Elizabeth Bear - Future Visions - Original Science Fiction Inspired by Microsoft

Was this a glimpse into Jamie’s personal life? If so, Ethan didn’t want to know about it. He said, more primly than he intended, “Oh, I think most people know what they really feel.”

Jamie gave him a strange look. “Really, Ethan?”

“Yes. But the point here is that MAIP didn’t know.”

Jamie picked up Texas and fitted it into the puzzle, his head bent over the small table, his hair falling forward over his face and hiding his expression.

December, and still raining. Ethan went to the modeling lab late on a Sunday afternoon. He was alone in the building; it was almost Christmas. Water dripped from his raincoat and umbrella onto the floor. “Lights on.”

“Hi, Daddy.”

“Hi, baby.”

Allyson smiled, and the recording ended. He clothed her in artificial health, pink cheeks, and lustrous hair, and started it again.

“Hi, Daddy.”

“Hi, baby.”

He stroked her cheek. Soft, so soft in his VR glove. But Allyson had not been a soft child. Not noisy and obnoxious like Trevor or Jenna, not hidden and falsely polite like Cassie. Allyson had been direct, opinionated, with a will of diamond. She and Tina clashed constantly over what clothes Allyson would put on, what her bedtime was, whether she could cross the street alone, why she drew butterflies instead of the alphabet on her kindergarten “homework.” Ethan had been the buffer between his wife and daughter. It seemed ridiculous that a five-year-old had to be buffered against, but that was the way it had been. Allyson and Tina had been too much alike, and when Tina had blamed not only Ethan but herself for exposing Allyson to Moser’s Syndrome, Ethan had not seen the danger. Tina, dramatic to the end, had thrown herself under a Metro train at the Westlake Tunnel Station.

Allyson would not have grown up like that. As she matured, she would have become calmer, more controlled. Ethan was sure of it. She would have become the companion and ally that Tina had not been.

“Hi, Daddy.”

“Hi, baby.”

The recording stopped, but Ethan talked on. “We’re having trouble with MAIP’s ability to attune, Allyson.”

She gazed at him from solemn eyes. Light golden brown, the color of November fields in sunshine.

“‘Attune’ means that two people are aware of and responsive to each other.” And attunement began early, between mother and infant. Was that what had gone wrong between Allyson and Tina? He and Allyson had always been attuned to each other.

Ethan reached out both arms, one in the VR glove and one bare. Both arms passed through the model of Allyson that was made only of light. The gloved hand tingled briefly, but it still moved through the child as if she did not exist.

For a terrible second, Ethan’s brain filled with thick, tarry mist, cold as liquid nitrogen. He went rigid and clamped his teeth tightly together. The mist disappeared. He was in control again.

He turned off the recording, wiped the rain droplets from the floor, and left.

Zhao Tailoring didn’t open until 10 a.m. on Mondays. Ethan, who’d been there at 8:30, waited in a Starbucks, slowly drinking a latte he didn’t want. The Seattle Times lay open on the table, but he couldn’t concentrate. At 9:50 he threw his cup in the trash, left his unread paper, and walked back across the street to the tailor shop. He huddled under the roof overhang, out of the rain.

Tailoring was not part of his life. Ethan bought clothes haphazardly, getting whatever size seemed the best fit and ignoring whatever gaps might present themselves. The window of Zhao Tailoring held Christmas decorations and three mannequins. The plastic-resin woman wore a satin gown; the man, slacks and a double-breasted blazer; the child, a pair of overalls over a ruffled blouse. They looked bound for three entirely different events. The sign said ALTERATIONS * REPAIRS * NEW CLOTHES MADE. At 9:58, an Asian woman unlocked the front door.

“Ethan! What are you doing here?”

Laura Avery, under her Marc Chagall umbrella. Ethan felt his face go rigid. “Hello, Laura.”

“Are you having tailoring done?” Her voice held amusement but no condescension.

“No. What are you doing here? Why aren’t you at work?”

Her brows rose in surprise at his harsh tone. “I had a doctor’s appointment across the street. Nothing serious. Are you having a suit made?”

“I already said I wasn’t having tailoring done. Please stop asking me personal questions.”

Surprise changed to hurt, her features going slack in the blue shadows under the umbrella. “Sorry, I just—”

“If I wanted to talk to you, I would.”

A moment of silence. Ethan opened his mouth to apologize, to explain that he was just distracted, but before he could speak, she turned and stalked away.

“You come in, yes?” the Asian woman said.

Ethan went in.

“You want nice suit, yes? Special this week.”

“No. I don’t want a suit. I want…I want to buy the mannequin in the window.” Incongruously, an old childish song ran through his head: How much is that doggie in the window?

“You want buy what?”

She didn’t have much English. The person who did was late showing up for work. “You come again, twelve o’clock maybe, one—”

“No. I want to buy the mannequin…the doll .” They had finally agreed on this word. “Now. For a hundred dollars.” He had no idea what store mannequins cost.

She shook her head. “No, I cannot—”

“Two hundred dollars. Cash.” He took out his wallet.

They settled on two-fifty. She stripped the overalls and blouse off the mannequin, and, to his relief, she put it in a large, opaque suit bag. Ethan watched its stiff plastic form—hairless, with a monochromatic and expressionless face—disappear into the bag. He put it in the trunk of his car, pushing from his mind every bad B movie about murderers and wrapped-up bodies.

Marilyn Mahjoub was fifteen minutes late for her first testing session. Waiting, Jamie paced, smacking a fist into his palm, dialing the energy all the way up to ten. “You know, Dr. Stone Man, we’d be so much farther along with Maip if all the fucking subfields of AI research hadn’t been—oh, I don’t know—slogging along for sixty or seventy years without fucking communicating with each other?”

“Yes,” Ethan said.

“It’s just such a…oh, by the way, I changed some of our girl’s heuristics. What I did was—are you listening to me? Hello?”

“I’m listening,” Ethan said, although he wasn’t, not really.

“You’re not listening. Maip listens to me more than you do, don’t you, Maip?”

“I’m listening,” MAIP said.

“Why is she so much more here than you are? And why is that kid so late?”

If there was a reason, they never heard it. Marilyn Mahjoub arrived eventually, in the custody of a sullen older brother. Her clothing embodied the culture clash suggested by her name: hijab, tight jeans, and crop top. She had huge, dark eyes and a slender, awkward grace. In a few years, she would be beautiful.

Like Cassie McAvoy, Marilyn played the keyboard. Unlike Cassie, she was good at it. Ethan could picture her in a concert hall one day, rising to cries of “Brava!” However, she did not take well to MAIP.