The Perfect Wife

by Delaney, JP

  THREE

  Abbie Cullen didn’t do very much, to begin with. She sat at a spare desk. We pointed out to her the break room, the free bagels and tubs of cream cheese, the restrooms, and where to put the recycling. Jenny Austin—Mike’s wife—brought over a spare laptop, and there was a rush to be the one to help Abbie connect it to our network. (Tim refused to have an IT administrator, on the basis that if you weren’t smart enough to do that kind of stuff yourself, you shouldn’t be working for him.) And then she just kind of sat around, chatting.

  There was a pool table in the office, but it almost never got used. Nobody wanted to be the person who was shooting pool when Tim Scott walked by. It was generally just a convenient place to stack late-night pizza deliveries, and its soft blue baize was stained like an old mattress with their leakings. But when Abbie Cullen picked up a cue, turned to the nearest person—who happened to be Rajesh—and said “Wanna play?” we not only tolerated it, we went to watch.

  She was not even quiet. When she won a shot, she whooped.

  Pretty soon she developed a program of going around and asking people to explain to her what they did. She would squat down next to our chairs, so she didn’t tower over us, or sit on our desks, swinging her long legs, asking us questions. And she seemed genuinely interested, even amazed, by what to us was now fairly everyday and mundane. She was sweet. She had a way of reaching out and resting her hand on our arms to make a point that was—well, flirtatious would be the wrong word. It was more like she saw no reason not to be tactile, and no one in her life had ever seen any reason to make her feel self-conscious about it.

  We didn’t, either, of course. We were charmed.

  The second day, she wore a Debbie Harry T-shirt under an old leather jacket, and ripped jeans. Some of us did wonder if that was a bit too casual, for the office. But then she was an artist, not a regular employee.

  Someone asked her if she knew what her first project would be, and she shook her head. “I’m still waiting for an idea.” Not I’m working on it, or even It’ll come, just that she was waiting for something to show up and announce itself. We admired her confidence, but we also worried for her. What if no idea ever came? At what point would she give up? And if she gave up, would she leave us?

  So we waited along with her, and gradually What Abbie Might Do became a topic—perhaps even the topic—of conversation in the break room. “She’s talking to the form-cutters this morning. I expect she’ll want to use the three-D printer.” “I heard she’s thinking of doing some portraits of us.” “She’s interested in how the bots are coded. I bet she’ll incorporate that into her project.”

  It was when she started talking back to Tim, though, that she reached another level in our affections.

  It was quite a small thing, the first time. Tim was tearing a strip off one of the new developers. We felt for the guy: We had all been in his position, though we also experienced a secret thrill that it was now someone else’s turn. We called these bawling-outs Tim-lashings or Getting Timmed, just as we called all-nighters Tim Time and predawn was Tim O’clock. And to be fair, his outbursts were rarely unwarranted; merely excruciating. With Tim, the particular failings of the task you had messed up on were never merely errors. They were much worse than that: an indication that you didn’t subscribe to the same perfectionist worldview as him, that your standards or your commitment were somehow eternally compromised. He could move from the particular to the philosophical in a nanosecond.

  “We don’t do workarounds,” he was snapping at the hapless developer. “We don’t do betas. And we particularly don’t do failure. If something’s not good enough, don’t fix it—reinvent it. You think Elon Musk set out to build a better car? Wrong. He set out to build the thing that would replace the car. While you, my friend, are still polishing fenders.”

  To which Abbie said, “What’s wrong with a bike?”

  It was not a particularly smart or witty remark. But the fact she said it at all—that she acknowledged the way Tim was yelling at the poor guy within earshot of everyone—broke the unwritten rule, the fourth wall that separated us from him. And silently, inwardly, we applauded her for it.

  He gave her a blank look. “Nothing’s wrong with bikes. Anytime you want to invent a self-driving bike, feel free.”

  And so it began.

  10

  Upstairs you spread out some old sheets and get to work on the bookcase, methodically removing a shelf’s worth of books at a time. The tops are grimy—clearly, no one else has touched them in years. You wipe each one with a cloth before separating out those you intend to read. With the more interesting ones, you flick through in search of notes or annotations, too. For a moment you can’t recall the right word for that kind of thing. Then it comes to you. Marginalia. Of course. You are a person who enjoys such words, you are discovering.

  You wonder if you always did, or whether it’s something to do with your new deep-learning brain.

  The big shelves at the bottom mostly contain cookbooks. Happy Abbie-versary, Tim’s written inside a book of Venetian recipes, Best trip ever! Inside The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook you find the cryptic inscription, Present number thirty-seven!! A copy of Dishes from India is inscribed To Ms. Abigail Cullen, soon to be Mrs. Cullen-Scott. From the happiest engineer in the world.

  Tucked into the flap is a theater program, something experimental at the Cutting Ball. Scribbled on the back, in your handwriting and Tim’s, is an exchange:

  Asleep??

  Not quite.

  I’m thinking about food.

  Mmmm…

  Italian?

  Oysters!

  Bail?

  I’m right behind you.

  And a hand-painted Valentine in the shape of a heart. Dearest Tim, I give you my heart.

  Another word comes to you, equally satisfying. Ephemera.

  * * *

  —

  As you pull out Elizabeth David’s French Provincial Cooking, it falls open at a page crusted with pink cooking stains. A sentence has been underlined: It is useless attempting to make a bouillabaisse away from the shores of the Mediterranean. In the margin your earlier self has written YOU’RE ON!!!! Below is what looks like a shopping list.

  Rascasse

  John Dory

  Galinette (substitute Gurnard?)

  Saffron

  And, in a different pen:

  NB: Next time, simmer the tomatoes twice as long as this tyrant says.

  Smiling, you put the book to one side. You can’t eat anything yourself, but you like the thought of cooking something nice for Tim that you cooked before.

  You’re halfway through the bookcase when your phone pings. For a moment you wonder who it could be. But then you remember: Tim’s the only person who knows your phone’s in use again.

  U OK? Hate that I’m not there with you. X

  Affectionately, you text back:

  Your job needs you! I’m fine. Love U. Xx

  You wait, but he doesn’t reply.

  Reaching up, you pull another book from one of the upper shelves, almost falling backward as the cover comes away from the pages. A broken binding. It must have been a favorite, you think, for you to have kept it even in this poor condition. Perhaps it can be rebound.

  Carefully, you open it. Then you realize something. The book inside is smaller than the cover. In fact, you now see, it’s a different book altogether, a paperback that’s had its own front and back covers ripped off. But you can still read the title, printed at the top of every page. Overcoming Infatuation. Some kind of self-help book.

  Flicking through, you see that some passages have squiggles next to them. And at the end of one chapter, a paragraph has been underlined:

  Limerence, or infatuated love, is outwardly almost identical to the real thing. But
just as a little salt seasons meat while too much poisons it, so love and limerence are actually two sides of a coin.

  You put it aside to show Tim. Perhaps he can explain it.

  As you turn back to the shelves, your phone pings again. You pick it up eagerly, thinking it’s Tim’s reply. But the sender’s name simply says FRIEND.

  Puzzled, you open it. On the screen are just four words.

  This phone isn’t safe.

  You stare at it. There are no earlier texts above it, nothing to indicate who Friend might be.

  As you watch, the message slowly fades from the screen. Some kind of Snapchat-type spam, you decide.

  Putting the phone down, you continue with the books. You’re almost at the end of the row when you notice a volume of poetry, Ariel, by Sylvia Plath. A memory leaps in your mind. You read those poems as a teenager and fell in love with them, the way only a teenager can.

  You pull the volume out. But this cover, too, simply slides away from what’s inside. Intrigued, you prise the contents from the shelf. This time, though, it isn’t a book that the cover was concealing.

  It’s a small electronic tablet. An iPad Mini, hidden away here where no one would ever think to look for it.

  Unlike your phone, there’s no arty personalized case, nothing to indicate whose it is. But it must be yours. No one else, surely, would hide something among your books like this.

  Who’s it hidden from? Danny?

  No. Back then, if you’d wanted to keep it away from Danny, you’d simply have placed it somewhere his five-year-old hands couldn’t reach.

  From Tim, you realize. It can only be hidden from Tim.

  Are you the kind of woman who keeps things from her husband? The thought is disturbing, almost shocking. But at the same time, not entirely surprising. It feels…It feels right, the way a word or a fact sometimes does.

  After all, Tim is the very opposite of laid-back. Perhaps you’d wanted to avoid a lengthy debate about something. A woman has a right to privacy, even within a marriage.

  But a whole hidden iPad? an inner voice objects. That feels like more than just privacy.

  That feels like secrecy.

  And then there’s Friend. How weird is it that you get a message saying your phone isn’t safe at the exact moment another device turns up?

  You hold down the iPad’s POWER button. Nothing happens—the battery’s long since depleted. You take it down to the kitchen and plug it into the charger. As you turn back upstairs, the intercom buzzes, startling you. Behind the colored glass of the front door, a face fragments into orange and red. The straggly hair looks familiar.

  You go and open it. On the doorstep is Tim’s colleague, the one who tried to stop you from leaving the office. A black laptop case hangs from his shoulder. You search for his name. Mike Austin, that’s it.

  “Abbie,” he says. “Hey.”

  “Tim’s not here. He’s gone to the office.”

  He nods. “I know. I just came from there.”

  “Then why—”

  “It’s you I’ve come to see,” he interrupts. “I wanted to talk to you alone.”

  11

  You make him coffee.

  “Is it strange,” he says carefully, as you put the cup down in front of him, “not being able to drink that yourself?”

  “Believe me, that’s the least of what seems strange about all this.”

  “I guess so.” There’s a short silence while he blows on his coffee, watching you over the rim of the cup. “What do you remember about me, Abbie?”

  “I saw you at the office. You work with Tim.”

  “That’s true. But I’m much more than a colleague. I’m Tim’s oldest friend. The co-founder of Scott Robotics. I was best man at your wedding…You don’t remember that?”

  You don’t, of course. “Tim said something about having to be selective. Not giving me too many memories all at once.” You pause. “He won’t even tell me how I died.”

  Mike nods thoughtfully. “Did he explain why not?”

  “He said it might be too much to handle.”

  “Well, he’s correct about that. Creating a sentient AI from scratch in five years—it’s an extraordinary achievement. But Tim’s been…Tim’s been pretty driven about it. The only thing that mattered was speed. Getting it done as fast as possible. Getting to you.”

  You don’t understand the point he’s making. “And he did it. Against all the odds, here I am.”

  “Yes—here you are. But as for how you are…Have you heard of an AI called Tay?”

  You shake your head.

  “Tay was an adaptive-learning chatbot that Microsoft’s research division put out on Twitter a couple of years back. Its first tweets were charming—telling everyone how cool humanity was, how happy it was to be here, that kind of thing. Within twenty-four hours it was tweeting that feminists should burn in hell and Hitler was right about the Jews. The adaptive learning had worked too well.”

  “Well, I’ll try not to go crazy. Or go on Twitter.”

  You mean it as a joke, but Mike nods seriously.

  “Look, I probably understand the way your brain works better than anyone. But even I couldn’t swear we got everything right. We didn’t always have time to check our steps.” He swings his laptop case up onto the table. “It was pretty irresponsible of Tim to take you away before we’d run some tests, actually. But I can check you out right here.”

  “This is what you do, isn’t it?” you remember. “That’s what your job really is—to go around after him, sorting out whatever he’s been too impatient to deal with first time around. When he cuts a corner, you go back and check it. When he’s overhasty, you take care of the details.”

  Mike gives a thin smile. “I prefer to think of it as having complementary skills. Tim’s like an architect—he sees the big picture. But an architect is only ever as good as his builder. Stand up, would you?” He pulls a cable from his bag.

  You get to your feet. “And you’re sure Tim won’t mind?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t mention this to Tim if I were you. You know what he’s like. You’d probably just set him off unnecessarily. ” Mike bends down. You hear the click as his cable slots into your hip.

  You’re uneasy. Doing something like this behind Tim’s back feels wrong.

  But then, you think, you don’t intend to say anything about that iPad, either. At least, not until you know what’s on it.

  A series of beeps issue from Mike’s computer. “What are you testing for?” you ask.

  Intent now on his screen, he doesn’t look up. “Like I said, Tim was in something of a rush. So rather than design an artificial mind from scratch, it seemed easier just to construct a digital replica of the human brain. Or rather, the human brains, plural. Most people don’t realize, but the main part of our brain, the bit that looks like a big walnut, is actually a relatively recent addition—it evolved after we learned to use language. Beneath it there’s an older, smaller organ called the limbic brain, which dates back to the first mammals. That’s where the emotions are generated—friendship, love, all the things that make us sociable.”

  “And that’s where my empathy comes from?”

  “We believe so,” he says cautiously. “And then, underneath that, there’s an older brain still, the reptilian brain. That’s what controls our unconscious compulsions—breathing, balance, the survival instinct. How the three structures interact is still something of a mystery. And of course, sometimes the balance gets out of whack. It’s not a great design by any means, at least not on paper—it’s like a house that’s been extended multiple times over the centuries, instead of being conceived from the ground up. Mostly it works fine, but when it goes wrong, it’s a bitch to fix. In theory, you could be susceptible to all the same problems humans can have—personality disorders, psychosis, confabulation…”<
br />
  “Confabulation?”

  He glances at you. “Self-deception. Making things up without realizing it.”

  You stare at him. “Are you saying I can’t trust my memories?”

  “No one should ever entirely trust their memories. I take it you haven’t noticed any problems?”

  “No,” you say curtly.

  “Good.” Mike’s hands scuttle across his keyboard. The clicking sound sets your teeth on edge.

  Something else occurs to you. “If you’re his best friend, why hasn’t Tim uploaded any memories with you in them? Why can’t I remember you at all?”

  Mike looks up from his laptop. “Probably because he knows I don’t like you very much,” he says calmly. “That I loathe you, in fact.”

  12

  “Me then? Or me now?” you say, taken aback.

  “Both,” Mike says matter-of-factly. “Although loathed might be too strong a word to use about the original Abbie. I mean, it was pretty hard to hate you all that much. You were this idealistic, fresh-faced twenty-something without a cynical bone in your body. You were even into tech, for Christ’s sake. It was hardly a surprise Tim fell for you. It wasn’t you who was the problem. It was him.”

  It was a whirlwind courtship, Mike explains. Tim was completely head over heels in love.

  “It’s an issue in our industry. In school, the geeks aren’t cool enough to get the girls. Even the good-looking ones find themselves in all-male study groups. Then, after college, they’re trying to get a start-up off the ground and there’s no time for a social life. Until they raise some serious funding, and then—wham. Suddenly they’re rich, they’re flying around the world giving speeches, they’re offered the best tables in nightclubs, and they’re being interviewed by Vanity Fair and Time magazine. Half of them are still virgins at that point. It’s no wonder they lose their heads to the first beautiful woman who comes along and tells them how fascinating they are.”