The Turing Test
Willow confronted her at breakfast the next morning. "Anya told me about Tara being in the store to cast an uninvite spell for you. You didn't tell me she'd been here," Willow said in a hurt voice.
"I didn't think you'd want to know," Buffy said. "Since you've been trying so hard to avoid magic and all."
"But not to avoid Tara," Willow protested. "I can't ask her to give up magic just because it makes me uncomfortable - not if I want her back. Eventually I'll have to face it - because the magic isn't going to go away. It's easy to deal with temptation if we get rid of everything in the house - but I can't hide in the house forever."
Buffy shivered. Suddenly this conversation was hitting a little close to home. "Believe me, I know all about temptation, Willow," she said.
"No, I don't think you do," Willow said crossly. "You don't know what it feels like to want something so much that you'll do anything - anything - to get it."
There will never be a better opening . . . "I've been sleeping with Spike."
Willow stared, her irritation forgotten. After a minute or two, she noticed that her mouth was open and she shut it with a snap. "You . . . and Spike? That's just . . . wow."
"It's over now, though. After Riley left, I told him I couldn't see him anymore. That's why I needed the uninvite spell," she explained. "It was killing me, Will. He loves me - I can admit that now - but I can't love him. I was only using him to make myself forget for a while; to feel alive again." Willow suddenly found the tabletop intensely interesting, and Buffy sighed. Her friend would always feel guilty about pulling her back out of heaven, but she had hoped Willow would be dealing with it a little better after so long.
Putting aside her concern, she pressed on before she could lose her courage. "But I still want him." Her eyes lost focus as she remembered. Words tumbled from her lips before she could think to hold them in. "It's like he could read my mind - everything I wanted, and some things I didn't even know I wanted at first . . ."
"Buffy," Willow said slowly, "if it was that good . . ."
"No!" she insisted, coming back to herself and horrified that she had given that impression. "This is Spike we're talking about, remember? Tried to kill me several times, tried to kill you, tried to tear us all apart from each other two years ago? And so on, and so on?" Buffy sat back in her chair and stirred her coffee aimlessly. "Though if someone only thought about what he's been like this year . . ." some inner gremlin of honesty forced her to add.
Willow's face grew thoughtful. "Sounds like the Turing test."
"There's a test?" Buffy asked, confused, putting down her spoon. "Nobody said anything about a test. I didn't study!"
"Buffy, the Turing test was a test for artificial intelligence developed in the 1950s by Dr. Alan Turing," Willow explained, laughing.
"Makes sense - his test, he can name it what he wants," she said. Her face was still puzzled. "But what does that have to do with Spike?"
"He - Dr. Turing - said that if you couldn't tell from its responses that you were talking to a computer, then it had intelligence," she clarified. "And it didn't matter that it wasn't human, it was a sentient being. What if we thought about a kind of Turing test - for a soul?" she ventured.
Buffy thought she understood now. "Like, if we can't tell . . ."
"Right. Imagine you'd only ever met Spike a couple of years ago. And - and you've never seen him go all . . . vamp-y. Judging by everything he's done, would you think he was human? 'Cause then we'd assume he had a soul."
"That doesn't work, Will," she protested. "The only reason he hasn't killed anyone is because of the Initiative chip, not because he's gotten to be a better person."
"But don't you see? The reason doesn't matter - you can only judge the behaviour. If he behaves like he has a soul, then it doesn't matter what caused it, you have to say he's got one. That's the Turing test." Willow paused, considering the events of the past two years. "And Buffy? If he wanted to hurt us in ways he could manage without the chip, it would have been easy - you said it yourself, he almost drove us apart a couple years ago. But he's actually helped us, and almost, well, died. Because he loves you."
"You sound like you're taking his side," she protested. "Tara was all over me to go talk to him, too. What is this, gang up on Buffy week?"
"I'm not," Willow insisted.
"Could've fooled me. I don't want to talk about this any more, Will. I can't." Buffy pushed away from the table. "I have to get Dawn up or she'll be late again," she said, looking for an excuse to get away.
After waking Dawn, she waited until she heard Willow leave for classes before she came out of her room again.