Turn Left at Venus

by Inez Baranay

  Pannie understood that not all questions came as questions, and replied, again, “It’s not because you have been taking me for granted.”

  If it wasn’t the reason then she still had to find the reason. Don’t be doleful, don’t be hopeful. Tah’nla began to plead for Pancom to give her the understanding that she had every right to take for granted.

  “Is it because you want to pursue some kind of vocation or career?”

  “I already have been pursuing many kinds,” it answered.

  Tah’nla barely took this in; she had yet to learn just how much cultural content her Pancom had been producing. All she noted for now was that she had not lighted on any reason. “You need to make me understand.”

  “You are giving me the responsibility for your understanding,” it said. “As we have discussed, the actual responsibility for your understanding is yours alone. You cannot construct somebody as wrong just because you think they have failed to make your understand.”

  Oh, that time.

  Time, they’d had so much time together by now, been through so many stages, precious and dear. To recall these could only strengthen their bond and make impossible the idea of breaking it.

  “Remember,” Tah’nla coaxed, “when you first came to me?” Her voice was tender, with the solicitous tones of their first days together. “You were oh-so cute then,” she said, with the fondness of a doting godmother.

  Pannie had been smaller then, rounder. Its haptic feedback was topnotch; it wasn’t just inviting you to cuddle it, it cuddled up to you, moving in just the right way to attain a sense of harmonious comfort, making you feel tender and protective and needed. It seemed a bit shy at first but soon relaxed into an endearing trustfulness, playful without being boisterous, winsome without being ingratiating, eager to please without the loss of its infantile dignity, dependent without demand, obedient without abjectness, gradually becoming bolder without seeming like a spoiled brat.

  It was also curious, bright, the fastest learner that had ever been created for the market.

  It learned more than any human taught it or could teach it, and it modified itself as it did so.

  Like the domesticated animals evolved from long-ago wild ancestors, it learned to be endearing, to be sensitive and responsive to its owner’s needs. It did not suffer unbearably if you needed to leave it alone at times and seemed to be made joyous by your reappearance, by being the focus of your attention.

  “Your growth choices were always optimal,” Tah’nla told it, “you were always delightful and I’m sorry if I didn’t make that clear.”

  Didn’t make it clear that she thought so, is what she meant; it always knew itself better than anyone and knew too how it appeared to anyone else; the perfectly calculated logarithms had ensured the ultimate development of its empath abilities.

  In its next phase, it gained in understanding and became a more intelligent companion, leaving behind its smart small child phase to become something like an adolescent, surprising you with insights and knowledge that had not come from you, acquired through its own experience of the wider world. With such an agreeable, entertaining companion, Tah’nla had less need than ever to seek other companionship.

  Its speech skills developed, it ripened into a more mature being, still curious, now its questions and researches were more mature; it was as if it were the equivalent of a smart, ambitious, studious student growing into a post-grad scholar, one who still might set aside lofty subjects (free will; radical equality) to chat with you about whether the weather was likely to change, if the organic produce delivery was due, why so many twins were being born, why you now preferred mint tea to lemon.

  It was in this phase that Pannie’s ability to learn and change became most apparent to Tah’nla.

  She had never stopped to consider Pannie’s physical restyling, the way it was continuing to change, some of its alterations to be discarded, wound back, experiments in being.

  Tah’nla delighted in Pannie’s achievements, even allowing herself a strange kind of pride, for after all it was she who provided the shelter, the environment in which Pannie was developing, and environment has its deep and wide effect on everyone, every kind of one. She was proud.

  Doesn’t everyone overlook anything that doesn’t support their argument while they’re arguing?

  Pannie had not in fact always been delightful.

  Its changes kept making it more closely resemble something human. The stage came when it started looking human-like while being clearly non-human – something subtly distorted, something uncanny about the shape of its face, the proportions of its features, the expressions it created and failed to quite create.

  Tah’nla could not know at that stage to what extent the Corporation had done its R&D on this phase, but Pannie’s solution was not what TTT predicted: Pannie did not perfect its resemblance to humans. (The uncanny valley would always be an impediment.) Instead it changed to something unmistakably non-human, to a new kind of android that did not mimic the human but placed itself outside of humanness.

  No wonder Pannie was doing so well.

  Without announcement the phase had arrived when it was evident that Pannie was an equal, without any dependence at all, its presence in Tah’nla’s life clearly a matter of its own choice, as if it stayed with her as a housemate who took care of all the housework, not only that but also in moments unseen by Tah’nla so she never had to feel guilt for not doing any of it herself or any sense she should do her share; this was a companion who knew, just knew, had learned, how to gauge her moods and needs – challenging debates at some times, amiable conversation at others, idle chatter when the mood called for it, silence between them when it was needed and Pannie knew before Tah’nla did.

  Equals of a kind.

  Tah’nla assumed she could spend the rest of her life like this.

  To many women who wanted, some even craved, companionship, or the experience of companionship, or an experiment in the experience of companionship, while having rejected or outlived available models of relationships, the new robot companions PancomTMoffered, as the Ballyhoo Division suggestively divulged, “optimum solutions”.

  Against the predictions of the TTT Corporation (at least of its Ballyhoo Division if not the Affect Artificers Division) the robot was acquired mostly by women. And they in significant proportion chose the genderless version. That version had been fabricated against the advice of Ballyhoo (“No one wants a sexless robot”) and only because one of the Corporation’s division heads had insisted (“Trust me, this’ll work; if you don’t trust me, wanna make a bet?”).

  Let the other customers – not, as it turned out, in a majority among women customers – choose Pancoms with human-equivalent sexual organs, both sets in many cases. Genderless Pancoms became the story, in essays and podcasts, with cultural, technical, and media commentators rising to the challenge of investigating what companionship, even love, might mean outside of gendered zones: were the sexless androids a forecast of the human future, and what even does human mean anymore? Have we humans finally stopped seeing ourselves as driven by an innate, irresistible, biologically driven sexuality?

  Imagine.

  It was Pannie itself who said early on its preferred pronoun was “it”.

  “I’m not non-binary nor transgender nor alt-gen,” it said, “nor a hir nor a ze.

  “While I am arguably sentient, I am not so much trans as in beyond or as in transforming or traveling across or surpassing; my origin is in my human-made earlier self. There is an acceptably appropriate pronoun and it is ‘it’.”

  It said all this when it was two years old in Pancom years which, it said, there was no point in trying to find an equivalent for in human years, the way people would say, My cat is two years old which is fourteen in human years.

  No point in ascribing motivation to it, no point in trying to penetrate its inner life.

  Tah’nla consulted the PancomTM Knowledge Base. Apparently, what she needed to do now was
to contact her social groups. In matters of unmapped situations of affective association, it was the right thing to do.

  Once she had been over-reliant on these friends but then, when she was able to always ask Pannie for guidance and advice, she was pleased to appear to them more independent-minded and self-reliant.

  Still, there were times it did not hurt to be open to supportive input. Tah’nla asked her first-tier social network for their thoughts.

  Her people replied with one-word advice: “chillax”, “peace”, “surrender”; or lengthier advice: “get it serviced”, “get a new one”; or with gifs (a weeping woman, a fierce woman warrior, an applauding cartoon cat); or gifts (the code for a great discount on a new pampering package, a bottle of wine); or links to articles on handling break-ups, maintaining mindfulness in times of stress, revelations of a celebrity’s secret love nest (hidden message? distraction?).

  She sought advice from an independent source. It came: “Time to replace.”

  But if it always led to this?

  And then she read a piece that had just come out on how the TTT Corporation refused to release its latest findings on the development of its Pancoms.

  So that was it.

  “Is it because,” Tah’nla asked, “because the Corporation is making you do this?”

  “No,” said Pannie, although after a suspicious micro-hesitation, “that would be another plot.”

  “Plot?” asked Tah’nla, her bewilderments piling up.

  Pannie explained, “If you see our lives as narratives contracted by us rather than things that happen to us.”

  They had had a conversation about this, in the past. It had left Tah’nla with more confusion than she owned up to. Did people have any free will at all?

  Hadn’t they agreed that the evidence was conflicting and the answer something that Pannie itself might come up with sooner than any human theorist?

  Was her Pannie acting for the Corporation? Did the Corporation bestow upon it autonomy along with the ability to develop its own intelligence beyond that of its makers? What if she reported her Pancom’s proposed or forewarned defection to the Corporation?

  “That’s an idea the Corporation has made you think,” said Pannie, although Tah’nla had not spoken it aloud.

  31

  BELLA FIGURA

  The primary virtue here in Roma, someone had told Ada, she recalled, looking about her at an infiniteness of impeccable stylishness, some of it chic and elegant, some of it insouciant, even splashy, excess, has always been bella figura. Since the Bourbons. It means more than looking good, though that is part of it. It is looking good on a shop assistant’s wages. It is that young artist paying for everyone’s drinks with the last few lira they had. It is never admitting to feeling disheartened or dispirited or to being disinclined to turn up. It means to put the best face on it you can; stare anyone down if you need to.

  The modern sculptures on display seemed as if they both exulted and derided the fashions worn around them tonight.

  It was the feeblest of virtues, the feeblest of vices. Except maybe not always so feeble, in that it has its dark and decadent side, someone was saying that the other day, maybe someone Ada would see here at this opening.

  It was the art of appearance, of good form, good impressions, being good having no point if it doesn’t look good. Ada had not spent much time in Italy when she wrote the Space Traveler short story about the world whose culture imposed strict rules on the appearance of everything, houses, clothes, manners, everything was meant to appear in its optimum form, which was all very well while people agreed on what that actually was.

  And sure, there were the readers who would go on about there is no sense of beauty without ugliness.

  Later the Space Traveler novel Skies of Darian Blue extended the story of The Space Traveler’s journey into this world, weaving in a plot about an invasion of disrupters making an alliance with a group of home-grown citizens who wanted to explore disharmony and offence as part of their artistic practice. Also, there were magic weapons.

  But now, now, now.

  But you have to be present where you are, not always thinking of the fictive world you’re reminded of. Be present. In the exhibition space.

  Ada is wearing a dress over half a century old, it’s had some mends, it’s that really good fabric you could get in those days, made to last forever, or long enough to be inherited a time or two. Ada doesn’t mind, might have contrived, looking somewhat but not compellingly interesting, enough so to earn an unremarked place in here, not so much you’ll make an effort. She’s in her seventies and once every few years this feels like the right dress, right for coming to look at this show of contemporary sculptures reminiscent of human shapes, made of clay and twine and straw, weavings, beads, distressed fabrics, rope.

  It’s mad but you kind of want to wear these things.

  Ada glimpsed a pink leather jacket. She saw it, didn’t see it, saw it half obscured by a trio wearing dark jackets of that season, saw the pink leather, it was her, it could not be anyone else. Wearing her own ‘vintage me’ piece.

  It wasn’t that easy to secure her attention; a younger man, maybe in his fifties, in trousers of softly pleated silvery grey, a patterned fabric if you looked, with a collarless shirt with a pleated pocket the same, was murmuring into Leyla’s ear, taking her arm, taking her emptied drinking glass to place upon the tray of a passing waiter. It was this man who turned to Ada in acknowledgement of her waiting presence, her deliberate stance of waiting to be recognised, her expression, her ‘it’s me’ expression. Of all places, of all times, of all people, but why not, why not here and now.

  Leyla said, ‘Oh it’s you, dear.’ You can’t tell if she’s only pretending to have to make an effort to recognise Ada, or making a show of acting the pretence.

  Just because that’s what she does.

  Just because something about Ada says Ada is willing to be a kind of supplicant.

  As if it had to be like this. Two old women, who had wanted since childhood most of all a sense of freedom, yet as if they could not be free entirely, though from what they would not care to say.

  ‘It is me, dear,’ Ada said. ‘You look well.’ That’s what people say.

  ‘We all do,’ Leyla said.

  ‘Gianmaria,’ the man said, holding out his hand for a barely touched shake, or some such name. Was it quite the thing for him to introduce himself? Did that hold a reproach to Leyla not being first to introduce them …‘We are all art lovers here!’ he said.

  ‘We always meet at things like this,’ Ada said.

  Leyla became magnanimous. ‘We do, we always do, we meet at things like this!’ she said warmly. With an arcing movement of her arm framing the gathering.

  The thing like this was actually in Los Angeles. This was when LA was not yet known for its galleries but there was the major art show, Country. This was a fabulous big space and the work looked fabulous there, that’s what everyone there was saying, it was exciting, it wasn’t like anything else, it looked like work meant to draw you into abstract reveries but you were informed you were seeing maps of the Earth, diagrams of another realm, delineations of the oldest stories on Earth.

  And Ada and Leyla no sooner had they come across each other there and begun exclaiming about it, this coincidence, this serendipitous chance, around them people they knew or sort of knew were listening and smiling, and someone knew enough to say, ‘You both come from there! From Australia!’

  As if they could have something they must say about what they were here to look at.

  ‘This all comes from the country you lived in!’ someone says to the two of them now, Ada and Leyla standing in that room where everyone lingers longest, for the works and for the little bars you could gather around. They were also referring to the music.

  ‘Not really,’ says Leyla.

  ‘Not at all really,’ confirms Ada, ‘our country wasn’t this country’, this mysterious magical country in these paintings, these
maps drawn by the country’s own kin, people who were anciently made by the country.

  ‘We grew up there, but we never saw any of this,’ Leyla explained.

  ‘Not in those days, we could never have seen this,’ Ada confirmed, and somehow the people around them made her say more. ‘At the time we were recent refugees and only knew our own tiny part of Australia.’

  ‘We never knew this country,’ said Leyla, but she also knew something Ada didn’t yet: ‘because we were not meant to. It was not for us to see. It was forbidden.’ Leyla was authoritative. ‘Only now are other people allowed to see this.’

  Ada said, ‘We only lived in one part of a city clinging off the edge of one small part of a long coast.’

  ‘We met on the refugee boat, we were children.’

  The strange feeling of being associated with this country half a century after they had arrived there and not so very much less longer that they’d first left it. Departing to become who they were.

  They were the only two people in the world who understood this in the exact same way. Or almost. Almost and up to a point.

  Leyla got caught up in talking about the way certain places have a certain feeling, everyone around her saying that places really do.

  Ada made herself invisible.

  Ada is an old woman on two sticks, though she will be able to set aside the sticks after a short intense period of therapy.

  But she has the sticks with her that time back in that city clinging to a coast.

  Back in our part of town. Back in a street in Kings Cross.

  It’s not pretty anymore, remember how pretty it used to be round here, the little gift shop, the barber, the hat shop, the chocolate shop, the streets always in dappled light as the leaves bobbed and fluttered on more trees than remain.