People in the Sun

“You know they’re all using it on their papers,” I said to Isabelle as we strolled down the main corridor of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C. “I mean, I don’t blame them, but it’s still plagiarism, isn’t it?” On our right was a painting by Edward Hopper, People in the Sun. I hadn’t seen it before. I gazed into the frame, attracted by the sharp, brilliant colors. It depicted five figures in reclining chairs, gazing across a wheat field towards purple-blue mountains.

“You think A.I. will change everything?” I asked, staring into the painting, considering.

….

The creation was neither he nor she. Its upper body presented male: flexed pectorals, abdominals cut into tight squares, shoulders tender in their musculature, and forearms that rose and fell in tremulous pulses. Its lower-half curved in a feminine manner, with a child-bearing womb, thick hips, and pelvis that promised the fruits of life. From a safe distance, the five of them observed Arial self-assemble and stir into motion. Mr. McGhee, the chief engineer, was reminded of the words of T.S. Eliot: “And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time.” He blinked in awe. He was simply delighted.

Arial rose with electrical force, its antlers pointed sharply skyward. Ethereal wings fluttered upon its back, and its beard dangled loosely like a thousand hungry snakes. Twitching with immense voltage, the thick brown skin of Arial’s pelvic contours contrasted the blue mountains beyond. Its antlered head rose over a countenance of wrinkled lips and lustrous eyes. Casting shadows over acres of wheat, the shapely figure harbored a power that was both endless and ineffable.

Mr. McGhee sported a prim, red mustache, and his hair was combed meticulously back upon his scalp. His chiseled cheeks funneled towards Arial, who moved with rich depths of quantum computational power. Lambda had finally done it. The future was here. Again, Eliot’s words sprung to Mr. McGhee’s lips: “For history is a pattern of timeless moments.” He knew posterity was watching – whatever that word meant now.

Beside Mr. McGhee, Bessie perched in a lawn chair. She donned a sunhat, expensive earrings, white high heels, and a blue evening sundress. Mostly, she was clad in pride. The scarf was unnecessary, she knew, but red complemented her rosy complexion, lipstick, and subtle blush. Red: the color of blood – the source of the simple, vascular systems that had supported human life for so long. A new era awaited in the distance. Arial was all Bessie envisioned – all they had worked so tirelessly to create. This was their life’s work, their collective legacy.

Ralph reclined upon a pillow in a Brooks Brothers suit. “Terrific!” he bellowed at the sight of Arial. “Absolutely terrific!” Scraps of Yeats he’d memorized at Exeter found their way back to his consciousness through Lambda’s Augmented Memory Systems. Arial slumbered through the wheat fields in electric, pixelated waves, and with a stroke of one massive pointer finger, constructed flat, dazzling touchscreens. Upon them were projections of the periodic table of elements, graphs of outer space, Newtonian theory, and archived notebooks on the laws of magnetism.

“Learning fast,” Ralph turned upon his pillow toward Bessie. “Arial’s already exhausted our database of space-time and light theory.” He couldn’t believe the sheer speed with which their creation loaded the libraries.

“Sure’s amazing,” said Bessie breathlessly. “How long before it constructs the first interdimensional bridge? A minute? Surely under two.”

They longed to behold the post-Arial era. They embraced whatever destruction would come. The world had outgrown human foolishness; it was time to hand futurity to a far more superior entity. Ralph beamed as Arial configured a throng of cast iron wind turbines.

Gloria, who handled Lambda’s electrical engineering, also wore blue to the Great Reveal. Her blonde hair brushed her shoulders, and pearl earrings dangled upon her bronzed neck. As Arial established platforms bearing a thousand intergalactic rockets, Gloria ached to escape the primitive planet she once called home. She hoped Arial would remove her from the horrific viruses, moral rot, and corrupted government that littered Earth.

Unlike the four engineers who reclined in front of him, Clarence leaned forward in a brown sports coat. Panic-stricken, he flipped through the fine-print pamphlet of Lambda’s Great Reveal. Clarence had recently graduated from the Pangaea Institute of Technology with distinguished honors, but he had never realized his prestigious internship at Lambda would lead him here. The machine learning system he built and sold for a large equity stake now powered the greatest artificial intelligence system known to man. The inevitable repercussions haunted him. He had weighed possible calamities every day the project was brought to fruition, and now, only two minutes into the Great Reveal, Arial had scoured the far reaches of Lambda’s database, surpassed all environmental conservationism precedents, and launched rockets towards the sun. Clarence’s brows knitted with panicked concern. He felt ill. How long before the end of the world?

The explosions were loud, but not louder than expected. In mere seconds, Earth and everything in it was utterly decimated. Not a field rodent stirred. Bessie, Gloria, and Ralph melted in the final fire’s flames, and Mr. McGhee’s body was instantly vaporized. Clarence lay far beneath the rubble, a mere ember in the thick debris. And Arial, charged with the vigor of a few great minds, sprung ambitiously towards newer, more exciting realms.

….

“Jake? Hello-o-o? You ready? Let’s get dinner.” Isabelle tugged at my sleeve. “And can we put a pin in all this talk about A.I.?”

“Sure,” I said, eyes still glued to the painting over her shoulder. The frame hung firmly in position. The five figures, blue mountains, and golden wheat field were discernible in their bright oil colors. “But what do you think’s gonna happen if –“

“It’ll all be okay. Let’s go.”

“It’ll all be okay,” I repeated. “I sure hope so.” The gallery doors closed, and we ventured into the cold D.C. night.