Hugh Howey - Machine Learning

When John Joseph Adams and I edited an anthology together several years ago, we were both surprised (and delighted) to see a handful of submissions that dealt with homosexuality and questions of equality, even with stories set against the backdrop of the apocalypse. It wasn’t a coincidence, of course. The topic was everywhere; it has been one of the civil rights issues of our shared time; as speculative writers we were all exploring this theme.

“Algorithms of Love and Hate” was the first of several of my works to explore the ever-changing idea of equality. Too often we make progress in one area only to find ourselves pushing against the next. Or we find ourselves progressive in one area and stodgy elsewhere.

In my novel Half Way Home, I point this out explicitly: that our current modern selves will be seen as backwards to future generations. We make progress in areas of race, but can’t abide same-sex marriage. We solve that, and find ourselves scrapping sentient robots for spare parts. We expand our circle of empathy again, only to find yet another deficiency.

The point isn’t that we should expect moral perfection, or that we can know all objective moral truths, only that our smugness should be kept in check and our judgment of past generations should be tempered by recognition of their progress and our own failings. Too often we seem to think that barbarians are in the past and that we’ve reached some pinnacle. I think the climbing never ends.

Adam Griffey lost himself in the familiar glow-in-the-dark sticker. It was a depiction of a bee alighting on a flower, a thirsty proboscis curling out of the insect’s cartoony smile. The sticker held Adam’s attention. The glow of the bee made it seem radioactive, a poisoned thing. It adorned the edge of his beat-up computer screen, the edges curling away as the sticker lost its grip. The remnants of several other stickers stood idly by, just the bumpy adhesive outlines, the colorful bits having long ago been peeled away by Adam’s fidgety hands. He was prone to scratching at them with his fingernails. They weren’t his; they came with the old monitor, which he’d bought off another faculty member. Adam figured it belonged to one of their kids, what with the stickers. He thought about that as his eyes fell reluctantly from the bee and back to the screen. There was a message there, a series of messages typed back and forth. They populated a chat window, the only thing open on his screen. The window suddenly blinked with a new question:

lonelyTraveler1:you still there?

Adam picked at the edge of the radioactive bee, thinking of tearing it off. He read back over his conversation with Amanda, his responses in deep blue, hers a bright red. She had asked him a question before he’d gotten distracted. How long had he gone without responding? What would she read in that silence?

His fingers fell to the keyboard, leaving the sticker for another time. He sat motionless, unsure of how to respond. Thoughts whirled. Adam read the second question up. He read it over and over. Where the fuck had it come from? From nowhere, he decided. He had gone too long without reply; he decided to ignore the older question and answer the more recent one:

Griffey575:Yeah. Sorry about that. Doing too much at once.

lonelyTraveler1:you chatting with other people at the same time? you cheating on me? ;)

Adam glanced over the sad and empty expanse of his monitor and laughed to himself. Twenty-four inches by twelve inches of pathetic nothingness. His entire social life, his entire real romantic life, could be contained in one small chat window in a lonely fraction of that abyss.

Griffey575:I wish.

He typed the response, then held down the backspace key to erase the truth before he could send it.

Griffey575:Work stuff.

He decided that was better. Adam wondered if it counted as a lie if the untruth was as boring as reality.

lonelyTraveler1:what kinda stuff? for a class you’re teaching? are you writing anything? anything you can share?

Adam saw how lies could spawn more lies, each offspring bigger than its parent. The truth was, he’d been neglecting his work and his writing. Possibly, in no small part, because of Amanda’s constant badgering to read more. She was—if not his online girlfriend—at least his anti-muse, the woman whose insistence quenched all motivation. Adam had known this of himself since he was an undergrad: he couldn’t think when being told to.

lonelyTraveler1:you still haven’t answered my other question…

Which one? Adam thought.

Griffey575:Which one?

He hit enter before he could regret asking. He knew which question. He didn’t want to know, but he did. His stomach lurched with the audaciousness of her suggestion. And what did that say about him? How could he have a fake relationship with the real, and a real one with the fake? Which relationship was more real? Which was sicker? And who was the victim? Was anyone really being betrayed?

lonelyTraveler1:don’t you think it’s time we meet up?

There it was again. It was crazy.

Griffey575:In person?

lonelyTraveler1:how else?

Adam watched the cursor blink where he was expected to respond. The glowing bee radiated stored sunlight in his peripheral. In the utter darkness around him, he sensed the piles of clutter everywhere. He kept meaning to get to it. He kept the lights off in his apartment, kept the blinds drawn, so he couldn’t see the reminders of his laziness. The bee dimly betrayed him with its steady glow.

Griffey575:This way seems nice.

After the barest of pauses, he added a smiley face:

Griffey575::)

It wasn’t sarcasm. It wasn’t real humor. It was an apology, something to soften the blow of what he knew to be the wrong answer. Adam had replied incorrectly; Amanda’s silence confirmed it. An icon came up to let him know she was typing something. It disappeared for a moment, reappeared, then disappeared again. He was watching her think. He wondered what things had been erased, if it was anger or disappointment she was refraining from sending.

Griffey575:I think I’m just not ready.

He wondered if that sounded better. It at least filled the silence.

lonelyTraveler1:I’m gonna find out you’re married, aren’t I?

Griffey575:I’m not married.

Such lies were not in him. Such a life, perhaps, was not in him.

lonelyTraveler1:but there’s someone else.

Griffey575:There’s no person else.

Clumsy. The sentence sounded stilted, but it kept his response, strictly speaking, from being an outright lie.

lonelyTraveler1:I won’t push you. just think about it. or at least write me something, write me something about why you’d want to or not want to.

A pause.

lonelyTraveler1:I feel like we’re living in 2 separate worlds lately.

Adam laughed nervously. His fingers left the keyboard and moved to rub his sore temples. For a brief moment, just an insane instant, he considered telling Amanda the truth. He pictured typing all the craziness of his life out in one uninterrupted, suicidal message. He imagined her sitting there, staring at the icon that let her know he was typing for hours and hours while he crafted a biopic admission of how scary and surreal and demented his life had become…