I shut the document, logged out of the database,
closed the window, and deleted my history. I knew it was probably overkill, but
I always made an effort to completely eliminate everything that could be used
to trace back to my online activity.
I was one of the youngest people ever to get access to
some of these documents—it’d be a shame if I got hacked and lost the
University’s trust.
The Precontramortem Philosophy major was one of the
most limited-access things one could study. Some people believed that was
because nobody really wanted to study what a bunch of people thought up
desperately when they still knew they could die at any moment, but I chose to
believe the major was limited-access because it was prestigious.
I shoved the laptop in my bag, along with the notebook
and writing supplies one was expected to have if they were to play the part of
a detailed research assistant. I had never been great at taking notes—lectures
were the part of school I liked least, although I still enjoyed them. Slinging
the backpack over one shoulder, I started on my way.
As always, the building’s marble arches and columns
made me feel important, proud. If I died today, I would have accomplished
something in my life just by gaining access to this place.
Don’t think about that.
Now I sounded like one of the precontramortem thinkers
I’d been studying for the last few hours. Funny.
I decided to rent a hoverboard today instead of taking
the bus. I always had too much time to think on buses, which I usually
enjoyed. But today, the white-knuckle sensation of piloting a tiny life raft
flying at too-high speeds with the flow of traffic all around was just what I
needed.
I passed the robotically-manned farms and factories,
through the job sector where most people’s jobs were to have ideas for the
better-automated future, and finally, home.
My mother had always wanted me to get a job. Said that
I might be able to make real change if I wasn’t so involved in the books all
the time. But I’d responded that real change wasn’t necessary right now,
and that wouldn’t it be better to have someone well-informed having the ideas?
I preferred academia, and now that everyone got paid
the same and jobs were just something to occupy time, like academia, I
didn’t see any reason to leave the University. Besides, I was twenty-seven and
about to earn my third masters’ degree—clearly, I had a knack for the stuff.
“Happy birthday!” my mother called once she opened the
door.
Oh, right. I was twenty-eight now.
“Do you have your appointment scheduled?” my mother
asked.
“Six o’clock, and I’ve got my ride to the city
building.”
“Do you want dinner before or after?” my mother asked.
I glanced at her. “I said what I said,” she defended. “There’s no way they’ll
take you yet.”
“Before,” I replied. I’d always been a pragmatist, and
I knew I didn’t want to die hungry.
“I made your favorite,” my mother said, smiling that
I’d confirmed the before-and-an-implied-after structure of her last sentence.
I ate the enchiladas, but not with gusto. The Vegmeat
was savory and tender, the corn perfectly bright, the sauce just the right
amount of spicy, but it all felt a bit off. Just like every year on my
birthday.
When five-thirty rolled around, I was already sitting
on a bench in front of the city building. My best friend, Zach, had agreed to
take me for free in his car (he had access to a car because Zach was a driver
by trade, which helped to fill his time with conversation and music, two of the
things he loved best in the world). We made idle chatter on the bench until a
woman with a clipboard and a tight bun opened the large doors.
“Catrina Samuels?” she called. I ran up the stairs to
grab the large door, because it looked like the woman was having trouble
holding it open. Sure enough, the woman with the bun relinquished the heavy
thing quickly, turning her attention to the clipboard.
“Samuels, Samuels…” she muttered, her eyes scanning
the names. “Ah. Catrina Samuels.” She crossed the name off with her pen, which
I would’ve been a bit perturbed by if I’d believed in superstition. “Follow
me,” the woman said, and we started through a maze of corridors and city
offices.
It couldn’t last long enough.
“You’re here,” the woman said, gesturing to an
unimposing office. I took a deep breath, and the woman stayed beside me.
“Okay,” I said to her. “Wish me luck.” I opened the
door before she could formulate a reply.
When I closed the door behind me and turned around, it
was the same as it had been every year.
The Interviewer.
Some called it fate, some luck, some just called it
death. Regardless, it was a manifestation of the Artificial Intelligence
designed to be death in this postcontramortem world.
“Catrina Samuels.”
“Correct. But please, call me Cat.” I sat down.
“You are twenty-eight years old?” it asked. I nodded,
remembered that body language didn’t register because of the lack of cameras in
this room, and spoke instead.
“Yes.”
“Tell me about yourself.”
“I’m a twenty-eight year old named Catrina Samuels,
I’m working on my third master’s degree in precontramortem philosophy, and my
other two were in English literature and World History respectively. Although I
don’t have a job, I’m contributing to the planet by learning in preparation to
get one, and my degrees will help me with that. I’m also heavily involved in
civil service.”
“What makes you happy, Cat?”
What makes me happy? The Interviewer must’ve switched
up their questions for this year, and this was one I was utterly underprepared
for. Nonetheless, I tried to seem just as content as I was with the world,
except turning it up by fifty.
“Plenty of things make me happy,” I said, bluffing for
time. “I have a wonderful family, a best friend whom I love, and I’m learning,
which is in my mind, the greatest joy one could have.”
The Interviewer stayed silent.
“I’m thinking about getting a dog?”
I looked around awkwardly, thinking as I avoided The
Interviewer’s computer-screen face. For the first time, I noticed a curtain
behind The Interviewer. I was nothing if not curious.
“What’s that?” I said. I almost pointed but then
remembered to speak instead because of the lack of cameras. “The curtain behind
you. What’s behind it?”
“My servers,” it said simply. “If you attempt to
destroy them, you will not get far and there will be immediate repercussions.
“Not going to destroy them,” I responded quickly,
throwing out my hands in a gesture of surrender I’m sure the algorithm didn’t
see. It said nothing. “Including…the servers?”
“The ones that determine which humans will live and
which will die?” it asked me. “Yes. My entire consciousness for this city is
behind that curtain, although of course, my conversational mechanism is
connected to all of my locations, as we only have one entity determining death
in this world.”
“Were you programmed to use human pronouns to refer to
yourself?” I wanted to clap my hands over my mouth, but it was so much more comfortable
when I was asking the questions. I might have been tanking my
chances of surviving another day.
“I wasn’t, but there’s really no way to get around it
in the English language. Also, I’ve found that acting like a human helps put
people at ease.”
“That’s really interesting,” I said. It was true, but
flattery might’ve also worked on the AI. Of course, if flattery works on the
algorithm that determines who lives and who dies, this world has some bigger
problems to deal with. “How does this interview help you?” I asked. “Like,
exactly. Is there a certain goodness quotient, or service quotient that means
someone will never die? And how do you calculate that?” I knew that
sometimes, once in a blue moon, a baby will die. Nobody thinks it’s fair
because they have to be interviewed too, and of course they can’t talk,
but is there some pattern in their cries that indicate they’ll be a bad person?
“We both know humans aren’t allowed access to that
information.”
“Right, right. Of course. Sorry,” I said, but I was
still focused on the use of pronoun. We.
“Tell me a little more about yourself,” it said.
“Small moments. Some of your favorite memories.”
“Well,” I said, thinking about how to work its
preferred terminology into the conversation. “Of course, my successful
interviews with you were some pretty good memories.” It didn’t laugh.
Obviously. “Besides that…” I think. “Well, all the masters’ degree ceremonies
were pretty wonderful. And cooking meals with my family is always nice…” I wave
my hand in circles as if to remember more memories, but realize again that
there are no cameras.
“And I love going to the library…”
No cameras. Not in this room, at least. The
Interviewer promised retribution if I tried to mess with the calculation
mechanism. But unless there were cameras in that room, I’d be able to
just look behind the curtain. Just a peek. I stood up.
The curiosity has to fight the common sense that wants
to still my body.
“And if you were to die today, what would you wish you
had changed this year?” The Interviewer asked me. This decision.
“I’d want to spend more time with my sister,” I said,
surprising myself. I crept closer to the curtain, talking absentmindedly,
which, as an avid giver of academic presentations, was one of my talents. “We
were never very close growing up.” I could reach out and grab the curtain at
this point, but my hand seemed bolted to my side.
As it should be.
I reached for it, feeling the velvety fabric surface
against my hand. If there were movement-based cameras in there, they’d surely
notice a disturbance in the curtain’s position.
So when nothing was said by The Interviewer and no
alarms went off, I cautiously pulled it open the whole way.
The sight was underwhelming. A mess of wires, metal
boxes, and buttons that pressed and depressed automatically. A few blinking
lights.
Grabbing a few wires and pulling them out would be
possible—easy, even—but I understood perfectly that I wouldn’t make it out of
the building. The destruction of this tiny version of the algorithm wouldn’t
kill it, it’d just mute one of its many, life-ending voiceboxes.
The lack of response would be reported to everyone in
the city building and only the algorithm’s commitment to not making deaths
painful would spare me the worry of being tortured to death.
Besides, I had enough respect for the machine not to
want to destroy it. Our society ran on that tangle of wires. And…glass?
I couldn’t see many reasons for glass to be a part of
the machine. Until I saw the only camera visible in the room. It was pointed
downwards towards the horizontal pane of glass, at what looked like a small box
below. There was also a small, motionless mechanical hand next to the camera,
pointed down at the box.
The box itself had green sides, the only thing in this
room with color, but I couldn’t see over the lip. I crept closer, hearing The
Interviewer’s soothing voice a bit less clearly through the curtain.
“Do you have any regrets from before this year?”
“I’m sure there are a lot of small things,” I said,
creeping closer to the green box. I peered over the rim, still babbling about
having thrown a rock at someone’s head back in elementary school and wondering
whether the algorithm noticed a change in my voice from being behind the
curtain.
The sight of the box’s inside stopped my babbling and
wondering at once. The walls were green as well, and I recalled what one of my
precontramortem psychology teachers had said about how people liked to use
cameras to record themselves as a preservation mechanism, and how you could
change the background behind you by making the real background green.
But this wasn't what surprised me. What surprised me
was the dice.
All shapes, square dice and dice with triangular faces
and dice with faces that I couldn’t name the shape of if I tried.
Most were placed delicately in a corner, with all of
the one faces showing, but there were three in the middle of the box: A die I
didn’t know with a 10 facing up, another of the same type with a 6 facing up,
and a die with many, many sides and a 3 facing up.
I looked at the die for a long time, my shoulders
slumping with realization. I reached out to touch the die, almost unconsciously
(I would’ve stopped before the camera caught view of my hand, I think) and my
wrist brushed the box’s edge.
“Cat?” The Interviewer asked. I walked out of the
machine room, closed the curtain behind me, and sat back in my seat. “Return to
the main room, please.”
My blood froze. It knew. “I’m already here.”
“Already. Not still. So you did go
behind the curtain.” I’ve never been a liar.
“I did go behind the curtain,” I say. “But I didn’t
try to break your machine, I promise.”
“I know,” it said. “The touch sensors only registered
the briefest contact. You might’ve been able to fool me had you not touched the
box.”
“What will my punishment be?” I asked it. The face
didn’t change. Somehow, that never got less scary.
“What did you see?”
“Machines. Wires, buttons. A box.”
“Inside the box?”
I’ve never been a liar. “Dice.” The Interviewer was
silent for long enough that I tried the doorknob. Still locked.
“To answer your question from before,” it started,
“there is no goodness quotient. As the nonhuman tasked with administering death
to humans, I think it’d be somewhat unfair of me to analyze what makes a human
successful at being a human.” The sentence might’ve been hard to follow if I
wasn’t accustomed to reading so many research papers.
“So…what?” I asked. “It’s luck? Dice?”
“Yes,” The Interviewer told me. “You’re twenty-eight
this year. That puts you in the category of humans twenty-two to thirty-five,
who, in the precontramortem times, had about a zero-point-one-five chance of
dying. So, if you rolled a ten on each of the ten-sided dice and an eighteen,
nineteen, or twenty on the twenty-sided dice, you’d have been chosen.”
I think of the die faces. “So I’m safe?”
“No.” The Interviewer told me. There was no long pause
like a human might’ve employed, no give to the statement. “You’re the only
person who’s ever looked behind the curtain without attempting to break
something. For that, you have my gratitude. But the process is sacred, and the
fact that you’ve found the inner mechanisms of—” I started to think I knew
where this was going.
“—I won’t tell anyone,” I promised. “Not a soul.”
“Nonetheless,” The Interviewer told me, “your
curiosity has doomed you. I can’t take the word of a human when the entire
system is at risk.”
I pause, calculating. An academic approach to why I
should live was no use—I’d already explained my greatest achievements, which,
thinking about it, weren’t so great after all. And of course an emotional plea
would be no use. So I sat, steaming in my own despair, until curiosity got the
better of me again.
“Why do you even have a curtain there?” I
shouted. Curiosity and anger.
“Besides calculating based on age, it’s the one
concession I’ve made to bias. It’s a very small figure—far less than one
hundredth of one percent ever choose to look. But I’ve found that the people
dangerous enough to go behind the curtain were unable to be functional members
of society when I let them back into the world.”
“So it’s not based on the interview?” I asked. “Just
the dice?”
“Correct,” The Interviewer told me. “You were going to
live since before you walked in this room. You were always safe.” That
explained how some of the best professors and thinkers were taken young. People
always grew suspicious of them afterwards, wondering what evil they’d put into
the world to make them deserve that fate. Their husbands and wives bore the
brunt of protecting their reputations after death.
“And now I’m not.”
“And now you’re not.”
The Interviewer and I sat in silence as I worked
through first non-academic tears, then slightly-more-academic-indignation, then
completely academic curiosity.
“Do the interviews have any purpose?”
“They help humans reflect. Everyone’s too busy wasting
their own time to really think about themselves, and these once-a-year
appointments provide that opportunity for improvement.”
“Like New Year’s,” I say, thinking of precontramortem
holidays.
“Like New Year’s, but effective,” it corrects.
“Well, you never had that problem with me,” I told it.
“I’ve always been too stuck in my own head. That’s what everyone says.”
“See? An opportunity for self-reflection.” I stared at
the world’s best poker face.
“When do I have to die?”
“I have another appointment at eight tomorrow morning.
Your birthday is quite rare in this city.” I nod, realize The Interviewer can’t
see me, and then realize I never really wanted it to.
“May we talk until then?” I ask.
“Yes. You may choose how you’d like to die, and then
if you have any questions for me, you can have those answered.”
I nodded, feeling like I’d reached my curiosity quota
for the day. But not for the rest of my life, certainly.
“Am I really the first one to just look behind the
curtain?”
“Yes. That is why it took me so long to formulate a
response.”
“Well, that’s some consolation,” I say. “I’ve done
something nobody’s ever done before.”
“A once-in-a-lifetime achievement,” The Interviewer
agreed.
