Version Control

by Dexter Palmer

  Father came screaming into the room as soon as Mom was gone, clothed in all his holy hellish splendor, holding a newborn star in his hand. “Now!” he shouted. “I made all the lions learn to march in a row and do just what they’re told! But the robot that looks like me is staying in my place to lead the lion army. So I can come here to be with you. So that you can record all my adventures.

  “Now: let’s begin.”

  35

  AUTONOMOUS GRIDLOCK

  “Okay: who’s on deck this afternoon?” Rebecca said as Felix applied motion-capture tracking dots to her lips. This close to him, she could see his baggy, bloodshot eyes. She caught a whiff of last night’s vodka wafting from his pores.

  “Whoever it is,” he answered listlessly. “You know.” He blinked and shivered as the name popped into his head. “Catalina. Yeah.”

  “This is something like our fifth People Peek with her, isn’t it?”

  “Fourth. No—you’re right. Fifth.”

  “You doing okay, Felix? Partying on work nights lately? I have some Siestalert if you need it.”

  He placed the last dot on her face. “Nah, I’m good. But every night’s a rough night for me, lately. And every night’s a party.”

  He loaded up Marcus, who today was wearing an outfit inspired by Morpheus’s clothing in the virtual-reality sequences of The Matrix Reloaded: a forest-green vest and tie paired with a violet shirt, along with brass-framed pince-nez spectacles. “You look perky today,” he said to Rebecca.

  “I feel perky! I don’t know. It’s a weird thing lately. Wide awake all day, and I sleep like a dead woman as soon as my head hits the pillow at night. I haven’t been drinking that much, either. I pretty much quit drinking.”

  “Huh.” Felix kept his eyes on the monitor as he tweaked the color of Marcus’s vest to match the tie, and pushed his eyes just a touch away from brown, just a touch toward hazel. “Twelve-step?”

  “No, not at all,” Rebecca said, wondering why that was the first place his mind went to. “I just…haven’t wanted it. You know? Haven’t even been thinking about it. I’m not quitting quitting: I’m just not feeling it right now.”

  “High on life, are you?”

  “No, I wouldn’t say that. I…I just have this good feeling, like I haven’t had in a while.”

  She smiled.

  “I really feel like things are going to work out, Felix. For you and for me and for everyone.”

  “Well, keep those warm thoughts in mind and try to let them show in Marcus. Three minutes, and you’re up.”

  “Marcus!” Catalina said as soon as the People Peek’s intro screen dissolved and the ten-minute clock hovering in the corner began to tick down.

  “Catalina!” Rebecca said. “You know, I have to tell you, I’ve been looking forward to this People Peek all morning. I have had an absolutely crazy day at work so far—just managing everybody’s little problems—and it’ll be great just to take ten minutes out of my day to relax and talk—”

  “I’ve been looking forward to this, too,” Catalina cut in. “And the fact that we were both looking forward to it so much tells me that you have finally realized that it’s time for your wishy-washy self to put up or shut up. Here’s how it is. Three days from now, at twelve sharp, I will be at a table for lunch at the cafeteria in Alice Tully Hall, in Lincoln Center. I am either having lunch by myself, or with you.”

  “I—”

  “Oh, I know, you’re not sure if your all-powerful secretary has you scheduled for Kobe steaks with a captain of industry for lunch that day. You can move that to one o’clock and eat two meals. Because one of two things is going to happen. Either you and I are going to have a spectacular lunch together and really get to know each other—don’t worry, I’ll buy, if your wallet’s feeling light—or I will have an equally spectacular lunch alone, after which I will head across the street to check out the American Folk Art Museum. Either way, my time will not be wasted, and I’ll know whether I need to waste any more time with you. Now.”

  Rebecca looked over at Felix, who shrugged in confusion as Catalina said, “What are you looking at, over there? Is your secretary over there offscreen? Put her on so I can ask her if it’s okay for you to go on a lunch date.”

  “Um, uh, you know…you know what, Catalina? You drive a hard bargain. And my mother always told me that assertive women were the best women. Tell you what. I’ll clear my calendar. And I’ll be there. Twelve o’clock, Alice Tully Hall cafeteria. I’ve been blowing you off for too long, and I’ve been stupid. I’m looking forward to seeing you, finally.”

  “Apology accepted. And I’m looking forward to meeting you, too. And you’d better be there.” The tone was half tease, half threat. “Goodbye, Marcus.”

  The People Peek ended, with six minutes left.

  “What in the hell,” said Felix.

  “I know, right?” Rebecca laughed gaily.

  Felix looked at the monitor as if he was hoping that Catalina would reappear. “Are you just going to stand her up? That’s crossing a line, isn’t it?”

  “I’m not standing her up. I’m going to meet her.”

  “I don’t. Uh. W—wait now. Do you have, like, some kind of plan? One that isn’t publicly embarrassing, or incredibly offensive, or self-evidently doomed to fail?”

  “I told you. Everything’s going to work out for everyone. I’ve got a good feeling.”

  She took off her helmet and wiped a hand across her face. “Are there any more of these things to do today? Can you just tell them all that Marcus and Helen and Beauregard and whoever have family emergencies? I don’t really feel like being at work. It’s too nice a day.”

  “Well, okay, sure, but—”

  “But nothing. See you, Felix.” She shrugged into her coat and removed her purse from a hook on the cubicle wall. “You should head up to Central Park and people-watch. One of the last decent days of fall. People will be doing their little mating dances so they can get someone to warm their winter beds: always fun to see. Work to live, don’t live to work.”

  On the way back to Stratton in the early afternoon there was, strangely, a traffic jam, the first one that Rebecca could recall having been in in quite a while. When these self-driving cars glitched out, they did it in ways that would have seemed inexplicable to twentieth-century drivers, ways that would have been entertaining if you didn’t have to deal with the results. All of the cars around her were at a dead stop, their engines shut down to save gasoline and electricity. The most likely cause was that a few cars ahead of her had gotten stuck in infinite loops when attempting to determine their movement priorities: that sort of thing could crash your system so hard that manual override wouldn’t even work. Since self-driving cars decided when and how quickly to move based on the information being broadcast by the cars around them, the immobilizing effect of the infinite loop had cascaded backward along the highway, and would continue to do so until someone in Seattle or Nashville or Phoenix looked at his monitor, saw the problem, and rebooted the offending vehicles via satellite signal. Until then, these cars would all be stuck here, neatly packed together.

  The car in front of Rebecca had actually tried to turn around and head down the road in the opposite direction before Rebecca had blocked her in. Rebecca and the woman who was facing her behind the wheel of her own vehicle had shared a mimed shrug and laugh—these crazy computers; what can you do—and were now assiduously attempting to avoid eye contact with each other.

  The news projected on Rebecca’s windshield was of coming civil war: quadracopters were flying in phalanxes over the Badlands, carrying who knows what manner of devilish nanotech payload. This battle was going to be quick and nasty, and though Rebecca was sure she would not be spared the incessantly repeated bloody details of what had convinced the President to bring the hammer down, she was certain that whatever violence was meted out in return would be seen through a scrim at best, portrayed as mechanical and bloodless.

  Whatever happened, it was
all going to work out. It was weird to know that she was one of the few people, perhaps the only person, who understood, and was willing to accept, that this was merely a rough draft of history, one that could be revised by those who could step outside of time. Outside of time you could see the whole structure of things: Rebecca was certain of this. While you were inside time, the past was distorted by your memory, and the future was doomed to be a mystery. But outside time it would be easy to see the irregularities of history’s warp and woof. You’d just have to pull at a thread here and there to straighten things out.

  Her phone rang with what she still remembered as the core group’s “special chime”: through all these intervening years she’d dutifully transferred the ringtone from one phone to the next. She looked at the screen: Kathryn. At three o’clock? She should be working. But maybe they could play hooky together. “Guess what,” she said as she answered.

  “What,” said Kathryn, her voice strangely heavy.

  “Chicken butt,” Rebecca replied, but did not get the childish giggle in response that she was gunning for. “Are you crying? I’m talking about the hind end of a fowl: that’s just funny, in and of itself.”

  “Carson and I broke up,” Kathryn said. Then: “Carson broke up with me.” Then: “Carson dumped me.”

  “Oh!”

  “You sound…happy about that?”

  “No not at all: it’s awful!”

  Kathryn hesitated. “Should I call you at another time?”

  “No: now’s a perfectly good time. I knocked off work early: I’m in the car on the way back to Stratton. But stuck in traffic.”

  “I’ve been trying to hold it together at work, and I’m not really holding it together.”

  “You should leave work,” Rebecca said, and then she felt a jolt as her car suddenly accelerated to sixty-five along with all the other cars around her, including the one in front of her that was driving in reverse. “Look at that.” It had been given to her to be attuned to the true nature of space and time: she merely needed to speak and the world did her bidding. “I should be back in town by three thirty. Wanna meet up for coffee?”

  “Will the coffee be spiked with Everclear? Stop being silly. Tell Jeeves to get you to a bar.”

  “It’s your party. I probably won’t drink, but okay, wherever.”

  “We’ll see about that. There’s that hotel in downtown Stratton, and it’s got the bar? Let’s meet there at four. There’ll be no one there, and we can get soused and talk things out. They have those sludgy craft beers that are like eleven percent alcohol, and I’m making a dinner out of them.”

  “Okay. There in a bit.” She hung up.

  Out her windshield, through the projected footage of combat drones in neat rows, she could see the car in front of her peeling off at an exit, presumably so it could point itself in the right direction for the rest of the trip home. As nearby vehicles in the traffic stream smoothly parted to make way, the woman behind the wheel waved at Rebecca, offering her a last weak smile as she receded, and disappeared.

  “That’s mighty virtuous of you, mighty virginal,” Kathryn said as she gestured at Rebecca’s drink, orange juice dosed with a spritz of carbonated water. Rebecca detected an unexpected edge of anger to her mockery. She’d bought Kathryn a beer that was served in a brandy snifter: the handle affixed to the tap had been a replication of one of those brightly colored skulls you see during Dia de los Muertos celebrations, with roses inserted into each of its eyeholes.

  Kathryn made a face as the beer’s hoppiness bit her tongue. “Hoo yeah.” She drained half the snifter straight off, scrunching her shoulders and shivering like a wet cat; by the time Rebecca had wordlessly gotten up, gone to the bar, ordered a second glass, and brought it back to the table, Kathryn had finished the first. “You’re letting me lap you,” she said. “Shit, with that stuff you’re not even in the race: you’re like watching from the stands and cheering.” Rebecca pushed the newly poured beer toward her in silent response.

  “Now I’m ready to talk,” Kathryn said after a few more sips. “This happened over the weekend. This happened Sunday afternoon. He calls me and he says, I want to come over, it’s important. And he’d just stayed over the night before and we’d gone out for brunch, so I didn’t know what the emergency was that had cropped up during the past few hours. Anyway, I say, Sure, come over.

  “So he comes over, and this is when I get the idea that something isn’t right: I let him in, and I go sit on the couch in the living room like I always do, and I’m expecting him to come sit next to me like he always does, but instead he just stands there looking down at me. And he’s still got his coat on, and he’s got this backpack slung over one shoulder, like he’s halfway out the door before he’s even gotten halfway in.

  “And he says, I guess you’re not expecting this, or I guess maybe you are, I don’t know, but I don’t think we should see each other anymore. This isn’t working out for me.

  “And I think, Fuck no I wasn’t expecting it! I thought things were great! I didn’t say that, but I thought it. But I do say, What’s wrong? You know, sit down, we can talk about it.

  “And he says he doesn’t think it’ll help to talk about it. And the hurting thing is that he kept his coat on the whole time. Like he was trying to escape, and he knew if he sat down and got comfortable he never would.

  “And I said, I think we have something good here, and it’s a shame to throw it away when whatever problem this is is something we can probably solve in ten minutes if we just sit and talk.

  “And he doesn’t say anything at all: he just stands there, in his coat, like the cat got his tongue.

  “And I say, Well are you just going to stand there like an idiot? And I wish I hadn’t said that.

  “And he says, real quiet, I guess I’d better go then. And he turns and leaves and lets himself out. Not even, let’s talk in a few days, or I’ll call you, or anything. That’s it.”

  “That’s terrible,” Rebecca said. “I’m not sure what to say.”

  She drank her orange juice. She was sure that this was all going to turn out okay, but it would probably be a bad idea to tell Kathryn this—those words would sound like empty consolation. And if Kathryn had any idea of the degree of boundless optimism that Rebecca was feeling right now, she’d think she was crazy. Best to be a good listener and let Kathryn talk her own way through her problems.

  “I’m not young,” Kathryn said. “I’m thirty…what. I have to think about it and add it up now.”

  “You look dry,” said Rebecca. “Let me get you another.”

  “You know,” Kathryn said when she was deep into her third beer, “you want closure. You want everything to make sense in the end; you want explanations for things. And I don’t feel like I’m getting that here. That’s why what he did seems so rude. Not providing people with endings is an asshole thing to do.”

  “I know how you feel, sort of. But life isn’t neat in the way a story is. And if you try to pretend it is, then you just make yourself unhappy, or screw yourself over. Because of wanting something that can’t be. I’m saying, maybe he doesn’t even know exactly why he wanted to call it off, you know? People don’t really know the reason why they do things, a lot of the time. You make up a story after the fact to explain to yourself why you slept with that guy you met in a bar who had a band of pale skin on his ring finger, or why you spent five hundred dollars on a dress instead of getting groceries, but the stories are just lies. Your mind doesn’t make sense to you the way you like to pretend it does, and the world can’t, either.”

  “That doesn’t stop me from wanting an explanation, though,” Kathryn said, and there was that rough edge to her voice again. “I wouldn’t be human, if I didn’t want that.”

  Halfway through her fourth beer, Kathryn said, a little loudly, “You don’t think it was the race thing, was it?”

  “The race thing?”

  “Get the fuck out. I’m not going to lie, okay, I had one or two issues
, maybe, and I know they were stupid issues but knowing they were stupid doesn’t mean I didn’t have them, I maybe had a couple of issues. And it only stands to reason that he’d have the same issues, too, you know? And more reason than me to have them, because, I mean, history, right? So I would try to engage him on this stuff, through humor, because that’s what humor does, it breaks these barriers down between us, I would talk about this stuff to let him know it’s okay for him to talk about this stuff whenever he wants, that it’s not a serious thing, that it’s a jokey thing, but whenever I brought it up he’d get quiet or change the subject to science or something. And I guess that whatever it was got bottled up in him and got worse and worse until he just couldn’t handle it anymore.”

  “I don’t know,” Rebecca said. “But I wouldn’t beat myself up about it. If you keep worrying about it it’ll drive you nuts, and there’s nothing you can do.”

  “Goddamn,” said Kathryn. “If everyone could get on the same page and realize that we live in the future, we wouldn’t have to deal with this bullshit.”

  At the end of Kathryn’s fifth beer, when Rebecca had decided to herself that she was cutting her off, Kathryn said, “Something else I wondered about. Something.”

  Rebecca said nothing, and waited for her to speak.

  Kathryn looked at Rebecca over her empty glass with bleary-eyed suspicion, and her eyes focused and narrowed. “There was that mean little woman in Carson’s lab. When he took me to visit the lab and show me this thing he was spending all his time on, she kept giving me these dirty looks the whole time, trying to make me feel stupid. And I saw her a couple of other times like when Carson would bring me to these physicist parties. I know you two became friends eventually, but I never got along with her, to be honest. I never liked the way she acted, like anyone who wasn’t a scientist wasn’t worth her time to talk to.