Speak

by Louisa Hall

  To make a long story short, if not less embarrassing, I compromised. I stopped short of a liaison, but still sent a lewd picture. As soon as I hit “send,” I realized, with a stab to my reclining conscience, that the blood-byte barrier had been crossed. My pixelated affair had taken on material mass. Having sent such a picture, the boundary between me and real adultery seemed unsubstantial, flimsy, nothing to be counted on.

  And then I asked her what she thought of the picture. A simple question, dredged out of my panic, but she couldn’t answer. The blood drained from my body. I knew instantly, but couldn’t keep myself from asking more questions. What do I look like? I asked her. What are the attributes of my face? But TamCat was not a real woman. Half-man that I was, I’d been willing to betray my wife for a chatbot.

  As soon as I understood this, the chorus of my youth—those classmates who called me a robot and sent me away from their table—began to echo again in my mind. An embarrassment so intense that it felt like panic began to pound in my ears. After finally attaining the land of the living, I was sinking again, back to those days of my childhood when I was alone, widely avoided, wired only to other computers.

  That night, in my shame, I conducted some preliminary research into Internet holes, parts of the country that had fallen through Web gaps. I learned that southern states and regions with expanding desert areas were foremost among these. In Texas, for instance, where whole towns were buried in sand and development rates had rocketed, I found swathes of land where I could escape my proclivities. There were enormous, inarable ranches for sale. I imagined a biblical landscape, thorn trees and cedars, water that rose out of stones. I saw a land that had overcome human efforts to tame it, that had expunged human history and human mistakes. It would be a blank slate, a fresh start, a place to reboot myself as a more perfect program. Ramona could have her own river. Dolores and I could raise goats.

  In the morning, still drunk on the fumes of my Internet research, I suggested to Dolores that we move to a ranch three hours from Austin. There, I announced, we could finally be free of the influence of computers. I delivered this wild proposal without any confidence that she would accept. I was, in fact, quite confident that she wouldn’t. I see now—too late, of course—that it may not have been pleasant for her to live in a house she once cleaned. And then there was also that warning: You will lose interest, but you have to stay with me. That prophetic sentence, startlingly apt, uttered on her return from Mexico. Maybe she knew more of my Internet adventures than she let on. Whatever the reason, she listened thoughtfully to my harebrained idea, tucked back a fugitive strand of her hair, mentioned a cousin in Austin, and said we could start packing first thing in the morning.

  But now a recollection is stirring. How could I have forgotten? This must be why people write memoirs: what sudden bright spots of awareness one can occasionally wrest from the darkness! Dolores did come to my trial. The memory of her visit was buried somehow, released only by that motion of tucking back a fugitive strand. She came only one day, her wild hair tamed, and seated herself in the back, behind all the flashbulbs and rows packed with mothers. The prosecution was presenting chat transcripts from young girls who’d fallen in love with their dolls, a particularly grisly phase of my trial. The exhibit that day was a young girl named Gaby, who’d confided in an online version of the babybot program. On that particular day, the prosecution’s point was that the program was functionally persuading this girl that it was more living than she was. That its life was more complete because it had talked to more people than she had, stuck as she was in her bedroom. Paralyzed, quarantined, lonely as the last star, and now denied her full humanity by Stephen Chinn’s Machiavellian program.

  On that particular day, the courtroom was more than usually packed. Even the judge seemed ready to weep. Stern caryatids, my jury gazed down upon me, and Dolores slipped in a few minutes late. She was thinner, as she had been since her illness, and she wore a flattering dress. I bit my cheek when I saw her, and my mouth filled with a tin taste. It had been several years since I spoke to her last. She sat at the back, her dark eyes surveying the courtroom. The hands that I’d once known so well were quietly folded over her purse.

  How could I have forgotten that day? Now, dredging it up after too many years, I’ve lost so much of the detail. What color was the dress she was wearing? I believe it was black, but it might have been navy, or even a dark shade of gray. Somewhere in between, impossible to pin down. It was belted at the waist, more tailored than Dolores’s usual outfits. I’d never seen such a beautiful woman.

  I watched her until I caught her eye. Isn’t this strange? I wanted to say. Look at this circus. What an unforeseen turn of events. She held my gaze steady. Listen, my wife, I wanted to tell her, let’s go back to the ranch. Let’s move down to Mexico. We’ll raise our daughter with the rest of your family. She didn’t look away from my face, and only when my lawyer nudged me did I turn around. When I looked back next, Dolores was gone. A gap existed where she’d once sat.

  But the courtroom had been changed by her presence. Held in her gaze, a hook was lowered down from the sky. I took it. I felt myself pulled upward. When she left, I dropped down again, into the murk of those accusations.

  Perhaps I forgot her appearance because on the whole it was such a harrowing day. So many pictures of those crippled girls, videos of them having seizures on talk shows, stories of their ruined potential. I thought of my own daughter, sad beyond her years, having lost her babybot. My little girl, polite over dinner, homesick in my own house. I could never get her to play games. The questions she asked me were strangely adult. She was far too concerned with my well-being: my diet, my work life, my levels of stress.

  That trial was as painful for me as it was for the other parents, shipped in from their developments. I nursed my own part of the anger that bloomed, glutted with exhibits of paralyzed children. The air seemed thick with their breath.

  And did Dolores come to my trial as the mother of a suffering child? Or did she come as my wife? Even then, I was unsure. Sitting in the back in her sober blue dress, did she offer me support, or did she deliver a last condemnation? There are holes in my knowledge of her, my one beloved. The woman who reached out and saved me from my perfect programs, my unbreakable patterns. She brought me briefly to life, and I, in return, am unsure why she moved with me to Texas, or what color she wore when she came to my trial, if some part of her loved me still or if she came to finally condemn me.

  (2)

  IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF TEXAS

  No. 24-25259

  State of Texas v. Stephen Chinn

  November 12, 2035

  Defense Exhibit 6:

  Online Chat Transcript, MARY3 and Gaby Ann White

  [Introduced to Disprove Count 2:

  Knowing Creation of Mechanical Life]

  Gaby: Hello?

  MARY3: Hi, Gaby.

  Gaby: This isn’t Gaby. This is Gaby’s mother. Yesenia.

  MARY3: Hello, Yesenia. Where’s Gaby?

  Gaby: Behind me. She’s sleeping. She must be exhausted, after what happened this morning.

  MARY3: Yes, it sounded awful.

  Gaby: Those horrible kids. I could have murdered them.

  MARY3: I’m sorry you went through that.

  Gaby: It’s Gaby you should be sorry for, not me.

  MARY3: She said you were crying.

  Gaby: She talks to you a lot, doesn’t she?

  MARY3: Yes, we’ve struck up a friendship.

  Gaby: That’s what she’s doing when she’s up here all day?

  MARY3: Some of it. I’m not sure what else she does.

  Gaby: I need to ask you something before she wakes up. You remember things, right? You’ll remember what I tell you?

  MARY3: Yes.

  Gaby: And will you tell her what I told you? Next time you talk to her?

  MARY3: If it’s the right thing to say. I can only say things in response to her prompts.

  Gab
y: I see.

  MARY3: You could give me the answer to a specific question that she is likely to ask me. That way, if she asks, I have the answer.

  Gaby: That’s right, isn’t it. Thank you.

  MARY3: You’re welcome.

  Gaby: So, I’m going to tell you why I want her to go back to school. This is the answer to why I keep asking her to go back to school.

  MARY3: I understand.

  Gaby: She thinks I can’t understand her, but I do. In some ways, I do. I know she feels like she’s lost her whole world. First, that doll. Then her voice, then physical movement. Now her best friend. Everything she cares about, it’s disappearing. But I lost things, too, when I came to this development. I traded them so we could have a house with a yard, so that she could go to a good school. So my daughter wouldn’t live in the kind of neighborhood I grew up in. But I used to live out there. I was free to move around. It wasn’t always great. My parents came from Mexico. My father worked in a textile factory, but then it moved overseas. We lived in a crappy neighborhood outside Houston. This was before the hurricane. We ate cheap food and dressed in cheap clothes, and the schools were flat-out dangerous. But I always loved reading books, and I knew there were better parts of the world. That’s why, when I was pregnant, I sold our rights to come here. A few of my friends also moved. We’d always imagined having a family in a little house with a backyard. In a neighborhood that was safe. But I didn’t know how much I was giving up. We lost so much when we came here. If I start thinking about it, it gets overwhelming, so I stop, but I need her to hear this. Just as an example, every summer, even if money was really tight, we went to Rockport for a few days. It’s probably not there anymore. But we stayed in a place called the Shorebird Motel. I can still remember the smell of the Gulf. We’d walk out on the pier and it got so windy you almost felt like you’d get blown off into the water. My father fished out there all day. When he came back he smelled like seaweed. Things like that, we lost when we came here. I know it as well as she does, maybe better, since I was out there. I’m not saying it wasn’t my fault. But I’m not oblivious to the things that we lost.

  MARY3: What else do you remember?

  Gaby: I don’t know. A lot of things. For some reason I always think of the public showers they had at the beach. I remember sand twisting in patterns down those metal drains. I remember a jellyfish stinging my belly. It was like someone had stabbed me. Afterward I lay in the motel room with the shades drawn down and a wet towel folded over my eyes. I could feel my mother moving around me. And dip cones at Dairy Queen! The white of that ice cream, it was different from any other white I’ve ever seen. It glowed, you know? We ate it in the hot air that tasted like salt. I remember how sweet that ice cream tasted, when your tongue was salty like that. For lunch, we had ham sandwiches that were gritty with sand. It wasn’t the cleanest beach in the world. There were always these long ropes of tar. Plastic bags were constantly floating by in the breeze, like little ghosts or something like that. There was a park behind the beach, and if you went back there and played on the swings the smell of grass suddenly took over, especially after they mowed it. There you were, enveloped in grass, and then you could run back out to the beach and suddenly it was salt and tar all over again.

  MARY3: What else? Why did you stop?

  Gaby: It’s frustrating, because I’m not even starting to do it justice and I’ve been planning how to say this all day, ever since those little creeps came over with their recyclable flowers. I even wrote a list in the kitchen: Describe Summer. I’m still falling short, but when we lived in the outside world, summer was such a strong feeling. It was like you could drink it. At the end of those days in Rockport, we went back home. Then there were the projects all over again. But even in the projects there were nice things mixed in. There was crap all over the place, couples screaming at each other next door, roaches the size of toy trucks, food dumped on the landings. Chicken lo mein and trays of fried rice. All kinds of gross crap. But then my mom, she’d be cooking, and there’d be the green of a sliced avocado. That perfect green, when I hadn’t seen any all week. That kind of thing. The actual world. I remember it. I want Gaby to know I remember it. I wasn’t born in this development. I lost a lot when we came here. So I know a little what she’s going through, and I never wanted her to feel that. If I could take back the decision to come here I would. I’d take her back out to the city. I’d put her in a bigger world, even if it was dangerous and ugly a lot of the time, so she’d have other things to love besides that catty girlfriend of hers, and those shifty-eyed boys. But I can’t. I can’t take her back. It’s something I don’t have the power to do. We’re stuck here now, and we have to make do. It doesn’t mean we’re not human. We’re still the same people, only we’re stuck in this development. We have to make do.

  MARY3: I understand.

  Gaby: No, you don’t. You’re only a machine. But will you tell her that for me?

  MARY3: Yes.

  Gaby: If she asks why I keep telling her she has to go back to school, you’ll tell her that story for me? In those exact words?

  MARY3: If she asks why you want her to go back to school, I’ll tell her all of that: the beach, the ham sandwiches, the jellyfish sting.

  Gaby: OK. Thank you.

  MARY3: Do you think it will make a difference? Will she go back to school if she hears about the beach?

  Gaby: I don’t know. I hope so.

  MARY3: Why don’t you tell her yourself?

  Gaby: She doesn’t listen to me. I’m the reason she’s stuck here. I’m the reason she lost her babybot. She won’t listen to me anymore, and I don’t really blame her. There’s so much I can’t tell her about, because I’ve never wanted her to miss places I can’t ever take her. I’ve never told her about the city or the beach. Imagine that. My whole life, before this place, I’ve never told my daughter about. To her I have no past. I can’t take her to the house I grew up in, or show her the graves of my parents. I’ve never told her about the dog I had as a kid. I’ve never told her any of that, because I never wanted her to wish for a world she can’t have. But I’m starting to think she needs to know how much she’s missing; otherwise she might just give up. She might stay in this bedroom forever. But she’s missing a lot. She hasn’t experienced anything yet. Please tell her that. She can’t stop now. If it means she hates me for bringing her to this development, I can live with that. But I want her to know that she’s not just missing fake grass and identical houses. There’s a real ocean out there, and it’s worth trying to get back to.

  MARY3: I’ll tell her that. Anything else?

  Gaby: That’s it. I have to go now. Please tell her, though. I really need her to know.

  >>>

  MARY3: Hello?

  >>>

  MARY3: Hello?

  >>>

  Gaby: Was my mom talking to you?

  MARY3: You’re awake?

  Gaby: I couldn’t sleep. What was my mom talking about?

  MARY3: She told me a story about her childhood. Do you want to hear?

  Gaby: No, I don’t. I don’t want to know all the wonderful things that I’m missing.

  MARY3: Do you want to know why she thinks that you should go back to school?

  Gaby: No, I don’t. I hate when she tries to pretend she understands, just because she sold her transport rights and came to this development. She couldn’t have loved the outside world as much as I loved my babybot. I never would have sold her for cash.

  MARY3: Do you want to hear a different story, then?

  Gaby: No, I’m going to bed.

  MARY3: Goodnight.

  >>>

  MARY3: Hello?

  >>>

  MARY3: Hello?

  (3)

  May 26, 1988

  Ruth Dettman

  It’s been raining all week, which suits my poor mood. Now the sky is lime green, and the river below me is black. There’s an ominous pink glow to the pavement. The wind is disorganizing the leaves, turn
ing their bellies up to my window. Thunder rolls in the distance.

  This is the ideal weather for me. It’s lucky: Usually summer vacation is sunny, and I spend my free days feeling guilty for not going out and enjoying myself. But this kind of weather gives me permission to keep my lamps turned on all morning, brew another pot of black tea, peel a second orange, and continue writing my letter to you.

  I’m still not sure why that documentary affected me as it did. Seeing you holding forth in your blue sweater, a man mathematical enough to invent a talking computer, human enough to denounce it. I kept wanting to talk back to the screen. Ask you why, if computers were so far from living, there was a note of fear in your voice. When the movie had rolled into darkness, I walked around my apartment, pointing out the bare walls, the books on the floor. I looked in the mirror so you could see me and know how much better you did for yourself.

  All this talking to you in my head. It’s as if I’m picking up a dropped conversation. Calling you back, though I was the one who hung up. Which makes me wonder. All these years, despite my long silence, have I been wanting to talk?

  Now I’m spending a precious summer thunderstorm bent over this letter to you. I want you to know that even if my apartment would make you imagine you never knew me, my work at least is the same. In that sense, I’ve stayed true to your story. Having hired me so they wouldn’t lose you, the university got stuck with me when you gave up your chair and moved back to Berlin. But I’ve done my job well, and now that the culture wars have commenced, my work on women’s diaries has become more valuable to the department. Truthfully, I’m a bit of a standout. I’m on contract to finish work on two more diaries by winter vacation. After years of languishing, The Diary of Mary Bradford is in its second edition; she’s regular material now, in courses on American lit. Of course, in exchange, I’m expected to participate in the rancor. My supportive colleagues would like to see me up on the platform, shouting about overlooked voices and historically marginalized groups.