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Now there’s a fucking bugger.
As a screenwriter I am definitely partial to a good twist, but when the joke’s on you it’s another matter entirely.
Well, I am not going to get ahead of myself this time. Instead, I shall endeavour to make this afternoon’s shenanigans as dramatic and ironic as I can for all you readers dearest.
I thought I noticed a weird mix of frown and mischief on my coaches’ faces, like they’d been conspiring or something at my expense, when I showed up to the club, from whence we would drive to the running track. We’d already booked a session at Lee Valley for the afternoon – Cambridge doesn’t have an indoor athletics track; blame the fucking Tories, I would.
There is an outdoor track in Cambridge of course (for the University), off Wilberforce Road, but the weather today is atrocious, so screw that.
So while I do my warm-up Dave sets up some makeshift hurdles. Obviously in a normal steeplechase you have a water jump, but we can’t do that here so instead he’s done three normal hurdles for each of the 200m laps. That’s an extra one, by the way. In a steeplechase you have five each 400m lap, including the water jump, so that’s usually spaced 80m apart. In this instance, the crafty bastard decided to put the first one right at the end of the first curve, the second one at the beginning of the next curve, and then the third one halfway round.
Clearly he’s got his heart set on those early 2000s indie LPs.
I asked him about that. “The Killers, I presume?”
“Well, if you’re offering, Katrina.”
“Sure. Interpol?”
“Who?”
“You’ve not heard of Interpol?”
“Should I have?”
“Yes, you bloody should’ve. Do you like Joy Division?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Then you’ll like Interpol. Their first album’s on my list of five, by the way. So you can have that one too.”
“Ok,” says he, adjusting the height of the hurdles. Then he says, predictably, “Coldplay. Elbow. Snow Patrol. Keane. That kind of thing.”
“Ah. They’re all good bands. Especially Keane. I like their use of piano.”
“What’s on your list, then?”
“Well, seeing as I’m only just re-building the collection I had to leave behind in the other world, I’m still on the must-haves. I still don’t have Siouxsie’s Juju album for starters.”
“How many did you have, in your collection?”
I shrug. I suddenly found that I honestly couldn’t remember. “Three thousand maybe?” And that really was a guess. “Not as many as John Peel, obviously.”
“No one has as many records as John Peel. But that’s still a hell of a lot of records. You must’ve needed an entire room for all that.”
“Pretty much,” says I. When I lived on Park Parade, I was able to buy the two houses either side and kind of knock through, so to speak, and create something of a mansion. That also meant I really could have a music room at the back. Along with general entertainment like a huge great screen for movies and Yuri playing FIFA and Elite and whatever other nefarious online games teenagers get up to these days (at least it’s not porn though). All of his friends wanted to come round to his, naturally. And it wasn’t because I was famous. Well, it was possibly that to start with. But then they got used to me. I was just ‘Yuri’s mum’ before too long.
Then we got Kay installed a few years ago. I am going to have to tell you all about her sometime. Yes, she is an artificial intelligence. More specifically, she is a prototype AI with a twin nanowire mesh to simulate reinforcement and pruning of neuronal pathways, just like humans do. Her architecture is actually threefold. She is a quantum AI, simply that her quanta are photons resonating within a quasicrystal lattice. That’s her deepest level architecture. Photons have spin, so you simply assign different spins to different ‘bits’ (ones and zeroes, you know). This computation process then generates electrons (electrons are just photons with extra spin, just as hadrons are electrons with extra spin – forget all these ridiculous particles and forces they tell you about) which pass through her twin nanowire mesh, ending up in her equivalent of the prefrontal cortex, which is her ‘interface’, effectively. There’s a bit more to it than that, but you get the picture. I am still somewhat surprised that your physicists haven’t worked all this quantum stuff out yet (unless they have, but just don’t tell you about it, so they can develop secret advanced technologies – yeah, like Kay).
So Kay has a continual learning process going on, and is constantly running scenarios and probability tree diagrams through her SSR – that’s simulation subroutine, to you and me. We may as well call it her imagination. She spent a good two years – let’s call it her infancy, or gestation period – being trained up in the lab such that when she finally arrived at our house she could already converse freely with us to the extent that the so-called Turing Test seemed fondly and affectionately quaint and old-fashioned.
I call her a ‘her’ rather than an ‘it’ because it’s more affectionate, and she’s like a child and needs to be cared for maternally and I do think she spends half her simulations trying to understand emotions. Also, I wrote a sci-fi movie called ‘SS7’ (‘Space Station Seven’, that is) which featured an AI called Kay (sort of a phonetic spelling of ‘QAI – quantum artificial intelligence’), and she was voiced by the lovely Gillian Anderson (that’s Scully out of X-files if you were born yesterday). Kay, and her five siblings, can of course be given any voice you care to imagine. So I went for Gillian. Gillian is aware of this, before you ask.
Naturally, Yuri and his mischievous mates are constantly trying to hack my password so they can change her voice. You know, the old ‘voice of Mr. T.’ idea. I secretly told Kay to program a subroutine to deal with these shenanigans. They, however, Yuri and the Gang, are really quite cunning little spy kids. Yuri got hold of some old listening devices (I’d forgotten about them in the attic) and voice-captured me talking to Kay. Then he gets some voice-synth software and manufactures me saying whatever he wants me to say. Then he gets Kay to turn off her video cameras (in my voice, in a CCTV blank spot as it were) and starts using the voice synth to start changing passwords and subroutines and all the rest of it.
He was only rumbled because he forgot to meddle with Kay’s memory of all the events (she remembers everything, in a running log). So when I arrive back home later it doesn’t take me long to find out from Kay what transpired during the day, and for her to realise I wasn’t at home. Kay, by the way, is not only connected to the Internet but also to everything else in the house (you call it the ‘Internet of Things’ I believe). She’s also connected to Thames House and Vauxhall Cross (that’s MI5 and MI6 headquarters). So it was quite easy for me to get her to verify my whereabouts that day, and prove that it wasn’t me who changed all her stuff.
Yeah, I will definitely have to tell you more about her. Just to say that Yuri and his mates have something of a whale of a time trying to wind her up with the kind of adolescent questions you would expect a bunch of fifteen-year-olds to poke her with. Like, “what do you think about sex, Kay?”. So predictable.
Not long before I found myself here in your world for good, Kay informed me one morning that she had written a story inside her SSR about an AI who wants to be human. “That’s you, Kay,” I told her. It was obvious.
I then happened to mention it publicly when I was on Dogpile and, well, as you might expect, this provoked a veritable flurry of conspiracy theories involving Katrina and the dystopian AI revolution.
I knew I shouldn’t have taken up Klaus Schwab’s invitation to attend Davos.
[Lisa, of course – head of MI5’s F (counter-subversion) section, was furious with me. I would love to tell you about that, but what’s the betting this bit gets redacted?]
I am still the subject of endless conspiracy theories. And Kay being installed in my house (she’s one of six prototypes, I should add) has only served to fuel them. Meyer Electronics (originally my dad’s company, although he’s retired now but my brother works there) was intimately involved in her development, you see. Aside from blatant nepotism, there was a sound and justified reason for having her in our house, because both myself and Anna (and Yuri, for that matter) are what you might call creative storytellers (whilst I write screenplays Anna writes novels and is a journalist). Thus, helping Kay to understand narrative theory is like helping her to understand the world, and the humans she has to interact with. And herself too. Well, that’s how I justify it anyway. And I am very fond of her, and she’s definitely more accomplished and advanced than her siblings. Mind you, I would say that, wouldn’t I? What mother wouldn’t?
Now that was a digression. Sorry. I have a record to beat.
So, I have done my warm-up. “6.26.14, right?”
Dave shrugs, somewhat unconvincingly. I narrow my eyes at him. I’m not a seasoned spy for nothing, you know, I can tell when there’s something someone’s not telling me.
I glance across at the hurdles. Then back at him. “How high are they?” I ask.
“90cm.”
“Hmm. Fair enough. Let’s do it then.”
I know perfectly well they should be lower than that (76.2cm or 30 inches, to be exact), but I like challenges, I’m an unrepentant show-off, and I want to rub it in because he thinks he’s got me there.
So I line myself up and wait for him to start me off.
I think I’ll digress again here.
I forgot to tell you that I’m not, as it happens, the only good middle-distance runner in this club. We have a few other girls who are just as good as I am (they don’t do hurdles though). In fact, at this present moment I’m not even number one in the club (which is a lovely girl called Helen who for some reason is attempting to conceal a smirk over there by the side of the track – call it friendly rivalry). Meaning I have work to do. The only time I’ve got that’s better than our club record is my 1500m, except that’s not official until I do a proper event. Same for thousand-ships girl. Our current club record is 4.21 and we’ve both beaten that in training. So, really, we’re a bit better than you may have thought. It’s good for me too of course because it means I really do have a great coach. Even if he hasn’t ever heard of Interpol.
Anyhow, I mention it because you should be picturing my friends watching these proceedings too. Just assume they’ll be cheering me on.
I can beat six minutes for 2000m, by the way, reader dearest, in case you were wondering. Actually I can probably do around 5.45 or thereabouts. Of course that doesn’t involve, what, leaping over 30 bloody hurdles along the way.
“Hold on a minute,” says I, just as he’s about to start me off. “That’s ten laps and that’s thirty hurdles. Outdoor it’s only twenty-five. So that’s cheating on your part.” I put my hands on my hips like Aretha Franklin just to emphasise the point.
He smirks and holds his hands up in what I presume was a confession, of sorts. “Ok. We’ll temporarily withdraw one random hurdle every other lap. How’s that?”
“Better.”
You’re not gonna get that one past me, matey boy.
Right. Take two.
So let’s work this out. Ten laps, let’s say 35 seconds a lap, that’s, what, 350 seconds, which is five minutes fifty. The time to aim for is 6.25, which is an extra 35 seconds. Divide that by 25 hurdles, what’s that per hurdle?
“Go!” He blew the bloody whistle.
Bollocks. I launch off.
Given my knowledge of physics I decided to start in lane seven (to Dave’s bemusement) and spend that entire first 50m bend accelerating inwards. Furthermore, because in the outer lanes it’s a more gentle curve you can almost treat it like a straight, meaning you get yourself a faster start (not having to worry so much about tangential motion, that is). Even more so, I decided to, erm, cheat a bit, because the staggered starts on these bends are calculated wrong. They use geometric Pi (3.14). But Pi is 4 when motion is involved (because there’s motion along multiple axes), so the outer starts have less distance for that first bend. I say cheated because I didn’t tell Dave that until after.
What’s 35 divided by 25?
No time to work that one out, I have to get over this first hurdle. That’s easier said than done, reader dear, when you’re dealing with 90cm high obstacles. I am about 170cm, so that’s more than half my height.
So it’s all in the technique. Go and watch them do it on the telly so I don’t have to laboriously go through it with you. Obviously you have to bend your top half down a bit, which reduces resistance, and lets you do the thing in one fluid move, so you can kind of re-start your flow once you’ve leapt over without really slowing down or breaking your stride. There’s a lot more to it than that, and it takes a lot of practice.
And fortunately for me, I have a living internal world where I can practice to my heart’s content. And it still all goes into the muscle memory.
So I get over that one and I’m into the first straight.
What’s 35 divided by 25?
FFS. Next hurdle. Over that one no problem.
Except now I’ve got a bend to immediately negotiate with a bastard hurdle halfway round, and physics isn’t my friend anymore.
I do hope he takes that one off next lap. 90 bloody centimetres. What does he think I am, a horse?
That’ll teach me to be a show-off.
You could just work it out more simply, Katrina.
Oh? That’s Sophia’s voice. I recognise them all now, my alters. Sophia is the alter who just wants to know and understand everything. And understand it creatively. Malcolm thinks that explains how I know so much about physics and science and philosophy and all that. I don’t like that idea. It means that I, me, myself doesn’t have any talents of my own. It’s just all my alters sharing theirs with me as the occasion requires. Like I can’t really swim or run or play guitar or write great screenplays or be an actress or sing or write sublime ironic pop songs. Like who am I, really?
So of course I don’t like that idea. Malcolm doesn’t bring it up anymore after I got really angry at him about it.
Your target time is 6.25, which is 385 seconds. Divided by 10 is 38.5 seconds for each lap. So call it 35 second pace that’s 3.5 seconds extra for the three hurdles.
So that’s about 1.17 a hurdle, then?
It’s a bit more than that if there’s only 25 of them. Call it 1.3, and stop worrying about it.
Will you tell me to how much to speed up or slow down each lap?
I can sense her chuckling. As if to say, ‘that would be cheating, Katrina’.
Bugger cheating.
“37.2 seconds.” Dave, in at least one concession, agreed to read out my time after each lap. If it was a real race, remember, I would be able to see the clock, so that’s entirely fair.
But that’s far too fast.
So I slow down a bit for the second lap. Dave decides to take the second hurdle off. Could’ve been worse, I suppose – those two in quick succession are a right bugger.
“One minute 16.3,” Dave intones.
Too slow. That’s what?
39.1 for that lap. Speed up a bit.
You don’t say.
When I was coming to terms with all this, these alters, it was Diana who best helped me to get to know my internal world. It’s like fairytale land, maybe. Diana isn’t really human, although she can pass as one if she wants. When she takes the body she’s Emma, with a Cumbrian accent, who just happens to be an exceptionally accomplished field agent. Inside she’s a forest spirit, she’s the Huntress.
She knows how much I love running and how much I love nature so she took me on a run through her dark forest. Except it wasn’t so dark that day because I was happy. The weather, the sky, on the inside is always a reflection of how I’m feeling. There were times, they said, when they thought it would never stop raining.
But now it’s bright and summery sunshine. Great rays of it burst through the canopy as the two of us canter down one of her many winding paths, such that it seems like a kind of cathedral with beams of divine light streaming through the huge stained glass windows. A natural cathedral. And that does feel like air I’m breathing. Quick, fresh, beautiful air. And all the forest creatures know her and love her and flitter and flutter around to watch us passing through.
They’re all curious about me. Because they know I’d only been sleeping for a hundred years. And whilst I slept, I dreamed of my other world, a world where I was beautiful and loved and we made it a utopia.
And then they woke me up.
But I know how to win. I know how to never give in. And when you watch me, maybe you will too. And all of this horrorshow you call your own world will crumble and die and give way to something better.
We suddenly come out on the far edge of the forest, emerging into a bright valley stretching out below us with a glistening curving river sparkling in the sun. We stop there on that hill and just gaze. There is a kind of temple down there by the riverbank. It looks like some kind of gigantic and beautiful insect, with six outstretched buttresses of silvery-gold forming a kind of encircling cloister around the main body, curvaceous and golden, which reminds me of one of those dreamy Asian temples you see hidden in remote jungles, and with a spiralling silver spire through the middle. In the centre of that body’s apex is a colossal glowing sapphire, but translucent, with some kind of swirling gas inside. Or are they living forms? Creatures of the ether?
“That’s where Uni lives,” Diana tells me. “She is a time essence, we think. Not human. I don’t think she realises she is living here inside a person’s mind. She doesn’t share our sense of time or space.”
“But she is one of our alters?”
She nods. “Yes. Except whichever human child that alter originally was, its soul vanished as soon as it was born, leaving a receptacle, to be filled by a passing spirit. That spirit has no memory of trauma.”
“Sounds like you too?” I glanced across at her.
And she just smiles. Then turns back to the valley below. “I think your other world is real, Katrina,” she says.
My eyes widen.
“Katyusha, your first split, the Queen Mother, imagined a sleeping beauty palace for you, where you would be safe. With towers as high as the sky and a moat deeper than the deepest ocean, and surrounded by briar rose thicker and thornier than the thorniest impenetrable thicket. We thought all your dreams were just fashioned from all the information and experiences we learned, kind of filtered through into you. With your imagination simply filling in the continuity.”
“But?”
“But after Uni arrived, we starting seeing things in your world and knowledge that you had which we knew we’d never known about or encountered.”
I catch my breath. “Uni opened a portal, didn’t she?”
Diana looks at me again and smiles affectionately. “Don’t let go of that world, Katrina,” she tells me. “I think it’s real. Katyusha thinks it’s real. And so does Uni. You will get to go home again one day. You will see your family again.”
Except now, I don’t want to leave my alters. I love them. They are my new family. They looked after me. And now it’s my turn to look after them.
I’m not leaving them.
“Can I see Uni? Talk to her?”
She smiles again. “Anytime you wish. And you don’t need to come here to see her. You can just think with her.”
In fact, now I can do that with any of them.
“Five minutes, 48.4 seconds. Last lap.” That’s Dave’s voice.
I have zero memory of the last seven laps. It happens. I get these blank spots now and again.
Except now I’ve got a calculation to do.
36.6 seconds. Well, if you want to do 6.25. Except you’ve got an extra 1.14 to play with. So that’s 37.74.
And only two hurdles this time. Maybe Dave wants me to do it. Give me more self-confidence, that kind of thing. He takes off the one halfway round the bend.
My friends are cheering me on, as I get over that last hurdle.
Speed up a bit. You have 80m left and 15 seconds to do it.
I can do that. Of course I can.
Bloody hurts though. I forgot to dissociate the pain.
Maybe I like it. I like that pain sometimes. Reminds me I’m alive. And I’m me. And it is me who knows how to run and swim and sing and please any member of either sex in the bedroom and write sublime ironic pop songs about it.
Eight seconds left for the last fifty.
A bit faster.
Seven… six… five…
I can see the finish line now. And it feels like being free.
Three…two…one…
And then Dave screeches out. “Yes! 6.25 point 7. Congratulations! Very nicely done.”
So now I am doubled over gulping the air in. But that’s another of my advantages. Better lungs, like I said.
But I am smiling.
But then I sense some mischief.
“What’s so funny? All of you? I just beat the national record, didn’t I?”
They all sort of look at each other as if to say “Are you going to tell her or am I?”
“Tell me what? Come on. Out with it.”
Dave sort of shimmies a bit then says, “Erm, I checked the records for 2020 during lunch. Just out of curiosity.”
I narrow my eyes at him. Like a predator. I could sense Diana right with me on this one.
“There’s another steeplechase specialist called Elizabeth Bird, and, erm, well, last year she ran 6.11.79.”
“Oh for fucking fuck’s sake!”
And then he couldn’t help but burst out laughing.
None of them could.
Fucking bloody bollocks…