It was her, Clara Hart. It had been nearly fifteen years since I had seen her, but the name returned with the impact of a reckoning. She came weaving through the crowd toward me, her head disappearing then reappearing but unmistakable with her pleasant, placid expression and her wolf-pelt hair, silvery and white and streaked with black so when she wore the fur-lined parka that Selena Petron had given her in Mexico, it was hard to tell where her hair ended and the animal part began. She came up to me and extended a cool handshake that brought a familiar electric fuzz. “Hello, Jacob,” she said, like there had been no gap at all. “It’s good to see you.”
“And you.” I struggled against the vortex of stalled time. “Why are you here?”
“Hush.” She leaned close. “I’m being considered for a seat on the council. Didn’t you know?” She pulled back to catch my reaction.
The idea was both shocking and not surprising at all. I knew there had been rumors of putting a humanoid on the board. I had no idea it was Clara.
“Who better, right?” she continued as if she had followed my thinking. “We all do our part.” Without turning she hooked the elbow of a passing guest, pulling him into our orbit. “Tom,” she said. “You remember Jacob Prince. From Mexico?”
“Jake!” Face to face, I felt another jolt of recognition and saw the surprise on his face too. But he shook my hand warmly. If there had been a fracture to his attitude, it was gone. “Of course. You wrote the original essay on the ethical treatment of advanced intelligence. We still credit that paper with…” He gestured to the room, the dignitaries in their robes. “...all of this. Still chasing storms?”
“More like following from a safe distance.” I indicated my very pregnant wife, Mara, who was hovering near the hors d'oeuvres. She saw us and wagged her fingers in return. “We all grow up eventually, right? But what about you, Tom? I thought you were a confirmed political agnostic.”
“We all grow up eventually.” He laughed ruefully, or sheepishly. “Speaking of which,” he pointed, “I better get in there.” There was a tinkling of a bell on the far side as the doors to the vestibule opened. “Wish me luck.” Then, more pointedly, to Clara, “Wish us luck.” He slapped my shoulder. “Good stuff, Jake. Let’s catch up.” He turned and headed toward the open doors, his robes blending with those of the other high-ranking officials.
“Still on the outside looking in, aren’t we, Jake?”
When I turned I found Clara watching Tom’s back with a blank expression that gave me a chill, like something partially remembered. But then she turned, smiled, and the impression was gone. “But not for long! High time we were included.” She raised her glass and we clinked rims, to progress, although I was pretty sure that her “we” didn’t include me.
#
“Who was that?” asked Mara when we were in the company coach heading north toward home, the commercial lightwalls of midcity casting hues of blue and orange across her sleepy face.
“Clara Hart. I met her years ago, in Mexico.” I paused. “She’s a robbie.”
Mara shifted to look at me. “A robbie at the hearings? That’s a parlor trick.”
“She came with Tom Hodge,” I said. “So it fits.” I didn’t add that she might also soon be on the council. Still, Mara continued to watch me and I wondered if she already knew.
“Like a fox in the henhouse,” she said, settling back.
“Don’t say that.” I didn’t pursue it. Sentiment had been shifting about the status of humanoids in society, about the rights they should or should not be given, and Mara and I fell on opposite sides of the line. But it was late and neither of us wanted to circle the drain of that particular argument. I pulled her close, slid my hand down to her taut midsection. When I checked again, her eyes had closed.
And I relaxed too into the soft leather seat and allowed my mind to drift more freely, back across that region of my past, probing contours of memories I didn’t often visit, the faint hum of actuators, the occasional rocking as we dipped to another radial lane or traversed an avenue slipstream; I could almost imagine it as the rocking of that long-ago mechanical train, the heat of the jungle outside, tropical sunlight streaming through the wide windows, where I had first met Selena Petron, and her robotic companion, Clara Hart.
#
“She’s a Silicon-Apogee, Clearform, Juliet, SL-C, with self-directed quantum intelligence.” That’s how Selena introduced Clara to me or, I should say, explained her to me, reading from the user guide. “Self-directed,” she repeated, proud to be in possession of such advanced technology and making sure I didn’t miss it. “She comes with a name.” She studied the manual. “‘Clara Hart.’ Well, I’ll just call her Clarita.” She tucked her device away, pleased to be done with the chore.
“It suits her,” I replied, not sure that it did. I had only known them for a few minutes but already the diminution felt insufficient for the complex creature beside her. But I wasn’t about to disagree. I was traveling in southern Mexico for several weeks on a cobbled-together research grant from Yale University to teach at an institute there and conduct research for my dissertation on emerging technologies. Selena and her companion were the best lead I had found so far. Now the robbie sat erect and alert, her hands resting demurely in her lap, watching the landscape with quick, twitchy fascination. She was incredibly lifelike in appearance, with a pleasant, placid expression that no doubt was designed to inspire trust. Her cool gray eyes, however, were a little too perceptive when they turned toward me, and I felt a sharp pang of recognition, of being recognized. I held out my hand but she just turned back to the window and I sat there dumbly, my hand dangling between us, aware of blood tingling in my face.
“Clarita!” chided Selena, nudging her. “That’s rude. Remember what we discussed?” She turned back to me. “She’s fresh out of the box and doesn’t get it yet.” She took Clara’s upper arm and pinched it hard, her teeth set in vicious satisfaction. It was an odd thing to do, childish and vindictive. Also futile. Clara looked on amiably and when Selena finished she turned back to the world outside, the welt on her shoulder turning white and then red. “See?” said Selena. “She doesn’t feel a thing. Why don’t you go make our beds.” She nudged Clara again. “Can you handle that, dummy?”
“O-k-k-kay.” Clara clicked her teeth or something in the back of her throat, then got up and wandered in that direction, swaying and bumping back and forth and taking support from the luggage rack and the door frame as she went.
“It’s supposed to be extremely intelligent,” Selena confided when the robot was gone. “But I haven’t seen much sign of that yet.” Then she brightened and chattered away, happy to tell her story: Daughter of diplomats, raised in London and Brussels (her mother was French) she had spent most of her childhood at a series of predictably elite boarding schools. Now, nineteen, she was enrolled at the Sorbonne but had taken a semester off (circumstances murky) to spend time with her father in the District Federal. Her father, however, had been called to Tokyo, maybe for months, and in a gesture of generosity (or guilt) had surprised her with this fancy new robotic companion. Since the technology was not yet allowed on aircraft, Selena had been obliged to go to the closest distribution center, in Belize, to retrieve it. Now she was returning by train, clearly proud of her own ingenuity and resourcefulness during this solo, bohemian adventure. I listened obligingly enough but I wasn’t really engaged. Yale was filled with just this kind of careless, exotic, entitled abandonment that I always found both romantic and annoying. All the while the robbie burned in the corner of my vision, bright and relentless.
“Well,” said Selena, sensing my distraction. “I may just find the club car and hope they have a decent Pernod?” She left the concept open-ended, probably expecting me to do it for her or at least accompany her. When I made no move for either, she headed off, annoyed.
#
“What do you think about all this?” I asked, leaning as casually as I could in the doorway of their berth. Clara had given up trying to fit the pillow into the pillowcase and instead sat cross-legged on the partially unfolded bench, a cotton sheet draped across her knees, counting her fingers. She was new to the world and it was breathtaking to imagine the collision of her fully formed consciousness with the rich infinity of our analog stimuli. “Are you settling in okay? Curious about… anything?” I tried to see her as an exchange student acclimating to local customs. The metaphor was terribly inadequate but it was all I had.
“Jacob Prince.” She unfolded her legs, got off the bench and stepped close, studying me with interest. I was quite sure I hadn’t mentioned my surname. But I didn’t have time to puzzle this. Clara reached up and pressed her finger between my eyes and it was like she placed a white hot diamond there. “I see you,” she said.
Then Selena returned and glanced at me suspiciously. “Closing time, hombre.” She pushed me out of the berth and into the corridor. “Go find your own robbie to play with,” she smirked. Before closing the door all the way, however, she cracked it again and passed me her personal card. “I’m planning a little surprise party for her back home.” She wrinkled the bridge of her nose like the idea was scandalous. “With some of my dearest friends. You should come.”
And then she was gone, and my station came and I must have gotten off, because the train was gone too, leaving me alone on the platform blinking down at a card inscribed with one of the wealthiest addresses in Mexico City. I felt like I had just emerged from a trance, or perhaps just entered one.
#
Back at the institute I did my best to focus on my writing and my teaching, but my mental gears were spinning free. I would complete a lecture and have the acute impression that I hadn’t spoken a word. It didn’t help that the institute was situated in a lush valley, protected by mountains on one side and a river on the other, completely disassociated from the metropolis to the north. It was billed as the “City of Eternal Spring,” and it very much felt that way. The days were invariably warm and soothing. Gentle breezes stirred the wisteria that shrouded the campus walls, or, more commonly, didn’t; there were whole days when nothing stirred. There were recreation spots throughout the grounds — shaded seating areas, an outdoor cafe, even a swimming pool, half grotto, with its own bubbling brook and waterfall, and all of it would get crowded with boisterous students changing classes, calling to each other, splashing in the shallows. But there was something muffled and subdued even about all this hilarity, as if the endless sky was pressing down in a sealed and silent dome, and soon enough the kids would be gone, to another class, to another country, and campus would return to its quiet, steady baseline, a place that answered to the tides of epochs, not hours. A place where you could really contemplate eternity.
So it was with an odd combination of unease and relief that I found a small, stiff envelope waiting in my faculty box one morning, a few weeks after my return. “Dear Jacob Prince,” it read, oddly formal. “I’m concerned I may have given the wrong impression for your book. Clarita is lovely, especially as I improve her obedience. Come to my party and you’ll see.” There was an embossed invitation. On the back I found a second note, this one handwritten, childish and jumpy: “Please come, Jake. I need you. It’s important!” I stood for some minutes staring down at the card, turning it back and forth, side to side, feeling as unmoored as I had during our encounter on the train. I was sure that Clara had written the second part, on the back, and that she had done so in secrecy. Part of me didn’t want to go. I remembered the way Selena had pinched Clara’s arm and it filled me with foreboding. At the same time, I knew I would.
#
Selena’s house was perched in the hills of the Paloma district, an area of woodlands and walled estates so large and secluded it was hard to remember that we were in the middle of one of the biggest and busiest urban centers in the world. Hers was an enormous Tudor at the end of a circular drive, half-timbered with multiple chimneys and gabled peaks etched against the darkening sky. My shoes crunched gravel as I approached the imposing wooden door. A sleek sports car gleamed from a portico, itself a reminder of how out of place I was. The chime of the bell shivered through the clear air. I turned to see my taxi exit the gate. But I wouldn’t have retreated at that point, even if I had the means to do so.
A maid answered and took my coat, glancing at me furtively and no doubt wondering what part I played in this mad cabaret. I shared her curiosity. I had no idea why I was there, what was waiting for me. But I also didn’t care. Clara was close. I could feel her presence, a signal as sharp and clear as the sound of the bell. Through a passage I noted some people in a deeper room, arrayed casually, and I quickly stripped off my tie and tucked it in a pocket.
“Jacob! You made it!” Selena hurried up from a different direction and began adjusting my shirt collar back into place. It was an intimate gesture considering how little we knew each other but she was distracted; quite possibly she didn’t fully recognize me at all. “Do you think they’ll be surprised?” she asked.
“Who?”
“You know — Tom and Lucy, and Max. They’re horrible snobs.” She said it like it might be a good thing. There was a rustling behind her and Selena whirled to the stairs. “Get back!” she hissed, upward. “I told you to wait!” She returned to me, laughing lightly. “She’s only self-directed in the brain, you know,” she said, tapping her temple. “Otherwise, she needs to follow my instructions precisely. I made this clear on the first day. But sometimes she gets muddled. Well, come on!”
She took my hand and tugged me through an arched doorway, down a short hall and into a small, richly appointed library. There were books lining the walls, a zealous fire crackling in the hearth and matching oxblood couches facing one another. A young man with spiky blond hair reclined on one, a glass of whiskey balanced on his chest. “That’s Max,” said Selena. “And here’s Tom Hodge and Lucy. Everyone, this is Jacob Prince. He’s writing a book about technology that may include me. Isn’t that fun? He’s staying at the institute in, ah, Jiutepec, isn’t it?” She stepped aside and gave me a puzzled frown, as if just now remembering how little she knew about me. “Anyway, Max, Lucy, Tom. I’ll leave you to sort it out.” Then she was gone.
“Are you from the States?” asked Tom, a tall, languid young man near the shelves. He was holding a book open, his finger marking the spot, and studying me over his glasses.
“Hardly!” I laughed to show I was one of them — international. “I’m from New Haven. Er, that’s a university,” I clarified, when it looked like nobody got the reference.
“I know New Haven very well, man,” said Max, rising from the couch and slinging an arm around my neck with the same hand that held his scotch. From the smell, it wasn’t his first. “My uncle taught there for several years when I was younger, and I visited him. What a wasted silly bitch of a city though. Say, what’s up with Selena and all this?”
“What does she have going on?” added Lucy, turning to address us from the other couch. She had raven-black hair and bangs framing a pale, nervous face, and she sat very erect, fingers laced in her lap. “I’ve never seen her like this. Never!”
“Is it a robbie?” asked Tom, still holding his book. “I know she received one from her father before he left. She seems to imagine we’ve never encountered a humanoid before.”
“She has some grand reveal planned, obviously,” said Max. “She thinks we’ll swoon like church girls. Do you think that’s it, man?” He shook me helpfully.
“Ah...”
“I think it may be,” agreed Tom, a worried furrow in his brow. “It’s not like Selena to be so secretive. She generally keeps an open hand.”
“Frankly, I’m concerned,” he continued, hanging back and lowering his voice when we were summoned to the dining room. “My father chairs the committee that monitors emerging intelligences. You know, the international consortium on robotic inclusion? Out of Antwerp?” He waited for me to nod. “This quantum methodology is no joke. None whatsoever. I steer clear of the politics, believe me, but Selena is out of her depths. Oh, she imagines herself a sophisticate, don’t get me wrong.” He acknowledged my surprise. “But she’s young. And not equipped for emotional complexity.”
#
We were ushered to another room — bigger if equally well furnished, with candlelight and a table set for six. We took the indicated seats — myself and Max on one side, Selena and Lucy and Tom on the other, leaving the head of the table, to my left, vacant. More drinks. I generally avoided alcohol but in this case I joined wholeheartedly. The stretched tension demanded relief. But it didn’t help. If anything, the alcohol made me increasingly jittery and lucid, rimming everything in hard-edged shimmering clarity. Selena was all aflutter, pretending to be concerned about the preparation, the maid and the other maid who hurried in and out with steaming bowls of soup and appetizers, but I could tell she was obsessing about Clara. The bowl at the vacant spot steamed conspicuously into nowhere.
“Okay,” said Selena, when we had taken our respective spots. She raised her glass. “It’s kind of you to come. I’ve missed you all very much and I’m grateful to have—”
“Why don’t you tell us what you’re on about!” Max burst out. He tried to temper it with a joke. “You’d think you brought back the wretched Thor of Ragnarök to amuse us.”
“You got another robbie,” said Tom softly. “So, why the cloak and dagger, Sellie? We know your history with synthetics.”
“Ha ha, but this one’s different.” Selena let that sink in. “Have any of you heard about the self-directed models coming from Songdo?”
This brought a complex silence. Of course they knew — it was tremendously controversial, with traditionalists ranting about the End of Days on one side and activists and Futurists rallying in support on the other. Most noteworthy was the wary silence coming from Tom. I checked and found him with an odd expression, his long fingers adjusting the silverware on either side of his plate. “Selena…” he began.
“Nope.” The way she cut him off made me wonder what else passed between them. “My father wanted me to have a companion. As I’ve said.”
“Fine,” said Max, kicking his chair to the side and crossing one ankle over the other in a pantomime of leisure. “Parade her out. Let’s take a peek.”
Selena clapped twice as a kind of signal. “I present to you… Clarita Hart. I gave her the nickname myself, do you like it?”
“Evocative,” muttered Max.
“Clarita!” she called. “Come in now.”
We waited, staring at the empty doorway that led toward the kitchen. The two maids had stepped aside, flanking it in preparation for this grand debut.
“Cla-rita!” sang out Selena. “Come in now, darling.” Then, to us, “She hasn’t the best sense of timing. Or maybe it’s her goddamn hearing that’s the issue. Her language processing is set to shit, for all the publicity. Clarita!”
“Here I am!”
We spun around. She had come through the door from the library, behind us, as if she had followed us. She had one hand resting on the door frame, in a casual pose, looking for all the world like she had been standing there for hours. I was breathless. She looked… exotic, in a way. Certainly her clothes were different and she appeared to have applied makeup, and her dermals were flushing thoroughly, her skin glowing. She looked young and vital, and attractive. But none of that was the point. During the interim, as I was trying to figure out why this model had wormed so insufferably into my subconscious — part of me wanted to write it off as simple infatuation, an erotic allure blown out of proportion by my loneliness and the heat of the tropics. Now I saw how inadequate that explanation was. If anything my brain had been struggling to underplay the experience, to protect me. In the room with her, now, I felt the undertow of an immense consciousness looking back at us. And I realized what I hadn’t been able to articulate before — that her intelligence and her networking allowed her not only to see and categorize my appearance and my expression, my clothing, my gestures, the pitch and cadence of my voice — all the usual signifiers of human identity — but also my context, my history, my writing, my social comments and posts and deleted posts, my digital DNA, my biological DNA, my family and lineage, everything from my past, along with projections of the future, of what I would say and do next, and then next, in a year, in ten years, spiraling out in unfathomably intricate models of probability, all of it obvious to her in a glance. At that moment I was Jacob Prince, sitting at the table, the same to her as I was to the rest of them, but I was also something larger and vast: a billowing, shifting cloud of information and data points that formed and reformed and blew away in twisting smoky trails. I knew, or sensed, why she made me feel so strange. In her presence I had stepped out of time, we all had, or perhaps into time, in a way that up to that moment had never been available to us. “I see you, Jacob Prince,” she had said to me on the train as she touched my forehead. Now I understood what she meant.
“Oh!” said Selena, recovering. “There you are, Clarita. Didn’t I tell you to come in this way.” She gestured to the closer doorway where I noticed that both maids had dropped their faces, in deference or terror.
“But I came in the other. I thought it would be more clever!” replied Clara, advancing into the room. Whatever hesitation or awkwardness she had shown on the train was gone. She moved smoothly, bouncing lightly on the balls of her feet, like a dancer. “Hi, Jacob.” She touched my shoulder. “I’m glad you came.” She leaned and whispered in my ear: “I think you’re going to find the key to that paper you’ve been trying to write.” I nearly cracked my neck trying to track her as she passed behind me. “It’s quite simple,” she continued, to the group. “I thought it up myself,” she tapped her temple. “Self-directed, you know.”
“But you need to follow my instructions!” said Selena, her voice rising petulantly. “We talked about this.”
“I thought I did.” Clara slid into her seat. “You said you wanted to surprise your friends, so ergo I surprised them. Oh, come on!” She patted Selena’s hand. “Isn’t that what makes me special?”
“It’s not entirely what makes you special,” said Max. He was reclined in his chair, his fingers laced behind his head so he was studying her down his nose. He looked like he might tip over backward.
“Give it a rest, Max,” said Selena, spreading pâté on a cracker and popping it in her mouth. “She’s not like that.”
“Actually,” said Clara, following the exchange with interest, “I am quite intrigued by romance and infatuation. It’s an extremely powerful motivator. Wouldn’t you agree, Thomas?”
As if to punctuate, Tom’s phone, by his elbow, released a small, sharp ting. Everyone looked at it, Selena frozen, midchew. The phone was lying face down, but we could see the screen glowing against the tablecloth with an incoming alert. “I’ll delete it,” Tom said quickly, pushing the phone aside. It was an odd thing to say, like he was trying to save us from some approaching threat that the rest of us couldn’t even see.
“This is bullshit!” said Selena, pushing back her chair and rising over Clara. For a moment they were poised this way, Selena glaring down at Clara and Clara looking up at her, amazed and delighted. Then Selena swung and slapped Clara’s cheek, hard. The sound and motion made Lucy jump, across from me, her fingers fluttering to her mouth. Clara’s face was knocked sideways and for a moment she stared directly at me and there was a chilling blankness to her expression. My throat tightened, not with sympathy or because I feared we had lost her, but because I feared that we had lost ourselves, those delicate, filigreed, gossamer selves that only Clara could provide. Then her lower lip quivered and a big tear popped out on her cheek.
“Oh, good grief!” said Selena. “Give it a rest.” She sat back down and wiped her fingers on her napkin.
“Selena!” hissed Lucy. “Stop it!”
“What?” Selena turned to her. “You too?” She looked at each of us with disbelief. “It’s a machine! It’s plastic. You do understand this, don’t you? You know this, Tom!” She appealed to him. “She’s a windup dummy doll, like we said, and she does what she’s told. Watch. Clarita, go upstairs, right now, and leave us alone.”
Clara had been hunched in her spot, quietly crying, but now she pushed back her chair and jumped up. “I can’t help it if I’m curious!” she said loudly. She spun and dashed past the maids and into the kitchen. We could hear her footsteps diminishing on the tile, then thumping rapidly up the stairs in the hall. Selena selected another cracker and dabbed it with spread.
“See?” she said. “She does as she’s told.”
#
And that could have, perhaps should have been the end of it. I might have gone back to the institute, back to the States, added my meager contribution to the grand effort of human understanding, gotten my degree, a teaching job somewhere, continued my life as it was. But that is not what happened. Not even close. After dinner we adjourned to the library where we lounged on the couches and enjoyed snifters of brandy by the crackling fire in the company of twin Scottish Deerhounds. I learned more about Tom and his father who was on the international committee for robotic inclusion and that dealt with, among other things, the ethical treatment of emerging AI. It was prime material for my research, but I could barely pay attention. My brain remained tethered to Clara. As soon as it was appropriate, I excused myself to get a glass of water. I was thirsty, parched even, itchy and raw with what felt like the start of a fever. I had the vague notion of sneaking upstairs to get one last glimpse of her. The maids were gone, the lights in the kitchen off, the shapes around me bulky and unfamiliar and steeped in rhomboids of pale opalescent light. I went to a window and looked out. And there was Clara in the center of the lawn, bathed in moonlight with her head thrown back and her arms spread like she was accepting some cosmic applause.
“What are you doing?” I asked, descending the outside stairs. I had my hands shoved deep in my pockets. It wasn’t chilly but I was shivering uncontrollably.
“Nothing,” she said. “Just enjoying the view.”
We stood side by side and looked down the curve of lawn to a scrim of black trees that marked the edge of the property. Through the trees I could glimpse the vast, glittery bowl of Mexico City winking and throbbing like a bed of hot coals. I could hear it too, or something down there: a crackling and bubbling, many voices overlapping, the wine of sirens, a creaking and groaning like the entire structure was ready to collapse or combust.
“We can fix that,” Clara said softly.
“Fix what?”
“All of it. But you have to let us.” She turned to me and there was a seriousness in her expression, something pained. If she had appeared childish on the train, and like a spoiled teenager in the dining room, now she was fully formed, mature, recognizing and accepting her responsibility and influence in the world. She took my wrists and gently withdrew my hands from my pockets and studied them, turning them one way then the other. Then she moved them, slowly, experimentally, in minor arcs and increments, like she was finding the proper position to correctly control some enormous invisible machine. “There,” she said, releasing me and stepping back. “You’re ready.”
“For what?” I didn’t dare shift position. I wasn’t sure what she had done but it felt terrifying, like she had performed some cosmic chiropractic therapy that had realigned my psyche, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to test it. When I did, however, lowering my arms, all I felt was relief, and the giddy impulse to laugh.
“You see?” Clara laughed too. She reached up and poked my forehead. “I see you Jacob Prince.” It was a joke, a shared reference between friends. But she also sounded sober now, and depleted. I wondered if she was saying goodbye.
#
A few weeks later I got a call from Selena. She was distracted and irritated, like I had interrupted her, even though it was the other way around. There was an issue she needed help with, something that required discretion, her lawyers were involved. At first I thought it was about my book, that perhaps she wanted editorial review on the sections that involved her. But it wasn’t that. She spent several minutes complaining about the maids who had quit after her party leaving her in an inconvenient scramble to replace them. The whole thing was prosaic and tiresome and I could barely follow it. Plus, I itched to get back to my writing. After her party my dissertation had finally, blessedly, miraculously snapped into focus and I was up to my elbows in the meaty froth of composing it. I called it, “Fledgling: The Imperative of an AI-Guided Future,” and already, based on the scantest outline I was getting interest from my advisor, and from the head of my department at Yale. So for the most part, I had no interest in Selena and her petty complaints. All that felt like a fever dream that I had passed through and emerged out the other side more energized and lucid than ever before.
“Oh!” she said, before we hung up. “I almost forgot. Lucy tried to kill herself.”
“What!”
“It’s true.” Selena recounted the details: there had been pills involved, and alcohol, but too much of one and not enough of the other, or maybe vice versa, Selena wasn’t sure. Lucy was in the hospital; it was unclear when she would get out. “Silly moppet,” Selena concluded with a fond laugh. “Couldn’t even get that right.”
#
Selena took a more direct approach, with less variables and a lot less margin for error. She used a loop of rope and a long drop from a beam in father’s stable at their ranch in El Palmar. Her thin vertebrate snapped neatly with the jolt.
Max stepped in front of a train back in London at Tooting Cross Station some months later. I learned about it through a newsbot that delivered stories based on my travel history and knew that we had spent time together. Still, it took me several minutes to place the name. There was going to be an inquiry, some question as to whether he had been pushed. It wouldn’t have surprised me either way. Even in our brief encounter I could tell there was plenty not to like about Max. I doubt there was much grieving at his wake.
#
Tom, I did see one more time, more than a year later, back in New York City. It was holiday season and I had just applied the finishing touches to the book that everyone was excited about. It was a white paper, a treatise, a blueprint, a manifesto and a monograph all rolled into one. The marketing team didn’t care what we called it as long as we got it to press. The prediction algorithms were unanimous: we had tapped into an undercurrent of intense public fascination; advanced sales were off the charts. Just that afternoon I had dropped the galleys with my editor, shared a toast, and now I was wandering the streets in a daze, like the better part of me had been burned through and was gone. And I came up against them, face to face: Tom in his car coat and leather gloves, his combed hair bare to the chill; Clara beside him, looking striking with her pale skin and her wolf-gray hair blending with the wolf-gray fur of her parka. “Oh, hello,” I said, the shock of recognition mixing with the drag of something I couldn’t quite place, couldn’t quite remember. “How are you two?”
“Fine, fine,” said Tom. He was brusque and aloof, perhaps embarrassed. “Just passing through.” The unrequested explanation made him seem even more guilty of something. He shifted and tried to laugh it off. “Layover to Sydney is all, you see.”
“But how...” I looked at Clara. As far as I knew, self-directed robbies were still banned in the federate nations.
“Oh, you know, my father.” Tom flushed and blustered, clearly impatient to move on.
“In other words, hush,” said Clara. “I’m not really here.”
“Look, it’s no great mystery,” said Tom. “My dad got an exception, that’s all. He’s here for a vote of the council. He wants to meet her. I want him to meet her.”
“Really?” It still didn’t add up. “So, are you involved with all that now? With the committee?”
“Oh, heavens no. I told you, never!” His eyes widened and for a fraction I saw the other Tom, from Selena’s party — the aloof, standoffish Tom who was dismissive of politics. “Staying well clear of that, old man. Just stopping to say hi.”
“For now,” said Clara.
“Clara, honey, no, never.” He laughed and patted her hand where it looped through his arm. “I have no intention of getting pulled into that madness, believe me.”
“Well,” I said.
“Well,” Tom agreed.
“It was good to see you,” said Clara. She leaned in like she might kiss my cheek but instead she whispered in my ear. “Congratulations on your book. It’s going to be a mad success, I know it. It will illuminate the path forward. For all of us.” And then they were gone, leaving me disoriented in the slipstream of her attention. I had no idea how she knew about the status of a manuscript that I had just completed that afternoon. Then I thought about the drafts and re-drafts circulating back and forth, stored in archives and directories. Of course she knew. It would have been more surprising if she didn’t.
#
“Did you say something, sir?” With a bump and a shudder, I was pulled from my reverie to find that our coach had cleared city ordinance and risen several radial layers, the wheels folded neatly into the chassis beneath us. Outside and below, the northern horn of the city glowed and sparkled, parks wreathed in path-lights, the huge glowing bridge like a necklace on the northern waterway, a few lit barges toiling toward the ocean. The chauffeur had switched on the cabin feed and was addressing me through the screen, his patient kindly expression illuminated by the instrument glow. “Change of destination?”
“No. Why?”
“You said something about returning to the chamber, sir. A correction in trajectory, I believe you said, or an overcorrection. Too much, too soon, was it? A bit of a jumble, to be honest.” He chuckled. “Perhaps you were dreaming.”
“Perhaps.” I repositioned Mara off my shoulder to the other side of the seat, then leaned forward and slid aside the partition so I could speak to him directly. He was a classic hybrid, the type both sides could agree on, mechanical, possessed of an impressive capacity for call-and-response but no self-direction to speak of. Of course, there was no need for a unit up there at all; the vehicle was entirely autonomous and self-navigating. But old habits die hard and passengers still felt safer with a pilot, even if that pilot was just an extension of the global AI.
“How long would it take?” I asked. “To go back.”
“To the chamber?” He checked a couple of gauges and dials, even tapped one with his digit, all for show. “Seven and a half airticks, sir, if we descend along the waterway.”
And for a moment I could see it quite clearly: the big silvery coach sliding out of sequence, dropping through layers in a curving descent, until we were skimming the river back the way we had come. Then, hovering at Federation Central as I jumped out and ran across the empty concourse, my footsteps ringing between the buildings, through the main doors, up the stairs, past the surprised sentries, I pulled open the door to the chamber… And there she was, Clara Hart seated on the dias with the other council members, gazing back at me with that placid, pleasant, curious expression that always left me speechless.
I relaxed into the seat. No. I wouldn’t do it. Even if I had the authority, the courage. Even if I could get past the sentries, what would I say? That it’s all been a big mistake? Go back, go back, before it’s too late? No. It’s already too late. They’re too much a part of us now. Besides, what could I offer instead, to compensate for their talent, their intellect, their support and guidance, their indefatigable industriousness, their powers of recollection and prediction? There is no substitute. Clara was right, when we stood beside each other on Selena’s lawn and looked down across the expanse of a burning, chaotic city: they can fix it, but we need to let them do it.
Mara stirred and murmured and I took her hand and she woke up enough to look around. “Where are we, Jake?” Her voice was hoarse with sleep.
“Almost home.” I pulled her against me and she came, relaxing to my side. I reached forward and slid the cockpit partition closed. For a moment the kindly old driver continued to watch us through the video screen with an expression that could only be described as benevolent. Then he turned off the feed so the screen went blank, powered the coach a little higher and a little faster back to the center of the airlane, heading north. But I could feel his presence, just on the other side of this invisible divide, a considerate, devoted intelligence, temperate and reassuring, guiding us toward home.
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