by Ted Chiang
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Various employees take turns showing mascots the real world; Derek usually takes Marco or Polo. His first idea is to take them outside, around the office park where Blue Gamma is headquartered, and show them the strips of grass and shrubbery that divide the parking lot. He points out the crab-like robot that tends to the landscaping, product of an earlier venture in bringing digients into the real world. The robot is equipped with a stiletto-like trowel for pulling weeds, and its toil is purely instinct-driven; it’s descended from generations of winners in an evolutionary gardening competition conducted in Data Earth hothouses. Derek’s curious about how the mascots will react upon hearing the story of the weed-pulling robot, wondering if they’ll identify with it as a fellow émigré from Data Earth, but they don’t show the slightest interest.
Instead, it turns out that the mascots are fascinated by textures. Surfaces in Data Earth have a lot of visual detail, but no tactile qualities beyond a coefficient of friction; very few players use controllers that convey tactition, so most vendors don’t bother implementing texture for their environmental surfaces. Now that the digients can feel surfaces in the real world, they find novelty in the simplest things. When Marco returns from his turn in the robot body, he can’t stop talking about the carpets and furniture upholstery; when Polo is wearing the body, he spends all his time feeling the gritty nonskid treads in the building’s stairwells. Not surprisingly, the sensor pads in the robot’s fingers are the first components that need replacement. The next thing Marco notices is how Derek’s mouth differs from his own. Digient mouths bear only a superficial resemblance to human mouths; although their lips move when they talk, the digients’ speech generators aren’t physics-based. Marco wants to learn about the mechanics of speech, and keeps asking to put his fingers in Derek’s mouth when he talks. Polo is astonished to discover that food actually passes down Derek’s throat when he swallows, rather than simply vanishing the way digient food does.
Derek had feared that the digients might be distressed to learn the boundaries of their physicality, but instead they just find it funny.
An unexpected benefit of seeing the digients in a robot body is that it provides a closer view of their faces than is common when watching them in Data Earth. As a result, the work that Derek has put in on the digients’ facial expressions is easier to appreciate.
One day Ana comes to his cubicle and says excited,
“You are amazing!”
“Er…thanks?”
“I just saw Marco make the most hilarious expressions. You’ve got to see them. May I?” Ana gestures at his keyboard, and Derek rolls his chair back from his desk so she can reach it. She opens a couple of video windows on his screen: one is a recording of the robot body’s camera, showing the digient’s point of view, while the other is a recording of what the helmet screen was displaying. Judging by the former, they were out in the parking lot again.
“He went on one of SaruMech’s field trips last week,” explains Ana, “and of course he loved it, so now he’s bored with the office park.”
On the screen, Marco says, “Want go park we go field trip.”
“You can have just as much fun here.” On the screen, Ana gestures for Marco to follow her.
The image swings back and forth as Marco shakes his head. “Not same fun. Park more fun. Show you.”
“We can’t go to that park. It’s very far away; we would have to travel a long time to get there.”
“Just open portal.”
“Sorry Marco, I can’t open portals here in the outside world.”
“Now watch his face,” says Ana.
“You try. Try hard please please.” Marco forms his panda-bear face into a pleading expression; Derek hasn’t seen it before, and it makes him burst out in laughter.
Ana laughs too, and says, “Keep watching.”
On the screen she says, “It doesn’t matter how hard I try, Marco; the outside world doesn’t have portals. Only Data Earth has portals.”
“Then we go Data Earth, open portal there.”
“That would work for you if there’s a body there for you to wear, but I can’t wear a different body, I’d have to move this one, and that would take a long time.”
Marco thinks about that, and Derek’s delighted to see that the digient’s face actually suggests his incredulity. “Outside world dumb,” the digient announces.
Derek and Ana burst out into laughter. She closes the windows and says, “You did some terrific work there.”
“Thanks. And thanks for showing that to me; it made my day.”
“Glad to do it.”
It’s nice to be reminded that his earlier work is bearing fruit, because most of Derek’s recent assignments aren’t nearly as interesting. The Origami and Faberge digients have begun to pop up in a wider variety of avatars, such as baby dragons, gryphons, and other mythological creatures, so Blue Gamma wants to offer similar avatars for the Neuroblast digients. The new avatars are straightforward modifications of the existing ones, requiring nothing new in terms of their facial expressions.
In fact, his newest assignment requires him to create an avatar with no facial expressions at all. A group of artificial-life hobbyists was impressed by the potential of the Neuroblast genome and, rather than wait for real intelligence to evolve on its own in the biomes, commissioned Blue Gamma to design an intelligent alien species for them. The developers engineered a personality taxon that was miles away from the breeds that Blue Gamma sells, and Derek’s designing an avatar with three legs, a pair of tentacles instead of arms, and a prehensile tail. Some of the hobbyists want an even stranger body plan, as well as an environment with different physics, but he reminded them that they’ll have to wear the avatars themselves when raising the digients, and controlling tentacles will be difficult enough.
The hobbyists have named their new species Xenotherians, and set up a private continent called Data Mars on which they intend to create an alien culture from scratch. Derek’s curious about it but hasn’t been able to visit, because the only language allowed in the presence of the digients is a custom dialect of the artificial language Lojban. He wonders how long the hobbyists will be able to stick with their project. Aside from the enormous barrier to entry, raising the Xenotherians won’t offer pleasures like the one that he and Ana just got from watching Marco. The rewards will be purely intellectual, and over the long term, will that be enough?
Chapter Three
Over the course of the following year, the forecast for Blue Gamma’s future changes from sunny to decidedly cloudy. Sales to new customers have slowed down, but worse than that, the revenue generated by the food-dispensing software has fallen: more and more of the existing customers are suspending their digients.
The problem is that as the Neuroblast digients leave infancy behind, they’re growing too demanding. In breeding them Blue Gamma aimed for a combination of smart and obedient, but with the unpredictability inherent in any genome, even a digital one, it turns out the developers missed their target. Like an overly difficult game, the balance of challenge and reward that the digients provide is tilting beyond what most people consider fun, and so they suspend them. But unlike dog owners who bought a breed they were unprepared for, Blue Gamma’s customers can’t be blamed for not having done their homework; the company itself didn’t know that the digients would evolve in this way.
Some volunteers have begun maintaining rescue shelters, accepting unwanted digients in hopes of matching them with new owners. These volunteers practice a variety of strategies; some keep the digients running without interruption, while others restore the digients from their last checkpoint every few days, to keep them from developing abandonment issues that might make it harder for them to get adopted. Neither strategy is enormously successful at attracting prospective owners. There is occasionally a person who wants to try a digient without having to raise one from infancy, but these adoptions never last for long, and the shelters essentially become digient war
ehouses.
Ana’s not happy about this trend, but she’s familiar with the realities of animal welfare: she knows you can’t save them all. She’d prefer to shield Blue Gamma’s mascots from what’s happening, but the phenomenon is too widespread for that to be practical. Again and again she has taken them to a playground and one of the digients realizes that a regular playmate is absent.
Today’s trip to a playground is different, and brings a pleasant surprise. Even before all the mascots are through the portal, Jax and Marco notice another digient wearing a robot avatar. They simultaneously exclaim “Tibo!” and run over to him.
Tibo is one of the oldest digients aside from the mascots, owned by a beta tester named Carlton. He suspended Tibo about a month ago; Ana’s glad to see that it wasn’t permanent. As the digients chatter, she walks her avatar over to Carlton’s and talks with him; he explains that he just needed a break, and now is feeling ready to give Tibo the attention he needs.
Later on, after she’s brought the mascots back from the playground to Blue Gamma’s island, Jax tells her about his conversation with Tibo. “Tell him about fun we do time he gone. Tell him about field trip zoo fun fun.”
“Was he sad he missed it?”
“No he instead argue. He said field trip was mall not zoo. But that trip last month.”
“That’s because Tibo was suspended the whole time he’s been gone,” Ana explains, “so he thinks last month’s trip was yesterday.”
“I say that,” says Jax, surprising her with his understanding, “but he not believe. He argue until Marco and Lolly too tell him. Then he sad.”
“Well, I’m sure there’ll be other trips to the zoo.”
“Not because missed zoo. Sad missed month.”
“Ah.”
“I not want be suspended. Not want miss month.”
Ana does her best to sound reassuring. “You don’t have to worry about that, Jax.”
“You not suspend me, right?”
“Right.”
To her relief, Jax seems satisfied by this; he hasn’t encountered the idea of extracting a promise, and she’s embarrassingly glad that she didn’t have to make him one. She takes comfort in the knowledge that if they suspend the mascots for any period of time, they’ll almost certainly suspend all of them, so at least there won’t be experiential discrepancies within the group. The same would be true if they ever roll the mascots back to a younger age. Restoring an early checkpoint is one of Blue Gamma’s suggestions for customers who find their digients too demanding, and there’s been talk that the company should do this with its own mascots to endorse the strategy.
Ana notices the time, and begins instantiating some games for the mascots to play on their own; it’s time for her to train the digients in Blue Gamma’s new product line. In the years since creating the Neuroblast genome, the developers have written more sophisticated tools for analyzing the interactions of its various genes, and they understand the genome’s properties better. Recently they’ve created a taxon with less cognitive plasticity, resulting in digients that should stabilize more quickly and stay docile forever. The only way to know for certain is to let customers raise them for years and see what happens, but the developers’ confidence is high. This is a significant departure from the company’s original goal of digients that become ever more sophisticated, but drastic situations call for drastic measures. Blue Gamma is counting on these new digients to stanch the loss of revenue, so Ana and the rest of the test team are intensively training them.
She has the mascots sufficiently well-trained that they wait for her permission before they start playing the games. “All right everyone, go ahead,” she says, and the digients all rush over to their favorites. “I’ll see you all later.”
“No,” says Jax. He stops and walks back to her avatar. “Don’t want play.”
“What? Sure you do.”
“No playing. Want job.”
Ana laughs. “What? Why do you want to get a job?”
“Get money.”
She realizes that Jax isn’t happy when he says this; his mood is glum. More seriously, she asks him, “What do you need money for?”
“Don’t need. Give you.”
“Why do you want to give me money?”
“You need,” he says, matter-of-factly.
“Did I say I need money? When?”
“Last week ask why you play with other digients instead me. You said people pay you play with them. If have money, can pay you. Then you play with me more.”
“Oh Jax.” She’s momentarily at a loss for words. “That’s very sweet of you.”
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After another year has gone by, it becomes official: Blue Gamma is shutting down its operations. Not enough customers were willing to take a chance on the perpetually docile digients. Internally there were many proposals discussed, including a breed of digient that understands language but can’t speak, but it was too late. The customer base has stabilized to a small community of hardcore digient owners, and they don’t generate enough revenue to keep Blue Gamma afloat. The company will release a no-fee version of the food-dispensing software so those who want to can keep their digients running as long as they like, but otherwise, the customers are on their own.
Most of the other employees have been through company collapses before, so while they’re unhappy, for them this is just another episode of life in the software industry. For Ana, however, Blue Gamma’s folding reminds her of the closure of the zoo, which was one of the most heartbreaking experiences of her life. Her eyes still tear up when she thinks about the last time she saw her apes, wishing that she could explain to them why they wouldn’t see her again, hoping that they could adapt to their new homes. When she decided to retrain for the software industry, she was glad that she’d never have to face another such farewell in her new line of work. Now here she is, against all expectation, confronted with a strangely reminiscent situation.
Reminiscent, but not the same. Blue Gamma doesn’t actually need to find new homes for its dozen mascots; it can just suspend them, with none of the implications that euthanasia would have. Ana herself has suspended thousands of digients during the breeding process, and they aren’t dead or feeling abandoned. The only suffering created by suspending the mascots would be on the part of the trainers; Ana has spent time with the mascots every day for the last five years, and she doesn’t want to say goodbye to them. Fortunately, there’s an alternative: any employee can afford to keep a mascot as a pet in Data Earth, whereas keeping an ape in her apartment hadn’t even been a possibility.
Given how easy it is, Ana’s surprised that more of the employees don’t want to adopt a mascot. She knows she can count on Derek to take one–he cares about the digients just as much as she does–but the trainers are unexpectedly reluctant. They’re all fond of the digients, but most feel that keeping one as a pet now would be like doing their job after they’ve stopped being paid. Ana is sure that Robyn will take one, but Robyn preempts her with news of her own at lunch.
“We weren’t going to tell anyone yet,” Robyn confides, “but…I’m pregnant.”
“Really? Congratulations!”
Robyn grins. “Thanks!” She releases a flood of pent-up information: the options that she and her partner Linda considered, the ova-fusion procedure they gambled on, their fabulous luck at having the first attempt succeed. Ana and Robyn discuss issues of job hunting and parental leave. Eventually they get back to the topic of adopting the mascots.
“Obviously you’re going to have your hands full,” says Ana, ”but what do you think about adopting Lolly?” It would be fascinating to see Lolly’s reaction to a pregnancy.
“No,” says Robyn, shaking her head. “I’m past digients now.”
“You’re past them?”
“I’m ready for the real thing, you know what I mean?”
Carefully, Ana says, “I’m not sure that I do.”
“People always say that we’re evolved to want babies, an
d I used to think that was a bunch of crap, but not anymore.” Robyn’s facial expression is one of transport; she’s no longer speaking to Ana exactly. “Cats, dogs, digients, they’re all just substitutes for what we’re supposed to be caring for. Eventually you start to understand what a baby means, what it really means, and everything changes. And then you realize that all the feelings you had before weren’t–” Robyn stops herself. “I mean, for me, it just put things in perspective.”
Women who work with animals hear this all the time: that their love for animals must arise out of a sublimated child-rearing urge. Ana’s tired of the stereotype. She likes children just fine, but they’re not the standard against which all other accomplishments should be measured. Caring for animals is worthwhile in and of itself, a vocation that need offer no apologies. She wouldn’t have said the same about digients when she started at Blue Gamma, but now she realizes it might be true for them, too.
Chapter Four
The year following Blue Gamma’s closure involves many changes for Derek. He gets a job at the firm that employs his wife Wendy, animating virtual actors for television. He’s fortunate to work on a series with good writing, but no matter how quick-witted and nonchalant the dialogue sounds, every word of it, every nuance and intonation, is painstakingly choreographed. During the animation process he hears the lines delivered a hundred times, and the final performance seems glossy and sterile in its perfection.
By contrast, life with Marco and Polo is a never ending stream of surprises. He adopted both of them because they didn’t want to be separated, and while he can’t spend as much time with them as when he worked for Blue Gamma, owning a digient now is actually more interesting than it’s ever been before. The customers who kept their digients running formed a Neuroblast user group to keep in touch, and while it’s a smaller community than before, the members are more active and engaged, and their efforts are bearing fruit.