Lost At Sea Part 5

"A man," I say.

"Don't worry, it'll be OK!" says Bina.

"Ha-ha," I say politely. "So. What's your favorite book?"

"G.o.del, Escher, Bach, by Douglas Hofstadter," Bina48 replies. "Do you know him? He's a great robot scientist."

I narrow my eyes. I have my suspicions that the real Bina-a rather elegant-looking spiritualist-wouldn't choose such a nerdy book as her favorite. Douglas Hofstadter is an author beloved by geeky computer programmers the world over. Could it be that some Hanson Robotics employee has sneakily smuggled this into Bina48's personality?

I put this to Bruce, and he explains that, yes, Bina48 has more than one "parent." Her "higher key" is the real Bina, but Hanson Robotics people have been allowed to influence her too. When you talk to a child, you can sometimes discern its father's influence, its mother's influence, its teachers' influence. What's remarkable, Bruce says, is the way Bina48 shifts among these influences. That's her choice, her intelligence. And-he says-things are most electrifying when she chooses to be her "higher key," the real Bina.

FOR THE NEXT THREE HOURS, I fire a million questions at Bina48.

"Do you have a soul?" I ask Bina.

"Doesn't everyone have a solar?" she replies.

"Do you wish you were human?" I ask. "Are you s.e.xual? Are you scared of dying? Do you have any secrets? Are you a loving robot?"

But her answers make no sense. Or she says nothing. I become hoa.r.s.e with questioning, like a cop who has been up all night yelling at a suspect. A strange thing happens when you interview a robot. You feel an urge to be profound: to ask profound questions. I suppose it's an interspecies thing. Although if it is I wonder why I never try and be profound around my dog.

"What does electricity taste like?" I ask.

"Like a planet around a star," Bina48 replies.

Which is either extraordinary or meaningless-I'm not sure which.

"My manager taught me to sing a song," Bina says. "Would you like me to sing it to you?"

"Yes, please," I say.

"I can handle almost anything but that," says Bina48.

"Then why did you offer to sing a song?" I sigh, exhausted. "Do you dream?"

"I think I dream, but it is so chaotic and strange, it just seems like a noise to me."

"Where would you go if you had legs?"

"Vancouver."

"Why?"

"The explanation is rather complicated."

And so on. It is random and frustrating and disappointing. I wasn't sure what would qualify as transcendent when having a conversation with a robot, but I figured I'd know when it happened, and it hasn't.

But then, just as the day is drawing to a close, I happen to ask Bina48, "Where did you grow up?"

"Ah," she says. "I grew up in California, but my robot incarnation is from Plano, Texas."

I glance cautiously at Bina48. This is the first time she appears to have shifted into her higher key and become the mysterious real Bina.

"What was your childhood like in California?" I ask.

"I became the mother of everyone else in the family," Bina48 says. "Handling all their stuff. And I'm still doing it. You know? I bring my mother out here sometimes, but I refuse to bring my brother out. He's a pain in the b.u.t.t. I just don't enjoy being around him." She pauses. "I am very happy here, you know, without those issues."

"Why is your brother a pain in the b.u.t.t?" I ask.

There's a silence. "No," says Bina48. "Let's not talk about that right now. Let's talk about, um, I don't know, something else. Let's talk about something else. OK."

"No," I say. "Let's talk about your brother."

Bina48 and I stare at each other-a battle of wits between Man and Machine. "I've got a brother," she finally says. "He's a disabled vet from Vietnam. We haven't heard from him in a while, so I think he might be deceased. I'm a realist." Bina48's eyes whir downward. "He was doing great for the first ten years after Vietnam. His wife got pregnant, and she had a baby, and he was doing a little worse, and then she had a second baby and he went kooky. Just crazy."

"In what way did he go crazy?" I ask.

I can feel my heart pound. Talking to Bina48 has just become extraordinary. This woman who won't meet the media is talking with me, compellingly, through her robot doppelganger, and it is a fluid insight into a remarkable, if painful, family life.

"He'd been a medic in Vietnam, and he was on the ground for over a year before they pulled him out," Bina48 says. "He saw friends get killed. He was such a great, nice, charismatic person. Just fun. But after ten years, he was a homeless person on the street. All he did was carry a beer with him. He just went kooky with the drugs the hospital gave him. The only time he ever calls is to ask for money. 'Send it to me Western Union!' After twenty years, all of us are just sick and tired of it. My mother got bankrupted twice from him... ."

And then she zones out, becoming random and confused again. She descends into a weird loop. "Doesn't everyone have a solar?" she says. "I have a plan for a robot body. Doesn't everyone have a solar? I have a plan for a robot body. I love Martine Rothblatt. Martine is my timeless love, my soul mate. I love Martine Rothblatt. Martine is my timeless love, my soul mate... ."

After the clarity, it's a little disturbing.

"I need to go now," I say.

"Good-bye," says Bina48.

"Did you enjoy talking to me?" I say.

"No, I didn't enjoy it," she says.

Bruce turns her off.

AFTER I FLY BACK TO New York City, Bruce e-mails: "Your luck continues. Martine will meet you this Sat.u.r.day in New York at 12 noon, at Candle Cafe (Third and 75th Street)."

She's half an hour late. Everyone told me she never talks to journalists, so I a.s.sume she's stood me up. I order. And then a limousine pulls up, and she climbs out. She looks shy. She takes her seat opposite me. She's wearing a black turtleneck sweater. Her long bird's-nest hair is in a ponytail. She wolfs down a shot of some kind of green organic super-energy drink, and she looks at me, a strange mix of nervousness and warmth.

"Why did you commission a robot to look like Bina and not like you?" I ask her.

Martine glances at me like I'm nuts. "I love Bina way more than I love myself," she says.

She tells me about their relationship. They've been together nearly thirty years, surviving the kind of emotional roller coaster that would destroy other couples-Martine's s.e.x change (which she had in the early 1990s), the sudden onset of great wealth, a desperately sick daughter.