Indigo (16 page)

Robert had fallen into an unpleasant cluster of memories. Jellyfish nest.

– He was at your house in Raaba?

– At first my mother was worried that he would show up at our place completely drunk. And you know how allergic she is to something like that.

Cordula nodded:

– Oh, my, yes. New Year's Eve.

– Since 2007 has written articles, murmured Robert, who had enlarged the teacher's biographical details in a little box and read them line by line.
National Geographic.
What the hell is that?

Cordula's face told him that he had once again run into his gap. General knowledge. Dingo delay.

– The skin, he said. Peeled off the damn skin! That's some sick shit right there!

– Well, it says here at least . . . , Cordula began again.

But then she gave up.

Robert read on.

The lines of the interview were scarcely more than rungs of a ladder he could hold on to with his eyes while his brain went its own way. He remembered that day in autumn of 2006, the forced politeness of his parents, the six minutes spent in accelerated conversation (at that time still: blessed 360 seconds).

He remembered the conversation and how senseless it had felt to address the visitor as Herr Professor. After all, he wasn't one anymore. Thrown out, drunk on duty. And then the crap he had talked! And now this! A brutal murderer, who was acquitted. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.

Dogs, dogs—Robert's eyes widened. He saw the scene again before him. In his room, in the house in Raaba. The curtains closed. And the crazy teacher gave one of his incoherent monologues about who knows what:

I mean, there are a lot of people who can't go out, and of them you're still one of the luckiest, Robert. The others treated you badly. But you can go where you want. Abroad. Or onstage. You could become a performer, an artist. In 1999 a sword swallower in Bonn tried to swallow an umbrella. He accidentally pressed the button that opened the umbrella and died. A few years later a Canadian repeated the stunt and also died. And another sword swallower bowed to the clapping crowd after the act and in so doing suffered
(Robert could still remember the peculiar shift in diction, probably the point when the previously memorized text took possession of the math teacher)
severe internal injuries. Another took a few steps and fell, with the sword in his throat, off the stage.

Okay, Robert had had to laugh at that. It was funny. But why that freak had come around to that subject in the first place, no idea.

Just say when you have to go out for a little while, he had said.

A strong hint. Professor Setz didn't get it.

What's that? he asked, pointing to a small poster hanging in Robert's room directly over the bed.

That?

Yes.

A space dog.

The professor's face darkened.

Robert stood up from the bed.

Taken right in the satellite. Belka. The dog was totally high up back then, almost in the exosphere and . . . well, and that's when they took the picture, I think . . .

The math teacher took a step back and left the room without a word.
Hey
, thought Robert,
that wasn't six minutes. Pussy. Wimp.
He put on headphones and listened at full blast to Whitehouse, the album
Great White Death
, an absolute masterpiece. His consciousness dissolved in noise and screaming, became soft and permeable as a membrane . . .

What brought him back down to earth was his cell phone, which lit up briefly. A text message—from his mother, who was sitting in the next room!
Don't forget the casserole
, she wrote. For Chernobyl's sake! As if a strange day on which a strange person paid an extremely strange visit couldn't get even stranger.
But yeah, screw it, I'll eat the casserole. Whatever. Dance along in the absurd puppet theater.

His mother had later come to him in his room and had told him that the wine hadn't agreed with the visitor. Probably relapse problems of the ex-alcoholic.

He even apologized to us, she had told Robert. For neglecting his duties as a teacher. But then he suddenly had to go, because he, well, you could tell from his eyes. He felt dizzy, he said. Anyway. How was the casserole? Did you like it?

What was that about with the cell phone? Am I nuclear waste now, which has to be handled by remote control from outside, or—

No, my dear, no, for God's sake, it was just, I couldn't let him out of my sight, because he . . . you know, I didn't want to tell you this, but your father and I, we had to . . . physically . . . escort him out, because he . . . well, you can imagine what. . .

1.
Thesis

In late autumn of 2005 I finished my studies to become a teacher in mathematics and German literature with a thesis on so-called father-son problems in math education.

A father has two children. At least one of them is a son. What is the probability that the second child is also a son? The surprising answer is: 1:3. Not 1:2. And if we assume that the father has two children of whom at least one is a son—and the father shouts into the next room, at which point a small boy appears in the doorframe and says: Okay, I'm your son, and I'm completely fine—then what is the probability that the second child is also a son?

In my thesis I went into the history of these problems a bit, into the phenomenon of their great popularity in mathematics teaching methodology, into some selected examples, mostly from stochastic theory (variations of the famous Monty Hall problem) and the geometry of solar systems.

The thesis was highly praised by my professor. In a conversation I revealed to him that I was thinking of writing my dissertation on the same topic.

He leaned back a bit in his chair, crossed his legs, and said that this required a lot of thought, for a dissertation is an entirely different sort of project. In terms of length alone.

– You might repeat yourself, he said gently.

– Well, I said, I mean, I'll do my internship first, of course.

– Yeeeah, he said, sounding relieved. You still have some things to do before you can think about the next step in an academic sense. So where are you going to do it?

– What?

– Your internship.

– Oh, I haven't decided yet.

– You know, Herr Setz, I think I have an idea. A recommendation, so to speak.

2.
Uncanny Valley

It was a snapshot printed in poster size of one of the two astronauts on the Sputnik 5 satellite. The dogs Belka and Strelka were shot into outer space on August 19, 1960. Unlike in the more famous case of the dog Laika, the animals landed a day later, quite distressed but nonetheless unharmed, on earth. After Strelka had puppies, one of them was presented as a gift to the daughter of then-President John F. Kennedy. Although the CIA explained emphatically to the president that this dog might contain mini-microphones hidden by the Soviets and therefore should be promptly killed, Kennedy let the animal live.

Robert was really excited when he showed Willi the picture. He hadn't looked at it for years, and it had taken some time before he had found it, rolled up, in a drawer.

– And they neutralized the mutt, so to speak? asked Willi.

He was relieved that his friend Robert had come back to the living room. It had often happened that he simply stayed away, buried in the black-painted corner of his room until the guests had gone home.

– No, they didn't, that's the point. Kennedy let his daughter keep it.

– Wuss. But the story is really . . . My God, the dog's face! Look!

He held the picture up to the women. Cordula looked away quickly.

– And that caused this Setz to lose it back then?

– Yeah. It immediately came back to me when I saw the article.

– Well, no wonder, said Willi. I mean, the whole thing already could have been predicted back then, huh?

Robert laughed:

– That he would skin an animal abuser fifteen years later?

– No, not directly. But you have to admit—

– But he was acquitted! Cordula said. Didn't you guys finish reading the article?

– Yeeeah, said Willi. Acquitted. But not innocent.

– That's unfair, said Cordula.

– I find it creepy, said Elke, hunching her shoulders.

– Well, the face of this dog here isn't creepy, is it?

He showed it to the women once again. Cordula looked away again.

– It's cuddly, that look. Things get really creepy only when the face almost looks like a human face. Then it's that valley, a phenomenon from the history of science . . . that . . . um . . .

Willi searched for the word. He made catching movements with his hands in the air in front of his face.

– Um, he said. De . . . du . . . uncanny! Uncanny valley!

– What's that supposed to be?

– Look, here, take this napkin. And draw baby faces on it.

Robert did so.

– Okay, said Willi. And now think of Data, okay?

– Of Data?

– Yes.
Star Trek
.

– Okay.

– He was played by a person who was only made up to look like a robot. Brent Spiner. These days he's fat and bald, advocates for wild bears. But at the time he was still a good-looking man. And they put silver makeup on him and did something with his eyes—and there was the robot.

– Okay, said Robert.

He was crumpling the paper napkin on which he had doodled the baby faces. It was worthless.

– That's one path you can take, okay? said Willi. You start with a human, in this case that actor, and alter him until he looks like something that is still close to a human, but actually isn't one anymore—a robot. That's the unproblematic, the simple path. But you can also take it from the other side, and that's when it gets problematic. For our psyche.

– In what way?

– What does this have to do with the crazy teacher? asked Elke.

– You start with something pixelated, Willi said to Robert, I don't know, some bad animation on a computer or in reality, a crude simulation of a human face. And you look at it and say to yourself, okay, that's supposed to represent a human, somehow, okay, I get it. But then—(Willi pointed with his forefinger directly at Elke's breasts)—then someone comes along, he has access to a really good computer. One with social skills, like an iSocket. And he creates for you a really good animation of a human face, with expressions and everything. And then someone else comes along, who manages to do it even better. And then the result is shown to a number of people. And what do you think the reaction was in most cases?

Robert pushed the paper ball that had previously been a napkin around on the table.

– No idea, he said. Maybe they were impressed, I don't know.

– They were horrified. They had panic attacks. Like the people in the nineteenth century who went running out of the theater when the train came toward—

– But they were naïve, said Elke.

– Sure, in the meantime we've gotten used to all sorts of things. But people were shaken, profoundly shaken. That's known as the uncanny valley. It extends from ninety-five to ninety-nine percent.

– Of what?

– Of a face. A human face.

– Aha, said Robert. You mean with skin and everything.

He made a skin-peeling gesture across his face and a grimace of pain.

– I think you guys are being unfair, said Cordula.

– Can't we talk about something else? asked Elke.

– This uncanny effect is always present with particularly realistic-seeming simulations, especially of babies. That's why I asked you before to draw a few babies.

– I've never done it, said Robert. Naked guys, no problem, but I've never seen a baby in a fruit basket, not in any drawing lesson.

He imagined it.

– Today you still sometimes see the uncanny valley with people who cross your path in a dream, said Willi. That quality of being off by a hair, that . . . no one can bear that. A human who was designed by another human, maybe it was that too, that religious element . . . but supposedly that wasn't the reason. It was probably more psychological, know what I mean? We don't want to see something like that. Something that, from the other side, from the inorganic, approaches our side . . . so to speak . . .