“Please do not worry.” Bittu’s Brain broadcast directly to our heads. It had an airline-stewardess voice, and it spoke first in English, then in Hindi. “She can be easily awakened at the nearest facility.”
I remember the doctor who handled Bittu’s case. She was very reassuring. I remember everything after the doctor took over. She was that reassuring.
“Bittu was Enhanced only last year, wasn’t she?” said the doctor.
She wanted to know the specifics of the unit. Did Bittu’s Brain regulate appetite? How quickly would it forget things? What was our policy on impulse control? That was especially important. How did her Brain handle uncertainty? Was it risk-averse or risk-neutral? Superfluous questions, of course. The information was all there in the medical report. I listened, marveling, a soaring happiness, as Padma answered every question, and thus answered what the doctor really needed to know: Are you caring parents? Do you know what you have done to your child with this technology?
The doctor asked if we had encouraged Bittu to give her Brain a name. Did we know that Bittu referred to it as a “boo-boo”? Newly Enhanced children often gave names to their Brains. Padma nodded, smiling, but I could tell she was worried. Boo-boo?
We got the It-Takes-Time-to-Adjust speech. Bittu was very young, the Brain still wasn’t an integral part of her. Her naming it was one symptom. Her Brain found it especially difficult to handle Bittu’s complex emotions. And Bittu found it difficult to deal with this thing in her head. We should have been more careful. It especially hadn’t been a good idea to mask the trial separation as a happy vacation in Boston. We hung our heads.
Relax, smiled the doctor. These things happen. It’s especially hard to remember just how chaotic their little minds are at this age. It’s not like raising children in the old days. Don’t worry. In a few weeks, Bittu wouldn’t even remember she’d had all these worries or anxieties. She would continue to have genuine concerns, yes, but fear, self-pity, and other negative emotions wouldn’t complicate things. Those untainted concerns could be easily handled with love, kindness, patience, and understanding. The doctor’s finger drew a cross with those four words.
“Yes, Doctor!” said Padma, with the enthusiasm all mothers seem to have for a good medical lecture.
We all felt much better. Our appreciation would inform our Brains to rate this particular interaction highly on the appropriate feedback boards.
Outside, once Bittu had been placed—fast asleep, poor thing—into Sollozzo’s rental car, the time came to make our farewells. I embraced Padma and she swore various things. She would keep in touch. I was to do this and that. Bittu. Bittu. We smiled at each other. However, Amma was a mess, mediation or no mediation.
“Was it to see this day, I lived so long?” she asked piteously in Tamil, forgetting herself for a second, but then recovered when Padma and I laughed at her wobbly voice.
“That lady doctor liked the word ‘especially,’ didn’t she?” said Sollozzo, absentmindedly shaking and squeezing my hand. “I had a character like that. He liked to say: on the contrary. Even when there was nothing to be contrary about.” He encased our handshake with his other hand. “Friend, my answer to your question was stupid. Totally stupid. I failed. I’ve often thought about the same question. I will fail better. We must talk.”
What question? The relevance of fiction? I didn’t care. So. This was it. Padma was leaving. Bittu was leaving. My wife and daughter were gone forever. I felt something click in my head and I went all woozy. The music in my head made it impossible to think. I was so happy I had to leave immediately or I would have exploded with joy.
Amma and I had a good journey back to our apartment. We hooked our Brains, sang along with old Tamil songs, discussed some of the entertaining ways in which our older relatives had died. She didn’t fall asleep and leave me to my devices. My mother, worn out from life, protecting me from myself, even now.
That evening, Velli made a great deal of fuss over Amma, chattering about the day she’d had, cracking silly jokes, and discussing her never-ending domestic soap opera. Amma sat silently through it all, smiling, nodding, blinking.
“Thank you for caring,” I told Velli, after she had put Amma to bed. “You look tired. Would you like a few days off next week?”
“I’m not going anywhere!” she burst out in her village Tamil. She grabbed my hand, crushed it against her large breasts. “You’re an inspiration to me. All of you! How sensibly you people handle life’s problems. Not like us. When my uncle’s wife ran away, you should have seen the fireworks, whereas you all—Please don’t take this the wrong way, elder brother, but sometimes at night when I can’t sleep because of worries, I think of your smiling face and then I am at peace. How I wish I too could be free of emotions!”
It is not every day one is anointed the Buddha, and I tried to look suitably enlightened. But she had the usual misconception about mediation. Free of emotions! That was like thinking classical musicians were free of music because they’d moved beyond grunts and shrieks. We, the Enhanced, weren’t free of emotions. On the contrary! We had healthy psychological immune systems, that was all.
I could understand Velli’s confusion, but Sollozzo left me baffled. We chatted aperiodically, but often. Padma told me his scribbling was going better than ever, but his midmornings must have been fallow because that’s when he usually called. I welcomed his pings; his mornings were my evenings, and in the evenings I didn’t want to think about ESOPs, equities, or factory workers. It was quite cozy. Velli cutting vegetables for dinner, Amma alternating between bossing her and playing Sudoku, and Sollozzo and I arguing about something or the other. Indeed, the topic didn’t matter as long we could argue over it. We argued about the evils of capitalism, the rise of Ghana, the least imperfect way to cook biryani, the perfect way to educate children, and whether bellies were a must for belly dancers. Our most ferocious arguments were often about topics on which we completely concurred.
For example, fiction. I knew he knew that fiction was best suited for the Unenhanced. But would he admit it? Never! He’d kept his promise, offering me one reason after another why fiction, and by extension writers, were still relevant in this day and age. It amused me that Sollozzo needed reasons. As a storyteller he should’ve been immune to reasons.
When I told him that, he countered with a challenge. He offered two sentences. The first: Eve died, and Adam died of a heart attack. The second: Eve died, and Adam died of grief.
“Which of these two is more satisfying?” asked Sollozzo. “Which of these feels more meaningful? Now tell me you prefer causes over reasons.”
“It’s not important what I prefer. If Adam had been Enhanced, he could’ve still died of a heart attack. But he wouldn’t have died of grief. In time, no one will die of heart attacks either.”
Another time he tried the old argument that literature taught us to have empathy. This bit of early-twenty-first-century nonsense had been discredited even in those simpleminded times. For one thing, it could just as easily be argued that empathy had made literature possible.
In any case, why had empathy even been necessary for humans? Because people had been like books in a foreign language; the books had meaning, but an inaccessible meaning. Fortunately, science had stepped in, fixed that problem. There was no need to be constantly on edge about other people’s feelings. One knew how they felt. They felt happy, content, motivated, and relaxed. There was no more need to walk around in other people’s shoes than there was to inspect their armpits for signs of the bubonic plague.
“Exactly my point!” shouted Sollozzo. He calmed down, of course. “Exactly my point. Enhancement is straightening our crooked timber. If this continues, we’ll all become moral robots. I asked you once, are you so eager to return to Zion?”
“What is it with you and Zion?”
“Zion. Eden. Swarg. Sahyun. Paradise. Call it what you will. The book of Genesis, my brother. We were robots once. Why do you think we got kicked out of Zion? We lo
st our innocence when Adam and Eve broke God’s trust, ate from the tree, and brought fiction into the world. We turned human. Now we have found a way to control the tree in our heads, become robots again, and regain the innocence that is the price of entry into Zion. Do you not see the connection between this and your disdain for fiction?”
I did not. But I had begun to see just how radically his European imagination differed from mine. He argued with me, but his struggles really were with dead white Europeans. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle; Goethe, Baumgarten, and Karl Moritz; Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Mach, and Wittgenstein: I could only marvel at his erudition. I couldn’t comment on his philosophers or their fictions, but I was a banker and could make any collateral look inadequate.
In this case, it was obvious. His entire argument rested on the necessity of novels. But every novel argues against its own necessity. The world of any novel, no matter how realistic, differs from the actual world in that the novel’s world can’t contain one specific book: the novel itself. For example, the world of Pamuk’s The Museum of Innocence didn’t contain a copy of The Museum of Innocence. If Pamuk’s fictional world was managing just fine without a copy of his novel, wasn’t the author—any author—revealing that the actual world didn’t need the novel either? Et cetera, et cetera.
“I have found my Barbicane!” said Sollozzo, after a long pause. “I need your skepticism about fiction. Fire away. It will help me construct a plate armor so thick not even your densest doubts can penetrate.”
All this, I later learned, was a reference to the legendary dispute in Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon between shot manufacturer Impey Barbicane and armor-plate manufacturer Captain Nicholl. Barbicane invented more and more powerful cannons, and Nicholl invented more and more impenetrable armor-plating. At least I was getting an education.
If his hypocrisy could have infuriated me, it would have. As long as his tribe had mediated for the reader, it had been about freedom, empathy, blah di blah blah. Sollozzo hadn’t worried about mediating for the reader when he’d written stories in English about Turkey. Stories in English by a non-Englishman about a non-English world! Jane Austen1 might as well have written in Sanskrit about England.
It didn’t matter, not really, this game of ours. Men, even among the Enhanced, find it complicated to say how fond they are of one another. Sollozzo made Padma happy. I was glad to see my Padma happy. Yes, she was no longer mine. She’d never been mine, for the Enhanced belong to no one, perhaps not even to themselves. I was glad to see her happy and I believed Sollozzo, not her Brain, was the one responsible. Bittu was also adjusting well to life in Boston. Or perhaps it was that Bittu had adjusted to her Boo-boo. Same thing, no difference. Padma said that Bittu had stopped referring to her Brain entirely.
Padma was amused by my chitchats with Sollozzo. “I am super jealous! Are you two planning to run away together?”
“Yes, yes, married today, divorced tomorrow,” shouted Amma, who had been eavesdropping on our conversation. “What kind of world is this! No God, no morals. Do you care what the effect of your immoral behavior is on Bittu? Do you want her to become a dope addict? She needs to know who is going to be there when she gets back from school. She needs to have a mother and father. She needs a stable home. No technology can give her that. But go on, do what you like. Who am I to interfere? Nobody. Just a useless old woman who’ll die soon. I can’t wait. Every night I close my eyes and pray that I won’t wake up in the morning. Who wants to live like this? Only pets. No, not even pets.” She smiled, shifted gears. “Don’t mind me, dear. I know you have the best interests of Bittu at heart. Which mother doesn’t? Is it snowing in America?”
It’s all good, brah, as the Americans say in the old movies. As I ruffled the pages of Sollozzo’s volume, The Robots of Eden and Other Stories, I wondered what Velli had made of the arguments I’d had with Sollozzo. I remember her listening, mouth open, trying to follow just what it was that got him so excited. She’d found Sollozzo highly entertaining. She used to call him “Professor-uncle” with that innate respect for (a) white people, (b) Enhanced people, and (c) people who spoke English very fluently. Sometimes she would imitate his dramatic hand-gestures and his accented English.
In retrospect, I should have anticipated that Sollozzo’s suicide would impact Velli the most. How could it not? The Unenhanced have little protection against life’s blows on their psyches. I had called Velli into my office, tried to break the news to her as gently as I could.
“Your professor-uncle, he killed himself. Don’t feel too bad. Amma is not to know, so you have to be strong. Okay, Velli?”
I had already counseled Padma on the legal formalities, chatted with Bittu, made her laugh, and everything went as smoothly as butter.
Padma and I decided we’d tell Amma the next day, if at all. Amma got tired very easily these days. Why add to her burdens?
“I have to handle his literary estate,” said Padma, smiling, her eyes ablaze with light. “There’s so much to do. So for now we’ll all stay put in Boston. Will you be all right? You’ll miss your conversations.”
Would I? I supposed I could miss him. I didn’t see the point, however. I was all right. Hadn’t I handled worse? What had made her ask? Was I weeping? Rending my garments? Gnashing my teeth? Then, just so, the irritation slipped from my consciousness like rage-colored leaves scattering in the autumn wind. It was kind of her to be concerned.
“Why did professor-uncle kill himself?” asked Velli, already weeping.
“He took something that made his heart stop,” I explained.
“But why!”
Why what? Why did the why of anything matter? Sollozzo had swallowed pills to stop his heart, he’d walked into the path of a truck, he’d drowned, he’d thrown himself into the sun, he’d dissolved into the mist. He was dead. How had his Brain let it happen? I made a mental note to talk to my lawyer. The AI would have a good idea whether a lawsuit was worth the effort. Unless Sollozzo’s short story collection contained an encoded message (and I wouldn’t put that past him), he hadn’t left any last words.
“Aiyyo, why didn’t he ask for help?” moaned Velli.
I glanced at her. She was obviously determined to be upset. Her quivering face did something to my own internals. I struggled to contain my smile, but it grew into a swell, a wave, and then a giant tsunami of a laugh exploded out of me, followed by another, and then another. I howled. I cackled. I drummed the floor with my feet. I laughed even after there was no reason to. Then, just so, I relaxed.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I wasn’t laughing at you. In fact, you could say I wasn’t the one laughing at all.”
Velli looked at me, then looked away, her mouth working. Poor thing, it must all be so very confusing for her. I could empathize.
“Velli, why don’t you go down to the river? The walk will do you good and you can make an offering at the temple in professor-uncle’s name. You’ll feel better.”
I had felt it was sensible advice, and when she stepped out, I’d felt rather pleased with myself. But Velli never returned from the walk. I got a brief note later that night. She’d quit. No explanation, just like that. Her father, Rajan, came by to pick up her stuff, but he was vague, and worse, unapologetic. All rather inconvenient. All’s well that ends well. Padma and Bittu were happy in Boston. Perhaps they would soon return. I hoped they would; didn’t want Bittu to forget me. Sollozzo’s volume would get the praise hard work always deserved, irrespective of whether such work pursued utility or futility.
“You’ll spoil the book if you keep ruffling the pages like that,” complained Amma.
I returned the volume to Amma, marveling at her enthusiasm for reading. For novels. For stories. Dear Amma. Almost ninety years old, but what a will to live! Good. Good! Other people her age, they were already dead. They breathed, they ate, they moved about, but basically, they were vegetables with legs. Technology could enhance life, but it couldn’t induce a will to live. Amma was a true inspiration. I
could only hope I would have one-tenth the same enthusiasm when I was her age. I started to compliment Amma on this and other points, then realized she was already lost in the story. So I tiptoed away, disinclined to come between my beloved reader and the text.
ELIZABETH BEAR
Erase, Erase, Erase
from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
I shouldn’t have let it get so far. It felt so inconsequential at first. Almost a relief to find myself getting a little misty around the edges. Bits dropping off. Stuff you don’t need anymore.
Erase, erase, erase.
Sorry, historians. I know some of this would be useful to you, but it’s all gone now. All gone.
I burned most of it.
Only I am still here.
And I am falling apart, and I can’t remember who I used to be or how I got here.
Irresponsible of me, I know.
* * *
It’s not just the memories, either. There’s bits of me gone that I swear were there before. Fingertips. Some hair. The eyelashes on my right eye.
I’m almost certain I used to have those.
Sometimes I reach for something—coffee mug, keyboard—and realize I can’t seem to find my own hand. I have to go look around the house for it, because I never remember where I had it last. Feet, at least, limbs—I don’t tend to get far when those have gone missing. It’s hard not to notice as soon as you try to stand up.
But I’ve found hands in the bed, under the bed, halfway up the stairs. Once in the fridge, which worried me a lot but actually it went right back on. Just felt a little weird and numb for a few minutes. Found my ear still stuck on an earbud once, and that was pretty awful. When the nose comes off, the glasses usually go with it.
I miss cats, but I don’t have a cat anymore. I couldn’t be sure of taking care of one. I’d probably forget to feed her, or not be able to work the can opener, and she’d resort to eating a mislaid finger.
The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2020 Page 40
