The rest of the day in Polis passes without much more happening. Will at this point seems more worried about the scheduled discussion about the tablet tomorrow than anything else. He carries it around with him in a small bag he borrowed from Chang-dol, never letting anyone touch it, much less out of his sight. He even eats while clutching the bag, ignoring the pleasant chatter around him. Of course, I ask to look at it, and of course he refuses.
“It’s mine. Simon left it to me,” he says.
“I’m very sure that if he did he also wanted you to continue the plan. I know Simon too well. He always kept everything close to his chest—if he expected you to do nothing with this he would have simply destroyed the model weights to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands.”
His face is gloomy, devoid of light even under the warm glow of Paolo’s kitchen. “He wanted me to come around. It’s been three years, Alice, I’m not coming around any time soon. And it’s too late anyhow…” he stops himself.
“What? Too late?”
“Uh. The GOF is probably doing their own version of this plan. You know, what Chang-dol said— Maybe we’ll just cancel each other out. That’s what I mean.”
“It’ll all be talked over tomorrow anyways, I’m sure.” To speak the truth, I’m becoming less and less sure of anything myself. Polis seems almost like a world in a bottle, a magic circle divorced from any idea of the outside world except in the resources and people that pour in and the contract work that goes out. A dream-world where people work and live and share seemingly effortlessly, with no concept of politicking and internal power struggles. Maintained by material plenty and privilege, Poul’s voice reminds me. Still, everything outside of the bubble—Radix, the election manipulation scheme, the metaorgs, the GOF—all seem impossibly remote, like figments of my imagination. Had I really worked for a shadowy conspiracy for six months, fighting other shadowy conspiracies to take control of the world with machine learning in a souped-up version of Cambridge Analytica? It all seems so ridiculous now. But Simon’s voice is still in my head, telling me that something must be done, that first day when he questioned my half-baked ideas for improving the world until they broke down and I started to have an anxiety spiral in his office.
At some point people start drifting off and someone hooks up a tv to show one of the countless US election livestreams. About thirty minutes in Chang-dol starts guessing if the talking heads on screen are being synthesised—We do see a few “as an AI chat bot, I cannot say” error messages in the chat zooming by, but none of us can decide if they’re joking or not. The actual spambots are numerous enough that it doesn’t really matter anyways. Jens plans on staying up all night, but Will, Chang-dol, and I find ourselves drifting off at around one a.m. For once the usual drizzle has let up, and the moon shines dimly through layers of cloud-cover. The useless solar panels and their half-attached tarp covers glint sadly as we pick our way through the village. Will is still holding his tablet, though we don’t comment on that.
“I know we haven’t been able to have a real talk since you arrived,” Chang-dol begins. “It’s busy around here, to be sure. So busy that I haven’t even had time to bake anything since I moved in. No more midnight snack runs, Alice.” There’s a grim chuckle between us, but then the silence resumes.
“Listen. Whatever happens tomorrow…” It’s rather unlike him to be unable to finish a sentence.
“Yeah?” I say.
“Whatever happens tomorrow, I want you to know that I’m sorry about what happened at Radix. You were under my care, and I failed to protect you.”
“Simon was in charge, and he failed to protect all of us,” Will says.
Chang-dol kicks a pebble on the ground. It skitters, clangs against one of the pipes, then falls into shadow. “Simon. I knew him in Harvard, you know? He was always the smartest guy in the room, more well-read than the english majors and better at maths than the physicists. He had computer science masters students running to him for help with their dissertations when he was still in undergrad. All the world seemed to be just another problem waiting to be solved, especially when we went drinking with the cybersophist bunch.”
“And you?”
“I started off as a political science major, switched to data science halfway through when I realised I liked the data analysis more than the theory.”
“Huh.” Will says. “I’d always pegged you as more of a humanist than the rest of the Radix people.”
“In high school I was the politics nerd, to be sure. Quite a few people make that sort of change over their undergrad careers.” He almost catches himself. “Careers. Undergrad careers. I’ve really become one of the old establishment fogeys, haven’t I?”
“I mean, what you’re doing here is hardly establishment, is it?”
Chang-dol turns away, throws a few imaginary punches, stretches his back under the moon which has finally shown itself. “I sure hope not. Who knows, maybe this is the future. Or maybe we’re just privileged programmers playing at anarchism. The rich have always had the freedom to choose how they live, and if they want to be radicals they’ve always had the law changed to suit them rather than the other way around.” Another punch at the air, slightly more vicious. “We’re probably a good portion of this shitty island’s tech sector, if not its GDP.”
“Seems like you’ve got yourself set up for the end of the world, then. Do you still want to change the system?” I ask, somewhat fearing the answer. “Or are you just happy… retiring?”
“Retirement, that’s a good joke.” For a moment it seems like Chang-dol will actually laugh. Then he turns around. His eyes are bloodshot and his pale skin practically milk-white in the moonlight. The bags under his eyes have their own contours, their own shadows. Tall and silent, he becomes a lunar ghost for a second, then he starts talking in a screwed-up, angry, guttural voice. “When you were on the cusp of something that you’ve convinced yourself will save everyone, you don’t just forget that feeling. Every day I live here I wonder if I’m wasting my life. Every day the screaming inside becomes harder to ignore. Do you know why you’re here? I brought you two here to turn Polis into another Radix. If you can convince the people on this island to try to change the world, we’ll have another another shot with better technology and more talent.” A speck of somethind reflective manifests in his left eye. “We lost. We have to put it right. We have to try again.” Staggering, he takes a step forwards towards Will, whose face is frozen in what can only be described as a mask of horror.
“Change the world. Change the world. You’re just the same as Simon—You’re not talking about change, you’re talking about control. Biopower, psychopower, neuropower.” He says those last few words like they’re curses.
There’s a groan, the older man’s face contorting in what seems like frustration and anguish. His hands become claws, reaching for his chest like he’s playing pantomime on a stage. As he starts talking his hands do rapid cutting motions like he’s playing out a scene in a horrid political drama. “Control is the only way we get out of this mess! How else do you propose completely shifting the way society lives, works, consumes, organises? We’re not just dealing with a climate problem or a political problem or a social problem, we’re dealing with a total failure of the current mode of civilisation. And if we don’t change fast enough we pass the point of no return predicted by the Societal Limit Theorem, and then the collapse becomes inevitable—unless we kill ourselves with nuclear war first.” I can’t speak, I realise, but I’m nodding along inside. I find myself hoping that Chang-dol can beat Will down, batter away his persistent questions and doubts.
But Will’s voice also sounds strange, magnified beyond his usual reserved volume. “You people see all the problems with society and none of the problems with yourselves. It took, what, two months for Radix to get to putting me on the payroll? Yeah, I’m sure that won’t be a problem once you start playing Mustapha Mond. You want me to play along with this dictatorship bullshit? I can’t go to the store without walking by a homeless person. If I can’t even manage that level of morality, what gives me the right to control the world?” Missing the forest for the trees, I think to myself.
“Well, if you have any better ideas, I’d love to hear them.” I’ve never seen Chang-dol be sarcastic, biting, vicious before. It’s a look that doesn’t suit him.
The impasse is broken by the rain restarting. I wonder how the election is going in America.