by Jerry
Vonda laughed. “Oh, don’t worry. Is a bit of artifice really so bad? I bet you wore makeup, perfume, high heels—”
“That’s normal!” Pamela exclaimed. “Everyone expects it. But I didn’t expect his voice to change.”
“Then just look for things that are harder to fake. A well-muscled physique, a well-stuffed wallet . . .”
Pamela smiled; she appreciated Vonda’s attempt to cheer her up. But this wasn’t something to giggle about, then forget. “No, seriously, I’ve become too obsessed with guys and how they look, how they sound, how they smell. And I’m not letting any of these nights develop into anything. I should be going on second dates—”
Vonda clamped her hand on Pamela’s arm. “Stop right there. Bad girl! You said a naughty word.”
Pamela raised her eyebrows.
“In dating, there’s no should,” Vonda said firmly. “Just whatever feels good.”
“But when I got home this morning, I felt like shit.”
“Oh, that’s only because he fooled you with his fake accent.”
Pamela shook her head. “It’s not just that. It’s the whole scene. I needed it after I broke up with Jeremy, but lately it’s been getting me down. And these damned goggles aren’t helping. If I spend all day looking at avatars specifically designed to be unreal, it’s no wonder I end up craving something genuine. Someone with real hair, real skin—”
“—A real cock—”
“—A real voice, with a real accent, instead of that horrible speech synthesizer.”
Pamela fished her Equalizers out of her handbag and glared at them. Were they really the problem? Until now, she’d resisted blaming them, because they’d been her own idea. But as her life careened downhill, the evidence became harder to ignore.
“If these are the problem, then they wouldn’t just affect me,” Pamela said. The entire HR department was wearing them during the trial period. “Have you noticed anything?” she asked Vonda.
“No, I haven’t. And I don’t think it’s the Equalizers. It’s because you’re coming off a rotten breakup. You spent ten years with Jeremy: it grew stale, it ended badly. So naturally you want to go out and play the field. But if you’re out there, sometimes you get hurt. It’s always been like that—you’ve just forgotten, because it’s been so long.”
“Forgotten what it’s like to get hurt? I wish that was so easy to forget.” Pamela shrugged. “Maybe you’re right. I hope you are, because I really don’t want to go back to the Board and say, ‘Sorry, I’m canceling the Equalizers.’ ‘Why’s that?’ ‘Because they’re screwing up my sex life.’ ”
Their food arrived: omelet for Vonda, crab salad for Pamela. On the dating merry-go-round, every calorie had to earn its keep.
Vonda said, “If the problem is that you’re getting hung up on these guys’ physical aspects, then maybe you need to go the other way.”
“What other way?”
Vonda smiled mischievously. “Well, there’s lots of other ways. But I mean you shouldn’t see their physical aspects at all. Wear the goggles.”
“The Equalizers—outside work? You’re not serious.”
“I am.” Vonda imitated a sales rep quoting from the brochure. “See beyond the skin. Let excellence shine, unhindered by prejudice. Find the best candidate for that crucial role—”
“My love life isn’t a job vacancy.”
“It might as well be. And interviewing is what you’re good at. Why not give it a shot?”
Pamela spluttered. “The practicalities! How would I know anything about a guy if I couldn’t see him properly? How could I tell if he looked creepy or dangerous? It wouldn’t be safe,” she said forcefully, expecting that to be the end of the matter.
“An excellent point,” said Vonda, “which is why I wasn’t going to suggest that you walk into a bar and pick a bloke at random. I’ll find someone for you. It’ll be a blind date.”
“A very blind date,” Pamela said, “if I can’t see him.”
Did it make sense? Vonda was trustworthy: she would only set Pamela up with someone she’d vetted. Pamela disliked wearing the Equalizers, but they might feel different outside the context of work. Perhaps it was worth a try, just for one date. After all, she could take the goggles off whenever she liked.
The familiar excitement started to build: the thrill of anticipation, the prospect of romance—or at least a good time. She was looking forward to it already.
On Saturday evening, Pamela sat in a West End restaurant, dutifully wearing Equalizers and waiting for her date to arrive. The room appeared full of grey, identical people. Back at work, the Equalizers distinguished between employees through a combination of facial recognition and staff ID cards, but no one here was in the database.
As she read the specials board, a subtitle scrolled across her vision—“EQUALIZER UPDATES AVAILABLE: AUTISM SUPPRESSION; GAYDAR ELIMINATION; LANGUAGE SANITIZATION; WHEELCHAIR COMPENSATION.” She tapped her left earpiece to clear the message. On Monday, she’d have to decide which upgrades to install. Various brands of Equalizers competed to promise ever greater strides toward a fairer world. She’d joked with Vonda that the ultimate version of the goggles would just show an endless vista of beige sludge.
A grey shape arrived at her table. “Hi, are you Pamela?”
She nodded, feeling flustered and at a disadvantage.
“I’m Nathaniel—pleased to meet you. You’re wearing silver glasses like Vonda said, but somehow I thought they’d be more, um, big and shiny. Like futuristic gadgets always used to be.”
“The future often turns out to be disappointing,” Pamela said, then winced inwardly. The first thing I say, I sound like a grump. Despite all the dates she’d been on, she still struggled to present the obligatory upbeat persona.
A waiter arrived to take their drink order. The familiar ritual soothed Pamela a little.
“It’s nice to meet you,” she said. “I hope Vonda didn’t twist your arm too hard. And I hope you didn’t dress up specially, because I can’t see what you’re wearing.”
“I changed my shirt: does that count as dressing up? But you’re outshining me by far. I like your dress. It’s very blue.”
Pamela stifled a smile at the clumsy compliment.
“I’d love to say it matches your eyes,” Nathaniel went on, “but I can’t actually see your eyes—”
“Yeah, I know. The goggles. I suppose you don’t have these where you work. . . .” Pamela didn’t want to talk about the Equalizers—she was tired of discussing them—but she figured it was best to get the subject out of the way.
“What are they for?” asked Nathaniel.
She explained how they displayed standardized avatars to prevent discrimination based on race, gender, weight, and so forth. “I’m wearing them all day, for testing. Other departments are only wearing them for interviews. I need to decide whether the whole company should wear them throughout office hours. Can they really help, or are they just a gimmick?”
“Sounds gimmicky to me,” Nathaniel said. “I mean, people already know who they work with. If I was one of your colleagues, then surely I’d know you were a woman, even if I wore the glasses and couldn’t see you properly.”
Pamela said, “You’d know on an intellectual level, but you wouldn’t be constantly reminded of it. If I was explaining something, you might actually listen to what I was saying, instead of just staring at my breasts. After a while, with hot desking and employee turnover, you might not know who you worked with. And then you’d treat everyone on merit, because you’d have no grounds to do otherwise.”
She smiled ruefully. “Sorry for the lecture. Let’s not talk about work on a Saturday night.”
Nathaniel accepted the hint and changed the subject. They chatted about the usual icebreaker and smalltalk topics: holidays, films, celebrity gossip. Pamela described her recent trip abroad, her first holiday as a single woman in ten years. “I took a guided tour to some ancient sites in the Middle East. I was alway
s fascinated by archaeology: I used to watch Time Team as a girl. In the desert, everything’s so well-preserved—”
She stopped, remembering the sight of those empty ruins. It had felt like gazing at the wreckage of her own life: once-thriving households, abandoned after someone’s decision to move on.
“Age is relative,” Nathaniel said. “When I was in Canada, we went to Lake Superior to see some famous pictographs, painted by the indigenous people. The guide told us in awed tones that these pictographs were hundreds of years old. I think he expected us to be impressed! There’s plenty of things in Britain older than that.”
“My granny probably has half of them. . . .”
Their conversation slid into an easy groove. At first it felt more like a chat with an office colleague than a date; Nathaniel spoke with the same synthetic voice that Pamela heard every day at work. The grey avatar was hardly romantic. What lay behind it?
The longer the evening wore on, the more Pamela wondered about Nathaniel’s true appearance. How old was he? What did he look like? She deliberately avoided asking personal questions that veered into this territory. She wanted to enjoy the blind date in the spirit of Vonda’s suggestion: a meeting of minds, rather than a fetish for flesh.
Nevertheless, the mystery was enticing. Maybe Nathaniel was Hollywood handsome. Maybe he was ugly or deformed, and never normally got dates. Maybe he was the god Zeus, and if she looked on him with her naked eye, she’d be incinerated by the sight of his glory.
So many possibilities! It was tantalizing. She wanted to see Nathaniel properly, yet she recognized this would inevitably be a letdown. The mystery itself was more exciting than any answer could possibly be. And so it was best prolonged. Don’t try to know. Just keep talking. She relished the uncertainty, the delicious sense that anything might happen.
But they couldn’t keep talking forever, not when the meal had ended and they’d finished the wine.
Ordinarily, Pamela didn’t take a man home the first time. If things went sour, it was always easier to walk out of someone else’s place than to kick a guy out of her own. Yet she felt comfortable with Nathaniel. And wearing the goggles had already broken her routine; hell, the routine was the whole problem.
So she invited him back to her house for coffee. As they sat in the taxi, she longed to put her hand on his knee. Save it, she told herself.
The whole night lay ahead of them.
Pamela’s home was clean and tidy—almost too tidy. Jeremy had always been the one who left clutter lying around. Without his mess, she lived in rooms as sterile as a hotel suite.
“Tea, coffee, vodka?” she asked.
“Whatever you’re having,” Nathaniel said.
As she boiled the kettle for two mugs of tea, Pamela suffered a pang of doubt. Should I go ahead? I have no idea who this person is!
But how much had she known about those other guys? Even less than she’d thought.
They sat together on the sofa. Nathaniel put down his drink, and leaned into her for a kiss. A message appeared in Pamela’s vision: “WARNING—INAPPROPRIATE BEHAVIOR DETECTED.”
She cleared the message, feeling delightfully naughty. They kissed. Pamela had to suppress a giggle, distracted by the sensation of stiff bristles poking into her upper lip.
“Wow, that’s some moustache you’ve got,” she said when they broke apart. “Is it waxed, or something?”
Nathaniel laughed. “Sorry about that.”
Pamela had grown accustomed to his synthetic voice at the restaurant. But here in her own home, it sounded newly grating—too calm and passionless. It would be like sleeping with a robot.
At some point, Pamela needed to remove the Equalizers. Surely it would be absurd to have sex without being able to see, hear, or smell her partner.
Or would it? It might become a game, like wearing a blindfold. The Equalizers—
and their rival brands—could create any kind of avatar, not just the featureless shapes used in the office. If you wanted, you could see a celebrity, or an ex-lover. You could dial up whatever assortment of features took your fancy, or select an ever-changing random shuffle.
The anonymity could become a fetish, an addictive spiral into the depths of meaningless sex. Was that any different from what she’d already been doing, selecting nightly faces from the cyber-smorgasbord?
Pamela shivered.
“Is something wrong?” asked Nathaniel.
“I’m just thinking about taking the goggles off,” Pamela said.
It would destroy the mystery that she’d savored. And it would doubtless be a disappointment, revealing an average guy with an ordinary face, commonplace accent, and typical BO.
Yet she couldn’t keep wearing the goggles forever. She imagined herself in a relationship with an unknown partner, bringing up a baby of unknown gender—tackling discrimination at its roots by refusing to socialize the child as either a girl or a boy.
Abruptly, Pamela ripped off the Equalizers. The glasses beeped reprovingly—a warning system to prevent surreptitious peeks at reality. When her vision refocused, she saw who sat beside her: Vonda, wearing a false moustache.
“Hello,” said Vonda. “Fancy meeting you here!”
“My God, I could give you such a slap! What the hell are you doing?”
Vonda held up her hands, as if she was merely a victim of circumstance. “I found a guy for you—a nice guy, you’d have liked him—but at the last minute, he said he couldn’t do it. I nearly told you it was off, but since the restaurant was booked, I thought I might as well meet you there: we could have a night out ourselves. And on my way over, I had a devilish impulse. If you were expecting a blind date, it could be anyone—even me.”
“You’re always having devilish impulses,” said Pamela. “Are you sure you’re not actually the Devil?”
“I don’t think the Devil wears a moustache from a fancy dress shop.” Vonda tugged at the plastic and winced as it peeled off. “That’s better.”
“Why were you wearing that?”
“It was a disguise to fool the Equalizers,” Vonda explained. “If I’d turned up without it, you’d have seen me as an orange avatar with my employee number. When I wore it, the goggles didn’t recognize me. I tested it by wearing my own Equalizers and looking in a mirror.”
“Very clever,” Pamela said tartly. “Thanks a bunch!” She got up and stalked around the room. She’d expected disappointment when she removed the Equalizers, but not like this. It had turned the night from a date into a practical joke.
“I was trying to help,” Vonda protested.
“Help? How is this helping me?”
“I thought something different might break you out of a rut. Shock therapy. You said you were feeling like shit, remember? I was worried about you, so I wanted to try something. Even if it didn’t work, at least it would be an evening with someone who cared about you, instead of some random faker.”
Pamela glared at Vonda. Anger boiled inside her, but she couldn’t vent it. Her friend had good intentions. Yet it was frustrating to realize that Nathaniel had never existed, and all her anticipation had come to nothing.
“These damned Equalizers,” she said. “They’ve totally fucked me up.” She wanted to smash the things.
Vonda shook her head. “Pamela, honey, I don’t think it’s the Equalizers.”
“No? Well, if it isn’t them, then what is it?” she cried. “Is it me? It must be me who’s fucked up, right?” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “It is me, I know it is.” She flopped back onto the sofa, closing her eyes as though blotting out the world.
“Oh, Pamela . . .” Vonda put her arm around Pamela’s shoulders.
For a moment, neither of them spoke. Pamela wanted to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come. There was nothing inside her, only a vast emptiness.
“It’s not the Equalizers,” said Vonda, “though they’re not helping. They’re making it worse, because they’re distracting you and giving you something to blame.”
A long pause followed. Distant sounds drifted into the room: a motorbike revving up, a faraway police siren, someone laughing on the street outside.
Pamela lifted her head. “You’re going to make me take part in this conversation, aren’t you?”
“That’s why I’m here,” said Vonda.
“Then while you’re here, maybe you could brew another pot of tea and bring out the biscuits.” Restaurants offered all kinds of desserts that had far too many calories, but never gave you a proper biscuit with your cuppa.
Vonda began clattering in the kitchen. God, it’s good to have some company and hear someone else making a noise. Pamela had been living alone since Jeremy’s departure, rattling around in a house too big for her. It was lucky she’d been promoted to HR director; on her old salary, she’d have struggled to pay the mortgage.
The tea arrived. “All right,” said Pamela, “what were you saying about the Equalizers?”
Vonda said, “When Jeremy left, you started seeing other guys. You had a few one-night stands. Which would have been fine, except you weren’t comfortable doing it. You couldn’t admit to yourself that’s what you wanted. Nice girls shouldn’t sleep around, should they? So you blamed the Equalizers. You told yourself it was the effect of the goggles, starving you of human contact.”
Pamela nodded, reluctantly conceding some truth in Vonda’s words.
“And blaming the Equalizers allowed you to carry on with it,” Vonda said. “But it didn’t make you happy. It couldn’t make you happy, because you told yourself that you were being pushed into it.”
Pamela remembered how she’d thought about those guys, the way she’d luxuriated in their physicality. It was shameless and animalistic, as though it came from outside her. “Men can behave like that, but women aren’t supposed to. It’s discrimination, plain and simple.”
“Of course it is,” said Vonda.
“I’ll write a memo,” Pamela said. “‘To further enhance the Firm’s commitment to equality of opportunity and prevention of discrimination, guilt-free one-night stands are now mandatory for all staff.’ ”