Once

by Elisabeth Grace Foley et al.

  The weight of silence became palpable.

  “I’m sorry, you must be tired,” he said at last. “I only wanted to congratulate you… I’ve had wind of tomorrow’s papers, and they are full only of wedding gossip and congratulations, not a whisper of a rumor regarding our true arrangement.”

  The weight lifted, and she could breathe normally.

  “What a relief!”

  “Indeed.” He smiled at her. “Are you comfortable here?” He looked around the scrumptious room. “Are you in need of anything?”

  She couldn’t bear the penetration of his brown eyes, and she dropped her gaze to the floor.

  “No, sir. That is, I am comfortable. Very. Thank you.”

  “No, thank you.” He turned to leave, then looked over his shoulder. “I’m excited to see what you come up with in your days here.”

  She looked up and smiled, then watched him leave and close the door behind him.

  “Goodnight,” she said softly to the wooden panels.

  Then she slipped under the covers and laid her head on the pillow, marveling again at its rich softness. She reached up to pull the chain on the wall next to her and the lights turned off, leaving her alone in the rich darkness.

  When she awoke the next morning, bright light assaulted her eyes through the windows, indicating that if she were still back at the mill, she would have been up and at work hours before.

  She snuggled against the feather pillow, relishing the feeling of silk all around her.

  It seemed like a good day for breakfast in bed.

  She sat up just enough to reach the cord that dangled beside the bedpost and tugged on it the way Mary had showed her, then nestled back into the silk and feather heaven.

  She had settled it in her mind while she lay in the dark the night before. She was not Byron’s wife, not really. But nor was she his servant or his employee. She was lower than the former position, but higher than the latter. It had puzzled her at first. What was she, then? To the outside world, including her father, she held a position of privilege, but she and her husband and the servants knew better. So what was she to them?

  She wouldn’t know how to behave or to interact with them until she knew the answer.

  Finally it came to her. She was his ward. His protege. His project. A rough gem he had plucked from the gutter in the hopes that time and money would polish it into a diamond. She was his own personal rags-to-riches story, pulled from rags but not having yet earned the riches.

  She was the heroine of a feminized Horatio Alger Jr. story.

  As she recalled these revelations, the door swung open and her maid bobbed in. “Good morning, ma’am. Can I get you some breakfast?”

  “That would be wonderful,” Amanda smiled.

  “What will you have?”

  “Surprise me.” She loved the feeling of power the words gave her. She loved knowing that something amazing would be coming, whether simple bacon and eggs or something she’d never even heard of. And she loved above all the fact that she did not have to cook it herself.

  “Yes ma’am,” Mary nodded, and slipped out of the room.

  Amanda sank back into the bed and let her gaze drift around the room. Everything, from the rich wine color of the walls, to the mahogany wardrobe in the corner, to the small chest overflowing with jewelry on the desk, cried out, “You’ve finally moved up in the world. You’re going places. You can do anything you want.”

  She smiled.

  Breakfast, when it came, was crepes with fresh fruit and a glass of juice. It was paradise on a fork. When she finished, Mary cleared the dishes, then helped her dress in another gown—not silk this time, but a lightweight royal blue linen.

  Then she showed Amanda to her laboratory.

  It was a clean, almost sterile white room with shelves and desks spanning the walls. The shelves were loaded, and the sight was sweeter to her than candy. Tools and equipment and materials lined every surface in an orderly fashion, while basic programming stations were placed at intervals around the room. In the center of it all a long, narrow table stood laden with more tools and equipment, situated so she could easily dive right into her work.

  Byron had been serious about giving her everything she needed. All this must have taken well over her thousand pounds for the month.

  Unless he’d already owned much of it. She recalled that he’d invested in AI before. Had any of his other hopefuls worked or even lived at the palace?

  “I’ll come get you for luncheon, ma’am,” said Mary, bobbing her head.

  Then she vanished, and Amanda stood alone in the white room.

  She took it all in; the coils of wire, the stacks of gears, the metal plates, the welders, the pliers, the bolts, the batteries, the programming machines, the bulbs, the vinyl disks.

  And she smiled.

  When Mary tapped on the door and opened it to call her for the midday meal, Amanda had her nose in the scientific journals that were piled up in one corner of the room. She assumed they had been hand-picked by the governor, since nearly all the articles were geared more or less towards the practical applications of artificial intelligence.

  This was all so far beyond anything she’d ever thought while working with the mill AI.

  “Luncheon is served, ma’am.” The maid’s voice jolted her from her ponderings.

  Amanda stood up and laid down the paper. “Thank you.”

  She followed Mary to the small breakfast room downstairs, then hesitated in the doorway at the sight of the single place setting.

  “Where is… Byron?” Amanda tried to make the name feel natural on her tongue, to mask the timidity she felt.

  “I believe he is out at a meeting, ma’am,” the maid said.

  So Amanda ate alone.

  It was to be expected. After all, he was her husband in name only, and a busy man. She still couldn’t get over the feeling that she really belonged neither here nor downstairs with the servants.

  But there was no third option, so the fine breakfast room it was.

  After luncheon, when the footman had cleared her plate, she asked him to send Mary up. He obliged, and when the maid appeared Amanda had a question.

  “Is there a library?”

  Mary’s thin lips seemed to be resisting a smile, and Amanda felt absurd. A grand mansion not have a library? Ah, how naïve. “Yes ma’am. Shall I take you there?”

  “Yes, please.” The haughty tone surprised her. Why should she think herself any better than this girl? Or did she? Was the haughtiness born of a desire to mask her embarrassment?

  It was new.

  The library itself was a glory of wealth and beauty. Books lined what seemed like miles of shelves covering every wall, arranged by type. The array of colors dazzled her.

  There were novels and biographies and histories and theologies and law books and—yes, there was a science section that made the modest lending library of her hometown look like a joke, and not a very funny one.

  She lost herself in the books, seeking information in their pages until she fell asleep in her chair in front of the electric heater.

  When she woke up, she was cold and stiff. She moved slowly, unfolding one joint at a time, and stood, tucking the programming book under her arm.

  She took the long way back to her workshop, or at least that’s what she told herself. She needed to stretch her legs and work the kinks out of her back. No, of course it wasn’t just that she wanted to explore the house.

  She found a rich ballroom, overshadowed by a dormant electric chandelier of the most intricate detail and expensive proportions. She found guest bedrooms by the dozen, all boasting rich furniture and silk curtains. She found sitting rooms and lavish and technologically advanced lavatories, and she found doors that led up into the attic or down into the basement, but she didn’t dare open those.

  At last she made her way back to the laboratory again, stuffing down feelings of reluctance. She had progress to make, machines to create, inventions to dream up.<
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  And reading to do. So much reading. After all, one could not be inspired out of thin air. One had to piece together the progress of others and turn it into something that was both old and new, borrowed and blue with the guilt of one’s artistic stealing.

  She didn’t have to make something original. After all, no one ever truly did. She had only to improve upon what existed. And so she studied.

  The shadows were lengthening when Mary popped her round head in and called her for dinner. She slipped through the doorway and started down the hall but Mary stopped her with an urgent, “Excuse me, ma’am.”

  Amanda turned back to her.

  There was that thin-lipped non-smile again. “You have to dress for dinner, ma’am.”

  Amanda was glad the light was dim enough to hide her blush.

  This time she was escorted, silk-gowned, into the grand dining room, and her husband was there.

  “How was your day?” she asked timidly after they’d been eating for a few minutes.

  He smiled at her. “Very profitable. I did some demonstrations of your AI. It was well-received for the most part, though the unions are going to take a lot of winning over. But the senate has been mostly tied up in discussion about some of the new auditory contract policies. Still, it looks as though I may be able to secure some grants for you from one of the factories that is more favorable to automization.”

  “That’s good news,” she smiled back, though the reference to “her AI” made her stomach twist a little.

  “Indeed.” His smile softened. “Really, you have no idea how much this means to me. I was on the verge of giving up on this. But,” he turned back to his food, “I haven’t heard how your day was.”

  She studied his face as he focused on his soup, and she wanted to tell him about her breakfast, and about her exploration of the house, and the journals she’d read, and her amazement at the library, and even her confusion at what her station was. She wanted to expound on her wonder at the chandelier and plumbing and the wealth of the house.

  But someone fitting to his station wouldn’t have been so impressed by the latest technology, and a girl of his class wouldn’t have marveled so at silk and books. She would only damn herself further if she rambled, sinking closer and closer to the servants and away from him.

  He thought her the tiniest bit better than that. Even though he thought the only reason she was worthy of his attention was her ability to create the AI.

  Which wasn’t even true.

  The twist in her stomach tightened.

  “It was fine,” she said at last. “I’m working on some ideas.”

  Byron smiled, wiped his lips on a napkin, and pushed his empty bowl away. “I’m glad to hear it. But how are you doing? I know this place can be overwhelming. Do you need anything?”

  Yes. She needed to know what to do, how to act, what to say.

  She swallowed.

  “No sir. Thank you.”

  He stood up. “Please tell me if you do,” he said with one last smile. Then he turned and left the room to take his rest.

  Amanda sat for a moment, waiting until the footman had taken both sets of dishes away. Then she lifted the hem of her skirt, stood as gracefully as she could, and left to go to sleep.

  V.

  When Will My Life Begin?

  Amanda was surprised how quickly the excitement wore off. With so much to work with, she had—perhaps subconsciously—expected the previously fettered genius to flow from her fingers into brilliant creations. The one comfort was that one thing she had said when beginning the whole ordeal had been true after all.

  She had no idea how to create high-functioning AI.

  Then again, that was no comfort whatsoever.

  She read journals and science books, and made sure to spend at least four hours a day in her workshop, tinkering. At least, she told Byron she was tinkering. She told Mary she was tinkering. In reality she was studying different materials and browsing the programming of the machines in the room. She made a few improvements to them. Improved their efficiency and widened their scope.

  But when a week passed and she had created nothing new, she began to be concerned.

  Perhaps the problem was being confined by an almost—thermodynamic process. She was operating in a closed system. Yes, that was it. She was giving her mind no opportunity to receive outside information.

  So she took more walks. She explored more rooms. She even snuck in readings of a few novels. Inspiration could be found anywhere, couldn’t it?

  Every morning, she laid in bed until she became restless. She always asked to be surprised at breakfast, but the dishes weren’t infinite and she eventually ran out of new things to try. She would read and explore and think and attempt to work until dinnertime finally arrived, and then she would always eat with Byron while he talked about the day’s meetings. His discourses tended to run along two tracks—the process of sorting out the auditory updates to the state’s contract laws, and the process of trying to reform labor laws to embrace more automation.

  “Fiver always performs well,” he told her one evening over cheese souffles. “I took him to a book factory today and did a demonstration for the press. I think everyone can see the potential. I may even be winning over some of the unions. But…” He sighed.

  “The Tyrellian Corporation?” she asked. She might only understand half of what he said—all right, more like a quarter—but she’d heard the name come up often enough to guess.

  “At every turn.” He shook his head. “I don’t know why they’re so adamant. I’m guessing it has something to do with their former president, though.”

  Amanda hadn’t heard anything about this, and she kept quiet, hoping he would explain without being asked.

  He took a few more bites, then obliged. “There’s no way to know what really happened, though. He was forced off the board in some disgrace. My father probably knew something—Mr. Tyrellian had worked with him. I even met the man once. I was only a child—and something about him frightened me, but I didn’t know what.” He chuckled. “Anyhow. My father said nothing to me about it. But if it had anything to do with automation, that would explain a sore spot for the company. But still.” He sighed again, then shook his head as if shaking off the cares of the day and smiled at Amanda. “You don’t have to eat in here, you know. I’m sure I bore you.”

  He didn’t. “That’s all right. I appreciate the company.”

  “Oh, company. That reminds me.” He pulled a slip of paper from his jacket pocket and handed it to her. “We’ll be expected to host the first holiday ball this year. I don’t know how Virginia does it, but here nobody else would dream of having a ball until the governor opens the season. And now that I have a wife—” here he smiled, “—expectations will run a bit higher than in the past few years.”

  She unfolded the paper and found a list of important points for the party.

  “Not that you’ll need to do anything,” he assured. “The servants will run the thing, but you’ll be expected to play the role of hostess. I hope that’s not too much to ask.” His tone was apologetic, as if instead of asking her to put on a beautiful dress and dance he were requesting that she spend all day scrubbing the lavatories.

  “I can do that,” was all she said.

  “Excellent.” His smile made her feel sick. “Now, how was your day? Any projects coming along?”

  She had long since giving up describing her day, since he was not nearly as good at pretending to listen as she was. Instead, she reported on what she’d been learning and tried to make it sound as though she had some practical application for it.

  As always, he smiled and said, “I’m eager to see what you come up with,” excused himself, bid her goodnight, and disappeared to bed.

  Then she would always follow his example and retreat to her haven of silk and fluffiness to try to drown her worries in sleep.

  One evening she was in a chair reading about positronic theory and he walked through the doors and
settled himself at his desk across the room. She wasn’t too absorbed in her reading to notice, and his appearance was rare enough to cause her heart to flutter with surprise, but she pretended not to be aware of him. She kept her nose between the book’s pages.

  “Would you mind turning the heater down?” he asked, not turning to her.

  She slipped from her chair and dialed the temperature down a few notches.

  “Thank you,” he said, still displaying only the back of his head.

  An automated voice spoke softly into the silence. “It is now nine o’ clock p.m.”

  It was so much smoother than the intonation of the mill’s AI. This could almost be the voice of a person. Almost. It was close, but it was still missing some quality that would have made it fully human.

  As if the voice had been a reminder, Byron stopped writing, sat up, and turned towards Amanda with a smile. “How are your projects coming along?”

  Her heart sped up. What was she supposed to say? The closest she’d come to a project was welding five metal plates together to make herself a box to hold her tools.

  “So far so good,” she said. “I’m sorry it’s so slow. I’ve been focusing on polishing my programming skills.” It was not untrue. When her brain got tired, she liked to fiddle with the calculating machines, both their software and hardware. And she was learning. She just—wasn’t inspired.

  “What ideas have you had?” he asked.

  She bit her lip. “I’ve—had some trouble being inspired.” There. Finally, some honesty. But just how far could lack of inspiration get her? At some point she would have to power forward.

  Goodness, would he truly divorce her if he found how useless she was finding herself to be?

  He rested his chin on the back of his chair and peered thoughtfully at her in the dim electric light. “Do you lack anything you need?”

  “Oh no,” she said, his gaze tying a knot in her stomach. “I’m just still—baking some ideas.”

  He smiled, and the expression turned the knot into a weight. “I look forward to seeing the fruit of these ideas.”