We go back to the reefhouse when the water gets cold, then me and Vera hop in the hot tub while Aline raids the minibar for mojito supplies. With a big billowy cloud of steam between us, it’s easy to imagine Vera’s got her updates and her perfect hair, which in turn makes it easier for me to realtalk her. Which is my duty as first best friend. Sure, Aline’s way wattage and way funtime, but I am Vera’s confidante.
"So how actually are you, V?" I ask. "No need for brave facial, love. Be serious, okay?"
"I’m actually good," she says, tipping her head back. "Now that I’m out of neural recovery, really good. The hospital food was shit." She grins and flicks some water at me.
This is not how I was envisioning it. I thought she’d admit how miserable she’s been all month, maybe cry a little, and I could comfort her and reassure her that when her Face is back it will be like it never ever left. I did not envision her so blissy about everything. Maybe a few mojitos are needed first.
"You’re being so brave about the situation," I say, because I didn’t have a backup plan. "And when your Face is back online, it’ll be like nothing ever happened. You will forget this month so fast."
"Not exactly, Bess." She raises an eyebrow, which is way furrier than an eyebrow has any right to be.
"Not exactly, what?"
"If they get my Face running again, it won’t have any of my old stuff," Vera says with a shrug. "That’s all gone. Permagone."
She says it so nonchalant that for a second I do not even understand, and then when I do, I know this is selfish, but the first thing I think is how her Face, or at least her update cloud, was like 35 percent me from all the party-streams and snaps and curated convos we shared, and now all of that is gone and she doesn’t even care. I could slap her until I remember that she is recovering from a serious viral strike and probably medded sky-high. Maybe she should not be drinking mojitos.
"Why’re you saying if?" I ask. "Why if?"
"When," Vera corrects.
I narrow my eyes. "V. That night you caught the virus, do you remember what you chatted me? Looking for…"
"Mojitos!" Aline announces. "Except with no mint. So, rum and lime juice." She hands us our drinks, then sticks the handle of rum and the plastic bottle of mix and the few remaining Bacardi Slushes into the little floating thermos that is bobbing around with us in the water. She slips into the tub between me and Vera and sends me a Whispa at the same time, like, why are you AMAing her about the night she got viral, she does not want to think about that right now!
I do not want to reply, so instead I hold up my not-mojito. "To Vera’s health, right? Um, salud."
"Yeah, whatever, salud," Aline says, but she holds up her glass and grins. Vera holds hers up, too, but doesn’t look at me when we drink.
The hot water and cold drinks do their tingly headrush thing, and pretty soon all three of us are turvy and blissy and laughing. We make a drinking game out of the floating thermos, as in whoever it floats to via the current has to drink, and for some reason it keeps coming back around to Aline, and she’s kicking her feet at it like no, no, no, you evil little robot, and Vera is hiccupping how she does when she laughs too much, and it feels almost like we’re drinking for the first time again.
Me and Aline apologize to Vera, ultra-blubbery, for the Venice thing. Then, still in the repentant spirit, Aline confesses that she was still hooking up with Thierry when I started dating him, but I already knew and never much liked him anyway. Vera tells us how her mom ordered her a bunch of physical makeup from some specialty place, but she had no clue what to do with it and ended up smearing it all over her hospital room’s wall, pretending to suffer a delusion where she believed she was Pablo Picasso.
Before long Aline flicks out, sliding down the side of the hot tub and mumbling about how she way way loves us, which is sweet. We get her out and nest her in some towels on the couch, propped on her side just in case. Then it’s just me and V and we’re drunk.
"What’s it feel like not to have your Face?" I say. "Besides horrible."
We’re in the kitchen now because we’re looking for acetaminophen. You crush one and mix it in a glass of water and you wake up without a hangover, or at least Aline thinks so.
"It was only odd for a few days," Vera says, scraping around on the shelves, up on tiptoe. "And then you feel… light."
"Light how?"
"Like a balloon," Vera says. "Up, up, and away, strump." She turns around, twisting a fistful of the fabric of her shirt in a way a Face probably would not allow. "You want to try?"
It seems really obvious to me, now that I’m drunk and I remember back to that night when she chatted me. Maybe I’ve known this whole time.
"You got the virus on purpose."
"Yeah. Did." Vera looks relieved to say it. She smiles her unwhite smile and it makes me so angry. "Looking for a way to be real again, remember?"
"I thought you were looking for fucking fashion leaks," I snap. "Thought you tapped something bad by accident. Everyone was so gutted for you, and worried—"
"You want to try?" Vera repeats, ignoring me as she does when she’s drunk. "Not a full deletion. Just a flicker." She sinks down onto the glassy kitchen floor, tugging me down by the wrists. Her bare skin is warm and well textured even though I thought it would be cold and goopy for some reason.
"But don’t you love us still?" I ask, the mads transmuting to sads all at once. If I was Aline I’d be throwing the cartoon tears by the bucket. Instead I just feel like I’ve got hard plastic in my throat. "Everything we did together, V. It’s gone, V?"
"I’ve still got it where it counts," Vera says, pulling me into one of those sloppy hugs that usually only happen after one of us throws up. She feels softer than normal.
"Like, you offsite stored it somewhere?" I sniff, only half-joking.
"Just try it for a bit," Vera says. "Just us two."
She shows me how to get there, down under all the masked protocols and shit, past all these blistery red pop-ups asking me what exactly I am doing. The override is so simple, just a little off/on toggle.
"That’s why I had to use the virus," Vera says. "Too easy to go back, otherwise. That’s what other people were saying."
The toggle revolves around us on the kitchen floor, a glowy little satellite. I don’t know if I can do it.
"Minimalism might be back in," Vera says. "Right?"
"Yeah, strump, whatever, strump." I take a deep breath. "Hold my hand, would you?"
I know I can’t preview before I do it, because if I preview I’ll see myself looking so ugly and lonely and small and anonymous I will not be able to go through with it. Instead I try to think about how Vera looked in the waves, how I looked as a kid.
Holding hands with her, I switch off my Face. Everything dissolves around me, all my updates, all my streams, all my little bits of manufactured me, and it feels almost like coming up for air.
(2016)
THE TURING TEST
Chris Beckett
Born in Oxford in 1955, Chris Beckett is a former social worker who now writes and lectures on this subject. He is the author of seven novels (the most recent, Beneath the World, A Sea, came out in April 2019) and won the Arthur C. Clarke award in 2012 for his novel Dark Eden. Beckett deploys robots only occasionally, but to devastating effect, laying bare all the ways we value, and fail to value, each other. In his debut novel The Holy Machine (2004) a man obsessed with a sexbot finds himself defending her burgeoning sentience. The following story – originally published in Interzone and collected with thirteen others in The Turing Test (coll 2008) – fought off excellent non-genre competition in 2009 to win the Edge Hill Short Story Prize.