“Anything wrong, Ruby?” Jason Tsao’s voice snapped her eyes open.
“Nope.” In front of her, the support diver in charge of filming had his camera aimed at her face. Ruby smiled at him, so that everyone in the mission control room would be able to see that she was fine. They wouldn’t pull her out of the pool, not with lives on the line, but they would sure as heck note any struggles for future missions. “Just thinking through next steps. I’m ready to start up again when you are.”
• • • •
On attempt number four, Ruby had figured out a process that got the tube lined up, but still wrestled with snugging the life raft up against the ship enough to get a good seal. The grapple mechanism had been designed to be activated by pressure from docking. Attempting to exert that pressure manually was…challenging.
Biting the inside of her lip, Ruby fumbled with the thick straps while holding on to a handrail with one hand. Her own tethers stabilized her a little, but not enough.
Eugene crackled onto the comm. “Do you think an APFR would give you better leverage?”
Articulated Portable Foot Restraint. She stopped what she was doing and stared at the ship. The handrail she was using was between two sockets built into the skin of the lunar shuttle. She’d been using the solution as just a navigation point. All she had to do was use one of those two sockets to attach a foot restraint and free both hands.
And she’d been avoiding using a foot restraint because she’d been unconsciously avoiding pain. To get her feet into the APFR, she’d have to twist her ankle in and out of the restraint. Normally the MC trusted the astronaut on decisions like that during a dev run, to figure out what worked best for them. Ruby had been screwing things up because she’d gone dancing.
“Good call.” The silver lining to the number of runs they’d done was that she knew where the nearest APFR was stored. She’d passed by it at least twice during this run, which made it all the worse that she hadn’t thought of it. “Translating back over the river and through the woods.”
“If you’re reversing course, shouldn’t that be through the woods and over the river?”
“Pretty sure there are woods on both sides of the river.” Ruby pulled herself hand over hand to the port sensor array, which was, thankfully, within reach of her safety tether. Even so, fighting the water resistance made her arms burn with effort. In the back of her head, time ticked away. “I could have collected this on my previous pass, which would buy some time.”
Jason Tsao responded. “Good note, EV2. I’ll pass that up to station.”
He didn’t say “if this works” but the question hung in the water with her. Ruby attached a Retractible Equipment Tether to the foot restraint. Once the RET was secure, she pulled the foot restraint off the WIF by turning the collar and depressing the “petals” at the base of the post. The bayonet slid out of the socket. It was a ridiculous thing to feel triumph about, but at the moment she would take even small victories.
Turning to reverse course, Ruby swung her body through the water so that her feet trailed behind her. The water resistance grabbed her feet and seemed to slowly twist her ankle. Ruby locked her jaw and breathed through her nose. This was an acceptable level of pain but the translation back to the work site seemed twice as long. She didn’t have the energy for banter.
When she got back to the handrail, she snapped her local tether back into place. “Slider locked, black on black.”
Closing her stiff fingers around the foot restraint, she plugged it into the nearest socket. The litany of locking things in place continued. “Collar locked, black on black.” She wrapped her hands round the APFR to make sure it was seated correctly. “Good twist and pull test”
“Copy EV2.”
Ruby retrieved the RET and restowed it. The last thing she needed was to get snarled in something she’d forgotten to put away.
Adjusting her tethers to allow her to “stand up” perpendicular to the lunar rocket, Ruby put her feet next to the foot restraint. She slid the toes of her left foot under the restraint and twisted her foot to slide the heel ridge into the restraining slot.
Biting the inside of her cheek, she slid her right foot under the restraint and twisted it. It felt as if her boot was filled with broken glass. It wasn’t. She was pretty sure she wasn’t doing permanent damage to the ankle. Slowing down recovery time, yes, but even if it was permanent damage, at the end of the day it just meant she wouldn’t be able to dance.
But she’d still be able to play bridge with Myrtle and Eugene.
Ruby reached for the tether and yanked on it with both hands. Something in her ankle went pfft and snapped.
A small cry escaped. Ruby bit down hard. She would live, and so would the people on that ship if she had anything to say about it. Grimacing, she hauled on the tether until the tube snuggled up against the mockup station and the grapple clicked into place.
Tears streaked across her cheeks, and for once the 1-G was a benefit because the moisture didn’t build up in watery balls over her eyes. Ruby nodded for the camera. “Thanks, Eugene. The answer is APFR. With that, I can pitch back. I can grab the bag. Anchor it. I can maneuver my body and not have to pitch or roll with the handrail. Sorry it took so long to work out.” Her ankle throbbed with each beat of her heart. “What’s next?”
She hung in the water, listening to the sound of her own fans. Around her, support divers slowly turned the water with their fins while they all waited. Her ankle consumed the rest of her attention.
The line crackled as Jason came back on the line. “Let’s get you out of the pool.”
“I’m fine to continue.”
“Thank you, but we’re transmitting this part of the procedure up to Lunetta. We’ll let Paul and Serge dev the process of getting the tube back to the other end of the ship. It’s comparatively straightforward.”
“It’s not a problem.”
“Ruby.” Eugene’s voice cut in. “I’ve played bridge with you. I know your tells.”
She opened her mouth, staring at the camera in front of her. “Right. See you topside.”
Her support divers swam up around her and pulled her away from the ship. In space, right now, someone on Lunetta was suiting up to go out and do this as a real spacewalk, not as a development run in a pool. Or heck, maybe they were all ready to go and had just been waiting for a viable solution.
All the mistakes that Ruby had made were ones that the real rescue team wouldn’t have to. The pool was hard. Space would kill you.
Ruby let herself go limp in her suit, watching the bubbles of her support divers stream past like flecks of snow. In her ears, the conversation with the other team continued as they kept working to try to mate an umbilical to the lunar rocket. She realized that she had no idea how long she’d been down.
When the divers got her attached to the donning stand and the crane hauled her above the pool, Eugene was waiting poolside. He still wore his Snoopy cap, with the comm unit in place so he could stay in the loop. His lower lip had a raw spot as if he’d been biting it constantly while she was under the water.
He could hear her if she spoke, but she waited until her suit was depressurized and her suit tech had her helmet off. She flexed her hands against the ache in the joints and met Eugene’s gaze as the tech pulled her Snoopy cap off.
Eugene took his own off and stepped forward. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell them to pull you earlier.”
“That was the right choice.” She shifted her weight to her left foot as her tech released the hard aluminum ring connecting her pants to the suit. “How long do they have?”
“Six hours.” He glanced across the room at the clock on the wall. “It’s enough.”
Ruby nodded and squirmed down, with a tech on either side to catch her. It was standard practice, but Eugene stepping forward, hands out, wasn’t. For the first time since she’d gone under, Ruby put weight on her right foot. Her head was still in the suit and the fiberglass interior seemed to light up like a met
eor striking the Earth.
Hands caught her and the next thing she knew, she was seated in a chair, still blinking back tears. Swallowing, Ruby shook her head. “I’m fine—GAH!” The sound ripped out of her as the techs tried to pull the spacesuit pants down. Her ankle was so swollen that it caught in the boot.
Gripping the side of the chair, she panted until the spots faded from her vision.
The nearest suit tech toggled on his mic. “We need medical for EV2.”
She winced, but calling a medic was inevitable. “Not urgent. I aggravated a previous injury, that’s all.”
“Aggravated?” Eugene shook his head. “You’re going to aggravate me if you keep lying.”
“I’m not— Okay. I am. I’ve likely torn a ligament in my ankle. But y’all are going to pull these goddamn pants off of me because if the medic gets here first, she’s going to try cutting it off.”
The tech looked up, appalled. “Oh hell, no.”
“Right?” Ruby stuck out her hurt leg. “You are Go for removal.”
He looked up at Eugene, who grimaced and then nodded. Eugene stepped behind her and braced Ruby with his hands on her shoulders. Putting a hand on either side of the boot, the tech hauled back. Ruby managed not to scream, but if Eugene weren’t bracing her, she probably would have fallen out of the chair.
Beneath the mesh of her cooling garment, her ankle was swollen to twice the size it should be. Eugene whistled. “Aggravated a previous injury?”
“Sprained it last night.” Her entire leg was pulsing in hot and cold waves around the burning core of her ankle. It was past a sprain now, but Ruby tried to keep her voice military calm. “But…not really a choice, was there?”
“Thank you.” He squeezed her shoulder.
She didn’t deserve thanks. If she’d done her homework on other ships. If she’d not been avoiding using her foot. If she’d just had her priorities straight—hell, if Eugene had been in the pool, he’d have figured this out faster than she did. She’d been trying to fit too many things into her life and had come within a hairsbreadth of failing at all of them. Failing her dance partner was disappointing. Failing the IAC could have been fatal.
Ruby let her breath out slowly as the medic came barreling around the end of the pool. “Make a phone call for me? I have a rehearsal I need to cancel.”
And after that, Ruby was going to go home, curl up in bed, and study every manual she could get her hands on. No one was going to come this close to dying on her watch ever again.
She didn’t have that many pieces of Before left, but keeping them didn’t mean keeping them in the same way and shape. Lindy-hop could go back to being just a social thing. But where she belonged in life After the Meteor, was here.
Here, she made a difference. Sprained ankle and all.
* * *
Mary Robinette Kowal is the author of Ghost Talkers, The Glamourist Histories series, and the Lady Astronaut series. She is the President of SFWA, part of the award-winning podcast Writing Excuses and a four-time Hugo Award winner. Her short fiction appears in Uncanny, Tor.com, and Asimov’s. Mary Robinette, a professional puppeteer, lives in Nashville. Visit her online at maryrobinettekowal.com.
I (28M) created a deepfake girlfriend and now my parents think we're getting married
By Fonda Lee
I didn’t want a girlfriend. Don’t get me wrong, I like girls—I just don’t have time for the hassle of dating right now. But I was at a family reunion last year and my parents kept making comments about me still being single: “Oh, he works too hard” and “He’s shy; he just needs to give himself some credit.” My mom was asking my aunts if they could set me up with girls they knew. It was getting to be too much.
So when I got home from the reunion, I signed up for a Worthy account. It was pretty simple: I filled out some information about myself, put in my preferences for gender and age, and in seconds I had an AI-generated virtual girlfriend named “Ivy.” She sent me a text: “Hi, I’m looking forward to getting to know you.” I texted back right away, “Me too, how’s it going?” and my Worthy score in the corner of the screen went up from zero to five.
You start by texting your virtual significant other, but as the relationship progresses, you can send and receive voice messages, go on virtual dates, and talk over video calls. You get points based on the quantity and quality of your interactions. Once I reached a high enough Worthy score to be at Level 3 (“Spark” level) in the program, I could upload photos and short clips of myself and Worthy would insert my virtual girlfriend into them. That would give me ammunition to tell my parents I was dating someone. They live in Seattle and I’m in Boston, so we mostly stay in touch via texts and photos anyway.
It’s not like I was being completely dishonest, either, because I would be getting dating experience. Just a lot more efficiently. Worthy gets you through the awkward, shallow online dating phase using an AI that teaches you to be a more emotionally intelligent romantic partner—which is what girls want, right? You don’t have to disappoint or be disappointed by a real person. And if you get too busy, you can just put your account on hold.
You have to treat the relationship seriously to get a high Worthy score, though. If you ask your AI partner how their day is going, listen to them, and send them virtual flowers on your “anniversary,” your score goes up. If you ignore them, talk over them, or say insensitive things, it goes down. Worthy’s algorithms learn your behavior and react realistically. So you can’t hack the system by sending virtual flower bouquets nonstop. The program will flag that as being insincere and your rating will take a nosedive.
Once you have a high enough score, you can transfer your account over to Worthwhile, which is the company’s actual dating site. Over there, you can see everyone else’s Worthy scores and they can see yours before you decide whether or not to contact each other. But I wasn’t thinking that far down the line when I started. I just wanted the photos and videos from Worthy to keep my parents off my back.
You’ve probably already guessed the big problem in this plan: When it comes to physical appearance, there are only 12 models of Worthy girlfriends to choose from. The AI uses your profile to design a compatible personality, and there are about a hundred name variants, but if you did an online image search for any of their faces, each one would show up next to thousands of Worthy users. The company could easily create more models, but they limit the number so they’re easily recognizable as Worthy girls (i.e., proprietary software). My parents aren’t very tech or social media savvy, but if they ever happened to see another photo of the same Worthy girlfriend model online, or if they were to share a picture of me and my “girlfriend” with one of their friends, my cover would be blown.
Luckily, there’s a deepfake app called FaceAbout that alters Worthy media files. It’s not approved by Worthy, but the quality is still really good and it works right in the Worthy interface with barely any lag time. It also doesn’t seem to have any of the glitching that happens in high-res video with the cheap deepfake apps. FaceAbout needed at least six facial photographs to make my Worthy girlfriend look like someone else. Scrolling through my phone, I found a bunch of recent photos of my friend Mikala (not her real name, by the way) from when we’d gone to Fan Expo together, so I uploaded those. My parents have never met Mikala, so I wasn’t worried about them questioning why two different girls in my life had the same face. All told, it took me about 15 minutes to set everything up.
**Edit: Yes, the FaceAbout app has a standard user agreement where you check a box stating you have permission to use the photos you upload. Pretty much every photo or video manipulation app has some disclaimer like that and no one reads them. Okay, I admit it’s maybe a little weird to use my friend’s face to create my fake girlfriend without telling her. But remember, I’m never showing these photos to anyone other than my parents. Mikala and I have known each other for years through online games, but we only recently discovered we live in the same city and started hanging out in person.
She’s cool and no-bullshit and has a girlfriend of her own. I don’t want her to think there’s anything weird between us just because I’m using some photos of her, because there really isn’t.
My first few conversations with Ivy were pretty generic: “Hi, how’re you?” “Good, what you doing?” “Just got back from the gym.” That sort of thing. A few days later, I said I was going to see the new Alien movie next weekend, and Ivy sent me a photo of herself in a Xenomorph T-shirt standing outside a theater, sticking her tongue out at the camera. She texted, “Opening night, baby!”
It was Mikala’s face, of course, on a taller, slimmer body, and that weirded me out for a couple seconds. I knew it was a fake image, but it was still cute. We agreed to do an Alien series marathon. (“Watch a movie together” is one of the virtual dates you can choose from, along with “Cook a meal,” “Watch a sports game,” “Go for a walk,” and others.) While we were watching, she was texting me things like “RIPLEY GTFO FORGET THE CAT ALREADYYYY” and it was cracking me up even though I knew she wasn’t really watching a movie with me.
I sent Ivy a cookie basket. The cookies are virtual, but it still costs $11.99. Which is like a third of the price of a real cookie basket. That part of the Worthy experience is honestly a ripoff. I mean, it literally costs them nothing. But the next morning, I woke up to see photos of Ivy with this big basket of cookies. They looked really good, and Ivy looked really happy. She sent me a text filled with heart emojis.
**Edit: Since so many of you are asking the exact same question in the comments: No, the Worthy platform doesn’t have porn. You can have smutty conversations with your Worthy partner, but that’s it. They even delete nude pics.
**Edit: All of you asswipes making fun of Worthy users, saying what’s the point of a fake girlfriend without porn, are derailing the thread and need to grow up. BTW, all of Worthy’s girlfriend models are deepfaked on porn sites; they’re easy to find.
The Long List Anthology Volume 6 Page 6
