“I just said I could code an algorithm that would allow people to get a kind of Cyrus ritual, you know, a combination of all their things, wrapped up in a little modern package, without the sexism, homophobia, and burning in the fires of hell of actual religion.”
“You know,” Jules agreed, “that’s not a bad idea. People might actually go for that.”
I shrugged. “It’s up to Cyrus.”
“What’s wrong, Cy, you don’t want to be the new messiah?”
Outside, the snow continued to fall. Everything was blurry and quiet.
“We need marshmallows,” Cyrus said.
“Why don’t we do a little experiment,” I suggested. “I can code a mini version of the algorithm, and Cyrus, you can decide if you like it.”
“You know what I don’t like about s’mores?” Cyrus said. “The chocolate should be melted. Otherwise it’s just the marshmallow that’s warm, and they’re never hot enough to take the chocolate down.”
“Fine,” Jules said, sighing dramatically. He leaped up, darted into the kitchen, slammed a few cabinet doors, and came back with marshmallows, chocolate, graham crackers, and metal skewers.
“Why are you so well prepared?” I asked.
“It’s the white man’s dessert. Every household comes fully equipped.”
We made the s’mores. Cyrus repeated his opinion about the chocolate. Jules suggested Cyrus squeeze a little Hershey’s syrup over his. “That’s another staple of the Caucasian larder.” He winked.
“I’ll do it,” Cyrus said.
I was surprised. “Really?”
“Anything for you.” He smiled.
“Hallelujah!” Jules said, slamming his hand on his armrest. “I always knew we were meant for great things.”
We toasted with our skewers. I promised to get to work immediately. Jules asked how long it would take to do a small release. He said we should try to get it out to a few people as soon as possible. You know, just to see what happened.
* * *
What happened was this: I started coding the platform, and Jules became maniacally attached to it. Not half an hour would go by before he’d barge into the dining room and ask how far I’d gotten, what would the features be, and should we think about beta-launching soon, and did I need a coffee? “This is genius,” he kept saying, pacing back and forth along the room, running his hands over the patterned wallpaper. “It could be huge.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant by “huge,” but even though I stayed super-cool and casual about the whole thing, I found myself getting a little excited too. I was sneaking away between classes and cutting into my lab time thinking about the idea. Essentially it was a giant library. But I didn’t want to pull the information off Wikipedia or some other obviously amateur site, so after I got the scaffolding up, Cyrus had to lend us his brain. Late at night and on weekends, the three of us gathered around the twelve-seater dining table and went through the categories, trying to find ways of combining them. “You have here that it’s called The Tibetan Book of the Dead, but that’s actually a Western construct because the translator, Evans-Wentz, decided to give it that title.”
“So what’s the Tibetan book called?” Jules asked.
“Bardo Th?dol, Liberation Through Hearing During the Intermediate State.”
Jules tapped on his keyboard.
“The thing is,” Cyrus went on, “if someone told me they were interested in The Tibetan Book of the Dead, or Tibetan Buddhism, I would first tell them about the Bardo Th?dol, and then I would direct them to read the larger body of work that it’s based on, which is Profound Dharma of Self-Liberation Through the Intention of the Peaceful and Wrathful Ones, and then I would tell them to read George Saunders.”
“Who is George Saunders?”
“He’s a novelist.”
“A Tibetan novelist?”
“American. He wrote Lincoln in the Bardo, which is about Abraham Lincoln mourning his dead son, who is in the Bardo, the transitional state. So if someone were mourning, say, a child, they might read Lingpa, but they might also read the novel.”
“Who’s Lingpa?”
“He wrote the Bardo Th?dol.”
This was the kind of conversation we were constantly having with Cyrus. Cyrus doubted whether the AI could replicate the ways his mind worked. “It’s going to be too linear,” he said.
Cyrus was consistently, encyclopedically brilliant. He made connections that no other person could ever make, between texts—religious tradition, history, fiction—and the world—movies, pop songs, memes. This was why he was the perfect test case for the Empathy Module. If it could mimic the workings of Cyrus’s mind, it would definitely be more human than any other AI platform ever made. I thought of Cyrus as Prototype 1, the subject after which all of my work would someday be modeled.
I wondered sometimes if this was part of my attraction to Cyrus. Was I in love with the whole him, or mostly his mind as a challenge for my algorithm? No, it was definitely the whole him. Either way, we were high on all of it, all three of us feeding off Cyrus’s big brain, his appetite for just about everything, and how it seemed to be making its way into zeros and ones, all with the little tap-tap-tapping of my fingers.
* * *
By the time the snow had melted and the apple blossoms had turned everything pink and yellow, I was ready to start testing the prototype. There was no design, no interface—it was just a series of questions on a blank page.
Name three things you love or that define you, it asked.
“Jules, you go first.”
“Chess, singing, and Kirk Douglas in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.”
“I didn’t know you played chess,” I said.
“You want me to be the first guinea pig or not?”
The second question was Name the experience that has most shaped you as a person.
“I tried to dive into my swimming pool, but it was too shallow and I gave myself a concussion.”
Cyrus and I both knew this was not the experience that had most shaped Jules as a person, but we kept silent.
Are you drawn to any particular religious tradition?
Silence from Jules.
And finally: What occasion/important life event is this ritual intended for?
“I want a baptism,” he said.
I typed his replies into my laptop. We waited. The system took fifteen seconds, which felt like a long time.
I started to read the reply on the screen. “?‘Your body will be washed from head to toe, this time avoiding the injury that was caused the last time you tried to baptize yourself.’?”
“I was just trying to dive,” Jules interrupted. “I wasn’t baptizing myself.”
“?‘Your friends and family will gather around and sing “A Whale of a Tale,” just as Kirk Douglas did in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.’?”
“I totally forgot about that song.”
“?‘You will dip your head below the water, angled at forty-five degrees, the way a knight on a chess board might approach his opponent. You will be reborn into whatever faith you have chosen to guide you, or if you choose not to follow a faith, perhaps this moment will give you pause to reflect inward, to think about what you want to believe in for the rest of your life.’?”
“Asha, is this thing looking into my soul?” He laughed. And then, for about ten days, he sang “A Whale of aTale” until we had to beg him, for the love of God, to stop.
Got a whale of a tale to tell ya, lads
A whale of a tale or two
* * *