FutureDyke

by Lea Daley

  “I am organizing your possessions, sorting the items into categories. Tomorrow I will arrange to have the bins recycled.”

  “Very interesting, but hardly uppermost in my mind. What happened to you?”

  “I do not understand the question.”

  “You mean, ‘This does not compute?’”

  “Are you displeased?”

  “How can I tell? I have no idea what’s going on!”

  The VTO leaned against a wall, nibbling pensively on her lower lip, seemingly as human as I. One fine-boned hand swept through short dark hair, which I noticed was now styled in a fashion favored by the dykes of my day. “I am only anticipating your desires.”

  “How the fuck do you know what my desires are?”

  “Well…last night you dressed me in these clothes. Then you dreamed I was alive…”

  I was shaking. With shock. With outrage. “You know what I dreamed?”

  “Of course. How else can I meet your needs?”

  “You could bloody well wait till you’re asked!”

  “But you need many things that are beyond your conscious awareness and I am here to serve.”

  “Just how do you propose to know what my subconscious needs are?” Said nastily.

  “The same way…by reading your mind. I will improve over time.”

  “You…can…read my mind?”

  “I anticipate, therefore I am.”

  “Go away! I need to be alone!”

  “No. The last thing you need is to be alone—you are so frighteningly alone you can scarcely bear it.”

  “Oh, my god! Are you going to second-guess me all the time? Don’t I have any say in this?”

  “I can only override commands when that is in your best interest.”

  “You’re saying you know me better than I know myself?”

  “As I have access to information which is hidden from you, that is inevitable.”

  “Terrific! Tell me, O Wise One, what do I need?”

  “Just now, you could use a deep body massage.”

  Startlingly strong hands came down on my shoulders and went to work. And with my eyes closed, I was able to surrender. Her fingers sought out every stressed fiber and frayed nerve. Without a doubt, it was the best massage I’d ever had. It almost seemed she knew exactly what to do. And when. And how hard. Then it hit me—she did know. She was getting feedback from my mind as well as my body.

  I leaped up. “Get out! Get out now!”

  The VTO’s nod morphed into a reluctant bow. And then, without benefit of bracelet, she walked through the wall.

  Chapter Four

  I sat motionless for a long time, face in my hands. Fighting to keep my mind blank. Difficult under the best of circumstances, impossible since waking on Jashari. And the instant the mannequin vanished, I wanted her back. I had so many questions!

  More potent than my need to know, though, was that sickening sense of invasion, of violation. Fear, anger and insecurity roiled me. If I could believe the VTO, I had no privacy. No way to keep thoughts to myself. No safety in discretion or the well-timed white lie.

  Worse, my hard-won individuality was eroding. With no one to talk to, no one to love or despise, I felt hazy, blunted, insubstantial. I’d never guessed how much I was a product of my own place and time. Never known that my sense of self depended on others who were forged in the same crucible. Who was I when not a soul shared my values, my viewpoint, my culture, my world?

  It didn’t help that every hallmark of ordinary life had been swept away. Every organizing principle canceled, all responsibilities eliminated. Each reassuring routine and ritual disrupted. And the silence here—the terrible unremitting silence—was working against me.

  My sharp, black howl shattered the vacant air. In a second, she was beside me again—the mannequin, the robot—whatever she was. She embraced me, patted me, let me sob all over that lavender T-shirt. Finally, I pulled back. “This is stupid! I can’t believe I’m crying on a goddamned computer.”

  “Leslie,” she said, speaking my name for the first time, “I am somewhat more than a computer.”

  “Yeah, yeah. But my traumatized little lizard brain can’t comprehend that.”

  “Could you think of me as a friend? A friend who understands you thoroughly, accepts you completely, wants only the best for you?”

  “Where I come from, friendship has to be cultivated, earned. And it’s usually not so…all-encompassing.”

  “Then perhaps this is better?”

  “Hardly! Because you can know me completely, but I’m probably incapable of knowing you. There will never be balance or reciprocity…”

  “This disturbs you.”

  “Yeah. This disturbs me. But you’re only aware of that because you can read my mind!”

  She took my hands in hers. Gently. “What did you expect to find in the future, Leslie?”

  “Why don’t you tell me?”

  “Very well. You thought everything would be fairly similar to your own era—Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, yes? You knew you would need time to acclimate, of course. You expected to make some adjustments. But you figured you were tough enough to handle the challenge.”

  “Could you possibly be mistaken?”

  “Unlikely.”

  “Okay. I did think the more things changed, the more they’d be the same. Obviously I was wrong. I’ve hardly seen any of Jashari and I’m already coming unraveled.” A tear rolled down one cheek. “I’m so fucking confused! Now what?”

  “Breathe deeply. Take your time. Allow yourself to heal—which is a long process, as every cell in your body was affected by cryosleep. Among other things, you still need an inordinate amount of rest. Gather your resources. Make use of me.” She glanced around. “And put your things away.”

  “Yes, mother. Then may I have a cookie?”

  “No, Leslie-ahn! They are horribly unhealthy!”

  “It was only a joke.”

  If a computer can look off-balance, she did. “Ah, yes. Humor was common in your epoch…”

  “Yes, thank god! Please don’t tell me it’s gone out of style.”

  “Humor is a coping mechanism, a vestigial trait of undeveloped societies. It has little value today.”

  “I knew I should have bought a roundtrip ticket!”

  “Another joke?”

  “You got it, sweetheart!” Then a thought struck me. “I don’t even know your name. If you’re gonna hang with me, that has to change.”

  “I am A.I.—”

  “Too clumsy. You need a real name.”

  “What would you suggest?”

  “I don’t know…What do your friends call you?”

  “You will be my first.”

  “Jesus! Have they sent me a rookie?”

  “You may think of me as a virgin.”

  “Well, that has possibilities! How does ‘Mary’ sound to you?”

  “A little too close to Meredith—judging by the leap in your pulse rate.”

  “Right…a really dumb idea. How about Electra?”

  “Careful—you will hurt my feelings. We are long past such crude technology.”

  “You have feelings?”

  “Without feelings, how could I respond to you empathically?”

  “Shucks, I don’t know. I’m just a country bumpkin. This is all beyond me.”

  “Perhaps. But naming is not. Let us continue.”

  I stood back to study the VTO. It was hard to remember how pale and motionless she’d been at first encounter. Her skin—if skin it was—had taken on a light coffee color with an underlying blush of peach. Her hair was as dark as midnight skies. Her eyes tilted up slightly at the outer corners, and regarded me with a steady amber gaze. “How about Cammie—short for Chameleon?”

  She wrinkled an adorable nose. “No—I can tell you are not overly fond of reptiles.”

  “True. Aren’t you finding this boring? You know everything I’m going to say before I open my mouth.”
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  “That has its advantages.”

  “I bet it does…We could give you an old-fashioned, nature-dyke name. Something to go with your outfit…Rainbow? Moonbeam? Sage?”

  “You would find any of those laughable.”

  “That’s also true—though ‘Sage’ has more than a little relevance, I gather.”

  “No.”

  “Opinionated, aren’t you?” I reflected silently, sifting possibilities.

  “Yes!” she said suddenly. “I like it!”

  “For heaven’s sake, woman, at least let me speak before you agree.”

  But that’s how the mannequin got her name. Aimée—French, for “friend.” Sort of.

  * * *

  When the VTO joined me for breakfast the next morning, I was so startled I dropped my chopsticks. “You eat?”

  Aimée opened the food compartment and drew out a second tray. Which was a first. “Of course, Leslie-ahn.”

  “There’s no ‘of course’ about it! Why would a robot need to eat?”

  She picked up the porcelain teapot. “Some energy source must power my activity. And meals are central to human social life. If I could not partake of such significant events, I would be unable to fully support you.”

  I lifted my bowl. Sipped slowly. Tried, but failed, to think of a snappy comeback. “I’ll just file that under ‘food for thought’ and move on.” Poking at my breakfast entree—which was something like toasted tofu that day—I said, “God! I’d pay good money for a cheese Danish or a Belgian waffle!”

  Aimée paused, chopsticks in midair. “Why do you say those things, Leslie-ahn?”

  “Because they’re positively delicious!”

  “No, not the foods—those words. ‘God,’ ‘Jesus,’ ‘Christ,’ ‘damn,’ ‘hell’…You use them constantly, although they have no meaning on Jashari. They do not even have meaning for you.”

  “Oh…they’re just fillers, expletives. That was a commonplace in my culture—we used them reflexively. Lots of those words were rooted in religion. Even expressions like ‘gosh,’ or ‘darn’ or ‘heck’ were just substitutes for profanity, an attempt to placate the gods, I suppose. Others were associated with bodily functions—pleasurable and otherwise. Think ‘fuck’ or ‘shit,’ which you’ll also hear me say on a regular basis. Some people tried substituting phrases like ‘Jiminy Cricket,’ ‘Gee willikers,’ and ‘All iced up,’ which only made them seem juvenile or countrified.”

  “But what purpose do expletives serve, Leslie-ahn? What value do they add to communication?”

  I combed fingers through rumpled hair as I thought about her question. “It’s a kind of shorthand, I suppose. A quick-and-dirty way to convey emotions like anger or frustration or distress. If you made a mess, you could say, ‘I’ve dropped a raw egg on the floor and it’s splattered all over everything and it will be a pain to clean up,’ or you could just groan, ‘Goddamn!’” Smiling at the familiar complexities of the English language, I added, “Tone and context are everything. The same words that express contempt can also describe a sense of awe or wonder—So ‘God!’ might mean that something’s either surpassingly beautiful, or intolerably awful. Surely you have equivalents here?”

  “There is no need, as Jasharians place a very high value on self-control.”

  I covered my face with both hands, shaking my head in despair that was only partly playful. “Jesus! How in hell is someone as fucking emotional as I am supposed to fit into this goddamned place?”

  “Is that meant to be funny, Leslie-ahn?”

  “Or not, my friend. But this conversation raises a new question.”

  “Yes?”

  “Are there gods, Aimée—I mean Jashrine gods?”

  “No, Leslie-ahn. This culture is entirely unconcerned with matters of religion or worship.”

  Which was a frame of mind I both admired and found oddly disorienting. “Just astonishing!” I said, as I struggled to conceptualize a wholly secular society.

  “If one considers the origins of our world, that was the only possible outcome. The founders were scientists, with a natural bias toward the rational. And this attitude has strengthened over successive generations. Thus the only ‘creation myth’ we require is the factual history of Jashari’s establishment, which all here know. Such wonder as we feel is based in respect for the technological achievements that make our lives possible.”

  “So Jasharians are entirely unfamiliar with—indifferent to—legends and magic and miracles?”

  “It is as you say.”

  Blowing out a slow breath, I murmured, “I’m trying to imagine art and literature without the machinery that drove centuries of Terran culture—heroes and gods and prophecies…”

  “Where all are one, heroes and gods are things unknown.”

  “Prophecy’s still unaccounted for,” I teased.

  The VTO shoved her plate aside, then rose in a way that suggested she’d soon bolt through a wall. “There is only one,” Aimée replied tersely. Then she vanished before I could press her for details, leaving her food almost untouched.

  What a strange, strange place this was! After breakfast I found Serenghi’s book again and thumbed to an ironic fable about the capriciousness of Earthly deities. Because no matter how fantastical these tales were, I understood them far better than anything I’d experienced on Jashari.

  * * *

  Whenever I truly needed the VTO, she appeared. I might as well have named her Genie. She seemed to have displaced my shy little nurse, which I took for good news. Apparently, Aimée was charged with helping me adapt to Jashari. I could begin, she said, by decorating my living quarters—after my possessions were stashed away.

  “First I’d need storage space.”

  “I can assist you with that.”

  So the VTO taught me how to cast a laser-like grid over my walls, then click off coordinates. Each segment I selected was instantly transformed into a shelf or compartment of the desired dimensions. And if I miscalculated, I could simply “drag” the laser lines to reconfigure the design, no harm done. A form of Jashrine magic, despite protestations to the contrary.

  Next I sorted through my belongings, with Aimée a willing audience for every reminiscence. Occasionally, she asked about an object. Its name, its purpose, its provenance. Though she surely knew every detail from picking my brain, answering those questions seemed to help integrate my old life with this new beginning. Maybe that was the point.

  But the VTO was puzzled by the toys Meredith packed just for the hell of it. “Handle that with reverence,” I said, as she picked up an ornate bamboo tube. “It was an antique when Mer acquired it. Handmade in Brazil before the rainforests were obliterated. Turn it upside down and hold it to your ear.”

  Aimée’s eyes went wide as crushed seashells cascaded through a maze of slender dowels, making a sound much like falling water. “What is the purpose?”

  “It’s for fun, my all-too-solemn friend.”

  “Oh.” The VTO rotated the rain stick repeatedly, listened closely, then set it aside, plainly no wiser than before.

  Next she found a kaleidoscope. “Hold that to one eye, Aimée.”

  Though the shifting, shimmering patterns made her smile, she soon plucked another mystery from the collection. “And this spring is…?”

  “My grandpa’s Slinky. I can’t believe Mer thought to include it.”

  “Slinky?”

  “Another plaything. Fiddle around with it—it’s addictive. Motion, sound, sensation…”

  But when one bubble-wrapped bundle brought me to tears, the VTO knew better than to probe. “Miniature Christmas tree,” was all I said as I stashed it away.

  To divert me Aimée picked up a cheap plastic sphere with a tiny bell inside. “What is this?”

  “A cat toy.” Maybe Meredith had dropped it in for a laugh. Or maybe it was a contribution from Stonewall, our oldest critter.

  “You had cats?”

  “Sure. An endless supply. Meredith was a c
at freak.” Noting Aimée’s startled look, I said, “That means she really, really liked cats. One old guy was a permanent member of the household, but Mer regularly fostered strays. We usually had at least three cats at home.”

  “They actually lived with you?”

  “Of course—why not?”

  “It is just so…so…uncivilized! I hope I have not offended you, but animals in a human dwelling? It is unthinkable!”

  “You must have known this about me.”

  “It is in what you would call my memory banks, but it is very hard to grasp. How did you tolerate it?”

  “It wasn’t a struggle, Aimée—we loved the cats! They added another dimension to our lives. They have personalities, preferences, they form friendships…We learned a lot from them…” A wave of nostalgia swamped me. “I guess I can’t explain it to you…” Pulling a photo album from a shelf, I drew an unsteady breath. “Let’s try this.”

  It was the first time I’d dared look and I was glad to have company at that moment. My hands shook as I flipped past the early pages—unbearably dear images of childhood and youth. Finally I came to the shot I was seeking.

  There she was: Meredith McAllister, my long-lost love. Her face radiant. Her eyes glowing. Hugging Stonewall, our aging Maine Coon. Surrogate mother to a steady stream of feline waifs—if a neutered male can be dignified by that title. In a strangled voice, I said, “You’re so good at knowing what I feel, Aimée…tell me!”

  Her face softened. “Tenderness. Sorrow. Pain. You feel that for the cat, as well as for Meredith!”

  “Yes. That and more.”

  Aimée examined the contours of Mer’s fine face. “She was very beautiful, was she not?”

  “She was better than beautiful. She was smart and funny and kind.” I snapped the album closed, suddenly tired beyond words. “I have to get some sleep, Aimée.”

  Eyes still closed, I reach out, but I’m alone in our bed. Mer’s already up, I think—I must have slept through the alarm. I smile, sleepily amused, as lovers can be by one another’s proclivities. Because that buzzer rules Meredith’s life with uncompromising authority. The moment it sounds, she’s up. To stay in bed longer than it takes to fling back our blankets is to violate at least one law of nature—and possibly a lesser commandment.