For a terrible second, Ethan’s brain filled with thick, tarry mist, cold as liquid nitrogen. He went rigid and clamped his teeth tightly together. The mist disappeared. He was in control again.
He turned off the recording, wiped the rain droplets from the floor, and left.
Zhao Tailoring didn’t open until 10 a.m. on Mondays. Ethan, who’d been there at 8:30, waited in a Starbucks, slowly drinking a latte he didn’t want. The Seattle Times lay open on the table, but he couldn’t concentrate. At 9:50 he threw his cup in the trash, left his unread paper, and walked back across the street to the tailor shop. He huddled under the roof overhang, out of the rain.
Tailoring was not part of his life. Ethan bought clothes haphazardly, getting whatever size seemed the best fit and ignoring whatever gaps might present themselves. The window of Zhao Tailoring held Christmas decorations and three mannequins. The plastic-resin woman wore a satin gown; the man, slacks and a double-breasted blazer; the child, a pair of overalls over a ruffled blouse. They looked bound for three entirely different events. The sign said ALTERATIONS * REPAIRS * NEW CLOTHES MADE. At 9:58, an Asian woman unlocked the front door.
“Ethan! What are you doing here?”
Laura Avery, under her Marc Chagall umbrella. Ethan felt his face go rigid. “Hello, Laura.”
“Are you having tailoring done?” Her voice held amusement but no condescension.
“No. What are you doing here? Why aren’t you at work?”
Her brows rose in surprise at his harsh tone. “I had a doctor’s appointment across the street. Nothing serious. Are you having a suit made?”
“I already said I wasn’t having tailoring done. Please stop asking me personal questions.”
Surprise changed to hurt, her features going slack in the blue shadows under the umbrella. “Sorry, I just—”
“If I wanted to talk to you, I would.”
A moment of silence. Ethan opened his mouth to apologize, to explain that he was just distracted, but before he could speak, she turned and stalked away.
“You come in, yes?” the Asian woman said.
Ethan went in.
“You want nice suit, yes? Special this week.”
“No. I don’t want a suit. I want…I want to buy the mannequin in the window.” Incongruously, an old childish song ran through his head: How much is that doggie in the window?
“You want buy what?”
She didn’t have much English. The person who did was late showing up for work. “You come again, twelve o’clock maybe, one—”
“No. I want to buy the mannequin…the doll.” They had finally agreed on this word. “Now. For a hundred dollars.” He had no idea what store mannequins cost.
She shook her head. “No, I cannot—”
“Two hundred dollars. Cash.” He took out his wallet.
They settled on two-fifty. She stripped the overalls and blouse off the mannequin, and, to his relief, she put it in a large, opaque suit bag. Ethan watched its stiff plastic form—hairless, with a monochromatic and expressionless face—disappear into the bag. He put it in the trunk of his car, pushing from his mind every bad B movie about murderers and wrapped-up bodies.
Marilyn Mahjoub was fifteen minutes late for her first testing session. Waiting, Jamie paced, smacking a fist into his palm, dialing the energy all the way up to ten. “You know, Dr. Stone Man, we’d be so much farther along with Maip if all the fucking subfields of AI research hadn’t been—oh, I don’t know—slogging along for sixty or seventy years without fucking communicating with each other?”
“Yes,” Ethan said.
“It’s just such a…oh, by the way, I changed some of our girl’s heuristics. What I did was—are you listening to me? Hello?”
“I’m listening,” Ethan said, although he wasn’t, not really.
“You’re not listening. Maip listens to me more than you do, don’t you, Maip?”
“I’m listening,” MAIP said.
“Why is she so much more here than you are? And why is that kid so late?”
If there was a reason, they never heard it. Marilyn Mahjoub arrived eventually, in the custody of a sullen older brother. Her clothing embodied the culture clash suggested by her name: hijab, tight jeans, and crop top. She had huge, dark eyes and a slender, awkward grace. In a few years, she would be beautiful.
Like Cassie McAvoy, Marilyn played the keyboard. Unlike Cassie, she was good at it. Ethan could picture her in a concert hall one day, rising to cries of “Brava!” However, she did not take well to MAIP.
“Try playing that last section slower,” MAIP said in the warm, pretty voice that Jamie had given her. She was comparing Marilyn’s rendition, note by note, to the professional version in her memory.
Marilyn’s lip curled. “No. It shouldn’t be slower.”
“Let’s try it just to see.”
“No! I had it right!”
“You did really well,” MAIP said. “Can I please hear the piece again?”
Jamie nodded briskly; MAIP was acting to lower Marilyn’s frustration level by offering praise and neutrally suggesting a redo. Ethan studied the data display. Her frustration level was not lowering.
“No,” Marilyn said, “I won’t play it again. I don’t need to play it again. I did it right already.”
“You did really well,” MAIP said. “I can see that you’re talented.”
“Then don’t tell me to do it slower!”
“Mare,” said her brother, with much disgust, “chill.”
Jamie stepped in. “What would you like to play now, Marilyn?”
Her childish pique disappeared. Lowering her head, Marilyn looked up at Jamie through her lashes and purred, “What would you like to hear?”
Christ—twelve years old! Were all young girls like this now? Allyson wouldn’t have been. She would have been direct, intelligent, appealing.
Jamie, flustered (Ethan hadn’t known that was possible), said, “Play…uh, what else do you…what do you want to play?”
Later, after brother and sister had left, Jamie turned on Ethan. “What’s wrong with you?”
“With me?”
“You’ve been distracted this whole session, and you made me deal with that little wildcat by myself! Did you even hear me say that I added heuristics to Maip, matching emotion with postural clues?”
“No, I…. Yes.”
“Uh-huh. Get with it, Ethan! We have to get this right!”
Ethan said, “Don’t take your frustration with Marilyn out on me.”
MAIP said, “Jamie, you seem distressed.”
Startled, Ethan turned toward the computer. “MAIP has your data? Did you give your baseline readings to her?”
“No!” Jamie’s irritation disappeared, replaced instantly with buoyancy; it was like a dolphin breaking the surface of gray water. “Well, I gave her some data, anyway—but I think she applied the postural heuristics and the other new stuff and…I don’t know, you’ll have to do the analysis, but I think she actually learned!”
Ethan gazed at MAIP. A pile of intricate machinery, a complex arrangement of electrons. For some reason he couldn’t name, he felt a prickle of fear.
It was after 10 p.m. when the last researchers left Building 6. In Building 5, the Biological Division, lights still burned. Perez and Chung clattered out together, talking excitedly. Maybe they’d had another breakthrough, or maybe they just loved their work.