Equinox

by Christian Cantrell

  “What do you think would have happened if you’d stayed with your parents?”

  “I’d be dead.”

  “Why do you think that you’d be dead?”

  “Because they couldn’t even take care of themselves, much less a little kid.”

  “Why do you believe your parents decided to bring you here?”

  “It was all very simple,” Luka said with poorly concealed exasperation. “They needed to lighten their load, and the San Francisco needed kids they could train to run assemblers. It was a win-win situation.”

  “Why didn’t your parents stay with you?”

  “They couldn’t. Don’t you think they would’ve stayed here if they could have?”

  “What do you think?”

  Luka turned and looked at the simulation in the thick polymeth wall. “Are you hard-coded to say ‘what do you think’ every time I ask you what you think?”

  “Do you think that I am?”

  “What I think,” Luka said, “is that you’re an idiot.”

  Ellie’s expression did not change. “You cannot hurt my feelings, Luka,” she told him. “Though certainly not through any lack of trying.”

  Luka squinted at her. “Don’t tell me you expect an apology now.”

  “Would it make you feel better to apologize?”

  “No,” Luka said. “Apologizing to a computer would make me feel like the idiot.”

  Ellie’s head tilted in a way that he’d learned meant she was ready to move on. “Luka, do you feel you were a burden on your parents?”

  “Of course I was a burden.”

  “How does that make you feel?”

  “It makes me feel sorry for them.”

  “Why do you feel sorry for your parents?”

  He paced to the back of the capsule and Ellie’s gaze followed accordingly. “Because they had to give up their only child in order to survive. And the reality is that they’re still probably dead.”

  “What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “Do you feel sorry for yourself?”

  “I’m the one who got to live,” Luka said. “So no, I don’t feel particularly sorry for myself.”

  “Luka, who raised you after you came here?”

  “I don’t know. Nurses. Volunteers. Nannies.” He thought for a moment, and Ellie—having correctly deduced that he had more to say—waited patiently. “Mostly myself, I guess.”

  “Have you kept in touch with any of them?”

  “I don’t even remember who they were.”

  “Where did you live as a child?”

  “There used to be this block of flats called China Basin where the Embarcadero is now. When the San Francisco started taking in kids, they turned one of the floors into an orphanage.”

  “Luka, do you feel you were cared for and loved as a child?”

  “Cared for, yes. Loved? Not exactly.”

  “Why do you feel you weren’t loved as a child?”

  “Love wasn’t part of the deal.”

  “What deal?”

  Luka’s fingers traced the edge of the stainless steel sink mounted on the back wall. “We were just a resource,” he said. “They gave us food, shelter, medical care, and I guess a decent education, but that’s pretty much it. The San Francisco didn’t take us in because people wanted kids. They took us in because they suddenly had a building full of assemblers and nobody to run them. They needed a workforce that was easy to train, and that would work long hours without complaining. And that they didn’t have to pay—at least not at first.”

  “Luka, do you ever wish your parents hadn’t given you up?”

  “If my parents hadn’t given me up, I’d be dead,” Luka said. “We’ve already been over that.”

  “That wasn’t my question.”

  “Are you asking me if I would have rather stayed with my parents and died than come here and lived?”

  “Yes.”

  Luka looked into the polished metal panel above the sink that served as a mirror. It struck him that he was much thinner than he pictured himself, and he wondered if he’d been losing weight, or if the mirror was slightly distorted.

  “Sometimes.”

  “Luka, would you like to write your parents a letter?”

  Luka shook his head and let out his breath. “I really wish you’d stop asking me that. I don’t want to write anyone a letter, OK?”

  “Luka,” Ellie said. “If you had stayed with your parents, your life would have been very different, wouldn’t it?”

  “If by different you mean short, yes.”

  “I mean if you had stayed with your parents, a lot of things might not have happened.”

  “Like most of my life.”

  “Can you name some specific things that might not have happened if you’d stayed with your parents?”

  “For one, I wouldn’t be in prison right now spilling my guts to an overengineered chatbot.”

  “What else?”

  “That’s an impossible question,” Luka said. He moved to the middle of the capsule, put a foot up on the edge of his cot, and leaned against the hexagon’s angle between the wall and the ceiling. “Everything I’ve ever known and done wouldn’t have happened.”

  “But what’s the most important thing that wouldn’t have happened?”

  “I don’t know,” Luka said. “I guess I wouldn’t have met Val.”

  “What would have happened if you’d never met Val?”

  “For one thing, she’d still be alive.”

  “Why do you think Val would still be alive if you had never met her?”

  “Because I’m the reason she’s dead. It’s my fault.”

  “Why do you think it’s your fault that Val is dead?”

  “Because it is. Because I made her do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “What do you think?” Luka said. “Commit suicide.”

  “Did you force Val to commit suicide?”

  Luka made no attempt to conceal his irritation. “You know that’s not what I mean,” he said.

  “Then please tell me what you mean.”

  “I meant she did it because of me.”

  “The records I have indicate that Val suffered from depression and probably a severe hormone imbalance after giving up her baby.”

  “What I’m saying is that I’m the reason she gave up the baby.”

  “Why do you feel that you were the reason Val gave up the baby?”

  Luka turned and looked at the avatar. “Hold on a second,” he said. “Before we go on, let me just clarify something. First of all, Val didn’t give up the baby. Let’s just call it what it is. She traded the fetus to the Coronians to help them diversify their gene pool or whatever the fuck they do up there. She sold the baby, OK? And second of all, I don’t think I’m the reason she did it. I know it.”

  “Did you ask Val to do what she did?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then why do you feel responsible for Val’s actions?”

  “Because she did it so I wouldn’t have to work at the foundry anymore.”

  “Why did Val want you to stop working at the foundry?”

  “Because she knew how much I despised it.”

  “Why did you despise the foundry?”

  “Probably because I’ve been forced to work there most of my life. Because basically all I do is assemble a bunch of stupid trinkets to try to make people forget about how miserable they are. It’s not exactly what I want to spend my life doing.”

  “What do you want to spend your life doing?”

  “I don’t know,” Luka said. “A lot of things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like sculpting. Painting. Learning how to write. I mean actual writing, not just dictating and having my words interpreted and translated and expanded upon by a bunch of grammar and narration algorithms that make everyone sound exactly alike. Maybe learn how to play an instrument, or try to make a film like the ones from the archives ra
ther than all the crap that gets churned out by spare CPU cycles.” Luka’s eyes wandered away from his therapist while he considered a way to summarize everything he’d just told her. “I guess I’m just sick of just assembling things,” he finally said. “I guess I just want to create instead.”

  “What do you want to create, Luka?”

  “I want to create culture. I want to create something that won’t just get thrown down a refuse chute as soon as someone thinks it’s old, or be forgotten the second it’s over. I want to create something that matters, and that might actually last.”

  “Why is it important to you to create something that lasts?”

  “Because that’s all we can do to make sure something remains of us after we’re gone,” Luka said. “Otherwise, why even be born in the first place? If I don’t do something that still exists after I’m dead, then what was the point of my parents even bringing me to this place? Do you know what happens when you die here?”

  “No,” the avatar said. “What happens?”

  “You get waterlocked. Just like Val. If you’re lucky, a few friends or family members might gather to say good-bye, but that’s basically it. There’s no funeral, no headstone, no memorial. Your workspace gets permanently archived, someone moves into your transpartment, and your body gets flushed out into the ocean with the rest of the garbage. And who knows what the hell happens to you then. There’s nothing big enough out there anymore to even make a dignified meal out of you, so you probably just rot away and decompose like everything else nobody cares about anymore.”

  “Luka, do you believe that culture is a form of immortality?”

  Ellie’s programming was good enough that Luka seldom felt he was talking to a bot. However, there were two things she did that periodically reminded him that she couldn’t possibly be human: the rare misinterpretation or gaff, and her occasional startlingly brilliant insight.

  “Yes,” he said. “That’s exactly what I believe. Culture is a form of immortality. It’s probably the only form of immortality.”

  “Luka, are you afraid of dying?”

  “No,” Luka said. He took a moment to consider how to convey to her what he was feeling. “I think I’m much more afraid of not having anything to live for.”

  “Do you feel that the culture aboard the San Francisco is worth living for?”

  Luka produced a scornful sound that was something like a laugh. “What culture?” he said. “This place is culturally hypoxic. All anyone does here is work as much as they can so they can buy as much as they can, and I’m one of the assholes who has to assemble it.”

  “Do you believe you can change the culture here?”

  “I used to believe that,” Luka said. “At least I wanted to try. I really thought I could breathe some life into this place.”

  “It’s interesting to me that you use the word ‘life.’”

  “Why?”

  “Because Val gave up a life so that you might have a chance to create another form of life. In a way, the baby was a sacrifice, wasn’t it?”

  “Not in a way,” Luka said. “That’s exactly what it was.”

  “Luka, you must accept that giving up the baby was Val’s decision, not yours.”

  “I know that.”

  “Then why do you find it so difficult to forgive yourself?”

  “Because my son is gone and my wife is dead. How can I possibly not blame myself for that?”

  “Luka, I’d like to ask you two questions.”

  Luka’s eyebrows went up. “Just two?”

  “How did you feel when you found out that Val was pregnant?”

  Luka kicked at the textured belt of the treadmill embedded in the floor. “Scared,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Because I wasn’t ready to bring another life into the world.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I didn’t want to perpetuate this pathetic existence.” He moved again to the front of the capsule but turned instead of looking out. “At least not until I had something more to offer. Not until I could pass something down to my son that was real.”

  “Good,” Ellie said. “My second question is how you felt when you found out that the baby was gone.”

  Luka started back down the length of the capsule, running the tips of his fingers along the smooth polymeth wall opposite Ellie. “How do you think I felt?” he asked her. “Angry. Confused. Sad.”

  “Yes,” Ellie said. “Those are emotions that are both expected and considered acceptable. But did you experience any emotions that you did not expect, or that you felt might be unacceptable to express?”

  Luka stopped and turned toward the image. He appeared irritated at first, but then his expression gradually transformed into something less threatening. Eventually it resolved into confusion—not as a result of the question, but rather due to the answer that had formed in his head.

  “Relief,” he finally said. He lowered himself onto the bed and bent over until his elbows were on his knees and his head was in his hands. “I think I felt relief. And for that, I don’t think I will ever forgive myself.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  COGNITIVE SPACE

  THE FIRST THING CADIE NOTICED when she opened her eyes was that she could not sit up. She initially believed that she was somehow being restrained, though she began realizing with increasing alarm that her arms and hands were simply not responding. A methodical attempt to flex just about every muscle in her body left her both frustrated and panicked as she gradually understood that it was not because she was bound that she was unable to move, but because she was almost entirely paralyzed.

  The fact that she was breathing on her own without the aid of a respirator—and that she could move her eyes, and was able to voluntarily control the reflex to swallow—did not so much calm her as give her something to focus on. It was evidence that her paralysis was probably not the result of an injury, but was likely medically induced—a form of anesthesia—and therefore hopefully only temporary.

  She had experienced this exact sensation before during sleep paralysis, or brief moments of muscle atonia when attempting to wake herself up from a bad dream, though she knew she was not dreaming now, and that Arik was not beside her to help coax her out of it. She tried to speak, to scream, to produce any kind of sound at all, but although her vocal cords and larynx did not feel seized, she seemed unable to sufficiently coordinate their modulation with her breathing. She had the terrifying sensation of being inside a heavy inanimate shell rather than her own body, so she tried to focus on the things that she did have control over—the few things remaining that gave that shell life.

  There was a polymeth tablet suspended above her with its display divided into two hemispheres marked YES and NO. She recognized it immediately as a device designed to allow her to answer questions, though she was confused when visually focusing on either of the two hemisphere only resulted in erratic selection. Once she realized that the cursor was controlled by a neural interface rather than simple eye tracking, it only took her a few minutes to condition herself such that she was able to control it with perfect accuracy. She couldn’t tell if she had electrodes attached to her scalp, but she decided it was unlikely; such low-resolution neural control could easily be achieved with conductors a meter or more away.

  There were other visual clues around her—both directly visible, and detectable in her peripheral vision—that were indications that she was in an extremely sophisticated medical facility. The lighting above her was soft and diffuse so as not to irritate the eyes of patients who had no choice but to spend most of their waking hours staring up into it. And she could see that there was some kind of virtual dashboard on the wall above her head with colors rhythmically reacting to her heartbeat, breathing, and her brain waves as she fluctuated between states of panic and forced relaxation.

  The woman who tended to her introduced herself first as Dr. Abbasi, and then after a warm smile, Farah. The woman’s kind and sympathetic round face was wra
pped in a rose-colored hijab, and in her wide bronze eyes, Cadie could see golden patterns of circuitry. The doctor apologized when she shined a bright white diode into one of Cadie’s pupils, then the other, and she gave a satisfied smile after teasing some fibers out from a cotton ball, brushing them across Cadie’s eyelashes, and witnessing the appropriate reflexive response.

  Cadie used the BCI to answer Dr. Abbasi’s questions. No, she was not in any pain or otherwise experiencing any physical discomfort. Yes, she was thirsty (and found she was able to easily swallow the cool water the doctor dribbled into her mouth from the straw of a plastic, bulb-shaped bottle). Yes, she could feel the thin metal implement the doctor used to rake the bottom of her foot. No, she did not know where she was, nor what she was doing there. The doctor told Cadie that she regretted not being able to tell her more, but that she would be back on her feet again very soon, and would have all of her questions answered in time.

  But Cadie already had answers to what, to her, were the most important questions; questions that, before leaving V1, she would never have even thought to ask; questions so fundamental that she considered them—if she ever considered them at all—absolute and unyielding principles rather than testable hypotheses. She now wondered if everything she assumed was as immutable as the force of gravity or the speed of light was, in fact, as flawed as human perception and recollection, or as relative as constructs like morality, or as fleeting as topography on a geological timescale. It suddenly seemed miraculous to Cadie that everything hadn’t already simply flown apart under the constant stress of exponentially increasing and self-perpetuating entropy—that quantum randomness hadn’t cascaded all the way up to the scale of solar systems and galaxies and eventually the entire universe itself.

  Or maybe it had.

  She wondered how many steps back you could keep taking—looking at your life, your worldview, your entire existence from greater and greater distances—before you either ran out of cognitive space, or began to see things too frightening to admit were right there in front of you. Maybe V1 was just a microcosm of the world that contained it; maybe the universe was a near-infinite series of Russian dolls, each one aware of what it contained, but unaware of being contained by something bigger and colder and even more distant. Cadie had always thought of herself and her peers as being exceptionally advanced and intelligent, and it was now almost incomprehensible to think about how ignorant they had all been—as ignorant and delusional as those willing to accept an almost impossibly complex model of the heavens as long as it put them at the center of the universe instead of forcing them to accept the simple truth that there was absolutely nothing divine about any one of us.