Her lips opened-closed-opened-closed. She was trying to speak. He could hear a choked-off background hiss from her lips. “…I’m happy with you, Reed…”
“Again,” Reed said, weeping, “please, say it again.”
He cupped her shuddering chin with the palm of his callused hand, feeling the unreal bleed of her skin.
“Programs don’t cry,” he whispered.
Her eyes met his. She could feel therefore she could cry.
There was a shriek of feedback. A flash of white-black unconsciousness.
He was lying on the floor – and she was gone.
It was the end of the working day, and Reed paused before swiping into his module. Julia had been gone a week. It’d felt so weird and empty without her. Allah, he’d cried on the job afterwards, worrying the rest of his ten-team. Breakdowns at work were a sure-fire path to getting zeroed – and there was a lot of data-chat these days about negativity being contagious. None of them wanted to catch what Reed had, so they kept their distance.
He rallied himself though it took a few days. No way was he ready to toss everything in just yet. He couldn’t do that. She wouldn’t have wanted him to. You’ve gotta move on, he thought, though that’s a real joke at my age. He swiped in, dumped his gear and entered the living space where he paused again, in the same spot where Julia had glitched herself to death seven days ago.
His latest purchase was waiting for him on the comp-couch, specially zapped in from the nearest Compound. He read off the item code on the glinting black shell of the instal-cube.
DRTHY-5766
“Dorothy.”
He placed his thumb atop the cube, wincing when he felt the scraping as a micro-scan of his skin and blood identified him as correct genetic owner. The cub began to hum to itself. Removing his thumb, he licked the wound-patch clean. A deep blue glow emanated from the cube as dial-up sequence commenced. A hologram miniature rose out of the cube to hover in the air before him. It was a wire-frame of a female body with no real detail.
“That’s for me to provide then.”
The blank head of the hologram nodded silently.
“Okay. Blonde hair. Long with a slight wave to it. Crystal blue eyes. Full lips. The kissing kind.”
He knew what he was doing, and knew that he shouldn’t be doing it, but there was no stopping him. Reed missed her and he was on a roll, reading out all of the necessary vital statistics. The ones he’d set when this module was new, she was fresh out of her cube, and there were neon dawns rather than gasoline sunsets. When he finished, the hologram miniature folded in on itself and descended back into the cube. There were a few moments of bright processing chatter, then she phased into being before his eyes. Dorothy was Julia and Julia was Dorothy. You couldn’t have told them apart if you tried. And he knew every pixel and polygon in minute detail.
“You’re back,” he said, unable to help himself.
Dorothy’s immaculately-rendered head tilted to one side, quizzical. “I’m here for you, Reed.”
The voice was slightly different, sharper and without the airy lightness he remembered.
Still, it was better than nothing. She looked like her, that was the most important thing.
He was saved.
Reed fell to his knees. His eyes were tearing up.
She laughed, something Julia never used to do.
Reed was happy. He was sure that he was happy. He must be. This was the right thing to do, wasn’t it? Besides, Julia wasn’t real. She didn’t die. It was an overload. A shutdown. A kindness in a way as she was an old, basic model and wouldn’t have been able to cope with an upgrade anyway. Now, he had her back. Dorothy looked like her, as he’d specified. It wasn’t morbid to do this. He hadn’t insulted Julia’s memory or raised the dead. Programs weren’t like that. They were disposable, and the latest version would always be superior to what came before.
“So why’m I feeling like this is wrong?” Reed asked Manchu, second lifter from his ten-team. They were in a rathole, sipping shots of bitterclear, watching the fumes from the liquid curl in the dingy atmosphere.
Manchu shrugged, “Dunno. She better in the sack than the old one?”
Reed nodded.
“Then that’s all you should be worrying about. She’s not a real woman. And I don’t judge. Nothing wrong with a bit of synth-love. N-borns, v-borns, droids, whatever gets you going is cool.”
“But is it, if I’m hurting someone else.”
“You said she fried, right?”
Reed nodded again.
“You’re fretting about a memory. She’s gone. Extinct. Deleted. Kaput. Her ghost isn’t watching over you while this new one has her finger up to the knuckle in your hole.”
“It feels like it sometimes.”
“That’s your own fault designing her like the old one. You should’ve gone for something new and fresh. Why go for the old blonde bombshell thing when you could have amethyst hair, martian crystal areolas, or one of those enhanced macro-cunts. They say it’s like fucking an underage, man. All legal like.”
“I don’t want to feel like I’m fucking an underage.”
“You just want her. Allah, Reed, you need to sort things out.”
“How?”
“You know how,” Manchu said, pouring another bullet of bitterclear and slugging it down, “hard reset. Start over. Proper like this time.”
Reed sighed, “I guess so.”
“Do it, man. You’ll not regret.”
“Yeah.” Reed said.
At home on the comp-couch, Reed nursed the instal-cube in his hands, handling it as he handled her body during sex. He could take it, walk outside, and drop it down the space between the module strip and the hub-car rails – send her plummeting into the smog that masked the lo-secs and zeroes from the world above.
In his mind’s eye, he saw himself standing there, ready to let go, fingertips sweating enough to reduce friction. The instal-cub slipping through his nerveless fingers. His eyes closed, willing away tears. And then, he knew it, he would stop, not let her drop and take the instal-cub back inside. It was a waste of time to even consider throwing her away for the possibility of someone real. He’d been like this too long, loved her too long. Even though she was dead, it wasn’t over between them.
What about hard reset then?
“No. Absolutely not.” He whispered to the cube in his hands.
If he couldn’t have the old her, then a new her would do. Ghost. Facsimile. Make-believe delusion. Call it what you will, Reed wasn’t letting the memory of Julia get away from him. What else was there to cling onto in the Crawl?
When the living let us down, the company of ghosts is all that remains. The cold comfort of inanimate objects, and the past times they represent. Reed eased to his feet and returned the instal-cube to its docking port, pushing it home with a click.
“There you are, baby. Home sweet home.”
Deep blue light began to seep out from the cube.
Reed frowned. He hadn’t activated it. This shouldn’t be happening without his voice code authorisation. A wet coldness spread across the pit of his stomach. He placed his hands on the cube, making to pull it free from the docking port.
A shriek of feedback.
Reed stumbled away, yelling. He could smell the burnt pork odour coming from the palms of his hands. Black mottled stains patterned the pulsating cube where his skin had been seared away.
This wasn’t right.
Dorothy actualised out of the thin air, smiling at him.
“How’d you do that?” he croaked, “How’d you turn yourself on?”
“Time and patience, Reed,” she lilted.
“I don’t understand.”