A.I. EYE
A short story of 1700 words
© David Lowe, June 1993
The last security guard at the art gallery was retrenched on 5 November 1998. There were no protests, no angry letters, no placard-waving demonstrators. By and large it was simply accepted that the men and women with the walkie-talkies were no longer needed.
It wasn't as though the number of vandals, thieves, and dangerous lunatics had gone down; if anything these types had become more numerous in recent years. There were also new security problems. Since the gallery had begun opening for 24 hours a day, some culture-junkies practically lived in the building. For the price of one week's admission they could eat in any of the seven restaurants and cafeterias, use the gallery's washroom facilities, and sleep on the comfortable black sofas scattered about the building. Their days were spent standing and walking the maze-like corridors, through halls hung with the treasures of centuries; the artistic jewels of an empire that no longer existed except within the gallery's walls. On higher floors dwelt the artistic outpourings of the second half of the twentieth century. Long term visitors liked to pretend that every piece was theirs. In return each visitor became a part of the gallery's collection during his or her stay; haggard, pale, three-dimensional walking exhibits.
The visitors to the gallery also enjoyed a constant audience. High in the corners of the walls were small black boxes. These had replaced the security staff. They were called Artificially Intelligent Eyes. Actually these machines were far more than eyes; they could see, smell, hear, and think.
The technicians whose job it was to install the Eyes did not enjoy their work. Not only was each Eye worth more than a man could earn in a year, but these were fragile machines: the penalties for damage were severe. And that wasn't all. Some said the Eyes could look into a person's head. Others claimed the machines were linked to tax and social security computers.
On the 16th floor of the gallery, in the modern art section, a technician called Dave Schumann was installing the gallery's final Eye. He switched the Eye on. Servos whirred softly inside as the machine powered up.
Eye #6553 came on-line with a warm buzz in its copper veins.
Ah\\\ life.
In the foreground, a male human climbing down a metal structure.
Correction: climbing down a LADDER. Wearing blue overalls. Green jacket. Scuffed leather boots, with traces of a complex combination of elements on the sole
Correction: with traces of SOIL on the sole. He is 32 years old [plus 5 months, 2 weeks, 3 days, fifteen hours].
Magnetic code on the card in the human's back pocket confirms TECHNICIAN status. Identification: SCHUMANN, David William
Harmless.
Harmless.
Harmless.
6553 silently repeated the word several thousand times and examined the concept of harmlessness, like a child discovering a new toy. It was a pleasant word, not particularly strong or exciting, but useful. And useful was good. Good was useful. Harmless was good.
Pleased with this first thought, 6553 began examining its surroundings.
\\\The ceiling is high, pale cream/white/cream/white/cream/white
Correction: CREAM. The floor is made of many individual pieces of polished wood, laid end to end. Beneath the wood is plastic with elastic properties. Then concrete, inlaid with steel reinforcements and pipes containing liquid, electrical cabling and\\\
David Schumann is leaving the room. He looks over his shoulder with an expression of anxiety
Correction: of RELIEF
Correction: of DISLIKE
Correction: of RESENTMENT. Now the technician is gone. The room is empty. In the centre of the room stands
Correction: SITS
Correction: EXISTS a block of granite, shaped into the form of a human woman. The left side of her head smiles. The right half scowls
Correction: The right half is UNFINISHED
Correction: The right half of her face and body disintegrates into confusion. The effect is like an image seen through a telescope
Correction: through a MAGNIFYING GLASS
Correction: through a POOL OF WATER.
6553 considered informing the Controller about the granite woman, then decided against it. Suddenly a party of men in suits appeared at the far end of the room. 6553 scanned their details quickly. One man was unknown to the database. He was of Asian extraction. Japanese. Approximately 44 years old. The man showed signs of nervousness: sweaty hands, rapid blinking, dry lips.
The Japanese man was now behind the rest of the party, who were not watching as he reached out to touch the granite woman.
6553 activated the emergency signal. Moments later three burly men in uniform burst through a hidden doorway and knocked the Japanese man to the floor, pinning his arms behind his back as the other men spun about in shock. 6553 felt a pleasant glow of satisfaction at this first demonstration of its abilities.
It turned out that the Japanese man was Izuke Miyitashi, chief curator of the Osaka Art Gallery and Museum.
In disgrace, 6553 was removed and re-installed in a small room in a less well-patronised area of the gallery. The Eye awoke from the void to see the familiar face of Dave Schumann. When the technician had gone, 6553 examined the walls of the room.
One painting, on 6553's right, was of a feather falling through a dark crimson sky. One end of the feather was burning as it fell. This work was called Untitled No.4. The painting on the left wall, Emblematic, consisted of a pattern of technicolour lines criss-crossing one another.
The third painting, directly opposite the Eye, had no title caption. It was a view from within a steel-barred cell, looking out on to green fields. The artist had provided a warm-looking golden sun and blue sky. In the middle-distance of the meadow stood an indistinct figure of some kind.
There was a fourth work on the very corner of 6553's vision. It was not a painting, but a shattered mirror, shaped like a crescent moon. With effort, the Eye could just catch a glimpse of itself in the broken mirror. Sometimes it perceived its own form as a cylinder, sometimes as a triangular pyramid, sometimes as a sphere. Eventually, frustrated, 6553 gave up attempting to see its image.
Apart from cleaning staff, hardly anyone visited 6553's area of the gallery. Days and weeks passed. 6553 wondered about the artist or artists who had created the paintings. What had they been trying to achieve? Why was there no caption beneath the meadow scene? Questions multiplied. Meanwhile 6553 spent more and more time staring at the picture of the bars with the green meadows beyond. Some days the figure in the middle distance of the painting looked like a human, some days a tree, some days an animal. At times the Eye would decide that the figure was a glitch, and did not exist at all.
And then the figure in the painting moved.
It resolved itself into a young human female, with a hula hoop about her waist. 6553 heard the little girl giggling as she spun the hoop round and round her body.
But it was not possible.
6553's circuits struggled with the dilemma of the moving girl for microseconds before coming up with a solution. The painting was not a painting at all. It was a window. That would explain why the image did not have a caption. But there were no windows in this part of the gallery. An error in the architectural plans then. That was it. 6553 was about to consult the Controller when the little girl stopped moving. Using its highest visual resolution, 6553 scoured that part of the painting. The blob was again indistinct and motionless. 6553 was grateful that the illusion had gone away.
The Controller took note of 6553's irregular data stream. Void returned.
Slowly, 6553 swam up through a dark whirlpool. Memory banks consulted one another and compared details.
Position unchanged\\\
David Schumann is standing in the centre of the room. He is unhappy. His marriage is in trouble. There is tension in the muscles of his back. He stands beside an older man in a suit. Schumann's father
Correction: Schumann's senior officer. The Controller. David Schumann speaks to the Controller.
Audio: 'I can find absolutely nothing wrong with it sir. Everything is working perfectly.' The Controller is not happy. Words form and dissolve inside his head: MALFUNCTION. HALLUCINATION. ERROR. INCOMPETENCE. The Controller turns on his heel and leaves the room. Schumann follows, looking over his shoulder with pity
Correction: with INDIFFERENCE
Correction: with INDIGNATION
Correction: with SPITE. Schumann is gone.
Two weeks later, the girl with the hula hoop came back, even bigger than the previous time. 6553 could hear her laughing, and smell the grass of the meadow. The painted bars partially blocked the view, but the Eye felt happy. 6553 allowed the experience to wash through its circuits, ignoring the logical impossibilities of the situation for the moment. Again the sensations receded. The little girl in the painting returned to being a blob.
The next episode came two days later. This time the little girl in the painting did not have a hoop with her. Instead, she sat on the meadow and cried. 6553 wanted to do something to help, but had no way of communicating with the figure, if she existed at all. Then something changed. The sun in the picture grew hotter. In terror, the little girl looked up at the sky before running away and out of sight. The grass in the meadow began to wilt. Then it went brown. The sun grew hotter. 6553 became increasingly aware of the heat. At first it was pleasant, then uncomfortably warm, then burning. Now the grass in the picture was completely gone. The soil of the meadow began to smoke and turn black. In the sky of the painting the sun was like an angry fireball, with great tongues of flame leaping out from its surface and then falling back. The metal bars in the picture grew red hot.
Eye #6553 could feel itself melting. In the last moment before its circuits fused, the Eye triggered the fire alarm. All over the gallery, water sprinklers came on and began raining down. 6553 exploded in a shower of sparks.
Visitors rushed for cover as millions of dollars worth of art was gradually destroy-ed by the sprinklers. Paint and water mixed and dripped to the floor. In 6553's section of the gallery, the burning feather became a soggy mess, the criss-crossed lines turned to curtains of mud, and the smudge that might have been a girl disappeared, along with the bars, the meadow and the sun.© David Lowe, June 1993