He blushed. They did the deed. “Oh.” I said, turning red myself. Awkward.
“Anyway,” he said, trying to restock the oxygen in the cabin, “I woke up and she was gone. I don’t know how the Gehinnomites managed to disable her comms. They left her GDS on, though—I guess because they wanted me to find her. All so we could reunite and she could tell me from her own mouth that I was a copy of you.”
The bitterness in his face was palpable. I cleared my throat, not wanting to get him angrier than he already was. I don’t like me when I’m angry.
“Those guys, the Gehinnomites, they probably forced her into it. Fuck ’em. We just need to find Sylvia, then we can get this all figured out.”
“Yeah.” He ruminated on that, but seemed to move on. “What about this Moti guy? Seems like he’s known where everyone’s been since this thing began.”
“Good call. And if he doesn’t, then he sure as shit will know how to find her. Only problem is…” I hesitated.
“What?”
“I have no idea how we’re going to get back to New York. I mean, there’s a TC in the hospital, but we need to get someone to operate it. Even if you or I could somehow figure out how to work the console—which is unlikely, based on my experience—only one of us can go.”
“That’s the only problem?” Joel2 asked in a condescending tone that Sylvia had told me several times she hated. Being on the receiving end of it for the first time, I understood why.
“Can’t play the game if we’re both not on the board,” I said.
“Well, if that’s the only thing keeping us from winning, then Moti is about to lose.”
“What do you mean?”
“I have a plan,” Joel2 said, “but you’re not going to like it. I’m going to hack Julie.”
A PERFIDIOUS INDULGENCE
REMEMBER HOW I SAID that most people looked upon their AIDEs as beloved familiars? In Sylvia’s case, the relationship with her app was more than familiar—it was familial. Julie became the sister my wife had never had. I had warned her a few times that she shouldn’t get too close, that no matter how “real” she seemed, Julie was only an app, coded to serve, but I couldn’t control her emotions. The AIDE plugged some hole in Sylvia’s psyche, some place not even I could occupy.
And so I let it slide, even though I knew it was a bit unhealthy. That if Julie ever crashed or got deleted, for my wife it would be like losing a loved one. I could see how happy Julie made her, and I didn’t want to be the one to take that away from her.
But Joel2 saying that we should hack Sylvia’s AIDE, that we slice and dice her code and peer into my wife’s deepest secrets, that wasn’t like taking Julie away. That was like cutting her open and pulling out her brains with my bare hands. It wasn’t just incredibly illegal; it was a violation of Sylvia’s very essence. It’s why Joel2’s suggestion set me off.
“What?” I said, flabbergasted. “Man, you’re crazy. Don’t even think about it.”
“Listen to me. She can operate the San José TC. She has Sylvia’s clearance and expertise.”
“Bullshit. We can hire a drone. We can—”
“We can’t hire shit. You’re an invalid. How long before the authorities notice an ambulance was stolen by a gimp with no comms? Don’t you get that every single time anything notices you, it’s an alert-worthy event? You’re like a walking alarm screaming, Danger, danger, danger! to everything around us. The longer we take, the greater the risk to us and Sylvia. No, we need to do things my way.”
“If you hack Julie, Sylvia will never forgive us. You already salted her once—”
“Again, to save Sylvia’s life—”
“No. I am not okay with this.”
“Again, again, it’s the only way we can port to New York. Use your brain!”
Has he lost his fucking mind? Could the same thing happen to me? “I am. You’re crazy. If we do this, I’m going to end up divorced and in jail.”
“Listen to yourself! You think I’m crazy? You’re the one who keeps referring to me as you. Should we ask my comms who the real Joel Byram is? I don’t know where you get off thinking you’re the real me. I’m the one who actually made it to Costa Rica, and at least I’ve got the common sense to get that the real me is dead. We died, Joel. Joan Anglicus, Joanna Shila, whatever her name was—she blew Joel Byram up. You’re the accidental Joel. And I’m the Joel our wife Frankenstein-ed in Costa Rica. Neither of us is Joel Byram, you idiot. That guy died the first time he teleported.”
“You sound like a fucking Gehinnomite!” My face was red with anger. I could feel the fight-or-flight adrenaline coursing its way through my veins.
“I’m also the only person in the world you can trust right now. Do you really think you can handle this little rescue mission by yourself? If so, let’s stop the ambulance. I’ll walk into the cloud forest and you’ll never see me again.”
He really seemed ready to do it. “I’m just saying, there’s a trust issue. If we’re ever going to get back to normal after this—”
“Normal?” He laughed, and not in a nice way. “You think I care about betraying Sylvia’s trust at this point? Consider what she’s done to us for a minute! She lied to us about Honeycomb, lied about teleportation, lied about Frankenstein-ing me—”
I cut him off. “Stop using that word as a verb. It’s not—”
He kept talking over me. “She lied about you, too, Joel. Maybe you haven’t had as much time to process it as me, but the sooner you realize that your wife left you for dead in New York, the better. Hell, maybe she even chose me over you. Did you consider that? That Sylvia knew you were in New York, but she stayed in Costa Rica with me. Why do you think that is?”
I finally lost control of my temper and took a swing at him, aiming for the mouth. I’d like to say that I didn’t want to aggravate his existing injury by avoiding his eye, but really I just wanted him to shut up. The things he was saying were cruel, but they were dangerously close to the thoughts I was having, too. Had my wife chosen one of us already? What if it wasn’t me? I put all my unanswered angst into my punch.
Anticipating my strike—perhaps wanting to throw a punch himself—he quickly slunk into his seat. My fist missed his face, and the padded cushion of the headrest bore the brunt of the impact. Taking advantage of my displacement, he sprung up with an uppercut to my unguarded chin. The back of my head slammed against the windshield, sending me reeling.
“Fuck!” I yelled out of anger and frustration.
“Fuck is right!” he yelled back. “As in shut the fuck up, you moralizing hypocrite, and let me do what I have to do to rescue our wife.” He looked off, already focusing on his comms.
What a prick. Is this how I appear to other people? Shit, I must be such an asshole.
“I don’t get it,” I said, rubbing the lump on my head. “If you hate Sylvia so much, why even bother trying to save her?”