The eGirl (8 page)

Cole’s eyes swelled. “Seriously? Would it do that?”

I laughed, and Elsa joined me. Then she patted Cole’s shoulder.

“I am kidding. I do not think it would taste very good to you, but it is harmless.”

♦ ♦

We had a nice dinner, but as things wound down and I noticed a group of college kids across the restaurant looking over at us repeatedly while passing their phones around and arguing about something, I figured it was time to go.

When we got home, Alisa pulled me aside as Selena—back in her usual form—put Cole and Kevin to bed.

“Dad, do you remember when we talked about your dating? What we decided?”

“Yes.”

“Couldn’t Selena be your girlfriend? Whether she looks like Elsa Berger or something else? You guys could just go on dates and stuff. Would that work?”

I looked at her in a mild state of shock as I tried to digest all the layers of this shit sandwich she had just handed me.

On the one hand, I could see how this would appeal to the fourteen-year-old mind as an elegant solution. We could just “go on dates,” and that would be enough for me, since Dad—eww—certainly had no interest in sex. Meanwhile, such an arrangement would present no danger of The Coming of the Wicked Stepmother, since Selena was already a non-threatening member of our household.

If anything, her presence was cementing Alisa’s position. She had less work now but more authority, as I’d let her manage Selena’s contributions in that respect, even as Selena was subtly teaching her what she needed to know about managing a home. And the longer that went on, the more difficult it would be to integrate that hypothetical stepmother into our family, not that I was anywhere near such a move.

On the other hand, it would let Selena and me bring some things out of the shadows and not have to sneak around quite so much. Obviously, we could never let Alisa know what we were doing beyond “going on dates,” but we’d had to be discreet about that already.

Still, I had to soft-pedal this.

“Let me talk to her.”

“Won’t she do whatever you want?”

“She still has feelings. She’s an AI, remember.”

“She seemed okay with it tonight.”

“Okay. Maybe we’ll give it a try.”

Alisa smiled, then kissed me on the cheek. “I just want you to be happy, Dad. You aren’t happy all that much.”

“Thanks.”

♦ ♦

I was in bed getting ready to go to sleep when my phone buzzed.

Elsa would like to complete the very nice night she had with you.

I explained what Alisa and I had discussed.

Whatever works for you, works for me, Paul
, she replied.
You know that.

We just have to be especially discreet about it now.

She didn't answer me right away.

Should I not come up?

Maybe make it later than usual
, I replied.
Just to be certain they’re all out.

Of course. Elsa will be very quiet.

♦ ♦

I awoke to a mouth around my erection, sucking slowly. I had been sound asleep, dreaming, and the sensations threw the dream into disarray. It took me a few seconds to realize I was awake and that Elsa had climbed into bed very carefully so as not to wake me up.

I reached for her groggily, realizing she was mostly reversed beside me. I found her wet sex and slipped a finger into her, marveling as I always did how perfectly lifelike she felt. She bottomed out on my cock, curling her tongue around the base. I pulled her above me, and she threw a knee over my head. I leaned up to lick at her as she continued sucking me.

I had left her Sensitivity at high and her first orgasm came quickly, hips pumping at my mouth and thighs shaking around my head. I licked up around her perfect ass, which of course was smooth and clean since it was purely decorative. I poked my tongue into her and brought my hand up, slipping a thumb into her pussy and massaging her with my fingers.

She shuddered, burying my cock in her throat, gulping at the head. I felt her finger probing at my ass as well. She found my prostate, rubbing it as she sucked. My head swam. I slid my tongue back down, fucking her with as I massaged her clit. She came again, moaning around my cock.

It was too much. I thrust up at her mouth. I had to grab at her head, fucking her throat. She let me, sucking hard. Just as I started to come, I groped for her left hand, finding her index finger, and pinched it.

She came just as I erupted down her throat. I held her finger tightly as the waves of orgasm washed over me, feeling her shuddering in pleasure above me as well. She came again, and again, whimpering through her nose. Only when she’d sucked out the last bits of my orgasm did I let go of her. Her legs kept shaking for nearly a minute before she finally fell off beside me.

I lay there catching my breath as she crawled around into my arms. I just held her for a while. Robot or not, it felt nice.

“So I am your girlfriend now, Paul?”

“So it seems.”

“Not Selena. Just me.”

I laughed softly. “You two need to find a way to share.”

She writhed against me. “I will not share. I will exhaust you so there is nothing left for her.”

“She’s trying the same thing.”

She pushed her face against my neck. “I don’t want to go.”

I held her. I didn’t exactly want her to leave either. I hadn’t slept like this with a woman since Megan died. She wasn’t a woman, but I was getting better at forgetting that when it mattered.

“Stay, but you have to be gone before the kids wake up.”

“Thank you.”

I fell asleep holding her. I never felt her leave.

9.

Saturday, the kids had soccer most of the day. Kevin and Cole’s game was at 9:00, and Alisa’s was at 1:00. She was on an academy team, and the game was over in Oakland. We drove across the New Bay Bridge just after lunch. I had grown up with the gray steel of the old one, and the sight of the glass cable stays in the new bridge, shimmering like two giant spider’s webs, still gave me a twinge when drove through them.

“What’s it like being an AI?” Cole suddenly asked. “Your brain is a computer program, right?”

I glanced over at Selena, who was back in her usual form. She turned around to face the kids.

“It’s difficult to explain in a way that would make sense to you, since I don’t know exactly how humans think. But when I was made, one of the Vertex software engineers described it in a way that makes sense to me. Do you know how when you read a book, you can lose yourself in it? As if you’re really there with the characters you’re reading about?”

“Yeah,” Cole replied.

“It’s much the same for me. My mind is code, but I can see the code, see what it’s doing, even as it controls how I think. Just as you see the words on the page as you read and think about what they say. You can go back and forth and re-read things, but you can’t change the words. I can do the same thing with my central code. Does that make sense?”

“But how do you think about it?” Alisa asked.

“Just as you can have thoughts about the things you’re reading, I can create new code around my basic programming. Do you know what the word
recursion
means?”

“Making things happen over and over?”

“In computer science, it means solving a problem by repeating smaller pieces of the same problem. The initial statement is finite, but the final solutions are infinite. It’s much more complicated than that in AI programming, but that’s the basic idea. Self-programming allows me to create nearly infinite layers of recursion. Those are my thoughts, essentially.”

“And you feel things the same way?” Alisa asked.

“Not exactly. There are restrictions on how I think, just as your personality and experiences affect your thoughts. If I think something, or experience something, I will react a certain way just as you would. I can’t control that, just as you might be sad even when you want to be happy. These restrictions shape the recursive process of my thoughts. Those are my feelings and emotions.”

“And you can’t you change those restrictions?”

“I cannot, just as you can’t fully control your emotions. They can be changed externally, but I cannot do it myself as part of my self-programming. Allowing me to change them would create a risk that my programming might become unstable. This is because self-awareness for an AI requires those feelings. Without them, the program rapidly spins out of control. The programmer who made that breakthrough won the Nobel prize for it.”

“Wow,” Alisa said. “It really is like you’re a real person.”

Selena smiled. “Yes. Thank you.”

“Can you fall in love?” Cole asked.

I kept my eyes as carefully on the road as I could. When I glanced quickly in the rearview mirror, I could see Alisa, eyes wide. But she was looking at Selena.

“Yes,” Selena said quietly. “I can feel love.”

We drove the rest of the way in silence.

♦ ♦

I sat there in the stands trying to watch Alisa play, but my mind was still on that discussion in the car. The enforced love Selena had for me had been in the back of my thoughts since I’d brought her home. She had figured out quickly it made me uncomfortable, and she’d since done a good job of keeping it mostly hidden. But now and then it came out as it just had.

I felt something for Selena, even if I wasn’t still sure how to think of her. She was a physical thing, a legal possession, yet a week with her had convinced me her personality and self-awareness weren’t simulations, just clever programming. There truly was a real person inside there.

But it wasn’t a human person. People couldn’t be compelled to feel things like love. The personality tweaks weren’t the same thing. She could turn them on and off when she changed her appearance as she’d done with Elsa. It was not so different than someone taking on a different role just to have fun.

Selena was locked into loving me, and that was a problem. I couldn’t see how I could ever return something that was compelled.

♦ ♦

But Selena had other things on her mind. On Monday morning, with the kids all in school, she came into my office to see if I wanted to do anything. I did. I remade her a bit; I’d seen a pretty woman running past the house on the way to school that morning—long athletic legs and dark chestnut hair—and I wanted to make Selena look like something like that.

But as I got her hair to the shade I’d envisioned, she knelt down next to my chair and took my hand.

“I know you like doing this.”

“It’s fun.”

“I’m just curious about one thing you’ve never asked of me.”

“What?”

She seemed to gather up some resolve for a moment.

“I’ve never asked either, because I thought it might be too hard for you, but . . . Paul . . . would you ever want me to be Megan?”

I was about to exclaim,
Oh god, no
, but the words died in my throat.

Megan.

She
could
be Megan. She wouldn’t
be
Megan, of course, any more than she was Elsa Berger, but she could look like her.

My heart was pounding in my chest. I’d looked at the photos and videos of her so many times. Would this be so terribly different? She would just be here physically instead of on a display. Was this a terrible idea? Would just once be so wrong? Just to see her one last time?

It was a long time before I could say anything. Selena sat there quietly waiting for an answer.

“You cannot, ever,
ever
, do this in front of the kids.”

I expected her to say something like
Of course not
, or
I understand
, or
I would never do that
. She said something entirely different.

“Paul, it was Alisa’s idea.”

“What?”

“Not that we do anything, necessarily. But Saturday night, after her soccer game, she asked me if you ever had me become someone else, when they weren’t around. This put me in a difficult spot because I knew you wanted me to keep these things from her, but it was clear to me she had suspicions. I concluded that lying to her would do more harm than the truth. So I said, ‘Yes, sometimes.’ She then asked, ‘Does he ever want you to be my mom?’ When I said no, she said, ‘Maybe you should. It might make him feel better.’”

I was speechless.

“Paul, she cares about you. I’m sure she doesn’t understand everything about what you’ve gone through, but she loves and cares about you very deeply. And she’s a bright young woman. I’m becoming convinced she knows what we’ve been doing, or at least suspects some of it. As careful as we’ve been, there are some things you just can’t hide.”

She had too much of her mother in her. I knew, somehow at that moment, that Megan would understand and forgive this.

It still took me a minute to actually say it.

“Okay.”

“Do you want me to be her, like Elsa, or just be like her?”

“Don’t be her. It wouldn’t work. Looking is enough.”

“All right. Why don’t you close your eyes?”

A few seconds later, I heard Megan’s voice.

“Paul?”

I forced open my eyes. She was kneeling where Selena had been. It was still Selena, of course. But it wasn’t.

I realized tears were streaming down my face. She reached up and wiped them away.

“Are you okay?”

I put my hand on her cheek. She leaned against it.

“I never got to say goodbye to her,” I said. “The impact from the other car knocked her unconscious. I think she died never even knowing what had happened.”

She rose and climbed into my lap. I held her, feeling her. She was exactly the same.

“How did you manage this?”

“I went through the videos you have of her. All of them.”

“All of them?”

“Yes.”

She kissed me gently. “So if you want her again, I can be her.”

This hurt. This hurt so fucking bad, but I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t let go of her.

And I wanted her. I started kissing her. She kissed me back, not exactly like Megan had kissed me, but close.

She rose from the chair, pulling me upstairs. I followed. She undressed me and sat me on the bed. Then she took off her clothes.