AM I, WHO WERE, YOU WILL BE

AM I, WHO WERE, YOU WILL BE

They were looking for volunteers for the AIHG (AI Hologram Generators) at MIT, and as an Adjunct Professor of English Gita felt she should again be doing her bit to help scientific research. She was in awe of the brilliant students from around the world who came in and out of the labs and looked so serious and preoccupied with their experiments.

She’d once volunteered for a language recognition experiment with invented words that sounded a bit like Sanskrit. (Gita's Sanskrit was not advanced -- she’d taken it as part of the linguistics curriculum called Words and Origins). There was a resemblance, but it was not language she’d ever come across. Robots with clear voices enunciated a series of words and the volunteer / participant had to imagine pairings of these ‘words’ – ones that could conceivably mean the same thing if the words were real (which they were not). It was fun but not very consequential she thought. What could they do with all the data picked up from her brain as she listened to fabricated ‘words’? She didn’t mind—as long as it was in the interest of science, it was good enough for her.

AIHG was conveniently located in the Stata Center, the crazy Frank Gehry building that looked like giant collapsing boxes of Kleenex. People joked and complained about it, but Gita loved it. Despite its structural defects and substantial leaks, she adored working in this quirky, controversial place. She thought of it as a reflection of the defective world outside: a mirror of its imperfections. Linguistics was also housed there so Gita didn’t have to leave the building at all in order to participate.

There were many release / consent forms and she eagerly signed off on all of them. Two consent forms warned that psychological sequelae were possible and that follow-up counselling would be available for all volunteers. That was of course reassuring, though she’d never had psychological issues.

The first session Gita had to complete a questionnaire while strapped up to elaborate brain monitors. It took almost four hours with questions covering all twenty-six years of her life, from birth through to the present: parents, siblings, schools, friends, teachers, social life, further education, partners, children, peak experiences, traumatic experiences, food preferences, sexual preferences, taste in music, taste in leisure entertainment, sports. Exhaustive and exhausting.

The second and third sessions involved MRIs of her brain and another form of monitoring she hadn’t inquired about, during which she would focus on important events and memories, and then focus on minor details she would pick randomly, and describe out loud as she free-associated.

The fourth session was the 3D imaging of her face, which took longer than expected.

Gita's fifth session involved ‘integrating’ the MRIs – this was termed “Integration of the 

Fourth Dimension”. She'd looked up 'fourth dimension', but it seemed the jury was out

on the true definition. Time? Something ineffable? Whatever, she’d wait and see. She loved surprises.

And that was it. In three months’ time there would be a presentation to very select faculty and students, and three volunteer subjects would be featured. 

It was a gorgeous late October day, crisp skies and trees rich in rust, red and yellow. 

Gita hadn’t been allowed to invite any of her family or friends to the event, as the program was in its ‘initial stages” and was highly confidential. As she entered she saw the red seats of the Kirsch Auditorium were less than half occupied.  There was apparatus at the front she didn’t recognize, and graduate students with what looked like huge projectors at the far sides of the auditorium and half way down the side aisles.

Professor Genuss, whom she recognized from the 4D session, coughed meaningfully.

“Computer scientists, neuroscientists, young geniuses in AI and other branches, you have collaborated for years on this incredible project. I commend you all for this!”  There was applause that quickly subsided.

“Merging thoughts, memories, tracing and monitoring billions of neural pathways of

human autobiographical memory, combined with cutting-edge imagery and exploiting our most recent discoveries and techniques in the use of AI, we present our work-in-progress. 

We explore and visualize what some scientists term the fourth dimension!” He gulped

 some water from a small bottle of Evian and coughed again. 

“Our first subject, a courageous volunteer, an expert in linguistics who works in this very building will witness this with you for the very first time. She will not be monitored now of course!” 

He laughed nervously-- he’d clearly meant this as a joke but the nobody laughed. 

“She will be living through an extraordinary leap in reality which no one in the world has ever experienced before.”  

Gita felt a bit nervous now, observing the observers, a majority men, sparsely distributed in the auditorium. She was in the company of brilliant people who were strangers, or whom she knew only by sight as they filed down a corridor with coffee to their labs.  She hadn’t bargained on this. It felt like a pelvic exam by a doctor you hadn’t seen before. Was this all a terrible mistake? Had she taken on something risky with her uncontrolled curiosity? And her sense of obligation to help science progress by volunteering?  

She simply had to trust. Trust the process, she thought. Trust. The. Process.

Genuss had finished his presentation and the lights were lowered.

A hologram of her head was projected overhead into a space not too far from the ceiling. Ghita held her breath: it was recognizably her: thick hair, high forehead, slightly forward chin and straight nose. The hologram moved subtly, as if speaking. Then she heard her recorded voice, describing her trip to India when she was eight years old, at a Diwali festival. Pinks! Bright blues and greens, blazing yellows! She recalled her enthusiasm that day! And recalled her joy in describing that day for the experiment. Reliving it through memory.

Shortly after, another hologram formed above their heads. Who was it? A woman with a trace of her sari --Indian? The woman faintly resembled Nani, but Nani had a

flattish nose. Her great-aunt perhaps? Hard to tell.

The woman began speaking, with a surprisingly American elements in her accent. She described her long career teaching English and science in schools in Maharashtra. She had created a junior academy of sciences for promising teenage students to develop their projects and ideas. She was in fact born in the US! Her childhood in New Hampshire was followed by a move to Massachusetts to study, and then teach there in America. The old woman laughed and the hologram vibrated as she laughed, so real even the pale green of her sari glowed.

Shockingly familiar. Gita gazed in fascination and disbelief. Impossible. Warped. Wondrous.

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Alexa Intrator

lexieintrator@gmail.com