“No.”
“No?”
“No. It was computer science.”
Meredith had nothing to say to that. Just looked at Sam and waited, annoyed, for an explanation.
“I wrote a little program that studies the sorts of things Livvie wrote in e-mails to you and then models them, re-creates them. I invited it to respond. It did. Well, she did. She was eager to. I didn’t make it. Her.”
“It wasn’t her.”
“It sort of was, actually.”
She got out of bed. Pulled on clothes from the pile on the floor. Said nothing. Wouldn’t even look at him. Grabbed keys and just left. Sam sank back under the covers and didn’t move for three hours. Then he called Jamie.
“I showed her the e-mail.”
“Of course you did.”
“She did not take it well.”
“If only you could have seen that coming.”
“Now what do I do?”
“How should I know, Sam? I’m not a woman—I’m a computer programmer. Worse, I’m a manager of computer programmers.”
“Not a very good one. Why do you let me go rogue, Jamie? Your job is to stop me from doing things like this.”
“Would that I could, Sam. I’d still have you working for me.”
“I was asked to develop that algorithm,” said Sam.
“But not to bring down the company,” said Jamie. “Point is, it was a good algorithm. It wasn’t wrong about you and Meredith which means it’s mathematically impossible for you to destroy this relationship which means there’s a way to fix this.”
“What?”
“I have no idea.”
“That’s not helpful.”
“Tell her the truth. The truth is always the answer, Sam.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
“Oprah. But it sounds like good advice.”
“The truth is I’m so in love with her, I’d try anything to make her love me half that much back. The truth is I’m such an arrogant prick that my response to, ‘I’m sad my grandma died,’ is, ‘Let me invent a computer program so she can write you letters.’ The truth is I’m so awkward and clueless that I think giving someone an e-mail from her dead grandmother in bed is romantic.”
“It’s a start,” said Jamie, “but I’d work on the delivery.”
Sam hung up and went back to bed. Finally, toward dinnertime, the covers pulled back, and she was standing over him bearing Indian carryout and a very nice bottle of Scotch she held out to him like apology, forgiveness, light.
“Figured we needed the good stuff,” she said.
“I’m so sorry—” Sam began.
“Do it again,” said Meredith.
OKAY, IT WAS A LITTLE CATHARTIC
Sam wanted to talk about it. Meredith did not. Sam wanted to consider some ramifications here. In light of her reaction, Sam thought a discussion was in order before proceeding.
“Don’t ruin the magic,” said Meredith.
After dinner, after not a little bit of Scotch, after much typing and deleting and debating over what to say, she wrote back to her grandmother:
Cold, yes, but at least it’s stopped raining for the moment. Glad it’s nicer there and that you’re getting in bridge with the girls. Tell them hi for me. The beach does sound better than work, but we can’t all be retired.
Sam and I made a soup last week you would love. Lentil kale stew. I’m going to tweak it some and send you the recipe. Sam’s a good sous chef, and also, yes, a computer geek, and an Orioles fan (though of course he’s adopted the M’s now that he’s here).
Love you,
M.
Then nine hours passed during which Meredith did nothing but sit with her laptop and hit refresh. Sam begged her to come to bed, so she brought the computer with her, sitting up against the headboard all night.
“It’ll pop up when it comes in. It’ll make a little noise to wake you up if you set it to,” he groaned.
“Can’t you make it come faster?”
“Did your grandmother stay up e-mailing in the middle of the night?” It was four o’clock in the morning in Florida.
“No.”
“Then I can’t.”
She sat up all night anyway. At seven thirty-five in the morning, finally, it was there:
You should take some time off work and come visit me—get some sun for a few weeks. You work too hard!! They’ll get by without you. Send me the soup recipe. You still haven’t told me what Sam looks like!
Hugs and kisses, sweetie,
Grandma
Meredith shook Sam awake.
“She wants our soup recipe!”
“We made it up as we went along,” Sam mumbled from under a pillow.
“That took long enough,” Meredith griped. “And it’s so short. I want more.”
“It e-mails when and how she did. It’s her. She e-mailed midmorning, so it e-mails midmorning. Her e-mails were pretty brief and to the point, so it e-mails briefly and to the point.”
“I waited for hours. I want more than a paragraph! Doesn’t she miss me?”
“Only like she’s in Florida.”
“Can you speed it up? Can you make it write more?”
“It’s being your grandmother, Merde. It’s scientifically, logically, brilliantly, analytically modeling your grandmother. I’m not doing anything anymore. You have to take it up with her.”
Meredith’s next e-mail went through several drafts and ended up being a six-page missive on the nature of love and family, childhood and grandparents, memory, life, and the passage of time. It ended with the plea, “I miss you so much! Write more and longer, please. Tell me everything!”
To which Livvie chirpily replied:
Wow. Someone had a lot of time on her hands this week. Must be crummy weather there—here it’s gorgeous so I’ll have to write more later! Off to the beach!! Love you!!
P.S. Come visit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
P.P.S. Is he hideous, or why won’t you tell me what this boy looks like???
Sam was impressed with himself—especially that it was still curious, not having yet been told, about what he looked like—but Meredith was in a bit of a state. She didn’t care that her grandmother would never have sent her long, mushy e-mails in life. She didn’t care that if she received long, mushy e-mails, they wouldn’t seem like they were from her grandmother. And, of course, she couldn’t go visit her in Florida. Sam thought maybe they’d come to the end. The past had run up against the present. They had reached the limits of what they could overcome with memory, habit, and the way things had always been. Livvie couldn’t keep up. Her relationship with her granddaughter had changed since she’d died, but she didn’t know it, and there were things she could not thus account for.
“I need a believable reason I can’t visit. What do I tell her?” said Meredith.
“Nothing. Let’s call it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Be done with this now. Let’s call this an interesting experiment and stop here.”
“You mean not answer the e-mail?”
“Sure. Just leave it.”
“I can’t ignore her. She’ll wonder what’s up. She’ll be totally pissed.”
“No she won’t,” Sam said as gently as he could. “She’s dead.”
“No, she’s been e-mailing me.”
“Not her. The software.”
“Are you sure?”
“Totally.”
“I’m not.”
“Merde …”
“Someone’s e-mailing me. And it’s worried that I’m working too hard. It wonders what my boyfriend looks like. It wishes I’d come visit. I don’t want to disappoint it. Her. I don’t want to leave it hanging.”
When Sam was a kid, his dad whipped up a program so he could practice math on the computer. When he got a question right, it said, “Way to go, Sam,” or, “What a smartie,” or something like that. When he got one wrong, it said, “Sorry, not quite,” or, “Oops, try another.”
It was incredibly simple programming, but it still didn’t work because after an hour’s worth of mistakes, Sam refused to use it again. He was sure the computer thought he was stupid. No amount of explanation on the part of his father could convince him that it didn’t. He knew it was inanimate, had no feelings, no opinions, no real knowledge at all, but knowing that didn’t help him know it, didn’t change his mind. So his dad rewrote the program with super easy problems—all wrong.
“What’s 2 +3?” the computer would ask.
“5,” Sam would type.
“Nope, it’s 4,” the computer would say. “How about 8 – 2?”
“6,” Sam would type.
“Nope,” said the computer. “It’s 7.”
So Sam got to feel superior to the computer. And thus gained the confidence—clout really—to do more practice math. On the other hand, that was his first computer. And he was seven. Meredith knew better. But even Sam wasn’t sure. It wasn’t her grandmother, but maybe something—someone?—was awaiting her reply.
Meredith was sure she couldn’t just ignore her grandmother’s invitation. But she also didn’t want to tell her she was dead. She thought that would upset her, whoever she was. Sam thought it might make the program implode. Eventually Meredith replied:
Dear Grandma,
Sam is beautiful, really. He has dark, wavy hair, like his dad’s, evidently. He has these deep, green eyes that watch everything closely and look vaguely bemused, that redden up when he gets sad or tired. He wears jeans and T-shirts. He has glasses for reading. He smiles all the time. He hardly ever shaves. When he wakes up, his hair stands up in all directions, and he goes around patting it down all morning until he showers.
I would love to visit you. I wish so much that I could. You can’t imagine. But it’s not possible right now. I’m so, so sorry.
I think about you every day. I miss you so much. You are so much in my heart.
Sam wondered what the program would do with this but said nothing. Whereas the computer had so far replied exactly right, Meredith had now replied exactly wrong. The program had correctly assessed the situation: unremarkable, everyday, warm but not overwrought, ordinary mortal missing rather than the extraordinary eternal kind. Whereas the granddaughter’s reply rang with tragedy, pathos, and brave-fronted despair.
It noticed the change. And was worried.
Oh honey,
You seem so sad. Are you getting enough sleep? Do you feel okay? Maybe you’re really working too hard. I miss you too, but don’t worry, I’ll see you very soon. Can’t wait!! If I can help in the meantime, just yell.
Love you and see you soon!!! Summer’s coming!!
xoxoxo,
Grandma
P.S. Sam sounds like a total hottie! Send me a pic!
VIDEO KILLED THE RADIO STAR
Sam said let’s be done now. He did. He said enough is enough. He whispered while he held her naked against his naked that this wasn’t healthy or good for her or revealing, and no one was awaiting her reply, and no one had written her, and all it was was ones and zeroes, so much data, a clever computer program, and bouncing electrons. She said that was all his algorithm had been, and it had brought them together. Nothing more real than that. All that miracle. All that light. All that life that came from nowhere, from nothing, from where there had been none before. Sam said it was hurting her, not healing her. She said she was hurting anyway, and this way she got e-mails from her grandma to make her feel better. Sam said he was worried she was becoming obsessed. She said do you think you can do video.
Don’t be ridiculous, said Sam. The answer was unequivocally no, God no, don’t be absurd no, no way in hell, aren’t you cute to even ask, no. E-mail was a trick, a curiosity, an amusement. It took repeating elements, rearranged them for variety, and plugged in Meredith’s keywords. Basically, it was glorified Mad Libs. Video, on the other hand, would require the solving of problems that had puzzled computer programmers from the dawn of computer programmers, plus a miracle. The answer would therefore have stayed you-must-be-on-drugs-no except for one thing Sam had neglected to factor in. Best he could tell, there was nothing in the world more persuasive than: “Please Sam. Can you try? For me? I know nothing like this has ever been done before, but you are a genius, Sam. I know you can do it. I believe in you and your big brain. I feel so sad with missing her, and I know that this would help,” from one’s besotted, bereaved, very hot, and fairly new girlfriend. With tears in her eyes. “I’d do it for you,” she added.
“Merde,” Sam replied carefully, not wanting to strip her of her conviction of his genius, “what you’re asking isn’t possible. I could as soon raise her from the dead.”
“That would work too,” she agreed amiably.
“I can’t do either one.”
“Video is just like e-mail.”
“Video is nothing like e-mail.”
“Why doesn’t it work the same way? The computer remembers what she looks like and sounds like and the sorts of things she says and how she says them.”
“No.”
“No what?”
“No … ma’am?”
“No,” she laughed. “No you can’t, or no you won’t?”
“No, I can’t. First of all, e-mails are archived whole. You look in her outbox, and there they all are. Video chats aren’t archived at all. We could probably get ahold of some of the IP packets, but that data would be all mixed-up, unreadable, unsortable. Two, Livvie video chatted with lots of people, but it’s not like e-mail where there’s a name and address. She knew who she was talking to, but the computer didn’t. Three through four hundred and sixty-seven: the current impossibility of artificial intelligence, the unknowability of the human heart, the mystery of personal interaction, and the infinite variety of human behavior and response, not to mention complex understanding of complex situations.”
“You lost me at ‘first of all.’ ”
“Suffice it to say it can’t be done.”
“My grandmother loved video chat,” Meredith mused. “We gave her a laptop with a camera for her birthday a few years ago. I had to talk my parents into that one. They thought her old laptop was fine. I said it was old and out-of-date and didn’t have a camera for video chat. You can imagine how much of a selling point that was for Kyle and Julia, so I had to switch tactics to how heavy her old one was. I told them she might sprain a shoulder or something. That convinced them. But at first, my grandmother wasn’t sure about the camera either. Her point was she could do e-mail in her bathrobe. I said I’d seen her in her bathrobe loads of times, but she was worried about having this image of her in her pj’s out there in the world. Anyway, then she realized that, unlike e-mailing, video chat was something she could do while her nails dried. The woman loved to do her nails. After that, she was an instant convert. We talked all the time when she was in Florida. And here too. It just got easier than picking up the phone.”
“She was a remarkable woman,” said Sam.
“That’s not my point.”
“What’s your point?”
“My point is there’s a lot more of Grandma out there via video chat than via e-mail.”
“Out where?” said Sam.
“That’s your job,” said Meredith.
It wasn’t Sam’s job. Because he didn’t have a job. Every time he resolved to look for one, he remembered how much more productive it was to just stay home. When he went to work, all he got done was work. Now Meredith went to work in the morning, and he cleaned the apartment, walked the dogs, wandered down to Pike Place Market to buy fresh fruits and vegetables, cheese and flowers, went running, read books, did laundry, watched cooking shows then attempted elaborate dinners, and tinkered with corresponding electronically with the dead. He also corresponded electronically with his girlfriend, and though online flirting was less exciting than in-person flirting, involving, as it did, less chance of her being naked, it did increase the chance of her being naked later, and that was something.
“Thi
s meeting is sooooooo long,” she wrote one morning.
“Leave and come home,” he wrote back. “I’m lonely.”
“Because you are too much on your own. Alone. Unemployed. Drifting.”
“I’m not alone.”
“Who else is there?”
“The dogs.”
“No, really you’re alone.”
“So leave and come home,” he wrote again.
“Then they won’t pay me.”
“For a little while they will.”
“I’m so bored. Take a picture of your naughty bits and send it to my phone.”
“What if I want to run for president someday?” asked Sam.
“I don’t want to move to the East Coast,” said Meredith.
“What if I want to run for governor?”
“No one cares if there are dirty pictures of the governor.”
A little while later she texted, “OMG, it’s total upheaval here. You have to come to happy hour after work and meet my new boss.”
“You have a new boss?” said Sam.
“Trust me,” she replied. “This is one you have to see to believe.”
He met her downtown at Library Bistro, their favorite place for happy hour. It was the bar in the lobby of the Alexis Hotel. He liked that the walls were lined floor to ceiling, corner to corner with books, any one of which you could borrow, or own for five bucks. It was an eclectic mix, not being a bookstore, and Sam remembered the days he’d hung out there before he met Meredith when he’d choose which woman he might chat with based on what book she was reading. He never did chat with even a single one of those women, but he’d liked the extra data point the books provided, just in case. Plus they had great french fries. Sam got there early and had picked up a book of science jokes when Meredith walked in with Jamie.
Sam was delighted to see him. “Jamie! You tagged along!”
“Indeed I did. Why are you reading jokes about science?”
“Werner Heisenberg is pulled over for speeding. The officer walks up and says, ‘Sir, do you know how fast you were going?’ Heisenberg says, ‘No, but I know exactly where I am.’ ”
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