There’s no reason for Paul to look at Nadia right then, but he does, and for a second his whole face falters.
For a second, Nadia’s does, too.
Mason can’t sleep that night, thinking about it.
TO: ANDREW MASON
FROM: HR—HEALTH/WELFARE
Your caffeine intake from the cafeteria today is 40% above normal. Your health is of great importance to us.
If you would like to renegotiate a project timeline, please contact Management to arrange a meeting. If you are physically fatigued, please contact a company doctor. If there is a personal issue, a company therapist is standing by for consult.
If any of these apply, please let us know what actions you have taken, so we may update your records.
If this is a dietary anomaly, please disregard.
The company appreciates your work.
They test some of the components on a simulator.
(Mason tells Paul they’re marking signs of understanding. Really, he wants to see if the simulation prefers one of them without a logical basis. That’s what humans do.)
He pulls up a baseline, several traits mixed at random from reoccurring types in the Archives, just to keep you from using someone’s remnant. (The company frowns on that.)
Under the ID field, Mason types in GALATEA.
“Acronym?” Paul asks.
“Allusion,” says Nadia.
Her reflection is looking at the main monitor, her brows drawn in an expression too stricken to be a frown.
Galatea runs diagnostics (a long wait—the text-interface version passed four sentience screenings in anonymous testing last month, and something that sophisticated takes a lot of code). She recognizes the camera, nodding at Mason and Paul in turn.
Then her eyes go flat, refocus to find Nadia.
It makes sense, Nadia’s further away, but Mason still gets the creeps. Someone needs to work on the naturalism of these simulators. This isn’t some second-rate date booth; they have a reputation to uphold.
“Be charming,” Mason says.
Paul cracks up.
“Okay,” he says, “Galatea, good to meet you, I’m Paul, and I’ll try to be charming tonight.”
Galatea prefers Paul in under ten minutes.
Mason would burn the place down if he wasn’t so proud of himself.
“Galatea,” Mason asks, “what is the content of Paul’s last sentence?”
“That his work is going well.”
It wasn’t what Paul really said—it had as little content as most of Paul’s sentences that aren’t about code—which means Galatea was inferring the best meaning, because she favored him.
“Read this,” Mason says, scrawls a note.
Paul reads, “During a shift in market paradigms, it’s imperative that we leverage our synergy to reevaluate paradigm structure.”
It’s some line of shit Paul gave him the first day they worked together. Paul doesn’t even have the shame to recognize it.
“Galatea, act on that sentence,” Mason says.
“I cannot,” Galatea says, but her camera lens is focused square on Paul’s face, which is Mason’s real answer.
“Installing this software has compromised your baseline personality system and altered your preferences,” he says. “Can you identify the overwrites?”
There’s a tiny pause.
“No,” she says, sounds surprised.
He looks up at Paul, grinning, but Paul’s jaw is set like a guilty man, and his eyes are focused on the wall ahead of him, his hands in fists on the desk.
(Reflected in his monitor: Nadia, her book abandoned, sitting a little forward in her chair, lips parted, watching it all like she’s seen a ghost.)
At the holiday party, Paul and Nadia show up together.
Paul has his arm around her, and after months of seeing them together Mason still can’t decide if they’re dating.
(He only sees how Paul holds out his hand to her as they leave every day, how she looks at him too long before she takes it, the story he’s already telling her, his smile of someone desperate to please.)
The way Paul manages a party is supernatural. His tux is artfully rumpled, his hand on Nadia’s waist, and he looks right at everyone he meets.
It’s too smooth to be instinctive; his father must have trained him up young.
Maybe that’s it—maybe they’re like brother and sister, if you ignore the way Paul looks at her sometimes when she’s in profile, like he wouldn’t mind a shot but he’s not holding his breath.
(He envies Paul his shot with her; he envies them both for having someone to be a sibling with.)
“Why do you keep watching me?”
She’s not coy, either, he thinks as he turns, and something about her makes him feel like being honest.
He says, “I find you interesting.”
“Because of how I look.” Delivered like the conclusion of a scientific paper whose results surprised everyone.
“Because of how you look at everyone else.”
It must shake her; she tilts her head, and for an instant her eyes go empty and flat as she pulls her face into a different expression.
It’s so fast that most people wouldn’t notice, but Mason is suspicious enough by now to be watching for some small tic that marks her as other than human.
Now he knows why she looks so steadily into her book, if that’s what happens every time someone surprises her.
Doesn’t stop him from going cold.
(He can’t process it. It’s one thing to be suspicious, another thing to know.)
It must show on his face; she looks at him like she doesn’t know what he’s going to do.
It’s not how she used to look at him.
He goes colder.
Her eyes go terrified, as terrified as any human eyes.
She’s the most beautiful machine he’s ever seen.
He opens his mouth.
“Don’t,” she starts.
Then Paul is there, smiling, asking, “You remember how to dance, right?”, lacing his fingers in her fingers and pulling her with him a fraction too fast to be casual.
She watches Mason over her shoulder all the way to the dance floor.
He stands where he is a long time, watching the golden boy of Mori dancing with his handmade Vestige prototype.
He spends the weekend wondering if he has a friend in Aesthetics who could tell him where Nadia’s face really came from, or one in Archives who would back him up about a personality Paul Whitcover’s been saving for a special occasion.
It’s tempting. It wouldn’t stop the project, but it would certainly shut Paul up, and with something that big he might be able to renegotiate his contract right up to Freelance. (No one taps your home network when you’re Freelance.)
He needs to tell someone, soon. If he doesn’t, and someone finds out down the line they were keeping secrets, Mason will end up in Quality Control for the rest of his life, monitored 24/7 and living in the subterranean company apartments.
If he doesn’t tell, and Paul does, Paul will get Freelance and Mason will just be put down.
He has to make the call. He has to tell Compliance.
But whenever he’s on the verge of doing something, he remembers her face after he’d found her out and she feared the worst from him, how she’d let Paul take her hand, but watched him over her shoulder as long as she dared.
It’s not a very flattering memory, but somehow it keeps him from making a move.
(Just as well; turns out he doesn’t have a lot of friends.)
Monday morning Paul comes in alone, shuts the door behind him, and doesn’t say a word.
It’s such a delightful change that Mason savors the quiet for a while before he turns around.
Paul has his arms crossed, his face a set of wary lines. (He looks like Nadia.)
Mason says, “Who is she?”
He’s hardly slept all weekend, thinking about it. He’d imagined tragic first love, or some unattainable socialite Paul was just praying would get personality-mapped.
Once or twice he imagined Paul had tried to reincarnate Daddy, but that was too weird even for him.