The Girl With Acrylic Eyes

by Greg Krojac

  The evening before Coppélia was due to take her leap into the great beyond came round far too quickly for Karen. She was a sea of emotions, pleased that Coppélia had found the purpose of her existence, anxious for her friend’s safety, excited to be a part of this great adventure, but – above all – sad to know that she wouldn’t see Coppélia in person for at least forty-five years. Karen would have lived a whole lifetime in that time. She may not even be alive when Coppélia returned.

  The couple sat on the veranda, sipping Mote con Huesillo, a local non-alcoholic drink made from husked wheat and dried peaches soaked with sugar water and cinnamon. It was a strange evening, with little conversation, but the atmosphere was charged with an impending loss – words were superfluous. They were both starkly aware that the next day would be the last day that they would see each other for around five decades and were soaking up the presence of one another in an attempt to trap each other’s essence within themselves. Karen tried to appear cheerful but inside she was crying. She silently chastised herself for becoming emotionally attached to an android, but Coppélia was so much more than just a machine. Eventually, Karen submitted to the desire to sleep, and made her way to her bedroom, leaving Coppélia to recharge her batteries and evacuate the Mote con Huessillo from her abdominal reservoir.

  Once recharged, Coppélia tiptoed into Karen’s room. Her friend looked so peaceful, sleeping the sleep of the good. The android let her clothes drop to the floor, and slid under the covers. Karen stirred but didn’t fully wake, accepting Coppélia’s body as it snuggled up to her own body, and murmuring indistinctly.

  “Goodnight Coppélia. See you tomorrow.”

  The next day, they arrived at the local airport at 6 am sharp. As they boarded the Space Shuttle that would take them to the orbiting spacecraft, Karen was a little disappointed that they wouldn’t be using the Space Elevator. Of course, she’d seen video footage of it, but to actually travel in it would surely be very exciting. However, Raef explained that it was primarily used for cargo, as the Van Allen Radiation Belt was dangerous to humans and passengers would have to get through it really quickly or be sheltered inside heavy shielding. It was far more comfortable and more cost effective to travel by SAI Shuttle.

  The days when a Shuttle launched vertically astride a pair of recoverable solid rocket boosters and an expendable external tank were long gone. Modern day shuttles took off from a short landing strip just like conventional aircraft. Karen had never been in a Space Shuttle either, so the journey into orbit would still be a first for her.

  Raef checked that the two VIP passengers were securely strapped into their seats before making himself comfortable. Karen was a little nervous; she’d travelled to Australia from London on an intercontinental hypersonic plane before, but this was going to be different. Suddenly the Shuttle accelerated forward and left the ground after travelling only a couple of hundred metres. Whereas commercial planes would gradually reach cruising speed, it was as if somebody was driving a turbo-charged sports car and the accelerator pedal had been welded to the floor. There was no reprieve – the shuttle just kept going faster and faster. Suddenly, it wasn’t the horizontal velocity of the aircraft that was pushing Karen back into her seat. The Shuttle had left the horizontal axis and was now travelling vertically just as fast. Karen looked out of the window, but with no reference point, it was impossible to tell just how fast the Shuttle was travelling. As quickly as the aircraft had moved from the horizontal to a vertical plane, it resumed horizontal flight. Raef grinned at his passengers.

  “How was that, ladies? Got your breath back yet?”

  Karen clasped her hands to her belly as her internal organs reorganised themselves.

  “You could have warned me, Raef.”

  “Better than anything Disney has come up with, eh?”

  Karen felt more comfortable now.

  “I think it’s a once in a lifetime thing for me. I’ll stick to Disney, thank you very much.”

  Raef had something else he wanted to show her.

  “Don’t worry Karen. The journey back will be a lot gentler. In the meantime, look out of the window.”

  Karen had never seen anything like it. Of course, she’d seen hundreds of images of Earth taken from space, but nothing can prepare someone for the sensation of looking at the planet from space themselves. She could see the curve of the sphere, mainly blue, enveloped in wispy white weather patterns swirling like cream in a mug of hot coffee. But the thing that really overwhelmed her was the fact that on that sphere were about 12 billion human beings, each going about their lives, living, loving, dying, all oblivious to the fact that she was in orbit above them.

  Coppélia, on the other hand, had rock star status and billions of pairs of eyes were glued to digital screens all over the globe, anxious to watch her depart on the greatest journey in the history of man. Children played with scaled down pre-programmed models of the android, she was used as a teaching-aid, and digital images of her adorned many a teenager’s bedroom wall. She was definitely the planet’s golden girl.

  Suddenly Karen was aware of another spacecraft in her field of vision, a leviathan of a spaceship, that grew larger and larger until it filled the windows of the Shuttle and the blanket of stars, no longer twinkling due to the lack of an atmosphere, could no longer be seen. The spacecraft could never be described as beautiful, it bore none of the sweeping curves of fictitious interstellar spacecraft, but it was certainly very impressive, a functional structure containing a helicon coupler to convert hydrogen gas into plasma, an ion cyclotron heating coupler to heat the plasma upwards of 10 million degrees, and a magnetic nozzle to convert the plasma ions’ orbital motion into a useful linear motion that would propel the spacecraft forward. At the front of the spacecraft was a framework into which the space-pod, containing Coppélia, would be clamped. Along the side of the vehicle was written the name of the space ship, The Carl Sagan.

  The major obstacle to interstellar travel in the past had been the necessity to carry enough fuel to last the entire mission, but the recent development of technologies to harvest hydrogen from its own local environment meant that the spacecraft could theoretically continue to travel through space for eternity. However, for the moment, travelling to Proxima b would suffice; the costs of funding such a project as the Coppélia Project were exorbitant and it wasn’t anticipated that there would be another such mission for perhaps twenty-five years or more.

  Karen turned to Coppélia, trying to smile.

  “And you’re going to drive that thing?”

  “Of course.”

  “Aren’t you nervous? It’s bloody enormous.”

  Raef interrupted.

  “We’ve downloaded everything Coppélia needs to know in order to pilot the ship to her digital memory. We’ll be too far away to do anything remotely, so everything will be under her control. Oh, and we’ve replaced her skin with an upgrade. We hadn’t anticipated that she could damage her skin herself, so now her skin is 100% impenetrable.”

  Raef then showed an unexpected display of compassion. Although it was an easy task for him to be completely objective and always remember that Coppélia was just a highly advanced sentient machine, he knew that that wasn’t the case for Karen. She’d bonded with the android on a personal level and was about to say goodbye to a close friend.

  “I’m going to go and talk to the pilot for a few minutes – I’ll be back shortly.”

  Coppélia unbuckled her seatbelt and stood up. She turned to face Karen and took the former policewoman’s hands in hers.

  “So this is it.”

  Karen nodded, tears welling in her eyes.

  “I suppose it is, yes.”

  “Can I tell you something, Karen?”

  “Of course.”

  “You’re the most wonderful human I’ve ever met.”

  Karen tried to laugh but it came out more as a splutter.

  “And you’re the most wonderful android I’ve ever met. No, you’re the most wond
erful person I’ve ever met.”

  If Coppélia could have blushed she would have, but that was one function that her designers had overlooked. She knew that she was a humanoid that housed a highly advanced AI, but she didn’t feel like a machine. She felt human. She felt like a woman. Karen could hold back her tears no more.

  “I’m going to miss you so much, Coppélia. I can’t imagine life without you as my friend.”

  “We’ll still be friends, Karen. Nobody can take that away from us. No matter how far away we are from each other, we’ll be friends.”

  Coppélia felt sad, but she was also looking forward to this new experience, an experience that only she would feel. She hoped that she would be able to find the words to express how she felt when she took her first steps on the surface of Proxima b.

  Raef returned to the passenger area.

  “Are we ready?”

  Karen pulled a print copy of a photo of herself from her jeans pocket.

  “Take this with you. So you don’t forget me.”

  Coppélia accepted the photo graciously and put it in the breast pocket of her jacket, neglecting to tell Karen that she had several terabytes of video footage of the time that they had spent together in her memory banks that she could watch anytime she wished. She smiled at Karen.

  “I won’t forget you.”

  She and Raef made their way to the cargo hold of the shuttle, where the space-pod was waiting for its pilot, leaving Karen feeling suddenly alone. A couple of minutes later Karen watched as the spherical pod slowly traversed the distance between the shuttle and the Carl Sagan. Coppélia guided it expertly into its cradle at the front of the ship and automatic clamps secured it in place.

  Karen watched as twenty space-tugs led the Carl Sagan away from its stationary orbit and into deeper space. It took some time to get far enough out of orbit but, eventually, the interplanetary ship fired up its VASIMR drive, started to pick up speed and became a speck in the distance.

  Raef tried to cheer Karen up, but what he said was a double-edged sword.

  “You’ll be able to chat with Coppélia in a couple of days. But I have to warn you that as Coppélia moves farther and farther away from Earth, the time that it takes for any communication from her to Mission Control or from Mission Control to her will increase exponentially. At first, there’ll be a slight time lag but, with each passing kilometre, the gap between transmission and receiving the message will get longer and longer until eventually a message from Mission Control will take over four years to reach Coppélia on Proxima b, and Coppélia’s response will take the same time. Real time conversation will be impossible, and interaction will be little more than voice or video messages that we’ll pick up more than four years after they’re sent.”

  She heard Raef’s words, but the reality of what he had said didn’t sink in.

  14

  Karen was very excited at the thought of chatting with Coppélia; she’d never spoken to anyone who was in outer space before. Coppélia had only been gone two days – the first full day having been taken up with tedious technical procedures and administration – but Karen’s villa seemed kind of empty without the android. Karen had forgotten what it was like to be alone, although all she had to do if she fancied some company was to pop down to the local village and pay a visit to her favourite bar, so she had no real excuse for feeling lonely. However, for Coppélia, the solitude would be more noticeable and communication with Earth all the more welcome.

  Upon arriving at Raef’s complex, Karen was ushered into a smaller room just off the Mission Control room where Raef was waiting for her. He showed her to a chair that was bolted to the floor. Karen chuckled.

  “Are you afraid I’ll nick the chair?”

  “No, of course not. But the holographic telepresence system has been very carefully calibrated. It’ll be like your sitting with her, just having a chat.”

  “Thanks for that; I appreciate it.”

  “I thought you might like a little more privacy for your chats too. I’m afraid we’ll be recording everything – I’m sure you understand – but you’ll be on your own with her in this room. Just sit down and she’ll appear soon.”

  Karen settled herself down and made herself comfortable on the chair. She sat there, on her own, for what seemed an age. Was there something wrong with the equipment? She called out, hoping that somebody was listening. Raef came running into the room.

  “Are you ok, Karen? What’s the problem?”

  Karen was quite agitated. She felt like a dog who’d been offered a bone, only to have had it snatched away at the last minute.

  “I think there’s something wrong. I’ve been sitting here for over fifteen minutes and nothing’s happened.”

  Raef was apologetic.

  “I’m so sorry, Karen. I thought I’d explained to you about the time lag. The messages travel at the speed of light, but they still take some time to reach us. And our messages to the Carl Sagan take the same amount of time. You should see something happen in a couple of minutes. Is it ok if I leave you here? I don’t want to invade your privacy – not any more than is necessary anyway.”

  Now that Karen knew what to expect, she felt a little better.

  Without warning, a beam of light shone down from the ceiling and Coppélia was sitting in front of her friend.

  “Hi, Karen. Over.”

  It was as if Karen and Coppélia were in the same room. Karen had expected the android to look transparent but she looked like solid flesh and bone or - in her case – toughened heat and radiation resistant material and carbon nanotubes. Karen stood up momentarily and moved towards the hologram of her friend. She jumped instinctively when her hand went right through the Coppélia’s body as if it weren’t there. She drew her hand back and sat down again.

  “It really looked like I would be able to touch you. Over.”

  Eighteen minutes later Coppélia laughed and eighteen minutes after that Karen received her response.

  “I’m approximately two hundred and fifty-nine million, twenty thousand, six hundred and seventy-two kilometres away. You’d need very long arms to give me a hug. Over.”

  Karen liked it when Coppélia made a joke. It was confirmation that she was more than just a machine. She took a small round object from her jeans pocket and set it to record. If the gaps in the conversation were going to be this bad, she didn’t want to lose track of what they were talking about.

  “That’s a bloody long way. Over.”

  The sentence raced across the solar system for nineteen minutes, then there were another nineteen minutes to wait before Coppélia’s next words reached Karen.

  “And we’ve hardly got started. When the VASIMR unit kicks in fully I’ll be going really fast, accelerating to 30% light-speed. Over.”

  Karen found the delay irritating but forced herself to cope with the time-lag.

  “How fast are you going now? Over.”

  Whilst waiting for Coppélia’s response, Karen took the opportunity to visit the bathroom and freshen up. She was getting used to the delays now. She sat back down a couple of minutes before Coppélia’s next missive arrived, forty minutes later.

  “Really slow. About five million, three hundred and ninety-six thousand, two hundred and sixty-four kilometres per hour. But the ship is still accelerating. Over.

  Karen tried to comprehend the size of the numbers that Coppélia was talking about. She gave up, accepting instead that it was just incredibly fast.

  “So what happens when you get there? How will you slow down? Over.”

  Forty-two minutes later Coppélia’s explanation began.

  “Do you remember that there’s a large propulsion unit attached to the space-pod that I’m in? Well, about halfway to Proxima b, I’ll make a 180° turn so that I’m facing Earth. The engine will act as a brake and slow me down until I arrive at Proxima b at a velocity that allows the ship to drop into orbit. Then I can land the space-pod on the surface of the planet. Over.”

  �
�It sounds dangerous. Over.”

  The twenty-two minutes that it took for Karen’s message to reach Coppélia diluted the impact somewhat. Coppélia was pragmatic about the risks and her voice didn’t betray any of the anxiety that Karen may have expected when her next message arrived at Mission Control, forty-four minutes after Karen had voiced her concern.

  “Everything is dangerous if you make a mistake. But calculations have been made and simulations executed, so I’m sure that everything will be alright. Over.”

  Karen seemed satisfied for the moment.

  “And how is the space-pod? Comfortable? Over.”

  Forty-six minutes later, Karen got her answer.

  Coppélia smiled.

  “It’s satisfactory. It has everything I need. Over.”

  “Even a chair now, eh? Over.”

  Another wait of forty-eight minutes.

  “Yes. Even a chair. Over.”

  Coppélia knew that the chair would please Karen, even though the android would only use it for their telepresence meetings. Coppélia had specifically requested it; that and a retractable sprung floor. She changed the subject from furnishings to something more interesting.

  “Did you go to the bar yesterday? Over.”

  “For a while, yes. Everybody there sends their regards. They’re all very excited. Anybody would think it was they who had gone into space. Over.”

  Coppélia’s demeanour was very calm for someone who was travelling through space at 5.3 million kilometres per hour but, although she was sentient, her programming had deliberate limitations. She could not feel anger, hatred, jealousy, envy, or panic and it was the lack of these particular strong and potentially destructive negative emotions that perhaps still kept her separate from being the equal of her human creators. There was a certain innocence about her that was refreshing. There was also a tinge of sadness about her as she remembered her last experiences of human contact.