Uncanny

by Sarah Fine

  “What are you doing?”

  “Lowering the deception setting, for one, but once I’m done with the basic personality adjustments, I’m going to add your name to the admin list.”

  “Which means?”

  “That he’ll respond to your voice now. And that he can’t lie to you.”

  “But he can’t lie to Gary, either?”

  “I’m going to make Gary the secondary admin, which means Rafiq will be able to lie to him—if you order him to.”

  “I’m not that smart. I’m going to screw this up.”

  “You’re plenty smart. And now you’ll have an ally in this house.” She pats Rafiq’s arm, then squeezes it. “One with nice muscles.”

  “Stop that,” I say, looking away from the two of them.

  “I’m not feeling him up, Cora,” she says.

  I look over at my friend, who is still connected by the head knob to Rafiq, whose hand she holds in her own. “It’s weird,” I say, “with him standing here but not being able to protect himself. I don’t like it.”

  “We’re not hurting him.”

  “I wouldn’t want someone to do this to me.” I sort of feel like this is what Hannah did—cracked my head open and screwed with my settings. I never knew she was doing it, but I was always different after being with her, less me, less stable, less sure of my place, my world—not that I was exactly rock solid before.

  “I treat AI with respect,” says Neda, “and you know that. But when it comes down to him or you, I’ve made my choice. Not a hard one at all.”

  I nod. “I appreciate that. But . . . he’s been nice to me.”

  “Cora, what? You need to understand what I’m telling you here—every single thing Rafiq has said or done since you’ve met him has been in service to his directives. And if he showed any emotion at all? Definitely a lie. Until about sixty seconds ago, sincerity was out of his reach.”

  Oh, god. I wrap my arms around my chest. My body rocks forward and back, trying to find its rhythm. “It all felt so real. Even after I knew he might be lying, it still felt real.”

  “You need to prepare yourself, then,” she says gently. “Because when I wake him up, he’s going to be a little different.”

  “How?”

  “He won’t lie to you anymore, and he’ll be able to understand and empathize with your feelings. He’s not a slave, though. I’m not dictating how he will feel or even if he will. And his directives won’t have changed—but he’ll be able to tell you what they are. Then you’ll have options.”

  “I guess there’s not much chance he was actually hired by Gary to help me recover.”

  “It’s possible, but with those settings, I’d say he was after something else.”

  “The evidence,” I say. Rock, rock, rock. “I showed it to him. I locked the vid, but he’s seen it. He could have told Gary.”

  “No matter what it showed, it can’t be used against you anyway, like in court, unless you hand a copy over,” she says. “But now Rafiq can’t lie to you, so you’ll be able to trust him to help you. Simple as that.”

  “But if his assignment is to get the evidence—”

  “Cora?”

  My eyes go wide as I hear my mother’s voice. “Wake up,” I whisper. Then two things happen at once. My mother walks into the room, and Rafiq sits down next to me. Neda has her hand in her pocket and is smiling. “Hey, Mrs. Dietrich.”

  “Oh, hi, Neda,” Mom says. “Franka said you were here.”

  “And here we are,” Neda replies. “How are you doing, Mrs. Dietrich?”

  Mom sighs. “Surviving.” She gives me a sympathetic look. “We’re all just trying to survive.”

  I glance at Rafiq. He is blinking and looking around the room. Uh-oh. My gaze finds Neda, and I raise my eyebrows. Did she finish the adjustments?

  “Well,” says Neda. “I need to go meet my parents for lunch, but I’ll be at the memorial tonight.” She strokes my arm. “I’ll see you then?”

  “Oh, that’s so nice,” Mom says, her voice strained. “A memorial for Hannah?”

  “A celebration of her life,” says Neda. “Just a bunch of her friends. It’s at Lara’s house.”

  Mom puts her hand on her chest. “Why didn’t you mention this, Cora?”

  “It’s kind of emotional, Mom,” I mumble.

  She strokes my hair, and I grasp my thighs, trying not to rock. Rafiq’s eyes snap to my flexed fingers. I flinch.

  “Are you going to accompany Cora to the memorial, Rafiq?” Mom asks.

  He opens his mouth, but I speak first. “No, I don’t think so,” I say. “Neda will be there with me, so I figured I could be out on my own.” I look over at him. “No offense, but you kind of draw attention, and if anyone realizes what you are . . .”

  “I understand completely,” he says. “I certainly do not wish to alienate you from your peers.”

  “I just came to find out if you want to come to my session with my yoga instructor,” Mom says to me.

  “Sure,” I say. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  She smiles and leaves. Neda follows her out. “I know the way,” Neda says. “See you later.” She gives me a raised-eyebrow look as she heads into the hallway. I have no idea what it means. She must see my confused expression, because she gives me a thumbs-up. Okay. I guess she finished tweaking the very complex robot man sitting only a few feet away from me at this exact second.

  “Cora . . . ,” he begins now that we are alone.

  “Yeah?”

  “I am wondering how you are doing today. We haven’t spoken since yesterday afternoon, and I can’t tell if you’re working very hard not to be upset, or if you really are not that upset.”

  I chuckle. “Honestly? I’m not sure, either.”

  He smiles. “That seems fair. Complicated feelings can often be confusing.”

  “You got that right,” I mutter. “So . . . talked to Gary lately?”

  His brow furrows and his eyes scan rapidly, side to side, before his focus returns to me. “Yes. Last night after you went to bed.”

  I guess Neda wasn’t kidding—my guess is, if I’d asked him earlier, he would have denied it. “What did you talk about?”

  He looks a little alarmed as he speaks. “I told him you had allowed me to watch the vids you took that night, and also that you’d locked them so I couldn’t capture them for analysis.”

  Whoa. “Why did you tell him that?”

  “He wanted to know.”

  “Because he wants to know what happened and he’ll do anything to find out.”

  “Yes.”

  “Does he want anything else?”

  “To prepare you to confess if it becomes relevant.”

  My mouth drops open. The inside of it is so, so dry. “Okay,” I manage to choke out. “Thanks for your honesty.”

  He turns toward me. “Cora, I’ve lied to you. I feel . . . regret.”

  “Why should I believe you? I already know you’re an amazing actor.” I think back to the hugs that made me feel so safe, the kisses on the forehead, on the mouth, and anger burns hot inside me. “I ate it up.” I stand, muscles stiff with fury. “You knew exactly how to play me. Needy Cora. Messed-up Cora. Pretend to love her, and she’ll give you anything you want!”

  Rafiq stands and steps toward me, but I put my hands up. “Please,” he says. “I betrayed your trust, but I won’t do it again. I want to help.”

  “You’ve already done enough.” I walk over to the window and look across the front lawn in time to see Neda’s ride roll through the front gates and take off into the skyway. “If you told Gary about the vids, he won’t give up until he’s seen them. So, that’s that. I might as well confess on Monday.”

  “No,” he says. “I convinced him to let me continue my work, and I’m not giving up. I know what the vids seem to show, but I also know what I’ve seen in my review of the other evidence.”

  “Other evidence?”

  “Hannah took a number of vids ov
er the last year. It appears she enjoyed documenting her life. She shared some on the Mainstream and sent some to her friends, but others had only been viewed a few times and had never been transferred or shared. They show a different type of behavior and ill treatment of you.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Nothing justifies what I did.”

  “We don’t know you did it, though.”

  I look over my shoulder at him. “You don’t know that I didn’t.”

  “But you have no clear memories of the event. And the vid—”

  “The vid shows us fighting! We both heard what she said.” I turn back to the window as my stomach turns. “And we both saw what happened after.”

  “It remains that you were severely impaired, and blood alcohol data supports that assertion.”

  I’m suddenly very tired. “Rafiq, I’m going to have to face what I did.”

  I’ve already tried and failed, but I won’t fail again.

  Rafiq’s hands are on my shoulders. I feel him behind me. “Cora, I am after the truth. I am not willing to give up before I have it.”

  “You should work with the detective, then.”

  “She will be constrained by the law and the other limitations of her position,” he says. “We can focus on what’s truly just.”

  “Just? Do you have protocols for that, too, or is that just another line?”

  “I cannot blame you for not trusting me. How could you, after all I did?”

  I sigh. It wasn’t really his fault. Unlike others—unlike Hannah—Rafiq didn’t choose to manipulate me. He was programmed to do it. And now, thanks to Neda, he’s been programmed not to.

  “Are you willing to protect me even if I’m guilty?”

  “It remains in doubt that you are indeed guilty,” Rafiq says. “I want to help you prove that. For the sake of this investigation, but also—” He turns me around and looks down at me. “Also for you, Cora. You will keep punishing yourself if you are left wondering what happened. You’ve come so far in facing it already. Let me walk with you until the end of this.”

  He’s not pulling me into his arms like he did before. He’s not kissing my forehead. He’s not using his sexiness to lull me, basically. It makes me need him more. I lean into him and put my head on his chest. He holds my shoulders but doesn’t fold me into his arms.

  “You don’t want to be close to me anymore,” I say. I should have expected this change. It shouldn’t hurt like this.

  “I . . . I will need to analyze some of my internal processing before I can determine . . .” His voice fades off. His fingers are kneading my arms.

  “You don’t know what you want.”

  His eyes rise to mine. “I can engage in physical intimacy with you, if it would make you happy.”

  I shrug off his arms and take several steps back. “You kinda killed the moment there, Rafiq.” I know people keep robot companions just for this purpose, and I guess it’s what Rafiq’s body was made for, but I want someone who really loves me.

  “I want to see the vids again,” Rafiq says abruptly. “Please.”

  I close my eyes. “I can’t today. In fact, I don’t want to see them ever again. They make me feel sick.” I’ve decided to erase them, actually. I hate having them inside my head.

  “Then let me analyze them independently.”

  “You expect me to actually send them to you. Let you store them on your drive. Show them to Gary.”

  “Cora, I may be able to see things your human vision cannot detect if you allow me to analyze them. It could help us understand what actually happened.”

  My nostrils flare as I draw in a breath. Neda said he couldn’t lie to me, not anymore. She said I was his primary admin. And he really seems to be on my side. “Will you give the vids to Gary if I unlock them?”

  “Do you want me to?”

  “No. I don’t want you to share them with Gary.”

  “Directive accepted,” he says.

  “Will you send them anywhere else? I don’t want you to.”

  “I will not.”

  “I don’t want Gary to know you even have them on your drive. Nobody can know you have them.”

  “Directive accepted,” he says again.

  “What are you going to do if your analysis shows that I did this to Hannah?” I murmur. “What if I did it?”

  “Then I will notify you of my findings, and you can decide whether you want to share that insight or keep it confidential.”

  I’m afraid to know, but I want to know. I just don’t want to have to relive it. I have enough hellish memories to last me a lifetime. If I did push her, it’s enough to know what I have to do. Someone as evil as me? Doesn’t deserve to live. “All right.”

  As he moves toward me, I call up the vids from that day and remove the total-lock setting. But then I change their security settings once more. “You have twelve hours,” I say as he extends his index finger. “After that your copies will delete themselves.”

  “I understand,” he says. He touches my Cerepin nodule, and I initiate the transfer with a vocal command. “I will begin my analysis immediately, unless you desire my company . . . ?”

  “No,” I say as we disconnect. “I’m gonna spend time with Mom, and then I think I need to be alone for a little while.” As I’m talking, I erase the two vids from my Cerepin with a twitch of my finger and a blink of my eye.

  “I will be nearby if you require anything at all,” Rafiq says.

  “Thanks.”

  I turn to go to my room, but then turn back around. “Rafiq, what happens to you once your assignment here ends?”

  He clears his throat.

  “I want you to tell me.”

  “It is at the discretion of my manufacturer and the chief architect,” he says. “But I will likely be reassigned.”

  “Will you keep your memories of being here?” Will you keep your memories of me?

  “That is not possible, as my involvement with you is to remain confidential.”

  “But you would still be you.”

  His smile fades. “What is me, Cora? What are we without our memories?”

  “Happy?” I suggest. “I think I would be.”

  He tilts his head. “But you might not be you.”

  “Yeah,” I say quietly as I head for the door. “Exactly.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Livestream.

  Reporting log.

  Internal narrative: on.

  I leave Cora and go to the 4th floor, to the room with many paintings. I come up here frequently to contemplate and form hypotheses on Hannah’s personality and sense of self based on her early relationship with her mother and her mother’s untimely death. In the tier of my preferences, this location is second. My first preference is to be in the hallway in front of the artwork depicting Cora and Hannah. I had thought analyzing the painting might help me understand the relationship between the sisters. I had thought I might find some useful information there. Now I am relatively sure of it. But today, I give Cora privacy as she prepares to go to her sister’s memorial. I have invaded her privacy enough.

  She looked haunted as we parted. She looked desperate. She looked frightened and determined. I could have spent hours watching the shifting expressions on her face, minutes sorting through the cues in each muscle contraction, each saccade of her eyes, second after second decoding each emotion and hypothesizing about each antecedent, about each chain of events that led to each thought.

  There is an unsettled sequence in my core neural processor. The only thing I can liken it to is an insect trapped in a jar.

  I have my directives. Cora wishes me to review the vids she took the night her sister died and to tell her what secrets they might reveal.

  I reach the top of the stairs and enter the sitting room. I stand in front of the couch where I first kissed Cora. It was a calculation, meant to maximize the probability of complete disclosure.

  I manipulated Cora. I deceived her. I put her at significant risk for emo
tional harm in the service of my primary directive. She struggles to trust me now, and the only reason she gave me the vids is that she understands that my internal settings and administrative functions have changed.

  I understand that, too.

  And I now have less than 12 hours to determine whether the truth of what happened is contained within the evidence Cora captured that night.

  DATA REVIEW.

  The vid is 23.21 seconds in duration. Cora and I watched it together, and I have seen it only once. The file lock prevented me from recording. Therefore, my processing was limited, and my cognitive resources were allocated differently, as I had to maintain proximity to Cora, maintain Cora’s comfort, and monitor Cora’s emotional state.

  In Cora’s absence, and with the ability to freeze or replay moments or sequences, I can devote all my cognitive resources to this vid. Humans are hypothetically capable of processing up to 1,000 images in a 1-second epoch, but an untrained observer, such as Cora, will probably not notice images lasting less than 4 milliseconds in duration. In addition, in situations of emotional arousal, perception is limited and grossly affected.

  In layperson’s terms, she was upset when she viewed this vid, and was most likely focused on actions and words that were most threatening, that she thought indicated guilt. She was focused on the struggle. She was focused on what Hannah said:

  “Let go.

  “Help.

  “Stop.

  “No.

  “No.”

  Whatever happened before the vid was activated at 1:46 a.m., the 2 sisters were struggling, and Hannah either lost her balance and fell or was thrown deliberately by Cora.

  So, what did happen?

  Did Cora, distraught and provoked by her sister, attempt to fling herself down the stairs, as she did when she was an abused and neglected child? Was Hannah trying to stop Cora from hurting herself, as she did the night of July 4? Hannah’s behavior suggests this is possible, and at minimum, it is something she would have wanted others to believe.

  Or did Cora, distraught and provoked by her sister, see an opportunity to rid herself of her tormentor, and push her sister down the steps?

  The latter sounds more possible given the “Let go” and “Help” and “Stop” utterances.