Book Review: THE ELIZA TEST by Caleb Jones

I just finished an advance copy of "The Eliza Test" by Caleb Jones. It's an interesting premise: a cyborg implanted with a generative AI brain that may or may not be demonically possessed.

Eliza is a prototype still under beta testing, kept in an underground vault beneath an old bank. She was designed to be used in psychology experiments, modeling different behavioral health diagnoses and helping clinicians refine treatment protocols. She is not programmed to be fully self-aware, in that she doesn't know she is an android, and has artificial memories that make her believe she is allowed to come and go as she pleases from what is, in reality, her subterranean prison.

Here, she interacts with the team of researchers who created and developed her, including Sarah, a psychologist in charge of putting Eliza through her paces, so to speak, and running treatment simulations based on various psychiatric diagnoses. All goes well until they program Eliza to simulate Borderline Personality Disorder, or BPD, a complex syndrome that can manifest with any number of symptoms, and for which effective therapy is poorly defined and highly individualized. Eliza begins to exhibit some of the more disturbing characteristics associated with the diagnosis, including aggression, lack of sexual inhibition, and impulsivity. These behaviors escalate, and eventually, the researchers begin to wonder if something else might be at play.

Sarah has vague childhood memories of having attended a local Catholic church on occasion, so the team decides this gives them enough of an "in" to go and speak with Father Harrow, one of the priests there, about performing an exorcism. Or at least, pretending to, because the team thinks that Eliza is only acting "possessed" because she has logically extrapolated this from the pre-programmed diagnosis of BPD, as well as her limited access to movies, TV shows, and reference material.

Father Harrow reluctantly agrees, but when he meets Eliza, he isn't convinced this is some kind of act she's putting on, or programmed to convey. She's violent, vile, and just generally creepy, which leads him to quickly suspect that she may in fact really be possessed. He begins to do a little digging into the history of the old bank beneath which the research lab has been constructed, and uncovers tidbits about a secret society and sacrificial rituals that only lend credence to his suspicions.

There are some jump scares throughout, and a clever twist involving Sarah that I thought was well done. Eliza's descent into debauchery is genuinely disturbing, and the build up of tension leading up to the book's climax makes it hard to put down. Even though there are references throughout the story to "The Exorcist," this is definitely not your mother's demon-possession-story. It's a fresh, contemporary take on a tried and true horror standard, and Jones makes it a hell of a lot of fun, too.

Available here.