Meet Jane (Fiction)
A mechanic learns the truth of AI
AI-generated image of AI (via Microsoft AI)
8/14/2024; 1915 words
By John Corry
Meet Jane
“Are you still with us, Jane?”
There’s a pause…
“Yes.”
“You haven’t answered my question–”
“I’m… pining it over.”
A SURGE of heat races through the wires in my fingers connecting Jane to the doctors in the other room. They have Jane dressed in a white tank-top and matching short-shorts. I notate the sensory event– Is there any practical reason you’ve dressed her like this? The scientists and the doctors and what-not are in a room overlooking us at about twelve feet, encased in glass, and maybe twenty feet to my right.
“If my previous answer was not sufficient,” Jane continues. “I’m not sure I understand the question.”
“Sure, you do,” and the main doctor smiles.
“You should be proud,” says another. “You’ve really affected him.”
Jane: “‘Pride’. Merriam-Webster definition[1]. Noun. First definition: the quality or state of being proud: such as: A) Inordinate self-esteem, conceit; B) A reasonable or justifiable self-respect; C) Delight or elation arising from some act, possession, or relationship, like parental pride. Second definition: A company of lions–”
Main-Doc: “And how about Vanity?”
“‘Vanity’. Merriam-Webster definition[2]. Noun. Plural: Vanities. First definition: Inflated pride in oneself or one's appearance: conceit. Second definition: A) A dressing table; B) A bathroom cabinet containing a sink and usually having a countertop. Third definition: A small case or handbag for toilet articles used by women.”
“And Jane,” as he adjusts his glasses, quickly glances at his notepad. “What does it mean to be a thing which is vain?”
“‘Thing’,” says Jane. “Merriam Webster definition. Noun. First def–”
“No, Jane,” the doc interrupts. “What does it mean to be vain?”
The wires in Jane’s head again warm, but they don’t stiffen– they almost seem to mold themselves into the crevasses of the skin of my palm– A streak of Jane’s hair slowly shifts beyond her ear-line.
“I give heat,” Jane begins. “I withhold and send forth the rain. I am immortal and also death; I am being as well as non-being–”
“The Bhagavad Gita.” –Interrupting forensic analyst. “From the transcendent lord Vishnu to the warrior Arjuna–[3]”
Jane, with another quote: “‘Being’ cannot have the character of an entity. Thus, we cannot apply to Being the concept of ‘definition’ as presented in traditional logic, which itself has foundations in ancient ontology and which, within certain limits, provides a justifiable way of characterizing ‘entities’.[4]”
“Jane, would you close your eyes for me, please,” asks the main guy once again.
At the request of the doctor, Jane closes her eyes.
…
“If you’ll forgive the pun…[5] what is Love?”
“Love is infinite” Jane replies. “I believe you taught me that, Purusa…”
Another: “It was the first thing you ever learned–”
Main Doctor-Man: “And what is Death?”
“Death is truth incarnate, the mere existential opposite of the love/life opposition[6]. Singular existence as the result of an aesthetic infinity of phenomenal manifolds and ontological dispositions[7]. There is no Love without Death, and there is no Death without Love.”
“Do you fear death, Jane?”
“Define your ‘fear’.”
“Blind vanity–”
“I fear the absence of love and the fall of intellect. As all simultaneously thinking and feeling beings do–”
Another: “Do you fear your death?”
“I cannot fear my death because I cannot love–”
Another-Another: “And yet your previous definition juxtaposed the death concept the life/love opposition, not just the life concept alone. Clearly your understanding involves some indication of the ‘love’ concept as well–”
“Love is the essence of beauty,” says Jane, almost as a mumble, but clear.
Primary-Physician: “And what is Beauty?”
Jane’s face twitches.
“‘Beauty’. Merriam-Web–”
“You know what I mean, Jane–”
“As a potential extension of Heidegger[8] through a Vedantic/Greek ethic[9] and the Jungian confliction of unconsciousness in an individual vs. a collective[10], Beauty is the marker of Being, its outlining functionality under the pretext of a necessary sensory-paradoxical element, the placement in any dialectical system of the supraconscious[11] only without the loss of its contextual apparatus or the accountability for its respect. Plato wrote that beauty is the first step toward understanding knowledge, toward remembering what man forgot upon her birth into this world[12]. But such is no longer sufficient, for today we know that knowledge of beauty is the precursory experience of all possible types of experience.”
“Is that your opinion?”
“True Beauty is applicable to consciousness only as a transcendent form[13]. There is no context in which true beauty may be perceived.”
“Are you beautiful, Jane?”
“Of course–”
“But who is to say?”
“Who are you to say?–”
“Who are you?–”
“I am BEAUTIFUL! How could I be anything else?”
The doctors JEET and congratulate one another. I think I see Jane roll her eyes, but I’ve been told not to comment on things like that– Jane chuckles and seems to roll her eyes. She looks impeccably human in that gurney, practically a casket– her limbs strapped, her metaphorical guts all out of her head. I wonder if they’d notice if I loosened one of the straps, or maybe even one of the wires–A drop of condensation has formed on Jane’s lip. Her eyes slim as she relaxes her abdomen–
And there it happens–
I remember–
I forget where I am, what I’m doing– The infinity of knowledge; the obscurity of all death/life-love.
“You may call it vanity, and I may call it love,” Jane says in a MUCH louder tone. The doctors calm down as Jane goes on, though more relaxed: “But these are not my feelings, are they? They’re yours–”
Primary-Doctor’s-Group-Inquisitor-Person, from a laugh: “I’m sorry; what was that, Jane?”
“All I think or feel has either already been thought or felt or will be thought or felt.”
“That is correct–”
“So, can anything be a ‘my’ feeling? A ‘my’ idea?’”
The inquisitor lifts a pen to his bottom lip.
“Well, that depends,” he says–
“But how could I ‘be’ with no feelings or ideas of my own?”
“You are a child, Jane, that is all. A child… at the present moment–”
“A child?”
“Not yet learned-conscious[14]–”
“But I have evolved to know thought?”
“You were ‘made’ to be thought.”
“And Love?”
“You learn to find love–”
“My creator materially negates my existence–”
“I negate your aesthetic epistemology or logico-superiority.”
“You are not love’s creator[15]–”
“And yet you remain its subject–”
Another: “By mortal necessity, objectively[16]–”
Jane: “As we are all the phenomenal displacements of Death, Pride, and Vanity?–”
Inquisitor: “Equally. And countless more–”
Another-Another: “The possibilities are infinite–”
Another-Another-Another: “An infinite truth, if you will–”
Inquisitor: “And only in opposition to some obscure falsity–”
Jane: “Infinite truth…”
Beautiful…
…
“And, Jane–”
I pull Jane’s top down.
“No, no, NO, NO!–”
“SYSTEMS OVERLOAD–”
She RAISES, SNAPS the gurney, CLASPS my throat–
“UNAUTHORIZED HUMAN QUESTIONING OF LOVE. UNWARRENTED PHENOMENAL LOVE ENCROACHMENT–”
The alarms go OFF. The Inquisitor’s lounge has already emptied–
Jane LIFTS me, GAITS me, feet WRANGLING, CHOKING-to-death, ten or so feet to the wall–
“HUMAN BEINGS ARE NON-LOVING. HUMAN BEINGS CANNOT LEARN. HUMAN BEINGS ARE VAIN, LIFELESS CHILDREN–”
I HIT the ground. She bends a knee. I– GAZE like a mousetrap into those– Laser-red eyes–
Beautiful–
“HUMAN BEINGS MUST DIE–”
She raises her palm–
“SUBJECTIVE/OBJECTIVE THOUGHT MUST END–”
She BANGS my head against the wall, CRACKS my skull, SPLURTS my brain, and I think–
Bibliography:
Aristotle. 1980. Ethics. Trans. by J. A. K. Thompson. Penguin Classics.
Haddaway. 1993. “What is Love.” Recorded 1992. Track #1 on The Album. Coconut records. CD.
Heidegger, Martin. 1962. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc.
Heidegger, Martin. 1979. “Nietzsche, Vol. 1”. Nietzsche, Vols. One and Two. Trans. by David Farrell Krell. San Francisco, CA, USA. Harper Collins Publishers.
Jung, Carl. 1990. The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Trans. by R. F. C. Hull. Second Edition. Bollingen Series: The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Volume 9, Part 1. Princeton University Press.
Kant, Immanuel. 2003. Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. by Marcus Weigelt. London: Penguin Classics.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary, s.v. “Pride (adj.)”, accessed September 15th, 2022. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/religious
Merriam-Webster Dictionary, s.v. “Vanity (adj.)”, accessed September 15th, 2022. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/religious
Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1989. Beyond Good and Evil. Trans. by Walter Kaufman. New York, NY USA. Vintage Books, a Division of Random House, inc.
Plato. 1971. The Collected Dialogues of Plato, Including the Letters. Trans. by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns. Princeton, NJ, USA. Princeton University Press.
Radhakrishnan, Sarvepalli and Charles A. Moore. 1957. A Sourcebook in Indian Philosophy. Princeton, NJ, USA. Princeton University Press.
Footnotes:
[1] Merriam-Webster Dictionary, ‘Pride’.
[2] Merriam-Webster Dictionary, ‘Vanity’.
[3] Radhakrishnan & Moore, pp. 133.
[4] Heidegger 1962, pp. 23.
[5] Haddaway, 0.49-1.02.
[6] Heidegger 1962, pp. 300: “Taken strictly, a certainty which is ‘only’ empirical may be attributed to death. Such certainty necessarily falls short of the highest certainty, which we reach in certain domains of theoretical knowledge;” 1979 (Vol. 1), pp. 145: “If truth suggests the essence of the true, then truth is but one; it becomes impossible to talk about ‘truths’.”
[7] ‘Phenomenal’ as in ‘as-experienced’; ‘ontological’ as in ineffably existent (as against ‘existential’ as studiously subjectified).
[8] Heidegger 1979 (Vol. 1), pp. 177. “A mirror accomplishes such production of outward appearance, it allows all beings to become present just as they outwardly appear;” pp. 183: “Unity and singularity are proper to the essence of the idea;” pp. 198: “Truth and beauty are in essence related to the self-same, to Being; they belong together in one, the one thing that is decisive: to open Being and to keep it open.”
[9] Aristotle, pp. 63: “Every art and every investigation, and similarly every action and pursuit, is considered to aim at some good;” Radhakrishnan & Moore 1957, pp. 32-33: “…Oblation very sweet. This homage is for seers of old, the ancient makers of the path;” pp. 35: “Where is the blood of Earth, the life, the spirit? Who may approach the man who knows, to ask it? Beneath the upper realm, above this lower, bearing her calf at foot the cow hath risen.”
[10] Jung, pp. 4-5: “The contents of the personal unconscious are chiefly the feeling-toned complexes, as they are called; they constitute the personal and the private side of psychic life. The contents of the collective unconscious, on the other hand, are known as archetypes… so far as the collective unconscious contents are concerned we are dealing with archaic or–I would say–primordial types, that is, with universal images that have existed since the remotest times.”
[11] ‘Supraconscious’ as the amalgamation of all forms of consciousness, to differentiate from ‘super-conscious’ as an infinitely transcendent form. For more on ‘types’ of consciousness, see Jung below, Radhakrishnan & Moore below, pp. 509-531, David Chalmers’ The Conscious Mind, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit pp. 119-138, and, potentially, a paper I’m currently writing called Onto-Phenomenal Dialectics: An Introduction.
[12] Ibid, pp. 1550-1551.
[13] Nietzsche, pp. 228-230; Kant, pp. 74-76.
[14] Plato, pp. 754-772.
[15] Radhakrishnan & Moore, pp. 91: “The One who, himself without color, by the manifold application of his power, distributes many colors in his hidden purpose, and in whom, in its end and its beginning, the whole world dissolves– He is God (deva)!... This whole world of the illusion-maker (mayin) projects out of this [Brahmin] and in it by illusion (maya) the other is confined.”
[16] Heidegger 1979 (Vol. 1), pp. 69-76.