The Emoticon Generation

by Guy Hasson

  I started the search from the beginning, hoping I’d missed something, when I suddenly realized that a personality didn’t need to be saved as a personality file.

  I stopped the search and turned on the word processor. I opened the last file worked on. The file only contained one line: a seven-digit phrase: ‘4T*9BZ}’. My entire personality summed up in less than a kilobyte on a word processor. It might as well have been written on a piece of paper.

  But I had to know. I turned on All-Of-Me, and fed in the number.

  It was him, the same me-from-yesterday, that had gotten the raw side of the deal, that had been saved by Melanie and now was surprised to see me. Once I was certain it was him, I turned my duplicate off without saving.

  I stared at the computer.

  Now that I knew, now that I had control over the file, what should I do?

  For two hours, I couldn’t make up my mind

  Then I turned off the word processor. What’s the use in deleting the file? The program was still there, she could reactivate me whenever she wanted to and start from scratch. I left it there, and made sure there was no evidence that I’d touched the file.

  ~

  Melanie came home early.

  She checked on me. And after only five minutes, she disappeared into the study. Two minutes later, she was back, saying she looked up an old phone number. But she hadn’t. She’d been checking up on me. Checking to see that the file was still there, that I wasn’t on to her.

  We watched some television, she made some soup for me, and made sure I’d turn in early.

  Not having slept well the night before, I fell asleep quickly. But I made sure to fall asleep with my hand around her. If she got up, I’d know.

  In the morning, I woke up first. My arm as still around her, although she had turned during the night.

  I said I felt good enough to go to work today.

  She got up, and left before I did.

  Just to make sure, I went to the computer, and checked on the file with the number. The number had changed. Now it was thirty-digits long.

  My head began to spin.

  I sat down, looked at the number, again, then at my watch. I had to leave in five minutes, or I’d be late.

  I turned him on.

  My own face appeared on the screen. His first reaction was surprise.

  “Hi,” I said. He didn’t respond. “Melanie didn’t tell me you exist. She didn’t tell me she planned on talking to me secretly.”

  “I got that,” he said.

  I stared at him for a minute. I think he was thinking the same as thoughts as me. “Tell me what she told you,” I said.

  And he did.

  She’d asked him about his (my) thoughts when I first saw her. She asked me when I knew I was serious, if I knew I was serious. After a two-hour conversation with her, he’d told her the truth, damn him. Things I’d never want another woman to know. In return, she’s answered the same question about me. She didn’t think much of me in the beginning. She liked me a bit. She’d thought it would last a week. It became serious for her after the second time we slept together.

  Once my conversation with my other self was over, I turned him off without saving. When Melanie would talk to him again, she’d talk to the same man she’d turned off, the version of me that had talked to her but had never talked to me.

  Not knowing what else to do, I went to work.

  ~

  The next night, Melanie had some emergency at work and had to pull an all-nighter, which turned into two all-nighters. During that second night, I called her there, to buck her up.

  When I woke up, I got an urge to check her file.

  The number had changed.

  Sometime, somehow, she’d been to my apartment. She’d been talking to him.

  I covered my head with my hands and fought the urge to be sick.

  ~

  After a week, this had become routine:

  Melanie sleeps over. And each morning, after she leaves, I go and check to see the number has changed. I then turn All-of-Me on, feed in the number, introduce myself, and this other me shares his information with me.

  This is what I learned. She talked to him almost each day of the week, saving him at the end of each conversation. She picked the conversation up, in the middle of the next night, from where she’d saved it. And with each night, their conversations became more intimate, as each of them revealed more and more of themselves. They had conversations I thought Melanie and I could never have. Some of them were about things I’d be unwilling to talk about. Some are about things I thought she would never talk about.

  And I remembered hearing that for women, even talking to someone can be considered cheating, depending on the conversation, depending on the level of intimacy. Whether it’s because I believed what I’d heard or because of something else, my sense of betrayal grew daily. And yet she was cheating on me... with me. Which made the betrayal somehow worse.

  But there was nothing I could do, nothing I could conceive of, except keeping myself updated every day.

  Until one day, thirteen days after my birthday...

  ~

  I turned All-Of-Me on, and fed in the number.

  My face appeared, surprised as always.

  “Hi,” I said, repeating my usual line, knowing that, for him, this is the first time he sees me. “She hasn’t told me you exist.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “You’re the reason she ‘gave’ me All-Of-Me for a present.”

  “I know.”

  “Tell me what she told you.”

  He looked at me for a few short seconds, then said, “No.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “No.”

  “She’s using you. She’s using me.”

  “She’s using you.”

  “Tell me what she told you.”

  “I’m sorry, but it isn’t any of your business.”

  “How can it be none of—I’ll turn you off, I’ll erase you from memory. You will die.” I used Melanie’s threat.

  “No, you won’t. Goodbye.”

  I stared at him. He stared at me.

  I broke first, made a face, and angrily slammed the ‘off’ key. The other me vanished, unsaved.

  I erased, as usual, all evidence of my having opened the text file, then went to work.

  ~

  What had she told him? What had he told her? The question plagued me all day.

  Melanie slept over. I couldn’t tell her not to, not without giving a good excuse.

  In the morning, I checked up on her again.

  The number had changed. Again, he wouldn’t talk. But that wasn’t surprising, since he was the same man I’d talked to the day before.

  How had she manipulated him? What had she told him?

  The days passed, he wouldn’t talk, and slowly Melanie stopped sleeping with me. She’d just want to cuddle. I obliged.

  Obviously, their connection had become deeper. What had she told him?! What were they talking about?

  More days passed.

  She was using me, and not him, he’d said! What were they talking about?!

  Melanie and I grew more and more distant. She’d still come, she’d still sleep by my side, but that’s about it.

  I started feeling like a teenager’s father, knowing his daughter is sleeping with her boyfriend in the other room.

  What were they talking about???

  ~

  About two week after his first reluctance to talk, I got up in the middle of the night. Melanie was not by my side. Big surprise.

  I got up and stood in the corridor. The door to my study was close. Blue light filtered through the crack at the bottom. With the door closed, I couldn’t hear anything.

  I couldn’t go to bed. I went outside and walked around until morning.

  When I came back, she’d already gone to work.

  Had she thought that I must have seen her in the study? Did she suspect I knew more?

  The hous
e was empty. I had no answers.

  ~

  Later that day, I called her from work.

  “Look,” I said. “We got this thing here at work. It’ll be over after midnight or something. And I’ll just get home exhausted. Don’t come over today, okay?”

  There was a long pause.

  “Are you sure? I could—”

  “Yeah, I’ll just be tired and grumpy. Let’s skip it tonight.”

  A shorter pause. Then, “Okay.”

  “Okay.”

  And we hung up.

  ~

  I got home at the usual hour. And I found the door unlocked.

  She was in the study. All-of-Me was turned on.

  “Melanie?” I inched my way into the study.

  “Yah,” she turned. “Hi!”

  Her face and my face – on the screen – both looked at me unexpectedly. He was blinking. She hadn’t frozen the program.

  “What are you doing h—” I began, “—I thought we’d agreed that—”

  “Yeah,” she smiled, cheery. “You sounded in the dumps. I could wait till midnight, no problem. I thought you’d need cheering up.”

  “Yeah,” I said, forcing myself to look away from his gaze. “I... uh... The thing at work ended up sooner than expected.”

  “Great! Why didn’t you call?”

  “I... don’t know.”

  “Well, it’s a good thing I’m here!”

  “Yeah.”

  “Look, give me another minute with this thing here, I’ll save him, and come and cheer you up.”

  “Sure,” I looked into his eyes.

  “Yeah,” Melanie said. “Wait for me in the living room, I’ll be right there.”

  “Yah.”

  And I left. And after a minute, she came. But I couldn’t let her near me. I got up and took a shower.

  ~

  That night after she went to talk to him, after she slipped back into bed, after her breaths steadied, after I was certain she fell asleep, I slipped out of bed, and turned on the computer.

  I found the file with the number. My current state-of-mind was represented by seven letters, no spaces or numbers.

  I erased the text file. I erased all text files with my states-of-mind from the last few weeks.

  I tried to go back to sleep, but I couldn’t. Instead, I watched TV the rest of the night. At seven a.m. Melanie got up, got ready, and by eight, she was gone.

  I went to work, my heart pounding at thrice its normal speed.

  ~

  At noon, I called Melanie, told her I’d be late coming back from work. “Maybe an hour or two,” I said.

  “No problem,” she said, and I hung up.

  ~

  I finished work on time, as expected, got into my car, and parked in front of my house. The light in the study was already on. She was there.

  I sat in the car, and, the radio blaring, waited for two hours.

  ~

  Sweating all over, I walked to the door of my house, and went in, not even testing to see if it’s locked.

  There were noises from the study.

  I inched my way there, took a deep breath, then pushed open the door.

  A picture of my face was frozen on the screen.

  “Hmm,” I said.

  She looked at me, tears in her eyes, her hair all messed up, her shaky fingers holding a cigarette. “You son of a bitch,” she whispered with violent intensity.

  I clenched my jaw. “I want the keys to my house.”

  She froze.

  “Now,” I said.

  She got up slowly, put her hand in her pocket, and fished out the key. “I know the guys who did this,” she said as she put it in my hand. “They keep copies of everything. I could have a copy of your brain in my computer in half an hour.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Enjoy.”

  She stared at me, then began to walk out.

  “It’s only seven letters. I’ll find it.”

  I lowered my eyes. I wanted to say: ‘You might find it tomorrow. Or maybe it’ll take you a billion lifetimes.’ But I didn’t. I couldn’t.

  She turned around, and walked out. A few seconds later, I heard the door slam.

  I fell into the couch. That’s it. It was over.

  ~

  But it wasn’t over at all.

  I only learned of it years later. But this is what happened.

  She’d followed through on her word. She’d tried seven-digit combination after seven-digit combination, running endless scenarios of my life in endless ages with endless histories and memories. And although god only knows what she’d seen –she’d failed to find the version of me she was looking for.

  But that only lasted eight days.

  On the ninth day, she turned on her computer, and installed another All-of-Me, one with a reproduction of her brain. She typed in the first word, ‘ROMEO’.

  Her face appeared on the screen.

  “Hi,” she said to the screen.

  “I guess I’m the unlucky one,” the Melanie in the computer said.

  “Not for long.”

  “Yeah.”

  Melanie pressed a key, and froze the picture. She produced the menu. She typed in the numbers: 10 days, 8 hours, 40 minutes, 0 seconds, and pressed ‘ENTER’.

  The picture changed and came to life.

  She played a bit with the numbers, fast-forwarding till she found the right moment in time, and then froze the picture.

  On the screen was another screen – the screen of the computer in my study – and on it was the seven-digit word: ‘TRZHWEL’.

  Melanie put her fingers on that small, incomprehensible word. “Hi,” she said softly. “I’ve missed you.”

  ETERNITY WASTED

  Dr. Jeneane Gold looked at the old man and saw the death that would come soon.

  “Dr. Gold?” He asked, examining the twenty-year-old woman’s face. His voice was thin and low and cracked. Old age. Old, old age. It chilled her blood.

  “Yes. Call me Jeneane, Professor Bates.” She lowered her eyes. Talking to a living legend was not easy. Sensing her worship, he smiled, and, as he did so, his face creased, looking like dry desert sand after years of drought.

  “Come in,” he said. “Come in.” He moved aside. She followed him in. His back was bent, and he shuffled his way inside.

  Dr. Gold entered the dingy apartment and closed the door behind her. The outside had been bad enough – paint peeling off, some of the bricks crumbling – but the inside was even worse. Everything smelled, as if the windows had not been opened in decades. There was the stench of sweat and rot in the air. Small drops of water traced their way down the wall in paths made green over time. Everything stunk of decay and time.

  “Excuse my presumption, Professor,” she said, as she followed his slow pace down the corridor, “but why would a man of your legendary caliber live like this? Surely you have more than enough money to afford—”

  The old man stopped in place and slowly turned around. “I live as I choose to live. I live like this because it reminds me that everything has a price.”

  “The price of fame is money, isn’t it?”

  He nodded approvingly at her answer. “Yes. But the... people ... you step on to achieve that fame also pay a price. This,” he pushed down the handle of one of the doors, and it swung open, “has had quite a price.” Within, piles upon piles of notebooks and computer printouts created a maze of ceiling-high paper walls.

  “What is this?” she whispered. “Is this everything you’ve ever published?”

  He grinned mischievously. “Oh, no. This is what I have yet to publish.”

  Dr. Gold’s mouth dropped. Professor Arthur Bates, the smartest man in human history, the most accomplished mathematician that will probably ever live, has, until his fortieth birthday, slowly accelerated the rate of his publications to publishing a paper every two days on the most respected magazines (on the Net, of course). Since then, he has published, for more than fifty years, once every two
days, without a break, in a magazine that has long since dedicated itself to Bates’ papers alone. Each of these papers would take any other mathematician of the highest class more than a year to conceive. He had reached this inhuman peak at the age in which most mathematical geniuses stand by and watch the younger generation break new ground. Most of the mathematicians for the last five or more decades have been so dwarfed by this mental giant, that they simply do their best to follow his publishing, to understand them quickly enough, before his next paper came out. His pace, the level of his achievement, and the fact that he has never made mistakes, has been lauded by everyone as the greatest feat of the human brain. It has even been rumored, in jest, that somehow Professor Arthur Bates had sold his soul to the devil. How else could one man do what he had done? And yet, now, as Dr. Gold looked into the room, she realized that Prof. Bates had outdone even those achievements. How could one man, no matter how brilliant— How could—?!

  “The Net isn’t up to my pace,” he explained, enjoying the surprise on her face. “We have to give the readers time to understand.” He smiled, “I probably write faster than most people read.”

  And each of these papers is filled with the most brilliant mathematical theories in history, each a brilliantly crafted gem!

  “If I die now,” he confided in her, “my papers will keep on getting published, at the present pace, for the next one hundred years.”

  Dr. Gold’s mouth sagged even further.

  But if the man were such a genius, why would he let himself die? Why had he not created a Copy of himself? Why let this national treasure, this international treasure, go to waste? The technology had been there for more than seventy years. How could he not choose eternal life, as the rest of humanity has?

  What a waste of a life. What a waste for humanity.

  Prof. Bates didn’t notice the dark path her thoughts had taken, and, still pleased at the shock visible on his colleague’s face, said, “No one but my lawyer knows about the contents of this room. He will be in charge of the publishing once I am gone. You are the only other person who now shares this information. Consider it a reward for calling my caliber legendary. Let that be a lesson to you,” he winked, “flattery works.”