by Jack Heath
Despite what she’s done to me, I can feel my own lip trembling. I’ve never been able to watch someone cry without joining them. Perhaps she’s stealing my family because she has none of her own.
She glances at the mirror, and sees me staring. Her eyes narrow.
‘Don’t look at me!’ she hisses. She clicks the mouse.
And everything goes dark and silent and cold.
Nothing.
The bulb flickers on, blinding me. I’m facing the ceiling now. I’ve been moved. Somehow it feels like some time has passed. A day, perhaps.
I turn my head to look around the garage. Nothing has changed—except that I can turn my head. It’s been reattached to my body.
But still I can’t sit up. Looking down at my chest, I see that I’m lying on the workbench, and this time I’ve been tied down by a net of nylon straps and aluminium buckles.
Somehow, this development frightens me even more. The girl’s ability to remove my head without killing me was scary. Now she has demonstrated that she can reassemble me at will.
But the nylon straps look like they could be loosened. If I just wiggle my shoulders …
‘Stop that,’ the impostor says, walking into view. Her face—my face—unsettles me more than it did yesterday. Now I recognize it as my own.
The girl doesn’t say anything about last night. Instead, she says, ‘Wiggle your toes.’
I try to make it look harder than it is, giving the impression that I’m weak. But it’s difficult to resist movement after so long without it.
‘Your fingers, now.’
I drum them on my thighs.
She holds up a photograph. ‘Who’s this?’
It’s a picture of my science teacher, Mr Fresner. He’s wearing his ridiculous schoolboy cap and pinching a cigarette between his fingers. The picture looks like it was taken from a distance, outside the bar of the hotel where I had my summer job.
‘That’s Uncle Derrick,’ I say. ‘Mum’s brother.’
The impostor looks back at the picture. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure. I’ve known him my whole life.’
‘In that case,’ she says. ‘We have a problem.’
My breaths are coming faster. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Either your facial recognition still isn’t working, or you’re lying to me. Since Mum doesn’t have a brother, I think it’s probably that.’
‘Mum never talks about Derrick,’ I say. ‘They had a fight when I was twelve, and …’
‘There is no Uncle Derrick!’ the girl screeches. Then she puts her face in her hands. ‘Please, just answer honestly so I know you have your memories back.’
Angry at being thwarted, I raise my voice. ‘My memories were fine before you kidnapped me.’
‘Kidnapped?’
‘Yes. Kidnapped. It still counts, even if we’re still in my house.’
The girl stares at me for a long time.
‘You think you can just walk into my home,’ I continue, ‘tie me up, and I’ll just give you all the information you need to steal my life?’
‘I never kidnapped you. I created you.’
I snort, nervously.
‘These questions are just to test you,’ she says. ‘I’m Chloe Zimetski. You’re a copy of me. I’ve been working on you for weeks.’
‘No,’ I say. My throat is closing up. ‘You’re copying me.’
She takes my hand in hers, and twists it.
I yelp as my wrist splits along an invisible seam, and the hand pops off in her grasp. Drowning in terror, I thrash against my bonds.
The girl tilts the hand so I’ve got a clear view of the mechanical joint and the electrical wires inside. ‘See?’
I can feel myself getting dizzy. I’m going to pass out again.
‘Stop yelling,’ the girl says, and grabs a fistful of my hair. ‘You’re a machine. The pain isn’t real. The fear isn’t real. These are pre-programmed responses that you don’t need.’
‘Why?’ I gasp.
‘Because the idiots who designed your software wanted it to be realistic,’ she says.
‘No,’ I say. ‘Why have you made me?’
‘You’re going to look after Mum,’ she says. ‘While I’m gone.’
‘My Mum?’
She leans over me, sad eyes on mine. ‘No,’ she says. ‘You don’t have a Mum or Dad. You’re silicone, wrapped around a titanium frame. You never existed before I put you together.’
She winds my hand back into place. The freckles on it are merely dabs of paint.
‘But …’ My mind is whirling, trying to process too much at once. I’m heading for a system crash. ‘Machines don’t think. Machines don’t feel.’
‘Machines do whatever they’re designed for,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry. I really am. It’s just something that had to be done.’
I thought no one knew I was missing. But it’s so much worse than that; no one even knows I exist.
‘Chloe?’ It’s Dad’s voice—Graeme Zimetski’s voice.
‘Coming, Dad!’ the girl calls. She throws a tarpaulin over the workbench, and the whole world goes dark and brown. I think of yelling for help, but what good would it do? Mum and Dad aren’t coming to rescue me. They’re not my Mum and Dad.
I hear the tapping of keys, and something clicks inside my head. By now I recognize the sensation. Chloe is switching me off.
~
I have no clue what to do.
Even if I could escape from the real Chloe, there would be nowhere to go. I have no home. No money. No friends or family. I’m so helpless that I may as well still be a severed head on a shelf.
No wonder she alternates between giving me orders and acting like I’m not here. No wonder she looks at me like an object. I am an object.
The fact that I’m awake must mean that she’s nearby. She wouldn’t have switched me on if she wasn’t. But the tarpaulin is still draped across me. I’m blind.
You’re going to look after Mum while I’m gone. She’ll have to free me for that. Where is she going, and how long will she be there? And what’s to stop me from escaping?
Maybe I’m programmed not to. I shiver. Perhaps I’ll go to the front door and find myself unable to open it.
A cold breeze washes over me and the tarp crackles as Chloe sweeps it off.
‘Mum and Dad are out,’ she says.
I don’t know why it’s important for me to know this, so I say nothing.
‘I need to make something clear to you,’ she continues. ‘Machines don’t have rights. They can’t vote, they can’t own property, and it’s not a crime to kill one. If anyone finds out what you are, they’ll take you apart to see how you work. We humans are like that. We can’t help ourselves.’
She seems worse than most, but something tells me not to voice this thought.
‘You’re going to have to stay away from doctors, paramedics, nurses—anyone who might want to check your pulse, because you don’t have one. Don’t let anyone fingerprint you or shine a light in your eyes either, because your pupils don’t dilate and the patterns on your fingers are all identical to one another. Also, keep clear of engineers, especially anyone whose work relates to robotics or artificial intelligence. A lot of people contributed to the open-source software that makes up your brain, and some of them might recognize their work. Got it?’
‘Are you going to let me go?’
‘I’ve loosened your straps. You should be able to free yourself once I’m gone. I tried to add everything I know to your database, but I’m bound to have missed some things. There’ll be holes in your recollections, and invented memories where your software has tried to plug the gaps. Some things you won’t remember, some things you’ll remember wrong. If anyone calls you on it, just apologize and move on. It happens to real humans all the time.
‘I spent a few weeks wearing motion-capture sensors under my clothes, so you should have all the necessary movements programmed in—walking, picking up objects,
tying your shoelaces and all that. If anything is missing, just copy other people. I also uploaded pictures and data from all the social networking profiles connected to mine. You should know what all my friends look like, how old they are, which ones know each other, and so on.
‘You don’t need to eat, sleep, or go to the bathroom, but you should do these things anyway to blend in. Your digestive system is basically just a plastic tube and a two-litre tank, but it works.’
When I was a little girl, I used to carry a plastic baby around with me everywhere. I’d ask her if she was thirsty, pour water into her mouth, and then scold her for peeing on the floor a minute later.
These memories aren’t mine. I never was that little girl—Chloe was. And now, I’m the doll.
‘I built your brain with some of Mum’s leftover processors,’ Chloe says, ‘but I bought your body from She’s Alive. Your software is from the Open AI Community. Their websites will help you learn what you can and can’t do. You’re going to live my life as normally as possible. Do my homework and my chores. Avoid social engagements when you can, but when you can’t, be friendly. Don’t give anyone any reason to be suspicious of you.’
‘Where are you going?’ I ask.
‘Someone has been following me,’ she says. ‘I first noticed him about a month ago. Sometimes I see him on my way to school, sometimes he’s there when I’m heading home. The same car drives past the house every weekend. I don’t know who he is, and I don’t know what he wants. But now he’ll be following you.’
I find the eagerness in her eyes deeply unsettling. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘You’re bait,’ she says. ‘While he’s watching you, I’ll be watching him.’
She’s insane. I’m the mechanical duplicate of a paranoid lunatic.
‘Don’t try to follow me,’ she says. ‘I don’t want to erase your personality and start from scratch, but I will if I have to.’
Then she climbs the stairs, leaving me alone in the basement. She doesn’t look back. It’s as though she has already forgotten me.
I hear the front door open and then close again. Silence descends upon the house.
I try to shimmy out of the nylon net. The straps drag out through the buckles, and soon it’s loose enough for me to wriggle out and land on the floor.
At last, I’m mobile. But I’m not free.
I don’t want to live Chloe’s life, play-acting while her friends and family watch. But what else can I do? I have no identity and no money. If I run, I won’t get far. If I ask someone for help, they’ll take Chloe’s side—she’s a human being, while I’m just a machine. My capacity to think and feel doesn’t give me any legal rights.
As I look at the stairs, a new thought comes into my head. Once she realizes that the man ‘following her’ is just a neighbour who works near her school, she won’t need me any more. What will she do then?
One foot in front of the other. Leaving my birthplace, my prison, my torture chamber, is easy. In a matter of seconds I’m at the top of the stairs, sliding back the bolt, easing the door open. My new life awaits on the other side.
WEDNESDAY
The laundry looks exactly as I expected. The tub spattered with old paint, the washing machine with the lid up so it doesn’t go mouldy, the scent of powdered soap in the air—just how I remember it. How, and why, did Chloe give me a sense of smell?
I put my palm against the tiled wall. It’s smooth, and less cold than I expected. Maybe the artificial nerves in my hands aren’t as sensitive as real skin. Or perhaps the difference between the wall’s temperature and my own is too slight to feel.
Through to the kitchen now. Pans are stacked upside down on the drying rack. Magnets on the fridge advertise fast food, a vet, and a dentist. Your next appointment, the last one says, is on 5/11.
I wonder if my teeth are made of porcelain, or perhaps enamel-coated steel. Either way, it had better be Chloe who goes to that appointment, not me.
I step onto the carpet of the living room. It hasn’t changed since Chloe showed it to me on the TV.
The TV. Where are Chloe’s cameras?
Where they should be, a hat stand hovers like a half-grown tree. I remove all the hats and scarves, searching for the shine of a lens.
Nothing. Chloe must have taken the camera away once it wasn’t useful any more. I hang all the clothes back up.
When I enter Graeme and Kylie’s room, I’m shocked by how much it looks like my expectations. A low double bed, an ornate chrome reading lamp, and the same woolly sock in the corner that I somehow knew I’d see. My memories must be based on a picture taken within just the last few days. Either that, or Chloe’s parents are slobs.
I open the wardrobe, reach past Graeme’s hanging grey suits, and pull a shoebox off a high shelf at the back. Bullets rattle inside. I open it up to reveal Graeme’s Beretta. Chloe doesn’t have it with her.
I close the box and put it back on the shelf. Taking one more uneasy look at the sock, I walk out and drift towards Chloe’s room, feeling like I’m dreaming.
Here it is, the bed I’ve never slept on, the clothes I’ve never worn, the books I’ve never read but somehow know. Chloe probably downloaded them all from the internet and installed them in my brain.
I look under the bed. Lift up the mattress, examine the frame. Pull back the curtains and check the edges of the windowsill. Take the books off the shelves, shake them by their spines. Receipts used as bookmarks flutter to the carpet.
I’m not sure what I’m looking for, exactly. But I know that I’m not finding it.
I sit on the bed, and sink down further than I remember. Chloe’s laptop is on the bedside table. I pick it up and switch it on, hoping the websites Chloe mentioned will tell me who—or what—I am.
A creaking, scraping sound reaches the microphones in my ears.
It could be the roof shrinking as the air cools. Could be someone at the door.
Could just be my imagination, if I have one.
I put the laptop on the bed and rise as silently as possible. Creep back into the hallway.
The noise comes again, louder. It’s coming from the front door. Whoever it is hasn’t touched the doorbell, or knocked. They’re just trying the handle.
I stand at the edge of the entrance, unsure what to do. I could run for the back door, but I don’t have Chloe’s keys on me, and I don’t know where she left them. Graeme has turned this house into a fortress—security lights in the front and back yards, motion sensors in each room with back-to-base alarms, both exterior doors double locked and covered by steel-grilled screen doors which are also double locked. Even the windows are protected by safety screens. There is nowhere to go.
The door swings open. A woman steps in, sees me, and screams. A quick yelp of panic.
I scream too. And then she sighs, and dabs her hand across her heart.
‘Chloe!’ Kylie Samuels says. ‘You startled me.’
‘You startled me,’ I say, forcing a smile and taking a step back. How close will she have to be to recognize that I’m not her daughter?
‘You both startled me,’ Graeme Zimetski grumbles, as he pushes past us both with the shopping bags. He doesn’t look at me.
‘Are you OK?’ Kylie asks. She’s a little shorter than me, with hair dyed red and nails bitten to the quick. She has Chloe’s straight nose, her crooked lips, her pointed chin. She’s dressed up in a luxuriously patterned shawl and high heels, as though she’s been to the theatre rather than just the cinema.
‘Sure,’ I say. ‘Why?’
Her neatly plucked eyebrows draw together. ‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘You look …’
My fake breaths are tight and shallow.
She shrugs. ‘Never mind. I’m just tired. Why don’t you give your father a hand with the shopping?’
‘Sure.’
I walk back into the kitchen, where Graeme Zimetski is sliding cartons of eggs and milk onto the shelves in the fridge. I pull a cereal box out of a tote bag a
nd take it over to the pantry.
According to Henrietta, who’s obsessed with Greek myths, Graeme Zimetski has shoulders like Cronus and eyebrows like Zeus. He’s not overly tall, but people think he is, because of his deep voice and his habit of standing too close to you when he talks. Pictures of him before he married Kylie show him as lanky and boyish, even in his early thirties. But since then, he’s grown a solid layer of muscles. He doesn’t believe in gyms—‘Just wasted energy,’ he says—but if he’s travelling less than twenty kilometres, he’ll cycle instead of driving, and if it’s less than ten Ks, he’ll run rather than cycling.
It unnerves me to know all this about a man I’ve never met.
‘What did you do while we were gone?’ he asks.
I shrug. ‘Not much.’
We make eye contact for the first time. ‘We were gone two and a half hours. You must have done something.’
‘Homework. Wrote some emails.’
You’re Chloe, I tell myself. Be Chloe.
My hands are unnaturally still by my sides. To occupy them, I fill a tumbler with water. The tap hisses. The fluid gurgles.
Graeme is still looking at me, saying nothing. I suddenly realize that I’ve never drunk anything before, and I only have Chloe’s word that I can. ‘How was the film?’ I ask.
‘Rubbish.’
Kylie walks in. ‘No it wasn’t.’
‘Made no sense,’ Graeme says.
‘It was metaphorical, honey.’
I pour the water down the sink while he’s looking at her.
‘I liked the soundtrack,’ he concedes.
‘How was your evening?’ Kylie asks me.
‘Fine.’
The tumbler snaps in my hand. Kylie gasps.
I must have squeezed it too hard. I only have Chloe’s memories of how to pick things up, and Chloe didn’t have my strength. Looking down, I see a small shard of glass is sticking out of the synthetic rubber of my palm. A lightning bolt of artificial pain zaps up my arm.
I whirl around to face the bench before either of them can see the wound. Dropping the remains of the tumbler into the sink, I yank the chunk out of my hand.
