The Emoticon Generation (22 page)

Melanie pressed a key, and we saw what he saw: My mother, hand open, slammed it against the screen. The sound of a slap. The ‘camera’ falling violently to the floor. The sound of my sobbing. “This is what you get!” My mother’s voice. “This is what you get for pulling tricks like this!”

“This never happened,” I whispered. She never hit me. Not once.

“It’s a different you,” says Melanie. “You want to go a few moments back, to see what brought this on?”

“No.”

“Come on, it’ll be—”

“No.”

“Okay,” she shrugged. “Let’s try something else.”

“Let’s not.”

“Seriously,” she said, as she her fingers whisked over the keyboard, typing: ‘LETS_NOT’. “
All
your potential lives are here.
All
of them! Your life if you’d been raised in any country, at any time, with any possible history. Fourteenth century, 5th century B.C., the future, the
future
! We could see what would’ve happened to you if you’d been raised by monkeys, or elephants or aliens maybe.” She hit ‘ENTER’. “I’ve been sitting here for three hours hoping to see some aliens. But...no luck yet.”

My face, slightly older, much chubbier, eyes closed – asleep – appeared on the screen.

“Boring,” Melanie said and immediately hit the menu, erasing that person, his unknown history, his unknown life, the dream he was having. “How about this?” And she typed: ‘BORING’. I caught her hand as it dropped to hit ‘ENTER’.

“Let’s not,” I said. “Let’s do something else.”

“Come on, I want to see this.”

“Let’s do something else.”

And I think she finally heard the serious undertones in my voice. “What, this is making you uncomfortable?” And she looked at me, her eyes locking with mine, amused. I had to fight the urge to look away, embarrassed, ashamed...

She looked down, wearing a smile. “Sure,” she said. “I understand. It’ll take you time to get used to this.” She turned around, exited the program, and got up. She rubbed my arms, “Let’s do something else.”

~

That night, she stayed over, as she did most days of the week.

Half-dreaming, I reached for Melanie, wanting to put my arm around her. She wasn’t there. Bathroom, probably. I turned around, and was sucked back into my dream.

Except that a thought of reality still clung: Melanie is not there. What is she doing? Is she back? What is she doing?

And with a rush of adrenaline I sat up in bed, and looked around. Still not here. I looked at the door. Faint, white light.

I got up slowly.

The light was coming from the study, the door to it open only a hair’s width. I could hear talking from inside. I looked at my watch: 4:25 a.m. She’s never up at this time.

I clung to the wall, and listened.

“Melanie, what’s going on?” A man’s voice. My voice.

“Would you
listen
?” Silence. Then, her voice again: “I, uh... When I was fifteen—” and I could hear her take a puff of smoke, “—I read this book. I don’t remember its name or who wrote it, but it was science fiction, and it was about this duplication technology. Like, this guy and this woman stepped into a box, and then, their exact duplicates – their clones – appeared light-years away. And the main thing – actually, it’s the only thing – I remember is that every time this guy – the hero of the book – got into the duplicator back on Earth, he shut his eyes, and when the process was over, there was massive relief for him. He’s the one that got to be back on Earth. While his duplicate opened his eyes, and found himself in dangerous situations, which usually led to his death. That’s what I was thinking about when you were going through those tests at the hospital a couple of days ago.”

“Melanie, I don’t understand.
This
is your birthday gift to me? What’s going on?”

“No. Jake, Jake, I
did
get you a birthday gift. It’s a
great
birthday gift. Only the man who opened his eyes, the man now sleeping in the other room,
he’s
the one who got the gift.
You
went to the hospital, got into the machine, opened your eyes, and you found yourself inside a computer, a few seconds later for you, but almost two days later for me. You got the short end of the stick.”

“You knew this would happen. You did this to me on purpose!”

“Look. I didn’t have to reactivate you. I can turn you off now. Do you want me to do that?”

Silence for a while.

“No.” His voice.

“Okay. Good. I’m glad. Then I’ll save you as you are now. Just in case, okay? See, if I press this, I’m saving you.” The sound of keystrokes. “Okay?”

Silence. Then, my voice: “Yah.”

I couldn’t help it, I leaned a bit closer, and peeked through the crack. I could see Melanie’s back, sitting on the chair, half hiding the keyboard and the screen from my view. And on the screen – my face, with black background. The PersoCam on top of the monitor was aimed at Melanie but away from me. So neither of them could see me.

“Okay. I... uh... Let’s try something, okay, Jake?”

“Yah.”

“Okay,” she said. “You’re an asshole.”

I blinked twice and my head shot backwards. My reaction was mirrored on the screen, “What?!” He said.

Without answering, she clicked on a few keys, and his image vanished. She’d exited without saving. Now she loaded a saved version of me.

My face reappeared on the screen.

“Okay?” She said.

“Yah,” he said. Same tone as a minute ago.

“Are you sure? No ill effects from saving you?”

“Saving me? Dooming me is more like it.”

“Jake!”

“No. I didn’t feel that at all.”

“Good.” And she saved him again.

“Okay. I ... uh... I want to ask you something.” Silence. She slowly inhaled on her cigarette. Then, “What if I told you I wanted a baby?”

“I can’t very well give you one now.”

“Seriously. I can turn you off.”

“Okay, okay.”

“What if I told you I want a baby?”

“You said you didn’t.” That’s right. “You said you wouldn’t.”

“What if I changed my mind.”

“Is that why you have me here? Is that why I have to suffer this
weird
, unacceptable life, to see how I’d react when you bring the subject up?” Melanie drew in another puff, looking away from the screen. “I’m going to give you your answer, and then you’re going to save me, go back to sleep, and turn me back whenever something else pops up? Is that what I’m here for? Is that what’s going to happen?”

Her hand hesitated over the ‘save’ key. “No, Jake. It isn’t.” And she exited the program without saving. “This conversation never happened,” she told the empty screen.

I got ready to leap back to bed and feign sleep, certain that she’d walk out of the room. But she just stayed there, staring at the empty screen, smoking.

After a minute or two, I crept back to bed and covered myself with a blanket. After what must have been ten minutes later, I felt her slip in, as well.

She tossed around for a while, then fell asleep. I didn’t.

~

In the morning, I said I was sick. Melanie volunteered to babysit me. I told her to go to work. I told her I’d be fine.

She left after I called in sick.

I waited for her car to leave, then locked the door, went into my study, and sat in front of the computer.

First thing: Find the file she’d saved. It wasn’t in the folder designed for saved personalities.

It took me two hours to search the entire computer using as many different search algorithms as I could think of. I found nothing, except evidence that a couple of saved-personality files had been erased beyond an ability to recreate them.

Had she really erased them before she had joined me in bed? Everything she’d done the night before had seemed well-planned. She had known ahead of time what she would do, what to press. The only things she didn’t know were what my responses would be. Why would she have saved him, if she didn’t want to use him? After all, the stuff she didn’t want him to remember, she had deleted.

I started the search from the beginning, hoping I’d missed something, when I suddenly realized that a personality didn’t need to be saved as a personality file.

I stopped the search and turned on the word processor. I opened the last file worked on. The file only contained one line: a seven-digit phrase: ‘4T*9BZ}’. My entire personality summed up in less than a kilobyte on a word processor. It might as well have been written on a piece of paper.

But I had to know. I turned on All-Of-Me, and fed in the number.

It
was
him, the same me-from-yesterday, that had gotten the raw side of the deal, that had been saved by Melanie and now was surprised to see me. Once I was certain it was him, I turned my duplicate off without saving.

I stared at the computer.

Now that I knew, now that I had control over the file, what should I do?

For two hours, I couldn’t make up my mind

Then I turned off the word processor. What’s the use in deleting the file? The program was still there, she could reactivate me whenever she wanted to and start from scratch. I left it there, and made sure there was no evidence that I’d touched the file.

~

Melanie came home early.

She checked on me. And after only five minutes, she disappeared into the study. Two minutes later, she was back, saying she looked up an old phone number. But she hadn’t. She’d been checking up on
me
. Checking to see that the file was still there, that I wasn’t on to her.

We watched some television, she made some soup for me, and made sure I’d turn in early.

Not having slept well the night before, I fell asleep quickly. But I made sure to fall asleep with my hand around her. If she got up, I’d know.

In the morning, I woke up first. My arm as still around her, although she had turned during the night.

I said I felt good enough to go to work today.

She got up, and left before I did.

Just to make sure, I went to the computer, and checked on the file with the number. The number had changed. Now it was thirty-digits long.

My head began to spin.

I sat down, looked at the number, again, then at my watch. I had to leave in five minutes, or I’d be late.

I turned him on.

My own face appeared on the screen. His first reaction was surprise.

“Hi,” I said. He didn’t respond. “Melanie didn’t tell me you exist. She didn’t tell me she planned on talking to me secretly.”

“I got that,” he said.

I stared at him for a minute. I think he was thinking the same as thoughts as me. “Tell me what she told you,” I said.

And he did.

She’d asked him about his (my) thoughts when I first saw her. She asked me when I knew I was serious,
if
I knew I was serious. After a two-hour conversation with her, he’d told her the truth, damn him. Things I’d never want another woman to know. In return, she’s answered the same question about me. She didn’t think much of me in the beginning. She liked me a bit. She’d thought it would last a week. It became serious for her after the second time we slept together.

Once my conversation with my other self was over, I turned him off without saving. When Melanie would talk to him again, she’d talk to the same man she’d turned off, the version of me that had talked to her but had never talked to me.

Not knowing what else to do, I went to work.

~

The next night, Melanie had some emergency at work and had to pull an all-nighter, which turned into two all-nighters. During that second night, I called her there, to buck her up.

When I woke up, I got an urge to check her file.

The number had changed.

Sometime, somehow, she’d been to my apartment. She’d been talking to
him
.

I covered my head with my hands and fought the urge to be sick.

~

After a week, this had become routine:

Melanie sleeps over. And each morning, after she leaves, I go and check to see the number has changed. I then turn All-of-Me on, feed in the number, introduce myself, and this other me shares his information with me.

This is what I learned. She talked to him almost each day of the week, saving him at the end of each conversation. She picked the conversation up, in the middle of the next night, from where she’d saved it. And with each night, their conversations became more intimate, as each of them revealed more and more of themselves. They had conversations I thought Melanie and I could never have. Some of them were about things I’d be unwilling to talk about. Some are about things I thought
she
would never talk about.

And I remembered hearing that for women, even talking to someone can be considered cheating, depending on the conversation, depending on the level of intimacy. Whether it’s because I believed what I’d heard or because of something else, my sense of betrayal grew daily. And yet she was cheating on me... with
me
. Which made the betrayal somehow worse.

But there was nothing I could do, nothing I could conceive of, except keeping myself updated every day.

Until one day, thirteen days after my birthday...

~

I turned All-Of-Me on, and fed in the number.

My face appeared, surprised as always.

“Hi,” I said, repeating my usual line, knowing that, for him, this is the first time he sees me. “She hasn’t told me you exist.”

“I know,” he said.

“You’re the reason she ‘gave’ me All-Of-Me for a present.”

“I know.”

“Tell me what she told you.”

He looked at me for a few short seconds, then said, “No.”

“Excuse me?”

“No.”

“She’s using you. She’s using me.”

“She’s using
you
.”

“Tell me what she told you.”

“I’m sorry, but it isn’t any of your business.”

“How can it be none of—I’ll turn you off, I’ll erase you from memory. You will
die
.” I used Melanie’s threat.

“No, you won’t. Goodbye.”

I stared at him. He stared at me.

I broke first, made a face, and angrily slammed the ‘off’ key. The other me vanished, unsaved.

I erased, as usual, all evidence of my having opened the text file, then went to work.