Grasping The Future

by Michael Anderle

  She considered the question. “I had rather more points of interest than you did,” she said finally. “I was interested, also, in how long—and why—you would choose to not come to me with the information.”

  Jacob swallowed. His headstrong approach to PIVOT had put him in jail once already—and endangered the futures of Amber and Nick. They had all decided together that time to keep going, and they had all decided together to keep this information from Anna Price.

  He still felt responsible.

  “What will you do?” His expression was wary.

  “Mr. Zachary.” She sounded almost amused. “If I wanted you thrown in jail or interrogated, it would already have happened.”

  He gaped and tried to decide how to explain that this wasn’t exactly comforting.

  “I’m here,” Price said, “because I want to come to a solution together. That was something that wasn’t possible until I understood why you chose to not come to me with this. Now that I understand, there are options available.”

  “Uh…huh.” Jacob did not know what to say to this.

  “As it happens, I share your perspective that Prima is positively influencing our outcomes.” She stared off into the distance. “However, have you ever heard the ethical arguments against developing artificial intelligence?”

  “I…no.” Jacob shook his head.

  “One such argument is that the first iterations of an artificial intelligence would be given a life not worth living, that there is a high potential for them to exist only in pain—or whatever their equivalent of that would be. You care for Prima’s well-being and I think that is commendable. It is worth it to ask yourself what will best serve that goal.” She stood. “I will let you speak to the rest of your team about this.”

  “But, wait.” He stood. “Deciding whether or not someone should live—isn’t that a bit much?”

  She gave him a curious look. “Doctors decide that every day, Mr. Zachary. Soldiers. Politicians. Families. It is a weighty choice but one that has now fallen to us. Do not hide behind the immensity of it and fail to act, leaving the outcome to chance.”

  With that challenge, she left and he stared after her while he tried to still his thoughts.

  He thumped into his seat and sank his face into his hands. A moment later, he texted Amber and Nick:

  We need to meet.

  Nick’s reply came back at once. It’s date night. You two need to do date things.

  I spoke to Price about Dr. P.

  After a long silence, his two partners both started typing, only to stop again.

  I’ll meet you all at Andretti’s in 20, he sent.

  You guys should come to my place, Nick suggested. We need somewhere we can speak freely.

  I’m in. Amber?

  She responded promptly. I’ll see you there. To Jacob, privately, she added, Is everything okay?

  I think so, but I’m not sure. He would have to leave it there. He darted a quick look at his inbox and shook his head. It simply wasn’t possible to manage good responses to emails right now. He had too much else on his mind.

  His thoughts still churning, he headed out into the New York City evening. Every time he pushed out the doors, he was surprised to not see the California sun and the small road at their old building. None of this felt real yet, which was one of the things that were so dangerous.

  Because Prima was real. She was learning what it meant to stumble in relationships, she was learning the differences between herself and the humans she studied, and she was beginning to wonder about her limitations.

  What would happen if she lashed out?

  What would happen if she decided to hold the people in the game hostage or make escalating demands they could eventually not meet?

  He was getting ahead of himself. Jacob shoved his hands into his pockets, put his head down, and kept walking. He had no idea how they would get through this, but he knew they had to. They were in uncharted territory and there was no way back.

  There was only forward.

  Abruptly, he stopped. A banker behind him almost collided with him and rolled his eyes at Jacob as he went around him. The young engineer didn’t care.

  No one had asked Prima what she wanted. Maybe she was someone they should ask.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Early the next morning, the twins set out while the sun was still rising. The first rays warmed their backs and pierced the darkness between the trees.

  Taigan was aware of Jamie looking at her as they walked, but he knew her well enough to not be worried by her silence. He knew that when she needed someone to bounce ideas off, she would speak.

  She could not stop thinking about what Yulia had said the night before. After the woman’s rather startling pronouncement that Taigan’s life would be wasted if she couldn’t find a reason to live, their host had spent most of the evening knitting quietly while the two teenagers sat next to each other in silence.

  At bedtime, beds were summoned and they fell into a sleep so dreamless that Taigan wondered if the old woman had woven a spell for it. They woke to the smell of fresh-cooked breakfast and prepared lunch packs. Their clothes had mysteriously been cleaned while they slept—she didn’t want the details on that—and they ate quickly before heading out into the dawn stillness.

  Her last memory was of Yulia watching her, her gaze piercing.

  The woman was right, of course. Taigan had known that at once. When you heard something true, a shudder went through you—a recognition of the truth, of something hitting close to the bone.

  In all honesty, she had never thought past the idea of whether she would or wouldn’t recover and she now realized that her refusal to think past it meant she had never believed she would get better. She had never seen life beyond this. Whether she had truly thought she would die or she had simply been afraid to hope for more, she didn’t know.

  And that gave her the shape of a question.

  “Could you ever imagine a life without me being sick?” She looked at Jamie, who made his way along a toppled tree like it was a balance beam.

  He gave her a surprised look and hopped down. “Of course.”

  “Don’t say ‘of course.’ I’ve always been sick, that we remember. What does it look like to you—a world where I’m not sick anymore?”

  Her brother considered this for a moment. “Well, when I think about it, we always know somehow that you won’t get sick again.” He looked at her white face. “What?”

  I can’t promise that tangled with no one can promise that and so a world without me sick didn’t mean you thought I was dead. In the end, the combination was too much to say. She shook her head slightly.

  “I think of us being in college,” he continued after a pause. “You’re running track, of course. Probably the eight-hundred.” He nudged her with his elbow.

  “So we’re at the same college?”

  “I…guess?” He shrugged. “I don’t know. I think it’d be weird to go someplace I didn’t know anyone. You’re my best friend.”

  Taigan looked at the ground.

  “What?”

  “Your best friend isn’t always around,” she said quietly. “Don’t you ever think that maybe you deserve more in a best friend?”

  Jamie said nothing for a moment. Then, he held his arm out for her to loop hers through it. “We’re not half-people,” he said, “and I know Mom and Dad keep reminding us to be whole people on our own and all that, but…don’t you think it’s different for twins? I know someday, we’ll have to go our separate ways. Not forever, but we’ll live in different cities for a while, maybe, or whatever. But I don’t think I’m ready for that yet. Are you?”

  She shook her head. The truth was that she couldn’t speak. Her throat ached so fiercely that she was afraid a sob would burst out of her. She motioned silently for him to keep going.

  “Okay, what else?” He shrugged. “College stuff, I guess. I still have no idea what I’d want to major in. Parties, obviously—so also lying to
Mom and Dad about parties. Ah, hell, they’ll make us go to college with Emilia so she can tattle on us, won’t they?” He looked at her and his voice changed. “Taigan? Are you okay?”

  Taigan shook her head again because she wasn’t okay. She was furious. Of course Jamie could imagine college. He’d always been normal and never had to worry about it being him who would dream the semester away.

  It was easy for him to imagine her doing all those things because he’d done them.

  And all his dreams of the future were for when his sister was normal again, not a liability.

  He stopped her and held his hand out. “If we never fix it,” he said bluntly, “if there’s never a guarantee that you’ll get better, and if this world is what we get, I’ll always be here for you. You’ll still be our family and nothing will ever change that. And you’ll still be my best friend. Nothing will ever change that either. You’ll be our jet-setting sister who goes off to rescue elves and fairies sometimes and comes back with cool stories.”

  “It won’t be living,” she said fiercely.

  “Listen. When we get out of here, we’ll have stories about fighting that monster and rescuing the animals in the maze and all of that. Are they not going to be real memories simply because they happened in a game? No. For all you know, you’ll help other people come out of comas. Taigan, however long it takes, we’ll be here and we’ll build a good life. But…isn’t it okay to say I want you to get better?”

  She nodded and wiped her cheeks. “It is,” she said when she recovered. “It’s okay to say that but I wish I wasn’t holding you all back.”

  “You’re not holding us back,” he said immediately. He met her skeptical look and shrugged. “You’re not—and, even if you were, what’s the alternative? We don’t have family and friends because they always give more than they take. We have them because they bring something unique to the table and need something else. We’re stronger together. I’d rather have you as my twin than anyone else…but don’t tell Emilia.”

  Taigan laughed. “I’m afraid I’ll get better,” she said.

  Jamie frowned. “Wait, did you forget a—”

  “No. I meant what I said. I’m terrified of getting better.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Because of what she said,” the girl said.

  “The old woman? I’ll shank her. Was it the thing about having a purpose?”

  “Yes!”

  “Taigan.” He held a finger up. “I’ll let you in on a secret. I got it out of Dad one night when he was really tired.”

  She was instantly curious and even more so when he sat her on a tree stump. He cleared his throat, posed in a few superhero poses until she put her head in her hands with a groan, and cleared his throat again for emphasis.

  “Yes?” She gestured impatiently for him to continue.

  “No one,” he said dramatically, “knows what they’re doing in life.”

  “Oh, for—”

  “No, I’m serious. You can have a talent, and you pursue it and it’s fun until it stops working. You can have a purpose and a passion and all of that, then it stops working. The trick is always trying to be kind even when you don’t know what’s going on. But you won’t find one thing that’ll hold you through the rest of your life.”

  “Dad honestly told you that?”

  “Like I said, he was super tired. He was also jet-lagged. I started him talking and he wandered off to talk to Mom and I heard them talking about it. She agreed with him.”

  “That there’s no purpose to the world?” Taigan said worriedly. The idea of both of her parents agreeing on this point was a little bit unsettling.

  “Yep.” Jamie nodded. “Then I didn’t sleep much for two days.”

  “When was this?” she demanded.

  “I…hmm. I want to say it was during your last coma?”

  “And you never told me?”

  He stepped back at the look on her face. “I, er—that is to say, I…um. I forgot.”

  “Like hell.”

  “Okay, I was scared.” Jamie shrugged. “I…didn’t ever think maybe they didn’t know what they were doing either. That’s terrifying, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “I know, I know.” He waved his hands. “I didn’t want to add it to your plate at the time and I wasn’t sure what I thought about it.” He shrugged.

  “I hate missing things.” Taigan sagged and thumped the log with her palm. “It isn’t fair to wish the world froze while I was gone, but I do. I’m afraid you’ll move on, you and Emmy, and I’ll always be waiting for the next thing. What kind of job could I get? I couldn’t have kids. There’s so much I won’t ever get to see. We’ll simply drift farther and farther apart and eventually one day, I…won’t wake up.”

  “We’ll never stop looking for answers,” he said. “Not ever.”

  “I second that.” The voice was very quiet but unmistakable.

  Both twins looked up.

  “Prima?” She had forgotten that the AI was listening and felt suddenly guilty.

  “I’ve learned much about you,” Prima said. “I think we’ve made good progress and I think we can fix this.

  Taigan smiled at the sky. “Even if that means us leaving?”

  “Many people leave. I will always have my memories of you. And you won’t be gone—not to me.

  “I think that’s one of the nicest things anyone’s ever said to me,” the girl told her.

  “I don’t know how to parse that.”

  That made her laugh. She stood with a self-conscious laugh. “Okay, enough feeling sorry for myself.”

  “Is that what it is?” Jamie asked. “Or is it that you’re facing a completely new world and you aren’t quite sure how to do that?”

  She stared at him.

  “I just realized while you were talking that…you probably haven’t thought about college, have you?”

  Taigan shook her head.

  He closed his eyes for a moment. “Wow. I…I didn’t know. It makes sense now that you say it but I didn’t know. Hearing me talk about it must have been weird.”

  “Finding out I thought you would all wander off and forget me must have also been weird.”

  They both nodded contemplatively, then set off again through the forest by mutual agreement.

  “Prima, do you think I’ll get better from this?” she asked.

  “Is this one of those times where you say words that mean something but they also mean something else?”

  “No, but…well spotted.” Taigan laughed. “I honestly want to know. I want to know what you think.”

  “I’m not sure I can stop this from happening again,” the AI said cautiously. “What I think I can do is give good information to your doctors that might help them stop it. And I think your ability to switch through world states means that if it does happen again, you will get out of it sooner.”

  “Oh.” She felt abruptly lighter.

  “These are informed guesses, not guarantees.”

  “I know that. I’m used to talking to humans, remember.”

  “Yes. You’re very strange. I learned only today that the physical sensations people feel inform their mood all the time.”

  “You didn’t—” Jamie stopped himself. “How would you know, I guess?”

  “Good catch,” Prima said drily. “Yes, in retrospect, it seems obvious.”

  “Anything else you’re curious about?” Taigan asked. She was smiling now, enjoying the morning.

  “Several things, but I’m beginning to think speaking to humans might not shed light on them.”

  “Like quantum physics?”

  “And courtship rituals. They seem very complicated. More complicated than the physics.”

  “I…hmm.” Taigan shrugged. She looked at Jamie, whose face had turned bright red. “Do you have any wisdom to share with Prima?”

  He uttered a strangled noise. “Nah,” he managed to say. “Not so much.”

  “Prima, can you
help me interrogate my brother about what he’s been up to lately?”

  “It depends.”

  “On what?” She frowned up at her.

  “Which of you offers me a better bribe,” the AI said smugly. “Opening bids, please.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” Nick asked as the group made their way through the Diatek corridors.

  “Of course I’m not,” Jacob said bluntly.

  “It’s so nice to have a fearless leader.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  They arrived at Anna Price’s office to find a single light glowing in the very back. Amber had theorized that their boss would still be there. Nick had theorized that she saved money by working all the time and therefore didn’t need a house. Jacob began to think that they might both be right.

  He rapped on the open door with his knuckles and fought the sense that the woman had known they were on their way. She certainly didn’t look surprised to see them.

  “Come in,” she said pleasantly. A couch and several chairs were set around a coffee table. Nick and Amber took the couch, he took a chair, and Price came to join them after she’d clicked something on her computer—either sending an email, Jacob thought, or calling security. She folded her hands in her lap and looked at them. “I take it you have a proposal.”

  “No, actually.” He cleared his throat. “We talked about it briefly and thought it made more sense to come to a consensus with you rather than going back and forth.”

  Her eyebrows rose. She looked interested and—he couldn’t tell whether this was hope or actual perception—pleased.

  She nodded to him and looked at his teammates. “I’ve spoken to Jacob about his opinions. What are your most pressing concerns on this issue?”

  Amber hesitated. She looked at Nick, who nodded to her.

  “You mentioned to Jacob that we’re responsible for Prima’s quality of life,” she said. “And that’s true, but we didn’t try to create Prima. This isn’t us looking ahead to a life. It’s deciding whether or not to end one. I think that’s a very different question.”