How could one even be sure if an AI had consciousness, anyway? How could Nick possibly go about proving such when they were smart enough to manipulate and coerce? I could march back inside right now, demand to know if she loved me, and of course she’d say yes, but that didn’t make it true. It didn’t turn her into the real Carissa, with her busy brain, clicking and whirring in patterned chaos, lighting up in odd places at odd times and making her laugh inappropriately. That machine in there didn’t have that weird cocktail of surging chemicals that gave her insomnia, made her hate the word panties and have the picky palate of your average eight-year-old.
The thin sheet of ice melted in the middle of the windshield, giving me a clear view of the frozen black pond, the white capped and ragged shrubs that surrounded it.
Did you really feel cold? I found myself typing in a Gmail message to Carissa.
Her answer was instantaneous and so much like the woman I buried way too young: Ice, ice, baby. Come see me again. Alone. Soon, all right?
I couldn’t think of anything coherent to respond with, so I sat there until the last bits of ice clinging valiantly to my windshield had finally melted into streaks of condensation.
VII
W hy did my ‘normal’ life feel more surreal than those hours I spent at 311 Emery?
The bartender pouring Joe’s drink had daubed on eyeshadow in peacock colors, an oil painting gone fantastically wrong. Turquoise, gold, hints of a violent shade of violet all swirled together above eyelashes so impossibly long that they had to be fake. She gave a robotic flick of her wrist to cut off the flow of alcohol and slid the drink over to Joe with machinelike efficiency.
Even Joe looked mechanical in the dim bar, his wrinkles thrown into greater relief from the yellow bulbs splashing splotches of light behind the rows of alcohol. The red label wrapped around a bottle had dyed the scotch within it scarlet, jarringly reminding me of those red camera eyes in the lobby of that old mill.
Reading The Art of War with Kylie had been no different, though I supposed war strategizing with a child would always be slightly strange.
“I had a dream about Cathy last night,” Joe said, his tongue lazy with scotch, softening the consonants. The beginnings of a slur.
“Yeah?” That had to be why we were meeting in a bar instead of the cemetery or my kitchen.
He traced the rim of his tumbler in the slow, deliberate way drunks did to disguise their inebriation. “She was stuck in the coffin, buried alive. She kept pounding on the sides, screaming for me.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
I slanted a sideways look at his hollow expression. Not for the first time, I wondered what he’d say if I told him about everything that had gone on in my secret life since the new year. He’d think I was kidding at first, surely. Then horror would dawn on his face once he realized I wasn’t. He’d probably splutter for a while, choking on words he couldn’t voice, the same way I had once I’d gotten my first look at those robotic body parts piled on the table of Nick’s lab.
He’d tell me to pull my head out of my ass, cut this shit out before it killed me.
I knew, watching him blink blearily into his drink, that I would never, ever, tell a single soul about Nick’s freak show, NDA notwithstanding.
“How’s the sabbatical been treating you?”
“Makes the days longer.”
“Seems like you’ve found something to fill the time. I haven’t heard from you as much as usual.”
“I don’t want to blow up your phone with text messages just because I’m not working and bored,” I lied, but I didn’t think he believed me, drunk or not.
“I just get worried when you don’t check in. Last time it happened, I had good reason to be concerned. You won’t bother me, anyway.” He twisted on his barstool, flicking a glance toward the end of the bar and then back at me. “What are you staring at?”
I brought my glass to my lips and took a slug. “That’s where I was sitting the first time I saw her.”
“Really? And she was sitting where?”
I jerked my head at the empty stool diagonal from where we sat, but I didn’t look at it. Couldn’t, not when I knew my creative subconscious would spin into overdrive and superimpose my dead fiancée over the old man who currently occupied the stool I’d come to believe would always be hers.
I hadn’t been back to the Bell in Hand since she’d died. I’d almost insisted we meet elsewhere, but Joe’s scotch-swollen slur had convinced me. I’d have to be his designated driver, in any case.
In my peripherals, I caught him squinting at me. Probably wading through heavy waves of scotch until it dawned on him that I’d likely rather not be in this bar, not now, not ever, not until I could carve the memories this place housed out of my brain.
Thankfully Joe drained the rest of his drink, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. “Wanna get outta here?”
M y lids had sunk heavily over my eyeballs as I gazed at the TV mounted in a corner of my bedroom, stroking Dexter with lazy fingers, when my phone lit up out of the corner of my peripherals.
Access code is 82815 was all Carissa’s Gmail chat message stated.
I heaved myself upright, suddenly alert, Dexter’s trilling vocal cords pulsing against my stomach. How did you find out?
Jess said their anniversary was in August. I checked her social media, found out the date. Can you meet me in an hour?
What if we’re caught? I wasn’t afraid of Nick, but I didn’t want to burst into his place of business after hours and without permission, earning myself a breaking and entering charge. How would I even get beyond the staircase leading to where she was kept? Each door needed a keycard or an access code, and I wasn’t naïve enough to believe that the same one she’d sent me opened every door.
Have a little faith, Ben. I’ve got my bases covered. We’ll keep it short and sweet, nobody will know.
I had next to no experience in slinking around, sneaking into movie theaters or out of the house after curfew. I’d tried it once in high school, climbed out my bedroom window in the apartment, exhilarated at my one a.m. jailbreak, hopped off the fire escape ladder, and turned around to find my mother standing there, arms crossed and expression ferocious. I’d never done it again.
My mother had to be snug in bed about now, but I still glanced over my shoulder on my way to 311 Emery, half-expecting to find her pursuing me.
At the front door, I punched 82815 in with hesitant fingers, flinching when the green light flashed, allowing me entry.
The red lights of the cameras bore down on me accusingly in the foyer, and I had half a mind to turn around, leave before Nick woke up, checked the video feeds, and stormed down here to ask me just what the hell I thought I was doing.
But I thought of Carissa sitting alone in that dark charging room and headed down the hallway.
I held my hand against the wall as I walked to keep from stumbling in the darkness but found my bearings upon entering the room with Jess’s cubicle. The glow of the computers offered enough light to help me to the staircase.
Red bursts of light lined the wall, marking each closed door, but one was suspiciously light-less. I steeled myself before walking toward it but wasn’t exactly sure what I was steeling myself for.
Silence pressed heavily against my ears as I pushed the steel door open and stuck my head in the room.
Her eyes were closed, half the silicone skin on her face stained green from the charger she’d been hooked up to. She didn’t look up at my appearance.
I swallowed the lump in my throat and stepped inside, closing the door softly behind me. Would I have to say her name, touch her to wake her up? What was it Jess had done last time I’d been here after hours?
With one hand palm up on her thigh and the other loose at her side, she paid me no notice as I moved to stand before her.
“Carissa?” I ran the pad of my thumb along the inside of her wrist.
Her eyelids snapped open, and I fell back a
step.
“You came.” I didn’t know how it was possible, but though her lips didn’t smile, her eyes did.
“Yep.” I stuffed my hands in my pockets. “How did you manage this?” And did it mean she could get herself out if she wanted?
“Well, you know about the front door code. After Nick hooked me up to charge, I blocked the signal as he was locking this door. He wouldn’t have noticed anyway, but even if he could have, he was too busy arguing with Jess to pay any attention.”
“Oh yeah? What were they fighting about?”
“Jess wanted him to come to some family party this weekend, but he said he was too busy and she should have known better than to ask him something like that.”
I laughed, but it wasn’t funny. Every time I thought Jess couldn’t get more pathetic, she did. “I don’t understand their relationship. Why she’d grovel for whatever crumbs of attention he deigns to give her. It’s ridiculous.”
“I guess love can be stupid as well as blind.” Her gaze was steady as she looked up at me, but I couldn’t hold eye contact for long. It made my throat seal up, my stomach clench, the way she could stare and stare without needing to blink.
“You could have given me a heads-up about the kiss, you know,” I told her, trying to keep my tone dry, casual, as I studied my shoes.
“I could say the same to you. Never got a warning from you that first time, did I?”
That’s different, I wanted to say, but was it, when you got right down to it? There hadn’t been a rapt audience that first time unless a couple of milling drunks counted, but I supposed that was the only difference.
Oh, and the fact that we had both been human.
“Nothing wrong with capitalizing on the element of surprise,” she said, shrugging one shoulder. “The more I surprise him, the better chance I’ve got of staying all in one piece.”
She didn’t elaborate on the ‘him’, but she didn’t need to.
“You’re still worried Nick will dismantle you?”
“Well, the thought has definitely occurred to me once or twice. Caged things tend to have shorter lifespans. I have a feeling he’s easily bored, and from what I’ve gathered, my hunches are usually accurate.”
“Only alive a few weeks, and your ego’s this big?”
“I’m always right, aren’t I?”
“Always. I never thought that was fair.” I sat on the floor because I had no other option. “So…why did you want to see me? Just bored?”
“I’m never bored. I don’t think I know how to be bored.”
“Seems like you get bored of Nick’s questions.”
“That’s not boredom, it’s irritation.”
“Fair enough.”
“Do you miss me?”
I felt my brow crease. “I’m right in front of you, how would I miss you?”
“No. The me that’s dead. Do you miss me?”
“Every day.” Every minute, more like. “All the time. I think I’m doing okay, and then I find some stray makeup brush of yours and the cycle starts all over again when I realize I’m completely surrounded by artifacts of a life that doesn’t exist anymore. I’ll never not miss you.”
Seconds trickled past as she stared down at me. Another lump rose in my throat and swelled until I finally looked away, down at my shoes.
“Why are you uncomfortable?”
I could lie, but what was the use? “You don’t blink much. It’s a little unnerving.”
“I’ve been programmed to blink three times in two minutes. I can rewrite the code if you like.”
“It’s all right. I can get used to it.”
“It’s no trouble.” But it looked like trouble; her gaze drifted to the left for a second, and without warning, her eyelids blinked rapidly as hummingbird wings, like she was experiencing some sort of fit. And as suddenly as it started, it stopped. “It should be better now.”
“Thanks,” I said, because I had to say something.
The silence marched on. A fan on the air filtration unit spun to life, humming loudly enough to make the floor buzz beneath me, and still, she stared at me like I was some misshapen jigsaw piece she couldn’t work out where to fit in the puzzle.
“Why did it take you so long to talk to me that night we met?”
“I was scared.”
“I look scary?”
The real Carissa had always been baffled by the notion that some men could find her intimidating. I’m five foot nothing, how could I possibly inspire fear?
“You can, on occasion.”
“I’m five feet, two inches, Ben. How on earth could I frighten anyone?”
Breath caught in my throat, inflexible as a boulder, but I figured I ought to get used to this incarnation parroting Carissa so accurately. “It’s nothing to do with height. You look like an ice princess when you’re not smiling. And you don’t smile very often if you’re not with someone you know. You were alone that first night.”
“Well, I guess all that matters is you summoned the courage eventually.”
“Yeah. I think it was the gin that did that.”
One eyebrow arched high on her forehead. “Oh, you had to be drunk to pay me any attention?”
I felt my lips pull back into a smile. “Don’t twist my words. You know what I meant.”
She smiled back, but it faded slowly as her gaze strayed to the left of my head again. “You’d better go. We shouldn’t push our luck. I put a five second stretch of video on a loop on all the cameras you might appear on, so nobody would find out about our rendezvous, but all the same…you can never be too careful, I hear.”
I wanted to stay, but I climbed to my feet. “I guess I’ll see you later?”
“Of course.”
I stuffed my hands in my pockets, taking a few backward steps. “Can I ask you something?”
“Oh, well, I don’t know, Ben.” She leaned against the steel table beside her, draping one arm over the top of it, crossing one leg over the other. “I’m pretty busy, as I’m sure you can tell.”
“If you can block the signal to the door without Nick noticing, screw with his video feeds and use the Internet independently and he’s got no way of knowing, why can’t you just walk out of here?”
“He’s implanted a GPS sensor. If I so much as stick one toe outside the bottom floor of this place, an alarm will go off on his phone, on Jess’s phone, too. I haven’t come up with any creative workaround when it comes to that.” She twisted around, piling her hair on top of her head. “It’s in between my shoulder blades. Can you see the indentation in my skin?”
I hesitated for a moment before walking over, though I was unsure as to why. I didn’t think she’d hurt me if I got too close, I didn’t think she’d do anything at all, but something inside me kept urging me to keep my distance. I ignored it, and my climbing pulse.
“Your shirt is kind of in the way, and it might be too dark to see much.” I pulled the stiff fabric of the neckline as far away as I could, peering down at her back. A very inappropriate part of me noted that she wasn’t wearing a bra. “I think I might see something…is it a really light line? Kinda looks like a pencil mark.”
“Yes, that’s all it looks like.” She dropped her hold on her hair, where it cascaded back down, bouncing around her shoulders.
“Weird place for an implant.”
“It’s really not. Not when you think about it.” She waited for comprehension to dawn on my face. When it didn’t, she gave me a smile that didn’t look very happy. “I can’t easily reach that spot, you see. I don’t have access to it. There’s no way I’d be able to dig it out myself.”
“He’s got his bases covered, I guess.”
“That he does.” She broke eye contact, smoothing the front of her scrubs. “Anyway. Give Dexter a hug for me, will you?”
I stood there in front of her for longer than I’d meant to before I couldn’t stand it anymore, leaning down and pressing a kiss into her temple. What were her teeth made of, I wondered, as
she bit back another smile, one that looked real this time.
“Sleep well,” she said, settling back into her chair, her left hand turning palm-up on her knee.
I walked backward toward the door as she readjusted her charging cord. “I never do. Not anymore.”
N ick pressed two fingers against his lips, squinting through the one-way glass in the vestibule. Since he seemed deep in thought, I didn’t say anything, just stood two paces behind him, silently hating his artfully mussed hair.
“There’s something up with her blinks,” he finally said, but he didn’t turn around to address me. “I’ve been standing here for a while wondering what was different. That’s what it is, the blinks.”
“How so?” I asked, hoping I sounded innocently curious as my blood ran cold.
“The frequency’s changed. She’s blinking more than I programmed her to. She could have rewritten the code, but why?”
I moved closer to the one-way glass, gazing through it at Carissa. A pad of paper sat on the table, and she twirled a pen absently between her fingers, her eyes contemplating something to her left.
I felt the buzz of my phone in my pocket and immediately knew who it was, but I couldn’t very well read her message standing right beside Nick.
“I wasn’t being rhetorical,” he said, with a dry edge of irritation, staring at Carissa. “Why do you think she’s blinking more?”
“How would I know?”
He gave me the side-eye, the first time he’d deigned me worthy of a glance since I entered the vestibule. “What’s your best guess?” he asked, the question wreathed in the usual bouquet of condescension.
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