by Guy Hasson
She looked at her feet. “I... I met someone else, Jake.”
“What?”
“I don’t want to see you again. Okay? You asked for this today. You asked for this.”
“What, you don’t love me anymore? You met someone else? What? Why? Maybe we can—”
“You know, I don’t want to talk about this.”
“But—”
“I don’t want to see you again, Jake. I don’t want to see you. Okay?”
And she got up, and she ran away.
And I froze the picture.
I needed coffee. I needed drugs. I needed therapy. This was... This was the greatest heartbreak I’ve had till that age. And...
I took a deep breath and produced the menu, more to get rid of the image of Sarah running away than anything else. But the second the menu appeared, my hands were already at the keyboard, clicking.
This was a drug. It was habit-forming, it messed with your mind, it was addictive, and—And I wondered how far back I should go now.
Let’s go really back. Let’s test the limits of this thing. Would it be able to show things as they were when I was five, when my brain was less developed, when things were different?
I typed in: 28 years, 0 months, 0 days, 6 hours (or else I’d find myself asleep), 0 minutes, 0 seconds. I pressed ‘ENTER’, and the screen came to life, showing something else.
“Do it again!” My voice as it must’ve been then. “Again!”
The red carpet – the house – oh, it was exactly as I remembered it – so huge, so rugged, so homey, so... so like my parents! This was my definition of home.
The screen was filled with two huge pillars in pants – my dad’s favorite pants. And I ran between them, giggled, then looked up.
And, here, in the present, looking at the screen, his face took my breath away.
I froze the picture.
Yes! This was how I’d always seen my dad. Even when I grew up. Even when I grew taller than him. Even when age began to change his face and body. What I saw then was not a thirty-three-year-old man, as old as I am today. He was a giant to me. A huge, colossal man, whose face was so... grownup in a way only children understand, in a way only children see. This program, this All-Of-Me, it showed things as I had seen them, not necessarily as they were. Through my eyes.
Should I unfreeze the picture? No. I could come back to this whenever I wanted. I summoned the menu.
I wondered how far back I could go with this. Does this program have any limits?
I typed in: 32 years, 8 months, 0 days, 4 hours, 0 seconds; then pressed ‘ENTER’.
The focus was off. Two huge blobs of brown above me, yellow background, a lot of colors. A huge brownish thing hovered into view, then a smaller pinkish thing met and engulfed it.
“Look!” A sound. A familiar male sound. “He’s holding my finger.”
Cheers all around. I looked away from the screen – it was too distracting – and listened. Slowly, one by one, I picked out the voices...
My mother showing me off to her mother. My grandfather giving my father advice about what I should eat, how I should sleep.
I could listen to this for hours. I could learn so much. About myself. About my parents. About the past...
For a second it was like I was falling down, out of control control, helpless.
I pressed ‘F1’.
How far back does this go?
I fed in the numbers: 33 years, 3 months, 0 days, 0 hours, 0 minutes, 0 seconds.
Before I was born. When my mother was six-months pregnant with me. When I was inside her stomach.
I hesitated for a second, then pressed ‘ENTER’.
The screen was filled with bursts of shapeless yellow and orange. There was constant and fast thudding. And in the background: Music. And... Muffled sounds. Voices! People talking! Muffled but I could still make them out. I upped the volume, and listened closely.
“Bang! Zoom!” Jackie Gleason’s voice. Jackie Gleason’s voice! I could hear him now, through the womb, through my mother’s stomach, more than 33 years into the past – I could hear what happened then.
Oh my god. Oh my god!
I froze the picture.
How far back does this go?
I typed in the numbers – I had never typed numbers that slowly in my life: 34 years, 0 months, 0 days, 0 hours, 0 minutes, 0 seconds.
Before my father’s sperm met by mother’s egg. Three months before I was conceived.
I hesitated, then pressed ‘ENTER’.
The screen turned into a violent explosion of abstract colors and sounds, screeches, and vague sounds. Occasionally, a sound made sense, a word here, a bit of music there. It was mesmerizing. It was chaos. It was impossible.
I stared at the screen for a while, until I made sense of it.
Sooner or later, the further back you went, you’d have to reach some sort of ‘first moment’, some state-of-mind that had no reasonable state-of-mind before it. Only the computer didn’t know that. Each number is caused by another number. So if you go back enough, you get chaos and gibberish.
Hmm.... Good to know this program has some limits.
And yet, there was something about the shapes, something about the sounds. Something hypnotic... It touched me at a spot I couldn’t recognize.
I pressed ‘F1’, and stared at the frozen picture, a shapeless form of a million different hues of red. And it was more beautiful than any picture by any painter I’d ever seen.
Gee-eez!
I pressed ‘ESC’ and exited the program. There’s always tomorrow. Always tomorrow.
I just sat there for half an hour, then got up, went into the living room, kissed Melanie, and thanked her for the gift. The gift she got just for me.
~
The next day, when I was at work, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I couldn’t stop going over everything I saw, remembering, seeing it in a different light. I made up endless lists of all the places in my past I could explore. I could hear what conversations I had as a kid. Go over my birthdays. Get a glance, again, of the girls I had a distant crush on in high school. I could hear my father tell me good-night stories. I could see my mother hug me.
I left work as quickly as I could, made five traffic violations on the way home, almost ran out of the car – and stopped. Stopped the second I stood in front of the front door, my key in the lock.
The door was unlocked.
Robber? Melanie?
For some reason, my heart shrank more at the latter.
I opened the door. The living room was empty. The kitchen, in a clear line of sight, was empty.
“Melanie?!” I called.
“In here!” Her voice.
I entered the corridor. Not in the bathroom. Only two more rooms – the bedroom or my study. Again, my heart shrank at the second option.
The door to the bedroom was open, but underneath the closed study door I could see a sliver of light. My body began to pump adrenaline.
I shoved the door open slowly, “Honey?”
And there she was, at the computer, my face frozen on the screen.
She was sitting on the chair, hugging her legs, a cigarette hanging between two of her long fingers. She looked back at me. “You gotta see this,” she said, as I tried to push down my anger. What right does she have to—! “This is amazing!”
I took a step closer.
“Look at what I found a few minutes ago,” she turned back to the screen, “Oh, wait, I’ll save this, first.” Her hands flashed over the keyboard, and a me I don’t know vanished off the screen and somewhere into my hard drive. Sweat began to form on my forehead. “I’ve been typing numbers randomly, just to see what would happen. Get a load of this,” and she typed: ‘MELANIE_IS_GREAT’ and pressed ‘ENTER’.
My face appeared on the screen, unshaven, gray-haired. His face was all red and he was panting.
“Let’s see this from his point of view,” she touched a key, and the view shifted. A woman filled the sc
reen, a naked woman I’ve never seen before. Her body was zooming in and out: I was kissing her. Melanie looked at me and smiled, “Now who the hell is that? What haven’t you been telling me?” She laughed, and pressed a few more keys. “Now, see, this isn’t you at all. If you go back, you’ll find that this version of you was raised in London. Yes, London. You even have a Cockney accent here. Now let’s try something else,” she turned back to the keyboard and typed ‘HOW_ABOUT_THIS’.
My face appeared on the screen, suddenly, screaming. Melanie and I both jumped, as the scream turned blood-curdling. Melanie pressed F1, and the picture froze. He was my age. And he was terrified.
“Hmm,” she said. “Let’s go back a minute.”
A couple of keystrokes later, we were seeing it from his point of view. He was on a bridge. My stomach sank. A trickle of cars going back and forth. Another person came towards him. A man in a long, black raincoat.
“Step away, step away,” I suddenly found myself whispering to the me in the computer.
“Excuse me,” the man said.
“Yes,” I heard my voice.
“Melanie—” I said. She raised a finger to shut me up, her eyes fixed on the screen.
“Do you have the time?” the man said.
“Sure, it’s—” and the me on the screen looked at his watch. The watch filled the screen, but you could see the background – the part with the shoes and the pavement – get suddenly darker in a fuzzy way. The darkness was the color of the raincoat.
“Okay,” the man’s tone turned aggressive. A quick change of angle, and we saw a gun.
“Turn it off,” I told Melanie.
“Shhh,” she said as the me on the screen said something I couldn’t hear. “Let’s see this.”
“Johnny says ‘Hi’,” the man said, as two of his big arms pushed us. The angle changed again, and in the screen there was only sky. He was pushing me off the bridge!
“Stop!” My voice came from the speakers, just as I was about to say the same thing. And then there was a scream, and water rushed towards the other me.
“Okay,” she pressed ‘F1’, “we already saw that part. Now, something else.” And she typed: ‘SOMETHING_ELSE’.
“Melanie—”
My face again. Young, this time, a kid. The way I had looked when I was six. Disturbed, frightened.
Melanie pressed a key, and we saw what he saw: My mother, hand open, slammed it against the screen. The sound of a slap. The ‘camera’ falling violently to the floor. The sound of my sobbing. “This is what you get!” My mother’s voice. “This is what you get for pulling tricks like this!”
“This never happened,” I whispered. She never hit me. Not once.
“It’s a different you,” says Melanie. “You want to go a few moments back, to see what brought this on?”
“No.”
“Come on, it’ll be—”
“No.”
“Okay,” she shrugged. “Let’s try something else.”
“Let’s not.”
“Seriously,” she said, as she her fingers whisked over the keyboard, typing: ‘LETS_NOT’. “All your potential lives are here. All of them! Your life if you’d been raised in any country, at any time, with any possible history. Fourteenth century, 5th century B.C., the future, the future! We could see what would’ve happened to you if you’d been raised by monkeys, or elephants or aliens maybe.” She hit ‘ENTER’. “I’ve been sitting here for three hours hoping to see some aliens. But...no luck yet.”
My face, slightly older, much chubbier, eyes closed – asleep – appeared on the screen.
“Boring,” Melanie said and immediately hit the menu, erasing that person, his unknown history, his unknown life, the dream he was having. “How about this?” And she typed: ‘BORING’. I caught her hand as it dropped to hit ‘ENTER’.
“Let’s not,” I said. “Let’s do something else.”
“Come on, I want to see this.”
“Let’s do something else.”
And I think she finally heard the serious undertones in my voice. “What, this is making you uncomfortable?” And she looked at me, her eyes locking with mine, amused. I had to fight the urge to look away, embarrassed, ashamed...
She looked down, wearing a smile. “Sure,” she said. “I understand. It’ll take you time to get used to this.” She turned around, exited the program, and got up. She rubbed my arms, “Let’s do something else.”
~
That night, she stayed over, as she did most days of the week.
Half-dreaming, I reached for Melanie, wanting to put my arm around her. She wasn’t there. Bathroom, probably. I turned around, and was sucked back into my dream.
Except that a thought of reality still clung: Melanie is not there. What is she doing? Is she back? What is she doing?
And with a rush of adrenaline I sat up in bed, and looked around. Still not here. I looked at the door. Faint, white light.
I got up slowly.
The light was coming from the study, the door to it open only a hair’s width. I could hear talking from inside. I looked at my watch: 4:25 a.m. She’s never up at this time.
I clung to the wall, and listened.
“Melanie, what’s going on?” A man’s voice. My voice.
“Would you listen?” Silence. Then, her voice again: “I, uh... When I was fifteen—” and I could hear her take a puff of smoke, “—I read this book. I don’t remember its name or who wrote it, but it was science fiction, and it was about this duplication technology. Like, this guy and this woman stepped into a box, and then, their exact duplicates – their clones – appeared light-years away. And the main thing – actually, it’s the only thing – I remember is that every time this guy – the hero of the book – got into the duplicator back on Earth, he shut his eyes, and when the process was over, there was massive relief for him. He’s the one that got to be back on Earth. While his duplicate opened his eyes, and found himself in dangerous situations, which usually led to his death. That’s what I was thinking about when you were going through those tests at the hospital a couple of days ago.”
“Melanie, I don’t understand. This is your birthday gift to me? What’s going on?”
“No. Jake, Jake, I did get you a birthday gift. It’s a great birthday gift. Only the man who opened his eyes, the man now sleeping in the other room, he’s the one who got the gift. You went to the hospital, got into the machine, opened your eyes, and you found yourself inside a computer, a few seconds later for you, but almost two days later for me. You got the short end of the stick.”
“You knew this would happen. You did this to me on purpose!”
“Look. I didn’t have to reactivate you. I can turn you off now. Do you want me to do that?”
Silence for a while.
“No.” His voice.
“Okay. Good. I’m glad. Then I’ll save you as you are now. Just in case, okay? See, if I press this, I’m saving you.” The sound of keystrokes. “Okay?”
Silence. Then, my voice: “Yah.”
I couldn’t help it, I leaned a bit closer, and peeked through the crack. I could see Melanie’s back, sitting on the chair, half hiding the keyboard and the screen from my view. And on the screen – my face, with black background. The PersoCam on top of the monitor was aimed at Melanie but away from me. So neither of them could see me.
“Okay. I... uh... Let’s try something, okay, Jake?”
“Yah.”
“Okay,” she said. “You’re an asshole.”
I blinked twice and my head shot backwards. My reaction was mirrored on the screen, “What?!” He said.
Without answering, she clicked on a few keys, and his image vanished. She’d exited without saving. Now she loaded a saved version of me.
My face reappeared on the screen.
“Okay?” She said.
“Yah,” he said. Same tone as a minute ago.
“Are you sure? No ill effects from saving you?”
“Saving
me? Dooming me is more like it.”
“Jake!”
“No. I didn’t feel that at all.”
“Good.” And she saved him again.
“Okay. I ... uh... I want to ask you something.” Silence. She slowly inhaled on her cigarette. Then, “What if I told you I wanted a baby?”
“I can’t very well give you one now.”
“Seriously. I can turn you off.”
“Okay, okay.”
“What if I told you I want a baby?”
“You said you didn’t.” That’s right. “You said you wouldn’t.”
“What if I changed my mind.”
“Is that why you have me here? Is that why I have to suffer this weird, unacceptable life, to see how I’d react when you bring the subject up?” Melanie drew in another puff, looking away from the screen. “I’m going to give you your answer, and then you’re going to save me, go back to sleep, and turn me back whenever something else pops up? Is that what I’m here for? Is that what’s going to happen?”
Her hand hesitated over the ‘save’ key. “No, Jake. It isn’t.” And she exited the program without saving. “This conversation never happened,” she told the empty screen.
I got ready to leap back to bed and feign sleep, certain that she’d walk out of the room. But she just stayed there, staring at the empty screen, smoking.
After a minute or two, I crept back to bed and covered myself with a blanket. After what must have been ten minutes later, I felt her slip in, as well.
She tossed around for a while, then fell asleep. I didn’t.
~
In the morning, I said I was sick. Melanie volunteered to babysit me. I told her to go to work. I told her I’d be fine.
She left after I called in sick.
I waited for her car to leave, then locked the door, went into my study, and sat in front of the computer.
First thing: Find the file she’d saved. It wasn’t in the folder designed for saved personalities.
It took me two hours to search the entire computer using as many different search algorithms as I could think of. I found nothing, except evidence that a couple of saved-personality files had been erased beyond an ability to recreate them.
Had she really erased them before she had joined me in bed? Everything she’d done the night before had seemed well-planned. She had known ahead of time what she would do, what to press. The only things she didn’t know were what my responses would be. Why would she have saved him, if she didn’t want to use him? After all, the stuff she didn’t want him to remember, she had deleted.