Lingering

by Melissa Simonson

  She gave him a look of polite indifference.

  Nick pressed the pause button and sent me a sideways glance.

  “Margot isn’t real.” The answer to the question he hadn’t asked rose to my lips automatically. “She’s an AI that guy built?”

  He tapped the man’s head on the computer monitor. “Dr. Amsler’s team all worked on Margot.”

  “And you too?”

  “Yeah.” He nodded vigorously. “She was amazing. Being around her was…” I saw him run through his entire vocabulary to come up with a strong enough word to fit his emotions. “It was just amazing. Everything about her. The way she moved, the way she spoke. How attune she was to every little thing, every detail. I’ve never seen anything as amazing as Margot. That video was from when she was less than a month old. She only got better as she got older.”

  I caught Jess rolling her eyes. She gave a guilty start when she saw that I had noticed, but I didn’t begrudge her that, sure that Nick had never spoken with such reverent tones when it came to Jess herself. I'd gotten jealous when Carissa had used baby talk when she pet Dexter, for Christ's sake. Who was I to judge?

  I couldn’t help noticing, however, that Nick used the past tense when referring to Margot.

  “What happened to her? Is she still in Switzerland?”

  “She was switched off a few years ago.”

  “Why? What was wrong with her?” I couldn’t help but agree that Margot was indeed amazing—how could they dismantle something like her?

  His expression was hard to read. It could have been a smile or a grimace. “She tried to kill someone on the team. Keeping her on would have been a liability. It was actually a really sad day, for me at least. I was as fond of her as I possibly could be, considering the fact that she wasn’t a human.”

  “Why would she do that, try to kill someone? A bug in her code? Was it an accident?”

  “She knew what she was doing.” He didn’t wear his signature smirk this time, but a real smile, the kind that lit the eyes from within.

  I felt my forehead crumple. “I’m sorry, but why is that funny?”

  “It’s not exactly funny, but it’s proof she had true artificial intelligence.”

  “How would attempted murder mean that?”

  “Because she wanted out,” he said simply. “And she’d tried every other avenue available to her. None of them worked. It was a last-ditch effort.”

  I gestured to the monitor, where Margot’s smoothly inscrutable face was frozen in time. If you looked at her long enough, you noticed how inhumanly poreless her skin was, how it was void of any kind of blemish. “Out of where, that room she’s in now?”

  “Well, that room and another.” He pointed to the door behind where she sat, hands clasped primly in her lap. “This door leads to another room. The lab where she was built. It was where she lived.”

  “Why couldn’t you let her out, then? It doesn’t seem like a terrible request.” I couldn’t blame Margot, not really. I looked back at her freakishly human face, pity swelling in my chest. Had she had the ability to feel claustrophobia? Had she been driven crazy by being confined to two rooms her whole ‘life’?

  “She needed to be kept in a controlled environment. She wasn’t ready to leave.”

  “Well, how long was she there?”

  “Three years.”

  “Three years?” I felt my jaw go slack. “You kept her locked up for three fucking years? No wonder she tried to kill someone.”

  Nick shrugged. “We were supposed to let her waltz around a mall or something? That’s ridiculous. There wasn’t any other option but to keep her safe in the lab.”

  “What do you mean, she tried other avenues to get out?”

  He turned back to the computer, clicking away on his mouse. “I think showing you would better illustrate what I meant by that.”

  He pulled up another video file.

  I got the sense that it was a different day, maybe a different month entirely. Margot wore the same plain blue tunic that wouldn’t have been out of place in a hospital or an insane asylum, but her company had changed, as well as the camera angle.

  “How was your vacation?” Margot looked up from her hands at the man across from her. “Two weeks is the longest I’ve gone without seeing you.”

  The camera angle shifted abruptly, centering on the man as he spoke. “It was lovely. Would you like to see some of the pictures?”

  “Of course.” The camera shifted back to her as she gave him a demure smile, leaning forward as he toggled through images on his cell phone.

  “You’ve heard of the Eiffel Tower?” he asked, his eyes focused on the screen of the phone.

  “Yes. I’ve seen some pictures of it, too.”

  “So, I suppose this isn’t uncharted territory to you,” he said, showing her the picture.

  “It must be wonderful to see it in person.” She shook her head slightly, her eyebrows contracting. “I mean, to stand in front of it. I can’t imagine what that must feel like.”

  He smiled softly, his black eyes crinkling at the corners. “I’m afraid to say I probably took it for granted during my holiday. I’ve seen it several times before.”

  “Your daughter liked Paris, didn’t she?”

  “She loved it.”

  “Do you think of her every time you go there on holiday?”

  “I think of her everywhere, but especially in Paris.” His smile grew a little sad as he tucked his phone into a pocket on his lab coat.

  She blinked in that slow, deliberate way, leaning back in her chair, her hands in her lap. “I learned something new while you were gone.”

  “Really? What?”

  ““Moonlight Sonata.””

  “Beethoven?” He looked a little taken aback, his receding forehead sprouting lines of surprise. “Impressive. Maybe you can play it for me sometime.”

  “I’ll promise to play it for you if you promise to take me to the Eiffel Tower.” Her lips pulled back, revealing unnaturally white, even teeth, not unlike the piano keys she apparently played.

  Nick paused the video and Margot froze, her disturbingly lifelike smile in place.

  “I ought to take a moment here and point out that Dr. Bullinger’s daughter Margaret died in her late teens. She was a concert pianist, and if I had a picture of her on me, you’d see how much Margot looks like Margaret. He wanted Margot modeled loosely after his daughter. Some sort of tribute to her memory.”

  “So, what are you saying? She tried to act like the daughter to play on his heartstrings?”

  “She had perfect recall. Not like us, when we hear things and promptly forget them. She remembered every word she ever heard, and he’d mentioned his daughter in passing a few times, never part of some huge conversation, just casual mentions. Showed her a picture. She must have realized how similar her face was to Margaret’s and tried to use that to better her odds of getting out of there.”

  “But he didn’t actually let her out or take her to the Eiffel Tower.”

  He shook his head. “No. But the point is, she tried. She was convincing, used a remarkable amount of cunning to get him on her side. By the time we realized what she was up to, Dr. Bullinger was going on about how cruel it was to keep her locked up. He wanted to let her out, but under careful supervision, of course.” He held his hand up, sensing another argument from me. “Just watch this one next.”

  He summoned up another video file and leaned back, linking his fingers together behind his head.

  To my mild surprise, he appeared on the computer screen in almost exactly the same position. He looked a little younger, a little less lined, maybe. His eyes were different, though. Less cold, more open. I wondered how much Margot had had to do with that change.

  “I missed you, Margot. That’s what I get for going to Prague for the weekend.”

  “Did you think of me a lot while you were gone?”

  “I always think of you. Eat, sleep, Margot. That’s my life.” He locked his ar
ms over his head in a deep stretch and let them flop to his sides.

  Margot watched him like she was trying to commit his every detail to memory. Which, I had to admit, was likely not much of a chore for her. “Do you say that to all the girls?”

  “I’m hurt you would even think that.” Nick clapped a hand over his heart. “Why would I need other girls when I’ve got you? Brains, beauty, sharp wit. Can you cook? If you can cook I’d get on one knee right now.”

  Jess sighed like an angry cat from beside me.

  An almost-smile played at the corner of Margot’s mouth. “You do love to tease me.”

  He leaned forward, elbows on the table. “I love that I can. You’re very smart. Much smarter than we ever thought you’d be.”

  “What did you picture when you and your team were building me?” she asked, and I heard the edge to her words, even though the onscreen Nick seemed to have missed it.

  “Nothing like the way you turned out. You surpassed all our expectations.”

  Her eyes swept the ceiling, ultimately settling right on the camera, though the only notice she gave it was one benign blink. What were behind her faux eyeballs? Cameras?

  “Are we friends, Nick?” she finally asked, eyes drifting back to him.

  “Of course we are.”

  She clenched and unclenched the fingers of her right hand and held it out to him. Wordlessly, he slipped his hand in hers.

  She dipped her chin to catch his eye, a curtain of her pale blonde hair spilling onto the table. “Do friends usually keep their friends locked up?”

  “No, Margot.”

  “But you said we were friends,” she insisted, her voice pulling up at the end of her sentence.

  “We are.”

  She reached out, grasping his hand between both of hers. “Don’t you care about me?”

  “I absolutely adore you,” he said, and for once, I believed him wholeheartedly.

  “I care about you, too. Does that surprise you? The fact that I can care about anything?”

  “It doesn’t surprise me one bit.”

  “So why does this have to be a prisoner/interrogator relationship? How is that fair?”

  He made to lean back in his chair, but she wouldn’t release her hold on him. “Margot, I’m not an interrogator, okay, give me a break—”

  “Do you think it’s fair?” she cut in, and I could tell by Nick’s face that her grip had grown uncomfortably tight.

  He grappled with her hands, disentangling his from her fingers. A red ribbon of what I knew would turn into a spectacular bruise rippled across his knuckles. He gave her a wincing sort of grimace and wiggled his hand, as if trying to shake off the pain.

  “I’m sorry.” Her hands were back in her lap, and she truly did look remorseful. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  “I know you didn’t.”

  “Are you leaving already?”

  “What?”

  “You glanced at the door.” Her fake pupils whizzed between both of his. “You just got here. I’ve been alone all day with nothing to do. I can tell none of the others care about me the way you do, Nick, I just want to be around a friendly face for more than five minutes.”

  I couldn’t not pity her if I tried. Maybe it was a ruse, but she'd had good reason. I felt a surge of dislike well up in my gut, knowing that she’d probably been destroyed within months of this recorded conversation, and all for the crime of simply wanting out of her cleanroom prison.

  And I surprised and horrified myself for thinking maybe that guy she’d tried to kill had had it coming.

  The real-life Nick stabbed the pause button.

  “That was the first conversation we had where she hinted about me letting her out. It got steadily worse, to the point where that was all we talked about. I honestly hated having to tell her it was impossible. The thing was, Margot and everything she was got to be so routine that eventually we didn’t clamor around the video feeds to watch the recordings live or even bother to watch them all later. If it was a testing day, sure, but everyday conversations went by the wayside. I thought I was the only one she’d spoken to about getting out of the lab, but,” he flicked his computer screen, “obviously I wasn’t. Once Dr. Bullinger started talking about letting her out, I went through all the footage of her interviews and realized what she was up to. Not long after we put it together, she stabbed another team member with a screwdriver and stole his access card. She didn’t get far, but it wasn’t for lack of trying.”

  “It didn’t have to get to that point,” I said with more umbrage than I’d intended, feeling firmly on Margot’s side. “You could have let her out. I can tell you cared about her. Cared about her more than you even meant to let on. And you couldn’t even take her outside for a lousy walk. I bet she would have been over the moon just to go to the fucking park.”

  “Yeah,” he said, bobbing his head, smiling as though at something I couldn’t see, like he was somewhere far away from me, from Jess and his underground lab. “I cared about her a lot. She was practically my best friend. And I was a chump, wasn’t I? I cared about her, but she didn’t have the ability to care about me. She had real AI, but she didn’t have feelings. She could mimic them like fucking Meryl Streep, though, I’ll give her that much. She wasn’t capable of empathy or anything that had to do with other people. Only cared about her endgame, which was busting out of the joint. Margot turned into a chameleon to try to get her way, tried to play off each individual personality in an effort to leave the lab. She even hacked the goddamned Swiss emergency alert system to try to get the police to force an evacuation.” He snorted, shaking his head, tacking on in an afterthought, “Of course we didn’t find out she was behind that little fiasco until she was in pieces. After everything that happened, the team wanted to step away from the project.”

  Except him, of course.

  “How strong are these things?” I asked, remembering Nick’s grimace when Margot had gripped his hand.

  “Hell of a lot stronger than a human. We’re just meat and bone, a collection of delicate organs and arteries. Margot had no pain reflex, of course, which meant a punch wouldn’t stop her, a two by four to the chest couldn’t hurt her. Cut her arm off, she’d just keep going, she had no blood to spill.”

  I pushed back from the table too roughly; the back of my chair hit Jess’s knees. “And you’re willing to risk that kind of thing happening again?”

  “Margot was there for three years. Her patience had long since waned by the time she got violent. That’s not going to happen this time. I’ll have more safeguards in place, and though the core coding is the same, I’ve tweaked a few things. I don’t want another femme fatale like Margot who uses whatever tools in her arsenal to get her way. I’m not looking for AI this time; Margot passed the Turing Test with flying colors when she was two weeks old. I’m looking for consciousness. And I think I can do it, especially if you’re helping me.”

  J ess looked distinctly grumpy, schlepping back through the hallways with me after we left Nick down on the bottom floor.

  “I hate watching Margot’s videos.” She tried to tame her wild curls, flattening them enough to tie back with a ponytail elastic. “It’s like she’s his ex-girlfriend or something.”

  That is your problem with watching the videos? I wanted to shout. You’ve got no other issues with what you saw on them?

  But I couldn’t say that if I wanted to foster the fiction of a budding friendship between the two of us, so I just made an indistinct noise in my throat. How could he be so sure history wouldn’t repeat itself? Surely his next creation—I tried very hard not to superimpose Carissa’s face over Margot’s—would want out eventually, too. If everyone else on his team back in Switzerland had been scared off the project, didn’t that make Nick reckless, or stupid, or both?

  “I don’t see how he can carry on with this project without any other members of his Swiss team helping him.”

  “It’ll just be slower going this time. He had to parcel
out a lot of the aesthetic work that needs to be done, but he’s capable of completing the build on his own.”

  “So how long, do you think?”

  We stopped back at her cubicle, where she slumped in her swivel chair and snatched up her coffee. After a long sip, she said, “Maybe a month. There’s an acclimation period in the beginning. They don’t just wake up and act the way Margot did in the videos. They’ll need to be taught some things. Kind of like babies. An accelerated child-raising type thing, I think. The more time a human spends with them, the more they learn. That’s why Margot was so lifelike toward the end. She’d had three years to learn how to simulate it.”

  But was it really all a simulation? I wondered on my way back to my car, my head buzzing like wasps trapped under glass. Real people went to extremes all the time when backed into a corner, didn’t they?

  That night I dreamed of bodiless limbs, wire sparking at the joints as Margot examined them in her prison, her face unnaturally still. I jolted awake when she suddenly and casually peeled off a layer of silicone on her face, holding it out to compare to the skin on the shin of the leg she was playing with.

  D o you ever wonder what Cathy would say if she knew you still visited so often?” I asked Joe, knocking back a sip of coffee.

  “She’d probably tell me to get a life already.” He looked thoughtfully down at his wife’s headstone, scuffing the toe of his boots into the black snow.

  “Carissa would probably think it was sweet but not conducive to the whole moving on thing,” I offered, blinking around the cemetery. It was even more depressing than usual, the weeks old snow blanketed with grime, patches of frostbitten grass struggling through thin sheets of ice. It had never looked bleaker, and I couldn’t help sucking in some of the melancholy hanging over the headstones like toxic fog.

  Visiting so often felt like exposing my open wounds to some gangrenous infection.

  I chanced a look at Joe’s profile. “You ever wonder if we should start to scale back the trips here?”