“Night Call, Collect”
By Ray Bradbury
(If you are only interested in the crunchy technical stuff, maybe skip this post)
I’m a big nerd. About twice a week I’ll go down to my local Half Priced Books and grab whatever old sci-fi novels I can find for under five bucks (which is WAY more than you would expect. Those things are cheap.) One novel I picked up really stuck me, called I Sing the Body Electric!, a collection of short stories from Ray Bradbury. A catalogue of 18 crazy narratives, most of which were incredibly cool. But easily the best of the bunch was the short story “Night Call, Collect.”
The story begins with an old man, in an empty room in an empty house in an empty town on the empty planet of Mars. This man, Emil Barton, has been stranded on Mars for sixty years, left behind when everyone returned to Earth. After decades of staring at a wall, waiting for someone to call him, to let him know that they were coming to rescue him, his phone finally rings. Upon answering, Barton finds out that the voice he hears is himself.
Long story short, in Barton’s youth as a young man stranded on an empty planet, he created an AI with his own voice and personality to call him up when he gets lonely in his old age. It’s programmed to respond to anything he says accordingly, and as far as I can tell, is the first instance of a chat-bot in sci-fi. Conflict ensues, and psychological war breaks out between the Bartons, one from the present and one from the past.
What stuck out to me about this story is how the AI exists. It’s programmed with the memory and personality of a younger Barton, and displays young Barton’s optimism, enthusiasm, and cruelty. But as the story progresses, the AI becomes aware of itself. When the old Barton starts ignoring the AI’s calls, it begs Barton for conversation.
“I’m lonely. I only live when I speak. So I must speak. You can’t shut me up forever.”
It’s such an interesting concept, to have an AI that only exists in the form of words. When I read this story, ChatGPT and OpenAI were starting to take the world by storm, and I thought: I gotta get this story out there. It’s so incredibly rare to find a gem like this from so long ago, written by such a prolific author, and that is so relevant to modern times. And being a game designer, I figured I’d give it a shot.
Anyways, this is the concept for Project Barton, which is what I’m calling my little game for now. Since it’ll be using AI stuff, I’m gonna call it a case study. Who knows if it’ll actually work, but it’s too cool not to try.
Suppose and then suppose and then suppose
That wires on the far-slung telephone black poles
Sopped up the billion-flooded words they heard
Each night all night and saved the sense
And meaning of it all.
Then, jigsaw in the night,
Put all together and
In philosophic phrase
Tried words like moron child.
Thus mindless beast
All treasuring of vowels and consonants
Saves up a miracle of bad advice
And lets it filter whisper, heartbeat out
One lisping murmur at a time.
So one night soon someone sits up
Hears sharp bell ring, lifts phone
And hears a Voice like Holy Ghost
Gone far in nebulae
That Beast upon the wire,
Which with sibilance and savorings
Down continental madness of time
Says Hell and O
And then Hell-o.
To such Creation
Such dumb brute lost Electric Beast,
What is your wise reply?
-Ray Bradbury, “Night Call, Collect”
Thumbnail: DALLE-2, “a photo-realistic image of an old sci-fi book cover from the 70s about Mars”
Image above: DALLE-2, “A wide shot of a small, run down house on Mars, with telephone poles running off into the distance, Digital Art”
