Or at least that’s the theory. In reality a lot of people who order sims are after quite specific things. They want them to remember a certain holiday, but not like that, like this. Or to be more grateful, or full of praise. I’ve heard stories about sims being programmed to apologise, or to enumerate the ways in which they failed or hurt the people who’ve ordered them. It’s a bit creepy but it’s hardly surprising: after all, if you could recreate a family member exactly as they were, would you want to? Or would you rather rewire them a bit, make them the way you always wanted them to be?
I don’t program the AIs; my job is to help get the facial expressions and mannerisms right. This is important, because although the software is good at guessing what people looked like when they were alive and at helping the sims to emote, it’s not perfect. Back in the early years of the century they used to call it the uncanny valley, that space where a robot became so close to lifelike that it began to terrify us, not because it was perfect but because it wasn’t quite. There was a theory that this fear was instinctive, a fight or flight response to something outside the realm of our experience, generated by a deep cognitive dissonance. The same thing happens with the sims: no matter how good the systems are at copying, they never get it quite right. And that’s where I come in. My job is to find the imperfections, the little details the software misses. To put the grit in the oyster.
I got the work by accident. Before Mum died, before the pandemic, I used to spend a lot of time in the virches. There was a group of us who hacked avatars, and pulled pranks on people we thought deserved it. It was kids’ stuff, really, sticking new faces on characters and generally messing about. But then some agent or other took notice and gave my details to Semblance, who offered me a job.
It’s a good gig. Semblance operates out of Guangzhou, although most of us work remotely, so I’m not stuck in an office somewhere. And I enjoy the work, not just because of the money, but because people’s faces fascinate me: the way they sometimes seem to have two expressions at once, one showing emotion, one trying to hide it, the unintentional ways they reveal us. I love looking for the flicker that comes before someone registers what’s going on, for those moments where you can see the unconscious mind working faster than the conscious. That’s how we know somebody’s really there, by seeing emotions move through them, by seeing the times when they’re not there, or not quite.
I spend the rest of the afternoon reviewing the data. Because he was only six when he died it’s mostly photos and videos, but there are also a lot of excerpts from Cassie’s lifelogs. I don’t need to watch them all – the systems will analyse them as they assemble the information for his sim – but as the day slips away I pull up more and more. Although most of them are of Matthew, there are videos of her as well, laughing or posing for the camera. And sometimes, in the background, a glimpse of myself.
It’s always slightly weird watching lifelogs and ambient video. Not because they capture the moment, but because of the way the past seems to hover, just out of reach, both close at hand and already lost. Watching her, watching him, my memory of the time I spent with the two of them is so vivid, yet the person I was, the one who had no idea what lay just ahead, seems like a stranger.
I’m so absorbed in what I’m doing that I’m still at it around ten when Dad’s bike comes crunching up the drive. I know he’s in a mood without seeing him. These past months he’s been doing odd jobs, helping people out for a few dollars here and there, but it isn’t easy, and it isn’t like it was before. It probably doesn’t help that I make enough money for both of us, so he doesn’t have to work at all and we don’t have to worry about ending up on the road or in one of the camps, but I sometimes wonder whether it’d be like this anyway.
He leaves his bike by the back door and after opening the fridge in the kitchen goes through to the living room. After that it falls quiet, so I assume he must have turned on his screen or lenses until I hear his voice behind me.
‘You hungry?’
Minimising my overlays I turn. Once he was handsome, in a slightly rough kind of way. Now he just looks tired and dirty. And old.
‘Not really,’ I say.
‘Have you eaten?’ He glances around my room. ‘Have you left here at all today?’
‘Sure,’ I lie.
‘There’s pizza in the kitchen.’
‘Great,’ I say. ‘I’ll get some in a bit.’
He seems to be waiting for me to say more, and when I don’t he turns away.
‘I’m going to bed,’ he says.
Once he’s gone I open the files again, but I’ve lost the thread. Dad dislikes me doing this work, he thinks it’s exploitative. But I know that’s not his real problem with it.
I’m not sure when he got so angry. Partly it’s about Mum, but it’s more than that. It’s like he’s caught, and he doesn’t know what to do. And being with me just seems to make it worse.
He wasn’t always like this. Before the economy collapsed he worked on a solar farm in the desert up north. He was just a casual maintenance guy but he had a scooter to get around the facilities, and some nights he would take me with him and ride me out to the collectors. It got cold at night up there, so there was something reassuring about being with him, about the heat from the panels radiating out into the dark. Sometimes when I’m really lonely I think about those nights, about the hum of the scooter, the smell of the air.
Looking at the images of Matthew I find myself wondering whether he had a place like that, a time he remembered. Although I’ve already read it half a dozen times I call up the brief again, try to put my finger on whatever it is I cannot quite pin down. The brief says he is six but I would have guessed four. After a while I realise it isn’t him I’m looking at, but her. What happened after they left? I find myself wondering. I said I’d stay in touch but we’d been broken up for six months by then, and while we messaged each other once or twice I don’t think either of us was really bothered when we dropped out of contact.
Eventually I fire off a message to one of my old classmates, Hugo.
Looking at old pictures. Do you remember Cassie Meek?
It’s been a while since Hugo and I were in contact so I’m surprised when he replies almost immediately.
Your Cassie?
Not sure she’d like you to call her that, but yes.
Of course. I thought she died.
No, she’s alive. Did you stay in touch with her after she moved away?
I imagine Hugo seated in his room as he ponders this. Not really. I think some of the others did.
Who?
Rhianna, maybe. Jaya. The Sailor twins.
Looking at their names, the faces of the Sailor twins and Jaya come to me unbidden. Other than Mum, I try not to think about the people who are gone. It’s the only way, this forgetting.
Thanks, I type. Then after a moment I add, You okay?
There’s a lag, which might be nothing or might be exactly what it feels like.
Sure, man. I’m good.
The conversation with Hugo over, I go back to the brief and begin work. The emulation engine is an M417, one of our cheaper models, probably bought from one of the discount wholesalers who resell our packages. The software has done quite a good job on Matthew’s sim, though: watching him he looks almost human. But not quite.
Ordinarily what I do now is pretty standard. I don’t need to worry about the sim’s conversation because the heuristics will improve that over time, but I have a few tricks that help. Incorporate some sub-routines to make them look like they’re sitting on a joke, or thinking good thoughts about you before they speak; splice in a hesitation here and there; insert a routine so that just occasionally you’ll catch them looking at you when they think you can’t see them, which will help create a subliminal connection by reassuring your subconscious mind that they don’t just shut down when you’re not looking at them.
All of that’s more difficult with kids. Some of the people who program sims think this is be
cause children wear their emotions so much closer to the surface than adults, cycling through them so quickly and transparently, and a lot of packages emphasise that – their kids are labile little love machines. But the real reason kids are difficult is because they’re so inward. If you don’t know what I mean, watch some: you’ll see how much of their time is spent engaged with whatever it is they’re doing, trying things out, becoming themselves. The things most people remember about them – the moments their kids hug them or say they love them – aren’t the real kids. The real them is the version that’s moving on, leaving their parents behind.
Some systems are designed to emulate that, so as time passes the sims grow older and change, but you can only guess at the way people will age. So usually they’re programmed to age more slowly than in real life, or they just stay the same, like ghosts. Which seems even sadder somehow.
Looking at Matthew I try to remember what he was like when I knew him. Funny, filled with life, obsessed with dinosaurs and superheroes. But beyond that I struggle, because to me at least he was just another little kid. And so I do what I always do: I speculate and imagine and fill in the details.
It’s almost five before I decide to stop for the night. From the kitchen I can hear Dad snoring in the next room. Outside the wind is up, sweeping down from the hills to the north, and in the backyard the turbines creak and turn, the lights flickering occasionally as the system tries to regulate the flow.
Before Mum died it never felt lonely out here. Even with the heat and the silence it was a good place. But now she’s not here anymore it’s different. I suppose lots of places are – the death toll was so high – but with just me and Dad it’s difficult not to feel as if we’re stuck here, that if we leave we’ll be leaving her behind.
I’m so deep in thought I don’t realise Dad has woken up until he steps through the door behind me.
He is tired and pale. ‘You’re still up?’
‘I’ve been working,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry if I woke you.’
He ignores my apology. ‘I think the turbines are playing up again,’ he says, looking up at the lights. ‘I need to take a look at them tomorrow.’
‘Sure,’ I say, then realise he might have meant for me to volunteer to help him. ‘I could help, if you want.’
‘I’ll be fine,’ he says.
A lot of people still want answers about where the virus came from. Some say it escaped from a lab in Taiwan, or in what was left of the Netherlands. Others say they have evidence it was released by one of the numerous terrorist groups that claimed responsibility when it first began to spread. Still others argue it was just a natural occurrence, the odds falling against us. I’m not sure I really care: after all, it’s not like knowing where it came from will make it unhappen or bring anybody back to life. What’s done is done, what matters now is finding some way to pick up the pieces and carry on.
Maybe I wouldn’t feel like that if Mum hadn’t died. She didn’t get sick until right near the end, only a few days before they announced they’d found the antibodies and sent the details to the fabricators. The stupid thing was that we’d been really careful through the early stages – although we lived far enough out of town for the risk of casual infection to be low we’d decided to stay inside as much as possible, and to make sure we wore gloves and masks when we went out for food.
Of course none of that guaranteed we’d be safe. There were stories about gangs of people looting houses left empty by the sickness, or killing those who remained. One night Dad woke up screaming and I thought we were being attacked, but when I went in there was nobody there, just Dad standing in the door to the bathroom and Mum seated on the side of the bed.
I couldn’t sleep again that night, or not until after the sun was up. We were all scared, it felt like the world was ending and there was nothing we could do about it. And so I put my lenses on, went walking in one of the virches. Back then I spent a lot of time in Universe, and although a lot of the people I knew there had disappeared, I still went there, sometimes to play, more often just to wander through the worlds. I fetched up on a moon around a gas giant in a system on the edge of the Rift, a place where gardens grew on gleaming towers and the great sphere of the planet and its rings filled the sky.
Afterwards it was difficult not to wonder whether Dad’s dream was a premonition of some sort, because a few days later I came into the front hall to find Mum staring out the window. It was a hot day, and while the sky was grey and heavy the UV was so strong you had to squint, even inside. She looked frightened.
‘What is it?’ I asked, and she gestured out the window.
At first I didn’t see anything, then I noticed somebody kneeling by the gate. A woman, dark-haired and thin.
‘What’s she doing?’ I asked.
‘She’s got two kids with her,’ Mum said. As she spoke the woman stood up and turned to face the house. The window was tinted but the way she stood there made me certain she knew the two of us were watching her.
After several seconds she seemed to reach some kind of decision, and began to walk up the drive. It was only then that I realised she was sick.
‘Wait here,’ Mum said, her tone telling me she meant it, and opening the door she stepped out. Whether out of regard for our safety or because she hadn’t quite summoned the courage to take us on, the woman stopped when she saw Mum.
‘You can’t come in here,’ Mum said.
The woman was small, her dark skin ashen and sweaty. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘I need help. My children . . .’
I saw Mum hesitate. The kids were standing by the gate, watching.
‘No,’ she said. ‘We can’t. You have to go somewhere else.’
‘The hospital is full,’ the woman said, taking a step closer. ‘And if I take them there they’ll get sick as well.’
Mum shook her head, but I could see she was finding it difficult to insist. ‘You need to keep moving,’ she said in a low voice.
‘Just them,’ the woman said. ‘Please. They’re not sick.’
‘No —’ Mum began, but before she could finish, the woman lunged forward and grabbed her by the wrist.
‘Please,’ she said, ‘you have to help them. You have to.’
Mum cried out, trying to break the woman’s grip, but she wouldn’t let go. I charged out to try to intervene, but Mum screamed at me to get back inside. The woman was on her knees now, crawling after Mum as she tried to get free, babbling and crying until finally Mum threw her arms up in a convulsive movement that sent the woman sprawling on the ground. ‘Go,’ Mum yelled at her. ‘Get out of here.’
Once in the house she leaned against the front door, staring at the arm the woman had grabbed. I began to speak but she lifted a hand to silence me.
‘Stay away from me,’ she said, backing past me to the bathroom.
She was still in there when Dad got home. He’d been out looking for food and I think he knew something was wrong before he got in the door.
‘What’s happened?’ he asked. I started to explain, and as I did the blood drained out of his face. Advancing on the bathroom door, he leaned against it and called Mum’s name.
‘Don’t come in,’ she said in a small voice from behind the door. ‘It’s not safe.’
That day passed slowly. Dad did his best, but it was obvious he was frightened, and frustrated.
While he paced around I tried to stay out of his way. I knew Mum was right to keep clear of us – all the information emphasised that the virus was transmissible by touch as well as the transfer of bodily fluids – but still it didn’t seem right that she was in there alone.
Late in the afternoon she told us to go into the kitchen and close the door; once we were in there I heard her open the bathroom door and go down the hall to the spare room. Dad looked at me as that door closed, then the two of us followed her down.
‘Have you got everything you need?’ Dad asked her, his face against the door. ‘Do you need food?’
‘Go over to the
Nguyens’,’ she said. ‘See if they’ve got any masks and gloves.’
I could see Dad wanted to argue, to say he should stay. But instead he said, ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can.’ Then he looked at me and said, ‘Call me if anything happens. Anything.’
I told him I would, and listened to him run outside and down the drive. I think I understood my mother had sent him to the Nguyens’ because she knew he needed to be occupied. Alone now I sat down against the wall beside the door. From inside I heard my mother’s voice.
‘Is that you, Dylan?’ she asked.
I tried to answer but my voice cracked. On the other side of the door I could hear her breathing. When at last she spoke again her voice was low, and it sounded as if she’d been crying.
‘I wonder what happened to those kids,’ she said.
It’s almost three in the afternoon when I’m woken by the sound of Dad in the drive. Pulling back the curtain I see him standing by the turbines in the backyard, toolbox at his feet.
Watching him I’m reminded how capable he is with tools and machines. There’s an economy and certainty to the way he approaches the tasks he takes on that often seems at odds with his manner the rest of the time.
Pulling on a T-shirt I head out into the yard, screwing up my eyes against the glare.
‘Hi,’ I say. He glances around but doesn’t reply.
‘Have you figured out what’s wrong with them?’
He tugs on a spanner. ‘I’m not sure. They need oiling but there’s a problem with the inverter as well.’
‘Is that why we’ve been getting power fluctuations?’
‘Probably.’
Before I was born, when Mum and Dad were first together, they’d go to the events out in the desert. Back then the economy hadn’t completely collapsed, and people used to build sculptures so big you could probably have seen them from space. There are still vids of the pair of them from then, not much older than I am now, dressed in costumes and laughing and dancing. Looking at Dad now I wonder whether he ever imagined this would be how things ended up.
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