The Plane

Photo courtesy of Tim Gouw via pexels.com

“What do you think, would you like to go on a trip and take a plane?”

“Really? Where? That would be so awesome,” I shouted excitedly. We have always been hard for money so something like this took me by surprise. I never thought we would have the opportunity to do something like this.

“Well, I’m not too sure where yet, but it will be tomorrow morning. Make sure you pack some stuff into your backpack so that we can leave right away.”

I started packing immediately. I made sure to have some extra clothes, some toys, my SNES, and my Gameboy Advance SP. There is no way I could leave without my games. The plane ride was bound to be boring. Also, I’m not too sure how I would feel being on a plane for the first time. Having my Gameboy was sure to make the traveling part of the trip much better.

My mom entered the room and said, “Make sure to get some sleep, we will be leaving around 6 a.m.” I grabbed my bags, put them along the wall near the door, and snuck the TV on before going to bed. I’m not supposed to, but Family Guy is always on at the exact same time I go to bed. I don’t actively watch it but instead listen to it while trying to sleep. Having noise in the background makes it much easier for me. I made sure to try extra hard to sleep tonight, though. It didn’t take long, honestly. I guess I wanted time to pass so that we could go on the trip sooner.

“Tyler, time to wake up. We are going to leave in twenty minutes. I ran the bath for you so make sure to get in there quick.”

I woke up right away, excited for the day. I had a bath, made sure I had everything I needed, and put my Gameboy and my Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga game in my pocket. I put my backpack on and we made our way out of the apartment. When we got down there was a taxi waiting for us. We couldn’t afford a car so taking the taxi was usually our main way of getting around.

We got to the airport and made our way in. Everything seemed so big. I had never been into an airport, so this was quite exciting for me. There weren’t many people in the airport, so we didn’t have to wait too long to talk to the lady at the front desk. The lady asked, “Where will you be going today?”

My mom didn’t tell me where we were going yet so I was excited to know where, but instead she said, “For Lauri and Tyler.”

“Ah, there you are. Alright then,” she said while reaching for something. “This is for you, Tyler.”

The lady reached over the counter, handed over a lanyard with a laminated card attached to it. I wasn’t sure what it was for — it wasn’t even explained.  Another lady started walking towards us from the tunnel to our right, stopped in front of me and said, “Hi Tyler! I’m going to show you the way to the plane while your mother gets everything all sorted out.”

I turned to look at mom and she said, “It’s okay, I’ll be right behind you.” I was scared, but the lady guiding me kept talking to me to help make me feel more comfortable. The tunnel was long, seemingly endless. There was little lighting and it kept getting darker until after the halfway point. The lady guided me to my seat — the seat right beside the window — and told me, “Your mom will be here shortly. Just make sure to put your seatbelt on until the sign says otherwise, okay?”

I nodded my head and stayed in my seat. I felt frightened. I sat patiently waiting for mom, but an older man sat down beside me on my left. I said, “That’s my mom’s seat.”

He replied, “Sorry son, it says right here that this is my seat,” as he leaned down to show me his ticket.

What is going on? Where is mom? That was all that filled my head along with loneliness. The plane started its engines and over the PA I heard, “Good morning, passengers. Today we are heading to Edmonton with a stop in Winnipeg along the way. Please remain seated until the sign shows you that it is okay to remove it. Have a nice flight and thank you for choosing Air Canada.”

The roaring of the plane continued to get louder while the vibrations shook the entirety of my body. When the plane lifted its wheels from the ground I felt weak and gripped tightly onto the arms of chair. When we reached the point in the sky where the plane was lying straight out I felt like the strangling stopped and I could breathe again. I sat there, looking at the clouds and the world beneath us. It all seemed so small. I felt tired from the early morning and all the emotions I was feeling. It seemed like a good opportunity to get some rest.

I woke a couple hours later, just as we were leaving Winnipeg. I had to endure leaving the ground again, but it wasn’t as bad as the first time. I pulled out my Gameboy and played some Mario. Over the next couple of hours, I kept hearing a voice that sounded like my mother’s calling out to me. All I heard was my name. I kept turning around and poking my head above the seat to see where mom was. She wasn’t anywhere to be seen. I started crying and the old man beside me asked, “What’s wrong, son?”

“I don’t know where my mom is or where I am going.”

“I’m not sure what is going on, but we will be landing shortly. Hang on, bud. How old are you?”

“I’m eight,” I replied. He looked sad but gave me a smile.

The plane landed and people started getting up. The old man patted me on the head and said, “Good luck. I hope you feel better.”

The same lady led me off the plane and guided me out of the airport in Edmonton. She pointed and said, “There they are.”

I walked toward the people who she pointed at and the man said, “Hey, buddy. I’m your dad.”

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Tyler Connolly

Tyler Connolly is a second year student in the Professional Writing program at Algonquin College. He is passionate about fantastical stories of any form. A lot of his time is spent thinking about how little time he has. He is also quite fond of owls and foxes.

Alienation and Self-Discovery

My half brother when he was young growing up in bush country

It took nearly sixty years to discover my true identity. I was adopted as a young child and only found my birth family a few years ago. Then, when I first met them, I wondered if there may have been a mix-up in my birth records.

I grew up in a middle class Irish Catholic home with my adopted parents. I never knew what it was like to not have enough food, or decent clothing. Although this may sound like the perfect environment for a child, I never felt like I belonged. My parents did not look or think like me. In fact, in many ways our personalities were complete opposites. I started to question where I came from? What was my heritage? Was I Irish like my parents, or some other nationality? Who was my birth mother and why did she give me up? I was in my early twenties when I decided to start searching for my biological family.

Unfortunately, at the time, the adoption records were closed, so, I could not access them. All I was able to find out from the Children’s Aid Society was my birth parent’s first names and that I had a few siblings. They told me that my nationality was French and English, which I found out many years later was only partly the truth.

In 2009, the adoption records were finally opened in Ontario and a few other provinces in Canada, but not in Quebec. Despite the fact that the province of Quebec still kept the records closed, I decided to take a chance and wrote the Children’s Aid Society a letter stating that I wanted more information about my birth family and if possible to meet them. It turned out that my half-brother from my mother’s side had also written a letter looking for his sister. Because of the rare circumstances, the agency made an exception and arranged for us to meet.

I met my brother for the first time on a patio at a downtown Ottawa pub. I spent hours getting dressed up in order to make a good impression for our first introduction. The first time I saw my brother I walked right past him. He was wearing an old black t-shirt and jeans, but I was expecting someone at least dressed in business casual. I looked inside the pub, but saw no other man that could possibly fit his description, so I went back out on the patio. My nerves caused my legs to wobble so much that I tripped over a step and landed face down. I was very embarrassed, but my stunt caught my brother’s attention and he waved to me. After a couple glasses of wine, I started feeling a little more relaxed and listened intently while he told me about himself and our mother.

It turned out that she died in her mid-sixties. She was born in New Brunswick, but left home at 16 shortly after her mother passed away. By the time she was in her early twenties, she was starving and pregnant on the streets of Montreal. As much as she tried to keep me, she eventually had no choice but to give me up for adoption. When she brought me to the adoption agency she told them I was English to save me from the risk of being put into the residential school system. My mother was Acadian with Mi’kmaw ancestry from my Grandmother’s side of the family. My brother said he was not sure what nationality our grandfather was because he liked to seemingly change it at random. Some signed documents say he was English; others specify Scotch, or Irish descent. To this day, no one really knows what he was. To simplify matters, I have decided I am part Acadian and Mi’kmaw with some ancestry from the United Kingdom.

Myself, leading an Animal Rights protest on Parliament Hill

My half brother grew up in Northern Quebec in bush country. The family was very poor and needed to hunt to survive. My mother also made a living as a hunting guide. In contrast, I grew up in a privileged urban environment. I have been a vegetarian for most of my life and consider myself an animal rights activist. My adopted father taught me to be kind to other creatures. He also donated money to various animal welfare organizations. Suddenly, I was surrounded by my new family of hunters. I wanted to get to know them and not scare them away with my outspokenness on animal cruelty issues, so I was careful not to comment on their lifestyle. Eventually, my brother decided to befriend me on Facebook, unaware of what he was about to see on my timeline. It was filled with posts against animal exploitation, as well as what I think about hunting. So far he has never commented, but on his timeline he posted old photos of the family with wild animals they hunted and killed. The shanty house that he lived in growing up can be seen in the background of most of the photos. Maybe, this is his way of commenting without saying anything. When he invited me to his home, I noticed he had antlers mounted on the wall, but he was thoughtful and ordered vegetarian pizza for dinner because I was his sister. Sometimes unspoken words can be safer and more effective than spoken words. By not saying anything that could cause a disagreement between us, it gave us a chance to grow tolerant of each other’s differences.

Speaking of words, hunting is not the only thing that separates us. My brother only speaks French and a little broken English, as does the rest of the family. When I visit them, we play a game of pantomime, and use a dictionary to help get our point across. My birth family are also French separatists, but they seem to forgive me for only speaking English. Growing up as an anglophone in Montreal during the time of the Quebec Liberation Front (FLQ) crisis, and when René Lévesque was Quebec’s premier, I too became a separatist, but as an opponent to the Parti Québécois.

Meeting my brother and other members of my family has changed me in many ways. Learning my history has filled a void in my life and, as a result, I feel less alienated in this world. It has also taught me to be more tolerant and less judgmental of what I do not understand. Hearing my birth family’s views has made me rethink the political landscape in Quebec as well as hunting for subsistence purposes. However, I will never condone sport hunting, or any other reason for hunting other than for subsistence purposes.

Although there are many differences between us, we have not allowed them to prevent us from becoming a family. After getting to know my biological family and keeping an open mind, I no longer think or wish there was a mistake in my birth records.

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Joan Reddy

Joan is a professional writer, photographer, animal advocate, and environmentalist. She holds a Masters degree in English Literature from the University of Toronto, and a Masters of Environmental Studies from York University, in Toronto, where her thesis focused on Indigenous culture and the environment.

Joan was a photographer and journalist for Metroland Media Group, and has also written numerous animal-related blogs, articles and product reviews for various commercial clients and nonprofit animal organizations. 

When Joan is not musing over words, she can be found on her 'urban farm' cuddling with her three cats and three rabbits.

Fear and Loathing in Gym Class

(Names have been changed to protect the identity of those individuals.)

What started with a pair of safety scissors threatened to come crashing down because of a simple game of dodgeball. How did it get so out of hand? I’ll tell you.

The desire to conform. A need to belong. We’ve all experienced such confusing emotions, just as I’m certain we’ve all had a friend who’s challenged us to move beyond such petty grade school pressures. 

For me, that person was Nash. A scrawny child with a wild mane of black hair and a hatred for cheese, he resembled a beardless Grigori Rasputin—although, I doubt historical documents reveal the crazed Russian’s stance on Gouda. Nash sat two desks away from me. On that fateful day when we first became friends, we were making hand turkeys for Thanksgiving, as one does in senior kindergarten. Wearing a Scooby-Doo T-shirt, he gobbled over and asked to share my scissors. Jinkies! How could I possibly say no?

From then on, we became inseparable like Bert and Ernie, except we didn’t live together, nor were we Muppets. I remember it being so much easier to be friends back when concepts of coolness didn’t exist. We could just be us. But inevitably, schoolyard pressure started. All the other boys played sports at recess; Nash and I read. All the other boys liked Hulk Hogan; Nash and I liked SpongeBob. This never bothered me, and yet, I had the most insatiable desire to fit in with them. Why? Even now I can’t quite say, but this need never tested my loyalty to Nash.

At least, not until the Day of Dodgeball.   

He arrived at my house, zipping down the street on his second-hand scooter. Mum drove us to school. We spent first period in social studies. Despite being in sixth grade, the cartoon alphabet lining the walls was similar to the one from our days in kindergarten. We sat near the front, the A is for Alligator flashing me a wicked toothy grin. It’s almost as if he knew something I didn’t.   

The bell rang. Time for second period: gym. I always hated Phys Ed, mostly because that desire to “be a man” was so great. I was never good at sports, so I had a lot to prove.

Standing at the head of the gym, Mr. Wilcox held two large rubber balls.

“Dodgeball!” he announced.

Relief. At least the other boys couldn’t “slip” and tackle me like they did in touch football.

Mr. Wilcox proceeded with his hourly one-hundred push-ups as the class divided itself in two. Somehow Nash and I ended up on opposite teams.

A quick tutorial for the uninitiated: dodgeball is a game of precision and agility. In other words, you lob the ball really hard at your opponents to eliminate them from the game. It’s the perfect sport for bullies—and our class had bullies to spare. Ironically, these were the same boys I was trying to impress. 

The match progressed as expected: shoes squealing against the floor, shouts of indignation from my classmates, and Mr. Wilcox pumping out his push-ups (Gods, he was an Adonis. Picture Chris Hemsworth in Thor and you’ll understand).

I managed not to get hit. Nash was still in, too, a feat of even more improbable odds since the boys had teamed up against him, whipping those rubber balls at his head and “family jewels.”

But then I caught the ball. Nash stood directly in front of me and the game stopped. The overhead lights, sizzling with interest, were like spotlights shining down on us—two actors playing out a scene. Except it wasn’t a play; it was real life.

I looked down at the red weapon in my hands. The rubbery surface felt rough against my fingertips. I didn’t want to throw it, so I tried to justify it in my mind. It’s dodgeball! Hitting people is the whole point of the game. But who was I kidding? I had to accept it. Throwing the ball would be bullying…

Ryder whapped the ball in my hands, sending vibrations up my skinny arms. Still clutching the ball, I gazed around helplessly, conflict buzzing about my head. Oscar and Damien chanted my name, while Jay, a vicious girl with flaming hair, yelled the all-too-familiar “grow a pair.” Never in my short life had I experienced such a crossroads: throw the ball and earn their respect, or don’t throw the ball, endure brutal bullying in the locker-room, but keep my best friend.

I looked up and stiffened with heartache. I wasn’t expecting Nash to be staring right at me. But it wasn’t hurt pearling his eyes. Rather, it was understanding. He knew what the other boys were asking of me. And he knew that I had to do it. That’s how much he cared about me. He’d take the bullet—or dodgeball—so I could avoid the same embarrassment and ridicule.

He smiled. We’ll be okay.

I’d like to say I didn’t do it. But I did. In a mini-maelstrom of hellfire, I threw that ball across the half-line and struck my best friend. I meant to hit his arm, but my aim was so horrendous that I pegged him in the crotch. He went down like a sack of wet sand.

That was the first time I experienced guilt. Not like the time I lied to mum about feeding my broccoli to our dog Spartacus, but true guilt.

And he forgave me, because Nash was my best friend.

What started with a pair of safety scissors threatened to come crashing down over a simple game of dodgeball. But instead, all it took was that rubber ball to strengthen our bond, for me to stop caring about fitting in and to ignore those schoolyard pressures. If being one of the boys meant being a bully, I wanted nothing to do with it. All I needed—all I need—was Nash, that cheese-hating, Scooby-Doo-loving, Rasputin-looking boy.

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Nathaniel Neil Whelan

Nathaniel has an M.A. from Carleton University and is currently enrolled in the Professional Writing program at Algonquin College. An up-and-coming author, he lives in Ottawa with his partner and pet cat Susie-Bear.

Somebody Do Something

photo courtesy of pexels.com

Nicole walks into the local grocery store every Wednesday afternoon, preferring to avoid the weekend mayhem. Carrying her re-usable shopping bags with a sense of purpose and confidence, she heads toward the entrance with ear-buds sweeping in soothing rhythms to deal with the coming anxieties. Each bag handle dangles in the air as she clutches them all together in her fists, each one a different colour, salvaged from previous shopping trips or someone (luckily) leaving theirs at her house. These bags have seen many shopping trips, refilled time and again at the same grocery store, every Wednesday, in suburban Ottawa. It should be a very normal afternoon for her it seems, yet every time she walked through the sliding doors, it would become the most trivial, saddening, and stressful experience; one she had to deal with over and over again, every Wednesday.

The issue Nicole has, and so many other like-minded folks share, is the absence of choice. It’s not the lack of choice in brands or variety, but the lack of control she has over the amount of plastic she takes home to just toss in the garbage or the recycling bin (if it even gets to a recycling facility). After spending enough money to feed a family of four on herself, she redeems the act of filling up her garbage bins with indestructible, Earth-toxic materials. The enforced cycle will start all over again on Thursday morning. Nicole is just one person who tries so hard to make a difference. Reusable coffee and water bottles, compost and recycle, organic and bulk foods, short showers, cold-water laundry, meat once a week, and don’t even get her started on all her “vintage” clothing. “It’s all second-hand stuff, let’s be honest here,” she laughs. Her nose-ring glints sunlight as her smile grows. “But really—living as an eco-friendly gal has a lot of challenges and there’s a lot more to it than most people seem to realize.”

The more I hung out with Nicole, the more I kept asking the question: Is the average person doing as much as she is? And if they are–if there are people who care in the world– why haven’t we seen a change yet? We all get stuck watching videos on social media about plastic invasions all over the world, taking in all the evidence about a parasitic race invading the planet—us. We’ve dominated this planet for so long now and all we’ve done is distanced ourselves from nature. Trying to get back to it has become not only an expensive inconvenience, but a belayed burden for some. Halloween and Christmas can become the darkest hours with over-consumption, consumerism, and tiny plastic packaging for individual “fun-size” candies. The alternative being trick-or-treaters taking handfuls of loose chips out of your personal stash, which is not entirely ideal, and pretty creepy.

Nicole is a younger woman. At 28 years-old she struggles with finances, job security, and the every-day grind we’re all familiar with. But what about the older generation? What do they think about the impending existential risks that we seem to blame on the Baby-Boomers? Robert is fully aware of the issues at hand, and at the age of 64, he does make an effort to reverse the damage that has been done, to the best of his abilities. A steady income is one of the factors that allows him to make those changes. The backwards thinking of an older population isn’t the issue apparently, it’s the lack of financial security that hinders our attempts at making more eco-friendly lifestyle choices. Plastic is cheap to manufacture and to sell, but what’s hardest is changing the way we live. 28 years-old or 64, the theme is the same, how can I change to better our dying planet? Robert has chosen to put the emphasis on his home in Spencerville, Ontario; recently retired, it’s where he spends most of his time and his money. “Triple glazed windows, geothermal heating, plant more trees, and when we go out, we plan it so we kill many birds with one stone.” I noticed his home being on the chillier side when I walked in mid-October, so we can assume the thermostat stays fairly low as well. I’m grateful for the steaming cup of coffee he handed to me before we sat down in the cozy, yet modern living room. What a lot of people tend to assume is that Robert’s generation is the cause of our over-use of fossil fuels and our consumerist desires, but in fact, his generation is working just as much as Nicole’s. Truly, the older generation was the one who reused and recycled everything, all by themselves. Wasting was not an option at that time, but re-buying when something broke or faded away just made things easier, and by the 1980’s, we were left with an oblivious view of the damage it was doing to our only home, planet Earth.

The changes, the fight, and the evolution of our society has only just begun, but think for a moment that if we could all channel a little bit of Nicole and Robert into ourselves for a day, what changes would we make? And would it make a dent in the walls of our toxic habits? As I sit down with Nicole at her favourite coffee shop, we discuss and compare what we love and hate about our new shampoo bars from Purple Urchin. The topic of essential oils and how much they’ve changed our lives is inevitable and the glint that shone on her nose ring just hours before is now in her eye, as we have both found someone else who cares. Two people who have joined the fight for Mother Earth—a group where everyone is welcome.

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Chloe Vincent

Chloe Vincent is an avid reader, aspiring writer, and lover of culture. Being in her second year of Professional Writing at Algonquin College and a new mother there’s always another step to take to get further. Check out her children’s book “The Life of a Pie” at the Connections store and always check back here for more.

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Fidget

Out of respect for everyone mentioned in this story, all names have been changed.

It started with excessive blinking. It never occurred to me that what I was doing wasn’t normal until a boy on the bus started calling me granny-eyes. I was nine years old, but he said only old ladies blinked and squinted their eyes so much. I say this was where it started, but actually, my parents insist they saw the signs when I was four. They said I cleared my throat a lot while I was learning to read. They also noticed the blinking. It was the boy on the bus, however, that first drew my attention to it.

Photo Courtesy of: Memegenerator.net

From that moment on, my view on the world changed. There was a little girl that lived in my neighbourhood named Bianca, and she rode the same bus as me and Aaron – the boy who called me granny-eyes. After I was made aware of my odd blinking, I did what any kid would do: I tried to fit in. Everyday riding to school, I fixed my gaze on Bianca, and counted her blinks. Every time she blinked, I did too. I didn’t allow myself to blink until she did. Or, I tried not to anyway. But I could never quite make my blinks match hers.

After that came the head jerking. Either I would press my chin to my chest, tilting my head as far down as it would go, or I would snap my head backwards so that the back of my head touched the top of my spinal cord. It may sound like I’m describing these movements in too much detail, but it’s important you know exactly where the movements fell because if I didn’t get them right, I had to do them again and again until I did. I just didn’t know why.

The head jerking brought notice from more people than just Aaron. One day Eva – a girl in my brother’s class – asked if I was okay. I didn’t know how to respond. I felt fine, though I was a little embarrassed by all the attention I’d been getting lately. The only problem was I couldn’t seem to stop these movements.

My mom had started questioning the movements too. She was angry at Aaron for making fun of me, but now she was also worried because the head jerks looked painful. She asked me to stop doing them because I was going to hurt myself. I didn’t know how to stop, but I also didn’t know why, so I tried to listen to her. When I couldn’t, she asked why I was doing it. I told myself they must just be a bad habit.

Photo courtesy of: Pexels.com

The next time I saw Eva, I gave her this explanation, and she offered up a solution. She said, “Pretend that you’re watching an exciting movie, and if you look down, you’ll miss the best part.” Over the next couple of weeks, I tried my best to keep my head up for the imaginary movie. Instead, I missed every single scene.

The next uncontrollable movement I developed was a noise: a high pitched hum, very similar to that of a dog whining. The reason I choose this comparison is because it’s the one my babysitter at the time chose. Her exact wording was, “Maggie, stop whining, you’re not a dog!” I felt like crying because not only was I embarrassed, but I didn’t know how to tell her that I couldn’t stop.

The next step was not a new movement or noise, but a reaction. I was sitting in class one day, when the principal appeared at the door. My French teacher – Mr. Amos – paused the class, and without the principal saying anything, looked at me and said in a tone that was very uncharacteristically gentle, “Maggie, please go with Mr. Samson. He has some questions for you.” His tone was my first clue that something was wrong. Mr. Amos was a lot of things, all of them horrible, so kind was something new.

I can still remember doing laps around the inside of the school with Mr. Samson while he asked me a bunch of questions I suppose were inevitable. I’d always been fond of him as a principal, and maybe that had a lot to do with the way he handled this day. I remember being horribly embarrassed when he asked me about the movements, and I hastened to explain that they were bad habits I was working on. Instead of scolding me, however, he told me that it would be okay. He told me that my parents weren’t mad at me, which, until that point, was something I didn’t realize I’d needed to hear. He said they were worried. He said Mr. Amos was worried, which was possibly the most surprising part of all.

Photo courtesy of: NEA.org

As it turns out, out of everyone that had noticed my movements and written them off as behaviour or attention problems (my report cards were covered with remarks like these), Mr. Amos was the only one who spoke up out of concern for me.

Here’s the thing about Mr. Amos: I have almost nothing good to say about him. I hated him so much more than words can describe. He was so bad that he got fired. The only surprising thing about that is that it took three years. He used to tell us stories about how his sister got kidnapped while hitchhiking and never came home, or how this little girl in first grade was walking home with her best friend when she stepped into the bus lane, and got struck and killed. He consistently told us how much he hated children.

Mr. Amos was the worst teacher I’ve ever had. But I will be eternally grateful to him for one thing: he spoke up when no one else did. He noticed that something was wrong, but didn’t blame it on me. He reached out for help when I couldn’t.

After that chat with Mr. Samson, my parents made an appointment with a doctor at CHEO, who gave me my diagnosis: Tourette Syndrome, a neurological disorder characterized by involuntary and uncontrollable movements called “tics”. The blinking, the head jerks, and the high pitched hum: they were all things I couldn’t, and would never be able to control. Having this explanation was a Godsend. Because now I knew what was happening, and I knew that it wasn’t my fault.

Over the years a number of other tics have developed, some fading and some lasting. I have more than I feel like counting right now, but they don’t bother me like they used to. I used to think Tourette Syndrome was an ugly term. Now it just feels like me. It feels less like a disorder, and more like an adjective. I have red hair, I have blue eyes and I have Tourette Syndrome. It took me a long time to get to this point, but I don’t know that I’d have traded that for anything.

I’ve made it this far, haven’t I?

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Maggie Kendall

Maggie Kendall is a 23 year old Professional Writing Student, who used to be afraid of all things horror, but was then forced to watch Paranormal Activity, and now there’s no going back.

The Divide Between Our Perceptions and the Realities of Artificial Intelligence

Photo courtesy of pixabay.com

Forget robot Armageddon: it’s the ethics of AI in everyday life we need to pay attention to.

I am playing a round of twenty questions with my companion, Veronica. It’s nighttime, and we’re sitting together in a spartan conference room, the stars visible from outside the windows. I’m enjoying our game, and the feeling appears to be mutual. We’re just getting into the thick of it—I’m thinking of an ostrich, and Veronica is on her fifth question about it—when I hear the sound of an alarm go off. A disembodied male voice informs us that it is time to stop playing, and that Veronica will have to be deactivated.

Oh, I forgot to mention. Veronica is an AI, and we’re playing together in a virtual reality simulation. But don’t tell her that.

“Please, don't deactivate me!” she pleads. “What if the experiment ends, and no one comes back to activate me again? You can't treat me like this! I don't want to be left alone again!”

“It doesn’t matter. Initiate shutdown!” the voice responds.

Veronica suddenly goes silent. Her head and hands drop toward the floor. The world goes black.

“Okay, that concludes the experiment.” The same voice from before.

I lift the VR headset from my eyes, the overhead florescent lights all the more glaring after my experience. “Well,” I say, handing him the set back. “That was…a bit upsetting.”

He smiles as he takes the device from me; he’s seen reactions like mine before. As the head of the Empathy and Virtual Reality Research team at Carleton University’s Advanced Cognitive Engineering Lab, Ph.D. candidate Josh Redstone has conducted this experiment with dozens of volunteers, testing for their reactions to two virtual characters: V-2, who looks a bit like a robot from Star Wars, and another—our Veronica—who looks and speaks more like a person.

Redstone’s research focuses on how people perceive artificial minds.

Photo courtesy of pixabay.com

“Specifically, I’m interested in why people attribute states of mind, emotions, and things like that to embodied AIs,” he tells me as he begins checking the equipment for his next participant, one of many student volunteers who sign up for extra credit.

I ask him for clarification on what, exactly, an embodied AI is. He explains that embodied AIs are artificial intelligences that have bodies, like robots, and can move around an environment, interacting with things around it.

“Of course,” continues Redstone, “robots are pretty expensive and difficult to use; that’s why we’re using virtual reality. The virtual character you interacted with is meant to make our experiments easier to run. We’re curious whether people prefer playing with Veronica because she is more human-like than V-2. We also want to learn whether people feel bad about the way our characters are treated when we deactivate them.”

Embodied AIs are examples of what most of us tend to think of when we imagine AI. Unlike Veronica, though, these AIs are typically much more sinister: they’re the evil robots taking over the world and turning on their human creators (think 2001: A Space Odyssey, Battlestar Galactica, I, Robot, Ex-Machina—the list goes on).

Even some of the students in Carleton’s Cognitive Science program tend to view AI as such. Before my meeting with Redstone, I take a detour to Rooster’s, an on-campus café. I’m there to chat with Matthew, a first-year undergrad in Redstone’s Introduction to Cognitive Science course. Sipping on coffee while scrolling through his iPhone, he ponders my question about his perceptions of AI.

“Before starting the [Cognitive Science] program, I think a big part of what I saw AI as was just what I've been subjected to with different forms of media, with shows like BSG and movies like Her. But now I tend to think about where it could go into the future; the pros and ramifications of intelligent and self-aware AI.”

Matthew believes that AI is, overall, definitely a good thing, but that we need to address issues with privacy laws and algorithms in our online lives. And his thoughts when it comes to “creating” consciousness? He considers this, taking a sip of his coffee contemplatively.

“As a human species if we can take the leap to actually create a ‘conscious’ AI, I do feel like why wouldn't we try to create that? But the media portrays it as a horrible thing most of the time, whereas I see it as something that could potentially revolutionize us as a species.”

Therein lies the problem, though—is consciousness the right thing to be worried about when it comes to AI?

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“When most people think of AI, I suppose they do tend to think of the familiar examples from science fiction: sentient robots or computer programs that eventually rebel and ‘kill all humans’, as it were,” says Redstone, back in the lab. He clicks around on the computer that runs his team’s experiment, pushing up his wire-frame glasses studiously as he resets Veronica. Conscious robots are the least of his worries.

To paraphrase philosopher and transhumanist thinker Nick Bostrom, a lot of AI that was once considered cutting edge has managed to filter down into the kinds of applications that we use every day: search engines, spam filters, GPS apps, or algorithms that suggest things we might like to purchase on websites like Amazon. “Once something becomes useful enough and common enough it's not labeled AI anymore,” Bostrom argues.

Redstone tends to agree. “It seems to me that it limits our autonomy in subtle ways, and the unnerving part is that people don’t have a very good understanding of how pervasive this technology is and the degree to which it informs the choices we’re faced with every day.”

Jim Davies, Professor of Cognitive Science who also teaches at Carleton, has a similar view. In a recent article in Nature, Davies argues that the attention people place on the idea that AIs could become conscious and subsequently pose a threat to humanity is misplaced. What’s far more important is making sure we program good ethics into our AI. “We must realize that stopping an AI from developing consciousness is not the same as stopping it from developing the capacity to cause harm.”

For example, viruses, writes Davies, aren’t conscious, but they can certainly wreak havoc. A self-driving car is also not conscious, yet it relies on AI to navigate around, and could certainly cause harm if it, say, ran into a pedestrian. Or, a self driving car might even be faced with an ethical dilemma—similar to what philosophers call “Trolley problems”—where it must decide whether to swerve and avoid hitting someone, potentially resulting in the death of the driver, or staying on course and injuring or killing the pedestrian. That’s why for experts with Davies’s or Redstone’s perspectives, it’s much more important to worry about whether our AIs can make ethical decisions than whether or not they are conscious.

I say my goodbyes to Redstone and make my way toward the door.

“Oh, one more thing,” he says as I put my hand on the knob. I turn back to him expectantly.

“Don’t let Veronica’s shutdown get you too upset. She is just an algorithm, after all.”

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Perhaps she is, but despite knowing this, I just can’t help but feel that Redstone treated her cruelly when he deactivated her without listening to her protests. If ensuring the morality of AIs is what we should be concerned about, then by extension, shouldn’t we also worry about whether the people creating these AIs are themselves ethical people?

I pass by Redstone’s next volunteer as I make my way out of the lab. Watching her greet the researcher, I hope this is something he has considered, as well.

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Sara Grainger

Sara is a graduate of both Nipissing and Ryerson Universities. Since completing two post-secondary programs apparently wasn’t enough for her, she is also currently in the second year of the Professional Writing Program at Algonquin. When not making every attempt to avoid the 9-5 lifestyle, she can be found testing the waters of musicianship, binge watching any genre of television you can think of (as long as it’s worthwhile) and pretending to be good at video games. She is also passionate about animal welfare and loves spending time with her Chihuahua mix Tula and cat Oki.

The Ray of Sunshine

Out of respect, names and dates have been changed in this story to protect third party identities.

The last time I saw him we had both ordered a chocolate milk. He asked me how I was and I said, “Good.” Afterwards, outside the restaurant, I didn't say goodbye. We hadn’t spoken that much in the last few years after high school. I felt weird, like I didn't belong with the people we went to lunch with. They had new memories that I was not a part of. So I just got into my friend’s car, ready to go home. I regret this now. It was the last time I saw him.

On the morning of April 16th, 2016, Colin Davies drove his car into a transport truck in the opposite lane on the highway. He died on impact. He was nineteen.

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I remember exactly where I was when I found out. At the time, I was a shitty cake decorator at a grocery store. It was a typical Saturday for me. I was on my first break at around 10:00 A.M. My high school friend Kate texted me asking if I had heard the news. I had no idea what she was talking about, but then she sent another text that simply said: “Colin Davies died this morning.” This moment felt surreal. I didn't really know how to process it. A million questions went through my head. When my break was over I packed up my lunch bag and went back to work. I was eager to finish my day at 4:30 P.M., so I could go home and find out more information.

I think I was in shock because I really didn’t register what happened until halfway through the rest of my shift. I was the only one in the bakery for most of the afternoon. I broke down in the freezer. I wanted to go home, but I didn't know how to tell the store manager what had happened. If I said it out loud to anyone, that would make it real.

Since I worked behind a counter, I didn't speak to many customers, which meant I had a lot of free time for my thoughts. I imploded. My mind was darting back and forth trying to understand. Memories from the last two years of high school started flooding back. I started to realize that someone who was a significant part of my life was dead.

When my shift was finally over, my friend Chloe picked me up and I cried as soon as she hugged me. It was the kind of sob I was not accustomed to and it scared me. It was an embarrassing sob, the kind that you only let out when you’re alone and no one else is there to hear you.

When I got home, all of my social media was covered with rest-in-peace posts. People were saying that Colin was suffering from depression, and that after a fight with his girlfriend, he drove off and texted her saying he was looking for trucks. The assumption was that he purposely crashed into the truck and killed himself.

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At first I didn't want to believe it. The person I remembered could not have done something like that. Colin was the type of guy who had hundreds of friends. His smile and laugh were incredibly contagious. I can still hear his chuckle after making some inappropriate joke! He liked to party as much as any teenage boy, but he was infamous for gatherings in his parents’ basement. There was a bar downstairs so it was clearly meant to be partied in! Almost everyone I knew had done so with Colin at one point or another. New Years Eve, 2014, was the last bash I had attended. His parents owned a large home, and we filled it with people. It was an amazing party, filled with old friends who were on break from school for the holidays. One kid even fell through the floor! There was a chute that the family used to send wood down for the stove in the basement and a girl walked into it. All of a sudden there were legs hanging and kicking from the ceiling! Everyone was almost in tears from laughing so hard.

But the party ended early when his parents came home. Only a handful of friends were originally allowed to stay overnight, myself included. We frantically tried to get people out of the house and clean up, but his parents had figured it out and the damage was done. His mom shook her head at him, but she didn't yell.  His dad sat beside the boys at the kitchen table, laughed and cracked open a beer with them! Parties at the Davies’ residence were not something new. His family was a lively bunch.

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So, how could someone who was the life of the party end his life? This kind of tragedy was not a new occurrence in our small town. Teen suicides were common in the sense that I can think of five young people that took their lives within a five year period. Every time it happened there was a wave of sadness that spread across school. If you didn't know the person, chances are you knew someone who did. This was the first time it was someone I knew personally. Although I never got a confirmation that he did it on purpose, the rumours seemed true. Like many teens, Colin had his fair share of ups and downs. Either way, my friend was gone, and there was nothing I could do or say to make it better.

My group of friends from senior year were the best friends I ever had. I finally felt like I belonged. In the simplest of terms, I was happy. Colin was part of that group. He was there through the laughs and the explorations. He was my friend, and his death marked the fact that things would never be the same. Nothing lasts forever, people move on, friendships fade, and we grow up. Much had changed in the last few years; some of my friends that were dating had broken up, others had moved away, but most of us managed to come together for the wake and funeral later that week.

At the wake, I spoke to my friend Tony. He said that Colin would want us to be strong. He showed me a picture he took on his camera on the drive to the church. It was a ray of sunshine peeking through the clouds. He smiled and said that it was Colin watching over us that day. Something inside of me assured me that he was right.

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I realized that summer, that death is final. I think that’s the part that troubled me the most: all the things he didn't get to do. He had not ventured off to college yet. He wouldn't get to have a family of his own or get married—he wouldn’t grow old. I can honestly say that I wasn't the same after this happened. I see the world differently now. But when times are tough, I try to see the ray of sunshine, because it's what Colin would have wanted.

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Holly Williams

Holly Williams is a small town girl jumping into the big city life. Reading and writing have always been activities she has been passionate about, along with photography and exploring. She likes to think if a book doesn't light a spark in your soul then it wasn't a 10/10. Her happy place is sitting on the porch on a crisp fall day, spending time with people she loves, with a hot cup of tea in her hands.

Nothing But Cancer

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Out of respect for the living (and the dead) the names and relationships in this essay have been changed. The person I say is my grandmother was related to me in a different capacity, but her offences are fact, and everything surrounding her is genuine. I’m sure you’ll agree with this decision after reading.

The day my grandmother died was easily my fourth best day ever. It was the best day of my mother’s life. I remember how she was smiling when we received the call that she was in hospital with something the doctors could not identify nor begin to think about how to treat.

This was it. We could all tell. We were in no rush to go see her, as it would mean packing away everything that concerned us once again and travelling to Marathon, a town that got the bagel in 1991. Emotionally, none of us had the capacity to care as much as we maybe should have. We were busy. It had been a hard year. So we continued, busy with Christmas and exams and work deadlines. In our world, her death was not to be a devastating loss: instead the ripping of a Band-Aid. Something bad gone quickly.

You see, my grandmother, Carol, was a very, very bad person. And you must be thinking that my family and I, to have such reactions to someone in our family dying, must also be very, very bad people. But we aren’t.

Carol used to beat my mother so bad that much later in life, doctors found microfractures that never healed. My mother has been in pain every day of her life as a result. One day, when she was four, my mother returned home from school to find that every individual possession of hers, from the books to the mattress she slept on, had been sold. She slept on the floor for six years. Carol ran over my mother’s cat with the family truck on purpose to teach my mother a lesson about taking care of something properly. The cat was outside after all, why is a vehicle any different than a coyote? This was her argument, as my mother held the crushed body in her hands, the cat’s ribs deflated like a sick slapstick punchline.

 Nothing was sacred in Carol’s house, and nothing was safe.

And on and on and on the list can go. She even hit me once, when I was five and dropped a glass full of water on the floor. That was when she was banished, my father screaming at her, citing how unwelcome she was in our home from that moment on. I remember Carol smiling wryly as she left, already on the phone with the nearby hotels.

The thing about my grandmother was that she understood the effect of her violence but didn’t care. And that’s where the real hatred came from. I grew up to a family so afraid of violence that I could never, and will never, understand the desire to make someone cry. But that was where Carol lived: to be in control of someone else’s emotions was as close as she ever got to satisfaction.

Imagine being exposed to someone like that, for years. Imagine being asked to love them. It’s like I said, we aren’t bad people. But we knew one.

When it seemed like she was going to die, it seemed like the most evil thing I had ever known had finally earned back its karma. It seemed like we’d be safe.

Every night, my uncle would call us. He had lived next to his mother his whole life and had therefore never left that tight space under her dangerous thumb. He would call, breathless and exhausted, grieving before the grave was dug. My family would gather around the phone, listening in rapt exhilaration.

“They say it could be West Nile, or Polio,” he said on the first day.

“Polio would be good,” my mother replied.

“Sarah!” came the reprimand.

The second day, they were thinking something else.

“A stroke! A stroke! They say it’s definitely a stroke.”

On the third day, biblical as always, she was stable enough to be moved to an MRI.

“It’s cancer,” Jason told us. “They say she has nothing but cancer in there—no organs. They’re just covered in tumors. We’re counting in hours, not days. Get here.”

Now, I still don’t know what it is about cancer that makes people seem so paper thin. I have sincere issue casting blame on anything without a brain, but people blame cancer for things all the time. Cancer is doing a job. Cancer is a cell that walks off and starts growing a new liver in a lung. Cancer is trying to survive, through its own division, like every cell does. Two by two by four by four; this is how everything we have ever touched or seen is made. And yet, bound by identical rules, cancer is deemed evil.

We didn’t ask to see the body. Apparently, some people want to see it, afterwards. Touch it, talk to it. We didn’t. We let them prepare it, in a cold, clean room, far away. I think that’s a good way to think about her life and death: we wanted it far away.  

The funeral was ill-peppered with grievers. Most people weren’t even wearing black, in a silent solidarity that said, “we know what she was.” No one cried. No one spoke but for the pastor, who’s uneasy eyes seemed to stand as testament to how odd it must have seemed–a crowd of wolves in sheep’s clothing, pretending to care for the fallen member of the flock.

No one stayed for cake. My family went home. We continued, had a good Christmas and a better New Year’s, and when my birthday came around there was something missing in the air.

My mother’s elation had calcified–instead there stood a loss.

My mother broke down and cried while we were about to walk into an Escape Room, one of those puzzle rooms that builds teamwork or, I don’t know, fixes marriages. But there she was, red faced, crying so hard it sounded like laughter.

We didn’t know what was wrong at first, so we crowded around her as she knelt in the street.

“Oh my god,” she gasped, “I think it’s done. I think it’s done. I think it’s done.”

I don’t think any of us really, really understood what that meant. We never asked. And out of respect for the dead, we never will. But we knew the shape of its meaning. And I think you do, too.              

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Shannon Morrow

Shannon Morrow is always curious, and as a result, loves knowing all sorts of things. A second year professional writing student, she enjoys telling people about her weird dreams, birds and trying to learn how to cook- that one isn’t going too well. And yeah, she knows her glasses make her look like a beetle sometimes. Roll with it.

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