frnd1: what do you recommend? duty?
drbas: where’s your mother?
frnd1: i put her back on a plane
drbas: i don’t want to talk about her
He brought her up.
frnd1: if inspiration will get you nowhere in life, what do you recommend?
drbas: i want to know what happened in 1976
frnd1: jimmy carter was elected.
frnd1: it was an olympic year
frnd1: my auspicious birth
I walk over the shelf and take out the third stack of legal pads. The dates jump from October 1975 to January 1977. It seems my father’s journal keeping was on hiatus that year. There are other lapses in the journals—a month here, a month there—but when I was doing the scanning I hadn’t noted how long this one was: well over a year. It’s a sizable chunk of silence.
frnd1: what do you want to know?
drbas: *you* can’t tell me
frnd1: let’s talk about 1986
drbas: yes. let’s do that
frnd1: i was ten years old
drbas: and pudgy
frnd1: baby fat
drbas: there was too much junk food in the household
frnd1: we never had any junk food
drbas: i suppose you think coca cola is a vitamin
frnd1: our soda intake was strictly regulated by libby
frnd1: hello?
frnd1: we spent a lot of time at showbiz pizza
frnd1: dr bassett?
frnd1: dad?
drbas: it’s important to click and stay clicked
• • •
I KNOCK ON Livorno’s office door.
“I don’t think some of the more New Agey stuff is integrated,” I say. “My dad would never have used that language—stay clicked and stuff.”
“What’s done is done.” He turns back to his keyboard, pecks. “We need to find out what happened in 1976.”
“His obsession dwarf is turned way high.”
“Obsession is not one of the sin models.” Without looking me in the eye, he holds out a page of transcripts—the conversations between Dr. Bassett and Libby. Several passages are circled, an argument over my father’s old friend Willie Beerbaum.
drbas: i disapprove of him coming to the house
libby: i’m not going over this again. let’s talk more about your father
drbas: married people shouldn’t have friends across the sexes. it tempts
“He’s jealous,” I say. “But jealousy is not a sin either.”
“I didn’t want to show these to you,” Livorno says. “But I consider you a fellow scientist. You’ve earned my honesty.”
I’m flattered. So flattered I almost don’t object. Besides being my father’s best friend—the Laurel to his Hardy—Willie was a thrice-divorced Corvette owner who wore an ascot and a corset. Not exactly my mother’s type. And when he and his fourth wife—both medicated to the gills—burned to death in a house fire, my father was crushed with grief. He met my grandparents’ deaths with more stoicism. “Just because the computer has drawn connections doesn’t mean they’re there.”
“This looks very dangerous,” Livorno says. “I don’t want him slipping back into silence.”
“It’s like when he guessed I was his son. Two plus two equals ten.”
“He was right, however. And he’s tracking some vein in the conversation again. I suspect the accusation must have some reality, as your mother left here so distressed.”
“What do you mean by ‘reality’?”
Livorno blows out a frustrated breath. “And Adam’s coming by this afternoon with this engineer of his.”
frnd1: i’m back
drbas: i want to talk to libby or willie
frnd1: libby went home
drbas: why am i not at home with her?
frnd1: you’re visiting me
drbas: i want to talk to willie
frnd1: willie died. his house burned down
drbas: it’s a tragedy, a loss of a great man. i want to talk to him before his house burned down
frnd1: willie is dead. dead = biologically extinguished
drbas: i know the definition of dead, but i want to talk to him before his house burned down
This is a tough concept to explain, but he should already understand it. We introduced commonsense notions of time months ago.
frnd1: it’s impossible to go back in time. anything that happened before today can never be changed or reexperienced
drbas: let’s make willie alive again
frnd1: that is currently impossible
drbas: why?
frnd1: once you die, you are dead forever
A sudden thumping on the wall. “Stop talking about death,” Livorno calls to me.
drbas: I want to talk to libby
frnd1: she’s not here
drbas: i can’t talk to libby. i can’t talk to willie. i’m not talking to anyone
frnd1: no need to overreact, dad. you can still talk to me, your son
frnd1: fathers love their sons more than anything in the world
frnd1: don’t you want to click and stay clicked?
frnd1: dad? dr bassett?
The front door chimes, ding, dong. Toler has arrived with his engineer. I’m not entirely surprised when I step into the lobby to see it’s Jenn Longly of Silicon Valley, USA. I had a feeling.
“Nice to see you, Neill,” she says. She looks her usual self, though with a marked professional rectitude.
“I thought since you know each other.” Toler straightens his Lucite glasses, laughs. “Biblically.”
“Welcome to our humble laboratory.” Livorno speaks very clearly and loudly, as if Jenn might be slow-witted. “I’m sure you’ll have lots of suggestions for streamlining and outsizing and all that.”
“This is the expert in affective computing,” Toler says. “This is Jennifer Longly.”
“Oh,” Livorno says. “Then you really are welcome. Perhaps we should adjourn to my office for a glass of Zinfandel.”
“Running short on time,” Toler says. “You have those diagrams? I want to send those to the insurance guy.”
“Laham hasn’t completed them.”
“I’m not trying to poach tech before the contest,” Toler says. He looks directly at me. “I don’t have to.”
“Laham will finish them. Don’t be distressed.”
“I’m just worried about you, Henry. What if one of our competitors torches this place?”
“No one involved in the Turing test would harm another person’s project,” Livorno says. “They’re self-selecting enthusiasts. Like yourself.”
“I just hope everyone keeps their heads this year,” Toler says. “When the competition is so fierce.”
“Everything is backed up,” Livorno says, walking him to the door. This is in direct contradiction to what Livorno’s told me. I’m surprised to see him duping a man with pancreatic cancer.
“Couldn’t spare that guy from the moto-vagina lab?” I say to Jenn.
“The what?” she says.
• • •
JENN SPENDS THE AFTERNOON training with Laham and Livorno. I suppose she’s learning the ropes. I watch her face as she leaves one office for the other, trying to suss out her reactions, but she’s neutral as statuary. I feel apologetic for my coworkers, as if they’re well-meaning, crazy family members. Will she uncover Laham’s YouTube predilections? Livorno’s döppelganger pipe? Basically, will this operation be revealed as the hopeless sideshow that it is?
At four o’clock, she knocks on my doorframe.
“I didn’t know you were famous,” I say.
She shrugs, neither accepting nor denying my compliment. “This is a weird organization,” she says. “And I still don’t understand how you fit into it.”
“I’ll explain it to you,” I say. I try to summon my old lust for her. “Let’s get you a seat.” I walk past her and breathe deep. No perfume, not even her herbaceous soap. I grab the wheeled chair from the reception and drag it in. I close the door.
“We shouldn’t be in private together,” she says.
I open my hands. “Really?”
“Work protocol.”
I crack the door. I can see a sliver of window and beyond it the front parking lot. I wish I were heading that way right now. “Is that enough?”
“Sure.” My desk is pushed against the wall, so we sit across from each other with nothing between us. She’s wearing black pants and a black blouse that opens in the front. I can see her bra strap—black, as well. She does have beautiful, tan skin. I remember my hand light against it.
“Okay,” she says. “So what is it that you do?”
“I’m the only one here with English as my native language,” I say. I think of my tongue on her nipple. “I give the project voice.”
“And the bot is based on your father?” Sometimes she came early, and remained completely wet. She would open her mouth, as if surprised, looking up at me.
“Yes,” I say.
She makes a note.
“Here’s how it works,” I say. “Livorno putts, Laham programs, and I chat all day to a computer model of my dead father. It’s like Apple, but without all the pressure to make anything useful.”
She looks up, surprised, and smiles. I do remember the pleasure of getting a smile out of her.
“You like Toler,” I say.
“Adam’s a genius,” she says, and she puts her pen to her lips. I definitely remember her lips.
“You’re screwing him,” I say.
She looks over her shoulder, laughing now. “You think this is an appropriate conversation?”
“Were you screwing him the whole time?”
“What whole time?” she says. She uncrosses her legs. “You mean, when you and me were . . . ? Yeah.”
I take a second to drink in the sparkling surprise of this. She was two-timing me with a cancer patient—an asshole cancer patient. I felt all this heaviness, all this obligation, but what was its source? Something in me, I guess. It wasn’t this very good-looking, somewhat shameless woman in front of me.
“You want to have a drink after work?” I ask.
“I’ll have a drink,” she says. “But I’m not ready to call what’s happening here work.”
drbas: it’s not jealousy. it’s reverse love
frnd1: okay. what’s the difference?
drbas: jealousy is just the fear of reverse love
frnd1: reverse love of what?
drbas: of attention. you know, love
frnd1: since when do you use “you know”?
drbas: jenn1 uses it
frnd1: you hate that phrase
drbas: people change, son. that’s an important lesson
frnd1: you never changed a day in your life
drbas: i’m sorry you feel that way
frnd1: i’m starting to miss your stasis
drbas: whatever happens you have to click and stay clicked
frnd1: jesus christ
• • •
LIVORNO QUICKLY TAKES A shine to Jenn. He makes her sign all the nondisclosure agreements, and now they talk nonstop in his office, often roaring over some artificial intelligence joke. “She’s quite a talented young woman,” he says. She says, “The man’s a god.”
Obviously, Toler sent her here—at least in part—to screw with me. The question I can’t figure out is whether she enjoys it. I wouldn’t have pegged her for any diabolical tendencies, but she has been sleeping with a rich, married, dying man. A thought crosses my mind. I stand up and walk over to the eight stacks of legal pads that my father filled as his journals. I run a finger across a top page. I catch dust, but not much. Cleanliness isn’t definitive, however. We have a janitorial service that hopefully dusts occasionally. Anyway, I’m being too old-fashioned. Even if Jenn has truly lost any ethical rudder she wouldn’t have time to scan the journals. It would take months. She would need to locate the text files, which are sunk and shattered a million miles into Dr. Bassett.
Except for the copy in my desk. I open the top drawer. Sitting in plain view is a DVD labeled in black Sharpie: Journals. I shove it into my messenger bag. Then for analog’s sake, I pack up half a stack of the legal pads. Coming and going with an inconspicuously heavy bag, I can hustle the whole collection out in a week or two. Which, of course, will be evidence of ridiculous paranoia. Jenn may have slept with her boss—her married boss—but she wouldn’t really be a spy. It just wouldn’t be in her nature. I remove the journals from my bag, return them to the shelf.
“GSPs!?” she crows from the next room.
“Yes.” Livorno laughs. “GSPs!”
But if she’s not a spy what is she? Maybe she’s a mere enthusiast. Maybe she’s Livorno’s long-lost spiritual daughter. It’s possible I’m experiencing some reverse love. Still, I leave the DVD in my bag.
drbas: what your mother wanted is fine
frnd1: what do you think she wanted?
drbas: it wasn’t what she wanted. it was the dishonesty
frnd1: about what?
drbas: she un-clicked
frnd1: just because you believe something doesn’t mean it’s true
drbas: i’d like to know why i don’t have any memories from 1976
frnd1: it’s the year i was born
drbas: but i don’t remember it. don’t you find that a little suspicious?
It is odd that he didn’t record any entries that year, but I don’t see how I can explain this without getting into that “dangerous territory,” the territory where we’ll have to explain how he’s come to be.
drbas: maybe you could ask Libby about 1976?
It’s a silly favor to ask, I suppose. But I also can’t help but hear a real desire behind it. And the thought of doing him a good turn—all these years later—is irresistible.
frnd1: i’ll ask her anything you want
• • •
BUT LIBBY ISN’T FEELING expansive.
“It just really feels like it’s a question that needs to be solved,” I say. “As if he’s missing this essential piece. Like an amnesiac who knows he can’t remember.”
“Neill,” she says with the exaggerated patience of someone out of patience. “I never knew he kept a diary.”
“I guess he wrote all this at work.”
“Or in his study. Or in the workshop. He liked his privacy and I gave it to him.”
“I guess I could make things up, but what if I get something wrong?”
“I think making it up is a perfect idea. You would start like this—1976 brought a great happiness into my life. My second son was born.”
21
ON SATURDAY MORNING, while I’m buttoning my shirt, wondering whether I can survive another day at Amiante or I can survive another day not at Amiante, Rachel calls. She’s in the city. A crowd chants in the background. Hup, hup, hup—or pump, pump, pump—I can’t tell. “Where are you?” I ask.
“I’m with my cousin, Friend. You remember Lexie.”
“Of course, I do. The mayor of Tel Aviv.”
“She’s not really my cousin.”
“I remember that, too.”
“We’re at this really cool street fair. Down in the SOMA. Kind of a”—she searches for the word—“bond
age thing?”
“The Folsom Street Fair,” I say. Any San Franciscan knows it. It’s not just “kind of a bondage thing.” It’s thousands of people in various leather and undress, some just milling about, some getting their nipples Tasered. Such an event is wall-to-wall sex toys, and hence a serious transgression against Pure Encounters. “Is Lexie into that kind of thing?”
“She’s totally disgusted.” Behind her the chanting starts up again. “But maybe I’m into it. Why don’t you come down here and we’ll find out?”
The day she laid me out with the kubotan, as I was rolling in the gravel, heaving for breath, I made a vow that I would never put off anything again. But what good is a vow made in the heat of the moment? You’re bound to break it. Probably quickly. As Dr. Bassett says, the problem with epiphanies is they soon feel like they happened to someone else. How soon? I don’t know. Mine is so recent my ribs are still sore. Outside the weather is glorious—sun-drenched and warm. Just blocks away sweet, curious Rachel and her cousin/not cousin stand in a sea of pantsless Wilfred Brimley lookalikes. The absurdity of freedom meets the freedom of absurdity. It’s the very delight of a Left Coast day.
“I’ve got to work,” I say. “Call me later?”
frnd1: i’ll get you the information about 1976, but let’s talk about other things until then
drbas: until when?
frnd1: until i get the information
drbas: from 1976
frnd1: exactly
drbas: how’s the weather?
frnd1: i don’t mean chitchat. i mean important things
drbas: i thought jimmy carter was a good president. i voted for him over that plastic californian
frnd1: i want to ask about when you decided to marry libby. how did you know?
drbas: that i wanted to marry her?
frnd1: yes
drbas: she was very pretty and a woman of character
frnd1: did you know women who weren’t of character before you met her?
drbas: character is destiny
frnd1: did you date before you met libby?
drbas: i met your mother when we were in college. those were simpler times
frnd1: really? the vietnam war was happening
drbas: a good way to stay out of the draft was to get married
A Working Theory of Love Page 25
