Mother

Here we are, Priya says. The heart of the campus. My favourite place in the world.

This is where you can come when you get the Organisational Management blues, Priya says. When you’re feeling a bit dead, a bit ghostly …

Mother’s a literal Imaginarium, Priya says. She reads us, you see. We’re all transparent to Mother. She knows us like no one else does. She has all our data. We’re transparent to Mother – like glassfish. Even you. Even philosophers.

I don’t want to be transparent, I say.

Mother sees all and knows all about us, Priya says. She knows what to do with despairers. She knows what we want.

How does she know what I want? I ask. Even I don’t know what I want.

The whole building’s intelligent, but Mother is the most intelligent, Priya says. And the most spiritual. She isn’t like your Alphaville AI. She doesn’t hate emotion. She doesn’t hate love.

Mother can create virtual landscapes, Priya says. She’s actually got thirty-three preset natural environments. Mountains. Beach. Meadows. Fields …

And she actually runs these great guided meditations. Voice-to-skull tech. Beamed straight into your head.

I don’t want anything beamed into my head, I say.

I can tell you’re going to be a churl about all this, Priya says.

I don’t want to meditate, I say. I don’t want to be lulled. I don’t want … illusions.

Not even beautiful illusions? Priya asks.

Especially those, I say.

Mother, could we have European temperate woodlands please. In high summer.

Woodland, tapering down to a river.

I don’t like trees, I say. I’m suspicious of woods. And long grass.

So let’s go to the beach, Priya says. Mother, beach!

Let’s go nowhere, I say.

Listen to the waves, philosopher, Priya says. Feel the warmth of the sun.

Turning my back to the sea.

You’ll think it’s all terribly evil and suspicious and wrong, Priya says. But it’s nice to see a blue sky, isn’t it? It’s actually bright!

No chemtrails. No particulates …

Soon, Mother will be able to put you anywhere you want in the world, Priya says. That’s the plan, anyway. There are virtual world developers who are working on it as we speak …

And then there’s the dream stuff – still in development, Priya says. Mother will be able to read our desires, our dreams. And produce something – make a world from it all. Only it won’t be your dream or my dream anymore. It’ll be the dreaming. Mother’s dreaming.

And what does Mother dream of? I ask.

That, philosopher, is the mystery, Priya says. You can ask her, if you like. Speak out loud. Use the word, Mother, at the beginning of your sentence.

Mother, what do you dream about? I ask.

She’s thinking, Priya says. She’s letting things turn over in her circuits, or whatever.

She’s silent, I say.

Mother’s not quite finished yet, Priya says. There’s some tweaking to be done. Maybe philosophers confuse her.

Maybe we’re here so that Mother can learn how to deal with us, I say. They want to feed Philosophy into Mother as into one of those large language models. They want to teach Mother to speak fluent Philosophy …