Terminal Experiment (12 page)

Using the online HELP function, the three sims had discovered how to get out into the vast interconnected universe of computers across the globe.

The net.

The network.

Not just the VR sig and static books. Everything.

America Online. BIX. CompuServe. Delphi. EuroNet. FidoNet. GEnie. Helix. Internet … a whole alphabet of online systems, all interconnected through the Universal Gateway Protocol.

They had access to it all now. Sarkar’s computers were vast — AI research required that. A little more activity, or a little less, here or there would never be noticed.

They’d never be able to read all the text — it multiplied orders of magnitude more quickly than they could process it.

But the net contained more than just text. There were pictures, too. Millions of GIFs of people with their pets, people on the beach, favorite cars, movie stars both dressed and nude, cartoons, clip art, weather maps, NASA images.

And multimedia files with full-motion video and sound.

And interactive games that they could play anonymously against human and computer opponents around the globe.

And bulletin boards and E-mail systems.

And newspapers and magazines and specialized databases.

And on and on and on.

The sims indulged themselves for days, reveling in all the input.

And one sim, in particular, became very intrigued by what he was discovering. It was soon apparent that one could get almost anything on the net. Stocks were traded. Almost any kind of merchandise could be bought in the electronic malls — just charge it and have it delivered anywhere in the world. Stamp collectors arranged to swap rare issues. People sought answers to all kinds of questions. Sometimes even love affairs blossomed through electronic mail.

One could get almost anything on the net.

Almost anything.

This sim thought about what had made him sad, about what would make him happy, and about what had made him different, why he would consider this, when the flesh-and-blood Peter had not.

The sim weighed the consequences.

And then he dismissed the idea. Madness. A terrible thing to do. He should be ashamed for even contemplating the notion.

And yet…

Exactly what were the consequences?

In a very real sense, he’d be making the world a better place. And not just this ephemeral world of data and simulations. The real world. The world of flesh. And blood.

Did he really want to do this? he wondered.

Yes, he decided. Yes, he did.

The sim waited a day, just to be sure. And when that day had passed, and he still felt the same way, he resolved to wait yet another day.

And still he felt the same, felt that this was not only what he wanted, but, in some very real simulated sense, that this was what was right.

He watched the commerce on the net for a time, refining his knowledge of the customs and procedures — of
netiquette
.

And then he made his move.

Adopting a handle, as he’d seen many others do, he put this notice on a public bulletin board devoted to the sale of unusual services:

He got some stupid public replies, as one always did on the net. Silly puns ("You’d like the problem laminated, you say? Holy sheet!") and complete irrelevan-cies ("I was in Toronto in 1995. What a clean city!"). But he also got a private reply, visible to him alone. It was exactly what he’d been hoping for.

The sim responded at once. He hadn’t felt this much excitement since … well, since never. It was almost as good as adrenaline.

The money involved wasn’t exactly pocket change, but the sim knew all the proper codes for accessing Hobson Monitoring’s corporate accounts. And, after all, it was, in a way, his company, and his money.

Yes, indeed, thought the sim. One could get almost anything on the net.

Cathy had gone again to see her therapist. Peter realized that he envied her: she had someone to talk to, someone who would listen. If only—

And then it hit him.

Of course.

The perfect answer.

It wouldn’t compromise the experiment — not really.

Sitting in the office in his home, Peter called into the computers at Mirror Image. When prompted to log on, he typed his account name,
fobson
. When he’d gotten his first computer account, back at U of T, he’d been assigned his first initial and last name as his login —
phobson
. But a classmate had pointed out that he could save a keystroke by changing the “ph” to an “f,” and Peter had adopted that as his standard login ever since.

He descended through layers of menus and finally came to the AI experimental system. Sarkar had set up a simple menu for bringing any one of the sims into the foreground:

[Fl] Spirit (Life After Death)

[F2] Ambrotos (Immortality)

[F3] Control (unmodified)

Peter tried to choose, and, in so doing, realized he was facing the very question he and Sarkar had set out to answer. Which one would lend the most sympathetic ear? The after-death version? Would a being with no physical body really understand marital difficulties? How much of marriage was emotional/intellectual? How much of emotion was hormonal?

What about the immortal version? Maybe. Immortality meant permanence. Perhaps an immortal would have a particular affinity for questions of fidelity. After all, marriage was supposed to be forever.

Forever.

Peter thought about Spenser. And Susan Silverman. And Hawk. He was enjoying the books about them. But when was the last time Robert B. Parker had found a new situation to put them in, a new facet of their personalities to explore?

A century with Cathy.

A millennium with Cathy.

Peter shook his head. No, the immortal version wouldn’t understand. Immortality surely didn’t confer a sense of permanence. Not at all. It would give one perspective. The long view.

Peter leaned forward and pressed F3, selecting the Control simulacrum. Just him, only him, unmodified him.

“Who’s there?” said the speech synthesizer.

Peter leaned back in the chair. “It’s me, Peter Hobson.”

“Oh,” said the sim. “You mean it’s me.”

Peter raised an eyebrow. “Something like that.”

The synthesized voice chuckled. “Don’t worry. I’m getting used to being Peter Hobson simulacrum, Baseline edition. But do you know who you are? Maybe you’re just a simulacrum, too.” The speaker whistled the opening strains from the Twilight Zone theme — doing a better job of whistling than the flesh-and-blood Peter had ever managed.

Peter laughed. “I suppose I wouldn’t like it if our situations were reversed,” he said.

“Well, it’s not so bad,” said the sim. “I’m getting a lot of reading done. I’ve got about eighteen books going at once; when I get bored with one, I switch to another. Of course, the workstation’s processor is a lot faster than a chemical brain, so I’m going through material quite quickly — I’m finally making my way through Thomas Pynchon.”

It was a remarkable simulation, thought Peter. Remarkable. “I wish I had more time to read,” said Peter.

“I wish I could get laid,” said the sim. “We all have our crosses to bear.”

Peter laughed again.

“So, why did you summon me out of the bottle?” asked the sim.

Peter shrugged. “I don’t know. To talk, I guess.” A pause. “We created you after I learned about Cathy.”

No need to be more specific. The manufactured voice was sad. “Yes.”

“I haven’t told anyone about it yet.”

“I didn’t think you would,” said the sim.

“Oh?”

“We’re a private man,” it said, “if you’ll forgive the mangled grammar. We’re not given to revealing our inner self.”

Peter nodded.

“A little louder for the court, please,” said the sim.

“Sorry. I forget you can’t see me. I was agreeing with you.”

“Naturally. Look, there’s not much advice I can give you. I mean, whatever I think of, you’ve probably already thought of yourself. But try this on for size. Just between you and you, so to speak: do you still love Cathy?”

Peter was quiet for several seconds. “I don’t know. The Cathy I know — the one I thought I knew, anyway — wouldn’t have done anything like that.”

“How well do we really know anyone, though?”

Peter nodded again. “Exactly. Forgive me for using you as an example, but—”

“People hate it when you do that, you know.”

“What?”

“Use them as an example. You’ve got this tendency to use whoever is at hand as a case in point. ‘Forgive me for using you as an example, Bertha, but when someone is really fat—’”

“Oh, come on. I never say stuff like that. You know that.”

“I’m exaggerating for comedic effect; another trait of ours not everyone finds endearing. But you know what I mean: you’ll take a hypothetical conversation, and draw people into it as examples: ‘Take your own case, Jeff. Remember when your son was arrested for shoplifting? I wonder how tough you’d want to be on young offenders in that situation?’”

“I do that to make a point.”

“I know. People hate that.”

“I guess I knew that,” said Peter. “Anyway” — he said the word forcefully, taking back control of the conversation — “to use what Sarkar and I are doing as an example: we’ve created models of my mind. Models, that’s all. Simulacra that seem to operate the same way as the original. But when a real person builds a relationship with somebody else—”

“Are they in fact really having a relationship with that person, or just with a model — an image, an ideal — that they’ve built up in their own mind?”

“Uh, yeah. That’s what I was going to say.”

“Of course. Sorry, Pete, but it’s going to be hard for you to dazzle yourself with your own brilliance.” The voice chip laughed.

Peter was a bit irritated. “Well, it’s a valid question,” he said. “Did I ever really know her?”

“In a broad sense, you’re right: we probably don’t ever really know anyone. But, still, Cathy is the person we know best in the entire world. We know her better than Sarkar, better than Mom or Dad.”

“But, then, how could she do this?”

“Well, she’s never been as strong-willed as we are. That asshole Hans obviously pressured her.”

“But she should have resisted that pressure.”

“Granted. But she didn’t. Now, what do we do about that? Do we give up on the most important relationship in our lives because of it? Even setting that aside, on a more pragmatic level, do you really want to go back to looking for a mate? Dating? Christ, what a pain in the ass that would be.”

“It sounds like you’re advocating a marriage of convenience.”

“Maybe all marriages are that to some degree. Certainly you’ve speculated that Mom and Dad stayed together simply because it was the path of least resistance.”

“But they never had what Cathy and I had.”

“Perhaps. Anyway, you still haven’t answered my question. We binary guys like simple yes-or-no answers.”

Peter was quiet for a moment. “You mean whether I still love her?” He sighed. “I don’t know.”

“You won’t be able to decide on a course of action until you resolve that question.”

“It’s not that simple. Even if I still love her, I couldn’t take this happening again. I haven’t slept properly since she told me. I think about it constantly. Anything will remind me of it. I see her car in the garage; that reminds me that she gave Hans a lift. I see the couch in our living room; that’s where she told me about it. I hear the word ‘adultery’ or ‘affair’ on TV — Christ, I never realized how often people use those words — and that reminds me of it.” Peter leaned way back in the chair. “I can’t put this behind me until I know that it will always be behind us. She didn’t just do it once, after all. She did it three times — three times over a period of months. Maybe she thought each time was the last.”

“Perhaps,” said the sim. “Remember when we had our tonsils out?”

“What you mean ‘we,’ white man? I’m the one with the scars.”

“Whatever. The point is, we had them out when we were twenty-two. Very late in life for something like that. But we kept getting sore throats and tonsillitis. Finally ole Doc DiMaio said enough already with treating the symptoms. Let’s do something about the cause.”

Peter’s voice was strained. “But what if — what if — what if
I’m
the cause of Cathy’s infidelity? Remember that lunch with Colin Godoyo? He said his cheating on his wife was a cry for help.”

“Please, Peter. You and I both know that’s bullshit.”

“I’m not sure we each get a vote.”

“Regardless, I’m sure
Cathy
knows it’s bullshit.”

“I hope so.”

“You and Cathy had a good marriage — you know that. It didn’t rot away from within; it was attacked from outside.”

“I suppose,” said Peter, “but I’ve been mulling it over a lot — looking for any clue that we’d blown it somehow.”

“And did you find any?” asked the sim.

“No.”

“Of course not. You always tried to be a good husband — and Cathy was a good wife, too. Both of you worked at making the marriage a success. You take an interest in each other’s work. You’re supportive of each other’s dreams. And you talk freely and openly about everything.”

“Still,” said Peter, “I wish I could be sure.” He paused. “You remember
Perry Mason
? Not the original TV series with Raymond Burr, but the short-lived remake they made in the 1970s. Remember it? They repeated it on A E in the late nineties. Harry Guardino played Hamilton Burger. Remember that version?”

The sim paused for a moment. “Yes. It wasn’t very good.”

“In point of fact, it stank,” said Peter. “But you remember it?”

“Yes.”

“Remember the guy who played Perry Mason?”

“Sure. It was Robert Culp.”

“Can you recall him? Picture him in the courtroom? Do you remember him in that series?”

“Yes.”

Peter spread his arms. “Robert Culp never played Perry Mason. Monte Markham did.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I’d thought it was Culp, too, until I saw a story about Markham in yesterday’s
Star
; he’s in town doing
Twelve Angry Men
at the Royal Alex. But you know the difference between those two actors, Culp and Markham?”

“Sure,” said the sim. “Culp was in
I Spy
and
Greatest American Hero
. And, let’s see, in
Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice
. Great actor.”

“And Markham?”

“A solid character actor; always liked him. Never had a successful series, but wasn’t he in
Dallas
for a year or so? And, round ’bout 2000, he was in that awful sitcom with James Carey.”

“Right,” said Peter. “Don’t you see? We both had a memory — a good, solid memory — of Robert Culp playing a role that had really been played by Monte Markham. Right now, of course, you’re rewriting those memories, and now I’m sure you can see Markham in the role of Mason. That’s the way all memory works: we save only enough information to reconstruct events later. We save the deltas — we remember base pieces of information, and note changes. Then when we need to summon up a memory, we reconstruct it — and often do so inaccurately.”

“So what’s your point?” said the sim.

“My point, dear brother, is this: how accurate are
our
memories? We recall all the events leading up to Cathy’s affair, and find ourselves free from blame. Everything hangs together; everything is consistent. But is it accurate? In some way we’ve chosen not to remember, in some moment that we’ve edited out, by some actions that died in the neural cutting room, did we push her into the arms of another man?”

“I think,” said the sim, “that if you have the depth of introspection to ask such a question, you know the answer is probably no. You’re a thoughtful man, Peter — if I do say so myself.”

There was silence for a long time. “I haven’t been much help, have I?” asked the sim.

Peter considered that. “No, on the contrary. I feel a bit better now. Talking about this has helped.”

“Even if it was essentially talking to yourself?” asked the sim.

“Even if,” said Peter.