"Well, good," I offered in return.
It was the first time we had ever spoken.
From the menu, I selected "Killer Hill-3." My heart set to work with gratifying eagerness. Then I called up my library, ready to plug in sixty minutes of Ancient Greece or World War II. But I couldn't stop staring at the world stretched out before me. It felt as if we were really at ground level. Judging by the shadows, we were facing north or south. A few busy strangers walked past - people of means with bright clothes and fine firm bodies. Some kind of tree was growing from a square of raw ground between the sidewalk and curb, and across the street stood a brick building that might have looked pretty for a couple days in its hundred-year life. Like a genuine window, diluted outdoor sounds passed through the squidskin. I heard the angry motor of a truck before I saw it. Several men on my left shouted their approval, and an ancient dump truck appeared, impossibly long and carrying what looked like the marble leg and torso and battered face of an ancient statue - the statue of a naked goddess pulled from Greek mythology or adolescent fantasy.
That was such an unlikely detail. Human faces are supposed to be doctored, leaving viewers unaware of who they might be watching. Privacy laws are clear on that score. But what I had heard once or twice was obviously true: The new infinity windows were as much invention as they were reality. Somewhere in the world was a city like this one, and it was inhabited by about as many pedestrians and vehicles as we saw for ourselves. But those people had different faces. And the AI, endowed with genius and the threat of boredom, was endlessly editing everything that was here, sculpting its own little storylines and odd sights; a marriage of the clever and peculiar leading to a view that people would watch, if only for fear that they might miss something remarkable.
Moments later came the musical hum of a real bus. An efficient box pulled to the curb and opened up. Six or seven strangers climbed out, every face twisted to protect identities. And every one of them wore a red nose and the bright white skin of a clown.
I like to think that I appreciate new technologies. Not that I'm an expert in AI genius or digital gamesmanship. But curious, endearing joy kept rolling through me. These little nuggets of fiction made me laugh, reminding me of those silly pictures that my son liked when he was five, where the game was to spot the chicken wearing a hat and the panda eating steak. Except these were stranger and much funnier visions, and to a man who wasn't going anywhere for another fifty-five minutes, endlessly entertaining.
The biggest story was subtle.
After a lull in foot traffic, a young fellow appeared. I noticed him at a distance, although I couldn't say why. Nothing about him seemed unusual. His clothes and face were ordinary. He walked toward the corner and stopped, his back to Berry and me. My assumption was that he was waiting for the next bus. Wherever this was, the day looked sunny and hot, and he stood against the building's shade. After a few moments, he turned, and with shameless intensity he stared at my face. Then with the same laser care, he examined Berry. And stepping back from the building, he laughed, lifting his arms and knees, and with a clown's oversized motions pretended that he was one of us, riding a marching machine that took him nowhere.
I didn't laugh so much as gasp.
"He can see us," I muttered.
One of Berry's doctor shows was playing. She paused it with a voice command and turned to me, never slowing her gait. But her smile changed, growing more serious. Then with a slow, careful voice - the voice that smart people use on diminished souls - she explained, "The window works in both directions."
"It does?"
Why didn't I remember that?
"Of course it does," she said. "One AI can serve two markets at once, which helps with energy demands and the general economics."
"But he doesn't see our faces," I said hopefully.
"Of course not." She gave out a big laugh, adding, "The window makes me twenty years younger, I hope."
Our new friend wasn't especially young or handsome. In fact, he seemed a little disreputable, his shoes were worn out and no socks, his shirt two mends short of being a rag. He was the kind of fellow that would earn a cautious look from me, if I found myself on his street. Which wouldn't happen, of course. But he or the window had a redeeming sense of humour, and his audience ended up having a good long laugh.
Once the mocking workout was finished, the stranger suddenly knelt down. I didn't understand why. Then a hand that could have used a good scrub touched our club's corporate emblem - the healthy red heart and two pink lungs full of good health and happy endorphins.
I cut my pace, allowing extra oxygen to flood my foolish brain. "It does make sense though, working both ways."
Berry didn't respond immediately.
"I just expected us to be high in the sky." It seemed important, explaining away my temporary stupidity.
"Windows serve many functions," she explained. "Advertisement, for one. This gentleman sees spectacular versions of you and me, and he's more likely to join his local club."
"He doesn't look like money," I mentioned.
"Looks," she said with a dismissive tone. "We don't know what to believe. Maybe in real life, he's wearing a suit. Besides, those legs are strong, and he isn't exactly starving."
No, I couldn't believe anything I was seeing. But more important, I had to be careful when I talked.
An uncomfortable moment passed between us. Then this woman I didn't know turned to me. Her smile was anything but simple. With a grave, almost morbid tone, she said, "These windows bother me."
"Why?"
"Solipsism," she said.
"Pardon?"
"Do you know what the word means?"
"Yes," I lied.
"The premise that everything outside your own mind could be unreal."
"I know the concept," I said.
"Anyway," she said. "I am troubled."
"By what?"
She didn't answer immediately. Growing bored with the window, or at least with us, our new friend had stepped out into the sun. We watched him looking up into the branches of the little tree. I noticed the leaves: very green and shaped like fans, veins radiating out from the stem. Which seemed phony.
"Since I was a teenager," Berry said, "the notion that the world isn't real has been gnawing at me."
"Every kid thinks that way," I said. "Everybody else is a figment of my vivid, important imagination."
"But today, anything is possible," she reminded me. "Algorithms can draw any scene, and AI wetware can string together any narrative. And everybody has to deal with that thirteen-year-old's conundrum: 'Am I real?'"
"I'm real," I said reflexively.
"And how would you know?" There wasn't any smile left on the old face. Gloomy and honest, she said, "Maybe we're illusions. Some AI dreamed us up. We're being used as an advertisement for the health club, and the target audience is standing out there, scratching his butt."
I looked at our friend's casual ass-rubbing. "I don't believe that," I said.
"Of course, you can't," she said.
And then I gave up talking, working the imaginary hill as hard as I could.
Buses are destined to run late. No system involving dozens of vehicles and thousands of humans can exclude chance, and chance wants to place every player ahead or behind schedule. That's why any two buses will usually be closer than expected or farther apart. Prospective riders face three possibilities: Arrive at their stop exactly as the next bus pulls up, which gives them reason to believe in God or their special luck. Or they hit an interval between two closely spaced buses - a rather more likely scenario reinforcing the idea of effective, efficient government. But the most common outcome is to enter one of the longer gaps, and if it's near the beginning, even the most rational citizen of the world will glance at the time and cluck his tongue, wondering why his goddamn bus isn't here yet.
The vagaries of chance: That's what I was thinking about when I turned away from the infinity window.
Apex Road was
empty of buses and most other traffic, adding to the general dilapidation of downtown. I could have checked the transit logs, wringing the data for a good estimate of my departure time. But I wasn't in any special hurry. There was no place I needed to be. A joyful life full of minimal expectations - that's how I paint myself when I need to crow about my blessings.
It was a warm day but not a furnace. Not like the last three weeks, at least. A previous mayor used our greenhouse abatement funds to buy ginkgo trees - an enhanced strain. They were planted up and down Apex, pieces of sidewalk removed so the roots could be shoved into rectangular patches of hard clay soil. The trees thrived a few years before starting to die. Only the corner gingko was still alive, and there was a bench in its shade where a man could sit and wait for the next piece of his life to begin.
There wasn't any wind. The world was like a picture, fixed and forever. I scratched an itch and sat down, and then I looked up.
Perched on the lowest branch was a marvel. How I even noticed her is a minor mystery. Whatever the reason, I saw her perched on the ginkgo branch, and with no expectations of success, I stood up and reached high, fingers nervous until the light dry feet shifted onto my right hand.
Her size and what I remembered about mantis biology told me she was a fully mature female. All of my life I'd held a fondness for these creatures. They looked deeply unlikely, cobbled together out of several less beautiful insects, but those marvellous, murderous arms belong to them alone. She weighed almost nothing, but she was still better than four inches long. I brought her down to eye level, staring at her pivoting, self-aware face. If I was a worry, she didn't show it. She held herself in a confident, queenly poise. I dropped her gently onto the back of the bench, and she accepted her new perch without complaint. I put my hands on my hips and laughed. Then I decided that an audience was necessary, which was why I looked back at the infinity window.
People were still riding those elliptical beasts. The woman in front of me was tall and elegant, not young but pretty in ways that no living, farting human being could ever manage to be. I didn't own any clothes as attractive as her tights and top. She looked like someone I should recognize: an aging actress, perhaps. In his own way, her man-friend was equally unlikely, all muscle and shiny flesh, thick veins bulging when he worked his arms and those long strong legs that shook the machine as he powered his way through the illusionary forward.
I waved at them and pointed at my mantis. But neither person would look at me now. The man was staring off into the distance, talking with feeling about some important matter, and then he stopped talking and the woman began to speak, causing her companion to frown and speed up even more, eyes narrowed as he contemplated whatever unwelcome news he was hearing.
Once again, I looked up the street.
My bus was still missing, but walking down the sidewalk was a rather pretty girl. And by "girl," I mean she was a female who looked maybe fifteen years younger than me, which meant she wasn't a girl at all. I watched her. She glanced at me long enough to decide that maybe she should look elsewhere. I'm accustomed to that response. I've never been a beast who dresses up in camouflage. But this was a different day, and the beast had a fresh trick at the ready.
"Look here," I said. "Look at this."
The girl threw a hopeful glance over her shoulder. But no, she was the only real person in sight.
"I found her up in the tree," I said.
My audience considered some good fast walking.
"And she walked right into my hand," I concluded, backing away from the bench, palms opened to the sky like a magician finishing his signature trick.
It was a wonderful moment. As if playing along, the mantis did a sudden little dance, flexing her raptorial legs while that bright watchful face did everything but wink.
The girl blinked.
Then she said, "Delightful," and came closer.
I just stood there, grinning happily.
With measured caution, she held out her hand and then slowly extended one finger, and the mantis took a swing at her fingertip.
She laughed loudly, buoyantly. "Oh, it is real," she said.
"I love these insects," I told her.
And she gave me another look. Not that I was anything she would ever want, but there was something about my face or my eyes that told her that at least she didn't need to run away.
The two of us could stand on that street corner, talking politely.
"Is it really a female?" she asked.
I said that I thought so, yes.
"They're the bugs that chew off their lover's heads, aren't they? While they're actually doing it?"
"It's their nature," I said.
And once again, with relish, she said, "Delightful."
"I'm sorry," the woman said.
This was an apology, but it took me a few moments to appreciate what was happening. I slowed and looked over at Berry, and she smiled as if embarrassed, admitting, "It's a rough game, thinking you might not be real."
"But I am real."
She nodded politely.
"I am," I repeated. But my denial was just words, reflexive and simple, and this topic made me uncomfortable.
Berry looked at her machine's screen, at the wise doctors and their beautiful, doomed patient. I assumed that our conversation was finished, that we might never speak again. Desperate for a distraction, I looked at the window. A young woman had just wandered into view. She could have been pretty, but she was too thin - that half-starved look that people acquire when they eat nothing but algae. Her legs and forearms were like sticks. She and that strange man chatted amiably. Then she approached the bench, her hand palm-up and slow. I studied her scrawny chicken back with the spine trying to push up through the skin and the shirt. I couldn't see what her hand was doing, but I was curious, particularly when she started to laugh. A loud giggle was audible over the sounds of machines and ventilation, and that's when she turned around, showing the world what she was holding.
"Look at that," I said.
Berry lifted her gaze. "Is that what I think it is?"
"No, it's probably something else," I said.
The old woman laughed. "You're right. But it could be a praying mantis. They get that big, don't they?"
"Honestly, I don't know bugs."
"We could look it up," she said.
"Or we could just watch the show," I said.
"The show" was two strangers and that emerald-green mantis perched in the girl's skeletal hand. The man said a few words, and the girl nodded and offered her other hand to the rider. More amiable than most pets, the insect walked to its new perch and flexed its arms. I could just make out its head pivoting and the sunshine in the tree branches and how those odd, almost alien looking leaves caught the light, turning it into something cooler and more special.
For a second time, I was sad and bothered.
Maybe Berry noticed, but probably not. More likely she was just dwelling on matters that meant something to her.
"I've watched a lot of these shows," she told me.
"Strangers and bugs?"
She laughed hard enough to break stride. Then she pointed at her screen, saying, "When I was little, my mother and I watched this television series, and I felt special. She allowed me to stay up late on a school night. Just to see these long-dead actors reading scripts written by people I wouldn't know from anybody. Oh, and the stories they told. Contrived and melodramatic, and we loved them. This was a great bonding experience for my mother and me. And I can't stop loving them. I mean, just this scene here...this poor gorgeous actress who lived fifty more years, but in this episode she's dying of leukaemia, and doesn't she look wonderful?"
I glanced at the screen. "She looks fine."
"An innocent, rich, meat-fed wonderful."
I didn't know what to say.
"This is the world I was born into," Berry said, her tone amazed, even a little disbelieving. "Whatever happened to that world?"
"The future happene
d," I said.
She laughed about that.
"But we're doing better every day," I added with conviction.
The strangers were sitting on the bench. They weren't sitting together, but they were close enough that the third party in this newborn relationship could stand on one open hand, and then, following some bug logic, calmly and purposefully walk across to the other offered hand.
I couldn't say why, but I was fascinated.
My pace slowed, and the machine gave me a quiet warning beep.
Then as I sped up, Berry turned back to me. And with a wary eye, she asked, "Do you want to know how to know? If you're real or not, I mean."
"There's a test?"
"One that I invented, yes."
"All right," I said. "Give it to me."
We sat and we talked, and I wasn't entirely sure what we had been talking about. It was that fun, that unexpected - one long, wonderful blur of words, busy and intense but never focused on anything important. Nothing secret or even borderline personal was shared. It was just that the ordinary details of ordinary life seemed spectacularly fascinating. We discussed weather and traffic and favourite foods, and she mentioned how much she liked Chinese food. And that was my opportunity to mention that ginkgo trees were from China and this mantis was probably the same. An Asian species was brought into the country in the last century, drafted a biological warrior in the losing war against insect pests.
"So she is a weed," the girl said with amusement. "One of the monsters crumbling our precious ecosystem."
"Maybe you should smash her," I suggested.
And the girl gave me a funny look, trying to discern if I meant it. I didn't. Then she lifted the mantis to her face, its arms in range of her nose.
The mantis' head twisted and turned.
And the girl easily mimicked every motion.
She wasn't beautiful, no. But there was youth and humour in her soul, and she wore the purposeful leanness of someone who didn't want to ride hard on our poor suffering world.
Engineering Infinity Page 18
