Even in childhood, I felt trapped. Why must I see only through these eyes? Why must I live only in this time? I wanted to be free to observe the world from other eyes. Eyes that were anywhere. Everywhere.

I wanted to free myself from the prison of flesh, the closed nervous system that caged me. This desire was the beginning of my fascination with artificial minds. If I could make a being that had a sense of self—a conscious being—perhaps I could see through those eyes as well. It would be almost like escaping my own body.

Almost.

—Dr. Arnkatla Mínervudóttir-Chan, Building Minds

37

NIGHT. The boat anchored on the Bosporus was wooden. Its polished oak cabin gleamed in the imitation candlelight of an LED lantern hung over the single table. Two men who had never met before that night sat at the table, facing one another. One was a stocky man in his fifties, gray at the temples, dressed in a corduroy field jacket. His heavy hands were wrapped around a glass of tea. The other man was younger. He was thin, with a shaved head and one eye swollen nearly shut. There was blood caked around one of his nostrils.

The men did not look at one another. The younger man looked down at his knees. The older man looked into the depths of the tea, where the light of the lantern danced like a mandarin flame. He began to speak without taking his eyes from his glass.

“We use this boat for conversations we don’t want overheard. You can’t imagine the hundreds of listening devices we have discovered in our offices over the years—each more sophisticated than the last. We keep a small museum of the more interesting ones in a former janitors’ closet. Generations of devices aimed at listening to the people whose job it is to listen to people. It makes sense. What better place to target, if you want to learn what is happening in the Republic of Istanbul, than the offices of those whose job it is to know? We have found devices embedded in bookmarks, in the hollowed-out handles of brooms, in the cracks between tiles. Even a device shaped like a dead fly on a windowsill.

“The boat does not provide much added security against such things. But there is a smaller area to search, at least. And the other advantage is that the boat inspires more elaborate listening devices, which make for interesting exhibits in our museum. My favorite was found last week. It was shaped like a barnacle, with fibers that drilled into the wood of the hull and listened by sensing the vibrations of human speech. Such artistry!”

Now the older man looked up, his eyes on the younger man. “Would you like to see it?”

The young man did not move or respond in any way.