Plasma Frequency Magazine: Issue 13 (11 page)

Familiarity

By DJ Daniels

I hold the dusty, metal insect in my hands. My familiar is silver blue with translucent wings. A metal dragonfly. And the only way I can think of to kill the device, that black, plastic teardrop that sits there blinking on my desk trying to gain my attention. It’s a false self, a hobgoblin, and I can’t even turn it off, though at least I’ve silenced it.

I have a non-AI clause in my will, but they’ll fight it. I know they will. I don’t want to live on, misunderstood and malformed. The device cannot possibly be me, or anything like me, not even a shadow.

I think about the little boy singing at the train station today. So caught up in his own world. Verse after verse as his mother struggled with the snack machine. I felt for her; I know what it’s like to be a distracted mother, hunting for coins. Just as I know what it’s like to be an old woman with enough time to be caught by a child’s voice.

What I don’t know is how to describe it to someone else. Once I might have written about it in a status update, maybe even invaded with a photo, but not anymore. I can’t describe the whole experience to another person, not even a friend, not the echoes in my mind, not the resonances. It is not possible for the device to understand.

I don’t mind if my insect familiar lives on; it can tell stories about me if anybody wishes to know. It understands me as well as anyone does. But I’ve neglected mine and it has long sat dusty on a shelf. I wonder if I can resurrect it now. It’s old-fashioned. And I fear that an update will force it to take on the deluded vanity of the device. But it has never been demanding, never needlessly cheerful and intrusive. I place the insect down on the charge mat. Its silver blue is faded, its wings almost opaque. Perhaps my familiar will have the sense to resist the call of the cloud.

To be fair, my husband’s device, the one he forced on me after his death, didn’t turn out so badly. But only because it was not truly him; it was the simulacrum of an idealised, attentive man. The man he thought he was. Though still controlling. An AI that expected to have a say. It resisted the sale of the house, it protested my move to the beach, it complained of a lack of attention. It sits in a box at the back of a cupboard now. My daughter objects from time to time. ‘It’s my father,’ she says. ‘You have to adjust, Mum. It’s a kind of immortality.’

It’s a kind of hell, I think. And one which I have no intention of entering.

I used my device, like everyone else did, to store my thoughts and memories. And I let it take over some parts of my life, the mundane, mostly. But, I have to admit, I let it deal with friends too. I even let it talk to my children when they’d grown up and moved away. There are times when I want to retreat from the world. I am shy, awkward, just not very good with other people. I misunderstand; I eagerly jump in when I should hold back. I keep most of my thoughts to myself. Of course, the children discovered the deceit and berated me. Which only proves my point – the device is not me.

There are people, my sister is one, who share everything with their device. Shocking, insulting, depressing thoughts. Confessions of desire and explicit acts of lust. Wild moments of joy and exhilarating self-belief. I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know how to convey a silent day in which the call of a whipbird and the start of gentle rain seem part of me – more so than anything I’ve done or said or even hazily thought. Those things will go on without me, without a device. It doesn’t matter that I won’t be there to know them; I’ve done my knowing.

I doubt that the universe will lose anything with my death, or gain anything if I remain. Other, similar souls will come along. Perhaps there’ll be a child of the future, some long distant relative who might wish to know me, find a way to interact and understand. My daughter says I am depriving them, these unborn children, though really she means her own children. They’ll remember enough of me, in their own, strange way.

It will be possible to construct a device from my existing web presence. I know that. A face tagged in a family album, an ill-advised comment on a friend’s blog. There isn’t much of it; I’m as shy online as I am in real life. I don’t have the energy to search for my own manifestations and delete them. I don’t have the skills. But will anyone try? Devices constructed in this way are said to be hollow. They need input from the living person to be truly animated.

Perhaps that’s my problem. I’m incapable of the input. I’ve never been good at explaining, even to myself. How could I explain to a machine?

I’ve wanted, for a long time, to destroy the device. I was tempted to take a cruise, throw it in the ocean, heave it into the Mariana Trench. But the thought that it might survive, that some God-awful person might later find and rescue it stopped me. I wanted the surety, the purity of flames. I even researched volcano tours, but it’s laughable – the thought of me, Hobbit-like, stretching over the maw of the volcano and dropping the device in.

And the cloud, the bloody cloud. I might destroy the black, teardrop case, but the thing will persist in ethereal form, weakened, but not dead.

A well-remembered voice floats to me. ‘Theresa, I am old.’ It’s possible I hear a rebuke.

‘Good,’ I reply. ‘You’re more useful that way.’ I attempt to tell it what I want – the complete death of my device, the familiar’s successor. I think about hinting at the satisfaction of retribution, encouraging thoughts of vengeance in the unfairly discarded insect, but I refrain.

‘Now, or later?’ is all it asks.

‘Now.’ An early death has its risks, but I want it done.

The insect whirs and plugs itself into the ether, sucking the life from the device, severing its invisible connections. I put the black, plastic teardrop into the box with my husband, ignoring the frantically blinking lights. I hope these lights will fade, that the device will revert to an empty shell, but I don’t want to see it happen. But I watch my familiar carefully. There are no real signs of its work, only the iridescent sheen of its multiple eyes and a shimmer on its wings.

Hours later I hold the insect again. Its body shudders, its glow fades. I stroke its wings and place it back on the bookshelf. Let them resurrect it, if they want, those future descendants. I go outside to listen to the currawongs.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

DJ Daniels lives in Sydney, Australia. Her first novel,
 
What the Dead Said
, was published in 2012 by Dragonfall Press. Her short stories have appeared in publications such as Luna Station Quarterly, Blue Crow Magazine and SWAMPWriting. She also volunteers with the Sydney Story Factory, a not-for-profit creative writing centre for young people. Her blog can be found at 
zombiejungle.wordpress.com