Tal Klein - The Punch Escrow

Shit. This is the most in-depth conversation we’ve had in weeks and you’re blowing it .

“Okay, okay,” I said, placing a hand on her leg. “I think it’s really just a semantics thing. She’s still her, right? Let’s just say, for argument’s sake, that while she’s slowly being teleported to the Aquarius constellation, Foyer Billy somehow cheats on her husband with the conductor. If you ask me, Billy’s still guilty of infidelity, even if Vestibule Billy never actually did it. You are who you are. Boom!” I finished off my Gibson in triumph.

Sylvia nodded, but I could tell she was a little upset by what I’d said.

“What?” I joked. “Is IT gonna come after me now?”

She shook away whatever thoughts she was having, half smiling. “Doesn’t matter. In a matter of months, it’ll be off my plate. We will have our lives back, Mr. Byram.” She kissed me again, lingering this time. “Once that happens, I’m going to— Shit .” Sylvia sat back, her demeanor completely changing as she looked off somewhere over my shoulder. She was getting comms.

“You’re going to shit?” I joked, but she waved a hand sideways, clearing whatever message she’d just gotten, and silenced me.

“I have to go,” she said in frustration. “Bill needs me back at work.”

“What? You just left!”

“I know, I know. I’ll make it up to you. I promise.”

She kissed me one last time and took off.

I looked down at the broken instruments embedded in the bar top. I couldn’t help feeling like they were some kind of metaphor for my marriage—busted, frozen, forever silenced. What the hell? I figured. I’m here already, might as well celebrate .

I motioned to Richard. “Fill ’er up. Looks like I’m drinking for two.”

So yeah, things weren’t great between me and my wife, but we were doing our best. Well, technically, she did her best, and I trailed along behind, living off the scraps of her drive and success like a remora—one of those sucker fish that attached themselves to a shark and ate whatever fell out of their mouths. I, in return, provided the occasional entertainment. Sylvia had always given everything 110 percent, whether it was our relationship, her job, or even planning vacations. She was the one who did the research, built itineraries, then told me when and where to show up. She was also the breadwinner, which I guess made me the bread loser. Some spouses might have been irked by that, but not me. I was content to take it easy.

But to be completely transparent, my lack of drive was one of the main reasons we had been doing so poorly for the last year. Her job at IT took up so much of her time that there was little left over for us. And after a decade of letting her man the wheel of our marriage, I barely even knew how to drive anymore. So I had let things get worse and worse, until our ten-year anniversary celebration was shorter and less enjoyable than a prison visit.

Thankfully, Sylvia was never one to throw in the towel. The morning after our interrupted date at the Mandolin, she broke through my hangover with a comm from the coffee shop across the street from IT.

“Are you on the bathroom floor?” she said, peering at me.

“It’s the one closest to the toilet,” I said blearily. “Are you wearing what you wore last night? Jeez, have you been working this whole time?”

“Clear your calendar for next week,” she informed me. “We are going on a second honeymoon. No comms, no International Transport bullshit, just me and you. You were right. We need to work on us.”

“So you’re ditching work for work,” I said dryly. “What’s the destination, Madame Cruise Director?”

“Costa Rica,” she said. “I just checked. Our honeymoon spot is still there. And according to my research, the cloud forest is one of the most off-the-grid spots in the world. Plenty of time for hiking, R&R, and TLC. Sound good?”

“Sounds great,” I said, though the only thing that sounded good right then was a bottle of aspirin and twelve hours of additional sleep. We said our good-byes and mostly stayed out of each other’s way for the next week, successfully avoiding any more speed bumps until the day of our vacation—July 3, 2147.

HERE COMES THE RAIN AGAIN

ON THAT DAY, I was in the midst of travel-packing procrastination when an audio message from Sylvia showed up on my comms.

“Hi, babe. Listen, things at work are quiet, so I’m getting out of here early while the getting’s good. I’m going to depart directly from the TC here at IT. If you can’t get ahold of me, I told Julie to give you—and only you—my GDS location. I am so ready for this. I love you.”

She sounded hopeful. When she said, “I love you,” I knew she meant, We’ll get through this , but I wasn’t so sure. I wasn’t as convinced that this second honeymoon was going to magically solve our marital problems. Maybe that was why it had taken me all morning to start packing.

After closing the message window, I threw some final items in my suitcase—swimsuit, bug repellant, mouth cleaner. Then, satisfied that I had enough underwear and socks for the trip, I zipped up my bag, scratched Peeve behind the ears, and did a dummy check of the apartment. I put a sticky reminder on my comms to add the dog walker to our apartment’s access list while we were gone.

I took the elevator down and stepped onto the street. A green, blue, and purple rainbow arced overhead, indicating the mosquitoes were hard at work emptying their bladders on us. 9The plan was to teleport to the San José TC, and from there hire a car to drive us to our resort in the mountains of Santa Elena. My wife had scheduled us a full itinerary of hiking in the cloud forest in search of quetzals, drinking terrible local wine, and getting into shouting matches with howler monkeys. Instead of watching the July Fourth Last War memorial fireworks, Sylvia’s plan was to drink Cerveza Imperials in our hotel room hot tub and celebrate our independence from International Transport for a few days. She’d chosen Costa Rica because it was one of the few countries left that didn’t have TCs everywhere, and it was the place where we had honeymooned ten years ago.

Shit. Where did she say we were supposed to meet?

I tried comming Sylvia.

Instead, an animated Rosie the Riveter avatar obscured my field of vision, causing me to trip on the sidewalk and bang my shin on my luggage. “Shit!”

I reduced the size of the comms window, making sure to dial down the background opacity so I could avoid any more obstacles.

The avatar displayed a concerned emoji expression. “Ouch. Are you okay, Joel?” It was Julie, Sylvia’s AIDE, or Artificially Intelligent Digital Entity. Basically, a personal assistant app with extra cruft. They acted as proxies for their owners, doing everything from personal shopping to paying bills to interfacing with coworkers when the owner was indisposed.

Most were fairly businesslike, but Sylvia had put a lot of extra effort toward giving Julie a personality. My wife was an only child, often lonely growing up. Getting her very own AIDE when she joined IT must have felt a lot like being handed a brand-new sibling, only one who would always be there for her, would always support her, and would never, ever ask for money. Sylvia nurtured her new app. She confided in Julie, asked her for advice, pushed her to be assertive and wise and funny. She even taught her to be a feminist, hence Julie’s choice of the Rosie avatar.

There was nothing wrong with the depth of their relationship, per se. Most people had a strong emotional bond with their AIDEs, somewhere on the spectrum between favorite pet and best friend, depending on one’s needs. I, however, always saw AIDEs as buckets of semicognitive code with finite complexity, designed to create the illusion of sentience.