“We can always sync-watch the movie with our implants,” Catherine said. “We’re still watching together.”
“It’s not the same,” Sarah said. “The whole point is to watch it on the screen.”
Suddenly the picture turned green.
“That’s bad,” Sarah called.
“Are you sure? I’m positive everything is…” Tom came out from behind the TV and peered at the screen. “No, that’s right. Look.” He held up the plastic case.
“The Matrix?” Maggie read. “I remember my parents talking about that.”
“Yeah, it’s a classic about people being slaves to sentient computers,” Tom said. “It came out the year I was born.”
“That’s old,” Sarah said. “Is it in green because they didn’t have color back then?”
“Shhh,” Catherine said. “Pass the popcorn.”
As the opening scene played out, Catherine fetched movie facts off the net. She quickly applied a spoiler filter to synchronize with her place in the film, and returned her focus to the movie.
Catherine jumped when the knock woke Neo up, and then a chill went down her back when the girl turned to show the white rabbit tattoo. Suddenly a thick, multicolored datastream cut across her view, obscuring the movie. She glanced over and sighed when she saw the stream emanating from Sarah’s implant.
Other people’s net traffic often showed up, one downside of her ability to see and manipulate the net. But that didn’t stop her from being annoyed. Why couldn’t Sarah just pay attention? Sarah was the one who insisted they watch on the screen.
Catherine redoubled her focus on the movie. Yet the more she tried, the more annoying the chunky pull of data became. She shook her head. It didn’t help that she was still pissed about the guy two nights ago.
As the minutes passed, she tried to resist looking at Sarah’s data, but finally gave in. She couldn’t read the encrypted parts, but enough trickled through to see Sarah was playing a new Japanese VR game. By force of will, she turned her attention back to the movie one last time.
On screen Neo was about to make a choice between two pills. Sarah’s datastream still hovered in the corner of her vision. Screw it. Catherine pushed hard, snapping the net connection. Hopefully Sarah would think it was an outage.
“What the hell?” Sarah yelled, bolting upright. She glanced around.
“What is it, honey?” Maggie said. She looked up and held out the bowl. “Popcorn?”
Catherine smirked, hoping no one could see her in the dark room.
“That was you, you shit,” Sarah yelled, standing up.
Tom stood, too. He fumbled at the old-fashioned remote until he paused the movie. “Calm down. What’s going on?”
“She cut my stream, that’s what.” Sarah turned to Catherine. “Stop getting in my head!” She didn’t quite stamp her feet, but close.
Tom put his hands on Sarah’s shoulders. “Look, she can’t mess with your connection. It’s not possible.”
“She can. That’s what happens when you get an implant when you’re a baby — she’s turned into a cybernetic weirdo.”
Catherine flinched. “That’s not true.” She was not a weirdo. She didn’t even have a choice in getting the implant.
“Oh, come on,” Sarah said, her arms spread wide. “You can’t even link with anyone during sex.”
Now they all stared at Catherine. One way or the other, they all knew she couldn’t link because of the biofeedback. Tom and Sarah had both experienced it first-hand. And Maggie had done her share of morning-after consoling.
“That’s not my fault,” Catherine said, in a small voice.
“That’s why she never keeps a boyfriend.” Sarah kept going, oblivious to the hard look she was getting from Maggie. “Who wants to have vanilla sex? She’s a freak.”
Catherine shook, an embarrassed rage fueling her, narrowing her vision, and making her heart race. She was not a freak. “Screw you. Your own parents kicked you out of the house because you’re a VR addict. Where would you be living if it wasn’t for me?”
Even as Catherine said it, she knew she was behaving more childishly than Sarah, even if Sarah was purposely provoking her, and still she felt helpless to stop.
“Come on, girls,” Maggie said.
“Fuck you!” Sarah said, ignoring Maggie. “When your mother died, you came to live with us. You owe me.”
“I owe you?” Catherine started to cry. “Am I going to pay for the house forever while you rot your head in VR? There’s more to life than just living from day to day.”
“They’re just games.” Sarah wiped tears away. “To hell with you and your damn plans.” She sneered as she said the last word.
“I want to do something with my life,” Catherine said.
“There is nothing to do,” Sarah screamed. “Nothing. You’re living the dreams of your dead mother.”
Memories of her mother overwhelmed her, making the room suddenly claustrophobic. Catherine had to get out. She shook her head mutely, and walked toward the door.
“Come on, Cat,” Maggie said, intercepting her at the door. “Don’t let Sarah get to you.”
“You’re not my mother,” Catherine said in a broken voice, shrugging off Maggie and rushing outside.
5
Leon slid into his seat for the department meeting. Once he and Mike had taken their spots, eight seats were filled by humans and two by androids, leaving six spaces that contained visualizations of AI.
“Thanks everyone for coming,” Mike said. The meeting agenda flew into view in the shared netspace, where it appeared to hover above the center of the table. “We have forty minutes for a department roundtable. I know Sonja has an important topic to share. I’ll close with an update on budgets.” Mike turned to his left and gestured to begin.
Vaiveahtoish, an android or human-style robot, was head of the Nanite department. His bronze visor flashed as he spoke in a refined, vaguely foreign accent. “We’ve begun rolling out version two point one of the Nanite Restrictions and Guidelines.” As the android presented, he fed graphics showing the changes and their results into netspace. Heads pivoted to take in the data.
The nanites, robots on a microscopic scale, was a decade-long innovation project led by successive generations of AI. Until now, they’d been tightly controlled, limited to a handful of research labs run by AI, a few experimental deployments, and a single commercial application. As the technology matured, the guidelines were being updated.
Leon, who had spoken to Vaiveahtoish yesterday, knew what he was going to say and tuned out. He glanced around the oval table, the necessary compromise between a round, egalitarian configuration and available space. The Institute had grown from two departments ten years earlier to eight.
Leon remembered the day of his first visit to the Institute, ten years ago. He’d been nineteen and wearing his first suit.
He had stepped gingerly over exposed cables and construction debris. On his left, two women in hard hats and yellow vests pulled a thick cable bundle through a new hole in the wall. In front of him, a man stood on the second-to-last rung of a tall ladder, pulling orange CAT-10 fiber optics.
“This way, please,” said another woman, dressed in a gray suit with mirror sunglasses. She had a hard voice, and her jacket bulged on her left hip.
Leon followed her. A few months earlier, he’d been terrified by the Secret Service agents. Now he just watched her butt.
“Focus, focus” Mike said softly.
Leon smiled at the older man and followed the swish of the agent’s hair instead.
As they turned down a hallway, the construction noises faded away. The agent guided them through a door. Inside, a leftover conference room: cool marble walls, an old-fashioned chalkboard, no windows. Leon ran his fingers curiously over the antique chalkboard. They came away white. He brushed them on his new black suit jacket, then saw the mess he’d made.