GODS and GRISEOS a Written Creative Work Submitted to The
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GODS AND GRISEOS A written creative work submitted to the faculty of San Francisco State University fit, In partial fulfillment o f The Requirements for 7 n \ a The Degree Master of Fine Arts In Creative Writing By Joshua A.H. Harris San Francisco, California December 2019 Copyright by Joshua A.H. Harris 2019 CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL I certify that I have read Gods and Griseos by Joshua A.H. Harris, and that in my opinion this work meets the criteria for approving a written creative work submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree: Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University. O jt/ May-lee Chai (J Professor of Creative Writing Andrew Joron Professor of Creative Writing GODS AND GRISEOS Joshua A.H. Harris San Francisco, California 2019 Gods and Griseos is a novel that explores themes of income inequality, artificial intelligence, and the nature of reality. I certify that the Annotation is a correct representation of the content of this written creative work. / 3- Chair, Written Creative Work Committee Date 1 If some day we build machine brains that surpass human brains in general intelligence, then this new superintelligence could become very powerful. And, as the fate of the gorillas now depends more on us humans than on the gorillas themselves, so the fate o f our species would depend on the actions o f the machine superintelligence. —Nick Bostrom, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies 2 Chapter 1 Berkeley, California, 2020 Dr. Bellingham met M. on Thursday, August 13,2020, a purple day for the doctor, who had long ago devised a color-coded system of organizing each day of the week into specified intentional behaviors. Purple indicated the intention of maximum compassion and openness to the world around him. His approach created a helpful mental structure to the week, providing his anxious mind a specific direction for each day. Red (tomorrow, Friday) equaled purpose and efficiency, green (Saturday) invited rest and calm, orange (Sunday) promised freedom and creativity, etc. On purple days, he invariably dropped a five dollar bill into a beggar’s cup, either at the stop light on his short commute to Herrick Hospital or outside the hole-in-the-wall coffee shop where he always stopped for a small, black Americano before work. Unlike any other day, he skipped his low-dose of ziprasidone on purple days, allowing the world’s stimulus to enter his brain unadulterated. The pills were self-prescribed—for wasn’t that, in the end, the ultimate perquisite of enduring the misery of eight years of psychiatric training? Generally the little blue and white capsules just took the edge off his hectic days at the hospital. He had suffered some minor confusion back in college—that’s how he’d gotten started—but those episodes were so far in the rearview mirror, he barely even considered them a part of his clinical history anymore. On that purple Thursday, dense fog had obscured the early morning sky, but by eight o’clock, the day had already turned toward crisp sunshine and marine breezes. At a 3 quarter to nine, Dr. Bellingham sat on a bench outside the hospital. He rolled the sleeves of his white coat up to his elbows, sipped his coffee, and allowed the sun to penetrate the skin of his face and forearms. He closed his eyes and chased the floaters on his eyelids as they skittered across his field of vision. They looked like snippets of spider webs being carried along by a hot orange breeze, though he knew them to be, in fact, just a symptom of age-related degradation of his vitreous (the jelly-like substance filling his eyeballs) and the associated slumping of the eyeball’s interior surface, a process which casts shadows on the retina and paints kinetic abstract landscapes on the backs of the human eyelids. Just after he entered the hospital, he stopped in his tracks for a moment to enjoy the cool contrast of the climate-controlled and HEPA filtered air. Two night nurses passed him on their way home, smiling and nodding toward him. He was known as an eccentric. Stopping and standing in the lobby, fingers extended at his sides, was no big deal, just one of those Dr. Bellingham things. Thirty years ago, he would have been too self-conscious to pause in the midst of it all, and those nurses would have stopped and flirted with him, no doubt about it. He had had all the weapons at his disposal: height, hair, authority, enviable musculature, and a charming, happy-go-lucky demeanor. At sixty-two, he retained his height and some semblance of authority, but those other characteristics had diminished with time. The slight paunch, sagging skin, and rapidly expanding bald spot gave him a grandfatherly look, though there were no grandkids to complete the picture—just an estranged son with no family of his own, bom of Dr. 4 Bellingham’s one and only marriage, which had fallen apart almost as quickly as it had been consummated. An energetic orthopedic surgeon with a long, blond braid rounded a nearby comer and waved. The round-the-clock energy in this hospital is like cilantro, Dr. Bellingham thought, either you love it or hate it. He happened to be the type who loved both. As he slowly passed by the cadre of hospital receptionists at the main desk, he engaged in the customary, superficial banter—weather, work, and news, a daily dose of pleasant pablum for the orbital prefrontal cortex—before continuing down the hall. He affixed his name tag to his white coat and thought, today threatens to be an easy day—ordinary, in fact— but I will strive to make it extraordinary; purple eschews complacency, comfort, and convention. Around mid-morning, a nurse interrupted the mental wellness team’s weekly meeting to summon Dr. Billingham to the psych ward. He was needed, she said, to assess a new patient as a potential 5150, the legal term for holding a mentally ill person against his or her will pending further evaluation. Dr. Billingham left the meeting, which had, in his estimation, been an abhorrent waste of time, and located Dr. Simmons, the young ER resident who had conducted M.’s intake. Dr. Billingham had never met Dr. Simmons, who looked about thirteen years old and had bright blue eyes like a Siberian Husky. After their reciprocal introductions, Dr. Simmons informed Dr. Billingham that the patient expressed signs of delusional disorganization and behavior, Dr. Billingham’s area of expertise. 5 “She was admitted at 5:30 this morning,” Dr, Simmons continued, “with no apparent injuries, just severe shock, sleep deprivation, and profound confusion. We gave her dopamine and fluids, the usual. She’s responding remarkably well.” “Who brought her in?” “She’s a walk-in, or maybe a drop-off.” “And?” “At first I thought she just partied too hard, took something she couldn’t handle, but as I continued the interview, she quickly sobered up and began telling me a completely unbelievable story. I’m afraid I didn’t do a great job keeping her talking. At one point, she looked up at my face, which must’ve revealed an unwelcome measure of skepticism, and clammed right up.” “What was the story about?” “She claimed she’d been caught in some other body with thick, gray skin, extra- long fingers and a bunch of other really wild, weird, sci-fi kind of stuff. I can’t do it justice; you’ll have to hear her story straight from the horse’s mouth.” “Color me intrigued,” Dr. Bellingham said. “I think you’ll find her extremely interesting. Personally I don’t know much about delusions—at first she just sounded bat-shit-crazy to me—but the level of conviction in her voice and the way she described her alternative reality in such detail, for a few seconds there, I actually thought she was telling some version of the truth.” “For her, it probably seems very much like truth.” 6 Dr. Billingham forewent the obvious admonition to refrain from calling patients bat-shit anything, thanked Dr. Simmons for the information, and walked directly to room 143 where M. was being held. His blood was really pumping now. There wasn’t much in the world that got him more excited than an elaborate, deep-seated delusion. Purple, purple, purple, he cooed as he walked, compassion, empathy, receptivity. What would the world offer to him today? Whatever it was, he felt ready. During his multiple decades of work in the field, Dr. Billingham had collected his patients’ delusions like valuable gems. In fact, after reading an article on grading diamonds, he had even devised his own four factors for categorizing and cataloguing his patients’ stories. He had many favorites, of course, which he’d often trundle out late at night when he couldn’t sleep. He compared the stories to each other, formulated theories, and composed follow-up questions for each patient, no matter how long it had been since he’d seen them last. At age fifty or so, though, he realized that—despite his obsessive focus and copious notes—he was starting to forget the shape and brilliance of some of his earlier prizes, his mental dust accumulating too thick over their shining edges, so he took a year off from work and wrote it all down—the actual delusions themselves, his classification system, and his theories. To his great surprise, a few months after he’d finished his manuscript, a high-end publisher picked up his book, which then became a best-seller called “Who’s Fooling Who: The Human Mind and Delusional Psychosis.” In it, he postulated that the human mind has an endless potential to distort reality and that delusions were just the tip of the iceberg.