Factoring Humanity

28

Yes, it was Kyle.

Heather knew it at once.

First, there was the view Kyle’s eyes were currently seeing: his office at U of T. Not the lab, but his actual wedge-shaped office, down the hall from the lab. Heather had been there a million times; there was no mistaking it. On one wall was a framed poster from the Harbourfront International Festival of Authors. Another poster showed an Allosaurus from the Royal Ontario Museum. His desk was piled high with paperite, but peeking out above one stack was a gold-framed holo of Heather herself. Kyle saw colors with a bit more of a blue tinge than Heather did. She smiled at the thought—no one had ever accused her husband of looking at the world through rose-colored glasses.

Heather had thought she knew Kyle, but clearly what she knew was only the tiniest fraction, the tip of the iceberg, the shadow on the wall. He was so much more than she’d ever imagined—so complex, so introspective, so incredibly, intricately alive.

Images kept flickering in and out at the periphery of Kyle’s attention. Heather knew that the problem with Becky had been disturbing Kyle greatly, but she had no idea that it literally was constantly on his mind.

Kyle’s gaze dropped to his wristwatch. It was a beautiful Swiss digital; Heather had given it to him on their tenth wedding anniversary. Engraved on the backside, she knew, were the words:

But no echo of those words passed through Kyle’s consciousness; he was simply consulting the time. It was 3:45 P.M.

My God! thought Heather. Was it really that late? She’d been inside the construct for a total of five hours. She’d completely missed her own two-o’clock meeting.

Kyle got up, evidently deciding it was time to leave for his class. The visual input bounced wildly as he stood, but it didn’t seem the least disconcerting to Kyle, although Heather, with access only to his consciousness and not to whatever unconscious balance signals his inner ear was relaying, felt rather tossed about.

It had been a sunny morning when Heather had entered the construct, and the forecast had called for sun to prevail for the rest of the day. But here, outside, on St. George Street, Kyle didn’t see the day as bright or beautiful. It seemed dingy to him; Heather had heard the expression “living under a cloud” before, but she had never appreciated how true it could be.

He continued along, past the carts and snack trucks pulled up to the curb selling hot dogs and knockwurst, or Chinese food—with, as if the cuisine could be uplifted thus, the bristol-board menus written exclusively in Chinese.

Kyle paused. He pulled out his wallet, removed his SmartCash card, and to Heather’s astonishment, walked up to a hotdog vendor.

Kyle had been eating heart-smart ever since his coronary four years ago; he’d given up red meat, he ate—even though he really didn’t like—lots of fish, he took aspirin every other day, and he’d replaced most of his beer with red wine.

“The usual?” asked a voice with an Italian accent.

The usual, thought Heather, chilled. The usual.

Kyle nodded.

Heather watched through Kyle’s eyes as a little man plucked from the grill a dark-red dog, thick enough around to be a section out of the handle of a baseball bat, and put it in a poppy-seed bun. He then used the same tongs he’d employed to move the dog to scoop up a mound of fried onions and pile them on top.

Kyle handed his card to the man, waited for the money to be transferred, pumped mustard and relish onto the dog, and then continued down the street, eating as he walked.

The thing was, though, it didn’t really give him any pleasure. He was disobeying his doctor’s orders—and, yes, Heather could detect the pang of guilt about what she herself would think, if she only knew—but it wasn’t making him any happier.

He used to eat that way, of course. Before the heart attack. Never thought it could happen to him.

But now… now he should care. He should be trying to look after himself.

The usual.

The thought was there, just below the surface.

He didn’t care anymore.

Didn’t care whether he lived or died.

The hot juice from the dog burned the roof of his mouth.

But the pain was lost against the constant background agony of Kyle Graves’s life.

Heather felt monumentally guilty about the way she was invading her husband’s privacy. She’d never dreamed of spying on him, but now she was doing more than that. In a very real sense, she had become him, experiencing everything he did.

Kyle continued down St. George until he came to Willcocks, then he walked the short block west to New College. Three students said “Hi” to him as he made his way inside; Kyle acknowledged them without recognizing them. His lecture hall was large and oddly shaped, more rhomboid than rectangular.

Kyle moved to the front. A student came down, obviously hoping to get a word with him before class began.

Kyle looked up at the her and—

What a babe.

Heather was angered by the thought.

And then she herself looked at the girl.

“Babe” was right. She had to be nineteen or twenty, but she looked no more than sixteen. Still, she was attractive—streaked blond hair in an elaborate do, big blue eyes, bright-red lips.

“Professor Graves, about that assignment you gave us?”

“Yes, Cassie?”

He hadn’t known the names of any of the students who greeted him in the corridor, but this one he knew.

“I’m wondering if we have to use Durkan’s model of AI sentience, or if we can base it on Muhammed’s model instead?”

Heather knew from recent Swiss Chalet conversations with Kyle that Muhammed’s approach was very cutting-edge. Kyle should be impressed by that question.

Babe, he thought again.

“You can use Muhammed’s, but you’ll have to take into account Segal’s critique.”

“Thank you, Professor.” She smiled a megawatt smile and turned to go. Kyle’s gaze watched her tight little rump as she walked up the steps to one of the middle rows of seats.

Heather was bewildered. She’d never heard Kyle make an inappropriate remark about any student. And this one, this one of all of them, was so youthful, so much like a child pretending to be an adult.

Kyle began presenting his lesson. He did it on automatic; he’d never been an inspired teacher, and he knew that. His strength was research. While he trudged through the material he’d prepared, Heather, now oriented in his mind, decided to press on. She’d come to the precipice, but, she realized now, she’d been hesitating before jumping over.

But it was time.

She’d come this far—finding the right mind out of seven billion possibilities. She couldn’t give up now.

She steeled herself.

Rebecca.

She concentrated on the name, while calling up an image.

Rebecca.

Harder and harder, shouting it with her mind, building up a good, concrete rendition of her face.

Rebecca!

She tried once more, rivaling Stanley Kowalski’s shout of “Stella!”

Rebecca!

Nothing. Simply demanding the memories didn’t bring them forth. She’d had earlier success concentrating on people, but for some reason, Kyle’s past memories of Rebecca were blocked.

Or repressed?

There had to be a way. True, her brain wasn’t hardwired for accessing external memories—but it was an adaptable, flexible instrument. It was simply a question of finding the right technique, the right metaphor.

Metaphor. She had interfaced her own mind with Kyle’s. Still, she had no control over his body—she’d failed to get that French rapist to stop, and now she attempted something more subtle, trying to get Kyle to glance at the floor for a moment. But it didn’t work. His eyes simply roamed over the students, without really connecting with any of them. The metaphor her mind had adopted for her current circumstances was that of a passenger, riding behind Kyle’s eyes. It had seemed a natural way of organizing the experience. But surely it wasn’t the only way. Surely there was another, more active method.

She kept trying to access what she’d come for, but except for the fleeting, harsh images of an accusing Becky that forever danced at the edges of his consciousness, Heather could find none of Kyle’s memories of his younger daughter.