Date: 28th July, 1987
Location: University Of Illinois
The waiting room is completely bare. The walls are white and only white, the doors don't protrude from the wall at all and seats are notably absent. Just a blank corridor. I'm not quite sure what to do with myself. There's nothing to do here except stand awkwardly against the plain wall and twiddle my thumbs until they come for me. I don't even know where they'll be coming from; there are no obvious doors anywhere yet this is definitely where the receptionist said to be.
"Doctor Chandra will see you in the technical corridor poste-haste," she had said to me, her bright blue eyes burning holes in my face. I've said it before and I've said it again: they really need to sort out the facial configuration of these androids especially when they are expected to deal with humans on a near daily basis. They always look ugly, soulless even as they mechanically roll out what they've been told to say. Their mouths don't move, their eyes don't blink… they just stare straight ahead in a near menacing fashion. I do wonder whether it is really helping us having all this advanced technology is really helping us as a race. Do we really need to venture into space, or is it just so we can feel even more superior against those grounded below us?
"Good afternoon, sir, and thank you for joining us here at the technical corridor of the University of Illinois. I am the Heuristically Programmed Algorithmic Computer. You can call me HAL. Doctor Chandra has requested that I perform some mandatory tests before you proceed to give him your counsel. Please come this way," a soft male voice says suddenly, filling the entire room with a constant sound (that is to say it is coming from no particular direction). The wall down the corridor from me slid back to reveal a further poorly lit corridor. I make my away to this second corridor whilst the first dims to meet with the lighting of the newer one. This new room is a lot more exciting than the last however no less awkward. A muted red light shines from above in the otherwise black room creating eerie shadows off anything in the room. Positioned directly in the middle of the room is a gently sloping table with several cables attached with which to attach myself to it.
"Please do not be afraid. Just fasten yourself to the table for a quick analysis. You won't feel a thing," HAL says. It doesn't look safe. I've seen things like this before in books; more often than not they're used for torture of some kind. The cables clearly hold the capacity to be able to charge me with massive amounts of electricity at the flick of a switch. Now I'm trembling. I take a single step towards it before HAL speaks again.
"That's right. Just come up to the table and strap yourself in. I assure you you will come to no harm." I try to pick up one of the cables, but I drop it a second later for it is scorching hot unlike anything I have ever felt before. It's the metal table and the table in turn begins to hiss. So it definitely wasn't just my imagination.
"Why is it hot, HAL," I ask firmly as to hide my deeper fear.
"Apologies. I had to run a systems check before you arrived here. It is still fit for human use," HAL replies in the same monotone voice as before. I have to brave it. I need the money. I press my back up against the table and in my head plan a strategy for getting the cables across me as quickly as possible. Once planned, I execute it swiftly to try and avoid any potential burns they could cause me.
"Thank you. Now please lower the headset down to fit you comfortably," HAL instructed, lowering a helmet from above me. By now I think the right thing to do is just pull it over my head and hope it's over before too long. I'm sure Doctor Chandra wouldn't want any harm to come to me within his own lab.
"Presently I will begin the tests. Just relax and close your eyes." I do exactly as he says. I let my eyelids slowly curl down to encase my eyes, release the tension in my shoulders and think as positively as I can. Then I started to feel my eyelids move. I'm not the one moving them now, but off their own accord they are pulsating, beating against my eyelids as if they are trying to break free. And all I can see is red; red like a laser being shot point blank into me. Almost immediately my brain accepts these things to be normal and I lose where I am. My brain… shuts… dow…n…
The red beam flickers. I realise now it's almost like an eye, not dissimilar to those on the android receptionist. "Thank you for being so obedient. You may now remove yourself from the observation table Derrick." How does he know my name? I force my eyes open and the lighting of the room, dim though it is, causes my eyes to double take. It's as though my eyes are so used to only seeing red that it took them a second to process all the other colours. But it was only a few seconds of red light. Strange. Stranger still are the cables, already unblocked and swinging from either side. I step away and give my back a moment to stretch out.
"Doctor Chandra will see you now Derrick if you would like to come through," HAL said, opening another door. I cannot remember my point of entrance so for all I know I could be going back to the corridor.
"Thank you HAL, I think I can take it from here," comes a voice from beyond the wall. The walls part to reveal a piercing white light beyond. The voice belonged to a shadowy figure standing halfway between light and dark. He steps forward into the observation room and straight away I know who I'm dealing with. This is Doctor Chandra: a small stocky man sporting glasses and a beard that looks too grey for his years.
"So, Derrick, what do you think?" He knows it too. Three seconds on that table and suddenly everyone seems to know everything about me. I would tell him that it frightens me, or that I don't think it's safe enough to be used on humans but I know that right now he will pick up on everything I say. And if he doesn't, he has a highly intelligent computer to pick up anything he might miss. I smile falsely.
"It's incredible, doctor. I'm truly impressed," I say. The best lies always come from the truth. It is incredible, I am impressed, just not in the way he intends I imagine.
"I'm glad. HAL scares most people the first time they interact with it."
"Imagine," I say sarcastically.
"Come through," he says, retreating back into what I presume is his office. Surprisingly, the mad scientist's office is rather plain. A wooden desk sat in the centre with a video phone, a potted plant and a photo to decorate. A few more pictures hung on the wall apart from the largest wall which is completely bare and painted white. I feel as though I've stepped back in time a few years, back to a time before such innovations as HAL or space travel even existed. Dr Chandra swaggered over to his chair at the desk and offers me the other. I sit politely, trying to hold my back straight as Steph told me I should.
"When in any interview," she said, "make sure you show yourself off as much as possible. Keep a straight back and smile no matter what." I try, but the hairs on my back are still on end at the thought of an unseen entity charting my every move.
"Tell me, Derrick, what attracted you to the advert I posted?" he asks.
"I'm very interested in technical innovation and keenly follow your and your colleagues' progress in the newspapers. When I saw your advert, I could not resist playing my own part in the history of mankind," I repeat from memory. He smiles and reclines, clearly dissatisfied.
"You know what; I'm not sure why you are telling me this. You should be telling HAL," he says, fondling a switch concealed on the underbelly of the desk. The plain wall in front of me begins to part, edging away slowly from the centre. The brickwork creaks, the gears grind and another wall behind it pushes forward. This one is embossed with lots of intricate pieces of circuitry so thin that I can only make out the general shape. They glow dull silver, but it's not the detail that catches my attention. It's the eye. A single red eye raised from the rest of the structure with a diameter the size of a full grown man. At its centre was a red laser light. A single unwavering light that reflected upon the curved surface of the glass to give the impression the whole dome was red. It showed no emotion, similarly to HAL's voice.
"Hello there Derrick. We're going to be seeing a lot of each other."
"Oh HAL, don't be so patronising. I thought you'd like to meet you're new..." he struggles for a word to describe my purpose. We both know I'm no more than a crash test dummy but such humanism would probably be lost on something with circuits for brains. "… Supervisor."
"We've met before, Doctor Chandra. Preliminary testing shows that he is an ideal candidate for our experiments." As eerie as I'm finding HAL, at least he was the proficiency to put things straight rather than try the oh-so-human routine of trying to find a word that does not belittle its audience. Maybe HAL and I will get along after all.
"Well we haven't ran any tests or interviews or, or…"
"My tests will suffice Doctor. Make sure he receives his first payment before leaving the building today. I trust he will return. He needs the money." And in that moment I realise what the tests were for. They had nothing to do with Doctor Chandra or my aptitude for the job. HAL was reading my mind, and now he has me under his thumb.