Dear Adam,
I’m glad you’re okay. I was worried when I heard the news. Don’t write me back. Lyle would see it. I wish you could help me.
Yours, Lily
A pang of old guilt and familiar emotions made me ashamed. Wanting to help, and wanting it to go away. Emotions I’d felt when Lily-2 first told me of Lyle’s abuse, and long ago as I stood still in the waves as Gabrielle attacked, and as I’d run away while my mom was murdered. Or perhaps as far back as my c-father pausing at the hospital door before walking to the side of his bald, dying mother.
I read the short note over and over. I could see young Lily-3’s pleading eyes as Lyle-2 had driven her away.
A way to help Lily-3 may have been clear, yet ignorance or fear prevented me from seeing it. But I knew Jack would have some insight, and a visit was long overdue. So I took my artificial legs on their first big test. It was a two-mile hike to Jack’s house. The day was gorgeous with spring in the air and in my steps. And the Padres were off to a great start, having just swept the Dodgers. On the way I stopped at a convenience store and got a six-pack of Sam Adams. Within an hour I rang his doorbell.
Joy opened the door. She looked at the beer in my hand.
“Jack around?” I asked.
She shook her head with a half-angry, half-pitying frown. “Adam, you know already. You can’t find him here.”
I shrugged impatiently. “He’s at the church?”
“Adam,” she said, closing her eyes and pressing her fingers to her forehead like she had a headache. “You know.”
I felt dizzy as flashes of memories flooded my mind. I turned around and started walking again, my legs carrying me to where I’d long ago been told Jack had been laid. I spent the rest of the afternoon at the cemetery thinking about years past, drinking the Sam Adams for both of us, thanking him for his friendship, apologizing for all that his love had cost him, my back resting against the side of his hard, warm headstone.
I’ve spent so many days there in the years since. Confessing that I don’t always know how to be a husband to Evelyn or a father to Cain. Asking about Lyle and Lily. I try to imagine Jack’s easy companionship and sound advice. Or I reminisce about our days at Hill Creek Academy when Jack, Evelyn, and I all met and still could have done anything with our lives.
Table of Contents
57
As the year 2076 rolled around, I felt the pressure building each day. Especially when Evelyn let herself visually age for her role as Miss Daisy in Driving Miss Daisy at the La Jolla Playhouse. It was only for six weeks in the spring, but it was terrifying to see her hair whiten and skin wrinkle and become marred with age spots, her rheumy eyes dancing with glee when they still should have been the sharp, dark eyes of her early forties, the feeling on closing night that those could be her last moments on a stage.
Not that we weren’t making some progress, especially with Bobby the Barebot taking charge. He and his host of Barebots worked round the clock in their attempts to crunch the data, create virtual experiments, and save Evelyn’s life.
Dr. Lisa Lopez assured me that, barring something unexpected, Evelyn should have a few more years. But I lost confidence in that assurance each time I looked at my wife. I felt impotent to save her. Still I tried to keep things hopeful around her. For a while I gave her weekly updates on progress we were making or snags we were hitting. We had replaced skulls, eyes, ears, noses, and every piece of the body besides the brain and some glands. But getting a brain to control all the nuanced features of a fully artificial body, and making sure the brain remained in perfect equilibrium there, was a Gordian knot of biological, chemical, and anatomical processes. Our AI simulations were getting closer and closer to success, but they also kept finding more unforeseen variables. Despite great AI advances, the human body didn’t always work like its simulated counterpart.
In early 2076, when I told her about our plans to put a chimpanzee brain into a modified artificial body, Evelyn asked me to stop giving her updates. She wanted to focus on living, and if it turned out we were able to prolong her life, so much the better.
But in June of 2076, just prior to the close of Driving Miss Daisy, we did convince her to go see the prototype of the new body we had created for her. The staff had removed it from its sealed environment and laid it on an operating table for Evelyn’s viewing.
She inhaled as she reached out to touch the face. The same face she’d seen in the mirror over the past twenty years. The same face I’d looked into when I made my wedding vows, but so different than the aged one she’d seen during the past six weeks.
She traced the curves of the chin and cheeks with her spotted and gnarled fingertips.
“It feels just like me,” she said, taking my hand in hers and moving my fingers along her artificial neck and face. “Don’t you think?”
The curves of her face were the same. The skin had the soft, smooth feel of young human skin. But it felt different. Nothing that I could articulate, and nothing that I would even try to describe at that moment. Nothing that Evelyn would want to hear.
“Yes, it’s amazing,” I confirmed. “Feels maybe even a little better than you.”
She hit me in the kidney area with her free hand, but smiled. Until she moved my hand to her new body’s forehead. There she stopped.
“You’ll be able to add the scar?”
I moved my other arm around her waist, pulling her closer to me, and kissed her near her scar. “Of course.”
Evelyn nodded. Then she looked at the sheet covering the rest of the body. She asked Cain to leave the room so she could continue her examination.
“God, you’re hot,” I said.
She smiled. “You think so?”
I nodded as I tried to move our hands down to touch the more intimate areas of her new body.
“Just who do you think you are?” she asked, laughing, which she hadn’t done much of lately.
Later that night we took Cain over to visit Grandma Hannah, and we went home where I made love to her ninety-year-old body. If we had met a hundred years before and grown old together as nature had once demanded, I would have grown old feeling young with her. She was still hot.
As she slept in my arms later that night, I wondered whether making love to Evelyn in her artificial body would have the same passion and intimacy. I imagined that I’d always miss her real body as I still missed my real legs. But I think I’d still be crazy for Evelyn if she looked like the cyclopean Gort in The Day the Earth Stood Still.
***
Speaking of classic sci-fi, a few days later the three of us began a cross-country train trip, stopping for a few days in several cities along the way, until arriving in New York in late June. Just in time for the Broadway premiere of Philip K. Dick’s Blade Runner.
We had several connections to the show, including Ingeneuity being its co-producer. The other producer was Barebots. It was an important show for them, as it dealt with whether manmade humans were truly human, or simply sub-human “skin-jobs” as some called them in the movie.
It was also the first Broadway play that featured a skin-job playwright. It was penned by a Barebot named Sophocleats, which translated into “wise cleats.” He’d been originally named Albot Einstein and designed to be a cosmological research android, but Albot discovered a love of books. After he downloaded Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and the film Blade Runner based on that book, he sensed a new destiny. Within seconds he had downloaded all of Dick’s novels and as much biographical information as he could find. Then he changed his name and began writing the script for a stage version that would combine elements of the book and film, and that he hoped would reflect both Philip’s vision and his own.
The date of the premiere was set for July 4, 2076, our nation’s tricentennial. Both clones and Barebots descended en masse, seeing this as the flashpoint of a movement to give artificial people the same freedoms given to humans in America three hundred years before.
The cast was filled with clones. Harrison Ford-2 reprised his clone-father’s role of skin-job hunter Rick Deckard, while Carrie Fisher-2 joined him in the role of Deckard’s love interest Rachael. Leonard Nimoy-2 took the role of Eldon Tyrell, the powerful creator of the skin-jobs/replicants. Jeff Goldblum-2 earned a Tony nomination for his performance as Roy Batty, the leader of the renegade replicants. Michael J. Fox-2, whose clone-father had starred in the Back to the Future films plus Mars Attacks and Clone High, took the role of replicant Leon Kowalski, and Dina Meyer-2, whose clone-mother had starred in Starship Troopers and Johnny Mnemonic, took the role of the opera-singing replicant Luba Luft from the book, having Barebots replace her vocal cords with synthetic ones just for the role. A teenage Parker Posey-2 played an added android character that was created to look like a young girl, while young Christina Ricci-2 debuted as Willow Mercer, a religious figure inspiring empathy, based on the character Wilbur Mercer from the book. Deckard’s pet artificial sheep, named Groucho in the book, was played by a hologram nicknamed Dolly.
It was also the debut of Broadway’s first skin-job actress. Barebots had created Cathode Hepburn specifically for the arts, and three years later she had already developed a cult following. One that skyrocketed with her performance as the sexy replicant Pris, girlfriend to leader Roy Batty, at the same time becoming the real-life girlfriend to Jeff Goldblum-2.
Sophocleats was playing to an audience that had a profound interest in the message, but his play would speak to others as well. It earned enormous profits for its producers. As of this writing, the show is still going. So if you haven’t seen it…
We all went to Sardi’s for the after party. The banner hung above the entrance read, “Replicants, Andys, and Skin-Jobs Welcome!” Sardi’s had a caricature of Sophocleats framed and ready to be hung on the wall.
Nikki Menae and Director James Cameron-2 introduced us to most of the stars as well as the clone-children of other sci-fi stars including Arnold Schwarzenegger, Angelina Jolie, and Daryl Hannah who was too young to reprise her clone-mother’s role in the film. Musical entertainment was provided by Sting-2 whose clone-father was in Dune and rapper Will Smith-2 (Men in Black and I, Robot). Jack Black-2 (Mars Attacks, Clone High) followed them up with some Tenacious D.
We were eventually seated next to Jeff Goldblum-2 and Cathode Hepburn, by Cathode’s request as it turned out.
“I saw you as Miss Daisy,” Cathy said as she shook Evelyn’s hand, “and I wanted to tell you how much I loved it.”
“You were wonderful,” Evelyn reciprocated. “I cried when Harrison Ford killed you.”
“Thank you. But I have it a lot easier than you,” Cathode confided. “I can cheat.”
Evelyn laughed. “Oh, really? Care to share your secret?”
Cathy leaned in close. “I put myself into a virtual reality where I truly believe I am the character, and the things happening on the stage are real. After the scene, another part of my brain lets me know that my virtual world was not the real one, and I leave the stage.”
Evelyn paused, trying to imagine what that would be like. “So when you’re killed onstage, you truly believe he’s killed you?”
Cathy nodded. “In my mind, I die every night. In this world, there is a constant backup of my mind secured at Barebots, so I don’t fear death. In that world, death is final.”
“What’s it like when you think you’re dying?”
Cathode’s eyes became unfocused. She rubbed a few strands of her red hair between her fingers. “Horrible.”
Evelyn paled. The conversation ended for a while.
Cathy had to restart it. “So,” she said, nudging Evelyn’s elbow as she took a bite of a fancy chicken concoction, “I hear you’ll be a fellow skin-job soon.”
Evelyn nodded as she finished chewing. “I saw my new body just a couple weeks ago.”
“Do you think you’ll still be who you are?” Cathy asked.
She smiled at Cathy’s bluntness, which was typical of Barebots. She answered with equal bluntness. “No.”
Cathode laughed, leaning against Jeff Goldblum as she did.
“She finds honesty among humans to be bizarrely funny,” Jeff-2 explained.
“And refreshing,” she added, using her other elbow to poke her boyfriend in the ribs.
“She also thinks we’re equally resistant to physical pain,” Jeff said, catching his breath.
She patted her boyfriend on the shoulder a couple times, then inspected Evelyn. “So are you looking forward to the operation, or are you scared?”
“And she also thinks we love to have our deepest feelings probed by total strangers,” Goldblum piped in.
Evelyn smiled at Jeff, and then used her fork to move her food around on her plate. “I don’t know.”
Cathode studied her. She was capable of calculating voice, body temperature, and facial muscle fluctuations to determine human emotions. Some tears welled in her eyes, and she put her arm around Evelyn.
“It’s all going to go fine. You’ll see. And then there’ll be no pain. No physical worries. And you’ll feel an energy and strength you’ve never felt before.” She kissed Evelyn’s cheek. “And we’ll be like half-sisters!”
Evelyn grinned at Cathy’s optimism. “Thanks, Sis.”
Cathode looked to me. “Is the testing going well?”
I paused. “Mostly.”
“How are things going with the artificial rights movement?” Evelyn asked. She had begun to shift conversations away from our progress, or lack of progress, more and more quickly.
“Oh, it’s not really going anywhere right now,” Cathy said, slouching over a little and gazing at her drink.
Jeff held her hand. “Unlike Barebots, it takes humans time to figure out the simplest things. Barebots are far more worthy of self-determination than we are.”
She smiled and leaned into him. “You’re worthy, honey. Show them that trick you can do that no Barebot can.”
Like his c-father, Jeff Goldblum-2 had strong voluntary control of his ear muscles. He wiggled his right ear and then his left to flaunt their existence.
Cathy lovingly ran her fingers through his hair. “Such a talented human.”
Evelyn turned to me. “You think I’ll be able to wiggle my artificial ears like that?”
I shrugged. “It’s a pretty expensive upgrade.”
As Cathy and Evelyn began discussing a number of other possible upgrades, I was grateful to watch my wife chatting about her illness with ease. And I was determined to make sure she would be able to enjoy any upgrade she could dream up.
Table of Contents
58
If we were struggling to make our miracles come to pass, Lyle-2 and Rejuve were making disturbingly fast progress on both prongs of their attack.
Despite my best efforts to subvert his rival artificial immune system product, by 2076 his AIS was already number two in the industry, second only to ours, and they were promising to be number one soon with some impressive innovations that, in comparison, would make using our AIS akin to using leeches.
I found that analogy offensive, but trusted colleague Stan Kushman assured me it might be true. By using our work as a stepping stool, a move that led to several lawsuits, he was preparing to leapfrog us.
“Why won’t we be able to keep up with them?” I asked Stan. I was willing to make a deal with the devil to do it.
“Their scientists have been making some amazing breakthroughs, and that’s likely to continue,” he answered calmly but sympathetically.
“But why aren’t we making those breakthroughs?”
“Well, he’s been far more aggressive and successful in recruiting the intelligence-enhanced doctors from the medical schools and from other research facilities around the world. You prefer to work mostly with non-enhanced brains.”
That was true, but I didn’t want to accept that we couldn’t compete because we weren’t using upgraded humans. I desperately wanted to believe that
non-enhanced brains could be as successful as their enhanced counterparts. Kind of like John Henry and the steam hammer, though I was hoping for a happier ending. Nor did I want to be reminded of my own prejudice. Deep down I knew it was wrong to blame people for their enhancements. I of all people should be sensitive to such prejudices. I had let my experience with intelligence-enhanced Lyle-2 poison me against a group of people, and he had used my bigotry to overtake me.
“What else?” I snapped.
“He’s also invested very heavily in artificial intelligence. He has more high-end AI ‘employees’ than all but five privately owned companies in America, and he seems to be moving more and more in their direction. They can crunch the data, dream up experiments, and draw conclusions better every year, and they can go 24/7. Our research shows he’s paying Advanced AI extra for them to look and talk like normal humans, but without emotions, egos, and ambitions.”
I nodded. “And, unlike people, he can know he has complete control over them. Helps him feel more like a god.”
“So what do you want to do?” Stan asked.
Throw something across the room. Kill Lyle. “Let him have the top spot,” I relented, not bothering to ask the devil if he might be interested in a new soul. Or whatever I might have that was comparable. “It’s too late for us to compete. Even if we started going after the enhanced, they’d still be able to recruit the top students because they’re the company with momentum. We’ll invest in some more AI and keep our hand in AIS so people still have alternatives, but our leadership is over. We’ll focus even more on artificial bodies. That’s our future anyway. And if we need to begin hiring more enhanced engineers to make sure we never get swept away in that field, let’s look into it.
“No – let’s just do it now.”
“Got it, Copy Boy,” he said, nodding. “Feel like a total failure?”
I grimaced and laughed. It was good to have friends who made you smile no matter the humiliation.
And so we chalked one up to Lyle. I saw him about three or four times a year at industry conventions, but we never talked. If we made eye contact, he would only frown and go on with his business.