“Yes.”
“Do you remember how you leaned into my hand? Why did you do that?”
For the very first time, Carissa looked utterly flummoxed. “I don’t know.”
Jess paused for a few beats, looking just as thrown as Carissa. “How do you not know?”
“If I don’t know why I did it in the first place, do you really expect me to know how I don’t know why I did it?”
Jess threw me a bewildered glance, as if demanding I say something, appealing to me to lay down the law. When I didn’t, she snorted and pressed on. “You have memories, Carissa, you remember what you were feeling at the time. I was playing with your hair. I’ve done it before, but you never leaned into my hand the way you did last night. Why can’t you tell me why you did it?”
“You’re beginning to sound a lot like Nick,” Carissa said, and it was obvious from her tone that she considered this something near base treachery.
“I just want to know why you did it. Nick wasn’t here to see it, and it needs to happen again, today, once he makes it back into the building. Hasn’t he told you what he’s been working on?”
“You don’t really believe he tells me much, do you?” Her fingers curled into her palm again, one after the other, her eyes on Jess all the while. For one wild moment I pictured a screwdriver snug in her grip. “I don’t know what he was doing. I was powered down at the time, wasn’t I?”
Jess slammed herself against the back of her chair, shaking her head, a mutinous expression wreathing her features.
“What’s the big deal?” I finally interjected. “She’s done it once; she can do it again. She spends most of her time with Nick, right? He’ll see it for himself at some point.”
“No, he won’t. He barely touches her.”
All I could think to that was thank fucking God.
Jess sighed loudly, her arms tight against her chest, her head tilted back so she was looking up at the ceiling.
I rubbed my eyes, trying to remove the last vestiges of sleep still seaming my lids together, and glanced blearily back at Carissa. Her gaze was steady, probing, not even broken up by one of her infrequent blinks.
A dim lightbulb of inspiration flickered on over my head. I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and pulled up Gmail chat.
Do you really have no idea why you did it?
Her gaze drifted vaguely to the left as the message went through, and after a second, she looked back at me. My phone buzzed in my hand, and I looked down at her response.
I might have an idea.
“Now's really not the time for texting, you know,” Jess complained as another message streamed through.
Maybe you can help me with it.
I buzzed the entrance of 311 Emery with my elbow, balancing a tray of coffees and a box of muffins in both hands.
Tell Jess you need coffee. Offer to get her something from Dunkin’ Donuts. She can never resist their muffins, so she’ll take you up on it.
The door flung open, and Nick stared out at me.
Nick should be back by then. He’ll probably be the one to answer the buzz.
“You come bearing gifts,” he said, taking the box of muffins from me to free up one of my hands. “She’s with Jess right now.”
I’ll pretend to have problems learning how to French braid if I need to buy time, but I doubt it’ll come to that.
Nick took a massive bite of a blueberry muffin, sugar crystals shining on his lips as we walked down the hallway. “Jess is down there doing something with her hair. She thinks she’s a Barbie doll or something. Probably’ll start trying to dress her up one of these days.”
“Anything would be better than those prisoner scrubs you’ve put her in.”
He laughed, plodding down the staircase which led to the bottom floor of the mill, and popped the rest of the muffin into his mouth. “Fashion wasn’t exactly top-tier in my mind when I was building her, Ben.” He wiped his mouth on his sleeve, flashing his access card at the scanner, and pushed the door open.
I looked through the one-way glass in the vestibule. Both Jess and Carissa’s hair were pulled back into French braids, as though they’d both attended the same bizarre slumber party. The glass rattled as the door swung shut behind Nick and me, and both women’s gazes snapped up to the doorway.
“Did you get me a chocolate chip?” Jess asked as we entered the room, pushing a lighted makeup mirror out of her way, but it was Nick who answered her.
“I ought to eat it out of principle.” He flipped the muffin box open and waved the chocolate chip one at her threateningly.
She rolled her eyes and pulled the mirror back in front of her, brushing back strands of hair coming loose from her braid. “You’re the one who said we should change the access code every quarter.” To me, she added, her tone heavy with annoyance, “I changed the code that gets us in the front door. Apparently Nick didn’t remember our anniversary and got himself locked out this morning.”
“Jesus. I’ll never live this one down.” Nick shot me a look, as though hoping for brotherly solidarity.
I shrugged. “Never forgot my anniversary. Sorry.”
“Women.” Nick sighed. “They’re easily upset. Especially this one.”
I was no fan of Jess, but I liked the way Nick spoke to her even less. Carissa watched their exchange with wary eyes in an otherwise vacant expression.
I set the rest of the spoils on the table and took a seat next to Nick, my every nerve humming in anxious anticipation.
When it feels like the right time, I’ll edge toward the topic in a roundabout way.
“You really shouldn’t treat someone you’re supposed to love so callously,” she told Nick, and if she’d just spontaneously combusted, Nick wouldn’t have looked so surprised.
“Is that what you think?” he asked, a weird slant to his mouth, as though he was considering smiling but didn’t want to commit just yet.
Carissa pushed a few stray wisps of hair out of her eyes. “It is.” She gave me the briefest of glances. “We never spoke to each other that way.”
It was a lie. We did all the time. There’s no way you can be around someone practically 24/7 and not have at least a few instances of snippiness.
“Well, congratulations. Pardon me if our mediocrity offends you.”
I’ll try to be subtle, work some of my hair out of the braid.
“How long have you been together?” Carissa hooked a finger through her hair, loosening the braid as she turned her eyes on Jess.
“Three years.”
“It’s only been three years?” Nick asked. “Could have sworn it was longer.”
“I can’t tell if that’s a compliment or an insult,” Jess said dryly. “It was three years in August.”
“And you’ve never thought about getting married?”
Nick’s eyebrow arched severely like a comic book villain. “You’re awfully chatty today. Normally I wouldn’t mind, but you’re going to get me in trouble.”
Jess closed her eyes briefly and let out the tiniest of sighs. “He’s very busy, Carissa. We both are. Marriage isn’t at the top of our priority list just yet. It isn’t the right time.”
Right. I almost chimed in with a retort—keep telling yourself that, Jess, but we all know he’s never thought twice about marrying you—but I pressed my lips shut to seal out the jibe.
“Is there ever a right time?” Carissa turned her gaze on me. “Was it the right time when you proposed to me?”
I fumbled with my words around a nervous cough. “Well, I didn’t exactly think about whether it was an appropriate time. I just…wanted to ask you. So I did.”
Her pink bottom lip curved on the cusp of a small half smile. “Do you still carry my ring with you everywhere?”
“It’s in my back pocket.”
“Can I see it?”
I rose, grappling inside my back pocket. “It probably needs some cleaning. It’s not as shiny as it used to be,” I said, sliding it across the table.
Fractures of light bounced off the facets of the diamonds, and I wished I could hear the turn of her thoughts as she considered the ring. This whole performance was just that, a performance, but I wondered if even the slightest shred of her wished it could be more.
But she blinked and the spell broke. She unfurled the fingers of her left hand and held it out to me. “Do you mind if I try it on?”
You have to put it on me. Nick might kick up a fuss, but I have a feeling Jess will try to override him.
I stood again, collecting the ring, and made to circle the table to where she sat, glass eyeballs burning with the loud message she couldn’t voice.
Jess pressed her index finger into her lips, a quizzical look on her face.
“Whoa.” Nick slashed both hands through the air. “Hold it. Let her put it on herself.”
“What’s the harm?” Jess demanded, leaning halfway over the table separating her from her boyfriend. “Your phone’s right here. If on the off-chance something does happen, you can hit the kill switch.”
His hard gray gaze swept over the three of us and fell back on his phone. “Fine.” But his hand hovered over the phone, presumably poised to press this alleged kill switch, should anything nefarious occur.
I felt my heart beat in my throat as I took the few steps toward her. Breathing became something I had to consciously order myself to do.
Her left hand didn’t waver as she offered it to me (very unlike the overcaffienated woman I knew, who couldn’t even take steady photographs because of her endlessly twitchy fingers), and she smiled slightly as I slid the ring into place.
“It fits.” She held her hand out before her, twisting it this way and that to make the overhead lights shatter over the diamonds.
I knew what she wanted me to do, but I couldn’t. It was like one of those nightmares I used to have as a teenager, my body frozen even though every fiber of my being screamed at me to move.
One of her eyebrows lifted slightly, her head tilting so a lock of fake hair fell over one eye. “Are you okay?”
You should be able to push the hair I worked loose behind my ear at that point.
Just do it, I thought. You’ve touched her before.
I reached out with trembling fingers and tucked that loose lock of hair behind her ear. She leaned into my touch exactly the way she’d planned it, and I was ready to feel that layer of soft silicone against my skin, but nothing could have prepared me for her cold hand ensnaring my forearm and pulling me down to her level. I doubt I could have ever been ready to feel her seal her lips against mine.
Nick stood so abruptly his chair clattered to the floor behind him.
I broke the kiss quickly, falling back a few steps, mainly because I didn’t want Nick to press that little kill switch button his finger hovered over, but also because being so close to her made it difficult to keep my heart in my chest.
And like Margot, Carissa’s acting chops were of the most magnificent caliber. The motors beneath her face worked into overdrive, twisting her features into bemusement, followed quite closely by shock and something a few shades near shame.
“What the fuck was that!” Nick righted his chair, every bit as taken aback as I was.
“I’m sorry.” Carissa’s big glassy eyes turned back to Nick, her brows pulling up. “I don’t know what came over me.”
Jess beamed at me, her eyes wide and watery. “It was just a kiss, babe, look at them, everything’s fine—”
Nick fell back into his chair, looking exactly as thunderstruck as I felt, massaging his neck, where his pulse visibly pounded. “Holy shit, I thought she was going to strangle you.”
It felt like she had strangled me, the way I could scarcely draw breath.
“I don’t know whether I’ve mentioned how irksome it is to hear you all speak about me as if I’m not even here,” Carissa said, her gaze back on the engagement ring riding loose on her knuckle.
Nick uttered a hacking snort of a laugh. “I’ll try to bear that in mind.”
Jess slipped her hand on Carissa’s shoulder, gently tugging her around to face her. “What was that all about? Why would you do that?”
“Because I wanted to,” she answered, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.
Nick drummed his thumb on the table, his gunmetal eyes flickering between me, circling back to my chair, and Carissa. “Did you have any expectation as to what it would feel like, or were you just taking a shot in the dark?”
“I figured if I liked his touch, I’d like that, too. I must have liked it before. I’ve seen too many pictures of us doing things of that nature.”
Nick propped his elbow on the table, cradling his chin in his hand. “What did it feel like?”
“Cold.”
I was about to open my mouth in protest—if it had been cold, it wasn’t my fault, she was the robot, for God’s sake—but he waved his hand in my direction to get me to shut up. “Cold all over? Head to toe?”
“Head to toe.”
“Is that bad?” I asked. “It sounds bad.”
“It’s not bad. I’ll tell you later. She doesn’t like people talking about her as if she isn’t present, remember?”
She gave him a sharp look, but her subsequent smile was even sharper, with none of the soft edges you had to look hard to find that she’d had in life. Sticking her hand out in front of her again, she mashed her lips into a thick pink line. “I suppose you’ll want this back, huh?” she asked me, glancing up through her lashes.
“I’ll…I can just get it back later. You can wear it for a while.” I would have preferred to keep it, but watching her stare at the ring made me think she might have needed it more than I did.
W hat was that?” My lips still burned from the recent contact like they’d been slathered in Icy Hot. Now I knew how Carissa had felt the first time I’d kissed her. She’d been in the middle of a sentence when the desire overwhelmed me. I didn’t even remember pushing her into that brick wall outside the bar we were standing beside, but I remembered the way the smoke from her fallen cigarette curled around us, stinging my corneas, and how her eyes had gone wide with surprise.
Nick dropped his cell phone on the desk in the room where I’d first seen Margot’s videos and pulled out his swivel chair. “You know what endorphins do, right?”
Could he ever ask a question without being condescending? “Doesn’t everyone?”
“So we get those feel-good chemicals whenever we do something we like, and it made me start thinking about ways to simulate that in an AI. I had to wonder what it was that machines, for lack of a better word, liked.”
He gave me an expectant look, like a teacher spoon-feeding some idiot student an answer.
“And what’s that?” I asked, feeling my vocal cords pulse with annoyance.
“We’ve all got fans on our computers, right? They like certain temperatures. They like running smoothly, running fast.”
“So you gave her some type of robotic fan endorphin delivery system?”
“It’s just a coolant. You can activate it through touch. I gave her sensors on certain parts of her body. They’re temperature sensing, so it’s not like she’d react the same way she did in there if she rubbed her head against a wall or something.”
Something cold gripped my heart, making my breathing hitch. He implanted sensors all over her body, did he? How exactly did he go about testing these sensors? By stripping her down in some cold metal room and fondling her?
Maybe I had my mind in the gutter. Jess had already said Nick didn’t touch her very much, but if that was the case, why would he even bother with heat sensitive sensors?
The question must have floated in a thought bubble over my head, because a knowing smile cracked over his face.
“The more human she feels, the more human she’ll be. She needs sensors anyway, to protect herself from harm. I wouldn’t want her damaging her skin if she touched something hot, or sharp, whatever.” He paused, scanning my face in
the way I’d come to expect from Carissa. “You look rattled. You doing all right?”
What planet was he from to expect me to be perfectly at ease with anything he did in this place?
“Sorry. It’s just that I’ve never been forcibly kissed by a robot.”
“Yeah, that might take some getting used to.”
As if I’d ever get used to it. “Margot never tried anything like that with you?”
He pushed back from his desk, snorting. “She faked an injury to her shoulder once. Used it as an excuse to take her top off so I could examine the area. Probably planned to punch me in the face and steal my access card if I’d gotten all googly-eyed.”
“What’d you do?”
“It was a minor laceration. She probably did it herself with her fingernail. I repaired the damage and sent her on her way,” he said, like I’d asked him the most obvious question on earth. He quirked an eyebrow. “What, you thought I groped her or something?”
“I hadn’t ruled it out.” And he could have been lying anyway. He’d been unusually close to and fond of Margot, much fonder of her than he had ever seemed of Jess. It didn’t take much imagination to picture him doing all sorts of inappropriate things with an AI.
He drew himself up in his chair, mock pompous and full of phony righteous indignation. “I’m a man of science, Ben. I’m remarkably self-contained.”
Right. Anyone could claim to be remarkably self-contained. At least until they weren’t.
I sat behind the wheel of my car, waiting for the layers of frost on the windshield to melt. Waiting until my brain could disentangle emotions from fact, wheeze up to the finish line with the answer of how I really felt. Sad, surely, but I was always sad, sad had tinged and tainted my every mundane thought since July. Confused was a given; I’d been confused from the very first second I laid eyes on that thing in there that spoke with Carissa’s voice and mimicked her half-smiles. It was her, but not her. It used the same expressions and had her same face, but it was still so foreign, similar to the way I’d always felt when I heard a recording of my own voice. I knew it was me, but it always sounded like a perfect stranger.
Lingering Page 20
