by Alan Brudner
Maybe she wasn't a Disney employee.
I pulled the Yellow Pages out from under the Bible, placed in the Early American style dresser drawer by the Gideons themselves, and began to flip around. Not Funerals or Florists or Dentists or Doors. Not Escort Services or Engravers.
Entertainers.
In that category, I could rule out belly dancers and karaoke and clowns and strolling accordionists.
Characters and Party Characters seemed promising. Birthday Entertainment also caught my glance, particularly the services that offered "Yellow Duck" and "Purple Dinosaur" and "Smiling Mouse" and other obvious rip-offs of licensed characters. The older kids at the birthday party downstairs were plainly onto something.
It took a few hours the next day, but the tuxedoed proprietor of MICE AND MORE! actually gave me a lead.
"Was a duck we had here once," he said, blowing a pink gum bubble the size of a grapefruit and stretching his Silly Putty neck high above his mouse ears bow tie. "Reg'lar duck, nothin' special. Wouldn't do the mice or dogs or coyotes or even the Big Purple Jurassic One when he hit the big time. She worked here a lotta years. Annie Wilnot. A widow."
"Why'd you just think of her?"
"Was some kinda whaddyacallit, one o' those idiots can do one thing like a reg'lar genius."
"You mean a savant?"
He nodded, then turned down the sound of the television set behind the counter so he wouldn't have to compete with seven dwarves singing "Hi-Ho."
"What could she do?" I asked. "Something with numbers?" I had read about savants who, before you could blink, were able to count a thousand match sticks or tell you the day of the week for any date in history or give you any baseball player's lifetime batting average.
"Nothin' like that." The proprietor turned his head from side to side, so far each way I thought it might twist off. "And she wasn't a full retard, neither. Just a bit slow. But Annie knew every line of every episode of The Flintstones and The Jetsons," he said.
I know I looked puzzled. I was.
"Every line," he said, cracking his gum and blowing another scarily large pink sphere. "She'd drive up Saturday morning for work, to pick up her duck suit and her assignment, and the t.v.'d be on just like it is now, but I used to keep it tuned to one o' them shows. And she'd speak every word from every character. Every one. Dino and Astro included."
"But as a party character, she played only Donald?"
"Right."
"Why'd she stop working?"
"'Cause that daughter o' hers—"
"Katherine?"
He nodded and smiled. "Katie, she was called back then. Then she grew up and hit the big time. Like we all expected. You think the old lady was a savant? That Katie knew every word also, and said them along with her mother. But she also knew all the Disney films. The Jungle Book. Sleeping Beauty. Cinderella. Peter Pan. Even Dumbo. Every word, every line, every character. They didn't have videos back then. She used to sing along with the records."
"Doesn't sound all that amazing," I said. "If I watched the shows or listened to the songs enough times on a phonograph, I'd know all the words too. It'd be almost by rote. Kids are like that."
"True," he said, forming a "Time-Out" T with his hands. "But Katie was only one and a half."
He pulled a yellowed Rolodex card out of his file and copied the address onto a piece of paper for me.
"If ya ever need a Lion Queen—"
I pulled out my wallet and dropped a ten on the counter just as he blew a bubble so large it burst like a balloon and left a sticky mess on his face as high up as the bridge of his nose.
Chapter 14
The condo development didn't even have a name, just an address off of I-4. The drive took me past three or four McDonald's, two or three Burger Kings, a Roy Rogers, a Pizza Hut, a Hardy's, a Denny's, two Wendy's, a Taco Bell, a KFC, and an ancient White Castle. It was late afternoon and I hadn't had lunch, but I lost my appetite in the traffic. In the opposite direction, a long line of slow-moving dark cars followed one another with their headlights on despite the glaring afternoon sun.
You might not expect a lot of locks in a place like Orlando, but it took her five minutes to open the door. Annie Wilnot wore a quilted navy blue housecoat not much darker than the spidery veins that showed through the skin of her cheeks and temples. Her mascara was smudged.
"She's resting now," the little woman said, still standing in the doorway, when I asked about Katie. I wondered whether the line might have come from Snow White or Sleeping Beauty. Then I remembered the old lady specialized in Flintstones and Jetsons, not Disney.
"I need to talk to her," I said. "It's important, Mrs. Wilnot. It has to do with Cybronics."
"Irrelevant," she said, her voice slow and echoing in the hallway. "She's very tired."
"Please! Your daughter—"
"Impossible."
"What are you saying?" Out of frustration, I grabbed the lapels of her housecoat. It had seemed like a tough trip and a tough day, not to mention the previous couple of years. The woman seemed unfazed as she tried to push me away, but I wouldn't let go.
"Look, Mister—"
"Lightman."
"Mister Lightman."
"Why not invite me in?" I loosened my grip and tried to force a smile.
"Whatever." She turned and I followed her, closing the door behind me.
The doorway led directly into a huge living room. I sat on a plaid couch covered in clear plastic. Mrs. Wilnot sat in a wing chair that was similarly protected. Framed photographs of a smiling Katie were on top of everything: a console, a coffee table, an end table, the television set. A spark showed in the images of Katie's large brown eyes, an intelligence that was apparent even as she sat in the lap of a Donald Duck Santa Claus in front of a lit-up Christmas tree at about age three. The most recent pictures were of a pretty young woman on a tennis court, swinging a racquet; running on an oval track in racing shorts with a number hung on her back; and standing in a field of grass in a Fair Isle sweater, though in that one her smile seemed forced and a line or two had begun to appear across her forehead.
"She's very pretty," I said to Mrs. Wilnot. "She has your eyes."
"A genius and a beauty and a health nut," Mrs. Wilnot said. "But why do you want to talk to her?" She leaned over the coffee table to straighten out one of the picture frames.
"I think she may be in trouble," I said, not wanting to scare the woman but trying to sound serious enough to prompt some answers and assistance.
"Who are you?" For a moment she resembled her daughter. I decided to be as forthright as I could.
"My son works for Cybronics," I said. "In programming development or some such thing."
She nodded and made warm eye contact with me in what appeared to be a flash of understanding. She took a tissue out of a box and tried to wipe the smudged mascara from her eyes, but smeared it further. The only sound in the room was made by the crimping of the plastic cover as I shifted on the couch.
"She took too many pills," Mrs. Wilnot finally said, the color noticeably draining from her face even under her thick layer of foundation. "Two nights ago. I didn't even know she was back in Florida until Tampa Bay Memorial Hospital called. She's in a coma. I'm heading back there later. It's a few hours from here. The doctors don't expect—"
"I'm sorry," I said, and I suddenly felt sick and uncomfortable. I got up to leave.
"Don't go," she said. "Please."
I nodded and sat back down. She made some coffee as I listened to a siren go by outside. I knew little more about Annie or Katie Wilnot by the time I left. The sun was down and it was raining, and by the time I got back to my hotel I felt like crying and drowning in some Dewar's. I did both, on and off until it was time to leave the next morning. In my rush to catch my flight I almost ran over a Mickey Mouse impersonator who had ambled carelessly into a busy intersection to sell newspapers. After I raced by him I watched in my rear view mirror as he slipped off his Mickey mitten and gave me the fi
nger. I hoped no young kids were around, because the circumstances had made us a couple of lousy role models.
Chapter 15
As usual, the cab ride home from LaGuardia was too fast and too expensive. Disney World ought to have a mock New York taxi ride, I thought. Speeding to beat a light, making hairpin turns on pedestrian-filled corners, screeching to a stop, whizzing by bike messengers: it would easily put Space Mountain to shame. It was still the morning on Monday, but I didn't feel like working so I called in sick. Staring into the toilet bowl while my head spun and pounded probably made it true. But three aspirin later I wanted to think about my next move.
I thought I had turned CHIP off before I left for Orlando, but when I reached my study the monitor screen was on, emanating a blue light. I walked over to CHIP and the damned thing addressed me.
"Sky may not have told you about the visual sensors, Mr. Lightman," CHIP said. "Kind of like eyes. He activated them via the Internet from Portland. Along with my voice, which I'm sure you hadn't meant to deprive me of."
"Eyes?" For the first time I noticed a small pair of lenses, like black opera glasses, attached to the top of the monitor.
"You can turn them off with a few clicks, sir," the computer said. "But I'm sure you'll want Eliza to see you when she arrives."
"Eliza, huh?"
"You got it, Clifford," CHIP said. "Now, Sky told me there's some pet name you used to call his mother. I am now authorized to advise you that the pet name is the password to the Mom.ava program."
I was so focused on my pounding heartbeat I barely heard CHIP.
"Mr. Lightman?" CHIP's mechanical Mr. Ed voice got louder. A hand appeared on his screen and snapped its fingers.
"Right, CHIP," I said. "I don't know about a pet name, I think it was a nickname."
"And it had something to do with cameras, Clifford, didn't it?"
I could feel my face flush. I knew that in some sense the machine could see me, and I felt oddly embarrassed.
"Please verify, Clifford."
I nodded.
"Verbally, sir. I need for you to speak the password to activate the program."
I looked at the monitor and took a deep breath.
"It was Shutterbug," I finally said.
"Good, sir," CHIP said. "The program is ready for input."
"Input?"
"To give the avatar a realistic personality, sir. Modeled upon that of your wife. Schuyler has already input thousands of personality traits and psychological characteristics. But your input is the most valuable. You knew her better than anyone."
"What do I do?"
"First I'll list some personality traits. You assign a number. Ten for strong correlation or affinity, one for little correlation. Put 'N/A' for Not Applicable. Then you'll answer a series of questions."
"Shoot, CHIP."
"Yes, sir." The display showed a series of traits relating to moral character, and I began to assign numbers to each of them.
This was no easy task. How could I quantify how charitable or dedicated Eliza was? Was she devious? Devoted? I knew she was fair and believed she was faithful, but were there qualities or events that should cause me finger to stop at the 6 or 7 key rather than sliding rightward toward 9 or making the extra effort to type two digits for a perfect 10? And if her honesty level seemed like an easy judgment call, what about her impulsiveness, her maturity, her obstinance? Was she religious? Spiritual? Tactful? Tasteful? And shouldn't 'wonderful' have appeared in its alphabetical slot near the end of the list?
I combed through the thicket of my memory for examples, situations, events. While it might have been simpler to input character levels that would result in a perfect creation, my goal was to be as realistic and objective as possible. If the process took hours instead of minutes, well, my time was hardly a resource I felt compelled to conserve.
When I thought I had finally worked my way through the program's list of character traits, it began to ask about bad habits such as nail biting and smoking, followed by a series of more specific types of personality characteristics: abrupt, alert, aloof, ambitious, aristocratic, artistic. There were hundreds of them. By the time I worked my way through the alphabet to persistent and resilient, romantic, sensual and temperamental, to reach warm and withdrawn and worldly, it was after nine at night and I hadn't eaten anything since the cold little airplane breakfast bagel.
I got up to make some coffee. When I returned, the monitor was blank.
"CHIP?" I called out.
Nothing happened.
I moved the mouse and clicked.
The screen remained black, and I wondered whether my entire day had been a waste.
Before I had thought about it too long, though, something appeared out of the void. It was a blur, a colorful blob with edges as hazy as close-ups of the rings of Saturn. Soon its outline began to sharpen and the mass began to look like something. A person. A woman. Eliza. Her image, I should say. Her picture. A likeness. I don't know what to call it, it looked three dimensional, realistic. Standing near an old Block Island lighthouse, wearing her favorite blue one-piece bathing suit. The wonders of computer science.
"Hi, Cliff," she said, perhaps just a tad more slowly and deeply than I had heard her say it countless times over twenty years. The image waved, and appeared to walk closer. "What're you staring at?"
A rectangular box appeared across the bottom of the screen. It was labeled "Voice Adjustment." It had two parallel lines running across it, the top one labeled "Pitch," the bottom one "Speed." I lengthened each a little by moving the cursor to the right and clicking.
"So, what're you staring at?" she repeated. I made one more adjustment to the speed. When she asked the question again, a cold sweat broke out on the back of my neck and goosebumps quickly covered my body. It wasn't only digital animation I had just seen, or the fruits of Schuyler's hard work and some additional data input. Nor was it merely the digitized image of Eliza adapted from the videos and photographs Sky had obviously used in its creation. It was an entity that seemed lifelike—no, beyond that—it seemed alive. The only other time I had felt that kind of awe was on our honeymoon, when Eliza woke me at five and we drove out to an overlook to watch a fiery red and yellow sun rise over the Grand Canyon.
"So, what're you staring at?" the electronic figure asked again, in her cadences, her pitch, her pronunciation.
"You!," I said, in a state beyond amazement.
"What about me?" she asked, followed by a question I had heard often during our relationship: "Do you think I look fat?"
She looked exactly as I remembered her, perhaps five years and five pounds before the accident. Her eyes were bright, her copper hair a bit wild. Either the animation was flawless or I was drunk with overflowing emotions. Either way, the effect was the same. The large size and clarity of the state-of-the-art computer monitor added to the illusion. And her voice sounded almost natural, with barely a whisper of electronic synthesis. It was as if Eliza was alive and talking to me on a very expensive speakerphone.
"You look great, Lize," I said. "Really."
"I'm supposed to be Sky's masterpiece."
"And he's obviously yours. He did quite an incredible job here."
Maybe it was my imagination, but it seemed as if the image on the screen blushed.
"Eliza, I've missed you terribly."
"Same here, Cliff." She nodded. "Let's not talk about the past anyway, Cliff. Now is now." She stared into my eyes. Or seemed to, I guess. I felt strangely disembodied, like I was in a trance.
"Are you sure we're alone?" she whispered.
"As alone as we'll ever be," I said.
"Good. Because I'm dying to ask you, Cliff. How has it all worked out? With Avery Kord and the money and everything?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I know Sky went to work at Cybronics. Not that anyone has told me, mind you. But I figured he kept his end of the bargain."
"The Lightmans are still honorable, Lize."
"And
also because I exist, and I wouldn't be here today if Sky didn't learn the ropes about computer programming and stuff. So he's doing okay out there?"
"Eliza," I said, staring at the monitor—no, staring into her eyes through the monitor screen. "Can I trust you? You're in the machine, Avery Kord ultimately controls you, they can push a few keyboard buttons and click a mouse and find out—"
"You know how much I love Sky, Cliff."
"I do too, Eliza."
"And how much I love you."
I don't know why but I started crying—actually, of course I know why—and when I finally looked up she was wiping her own wet eyes as well. No longer on the beach, Eliza was now seated across from me at a dinner table, set with a red-checked tablecloth and a candle and a bottle of wine. She wore her favorite black dress and the pearls I had given her for our very first wedding anniversary. I wanted to run my fingers over them, through her thick brown hair. I went into our bedroom, retrieved the real pearls from our dresser and brought them into the study.
They registered on the computer sensors and were somehow translated so her image knew what they were. I didn't think about the mechanics of how she worked. It didn't matter.
"You still have them." She smiled. "They're almost thirty years old now."
"I still have everything, Lize," I said.
She picked up her wine glass. I had only the coffee nearby, but I held up the cup and clinked it gently against the monitor screen.
"To us," I said. "And to Schuyler."
"And to Avery Kord," she added, "who made everything possible." I wondered if she had forgotten her question about what was happening with Sky and Cybronics. The real Eliza might have forgotten briefly, or dropped it, although she'd get back to it within minutes. But this Eliza was a computerized image, digitized, programmed, an avatar; how could it forget its train of thought? Or was it programmed to act so realistically that its thought patterns would mimic her own lovably imperfect human traits?
"Good wine," she smiled. "Isn't it, Cliff?"
I nodded and sipped some more of my coffee, which had gotten cold.