Previously on The Bowie Effect: https://philloz3000.wordpress.com/2021/05/15/the-bowie-effect-season-two-episode-two-my-red-queen-rises/
“That A.I. you sold me was shit.”
“First of all, I didn’t sell it to you. You traded with me for a set of Mars Attacks trading cards. Very nice condition, by the way.” Colin thumbed through the pasteboard stack, held together by rubber bands. Do rubber bands even exist anymore?
Paul grimaced. That wasn’t exactly what he meant to say, especially to Colin. Except that he was still emotionally jacked from the Valerie session, and wanted someone to blame. This was a bad idea. Nevertheless …
“Well, it was wrong. SHE was wrong. She wasn’t like a real person,” Paul complained. He looked across the living room, toward the kitchen. Diana was in there somewhere, and he longed for her help.
Colin was tall, lanky, bespectacled, and hopelessly geekish. He was a born cybergerth, an engineer and programmer with a wild artistic, anarchistic streak. He saw Romeo and Juliet in terms of algorithms, Luke Skywalker Vs. Darth Vader in terms of imaginary weight ratios and power stats. His chosen avatar was one of the Mads from Mystery Science Theater 3000 – a white lab coat and wild, green and purple hair. It suited him immensely.
“It’s not supposed to be real, for Jebus’ sake. It’s a fantasy construct, a toy,” Colin whispered. “Even that level of A.I. is forbidden by your PlasmaLife contract, you know. It’s an illegal patch. You’re supposed to be in Communionication when you role-play.”
Paul nodded, made out a shadow in the doorway, and stubbed out his cigarette. Diana entered the room, all sun and light, bouncing lightly on the balls of her feet and bringing a tray.
“Oolong tea,” she chimed, her musical voice resounding in Paul’s PlasmaLife abode, a smart, avant-garde space dominated by various cutting–edge sculptures and paintings. “I know it’s your favorite,” she sang to Paul.
Paul was momentarily stung by a one-time memory – from puberty – of being chided for putting sugar in his Chinese tea. “And why not?” he asked out loud, to no one in particular, while lifting his cup. The tea was delicious and soothing. Paul relaxed. These are friends, he reminded himself.
“I’m sorry, Colin, it just wasn’t what I expected,” Paul heard himself say. He still resented him, for a panoply of irrational reasons. Stupidly, as a matter of fact. Just because he was smarter and richer and lived on the Other Side …
Colin embraced his lovely wife as she sat down next to him. Diana was also an engineer, even more versed in A.I. than he, and for good reason. She had worked for the Aimes Research Center before the war. There were planets being conquered by cyborgs whom chanted her name as Mother-Creator. Not as artistic as her husband, but more intuitively connected with their inhuman machinery. A genius or savant, depending on the way you looked at it. Perhaps the old ballet lessons tempered her inhumanity. Maybe.
Colin leaned forward. “The problem lies not in the program, but in your own conflicting impulses.”
“A rather Freudian diagnosis, don’t you think, doktor?” Paul scowled, while drinking his tea.
“Not at all. The program can only read the information stored in your frontal lobe, augmented by whatever public records are available,” Colin countered. “I’m not a psychologist, but I’d have to say your problem has to do with cognitive dissonance.”
“What?”
Diana chimed in, with her lilting singsong voice blunting the cruel edge of the truth. “It’s really quite simple. The scans of your frontal lobe are at odds with your subconscious memory of Valerie. When she behaves in a manner than offends your conscious recollection, you experience this cognitive distress. It simply doesn’t jibe with your expectations.”
Paul took half a moment to absorb this. It has been a long time, he thought. Am I idealizing Valerie’s memory in conflict with the truth?
Whatever the truth may be?
“I’m not a computer. I only have my memories to go on,” he said lamely. “But it didn’t feel right. She seemed – programmed. Robotic.”
Diana looked and frowned at her husband. Colin leaned forward and chided, “We don’t take kindly to that term here.”
Paul blushed. “I apologize. But you know what I mean. She was not really there, in consciousness. She was there in physical form.” He paused. “I could smell her. I could feel her. That part was real.”
Diana smiled in satisfaction. That part was her doing, no doubt.
“Olfactory memories are among the most powerful and accurate in human awareness,” she lilted. “You may forget a face, or a name, but you never forget a smell.”
Paul looked up at Diana. So young, so fresh. Straight black hair, smooth-skinned, slim-hipped, a beautiful Chinese girl. Was this how she still looked in real life?
Did it matter?
“Colin,” Diana said, “I’d like to speak with Paul alone for a moment.”
Colin grimaced for a second, then quickly recovered. “Of course. Take all the time you need,” he said, while collecting the empty teacups. He stepped out the door and blinked offline, disappearing into whatever homely nesting place he and Diana had constructed for themselves in the PlasmaLife ‘verse.
Paul sulked in nameless desperation in his idealized living space. Original paintings from favorite masters adorned the walls. Various toy robots and other post-modern trinkets faced him accusingly. A moody haze of smoke clung to the air, moving in synchronization to the cool riffs coming from the ancient Marantz hi-fi; Julie London sang “Cry Me A River” to a receptive audience – him.
Diana leaned forward, grasped Paul’s upper right arm. Not unkindly.
“I’m worried about you, to tell the truth,” she said gently. “You want this Avatar to behave like a real person, but that person is fated to disappoint you.”
Paul blinked backed the beginning of tears, even as he appreciated Diana’s simulated touch. The plasma field was working perfectly now, even through the privacy patch.
“I don’t know what you mean,” he choked. “I just want my wife back.”
“And that’s something you can never have. Valerie is dead, Paul,” Diana said, her intonation loaded with compassion. “She died before personality downloads were ever possible. There are no waveforms to guide us but your own fractured memory.”
“So you’re saying I’m crazy?” he asked bitterly. “A pathetic burnout?”
Diana grinned in condescending sympathy. “Of course not. You’re a man mourning his wife. I even liked her,” she prefaced. Here it comes.
“But she was never all that good for you. Do you remember all the times you called me in tears during your marriage? Do you remember how she destroyed your ego? There’s a lot of pain left there, Paul. A lot of cognitive dissonance to overcome.”
“How would you know about that?”
“I know you, sweetheart,” Diana said, planting a comforting kiss upon Paul’s cheek. “You put women upon a pedestal, your late wife chiefly so. You worshipped her,” she paused.
He knew what the pause signified. As you once worshipped me.
“Why can’t she behave like a person?” Paul asked. It was a plaintive, desperate inquiry. Diana alternately frowned and smiled benevolently.
“My good friend,” she said. “It would be irrational and immoral to have a fully cognitive A.I. serving as your dead wife. Sentients are not toys to play with. They are people.”
“I don’t want to play with a toy.”
“I know,” she said, again kissing him, this time on the forehead. “You are a good man of lovely virtue. A learned, peaceful, devoted man,” she paused. “Which is why I loved you.”
“Loved, in the past tense,” Paul grumbled.
“We all grow up,” Diana said. “Or grow old.”
“Which have I done?” Paul asked.
“Both,” she said. “And neither. But I remain here. Contact me when you need me.”
And then she faded.
Paul grimaced again, thinking of Diana and Colin embracing in banal, superficial happiness on the other side – swaddled in their comforting Communionication, apart from the world of cruel loss and fallout and entropy and pain.
But yet the thought comforted him, in spite of his envy. He was not yet so grief-sticken that the happiness of others offended him. Even if it was in PlasmaLife’s virtual reality.
Paul flicked off the network connection, and found himself in his own grey bed. He drifted off to dreams of Chinese girlfriends and dead wives.
© 2008 P.J.L.
“The Physical World as a Virtual Reality,” by Brian Whitworth; published by Massey University’s Centre for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science in Auckland, New Zealand: http://arxiv.org/pdf/0801.0337
Dedicated to Janelle Farvour, writer, raconteur, lover, wandering spirit, restless angel. She died May 13, 2021. Your suffering is over; mine begins anew.
Bohemian Radio 