Athena's Choice

by Adam Boostrom

  Perhaps it’s true, as my objectors claim, that I am biased. As you all know, I lost my husband to the fever in the fall of 2050. It has been over forty years since that terrible moment, and yet in all that time, not a day has passed without my happiness-profile reminding me of how much I miss him. How much I miss the sight of him returning home to me from work with flowers hidden behind his back. How much I miss the way his eyes would stare at me when he caught glimpses of me coming out of the shower. I still remember the first time we made love. It was mind-blowing and world-changing. To this day, my chest still longs, as much as it ever has, to be pressed against his warm body. My neck still craves his hot breath upon my skin. My nose still searches for his scent. And is all of this desire really so wrong? Is it such an awful, horrible crime to be a lonely heart? To miss how safe and warm and happy he made me feel?

  Whatever you may think of my nostalgia, remember this: I am not alone. If you will not bring back men for their own sake, then do it for all the women who will otherwise suffer from your inaction. For while there exist today many hundreds of millions of us women thriving in the absence of men, there exist yet more millions, just like myself, who go to bed every night feeling alone and empty and confused — women of every age who pass through their daily routines in joyless repetition, their hearts aching for a kind of love that they will never find. Are we to consign all of those women to long lives lived without ever knowing the joy that a man might bring them? Are we to deny those strictly straight women the chance to ever feel the sublime pleasures of affection that I have known in my life? Will we ever have the courage to tell those girls that we possessed the power to fill the void within their hearts, but we did nothing?

  Should we fail to authorize this project today, then we will, all of us, have the blood of the crime of the Y-Fever on our hands. Should we fail to return those innocent male voices to existence, then I have no doubt that future generations of women will look back on us and conclude that we — for all our talk of compassion and understanding — that we women here today were no better, no kinder, no less cruel, and no less vile than the men we hypocritically claimed to oppose.

  Listen to your hearts when you vote today. Remember to do what is right.

  June 11, 2099

  35

  In a city-car heading north, Athena gazed up at the sun peeking out through overcast skies. The sight felt like a fitting metaphor for her clouded brain. No matter how hard she tried to concentrate on something else, her thoughts kept coming back to her first encounter with a living man. His look, his scent. She could think of nothing else.

  As usual, Valerie passed the time buried in her display, sending and receiving messages. At one point, she broke the silence to announce, “Michelle’s just emailed me a new report about your third dream. Our computer thinks your suspicion was correct. You were envisioning a university library, not a municipal one. It thinks this Original Sin book may have been an historical document kept inside a university’s physical archive—”

  “Did you get a good whiff of him?” interrupted Athena, completely changing the subject. “What was that? Pheromones?”

  Valerie’s blue eyes looked up from her work. She took in the teenage girl sitting beside her. “Yes,” she answered. “I smelled him.”

  Without any idea of knowing why, Athena leaned across the seat and placed her head into Valerie’s lap. “I feel so confused,” she said.

  In response, the captain said nothing and returned to her work. However, she did allow her left hand to stroke lightly through the soft strands of Athena’s hair.

  Minutes later, the city-car stopped in front of the PS guest apartments building. Upon arrival, though, neither Valerie nor Athena made any move to exit.

  “I remember how hard it was being your age,” the captain reminisced wistfully. “All the confusion, the impulses, the self-doubt.” With her left hand, she continued to stroke her fingers delicately through Athena’s brown hair. “I was determined, all throughout my teen years, to never get my happiness profiled. I guess it seems silly to admit it now. I just thought that it would mean less if a machine told me who I was, instead of figuring it out for myself.”

  She grazed the index finger of her free hand across her lips, from left to right, trying to touch a long-lost memory. “All that stubbornness, as you can imagine, led to some pretty cringeworthy moments. I couldn't even tell you how many friends I made and then subsequently alienated. And I must have tried about twenty jobs before I finally found one I liked.”

  Athena drank in every word, her eyes never opening.

  “What I’m trying to say is…what I wish someone had told me is…don’t blame yourself for being confused about who you are or what you want. These days, they send us home from the hospital with a file for our whole genome and give us up-to-the-minute access to our own profiles. They expect that with this information, all of our questions will be magically answered. But growing up isn’t that simple. What makes us happy — what we want in the end — it’s never that simple.”

  Very slowly, Valerie drew in, and let out, a long deep breath. “Anyway. Enough of that. I’m going to go home and work on finding your library. You want to come with?”

  Athena sat upright and nodded.

  With a spread of her hands in the air, the captain pulled up a map on her display. She tapped her finger onto the location of her apartment. Immediately, the city-car sped west, across the Chicago river.

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  June 11, 2099

  36

  It was clear from the look of Valerie’s rented apartment that she did not often have people over to visit. Her unit rested on the twenty-fifth floor of a high rise in the West Loop, just a short walk from work. It contained four separate ‘rooms,’ but to name them as such would be generous. Her kitchen was so narrow that it required turning one’s hips to the side to pass through to the end; her bathroom wasn’t much larger.

  The last two rooms were slightly more spacious. The living room could, just barely, fit a long couch, a coffee table, and an individual-sized 3D. The bedroom had only enough space for a queen bed and a side table.

  Shoes littered what tiny floorspace the apartment did enjoy: classic black pumps, blue d’Orsay flats, orange wedged espadrilles. Apparently, Valerie Bell had an informal side after all.

  Athena reached down to grab a pair of sparkling, tomato-red stiletto heels by the door. “You, uhhh, get a chance to wear these often?” she teased. She dangled the footwear in front of her.

  Valerie reached out and snatched the pair of shoes from Athena’s grasp. She glared as she warned, “Don't make me regret bringing you here.”

  With her long arm, the captain swept a pile of crumbs from the surface of her coffee table down onto the floor. Her left index finger swiped diagonally left, activating her unit's floor vacuum. Tiny specs of food flew into hidden holes located throughout the room. “You hungry?” she asked.

  Athena shook her head.

  Passing perilously through her narrow kitchen, Valerie grabbed an apple pie from out of her budget-brand food printer. Meal in hand, she rejoined Athena on the couch. “You sure you don’t want a bite?”

  Athena again shook her head.

  “Your loss.”

  As Valerie chowed down, Athena reclined into the couch’s comfortable cushions. “So what made you decide to go into Public Safety?” she asked.

  “Huh?” replied Valerie, her mouth full of pie.

  “You kno
w, you said you tried twenty jobs, why’d you stick with this one?”

  “Oh…” Very carefully, the great vault door which secured Valerie’s personal life safely away from the outside world cracked a bit more open. She looked left and right, even though they were completely alone in her own living room. She set aside her meal. “You promise not to tell anyone?”

  Athena nodded. Both women deactivated their digital lenses.

  “I’m just using Public Safety as a stepping stone,” Valerie revealed. “I heard succeeding there was…the best way to get named as a ‘Decisive Human.’ That’s what I want to become. That’s why I’m working so hard.” Her posture straightened. “I want to be one of the women entrusted with answering the great questions in this life. I want to help the AI’s decide on what courses of action they should pursue. I want to make a difference in the world.”

  Athena smiled from ear to ear. “I think you’ll be great at it,” she gushed. “I can’t wait to see you make it happen. They’d be crazy not to promote you.”

  For five full seconds, Valerie blushed, before her water-tight self-control kicked back in, and her vault door sealed shut. She shook her head. “Alright, Ms. Vosh, that’s enough distraction for now.” Her weight shifted forward on the couch. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We need to find your library first.”

  Survivorship Bias

  From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

  “Survivorship Bias,” “Survivorship,” and “Survival Bias,” all redirect to here

  ▲ Overview:

  Survivorship bias, or survival bias, is the logical error of concentrating on the people or things that “survived” some process and inadvertently overlooking those that did not because of their lack of visibility. This can lead to false conclusions in several different ways. The survivors may be actual people, as in a medical study, or could be companies or research subjects or applicants for a job, or anything that must make it past some election process to be considered further.

  Survivorship bias is a type of selection bias.

  ▲ Further Reading:

  For more information on survivorship bias, including an example in action, see the Abraham Wald biography The Hidden Holes, by former AI, the Second Core.

  ▼ Other types of Selection Bias

  ▼ Theoretical Antecedents

  ▼ Recent Recordings

  Last modified by RoadieGirl15 on 22 September 2098

  June 11, 2099

  37

  Captain Bell’s personal Aasha unit was linked with the PS mainframe, so she and Athena were able to run searches backed by the full force and power of Public Safety. For two hours, they matched Athena’s image of a library with any trace of partially-completed architectural records from the forties. They paired mountain locales with university locales, and cross-referenced them with every species of buffalo. Still nothing resulted. The hour grew late.

  “I don’t know what we’re missing,” Valerie growled, “but this failure is making my stomach hurt. I don’t feel good.”

  Lost in thought, Athena’s mind remained elsewhere. For some reason, she recalled a homework assignment she had written once on the subject of survivorship bias. “We keep searching for the library,” she muttered under her breath, “but it’s not there. Everything about it has been deleted…” She stared off into the distance while stroking her spiraling Helix-pendent between her thumb and finger.

  With much effort, Valerie rose to her feet and stumbled toward her bedroom. “I think I’ve got that retro-viral flu that’s been going around. I need to go lie down. You can stay as long as you want.”

  Athena glanced up and saw that Valerie’s skin had become a little paler, her lips a little bluer. It was quite the struggle for her to make it even five meters to her bedroom without falling over.

  “Are you sure you’re ok?” Athena asked. “You should at least let your Aasha unit diagnose you.”

  “No, no,” replied Valerie with a dismissive wave of her hand. “I’ll be fine. I just need some sleep.” She disappeared behind a closed bedroom door.

  Back in the living room, lying motionless on the couch, Athena’s brain churned endlessly, like a lazy river slowly carving away the rock to form a canyon. “We’re going about this all wrong,” she mumbled to herself. “This whole time, we’ve been searching for a library, but everything about it has been deleted. It's not where it is. It’s where it’s not.” She placed her palm against her forehead in a moment of epiphany.

  “We shouldn’t be searching for the library,” she gasped. “We should be searching for the hole of a library. We should be looking for where a library isn’t!” Her pupil’s dilated. Energetically, she began to bounce around the room as she dictated instructions to the captain’s home computer.

  “Aasha! Please create a predictive equation for how many books a university should have in its library system. Assume the variables that matter are the size of the student body population and the school’s scholarly reputation. For numbers, use historical data from 2040. Then, compare the predicted values of a school’s total number of books against the historical values for the number of books it actually had. Do any schools look like they are missing an entire library’s worth of books?”

  “Yes,” replied the home computer almost instantly. “According to your predictive equation, records show that the original campus for the University of Colorado — destroyed during the Greeley terrorist attack — possessed over one million fewer books than it should have.”

  Athena’s legs weakened. She fell back onto the couch. “Aasha, what was the mascot for the original University of Colorado?”

  Micro-seconds felt like eons as she waited for the computer’s reply.

  “It was a buffalo.”

  George Norlin

  From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

  This article is about the former president of the University of Colorado.

  For other individuals, see George Norlin (disambiguation).

  ▲ Overview:

  George Norlin (April 1, 1871 – March 31, 1942) was president of the University of Colorado from 1919 to1939. During his tenure as president, he oversaw the redesign of the campus in Boulder, Colorado.

  ▲ Biography:

  Norlin was born in Concordia, in Cloud County, Kansas, the son of Swedish immigrant parents. He was educated at Hastings College and at the University of Chicago. He was named acting president of the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1917. By appointment of Columbia University, Norlin spent the 1932-33 year as Professor of American Life and Institutions at the University of Berlin. After his time in Germany, he spoke and wrote articles warning of the dangers of Nazism and anti-Semitism.

  Norlin is also remembered for resisting efforts by the Ku Klux Klan, which had taken control of the Colorado legislature in about 1922. The Klan insisted he dismiss all Catholic and Jewish faculty, but he resisted and guided the University through the years until 1926, when the Klan lost control of the legislature and governorship. During that period, the University subsisted on a millage built into the state constitution; its budget was cut to zero.

  Norlin died in Boulder. The first and second Norlin Libraries were named in his honor. They are located, respectively, on the old and new University of Colorado campuses.

  ▼ The Europe Years

  ▼ Retirement

  ▼ Norlin Quadrangle Relocation following the Greeley Terrorist Attack

  Last modified by JuStJiLl on 18 February 2105

  June 11, 2099

  38

  Athena rushed into the captain’s dark bedroom.

  “It's in Colorado,” she shouted. “The library, the book, it’s in Colorado. It’s inside the Greeley exclusion zone. That’s why no one is stumbling across it. The building’s still radioactive!”

  Flat on her bed, Valerie lay completely still. Inside the room, nothing stirred.

  “Valerie?”

  Athena approached and saw the captain frozen in place. Absent
from her lips was the subtle twitch of air rushing past. Absent from her chest was the gentle rise and fall of each breath. Athena reached out to grab Valerie’s hand but found it slightly cold to the touch.

  “Valerie!”

  Athena grabbed Captain Bell’s lifeless shell by the shoulders. Her arms were stiff, her face completely colorless. Violently, Athena shook the body on the bed, but it was too late.

  Valerie Bell was already dead.

  Valerie Bell

  December 3, 2073

  Ms. Brady, 6th Grade Self-Awareness Class

  Assignment: Write About

  My Greatest Fear

  Spiders can seem creepy, but they are not scary. They only eat insects. If you see a spider, you are better off just letting it keep right on doing what it’s doing, because it’s probably killing insects for you, and those are much worse.

  Snakes scare a lot of people, but not me. They just want to protect themselves and their homes. I get that. If you do not bother a snake, then it will not bother you, so you do not need to worry about them.

  Heights are scary because dying is scary, and if you fall from a high enough place, that is likely to be the end of you. But I am not afraid of heights. Every time I am someplace high, I just stay away from the edge, and only look down when I am holding on to something. That way, I can stop myself from falling.

  What really scares me most is none of those things. That's because the only thing I’m really afraid of is forever. I am afraid of how big it is. I am afraid of the way it never ends. I can't even get my mind around something like that. I know that before I was born, there was a forever. And I know that after I’m gone, there will be another one, a second forever. More than anything else, that’s what scares me most. I’m afraid that when I die, everything I’ve done will disappear and be forgotten. I’m afraid that once I’m gone, the memory of me will be lost, swallowed up whole, for all of time, into the endless chasm of that second forever.