5
Cindy had transported our family into a Norman Rockwell–like setting. We were outside, sitting together at an old weather-beaten table at the edge of an apple orchard behind a gray-shingled cottage complete with peeling paint and a musty interior full of yellowing family photographs on mantelpieces.
It was warm, hot even, as the sun lazily set under a cloudless blue sky. We were on Martha’s Vineyard in a circa-1940s wikiworld. The fading day had a languid, easygoing feel to it, which was nice after a hectic day of chasing down cyberthreats. Sea air rustled in through tall, unkempt grasses atop the nearby dunes.
Like getting a fresh fix, our first baby girl proxxid had injected new life into our relationship, and the days and weeks had passed with a sense of rejuvenated expectations. Jimmy and Echo sensed what was going on, and the pair of them had volunteered to take on a lot of my Command functions, giving me the time to work things out with Cindy.
The highlight of each day became a ritualized homecoming to explore a new metaworld that Cindy would create for us, and, of course, to play with the latest proxxid. As time went on, we progressed, one by one, through Brianna, our first girl proxxid, and then Georgina, Paul, Pauli, and eventually to our new favorite, Ricky-Two.
“Adriana was right,” said Cindy, looking down into Ricky-Two’s face. “Blue eyes are the best. Just like little Ricky’s.”
“Huh?”
I was deep into a Phuture News report predicting a flare-up in the Weather Wars. I flicked away tabloid splinters that tried to correlate this to some paranormal reports. Of course, a lot of people were tracking events in the Weather Wars, and with so many people getting advance notice of events on this scale, there was a good chance the event wouldn’t happen.
As I was thinking this, the new news reported that the offensive was delayed and then quickly canceled. Suddenly, a report came in that a tactical nuclear weapon would be launched against a target in Kashmir, but this was aborted at the last instant. All sides were already at the negotiating table.
Accurate futuring technology was bringing out random behavior—phuturecasting meant everyone could see you coming, so being unpredictable and random had its advantages, usually at the expense of lacking strategic intent. The irony that “knowing the future” seemed to make things even less predictable didn’t escape me, but the serious strategists on the topic said that this perception was just the result of our primary subjectives being stuck in a single timeline.
I sighed.
The ops teams were reporting that Hurricane Ignacia had shifted directions entirely and now looked like it would slam into Costa Rica and cross over from the Caribbean into the Eastern Pacific. It had grown into a monster Category 4.
We were already backpedaling away from Hurricane Newton, a steady Category 2, as it wound its way up the coast of Mexico, and so were suddenly faced with two major hurricanes in our oceanic basin, with several other depressions spinning up in the background. Not unprecedented, but certainly unusual.
A mosquito hovered uncertainly before me, and I swatted it away, shaking my head.
“Remember our first Ricky’s eyes?” repeated Cindy. “I replayed them in Ricky-Two’s features. I just love them.”
She choked up as she said this, even though it had been six weeks since we’d discontinued the original Ricky proxxid. Sensing tears coming, I snapped out of Phuture News and focused my attention on Cindy.
“Yes, I love them, too,” I replied.
One of our favorite activities was to discuss and compare features of each proxxid. I thought I’d try launching into this to avert whatever was happening.
“I really like the face structure of Ricky-Two,” I suggested helpfully.
Cindy went completely still. In the sudden silence, I could hear the wooden grandfather clock in the cottage’s main hallway ticking through the seconds. Cindy stared down into Ricky-Two’s face. She seemed about to cry.
“Me too,” replied Cindy, catching herself. With a deep breath, she recovered from whatever it was.
“Who’s my cute little baby boy?” she whispered to the baby, jiggling him softly and then squeezing him against her body. He burbled with delight and cuddled his head into her.
Something definitely wasn’t right. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” She held the synthetic baby ever tighter.
A cicada’s whine played high in the distance. I squinted into the sunlight slanting through the apple trees and watched my wife doting over the proxxid. This was all very nice, but my uneasiness was wearing my patience thin. I’d been more than ready to move onto the real thing for some time.
I held up one hand to shield my eyes. “How about we step this one quickly through his age profiles, maybe see what he’d be like at five years old tomorrow?”
She didn’t say anything.
“Then maybe as a twenty-something the day after?”
Cindy shot me a hateful look and tightly cradled Ricky-Two. “We don’t need to do that. I already have a pretty good idea.”
Irritated, I looked down to inspect some crabgrass sprouting desperately out from under one of the feet of the table. A breeze rippled the struggling blades of grass as I watched, bringing with it the moldering decay of spoiled apples out in the yard.
“What do you mean, you have a good idea?” I asked. “We only let the first Ricky develop to about five, and Derek was just a baby when we terminated. Don’t you want to see what they’ll be like when they’re older?”
“You just know these things when you’re a mother,” she said firmly. “You can look at the older simulations if you like, but I don’t need to.”
She held the baby in front of her and began cooing softly at him.
The discussion was apparently over. I felt both uncomfortable and annoyed. “Isn’t that what the proxxids are for?”
“Honey,” she answered, staring at our proxxid. “I don’t want to argue with you, okay? It’s just not something I want to do.”
I sat for a moment, quietly putting my emotions in order before responding. “Cindy, please, put Ricky down for a second.”
“Okay, Mr. Big Ricky,” she replied finally. She turned and sat the baby on her lap, cradling him defensively. Looking up at me, she was about to say something but I cut her off.
“Can we turn this simulation off for a minute?” I asked. “I’m not comfortable here anymore.”
Hurt blossomed in her eyes, and she resisted for a moment, glancing back and forth at the cottage and then at me. Sensing my aggravation, though, she let the apple orchard and cottage fade away.
She still held Ricky-Two, but we were sitting back at our own dining room table in real-space. Behind her, light danced down from the kelp forests, illuminating a school of angelfish that swam past the window-walls of our apartment.
I leaned forward and put one hand on her knee. “I love you, honey.”
“And I love you, too.” She took my cue and held my hand with one of hers but still held tightly onto the proxxid with her other arm.
“I know this was all my idea,” I explained, “and I’ve enjoyed it, but I think this is enough. It’s time to get onto the real thing, don’t you think?”
I waited, expecting the worst.
She just smiled. “I think you’re right. This is enough.”
“Really?” I was surprised. “So we can move onto the real thing?”
She bounced Ricky-Two on her knee. “Well, give me a little time to myself, no?”