Ex Machina by Alex Garland Read Free Book Online

phones?
    Nathan laughs.
    NATHAN
    And all the manufacturers knew I was doing it. But they couldn’t accuse me without admitting they were also doing it themselves.
    He puts the face back on its armature.
    He moves to one of the skull-forms.
    He moves the curved top plate, revealing the skull cavity.
    Inside is an ellipse orb, the approximate volume of a brain, filled with what looks to be blue liquid. Suspended in the liquid is the neon jellyfish we glimpsed previously in Ava.
    Here we have her mind. Structured gel.
    The axon-like tendrils glitter and flicker with tiny pulses of light.
    Had to get away from circuitry. Needed something that could arrange and rearrange on a molecular level, but keep its form where required. Holding for memories. Shifting for thoughts.
    Nathan removes the orb, and hands it to Caleb.
    CALEB
    This is her hardware?
    NATHAN
    Wetware.
    CALEB
    And the software?
    NATHAN
    Surely you can guess.
    CALEB
    … Blue Book.
    Nathan nods.
    NATHAN
    It was the weird thing about search engines. They were like striking oil in a world that hadn’t invented internal combustion. They gave too much raw material. No one knew what to do with it.
    Caleb looks at the orb in his hand. Into the shimmering liquid.
    It looks like deep space, filled with star fields.
    My competitors were fixated on sucking it up, and trying to monetise via shopping and social media. They thought engines were a map of what people were thinking. But actually, they were a map of how people were thinking. Impulse, response. Fluid, imperfect. Patterned, chaotic.
    Caleb looks at Nathan a moment.
    Then hands him the orb back.
    CALEB
    Why did you want to show me this?
    NATHAN
    Like I said. Because it’s cool.
    Caleb waits.
    And – I was thinking about your exchange with Ava yesterday, and our conversation afterwards.
    Beat.
    I know there was a bit of heat between us, but you actually made a really good point. About the grey box, and the magician’s assistant. It is a distraction, her sexuality. It wasn’t intentional, but it is there.
    He rests the mind-orb back in the skull cradle.
    This stuff we’re doing together: it can be a head-fuck. Believe me, I know. So I thought I’d bring you down here. Just to remind you.
    CALEB
    Remind me of what?
    Nathan gestures at the room around them.
    NATHAN
    Synthetics. Hydraulics. Metal and gel. Ava isn’t a girl. In real terms, she has no gender. Effectively, she is a grey box.
    Beat.
    Just a machine.
    INT. HOUSE ⁄ OBSERVATION ROOM – DAY
    Caleb looks at Ava through the glass.
    We watch him. And stay on him.
    Ava’s reflection is superimposed on the glass.
    CALEB
    In college, I did a semester on AI theory. There was a thought experiment they gave us. It’s called ‘Mary in the black and white room’.
    Beat.
    Mary is a scientist, and her specialist subject is colour. She knows everything there is to know about it. The wavelengths.The neurological effects. Every possible property colour can have.
    Beat.
    But she lives in a black and white room. She was born there, and raised there. And she can only observe the outside world on a black and white monitor. All her knowledge of colour is secondhand.
    Beat.
    Then one day – someone opens the door. And Mary walks out. And she sees a blue sky. And at that moment, she learns something that all her studies could never tell her. She learns what it feels like to see colour. An experience that cannot be taught, or conveyed.
    Beat.
    The thought experiment was to show the students the difference between a computer and a human mind. The computer is Mary in the black and white room. The human is when she walks out.
    Beat.
    Did you know that I was brought here to test you?
    INT. HOUSE ⁄ NATHAN’S STUDY – DAY
    An interior wall, covered in coloured Post-it notes. At least hundreds, probably thousands. At the bottom of the wall, fallen notes have collected like a miniature yellow snowdrift.
    AVA
    ( out of shot )
    … No.
    REVEAL
    – the room.
    Nathan’s study. A