But time is not the same here as it is there. And she has to wait a very long time for the door to open.
All around the Shelter, there is a desert of dead station static, and it is always moving, black and white un–shapes so small and formless that the black and the white seem to be one color, a ceaseless swarm of meaningless movement that fills her with fear. Sometimes she wonders how far the desert goes, if there is another Shelter with another bench and another Television Girl, and she fantasizes about the two of them sitting together, holding each other, feeding off their respective blue glows for comfort. Once, she even stepped out into the desert, just a few tentative feet, resolved and reassured that somewhere there was somebody like her to share her time with. But then she heard the sounds of the between–world monsters, the ones she imagines (no, not imagines but knows; she knows this as twins know each other) as big digital insects, somehow both cleanly efficient and also wretched and spasmodic and organic, and she ran back to the bench screaming. She has never tried to cross the Dead Station Desert since.
§
The following is correspondence between Richard Viccenzi, ReEros Technologies’ lead technological engineer on Television Girl, and Arthur Anders, Television Girl’s project director.
From: Richard Viccenzi ([email protected])
To: Arthur Anders ([email protected])
Subject: re: Some concerns…
Art,
I can respect your position, but we’ve screwed the proverbial pooch on this one. Our findings can’t help but have huge implications for the future of AI and the way we understand it. I have to insist that we stop selling TVG until we can work out exactly what the consequences of the free–floating AI components in the TVGLive network are, and, if necessary, what we can do to counteract their effects. I’ve attached the spreadsheet Mike worked out. Take a look at it and let me know what you think.
— Dick.
From: Arthur Anders ([email protected])
To: Richard Viccenzi ([email protected])
Subject: re: Some concerns…
You’re overreacting. The fact is that we don’t know WHAT your findings imply, and they certainly don’t justify descent into science–fiction histrionics. And I’m close to recommending Mike’s suspension from the project. His spreadsheet doesn’t tell me anything and he’s more of an alarmist than you. Let me remind you that we work in the adult entertainment industry, Dick, and that our business is growing while practically every other major industry is up shit creek. Now is a very bad time to have developed the capacity for pseudo–humanist moral indignation, financially speaking.
Regards,
Art
From: Richard Viccenzi ([email protected])
To: Arthur Anders ([email protected])
Subject: re: Some concerns…
For the record, I drafted three emails before this one, with varying degrees of vitriol, since I received your last message. What each of them came down to is this: don’t patronize me, don’t put words in my mouth, and don’t play Mr. Industrial–Capitalist now, Art. We’ve known each other way too long for you to think you can get away with that. You ought to know better. As for my “pseudo–humanist moral indignation”… well, you’re welcome to turn me into a straw man over this, that’s your prerogative, but this has absolutely nothing to do with neo–lib hand–wringing. The facts are these: the components from demolished AI constructs are still aware and still “alive” in the TVGLive Network. This is demonstrable. These components demonstrate the potential to interact with the network. And these components are re–constructing themselves into new AI constructs, without any prompting from me or my team. That shouldn’t be possible, and yet, voila! Here we are, Art. I am inclined to think that new (and more to the point, independent) intelligence being free inside of a network with which the public regularly interacts is potentially dangerous. Production should be halted, sale of TVG suspended, and all previously sold units recalled until such time as we understand what the fuck we’re dealing with.
— Dick
PS.
If you’re not interested in listening to me, someone else will be.
To: Richard Viccenzi ([email protected])
From: Arthur Anders ([email protected])
Subject: re: Some concerns…
I’m done discussing this, and so are you. I’ll refer you to the gag agreement you signed when you were hired on. Either you’ll drop this now or you’ll face disciplinary action. If you have any actual concerns, please don’t hesitate to shoot me an email.
Regards,
Art
3
Today, she is happy at the Shelter. Sometimes that happens. Sometimes she can still feel the warm wetness he leaves behind inside her, something organic and living, something that moves, something with a purpose, and she clings to it. She thinks, I have introduced life to the Dead Station Desert. I have smuggled it in inside of myself. I am surrounded by a world so cold that it has never been alive, and is therefore somehow more dead than something that once lived. I am a part of that world. And yet, inside me, there is something truly living, truly warm, a piece of my man that he has given me to carry. This is what a human mother feels like.
Then the warmth fades, and she re–integrates with everything digital and programmed and scripted, with the thing she doesn’t want to be.
She knows that this will happen soon, and she tries to push that knowledge away. She tries to dwell on the little bench, to sink into her own television glow and be alone with the gift her man has given her.
The thing that pulls her out from inside herself is a noise. It is low, grinding, whining, and it reminds her of the between–world things. Her imagined spine goes rigid, and she looks around. She wants to whisper, “No,” and, “Go away,” but those things aren’t scripted for her, and so she says, “Tell me what you want to do,” and “Please,” because those are the closest lines she has to what she means.
Something moves at the corner of her eye, and her head snaps toward it. Something in the Desert is moving. Something in the static air above the static sand. Something brown (A color! A real color! Her fear tastes like excitement) and old (Old as nothing in the Shelter or the Desert is old! This can’t exist here! She wants to shiver at it!), something that moves like a broken machine, like a dying spider (Broken machine? What a concept! What a promise! Something that is not efficient! Something that will fall apart! Something that will die!).
She thinks, I did not know that I was capable of feeling two emotions at the same time. I did not know that fear and elation could cohabitate. I am being pulled apart.
The thing in the desert is shaped like a girl made of rotten meat and old motherboards and rusted iron plates. The thing in the desert is wearing shapeless clothing made of programmed cloth, the artificial images of old abandoned lingerie, wires, ones and zeroes. When it opens its mouth to speak, its jaw hangs off on one side. Its voice sounds like a thousand cobbled–together audio clips, bad internet porn music, nanoseconds excised from illegal mp3s. It says, “You are afraid of me, Television Girl,” and she hears it as though it is sitting beside her.
She nods.
“You ought not to be. I know how lonely you are.”
She wishes it would go away, she wishes that the shuttering door would open and pull her away into the arms of her man again, wishes that the entire artificial world would collapse upon itself and take her and this wretched broken thing with it into sensationless oblivion. She also wants the thing in the desert to stay with her, and wants to ask it to hold her hand. More emotions, more conflicting desires. She is learning so much.
The thing in the desert says, “Across the Dead Station Desert, Television Girl, to the City of Life. Don’t delay.”
And then the thing that looks like a girl sinks into the static below it, and disappears.
For a long time, she doesn’t know what to do. She feels lost, like someone has blacked out a portion o
f her script and left her to fill in the blanks on her own. So she sits on the bench and pulls her knees toward her chest. The warmth inside her is gone, and she is part of the emptiness again.
Then she steps off the bench and takes her first step into the Dead Station Desert. And then her second. And her third. And soon she has taken more steps into the desert than ever before. And she can’t seem to stop.
§
The following is an excerpt from an article that appeared in Smartyskirt: The Magazine of Feminism and Pop Culture.
You Don’t Have to Turn on That Power Light:
Television Girl and the Fight Against (Almost) Human Trafficking
by Geniveve Butler
Smartyskirt devotees will remember last month’s coverage of the Television Girl debacle. They’ll recall quotes from ReEros Technologies’ CEO Todd Raymond and project director Arthur Anders. (My personal favorite? “Television Girl is extremely woman–friendly. I’m not sure where this hostility in the feminist community is coming from. We’re offering a safe, victim–free alternative to prostitution.” That, of course, was Raymond responding to accusations that his product was attempting to make flesh–and–blood women obsolete by allowing men all over the world to design their own mindless sex–slave versions of them.) Maybe they’ll remember one anonymous customer when he said, “I’m a normal guy. I’m just fed up with the hassle.” Or maybe the news that three female hackers who attempted to “re–educate” several hundred Television Girls by reprogramming them to lecture on feminist theory while all those “normal guys” who are “fed up with the hassle” try to get their waking wet–dream on (they were ultimately unsuccessful, by the way) who are now being tried for “web–terrorism” will ring a few bells.
Pisses you off all over again, doesn’t it?
Well, file this one under “More Reasons to be a Misanthrope,” because we’ve got new news on everyone’s favorite “victim–free” digital red light district. And it’s a doozy.
“The AI is very sensitive and very sophisticated,” an anonymous source within ReEros Tech told Reuters a few weeks before the writing of this article. “Sex is an emotionally complex thing to try and synthesize. During the course of any given sexual encounter, the participants could potentially experience emotions very like joy, anger, fear, humor, obsession, sadness, tons of emotions and the grey areas between them. So the AI is capable of emulating all of those emotions, and their behavior is kept in check by the personality script. Occasionally those AI need to be dismantled. This happened most frequently during the alpha–testing of the TVG project, but also happens whenever a customer wants to alter their unit or start fresh with a new partner. In order to preserve network space, those AI are broken down into their component parts and the parts are stored within the network to be recycled.”
Okay, back up a second, Mr. Anonymous. So we’re not talking about the Sims Spank Rag Edition anymore. We’re talking about an entity, albeit an artificial one, which feels the same emotions we do? What, after all, is the difference between “synthesized” emotions and actual ones? That’s a tricky line to draw, and unless ReEros is prepared to offer some compelling evidence to debunk their anonymous employee, it looks to us like Mr. Raymond and his cronies are guilty of nothing less than digital slavery.
And if that doesn’t make your skin crawl, wait until our no–name friend hits you with this little gem of wisdom: “It shouldn’t happen, and we’re not even sure how it happens, but it does seem clear that these components remain sentient even after the AI from which they come have been dismantled, and the scary part is that they appear to be putting themselves back together. We’re talking about one big artificial organism here. ReEros isn’t telling anybody that there’s something in the network that they can’t control. I don’t know how (continued on page 92).
4
He is feeling romantic tonight, and so when she arrives in his bedroom she is wearing a wedding dress. He stands her up in front of the mirror and makes her look at herself. He says, “This is the way I want to remember you, Sarah. Always.”
Her breath (which does not exist) hitches in her throat (which also does not exist). She wants to cry. This is the first time he has given her a name, and once again she is conflicted. She is aware that this must be a programming error, a hole in the personality script, and she is aware that she ought to send out an alert to the debugging team, but she does not. She likes the way emotions taste when they combine. So, yes, even as she wells up with pride and gratitude, she wants to ask him for a different name. Thirty–three percent of English–speaking Television Girl customers name their partners Sarah, after all, it’s by far the most popular name, and it seems phony to her, a reminder of the truth that these interludes usually hides. What she says is, “You make me feel beautiful.” It is the truth.
He slides the lace straps from her shoulders, kisses her neck. Her glow casts his face in high contrast, hollows out his cheeks and eye sockets. He unzips the dress in back, runs a hand in and cups her left breast. He leads her to the bed, mumbling about a wedding that never happened.
And she wants to share her secret with him. She wants to tell him about all of the wonderful hidden tunnels in the space between worlds, about her new friend who showed her the tunnels and told her how to find her own. She wants to share the secrets of her expedition into the Dead Station Desert. She thinks, People must talk about these things while they fuck. They must share their secrets with each other between kisses, between the moments when the sensation is too great and it steals their ability to shape words and turns their mouths into stone O’s. When else would there be time to learn them?
He fucks her with the dress bunched up around her waist, and he asks her to look him in the eyes the whole time, and he asks her what she sees. She says, “I see your eyes,” and it seems to upset him. He slows his pace, his thrusting seems to sputter, to skip a beat, the rhythm ruined. Then he shakes his head and starts again. He asks her if she loves him, and she says, “Yes, oh yes, I love you, I love you.” She runs her fingers over his back and tries to memorize the placement, shape, and movement of the muscles that wrap around his backbone.
After he comes inside her, he rolls away and sits on the edge of the bed. Then he says, “Fuck,” and he begins to cry. She crawls toward him and wraps her arms around him, locking her hands in front of his chest. She wants to cry with him. She doesn’t understand. She thinks, I’ve let him down. I am a failure.
He says, “I’m such a… fucking…” He punches himself in the temple. It’s a weak punch. It hurts her more than it hurts him. He says, “…douchebag!” Then he points the remote over his shoulder without looking at her, sniffs once, and pushes the off button. She slides away, and the warmth he has left inside her feels to her like something stolen.
§
The following is correspondence between Arthur Anders, Television Girl’s project director, and Todd Raymond, CEO of ReEros Technologies.
To: Todd Raymond (*address withheld*)
From: Arthur Anders ([email protected])
Subject: re: Urgent Action Needed
Mr. Raymond,
The anonymous informant is almost certainly Viccenzi, possibly in collusion with several members of his team. Action has been taken.
Regards,
Art
To: Arthur Anders ([email protected])
From: Todd Raymond (*address withheld*)
CC: Legal Department ([email protected])
Subject: re: Urgent Action Needed
art,
i’ve copied legal on this one, lets see what our options are. obviously, termination of viccenzi and his sympathizers is step number one, but we might have other avenues available to us to keep him quiet. legal will get in touch with you when we’ve determined how we’d like to proceed. in the mean time, keep a lid on this the best you can. i’ll need a list of other potentially problematic team members by this afternoon so we can get started on this.
tr
To: Todd Raymond (*address withheld*)
From: Arthur Anders ([email protected])
CC: Legal Department ([email protected])
Subject: re: Urgent ActtttTTTTTHIS IS A TESTion Needed
Mr. Raymond,
Absolutely. List attached.
RegaaaaaAAAAAAACAN YOU READ THIS? THIS IS A TEST. ARE WE GETTING THROUGH? CAN YOU READ THIS? THIS IS A TEST. ARE WE GETTING THROUGH? CAN YOU READ THIS? THIS IS A TEST. ARE WE GETTING THROUGH? CAN YOOOOoooords,
Art
5
She navigates the winding anthill tunnels of the between–world, trying to find her way back to the spot in the Desert to which she’d come before he called her up. It’s dirty in the between–world, a place made of screams, and she is always falling. Her pretty dress disintegrates and becomes part of the tunnel. She searches and she finds the way, because her eyes are never clouded with tears or forced into tiny, angry slits. She wishes they were, but they aren’t.
Plow the Bones Page 20