When Marc visits New York, he returns encumbered with big carrier bags from
the FAO Schwartz toy store.
Once, a customs official told Marc he had duty to pay on some Lego MindStorm
Robots. Marc, aghast, threw the box at him.
Marc lectures on the mathematics of behaviour. He describes how animals
flock, and reveals how, with a couple of rules and big numbers, one can generate
such complex-seeming behaviours.
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He used to build little robots to demonstrate his points, only now, thanks to
the Lego people, any fool can make them, and his postgrad lectures are
summarised on the back of a billion colourful boxes.
Naturally, Marc has upped the ante. Now he says: what about human behaviour?
What鈥檚 the smallest amount of code you鈥檇 need to model the gritty stuff of our
experience? Jealousy? Rage? Pity?
鈥淚t comes down to faces,鈥� he says, when next I go round to his flat. He
sticks a plastic eyeball onto a blue plastic prism. 鈥淵ou see?鈥� He works at it: a
curly swizzle-stick becomes a tongue; a red ball, a nose.
This is his latest FAO Schwartz find. ZOLO: a box of interconnecting plastic
shapes. As you fit them together, you find that these shapes make little
creatures. Imagine Mr Potato Head crossed with Mir贸.
鈥淢eet Kevin,鈥� Marc says. (Already the flat has acquired a stale, bachelor
smell.)
鈥淢补谤肠.鈥�
鈥淗e looks like a Kevin.鈥�
It seems to smile at me.
鈥淗ello!鈥� Savagely, Marc snaps it apart. 鈥淵ou try.鈥� He flings the
pieces at me.
The shapes aren鈥檛 anatomical. You don鈥檛 say, 鈥淭hat鈥檚 an arm, that鈥檚 a torso,
that鈥檚 an ear.鈥� Still, in a few minutes, almost in spite of yourself, you find
in your hands a cute, crazy little alien thing with an expression, a character
all its own.
鈥淚鈥檓 not interested,鈥� I tell him, and I cross to the kitchen to throw away my
tea. There are take-out cartons everywhere.
鈥淎nthropomorphism,鈥� he calls out. 鈥淏unnies in pinnies, mate. Add another rule
or two to that, you鈥檝e got every human behaviour under the sun.鈥�
鈥淛ust give me her passport,鈥� I say.
Alice鈥檚 story: two years ago she was drinking Havana Club in the bar of a New
York hotel when a man walked in with a suitcase.
He sat alone in a quiet corner, watching her. When she stood up to leave, he
took from his case seven fist-sized robots. Seven mindless pieces of plastic
each following the three same, simple rules.
They scurried around her, herding her toward his table.
My story: I was lecturing at the London School of Economics, explaining why,
despite our best intentions, we seem to be wiping out all life on this planet.
The trouble is, we are conscious. Consciousness, I believe, is profoundly
wasteful. That is, consciousness lays wasteto its surroundings. I am an
economist and I have math to prove this.
That is what I said to Alice. I have math to prove this.
We were in a restaurant, waiting for Marc. I was struggling. Beautiful women
intimidate me.
鈥淎re we so complex?鈥�
鈥淰ery,鈥� I said.
She laughed. 鈥淒ifficult and doomed!鈥�
鈥渊别蝉.鈥�
She leant forward and tugged my beard.
Look at it from her side.
Marc enters laden with bags. 鈥淟ook what I found in New York!鈥�
鈥淲hat? Let me see!鈥�
鈥淎 Furbie!鈥�
鈥淥丑.鈥�
鈥淟ook, it blinks!鈥�
Alice might have expected a piece of jewellery, a picture, a posh dress; a
first edition, perhaps.
But according to Marc, what Alice really wants鈥攚hat we all
really want鈥攊s a sink, a sponge, an object, worthless in itself, into
which one can pour one鈥檚 humanity. 鈥淟ook at de cute liddle Furbie. Ahhhh . . . 鈥�
Needless to say, since Alice left him, he has been sending her fluffy dogs,
stuffed mice, Kinder Egg dragons . . .
So I have whisked Alice away to Hawaii. Since I had a lecture to give here.
Pissing on SETI鈥檚 parade.
鈥淐onsciousness is at best a short-lived phenomenon, and this, I believe,
explains the stubborn silence of the stars.鈥�
Back at the condo, I shave off my beard. My success owes much to this
beard鈥攊ts incongruous, avuncular fullness. Attending my talks is like
being told by Father Christmas that you have two months to live.
Still, Alice wants to snorkel, and if I don鈥檛 shave, the mask won鈥檛 seal.
Ta-da! I stare at myself, peeved. That long top lip makes me look
mournful. Worse. Pained.
I have no lectures for a while, thank God. Just imagine: that big, red,
wounded mouth, spitting deadly formulae like bits of glass.
On the beach, I read aloud an article about the local coral. It鈥檚 mostly dead
and gone, thanks to us tourists. And we all insist on having our brush with
fast-vanishing nature, don鈥檛 we?
Alice scrambles to her feet. 鈥淚鈥檓 going in,鈥� she says.
鈥淥办补测.鈥�
鈥淗and me the PhishP丑辞辞诲.鈥�
That is how it鈥檚 spelled. I hand the tub over. 鈥淧er-hish, per-
丑辞辞诲.鈥�
鈥淲丑补迟别惫别谤.鈥�
I go to the car for another magazine. She鈥檚 already out of the water when I
return. 鈥淪o many fish,鈥� she says, pretending to laugh.
鈥淧别谤-丑颈蝉丑.鈥�
鈥淕o see them.鈥� Blindly, she bundles the snorkel into my hands.
This is why she is crying:
Because it鈥檚 like Dr Seuss in there. Big fish, small fish, green fish, blue
fish. So many faces. So many creatures to be friends with, to love.
But we can only love on our terms.
Do not make the obvious mistake. Do not for a second imagine that the logger
cares nothing for trees, that the whaler does not respect the whale, that the
miner does not kneel awed before the seam.
We all love nature. But we love on our terms (how could it be otherwise?) and
our terms are deadly. We think the world鈥檚 a sink, a sponge, for our
humanity鈥攁nd we hug it to death.
Stubble rises, veiling my death鈥檚 head, lending it an expression, a
character, Alice once, however briefly, loved. But it grows too slowly, and
three weeks later, she is back with him.