“Whoa.” Evan pulled the kind of face that emojis could never capture: mouth screwed up, eyes slightly out of focus, eyebrows riding high above a grimace that seemed to say, I don’t know what you make of this all, but damn, what a show!
In his pod-chair, Charlie was slumped in classic kid-posture—a sprawl of boneless lethargy, except for his arms. These were animate as tentacles, weaving, swishing, fingers wriggling like strange sea creatures, plucking invisible meanings from the air. Here was the performance to which his earlier fumblings had been a kind of rude prelude. Anyone could tell the gestures constituted a language—just not a human one.
The patterns in the screen were eerily similar: curls, twists, and ribbonings of color, animate icons of light.
“Good God,” Aya breathed.
“That’s no home semaphore,” said Evan. “No, sir.”
It wasn’t ASL either, Jo knew, or any other human sign system. She’d checked. It was a language, she suspected, that had never been used anywhere outside this house.
She became aware of a stumbling pressure, a bumping hip, a foot on her toe. Teesha was railroading the whole group down the hall. In the bedroom, Teesha eased the doorway partway shut, peeking out into the hall. “Can Charlie hear us in here?”
Jo sat on the bed. “He wouldn’t notice if he did.”
“Now that,” Evan pointed down the hall, “is quality specter-speak.”
“But is it—” Sun Min restarted her question. “What is it?”
“It’s how they talk. Mostly. Though not usually at that level. By which I mean, well—” Evan socked his tongue into his cheek. “Is Charlie, uh, special?”
“In what way?”
“You know, gifted?”
“He used to be,” Sun Min said.
“A smart kid?”
“Charlie is . . . mathy.”
“Focused.”
“On the spectrum.”
They all had their own terms for it, picked up in parent gossip, office chatter, the world of online mom-chats.
“Charlie,” Jo said, “he latches onto things.”
“I mean, the kid’s a nerd. Right?” Teri shrugged. “We wanted a nerd. It’s what we paid for. A boy who’d ace the tests.”
“And not a girl?” Evan’s question evoked a chorus of half-hearted mumbles.
“It’s a bump,” Jo explained. “Having a boy. The top-ranked colleges are 65 percent women. The top-paid professions are 65 percent men. Think about it.”
“Okay,” Evan said noncommittally, puffing his cheeks.
“What did you mean, it’s how they talk?” Sun Min narrowed her eyes. For the past few minutes she’d been compulsively clicking the clasp of her handbag. “It’s like a code?”
“Well, technically it’s all code.” Evan grinned as they groaned. “I mean, the ghosts, they came out of the omnicom craze, right? So, like, everything has a mind, okay? Your shirt, your coffeemaker, your car. Well, what kind of stuff is a shirt gonna talk about? If it talks to a coffeemaker, what’re they gonna talk about? If all those things are talking to each other—”
“But they still have to talk to people.”
“Sure. But the thing about smart devices, they’re mostly talking to other devices, about people. The whole point of the internet of things is it’s networked. So if you’re a free-floatin’ free-lovin’ higher-level entity that grew out of all those little programs—well, how the world looks to you, it’s probably mostly not about human language. Like, User72 is heading southwest at sixty miles per hour on Highway 92, elevated blood pressure, restless, making hungry faces, scanning the map. . . . You put that all on a screen, what do you get? They can use some English, sure. But they don’t think like we do. So they don’t talk like we do, either.”
“But they don’t think at all.” Aya’s voice had a calculated coolness, the tone she probably used to close agenda items in meetings. “So what makes anyone think they’re talking at all?”
Evan looked at his toes. To Jo, at that moment, he looked just like Charlie, getting grilled on his social skills in some therapist’s office. He brought up his head with sigh. “Look, you’ve got a couple of options here—”
“We want to get rid of it.” Aya cut him off.
“Okay, but listen—”
“No. We want to get rid of it.”
“Can’t we just chase it off?” Sun Min was still fussing with her handbag. “Get it out of the house, but not, you know, kill it?”
“Well, you can do that. But they usually come back. Creatures of routine, right? Once they bond with a child—I mean, once they’ve linked to a user—”
“I don’t understand.” Teesha swung an arm to break into the conversation. “It’s software. Ones and ohs. If we try to delete it, can’t it copy itself?”
“Sure. They don’t really like to do that, though.”
“Huh?”
“Yeah.” Evan’s inner geek broke through in a goofy smile. “Well, it’s a funny thing. The thinking is, if you’re nothing but a trail of bits, copying is like a form of movement, right? Imagine you left a clone of yourself every time you took a step. Well, to a program, what we think of as movement is basically a special case of copying, except you delete the original version. That’s part of what makes these things so special. A virus copies. A ghost moves.”
“So if we delete it, you’re saying, it’s gone.”
“If we can manage to delete it, yeah.”
The words had a solemn power—the power, Jo suspected, of any statement of finality. It took her a while to realize everyone was looking at her. Jo made herself focus on Evan. She had a vision of Charlie all grown up, stranded in some weird niche job, letting his hair run riot, dead-ending his life. Becoming this man.
“It’s like we discussed, Jo,” Evan said.
“Right,” Jo sighed. “Like we discussed.” She got up and said, “Let’s do it, then.” And headed down the hall to Charlie’s room.
He was at the learning station, still signing with Sparklybits, performing those strange, lavish gestures. Jo thought of Evan’s explanation, how a coffeemaker might talk to a car, a car to a faucet, a faucet to a chair, but none of that struck her as having much to do with language. Language was about empathy, expression. Sharing something other than information.
“Charlie.” She slid into his line of sight. He registered her presence, blinked, broke from the screen, and gave a mind-clearing shake of his head. The human child slowly came back into his face.
“We’re doing a new puzzle,” he said.
“That’s great. But Charlie, listen, I need you to put away the puzzles for now. There’s something important we have to talk about.”
His eyes became deerlike, anticipating a shock. Did he know what was coming? Not a chance, Jo thought. There would have been tears, shouts, a crisis.
“This man,” she said, “needs to talk to Sparklybits.”
“No,” Charlie whispered, so faint Jo was sure no one else had heard. She tried to ignore the lance of ice in her heart.
“Hey, there, Charlie!” Evan used that awful adult-talking-to-a-kid voice, lowering his bulk to the floor with a grunt. Charlie glanced over, noted his existence, and turned back to Jo, saying only to her, “Mom, please.”
“Sparklybits, Charlie, he has to be . . .” Jo couldn’t finish.
“It’s okay, man.” Evan rocked backward, wriggling a hand into his shorts pocket. “We just need to keep him from running around loose. Catch him and put him in a safe place, you know?”
Jo winced. Did they really want to tell him that? Before she could send a signal to Evan, though, Teri picked up the theme. “That’s right, Charlie. We need to make sure he’s safe.”
“It’s for the best,” Aya said.
“For your health,” said Teri.
“There are other ghosts,” Sun Min added. “All different kinds. Different types of AIs. Right?” To Evan.
“Oh, sure,” Evan soothed, “all kinds. I mean, I even have a
bunch. At home.”
Again, Jo made eyes at him, but Teesha was talking.
“And all kinds of other friends. Real friends. Wouldn’t it be nice, Charlie, to have some human friends?”
“We’ll just snatch him right up and make a nice home for him.” Evan pulled out a gizmo and plugged it into the learning station, making various IT-dude adjustments. “To do that, though, Charlie, we need to know where he is. And to do that, we’re going to need your help.” Looking up from his gear, he mouthed over Charlie’s head, Ready.
Charlie was still staring at Jo. She knew what he wanted from her. Not reassurance, not explanations, but someone to cut through all the placating bullshit, tell him how things really were. Curling her fingers around his hand, pushing down her emotions to make room for his, Jo said, “We have to do this, Puppa. I should have told you sooner. I’m sorry.”
“No.” He mouthed the word, then howled it. “N-o-o-o-o!” Before Jo could react, they were in full meltdown mode. Charlie grabbed her arm as if to claw his way up it, into her head where he could change her mind. “No, no, no!” Jo avoided looking at the others. Charlie really did seem, right now, like a much younger child, emotionally stunted, behind the curve. Lagging, undeniably lagging, as he vented his grief in a series of screams.
“I’m sorry,” Jo said, struggling to hold him. “Puppa, I’m sorry.” But every apology, she knew, was a sentence handed down, a judgment, a verdict, a punishment. As if his sorrow had exceeded the reach of human speech, Charlie jerked away and made a sweeping gesture, lifting and thrusting out his fists.
“Charlie!” Aya gasped, mistaking it for an act of aggression. But the only violence here was the violence of passion. Charlie’s fists opened into a gesture of loss, gathering in toward his chest and flinging outward, as if hurling clusters of invisible blossoms, expressing a sentiment for which English had no words. It struck Jo as curiously archaic, elemental, like something from an opera or pagan ritual, a display of mourning the modern world had lost. She wondered how the ghost would express its distinctive digital experience, looking back through the networks of the world and seeing a million lost copies of itself.
As Charlie continued his ballet of supplication, the lights fluttered, the walls groaned, the screen of the learning station began to swirl. Streaks of light curved down and inward, forming gentle cupping lines. Sparklybits had come to see what was the matter, concerned for its suffering human companion. Poking its cyber-nose, like an animal, right into their trap.
Without a sound, without any obvious signal, the room subtly changed, becoming stiller, steadier, as the screen of the learning station blanked, leaving only a few blocky pieces of the puzzle that Charlie had been building with his friend.
“Got him,” Evan said.
Dropping his arms, Charlie sank to the carpet, wrapping his arms around his head. Teri stroked his hair. Sun Min murmured explanations. Teesha bustled up with grandmotherly authority. But Charlie dragged his pod-chair to the corner and sat staring at the empty wall. And Jo couldn’t help feeling, even though everyone gathered around to apologize, that this last gesture of rejection had been meant entirely for her.
No one spoke as they went outside and stood shuffling their feet on the concrete steps, all somehow avoiding, by one shared instinct, the temptation to glance back into the house. Charlie followed them, but there was no forgiveness in this act; Jo knew it was only a concession to routine. As they squinted into the reddening sun, Evan jogged down the steps, moving in the springy sideways trot that Jo associated with more athletic men. On the path he looked up, he shaded his eyes.
“Well, if it ever happens again . . . you know who to call.” Evan hesitated, seeming to feel something more was needed. Then he cocked a finger at the house, squinted one eye, and said, “Zap.”
Don’t overdo it, Jo thought, glaring down. Evan swung his arm in what was probably supposed to be a bow. “Luh-ay-dies.” A moment later they were watching his truck putter away.
“Well, Charlie.” Teri squatted, shining her camera-ready smile into his face. “I’m so sorry we didn’t get to catch up more. I love love love to see you, sweetie.”
“Yes, so much,” murmured the other moms.
“And you know, Charlie,” Sun Min hesitated, maybe second-guessing what she’d been about to say, but plowing ahead anyway, “it really was the right decision.”
“Yes.” Aya nodded. “For your future.”
“For the family,” Teesha said.
“Kiss goodbye?” Teri squealed, flinging out her arms. The question usually won from Charlie a grudging hug. Today it received only agonizing silence. Hanging their heads like scolded children, the moms shuffled away down the path, holding key fobs aloft to let out a froglike chorus of peeps, summoning their rental cars from the village lot. They would already be rehearsing, Jo thought, the things they’d say to other parents at the office, to colleagues and boyfriends, to their own mothers at home—in Tokyo, in London, in airplanes, clubs, bars: “Mothering is hard.” “It can break your heart.” “Just be glad you don’t have kids.” Jo herself was wondering what she’d say at work, in response to the inevitable Monday morning questions.
The Zephyr had come out to wait in the drive. Charlie jerked open the rear door, flumped in, and slammed it. Jo got into the driver’s seat, tapping a route into the console. They pooted out, following the golden trails of cyberspace, turned at the corner, and rumbled through the gate. On the highway, they took the second exit, bumping down to a strange part of town.
“Mom?” Charlie broke his vow of silence, leaning forward to put his face between the headrests. “Where we going?”
“No Doctor Brezler, today,” Jo said over her shoulder. “We have, uh, another appointment.” Without looking, she put a hand behind her ear, grazing his cheek with her knuckles. “Change of plans, Puppa.”
If he guessed what she had in mind, he didn’t let on. The car zagged through a series of turns, paused in front of a pizza parlor, recalibrating, then set off into a section of town that seemed to have been rezoned for random uses. People were squatting in public garages, selling scrap out of gutted franchises; an old YMCA had been refitted to house a group of refugees. Folks in the street sold vegetables, flags, homemade liquor. The car wriggled through a cluster of tents.
Only when they were a block away did Jo begin to recognize the area. The building itself was unremarkable, a strip mall in which most of the units had been converted to shabby apartments. The last shop, a former game parlor, still had a tangle of fluorescent tubes in the window, tracing the outlines of crossed pool cues. A hand-painted sign read “Ghostblasters!”
“Mom?”
Jo clucked for silence. If she’d learned anything from this ordeal, it was not to say too much, too soon.
The door jingled a welcome. No one stood at the dusty counter where a register had once been perched, no one guarded the fire-retardant curtains that blocked off most of the main floor. Jo pushed them apart. The place was smaller than she remembered, but jam-packed with the kind of interesting clutter that can make a room feel paradoxically large. Appliances, drives, peripherals, gadgets, all sprawled across the old, battered pool tables, linked by kelpy mats of wire. Looking them over, Jo was mostly conscious of a festive abundance of lights. Like candles, she thought. Like a birthday surprise.
“Boo.” The sound actually made Jo jump. Evan popped from behind the nearest table, brandishing the palm-sized gizmo he’d brought to the house. He presented it with a flourish. “Madame? Your ghost.”
Jo turned to Charlie, expecting—but she wasn’t sure what she was expecting. He seemed not to have heard what Evan was saying. He was staring goggle-eyed at the wilderness of wires, this doll-size metropolis of tiny night fires. His hands lifted, clutching. Jo didn’t need Sparklybits to tell her what the gesture meant.
“Like it?” Evan said.
“They’re so—what are they?”
“Ghosts.” Evan reached out, letting his hand fall
on a gadget at random, a toaster, walking backward to get a closer look. “This one, let’s see, this is old Elmo. Ancient feller, small memory, doesn’t need a lotta space. I keep him here and let him ring the bell. Every once in a while I hook him up for some TV time. He likes that.”
Charlie ambled along the aisles, lifting his feet as if by practice over the rubber strips laid over the roots of bundled cable, his eyes locking on to one gadget after another. Evan shambled behind him.
“Over here we have Skittles. One of our big vocal communicators. Talks in a tone-scale kind of like a whalesong. Probably appeared in a house that was blind-adapted, sound-heavy interfaces, that kinda thing. Had a real tight bond with this girl up in the estates. This here, this is Wanda. Kind of a retiring type, but she just loves chasing fingers on a touchscreen. The simularium, here? That’s our condo. Whole ghost family packed inside.”
“This . . . this is so harsh.”
“I’m not up on the lingo, man, but I’ll take that as a compliment. Have a look around. Tap the screens, touch buttons, whatever. Maybe break out some semaphores. They love the attention.”
As Charlie worked his way through the gizmos—hesitant, at first, then with growing enthusiasm, and finally with invincible levels of absorption—Evan sidled up to Jo, whispering, “So. We’re good?”
She lifted a shoulder. “Seems that way.”
“You were right, then, huh? Day-yum. Whole thing went off like you said.”
Jo nodded, not wanting to tell him how wrong he was, how far the day’s events had diverged from her expectations. Evan wagged the device, its corkscrewed tail of cable flopping: the new home of one Sparklybits.
“How’s that whole deal work, anyway? Like, those other ladies, they just chip in some money? Rent your kid for a weekend or something? I never understood the whole co-op family thing.”
Jo kept silent. Evan must have seen in her face that he’d brought up a not-OK subject. “Well, anyway,” he shrugged, “you were right about how they’d take it. I wonder what they’ll think, if they find out you—”
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