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

“Try playing that last section slower,” MAIP said in the warm, pretty voice that Jamie had given her. She was comparing Marilyn’s rendition, note by note, to the professional version in her memory.

Marilyn’s lip curled. “No. It shouldn’t be slower.”

“Let’s try it just to see.”

“No! I had it right!”

“You did really well,” MAIP said. “Can I please hear the piece again?”

Jamie nodded briskly; MAIP was acting to lower Marilyn’s frustration level by offering praise and neutrally suggesting a redo. Ethan studied the data display. Her frustration level was not lowering.

“No,” Marilyn said, “I won’t play it again. I don’t need to play it again. I did it right already.”

“You did really well,” MAIP said. “I can see that you’re talented.”

“Then don’t tell me to do it slower!”

“Mare,” said her brother, with much disgust, “ chill .”

Jamie stepped in. “What would you like to play now, Marilyn?”

Her childish pique disappeared. Lowering her head, Marilyn looked up at Jamie through her lashes and purred, “What would you like to hear?”

Christ—twelve years old! Were all young girls like this now? Allyson wouldn’t have been. She would have been direct, intelligent, appealing.

Jamie, flustered (Ethan hadn’t known that was possible), said, “Play…uh, what else do you…what do you want to play?”

Later, after brother and sister had left, Jamie turned on Ethan. “What’s wrong with you?”

“With me?”

“You’ve been distracted this whole session, and you made me deal with that little wildcat by myself! Did you even hear me say that I added heuristics to Maip, matching emotion with postural clues?”

“No, I…. Yes.”

“Uh-huh. Get with it, Ethan! We have to get this right!”

Ethan said, “Don’t take your frustration with Marilyn out on me.”

MAIP said, “Jamie, you seem distressed.”

Startled, Ethan turned toward the computer. “MAIP has your data? Did you give your baseline readings to her?”

“No!” Jamie’s irritation disappeared, replaced instantly with buoyancy; it was like a dolphin breaking the surface of gray water. “Well, I gave her some data, anyway—but I think she applied the postural heuristics and the other new stuff and…I don’t know, you’ll have to do the analysis, but I think she actually learned !”

Ethan gazed at MAIP. A pile of intricate machinery, a complex arrangement of electrons. For some reason he couldn’t name, he felt a prickle of fear.

It was after 10 p.m. when the last researchers left Building 6. In Building 5, the Biological Division, lights still burned. Perez and Chung clattered out together, talking excitedly. Maybe they’d had another breakthrough, or maybe they just loved their work.

Ethan knew he didn’t love his work on MAIP, no more than a castaway loved his raft. Depended on it, was grateful for it, needed it. But love was nowhere anymore, unless it was here.

“Hi, Daddy.”

“Hi, baby.”

The mannequin from Zhao Tailoring wore one of Allyson’s dresses, which had still been hanging in her closet at Ethan’s apartment. The mannequin had jointed arms and legs. Ethan carefully adjusted it into a sitting position. It was a little too tall for the projection, and he had to wrap the bottom four inches of plastic with his raincoat. That was all right; when he projected Allyson onto the mannequin, it looked as if she had plopped herself down onto his coat. Maybe after playing dress-up, maybe just with five-year-old mischief. Ethan set the lights to low, put the stuffed Piglet into her arms, and added the projected overlays, one by one. Healthy skin, glossy hair, bright eyes.

“Hi, Daddy.”

“Hi, baby.”

Ethan’s knees trembled. Slowly he knelt beside her, the coat buttons lumpy under his calves. Lightly—so lightly, the VR glove on his right hand feeling her skin but not the hard plastic below—he used his left arm to hug his daughter.

“Hi, Daddy.”

“What the fuck ?”

Lights crashed on full; illusion crashed with them. Ethan jumped up. Jamie said, “What the hell are you doing? Laura called me; she saw you go into—”

“Go away. Leave me alone.”

He didn’t. But Jamie’s face, always so confident, turned a mottled maroon of embarrassment. “Hey, man, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—” Then confusion and embarrassment vanished. “No, I’m not sorry! Ethan, somebody has to level with you. You can’t go on like this. I know—we all know—what you’ve been through. As tough as it gets, yeah. But you have to…. This isn’t normal . That model isn’t Allyson. You know that. You have to let go, move on, accept that she’s gone instead of…. This is a perversion of technology, Ethan. I’m sorry, but that’s what it is. And also a perversion of Allyson’s mem—”

He didn’t finish the sentence. Ethan crossed the floor in a mad dash and knocked him down.

Jamie looked up at Ethan from the floor. He wasn’t hurt or even winded; Ethan was no fighter, and Jamie outweighed him by at least forty pounds. Ethan had merely pushed him over. Jamie got up, shook his head like a pit bull hurling away a carcass, and left without a word.

Ethan began to tremble.

His fingers shook so much that he could barely shut down the programs. He left the mannequin sitting in the middle of the floor, a lifeless hunk of plastic, and left his coat and the stuffed Piglet with it. He couldn’t bear to touch any of them.

Outside, in the dark and blowing rain, there was no sign of Jamie. Ethan lurched to Building 18. He had nowhere else to go. He couldn’t drive; he could barely see. The tarry mist was back in his brain, filling it, chilling him to the marrow. There had never been anyplace else to go, not for a year. It frightened him that he couldn’t feel the sidewalk beneath his feet, couldn’t hear the raindrops strike the ground.

In the AI lab, lights burned and the flight simulator was running. Jamie must have been working late. But Jamie wasn’t here now, and if Ethan didn’t do something—anything—he would die. That was how he felt—how Tina must have felt. Thinking of Tina only made him feel worse. He stumbled to the game console and squeezed himself into the small chair in front of it. His hands gripped the controls. At least he could feel them, solid under his fingers: the only solid thing in his world of black mist and tarry cold. Black mist as a train sped into Westlake Tunnel Station, as an unseen virus ate into nerve and tissue…

“You have just crashed the jet,” MAIP said. “Let’s try again!”

Train speeding forward at forty miles per hour…“Hi, Daddy”…keep going keep going don’t give in or you’ll explode you will be Tina…damn bitch how could she leave me like that not my fault Moser’s Syndrome not my fault… don’t give in ….

“You have crashed the jet. But I know you can do this—let’s try again!”

Over and over he crashed the jet, even as MAIP made it harder and harder for him to fail. He smashed the jet into mountains, into deserts, into the sea. Again and again and again. Someone spoke to him, or didn’t. There was noise again, a lot of noise; there was destruction and death, as there should be, to classify reality, to match the ontology of everything he had lost—

And then, finally, he realized the noise was his own screaming, and he stopped.

Into the silence MAIP said, “You were very angry, Ethan. I hope you feel better now.”