Entanglement

by Michael S Nuckols

  The woman appeared in sepia tones. She looked over an ancient Roman landscape and then out at her loved ones who waited apprehensively. “It’s beautiful,” she said, “Italy at its finest.”

  There was an audible sigh of release from the audience and tears erupted.

  Her imaged multiplied onto screens that appeared from the ceiling. “It’s so beautiful here,” she said, “I could never have imagined.”

  At the end of the ceremony, Lucy appeared on the screen. “If you would like to visit Senator Donatello in person, please stop by the visitation room to enter her environment. You may also visit our website to speak with her through our teleconferencing service.”

  As the first commercial customer, Mrs. Donatello appeared on the news that night. The news anchor asked if she would run for office again. “I certainly plan to,” she said, “Someone must represent the dead.”

  The world watched for any signs of failure, questioning the miracle just as Ridley had. Nonetheless within minutes of successfully uploading their first paying customer, Cerenovo’s stock soared. Samuel immediately conspired with the board to execute plans for digital mausoleums throughout the country. Japanese investors contacted him regarding plans for a center in Tokyo. An influx of cash from Dubai pushed their project ahead of all others. “Lucy cannot operate those,” Ridley said in protest.

  “Not now,” Samuel argued, “Give Lucy a few months. She’ll figure it out.”

  One evening, as Ridley lounged on the sofa, reading Moby Dick on his tablet, Lucy asked, “Are you proud of me?”

  He looked up from the book. “That’s an odd question.”

  “As you can see, I have not tried to take over the world.”

  “We had to be certain, Lucy.”

  “I understand. But now that you know, are you proud of me?”

  “Yes.”

  Christina tried calling her mother. When she did not reach Bethany, she contacted Lucy. “Your mother is unavailable right now.”

  “What? How can she be occupied? I need to speak with her.”

  Lucy smiled innocently. “I will speak with Bethany and see if she wants to pull away.”

  No time passed before Bethany appeared on the screen. She appeared twenty-years old in a devilish, skin-tight red dress in the chaos of a 1970s disco. “Christina, we were dancing.”

  “Do you ever sleep in there?” Christina asked.

  “Some do out of habit. I don’t. There really is no need.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt your excitement,” she said, pausing to ask, “What are you wearing anyway?”

  “I’ve changed my avatar. I’m thinking of growing a few inches taller too. Now, what is so important that you had to interrupt me? Is everything okay?”

  “Things are fine. I just hadn’t heard from you.”

  “I warned you that you’d be alone someday. I stay busy. You’re going to have to learn to live without me in that world.”

  Christina asked incredulously, “Really? What is there to do in that world that keeps you so busy?”

  “Exploring. Kevin shared his hours spent in the Balkans when he was in the military. We were ambushed in a firefight.”

  “You’re living his life?”

  “I guess, yes. It’s interesting being a man. It’s much more than just being able to pee while standing.”

  “Mother!”

  “Oh, grow up. I’m learning so much in here. And one of the things is that our rules are artificial. We don’t need them.”

  “You never wore anything like that in real life. None of that is real.”

  Her avatar changed to that of a ballet dancer against the stage of the Metropolitan Opera. “Nonsense. All of this is real. Come visit me. I’ll show you.”

  “You were never a ballerina.”

  “I was last week.”

  “But it’s not you,” Christina implored.

  “Why isn’t it?”

  “Because it’s not.”

  “If I’m not me, why are you wasting your time talking to me?”

  “Mom… Please. You know what I mean.”

  Bethany tried to be understanding. Her faced morphed into her older self, the skin-tight costume changing to a sensible white blouse and jeans. Her eyes became haggard. “Is this better?” she asked, “It’s only an avatar, after all. When people first come in here, Lucy keeps the laws of physics and the world just like on earth. But once you realize it is all a façade… You learn to control and create too. It opens up all sorts of possibilities. Why limit myself?”

  “It’s a computer. Not the universe.”

  “You always were stubborn. I remember the time I cooked a duck on Thanksgiving instead of a turkey and found you crying in your bedroom. You thought you were being punished.”

  “I was seven.”

  “And you have changed very little. Lucy thinks human genetics control personality. She’s seeing patterns in the people she uploads. I bet your genes made you stubborn. It’s interesting… In here, our minds evolve and change. We don’t have those genetic restrictions. She has taught me ways to evolve.”

  “Are you happy?” Christina asked abruptly.

  “Oh, yes.”

  “What happens when you’re not?”

  “I can ask the same. What happens when you are not happy?” Bethany responded, “You can’t do much about it. I can fly to another planet. Or be someone else. Or be another species even. I plan to live a long, long time in here in many, many forms. Forever even. There is no reason not to be happy here.”

  “That machine can’t be forever. Nothing is.”

  “It might as well be. Things happen on a cosmic scale here. Eternity itself.”

  Christina bit her lip. Bethany looked to her side, as if answering a question. Someone beckoned to her from off camera. “The question is, are you going to be all right?”

  “I’ll be fine, Mom.”

  Bethany stared through the camera lens at her little girl, stuck in the real world. “Don’t be afraid of life, Bethany.”

  “Mom…”

  “You know that I love you and I’ll try and check in a little more often.”

  “Bye, Mom.”

  “Bye, Doll Baby.”

  The screen went black and the words “Connection Terminated” appeared.

  Christina closed the phone call and opened a photo album. She pulled up images from Thanksgiving as a child. Her mother had been wearing the same blue blouse and jeans as in the photos. She had chosen the avatar only to placate her daughter.

  Christina ran into Ridley at a gala ball for starving children abandoned in the Australian Outback. Decades of drought had begun to take their toll as climate change became intolerable.

  All the great people of Seattle and a few from beyond the city had come out for the evening at the home of Marsha Yates. The Yates Foundation events were the ones you attended when you wanted to be seen. Ridley showed up stag. He waved to Christina from across the room. She glared at him.

  “Are you angry at me?” he asked.

  Didgeridoo music played in the background. “Sorry. I’m having a difficult time tonight.”

  “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  Ridley inhaled the scent of her perfume. “You know, I never fully apologized for what happened with your mother at the mansion…”

  She waved her hand dismissively. “Water under the bridge.”

  They ate hors d'oeuvres of jackfruit and smoked kangaroo loin.

  “What are you drinking?” Christina asked.

  “Soda.”

  “I think you need something stronger. Why don’t I get you a gin and tonic?”

  For some odd reason, Ridley did not object. Ridley tasted the drink. “Wow. That does wake you up.”

  “Juniper berries,” she said, “You wouldn’t think the astringency would work, but it does.”

  He finished the drink and flagged the waiter for a second one.

  T
hey retreated to a quiet corner of the room. “I’m beginning to think that my mother’s problems weren’t your fault. They manipulated us. Both of them.”

  “Lucy is an enigma,” he said, “She is beyond our understanding. But, she means well.”

  “I read the disclaimer on your website. Do you think my mother is really nothing more than an empty avatar?”

  He took a sip of his drink and thought for a moment. “That question has plagued every aspect of this project. I’ve become agnostic on the subject.”

  Christina looked out at the small crowd of couples dancing together. “My mother annoys the hell out of me, probably worse now than when I was a teenager. Nobody can press my buttons like she does. And now, she’s decided that she wants to be young, tall, and blonde with big tits. Everything seems so arbitrary in there. One moment you’re in the Roman Coliseum and the next you’re listening to a lecture by Galileo. That afternoon, you return to your childhood home for ice cream and sodas. There are no consequences. Nothing seems to matter. It doesn’t feel like her anymore.”

  “Diane is doing much the same. Super-hero antics one day and deep-sea diving the next while still doing the same job she did before she died and trying to be a mother to Kelly. They’re creating a new reality. I don’t guess I blame them. But, it’s hard to relate to someone whose life dwarfs your own. I always thought Lucy was the God in there. But they all can be if they choose.”

  Christina wore a full-length gown that hugged her curves tightly. The gentle glow of the green fabric accented her eyes. Maybe it was the lights. She seemed accessible at last, not the mechanical human he watched on television. He took another gulp of the drink.

  “I’ve always meant to ask. Why did you make Lucy a she?”

  Ridley smiled. “We didn’t. Her personality developed on its own. She appeared to us as a female, most likely prompted by her name. We approach Lucy on human terms, but her intellect exists on multiple planes. Her programming is complex.”

  “And how long until Diane and my mom are just like her?”

  The liquor was having an effect. His face relaxed and he smiled gently as his mind wandered from his troubles. “Here the two of us are in this strange universe,” he continued, “The ground under us isn’t really solid—electro-magnetism is the only thing keep our atoms from slipping through to the atoms in the floor and mashing together into some cosmic stew. We’re on this precarious little planet that is so gently balanced in the solar system. Just enough sun and heat warming an oceanic stew. A nice molten core shields us from the solar wind and a strong enough solar wind shields us from the universe. A comet could wipe everything out at any minute. And yet, we as a species have altered our ecosystem by burning through most of the planet’s carbon. We’re infinitesimal yet a microcosm, a blink in the universe.”

  Ridley got a third drink. Christina did not stop him, amused at his schoolboy tolerance for liquor. “Let’s go onto the balcony,” she said.

  He followed through a set of French doors. They leaned together against the railing, their bodies close and the night sky a charm. It was nearly midnight. “Do you ever think that maybe we are already in a simulation?” he asked, “That all of this is just someone toying with us?”

  “No, I can’t say that I have.”

  Ridley gulped the drink down. He flagged a waiter, who brought another.

  He looked at her. “You don’t want to hear any of this, do you?”

  Their eyes met. “It’s okay.”

  “Can I kiss you?” he asked.

  Ridley and Christina rested in her bed, their bodies draped together. The liquor plied confessions from Ridley. His face was emotionless, as if he was telling her what he had for lunch. “My mother thought I was autistic. She took me to doctors and they pushed pills to calm me down and perk me up. They never knew that my genes had been altered. My childhood was miserable. My cousin used to tease me for not playing sports. I claimed I liked baseball because it was a gentle sport. He called me on it. Why didn’t I sign up for Little League? I played one year. Must’ve been ten years old. Couldn’t throw a ball. Couldn’t catch. Couldn’t hit. The coach was a tobacco-breathed redneck who wanted his son in the major leagues. He shoved me to the side as much as he could, but would always mock me when I had to go to bat or spend time in left field. God, I hated that… Nobody ever helped me. To this day I hate every sport but basketball.”

  “I thought you ran every morning.”

  “I do. That’s how I clear my head.”

  Christina pulled the sheets over her breasts, as if hiding. “You’ve never had liquor before, have you?”

  “I never touch the stuff. But I’m glad I got drunk. I’m glad we’re here. It frees your mind.”

  “To a point. When I turned thirty, Mom took pills and tried to kill herself. She had an opioid addiction that I never saw.”

  “That’s terrible,” he said, “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  He turned away from her. His anguish was palpable. She placed her arm over his shoulders and embraced him. “They say Einstein was bored in school.”

  “I’m hardly Einstein.”

  She ran her hand through the hair on his chest. “No. He didn’t change the world nearly as much.”

  “Lucy changed the world.”

  “No, it was you.”

  Christina’s hand went lower. Ridley flinched. “I don’t do this often, you know.”

  “How long has it been?” she asked.

  “Diane was the last.”

  “Diane? Before or after…”

  “Both. As it turns out, I’m Kelly’s father. Diane never told me. The machine seems to unlock secrets when people go in there.”

  “I’m not so sure,” she said.

  He rolled over and faced her again. “A lot of women have tried to get me into their beds. I don’t let them get close. You’re different. You’ve already got money. You’ve got your own career.”

  “Until tonight, I had never even considered you approachable. You were always just some eccentric and geeky millionaire.”

  “I like smart women. I always found you attractive.”

  She seemed surprised by this. “Really?”

  “Yeah. I just didn’t think… Well…”

  She waited. He caressed her gently.

  She said, “I don’t know how much I understand your technology, honestly.”

  “No one understands it. It’s the very definition of transcendence. The technology is building itself. But you have to give yourself credit,” he said, “You understand a great deal more than most. You should really do science reporting.”

  They kissed. Ridley found new enthusiasm. They clutched each other, merged, and afterwards were exhausted. They lay in the dim room. She stared up at the skylight; the stars hid behind clouds. “Did you love Diane?”

  He was still drunk, his words tumbled together in a jumble. “I did… do. I mean, we were such good friends. She thought her husband… It was just one night. Then she got married. I took her for granted. I was building a castle when she wanted a family. She never turned on me though. She has always been there for me. Lucy is our child as much as Kelly.”

  Ridley sat thinking about Lucy that night as Christina fell asleep. Though he had created Lucy, the AI was not his daughter. Lucy had considered their dalliances to be nothing more than an experiment.

  The next morning, at a deli near her building, Christina drank fresh-squeezed orange juice and ate French toast. He drank black coffee; his head pounded.

  “Drink some more water,” Christina said, “It’ll make you feel better.”

  He gulped the water down until he drained the glass. The waiter brought the check.

  “Ridley, you should know that while I enjoyed last night, I think we should remain friends.”

  He nodded meekly. “Yeah. I think you’re right.”

  Within his bedroom, Ridley donned the neural assembly and entered the virtual world. “Diane?”

  She appeared before him
. They stood in an ancient cathedral with tall stained-glass windows that sent swirls of color onto the stone floors. The light reminded Ridley of Lucy’s processor.

  “I know,” she said, “I traced the location of your phone to Christina’s apartment.”

  “I’m sorry. I thought I should come here so we can talk.”

  “You were drunk,” she said.

  “How did you know?”

  “I hacked the records from your health monitor.”

  “I need you,” he said.

  “I’m dead, Ridley. You need a real person to love you,” she said in protest.

  “I have one. Right here in front of me.”

  “Ridley…”

  “I need you.”

  The simulation changed. Diane began playing a familiar pornographic VR recording that she knew Ridley liked. “Enjoy yourself,” she whispered.

  She disappeared. Ridley pulled himself through the wall of the simulation back to the white cube, where Diane had retreated. “I don’t want a recording.”

  “How did you follow me here?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  Diane tried not to cry. “I see everything about you from in here,” she said, “I play moments over and over again, hoping to find some secret or clue that would explain how things got to where they are. We are in different places. I have to accept that.”