AI Era: Loss Function

We visited the mansion that had once belonged to a local count, famous for having (probably) slept with Catherine the Great when she visited Sergeigrad in 1773. "Everybody here thinks he's hero for that," she told me. "Big deal. She fucked him once, never came back. Sounds like disappointment for her."

After a whirlwind summary of the city's history – some buildings still wore scars from WWII – she showed me the more modern side: the new railway under construction, the shopping precincts, the flower gardens, occasionally switching back to history. "Your hotel"—she pulled her SUV across traffic at alarming speed, and I grasped the chicken handle as people honked at us—"that was NKVD headquarters. Soviets shot my great-grandfather there."

I wasn't sure what to say to that. She caught my silence and looked at me. "Don't worry, not in your room! They had basement for that."

"Uh, okay."

"Hey, do you like ballet? Matinee tomorrow afternoon. Not Bolshoi but pretty good."

"Sure," I said, embracing the change in topic. "I've never been, but I'm curious. How much are tickets?"

"Don't worry. My guest, my treat." She fended off all my attempts to pay.

Nadja had a good eye for fashion. I had mentioned that I needed a new winter jacket, and she knew just the place – "not the cheapest," she said, "but cheap shit falls apart. And we get you good hat too, so you don't look like 'hello I am tourist please charge me extra'." Along the way she showed me a beautifully painted Orthodox cathedral, drove me past the Presidential manor, and took me for a tour of the university grounds. Most of the buildings there were gleaming and new; from what she told me, a huge amount of money had gone into it over the last few years. We stopped by her department and she introduced me to colleagues who I'd only known as names on papers, and to a couple of students who treated her with cautious deference.

I'd heard Nadja speak at conferences, and her grammar there was polished and precise; much later she told me she'd spent four years at an expensive boarding school in Sussex. She'd been the same way with the lawyers. I was struck by the contrast with how she spoke now, looser and informal. Eventually I realised what it was: she was relaxed around me, and had for whatever reason decided that I wasn't going to think less of her if she didn't maintain linguistic perfection. That, in turn, warmed me towards her; it's hard not to trust somebody who apparently likes and trusts you.

On the first evening we were welcomed to a formal dinner with our Serjarussian counterparts. On the second, after the ballet, Nadja invited me to dinner at her place with her husband Pyotr, and one of her grad students, Mikhail. Pyotr was a hearty fellow who looked more like a lumberjack than the hospital administrator he actually was, and who was clearly disappointed when I wasn't able to sustain a conversation about the American cable series that seemed to be his main recreation.

Pyotr had an evening shift, so after we'd finished our mains and a rather delicious pomegranate-based pudding he took Mikhail home and left the two of us to deal with the remaining half of the evening's second bottle of Bordeaux. I'm not usually much of a drinker, but I had been enjoying the company and I was well into my third glass.

"This is a lovely flat," I said. It was much roomier than mine, and although the building was old, it had clearly been refurbished. "Is it cheap to live here, on a university salary?"

"Cheap, yes, but not this cheap. My family has money. Thinking of moving here?"

"It's a beautiful city, but no." I felt like I owed her some truth. "My dating life is limited enough as it is, without moving somewhere it's illegal." Not that homosexuality was illegal in Serjarus, not as such. But I was aware of a law banning "promotion of abnormal sexual conduct", with a "public indecency" clause that seemed to mean straight couples fucking or gay couples kissing.

"Ah." She held out the bottle, an offer to refill my glass, but I declined. "Nobody here asks, what is legal? We ask, what is possible?" She looked at her watch, made a thoughtful face, and at length said, "Let me show you something."

* * * * *

The club was loud, so very loud. Nadja told me it had been built as a tractor factory in the 1920s, then converted to make tanks for the war. In the early 2000s the district had been revamped from "crumbling industrial" to an entertainment precinct; most of the old buildings had been torn down, but the Tractor Factory had survived. Some enterprising soul had converted the space into a laser tag complex, and for a few years it had been the hippest place in town, so Nadja told me.

By the time of my visit laser tag was no longer trendy. The laser-guns were gone, the maze disused, and the reception space had been converted to a small nightclub. I guess they already had the sound system and the flashing lights in place. I could hear the sound long before we were inside, dance music and high-speed Europop going doof doof doof and reverberating off concrete walls.

The light was dim inside. As my eyes adjusted, the first thing that caught my attention was the crowd. People in Serjarus tended to dress conservatively, like they were going for a job interview at a funeral. Here there were a few suits, yes, but there was also colour, ripped jeans, garish eye shadow. The people ranged from eighteen-ish to a few around my parents' age, and the couples…

"Oh my," I said. Aside from one or two hangers-on, everybody in that place was female, though I had to look twice to be reasonably sure about some of them.

"Girl," Nadja stage-whispered in my ear, "I wanna take you to a gay bar."

Superficially it looked tame, compared to some I'd been to. The fashions would have been ten years out of date in a club in Soho or Berlin, and there were clearly some unwritten rules, with not so much as a kiss to be seen. But here it was bold, and I was nervous, and excited, and still a little drunk.

"Are we safe here?"

She looked at me, amused. "All nice people here. Maybe somebody grabs your ass, that's all."

"No, I meant from—" But at that moment a tall, sporty-looking woman in a green jacket tapped Nadja on the shoulder. She turned, and the two of them exchanged a brief hug and a peck on the cheek while saying what I assumed was hello. The other woman asked Nadja something – about me, I suspected – and Nadja replied. Then she turned back to me. "Trish, this is my friend Anja. She teaches English literature at the university. Anja, this is Trish, she is visiting from England."

"Nice to meet you," said Anja. "Here for long?"

"Just a few days."

She nodded. "I'm heading to the dance floor. See you there!"

Soon enough I was headed the same way; the music was too loud here for chit-chat, and I didn't need any more alcohol yet. The dance floor was packed with energetic young folk but they made room for me, and soon enough I was shaking my stuff, still nervous as hell but set to enjoy myself. I hadn't been out much since my last girlfriend walked out on me four months ago – it was easier just to sink into work. The music wasn't good but it was danceable, and I realised I'd been missing the physicality. I let the beat throb through me, let the lights dazzle me, let myself go in the energy of the dancers around me.

Now and then, one of the other women would smile at me and say something – I caught novaya once, I remembered that was "new" – and I'd smile back, shaking my head, and tell them "I only speak English". A couple tried to make conversation in my language, but it was too loud for me to make much out, so I just went on smiling, and that seemed to satisfy them.

I didn't jump when I felt hands on my hips, moving with me, soft at first then more firm as I showed no signs of rejecting the contact. I shimmied, felt her match the motion, pressing up against me. From the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of green: Anja.

I wasn't looking to go home with somebody. In a country like Serjarus, in the middle of a work trip, that seemed like a bad idea. But it felt good to be desirable, to flirt, to enjoy the physical contact, and Anja didn't show signs of taking it any further.

Then we turned, and I saw Nadja, standing by the bar just looking at us with a stony expression. I felt I'd put my foot in things somehow, and I didn't know how. "Excuse me," I shouted to Anya, and peeled myself from her grasp, picking my way between dancers to Nadja.

"Everything okay?"

"Yeah, is okay. Just… Anja is trying to provoke me."

It clicked.She's your ex. But then…

"Wait, how is flirting with me provoking you?" Nadja was clearly a regular here, she couldn't possibly be offended by my dancing when she'd brought me to this place herself.

"She thinks…" Nadja shook her head. "She thinks I have some attraction for you."

Was she avoiding my gaze?

I was still full of flirtatious energy, the kind that wanted so badly to get into trouble, and if I hadn't missed my mark… I stepped in close, placing my hands on her elbows, and asked in the sweetest voice I could manage, "And why would she think that?"

Nadja flinched, just a little, and I knew: after all these years trying and failing to get under this abrasive woman's skin, I had stumbled into it by accident. I didn't quite know how, but that didn't matter. "Nadja," I said, "did you tell her that?"

When she didn't answer, I continued, "Is there some place here we can talk?"

"Uh huh."

The maze was closed, but it wasn't locked, and we weren't the only people in there. We had to pick our way past couples in the shadows, whispering, kissing, some maybe slowly fucking up against the painted plywood. Couples, perhaps once a triple; it was dark enough that I couldn't be sure. I realised this was the true draw of the club: a make-out space for those who couldn't bring their lovers home. The pounding of the music was still loud enough to provide some cover, but not so loud we had trouble hearing one another.

"I like smart girls," said Nadja. "But I wasn't going to make move. Easy to find someone else to fuck, but not collaborator like you. I don't want to damage how we work together. And I didn't know you liked girls until you told me."

"Okay," I said, and pushed her back up against what had been Blue Team Control Centre. I wouldn't have been half so attracted to her if I hadn't hated her first. "I do like girls. So what if I make a move?" I slipped one arm around behind her waist and kissed her, and she pulled me in fiercely as if she'd only been waiting for permission. I felt her fingers digging into my back, felt her teeth against my lips…

"Wait," I said, remembering something.

"Huh?"

"Your husband. I am…" Stupid conscience. "I don't do cheating." Goddammit. I wanted this so badly, so suddenly, but there were rules.

Nadja was laughing. I felt her shaking in my arms. "Petya and I… He is darling boy, we are friends since school, just friends. Being married is convenience for both of us, he has his life and I has mine and people don't ask questions. You don't need to worry about him."

"Oh thank fuck." I kissed her again, one hand pressed against the back of her neck. It had been years since I'd kissed a smoker, and I didn't like the taste any better than last time, but I liked everything else about it. My chest felt tight. I could feel her hands at my hips, sliding in between us to stroke my belly.

"My place?" she said.

"Lead on."

As she drove us back to hers – one of the longest twenty minutes I've ever experienced – I rested my hand on her thigh. I didn't want to lose the heat, and from outside nobody should be able to see what I was up to. When we stopped at lights, she'd run her fingers over the back of my hand.

"Nadja?"

"Hmm?"

"Does that place ever get raided by police?"

"Sometimes."

"What… what happens then?"

I felt her shrug. "Manager says he keeps rules on dance floor, but sometimes people sneak into maze, what can he do about it? If anybody makes trouble for me, I tell them, my uncle is your chief do you want to bother him?"

"Oh."

"Told you my family had money."

I laughed unevenly. "Money yes, not connections."

"Money makes connections. And connections are how you make money."

I nodded. Something seemed odd, and it took me a moment to place it. The impatience had gone out of her driving; we'd just waited a full minute at a traffic light and I hadn't felt her fuming at the delay, nor her usual race-driver takeoff when the light finally went green.

"Why me?" I asked.

She took a while to reply. "You understand things. So much whirring in my head, argh! Takes so long to explain it to people. But you've read everything I published. I think you're the only one who can understand what I'm thinking of… god, wish I could tell you about it. Fucking contract nonsense."

* * * * *

It was the state of the guest bedroom that convinced me she really hadn't intended to make a move. She'd been using it as a study and the bed was covered with papers she'd been reading. The dramatic thing would have been to sweep it all onto the floor, or to ravish one another dramatically on top of the mess, but I quailed at the thought of trying to sort out all those loose papers after. So I sat back for a couple of minutes while Nadja stacked them into haphazard towers on her desk, and then she sat on the edge of the bed looking at me hesitantly.

In the club we'd been hungry for one another. With the trip back, and this little delay, we'd lost that heat. I knew both of us were thinking that now was the time, if there was a time, to say maybe this isn't such a good idea.

I sat beside her, one hand over her shoulders, and said, "So tell me." And she began to talk, at first hesitantly, growing in confidence as she went on with her idea and I didn't poke holes in it.

As she'd hinted, the goal was to combine the two approaches: the "parrot" that reads a text corpus and learns how to mimic those conversations, and the truth model that understands the system they're talking about. The trick was in coupling the two together. Instead of sitting down with the technical specs for the printer or whatever you're supporting, and trying to code that into rules, you get the machine to reverse-engineer the logic from those conversations.

Think of it like this: suppose you were to take a very bright medieval scholar, and give her thousands of conversations where modern-day people talk about their cars. It is very unlikely that she would figure out the intricacies of an internal combustion engine, or even form a very clear idea of what a "car" looks like. But she might come to understand that it is something like a horse that needs to be fed (petrol) and shod (tires). And then, if you asked her what to do before embarking on a long journey, she could tell you that you need to fuel your car and check the tires. The metaphor is not the reality, but it's enough to be useful.

Now, take a million such scholars, and let them each develop their own metaphors, and then argue with one another to find whose metaphor works best, perhaps modifying their own theories to steal ideas from one another… and you might end up with a very complex metaphor which is capable of telling you when to change your oil and what to do if the magic smoke escapes.

Is that "understanding"? Perhaps not, but so much of human knowledge depends on such metaphors, imperfect but good enough to be useful; perhaps not strictly truth, but paralleling the truth.

"…so, that's basics of it, but I need help developing mathematics," she said. "Think it could work?"

"I think I'd like to find out."

As she talked, as I asked questions here and there, we had slipped back into ease with one another. Hearing her expound her ideas had stirred memories of the anger I'd felt for her, of the long hours where I'd looked for ways inside her armour to strike at her. Those feelings were not gone, but they had fermented like wine…

I shoved her back onto the bed. She gasped, and from there I couldn't honestly say whether it was me pinning Nadja down or her holding me on top of her. I had a grip on her hair and I pulled her head back, leaving her throat bare to me. First I kissed, feeling her flex and shift in response to my touch, getting the measure of her reactions, and once her breathing had shown me the way to make her squirm I traced her jawline with the tip of my tongue, a flickering touch just on the sexy side of tickling.

She had both her hands in my hair, and I could feel her dilemma. She needed to do something with them, wanted to push and pull me, but she needed me to be in charge. Such a soft interior for such a hard shell.

So I sat up and flipped her over onto her belly, straddling her hips. From there, I could lean forward and nibble at the back of her neck, and she could wiggle her arms all she liked. I tugged her blouse free from her waistband and slipped my hands into it, sliding them up her side. She shivered at the touch of my fingers.

I squeezed my hands in under her torso, pressing upwards to the edge of her bra, sliding up to her collarbone and then back down again to slide my fingertips under the cups, to stroke her soft curves. She turned her head sideways so I could kiss her as my fingers teased at her, and I took my time in releasing the catch. I kissed her lips; I kissed her cheek; I blew warm breath in her ear, and flicked my tongue-tip at the skin just behind it. (She shivered.) Then I nipped at her neck, and bit, and sucked, and she gasped as my hand slid under her, under her waistband, between her legs.

"That will bruise…" Nadja muttered.

"Should I stop?" I replied, fingers beginning to rub her through her underwear.

"No," she whispered, and I bit her again, feeling her back arch beneath me. I pushed the gusset aside, and my fingers met hot flesh, and she pressed against my hand. I stroked her slowly, every little circle of my fingers provoking another gasp.

"At last, Dr. Kapustina, I have you at my mercy," I murmured, nipping her throat again, sucking, tasting a hint of sweat on her skin despite the late October chill.

"Hmm?"

"Nothing."

I drew things out, stroking her enough to keep her close to the boil, not quite enough to finish her, as I undressed her, smelling her growing arousal as I fingered her, caressed her body, finally letting her come with her knuckles stuffed in her mouth to smother her groans.

"Oh, god, Trisha. That was friggin' fantastic," she said when she'd caught her breath. "Now what do you like? I will do it for you, tell me."

"Well, let me show you…" I said, rising to shed my remaining clothes.

* * * * *

We dozed for a few hours, tangled up in one another, but somewhere around two in the morning Nadja nudged me awake. "You need to be back in hotel. If you stay out all night, people talk."

"Don't want to get up," I muttered. "Comfortable here." I had one arm around her and was doing what one ex had described as my "affectionate sack of potatoes" impression.

I felt her soften. "I know. Me too. But it's better if you're gone before Petya gets back. He's a good man but the easiest secret to keep is the one he doesn't know."

I let her drop me back at my hotel. At her suggestion I swayed a little for the concierge's benefit, to give the impression we'd been out drinking together, and then I lay in my bed thinking about the weird thing that had just happened. I wasn't sure what the consequences might be, but it had been nice.

In the morning we were all business, and if Nadja and I were somewhat tired business, we blamed it on the Bordeaux, and nobody questioned why she was wearing a scarf. For our remaining two more nights in Sergeigrad things with Nadja were strictly on a professional footing. She made no suggestion of repeating our encounter, and I didn't feel it was my place to ask. I wasn't sure if it had been a one-time thing. Perhaps she'd satisfied her curiosity, or perhaps she considered it unsafe to get tangled up with a foreigner who mightn't know how to keep a secret? I was confused, but I decided just to accept it as an unexpected and lovely thing that had happened, out of the blue.