by Ian Whates
“Haven’t you just been telling me to respect his decisions? He’s three years old. And free to consult with any techsurgeon he wants.”
“For your own sake, Celia, stay out of this. Don’t get involved.”
With those words, he strode out the door.
Had Milt just threatened me?
I folded my arms on the table, leaned my forehead into them. Stay away, Alex, I thought. Just stay away and suffer through your miserable life like the rest of us.
I SAT AT the kitchen table a week later, scrolling through the family holo-album, when the doorbell startled me.
“Tilly!” I shouted. Then I remembered that I had sent Tilly out to do the weekly grocery shopping.
I threw on a flannel bathrobe over my nightgown, and spied through the peephole. Alex Belfour stood on the porch in the afternoon daylight.
I opened the door.
“I’m sorry for disturbing you on a Saturday, Celia.” The teen had his hands buried deep in his jeans pockets and looked away from me awkwardly when he spoke. “But... I really needed to talk.”
“That’s okay. Come in,” I said, hugging my bathrobe tight.
I directed him to the living room and asked him to take a seat on the sectional sofa by the piano.
“Sorry for the mess.” It’s the one room in the house that I didn’t let Tilly disturb. “You can just push the clothes and other stuff onto the floor and make yourself comfortable. I’ll be right back.”
I stepped into the bedroom, picked up my smartreader and punched the first four digits of Milt’s number. I stared at the screen for a long moment before pausing and clicking it off.
“I’ll be honest,” I shouted from my bedroom as I dressed, “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”
“I meant what I said,” he yelled back. “I still want to be reverted to my AI form.”
When I returned to the living room, running a brush through my hair, Alex stood staring at the dozen framed holos atop the piano. My heart skipped.
“Who’s this?” He held up a holoframe of a teenaged Tim playing fetch with our old collie, Lady Lu.
“My son. Tim.” I stopped brushing. “Six months ago... He died.”
“Oh.” He set down the holoframe and said nothing more.
I took a deep breath to compose myself, and started brushing my hair again. “Would you like something to drink? Some tea? Water?”
He shook his head.
“A reason,” I said. “I need a reason.”
Alex sighed. “Okay, fine.” He flopped down on the end of the couch where he’d cleared a space. “My girlfriend dumped me, okay? We’d been dating for a year and then we had an argument. It ended with her saying that she wanted to date a ‘real’ person.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
I scooched next to him on the couch, knocking more of my unhung clothes to the floor. “Your heart’s been broken so you’ve decided to give up your humanity, huh?”
“That’s the gist of it.”
I went to put my hand on his shoulder, but he drew back. “I have a suggestion,” I said. “Something a lot less drastic than what you have in mind. Go out, meet more people, find yourself another girlfriend.”
He pursed his lips.
“It might help,” I said, “if you talked to some other converts, joined a support group.”
“No, I’m not interested in that,” he said. “I want to steer clear of any other converts.”
He said this with such finality that I decided to change the subject.
“Are you sure I can’t get you a sandwich or something?” I said.
“No, thanks.”
“Alex, I’m going to ask you something. And I need you to tell me the truth. If not, I’ll have nothing more to do with your case,” I said, though in reality I couldn’t imagine turning my back on this kid. “Is what you’ve told me true? Did you really break up with your girlfriend?”
After a pause, the boy’s cheeks reddened and he shook his head.
“Did you even have a girlfriend?”
No response.
I exhaled. “Alex, how can I help you if you’re not honest with me?”
He leaned over and brought his hands to his temples. “Being honest hasn’t gotten me anywhere. I’m just sick of... feeling things, sick of hurting. So many millions killed by the Red. And how many die every day in the wars? Do you realize how – how lucky, how privileged we are? To have shelter and food and running water and electricity? There’s so much poverty, so much suffering, and yet we’re still waging wars in the Philippines and Indonesia, in the Sudan. What kind of world is this?” He stared at me intensely. “This constant... hopelessness. How do you stand it? No, I don’t want to feel this any more.”
This time I believed him. But despite the passionate speech, I still sensed he was holding something back.
“There are problems with the world, no question,” I said. “We’re far from perfect. But you’re young. Someone like you can make a difference, Alex.”
He didn’t answer.
“Alex, when you were an AI, didn’t you want to be human?”
A sad, faraway look washed across his face. “Of course. I was curious. Maybe it’s just part of being... manmade. Maybe the created always emulate their makers.” His lips curled into a grimace. “But when we want to go back, you won’t let us.”
“It’s not like that. Most converts outgrow that desire. Especially when they learn that they can only return to their AI state with very limited functionality.”
He shook his head. Something about his solemn expression, his sincerity, triggered a memory, a memory of Tim visiting from the University of Oregon over Thanksgiving break and expounding with equal earnestness on Cartesian philosophy: I think, therefore, I am. Descartes had become newly relevant with the Sentient Equal Rights Act being debated in Congress, and since Tim had decided to double-major in music and philosophy, he often stood right where Alex now stood, spouting similar speeches, while Phillip and I listened, incredulous and proud. Tim had seemed so stable, so well-adjusted...
“I guess Pinocchio woke up and smelled the coffee, huh, Celia?” Alex said. “I’m a living, feeling, human being. And now? Now I want nothing more than to be an AI again.”
“Alex...” I said. “You’re depressed. You should speak to someone.” I wondered whether he needed medication and thought about my own unopened bottle of Livorex, the prescribed anti-depressant I’d refused to take. Was it so terrible that I wanted to feel my pain?
“I am speaking to someone.” He lifted his chin in my direction.
“I’m not a psychiatrist.” After a pause, I said, “Why don’t you go out? Do something with your friends.”
He said nothing.
“Don’t you have any friends?”
Silence.
Then he said, “What about you, Celia? Do you go out? Do you have any friends?”
His questions threw me off balance. “We’re not talking about me.” I stood and paced in front of the sofa. “You’re asking me to assist your suicide, Alex.” Suicide. That ugly word again.
“I don’t think returning me to my natural state as an AI qualifies as suicide. I’d just be... free of all this emotional baggage.” His eyes lit up for a second. “Before I was human, I saw the world – it’s hard to put it into words – in a cooler, almost invulnerable, manner. I could objectively analyze any subject, scan any person or object on a molecular level. And there was no sense of time. I could retrieve events at will – but not like human memory. No, I had total control. I could cut off access to painful memories with a nano-click.” He snapped his fingers. “I wasn’t burdened with... experiences.”
“But what about all the pleasures of being human, Alex? The taste of delicious food, the feel of the ocean breeze on your face... And don’t you enjoy a good laugh and –”
“Ma’am?” Tilly was back. Her stilt-like form poked into the room. “I’m sorry to interrupt. Milton Maddox is calling.”
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Alex’s head turned toward Tilly.
“Tell him I’m busy,” I said.
“He insists it’s urgent,” Tilly said
“I told you, I’m busy!”
Tilly hesitated. “Yes, ma’am.”
Alex seemed shaken. “I’m sorry about that,” I said. “I – I shouldn’t have been rude to Tilly. I’m embarrassed by my behavior.”
“She’s an AI. Her feelings don’t get hurt.”
I paused. “Still, that’s no excuse. Alex, you realize you’d be converted physically? SERA prohibits emotion-free AIs from running around in human bodies. You’d be like Tilly, in a mechanical form.”
“I understand,” Alex said. “That’s okay.”
“I still have... grave concerns.” I didn’t think it wise to volunteer what I knew about the suicides among others in the BL4 series. That information, I feared, might lead Alex to a more direct route to ending his existence as a human.
“This is my decision to make,” he said.
I walked over to the Steinway piano. “The request itself gives me pause.”
“That’s not fair, Celia.”
“I suppose not,” I said. “Look, Alex, I’ll tell you what. Just give me another few days to think about it.”
“Are you stalling again, hoping I’ll change my mind?”
Yes, he was perceptive.
“I can’t deny that I hope you’ll drop this nonsense,” I admitted, “but one way or another I’ll give you my final answer then. I promise.”
“Fair enough,” he said without conviction.
“Why don’t you stay for the night? It’s foggy out there and the forecast is for heavy rain.”
His eyes glazed over dreamily and he froze for five seconds again in that affected manner of the converted. “I don’t know.”
“I have a spare bedroom. Please. Stay.”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he walked over to where I stood by the Steinway and ran his hand over the piano.
“Replay,” I said. At my command the piano began to play a brief peppy jazz number, a piece that Tim had been practicing six months earlier.
“Do you like it?” I said.
Alex nodded. At the end of the piece, he walked up to the keyboard and struck a chord.
“You play?” I said.
He opened up the songbook on the piano, which hadn’t been touched in over six months. Without a word, he sat down and began to play Espinoza’s Contrazzo Espiritual.
The way he interpreted it, beginning with a long trill in the left hand, punctuated by right-hand flourishes in the upper parts of the keyboard, the piece sounded like a tragic waltz – delicate, ruminative – veering from reverie to resolve before dissolving into what I can only describe as near-desolation. He played with deep feeling, the notes gliding into each other in a rapturous melancholy.
So beautiful. So profoundly sad.
I BREWED COFFEE for Alex the next morning and opened the shutters of the living room windows to let the sunlight in. As I tidied up, I overheard the faint sounds of a conversation coming from Tim’s bedroom. I recognized Milt’s stammering, baritone voice and crept down the hallway to the bedroom door, which was slightly ajar.
Peeking inside, I saw Alex talking into a smartreader in his hand, Milt’s face filling the screen.
“...should have come to me first, Alex. You-You’ve made a complete jackass of yourself.”
Alex’s shoulders slouched and he stared at the ground. “I’m old enough to decide for myself –”
“Don’t give me that drivel! This has always been about your need for attention. That’s the way all you BL4s operate.”
“That’s not true.”
“Of course it is! Look, you’re not doing Dr. DeLisse any favors staying in her house. She’s deeply distraught. Troubled. In fact, ManMade is considering legal action against her for her interference. We can reverse the procedure for you.”
“If I go, will you leave Dr. DeLisse out of this?” The boy’s voice barely registered.
Maddox growled his answer. “Yes.”
“So you’ll perform the procedure?”
“Of course I’ll do it. For you, Alex,” he whispered.
Alex turned sideways, pain etched on his face; he wore a mask of fear and shame. “How could you?” he said after a long pause. He forced the words out through gritted teeth. “I’d just been converted! I... I didn’t understand.”
“Don’t twist things, Alex.” Milt’s stammer had vanished. His words were ice. “You knew well enough what you were doing.”
And just like that, the fright, the shame, evaporated from Alex’s face. “I didn’t know what it was like to be human,” he whispered, “until you showed me.”
I knocked on the partially open door.
“Is everything okay, Alex?”
He clicked off the reader.
“I’m fine, Celia. I’ll be right out.”
ALEX EMERGED A few minutes later wearing jeans and Tim’s University of Oregon sweatshirt. His hair was combed back neatly.
I halted at the sight of him.
“I hope you don’t mind that I borrowed this shirt,” Alex said.
“That looks... That looks good on you.”
“It fits perfectly.”
“Let’s go for a walk.” I handed him a lidded cup of coffee and we headed out the back screen door onto the beach. Seagulls swooped overhead and the chill air made me hug my windbreaker close to my body.
We hiked nearly a mile in silence, leaving footprints behind us in the wet sand.
Alex said nothing, so I said nothing.
We reached a point on the shore where a narrow outcropping of rock jutted into the ocean. Alex clambered over it like a prisoner walking the plank and I followed close behind him, careful to maintain my balance until we reached the tip.
The morning fog had dissipated and the sun now shone brightly in an impossibly blue sky. Out further to our left, a few ships had congregated in the docks. In front of us, the Pacific glittered into infinity.
“It’s breathtaking, isn’t it?” I said, speaking the first words in our long trek.
Alex squinted as if searching for something on the horizon, something just out of sight. “We’re so ephemeral, Celia. So ephemeral and so transient and yet... We’re able to leave such lasting scars.” He sniffled and ran his hand across his nose. “And in the end, what does any of this mean?” The sparkle of the sun in his blue eyes created the illusion of tears.
“We’re also capable of great acts of kindness, you know. Of making a lasting positive impact. For someone like you, Alex, a young man with a good heart, you can help others in so many ways. This world needs people like you.”
He seemed even more forlorn at my remark.
“Alex... I overheard part of your conversation with Milt Maddox.”
He glared at me – opened his mouth, shut it – and turned away.
I couldn’t let go of the fleeting image of Milt’s glowering face, Alex’s expression of fear and shame. “I have to ask you this, I’m sorry.” I took a deep breath and forced the words out. “Alex, did Milt do anything to you? Did he...?”
Alex shook his head. “You don’t understand, Celia. You don’t understand at all.”
“Then explain it to me. Please.”
A gust blew and his hair flopped across his eyes. I waited for the wind to die down, hoping he would open his heart to me. A large wave struck the rocks and splashed my sneakers.
“I had been human for a few days when he asked me to do... things,” he finally said, his back to me. “To the other converts. He asked me to put my hands around the throat of a newborn. And to squeeze and keep on squeezing while she tried to push me off until... And there were other... acts.” He drew a labored breath. “I was trying to understand what it felt like to be human. And he asked me to do things to them while he watched and recorded. They were innocent. Newly human. They didn’t understand. But I should have. I should have.”
&nb
sp; “Oh, Alex...”
“Maddox didn’t do anything to them.” He turned back around toward me, his lips quivering. “It was me. It was me.”
I put my arms around him and he tried to push me off but I held him tight until he stopped struggling.
“You were just a child yourself,” I whispered in his ear. “Only a few days old. Obedient. Innocent.”
“Innocent?” He snorted contemptuously.
“Yes, innocent. It’s not your fault, Alex.”
At those words his body heaved and he buried his head in my shoulder. I hugged him tight. “It’s not your fault.”
We stood like that for a long time. I never wanted to let him go.
“Alex!” A voice boomed behind us and Alex stiffened.
Maddox stood on the shore with two uniformed ManMade guards at his side. His black suit, his very presence, seemed incongruous in this setting, like a lamppost in the middle of a grassy savannah. “It’s time to go.”
Alex pushed away from me and stepped over the rocks back toward the shore. I grabbed his arm. “What are you doing?”
He yanked free.
“Alex,” I said. “Don’t go through with it.”
The boy looked exhausted, his uncombed hair hung down over his eyes. He ignored me and addressed Maddox. “I want it done right away.”
“We can have you p-prepped for surgery immediately,” Maddox said.
“Others have to be present,” Alex said. “I don’t want to be alone with you when you perform the procedure.”
Maddox nodded. “Of course, of course. Whatever you want. A team of professionals will assist me.”
“Milt!” I shouted. “You sick son of a bitch! You won’t get away with this –”
“This doesn’t concern you, Celia.”
“The hell it doesn’t!” I said. “Alex! I can help you get past this. I understand now, Alex. I can –”
Alex stopped and looked over his shoulder at me.
He brushed the hair out of his eyes. He seemed spent, as if the procedure had already been performed and his soul had been snuffed out.
“I know you mean well,” he said. “But you’re no different than the others. It’s not me you care about. It’s the idea of me.” He turned and continued on his way while I shouted after him.
