All the Retros at the New Cotton Club

by DeAnna Knippling

  A waltz started. She imagined Bobby working his way out of the crowd and holding out his hand to her. She wiggled her feet in time with the music.

  Hey doll.

  Her heart stopped. “Bobby?”

  You’re in a maudlin mood. I expected you to be throwing a party or something.

  She felt a ghostly feather against her forehead. A kiss.

  She smiled, tears pricking her eyes. “I tried. It was a bust.”

  Pick anyone up yet?

  “Also a bust. Hanging around without you, Bobby. It’s depressing.”

  Come on, that’s not the girl I married. You’re about as sentimental as a hammer.

  “Having your partner in crime die on you puts a damper on things.”

  She couldn’t stop the tears rolling down the sides of her face but then again she couldn’t stop smiling, either.

  They chatted for a while; he declined to make a visual appearance. From his perspective he’d just died of cancer a few minutes ago. He was having a hell of a time getting the hang of his new lifestyle. A few days and he’d be more confident. Some people were naturals—he wasn’t one of them.

  I’ll practice while you’re asleep.

  “Great, give me nightmares.”

  While you’re dreaming is my downtime, he said. Reboots, software patches, virus programs…

  “You can get a virus?”

  Of course I can. The chip uses the same networks that you do.

  She shook her head. “That sucks.”

  She felt a caress along her arm, then the side of her neck. She raised her lips for a kiss and distinctly felt his finger brush along them from one side to the other.

  Them’s the breaks, kiddo. So tell me about my funeral. Were the boys complete and utter shits?

  “Mary was an angel…”

  · · ·

  Then one day she got a call from the funeral home, long after Bobby’s body was interred. They left a message—there must be something that they forgot to gouge her for. The funeral had cost a bundle but all she had had to do was sign off on the expenses, thank God. The funeral director had handled the setup with the black market chip and doctor; she’d paid him under the table in cash for the parts of the agreement that were less than legal.

  Earlier that day she had been riding the streets in one of the red-and-black self-driving trolleys that the city was spending so much money advertising. There had almost been an accident. A toddler had run out in front of the trolley. It had swerved at the last second, making its passengers scream—but leaving the little guy untouched. The reaction had been so fast and so nicely calculated that a human driver couldn’t have done it. The kid was scooped up by its sobbing mother.

  On the way home in the trolley she and Bobby had gotten into their first post-death argument. She needed something to do with her life. Bobby kept telling her to wait for the end of the three years. She told him she was too bored to wait that long. He told her that it was time for her to live it up, not act like an old woman. The argument went on for miles. She probably looked crazy, talking to herself. First on the trolley and then the few blocks back to the house.

  She ended the argument at home by breaking off to return the funeral home’s call across a secure connection.

  “Hello, Ms. Stimac, thank you for returning the call. This is William Codere.”

  “Hello, Mr. Codere. Is there an issue with my late husband’s funeral that I need to address?”

  “Not with his funeral, no…”

  Mr. Codere explained that Bobby’s A.I. transfer had failed to reboot itself. Normally, the main A.I. was set up with all sorts of backups and failsafes, but a bunch of things had failed and—in short—the only viable copy of her late husband was the one residing behind her ear. He’d gladly refund the money—

  She cupped a hand around the chip protectively. “You lost my husband?” she asked.

  Not lost him so much as…yes. They’d lost him. Could she come in and have him uploaded again? It wouldn’t be much trouble, the process would take about four hours and…

  “Of course,” she said. “Please let me know when—”

  Bobby appeared in front of her. He’d been flickering in and out lately; now he showed up, dressed in a pinstripe suit with pencil-thin legs and a white pocket square. He had his hands on his hips and an over-serious pout on his face.

  No.

  “How about the eighteenth?” Mr. Codere said.

  “Hang on, he’s talking to me,” Bernice said. “His ghost is, I mean.”

  “I’ll wait.”

  I’m fine here, Bobby said. I’ll just transfer in three years like we planned. No sense on you wasting time on something like this.

  “But what about your business?” she said. An A.I. couldn’t exactly take the business he’d built as a living guy with him, but he could build a new one on the other side. Lately, Bobby had been complaining that his sons were screwing up the business he’d created as a living man. She’d told him to get over it. His position was that they were making stupid mistakes; her position was that not everybody could be a financial wizard.

  My business can wait. Or I can manage the transactions while you sleep.

  “What if I die before the end of the three years is up? What then?”

  Then they’ll get us both from our chips. If you want to be a retro, that is—I know you haven’t done your will yet, but it’s time to make up your mind.

  She sighed. “Are you sure?”

  Yes.

  “You better send them a certified message, then. I mean, if I were them, I wouldn’t believe someone who talks to herself on the phone.”

  …It’s done. Don’t worry, doll. I’ll be safe here.

  “Just don’t leave me,” she said.

  His image, which had flickered in and out of view and had finally frozen in place, started to blow her a kiss and locked up again. She caught it and ate it.

  Then she turned her attention back to the phone. “Mr. Codere? He says he doesn’t want to and that he’s going to send you a certified message to back that up.”

  Mr. Codere paused. “Did he say why?”

  She was surprised that he seemed so accepting of her word; if she was him she would have waited until she saw the proof before she believed that the young widow wasn’t trying to pull a fast one.

  “Not exactly. He said I shouldn’t waste time on it but I doubt that’s all there is to it.”

  I’m right here, Bobby said. To remind her of this, he began drumming his fingers on her thigh.

  Mr. Codere sighed and she agreed with him. Bobby was that kind of guy, even in death.

  Mr. Codere said, “I got into this business so that I could make the transition from life to death easier, not more complex and harrowing.”

  Mr. Codere had seemed fairly young to her, but that didn’t mean much these days. “Bobby doesn’t mean to inconvenience people, usually,” she said. “It’s just that he doesn’t think that aspect through.”

  I’m still right here, doll. Bobby sounded amused. He began nibbling on her ear; she grinned and tried to brush him away—not that it did any good.

  “The transition has changed,” Mr. Codere said. “But the essence of what I do has not. It makes me profoundly uncomfortable not to have some sort of backup of his A.I.”

  “I understand,” she said. “But Bobby’s going to do whatever he’s set his mind to do.”

  “Indeed. Thank you for your time, and I hope to remain in contact with you over the next three years in order to…”

  “Make sure that Bobby’s okay. I get it, Mr. Codere. I’ll check in once in a while and let you know how he’s doing. Right now he’s a bit flickery and a bit stubborn, but that’s nothing new.”

  Doll…! He pinched her. She hung up and squealed. She had to carry herself up to the bedroom, but otherwise it was just like old times.

  · · ·

  Two years passed in a blur. She was bored and didn’t know what to do with herself, and Bobby incr
easingly needed more time to get his business up and running during her waking hours, so she started learning the ropes. She’d always resented it when business had taken him from her when he was alive—she got it and she didn’t put up a fuss, although it always brought her down—but now that she was watching over his shoulder, she could see what the fun was.

  Money was one big, long, complicated game when you had enough of it to matter. Being a player was different than being a pawn or even a queen—moving pieces around instead of getting moved. Money wasn’t just something you used to buy things with. Buying things was incidental. Money was so weird that it was close to magic. She liked it. She was never going to be as good at it as Bobby was, but he helped her set up a few accounts that she could play around with. To keep her sharp he set up phantom financial accounts reflecting the probable amounts and decisions that his two sons were using, and dared her to try to top them.

  Sometimes she won, mostly she lost—but she was getting closer. And that, he said, was a good sign.

  Bobby finally told her the truth about the A.I.: He didn’t feel safe with another copy of him floating around. His sons were always trying to find ways to hack into his accounts or get his will invalidated—they wanted him deleted.

  “Oh, Bobby,” she said.

  Watch out for people with stuff that looks like guns. They’re developing these things called disruptors that can shoot an electronics-filled canister that can fry a hologram into static—and then, when the servers try to recompile the image, cause all the encryption on the data to disappear for a few seconds. They might be able to record everything I know from that.

  “How does that work?”

  When I project myself so other people can see me, it’s not just an image. Part of me is really there.

  He ran his fingers across her skin and she sighed. “Be here for me, Bobby…”

  · · ·

  She took up with a lover, a pretty blonde girl from Des Moines who was delighted at everything that Bernice showed her, in and out of bed. She’d tried to keep Bobby a secret but Jasmine found out anyway. She didn’t seem bothered to have been invited to a virtual threesome. In fact she begged to have a retro chip installed so she could see Bobby, too, and feel his touch.

  “That one’s going to be trouble,” Bobby warned her. “She’s going to scam us, one way or another.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “She’s got that greedy look. The way that she’s never satisfied with something for long—she always wants to move on to the next big thing. And it has to be bigger and better and more shocking than before. She’s a thrill-seeker. Whatever she does, don’t let her get a retro chip installed. She could make your life hell for decades, if not centuries.”

  Bernice eventually gave the woman kiss-off money and launched her out of the house on Willow Street, then blocked her after Jasmine burned through all the money Bernice had given her and begged for more. A minor scandal cropped up on the news media, a flash in the pan—then gone. The only surprising thing was that the fact of Bobby’s haunting her never went public.

  After that, she started going to retro clubs. Half virtual, half real—only people who’d been fitted with retro chips could go. About a tenth of the people who filled the clubs were retros. Because all the guests and most of the staff possessed retro chips, it was almost like the bodiless could have bodies again. They could flirt, drink virtual drinks, and even rent a room upstairs where the line between the virtual and real was even fuzzier (and sweatier) than it already was.

  The clubs, like the retros themselves, weren’t exactly legal, but as long as everyone stayed discreet it all worked.

  At first she was charmed. She could even dance with Bobby again, as long as it wasn’t a waltz or something that required a partner’s kinetic energy. He’d order their drinks. They could dine together. They even held business meetings where she could meet potential business partners who were also incorporeal. It was a gas.

  And then—

  · · ·

  The dame swirled the ice around in her empty glass. The cubes had melted together so that the ice no longer clinked as it moved. The yellow alert had disappeared. Everything had gone back to normal—or had it?

  The rendering was still thick with smoke and object framing. Charlie stayed on alert status.

  “And then it was time for him to go,” she said. “For him to move out of my brain and into servertown or wherever it is that A.I.s of powerful men go.”

  “And?”

  “And at first it just about damn near killed me…”

  · · ·

  The loss of Bobby had come as a shock. She had drunk herself insensible the night before, then drank more in the cab on the way over to the doctor’s office. She wanted to renege but she knew that Bobby wouldn’t put up with it. By then he was impatient to get out of her head and into the more updated, expanded hardware that he’d purchased somewhere in the Bahamas.

  They argued in the cab.

  “Don’t leave me,” she said.

  Don’t think of me as leaving, just as scouting out the next location. You’ll be with me once you decide to shuffle off the mortal coil.

  “I don’t like it. Can’t you leave a copy of yourself behind to keep me company?”

  You know how much I hate that. One of me. There can only be one of me.

  She had had her suspicions that Bobby had sabotaged the main copy of the A.I. but she’d never brought it up. “Are you saying that two of you would be too many?” There were tears streaming down her face. The cab driver kept giving her looks.

  Yes. We’d kill each other.

  She shook her head. “Just give me the one with no ambition…oh, what am I saying, Bobby? I would hate that. I would hate it with a passion.”

  You see what I mean?

  “What am I going to do with myself? It’s going to take years and years before I can…we can…”

  She sobbed. She felt his arm around her, squeezing her shoulders. It’s not forever.

  The appointment at the doctor’s office went smoothly. The doc gave her crap for showing up drunk but in the end it didn’t matter: four hours later she was alone in her skull again. She had the receptionist call her another taxi to take her home. She couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.

  She’d always been a cheerful girl. She cried at movies but that was about it. She’d made Bobby a good companion, always in a good mood and ready for action, whether it was dancing, gambling, traveling, or in bed.

  But now she felt a black curtain drop over her. She’d been on a stage and now the play was over. She might as well knock back a couple of lead antidepressants and get herself uploaded into the virtual world right now.

  She opened the drawer by her bed where she kept a pistol, a little holdout revolver. She spun the chamber around a couple of times, then got caught up in cleaning it.

  Bobby would be pissed at her if she shot herself in order to get an early release from this prison she called life. She could almost hear his voice, disgusted—still loving her, but disgusted.

  She raised the barrel to her mouth and put it in for a moment, then closed her eyes.

  No. She wouldn’t do it—for Bobby’s sake. She didn’t want him to be disappointed in her.

  She slid the handgun back in the drawer and made herself forget about it. Instead she told herself that Bobby’s chip hadn’t been removed—it had been broken and they’d replaced it. All she had to do was wait for him to come back.

  She got out a bottle of champagne and two glasses and settled in to wait.

  · · ·

  The days and nights passed. She kept up with her investing practice. Soon she was outstripping the virtual accounts kept by Bobby’s two sons easily. She could almost predict their mistakes before the market did.

  Bobby was right. They were idiots.

  She drank a bottle of champagne most nights. When she did, she always set out two glasses. One of them stayed empty—but it made a real sound when s
he clinked the flutes together at the rims.

  She traveled. She showed up for charity boards and fundraisers and found some favorite causes. She played with her money. She felt increasing hollow…thin. Blurry. She began to see movement out of the corners of her eyes, shapes that disappeared when she looked at them straight on. Like ghosts.

  Then one day she got a call from Bobby.

  Or not a call, exactly.

  Another haunting.

  · · ·

  She was back in the bathtub, shrouded with bubbles and a hot towel over her face so she wouldn’t be distracted by movement out of the corners of her eyes. The open bottle of champagne rested on the small table next to her, two champagne flutes as always. She was almost ready to fall asleep.

  Hey doll, he said.

  Her heart squeezed in her chest and her eyes flooded so quickly with tears that they started to run down her cheeks faster than the hot, damp towel could absorb them.

  “Bobby.”

  She took the towel off her face and struggled to sit up. She’d drunk most of the bottle; just the flat little dregs were left.

  He stood in front of her, looking more solid than he ever had before. He flickered a little, but it was more like the effect of an old-time silent picture than the lagginess of a bad network connection.

  Miss me?

  “You know I do.”

  I have a business proposition for you.

  “Are you in my head? Or are you…”

  I hacked your network.

  She nodded.

  I need you to hold a package for me.

  “Of course.”

  Don’t you want to know what it is?

  She shook her head. “It’s you, Bobby. It doesn’t matter what it is, I’ll take it.”

  It’s not a material package. It’s a virtual one.

  “What is it?” She grinned at him. “I don’t need to know. Now I’m just curious.”

  He shrugged. He’d grown a mustache; he tugged at the end of it. It’s better if you don’t know.

  She waved one hand. “It doesn’t matter. You know I’ve got your back, Bobby. Can you load it over the network or…?”

  No networks. It’s on a chip.