Zero echo shadow prime, p.3
Zero Echo Shadow Prime, page 3
Alan laughed. “Don’t worry, you’ll shine out there. Then everyone will get to see the Charlie I know and love.”
She smiled. At least she could take comfort in the fact that Alan would be at her side.
The stylist released Charlie’s head. He took a step back to inspect his work. “Ugh, that’s absolutely horrid!”
“We gotta run with it,” Angela said and shooed the deflated stylist out of the room. She pointed her index finger at Charlie. “You’re on in five. You’ll enter the stage by yourself.” Angela redirected her finger toward Alan. “You’ll be introduced later in the segment. Hold on.” She placed her finger against her ear, indicating a phone call, and migrated to the other side of the room.
Charlie whispered to Alan, “So, you never answered the question. Are you nervous?”
“Of course I am.” He smirked. “That’s how you made me.”
“You ready?”
Alan nodded.
Charlie issued the command: “Alan, spin, no eyes.”
Just like Lala the Space Dog, Alan spun into the ground.
Charlie opened a private, telepathic conversation.
{Charlie_Nobunaga:mindspace> Charlie: Still there?
Alan: Yup.
Charlie: Ok, just wait for my command, I guess.}
Charlie was led to the back of the Paul Renner set. Random crew people zipped past her as they prepared for taping. On the other side of the curtain, she could hear the studio audience settling.
At the same time, her stomach was unsettling. Charlie clawed at her belly, hoping to stem the inevitable progression. The dreaded stab came next. She lurched over and stumbled a bit, losing her sense of balance. She could faintly hear Angela raising a voice of concern. The rest of the backstage clamor faded away. The polished floor swished below Charlie. She pleaded with herself, Not here, anywhere but here. A violent torrent rose inside her body. She heaved. A few drops of saliva fell from her lip. More wanted to come out, but she had nothing left to give.
“Five!” A man yelled in the distance. Charlie perked her ears up. “Four!” The pain in her belly was subsiding. “Three!” Charlie took a deep breath and straightened her spine. She shook off the delirium. “Two!” The world returned. She was back.
The jazz band started playing. The audience clapped and hooted.
Backstage, all eyes were on Charlie—the cameramen, the grips, the production assistants, everyone.
“Are we good?” Angela asked with a hopeful grimace. The poor woman’s face had drained of color, as if she were the sick one.
Charlie nodded. She was good. At least, for now.
Paul Renner’s famous nasal voice hushed the crowd. “Hey, welcome back. My guest tonight is someone who’s been dominating the headlines lately. Winner of the 2045 Rivir Prize, the prestigious Turing Test Competition. The fact that she won the test is not remarkable as much as how she won it. Oh, and she’s only eighteen years old. Please welcome to the show, Charlie Nobunaga.”
“You’re on,” Angela whispered, and she gave Charlie a gentle shove in the direction of the curtain.
Charlie walked on stage and was instantly blinded by the wall of light. The studio audience slowly came into view as her pupils contracted. She gave them a dorky wave. Her breath was remarkably calm and steady. Perhaps her nerves were cleared by the stomach attack.
She sat down at the desk, opposite of Paul Renner. He was the hip, intellectual type in a sharp suit with a wacky bow tie. Charlie didn’t watch a lot of talk television, but when she did, she usually watched Renner. His program was smarter than most. It was the only reason she’d agreed to be on the show.
“Love the hair,” Renner said.
Charlie’s image appeared on the large center-stage display. She cringed at the sight. The hairstylist had been right; she did look horrid. “Um, thanks,” Charlie replied. “We were going for the mad-scientist look.”
“It totally works,” Renner said. A virtual copy of Time magazine appeared above the desk next to him. He read aloud the magazine’s headline: “‘God is a Freshman at Caltech.’ Appropriate moniker?”
Charlie hated that cover. Its central image was Charlie and Alan touching fingers in a similar manner to God and Adam in the Sistine Chapel. It was all so melodramatic. “Well, they got the freshman part right,” she said. The audience was gracious enough to laugh at her joke.
“Modesty, I like that. So…” Renner shifted his posture, signaling that he was getting down to business. He proceeded to address the audience more than Charlie. “We’re all familiar with Shadows. They assist with daily tasks, take dictation, monitor our vitals—for some, they administer mood enhancers…”
The audience laughed. A year and a half ago, Renner had been indicted with illegal Shadow doping. Shadows were known to facilitate dopamine production in their user’s brain, though it was not exactly an out-of-the-box feature. Renner’s case was ultimately thrown out of court, and he had since taken the scandal in stride, incorporating it into his onscreen persona.
“Shadows are always around us,” Renner continued. “They are inside of us, in our smart cells. But they are quite stupid when it comes to that very basic human activity—no, I’m not talking about sex, although that’s a limitation as well.” The audience guffawed. Renner tried to wave them down. “This is just from reports I’ve read. I know nothing about it personally. No, I’m referring to a Shadow’s ability to con-ver-sate, to forge meaningful human connections.” Renner pivoted away from the audience and addressed Charlie directly: “How is Alan different from any other Shadow in this regard?”
The air drained from Charlie’s lungs. Now, she was nervous. She didn’t have much practice talking about her work. “Um, well, historically speaking, the paradigm for intelligent agents has been nondirective.”
“Non-dir-what?”
“Nondirective. They are essentially stateless.”
“Stateless? Charlie, our audience is primarily English-speaking,” Renner quipped to audience laughter.
“Right.” Charlie’s voice quavered a bit. She straightened her back and took a deep breath. “What I mean by stateless is…their emotion states do not change. Your Shadow’s personality, his mood, his feelings toward you—they’re the same on Monday as they are on Wednesday. It doesn’t matter if the two of you had a fight on Tuesday. Or shared a laugh. Or shared some deep revelation. You change, but the Shadow never does.”
“It’s a perpetual amnesiac. It has no memory.”
“Well, that’s not entirely true. Shadows have memory. In fact, they have a larger capacity than the human brain. But they can only remember facts, not emotions. Or, at least, not in any kind of convincing way.”
“And you’ve found a way to change that?”
“I think so.”
“Well, let’s see.” Renner turned to the audience and said with gusto, “Do you guys want to see Alan?”
The audience replied with a unanimous, “Yes!”
“Awesome,” Renner said. “But first, we have a replay of Alan’s Rivir Prize-winning performance.”
The center-stage display switched from an angle of Charlie’s face to a video of the Rivir Prize Competition.
The stage looked like a typical mid-twentieth-century living room. Three people sat in a row of plush, fancy chairs. They were visible to the audience but separated from one another by freestanding curtains.
“First off, give us some background,” Renner said. “This is the third annual Rivir Prize Competition?”
“Sort of,” Charlie answered. “The actual competition has been around for decades, well before the advent of Shadows, but it’s only been called the Rivir Prize since Rivir started sponsoring it.”
“Rivir’s own employees aren’t working fast enough, so they decided to outsource?”
Charlie smiled. “I guess.”
Renner pointed his finger directly at one of the cameras. “You hear me Jude Adler? If you are looking for someone to lead your Shadow department, we have her right here. I’m gonna require a finder’s fee, though.”
The audience laughed. Charlie couldn’t help but blush. Jude Adler, CEO of Rivir Inc., was a visionary. She brought smart cells to the masses. She invented the Shadow. Needless to say, she was one of Charlie’s biggest heroes.
“So tell us what we’re seeing,” Renner said.
Charlie looked at the display and narrated: “This is the classic Turing Test setup. The man sitting in the middle is the judge. Alan’s on the left. A human volunteer is on the right. The judge talks to each one for ten minutes.”
“It sounds a little like speed dating,” Renner said.
“Yes, only in this case, the judge has to figure out who’s human.”
“So then it’s exactly like speed dating,” Renner quipped to laughter and applause. “Okay, we’re about seven minutes into the test. Let’s see how Alan is faring…”
The volume on the center-stage display rose to an audible level. Alan was in midconversation with the judge. “I think Tarantino is good,” Alan said, “but not as good as some of his influences: Leone, de Palma, Scorsese—”
“Wait a minute! Wait a minute!” The judge aggressively wagged his finger. “You said earlier that you hated Scorsese.”
“No, I didn’t,” Alan said. “I think he’s great.”
“No. If I remember correctly, you said he was overrated.”
“I said Spielberg was overrated.”
“No, you said Scorsese.”
Alan raised his voice. “Don’t tell me what I said! I know exactly what I said!”
“Okay, whatever.”
“Hey, if you’re going to track me, at least get your facts straight!”
“Okay, fine, chill,” the judge said, shrinking into his seat.
“For the record, I fucking love Scorsese!”
“Jeez, man. I get it. You’re not a Shadow…just an asshole.”
“This test is over!” Alan rose from his seat and stormed offstage.
Both audiences were stunned, at the Rivir Prize Competition and at the Paul Renner Show. Charlie covered her face in embarrassment. This was the second time she’d had to suffer through this moment.
Renner broke the silence with a series of deliberate claps. “That was quite a performance. And so he won? Even though he quit midconversation?”
“I had a mini heart attack when it happened,” Charlie admitted. “But the judge thought his emotional outburst was, um, shall we say organic. He’d never seen anything quite like it before.”
“And neither have we. Okay, let’s bring him out. Charlie?”
She nodded and issued the command: “Alan, spin, all eyes.”
Alan spun out of the stage to great applause. He bowed to the audience and then took a seat beside Charlie at the desk.
“So, Alan,” Renner said, “tell me your thoughts on Scorsese.”
The audience roared.
Alan grinned and nodded, taking the zinger in stride. “Just so everyone knows,” he informed the audience, “I’m not usually like that. I’m usually a pretty nice guy.”
“So you’re not a twenty-four-seven rage machine?” Renner asked.
“I experience a full range of emotions. I get sad, I cry, I laugh.”
“And you are obviously sensitive about your tastes in film.”
“No,” Alan asserted. “You only saw the final straw, but the judge was tracking me the whole way through.”
“Tracking?”
“Trying to catch me in a contradiction. It’s the easiest way to separate human versus Shadow. Humans are fairly consistent with their opinions, whereas Shadows usually just parrot what’s been said by random humans on the Internet.”
“Ah, the Internet. That great bastion of good taste,” Renner quipped.
“Yeah. Anyway, he thought he had me when he didn’t. Maybe I overreacted.”
“Now about that…” Renner’s tone grew more serious. “Critics have said that your win was undeserved, that your outburst was at best a ‘calculated risk’ and at worst a ‘cheap trick.’ So tell me: How do we know you actually experience emotion and aren’t just faking it?”
Alan smirked. “How do I know you’re not faking it?”
Renner shrugged playfully. “Touché. Just this morning, actually, my wife…”
As Renner went on a tangent, Alan opened a private conversation with Charlie.
{Alan: We need to talk.
Charlie: Now?
Alan: The health scan is done.
Charlie: I thought I told you not to run a scan!}
“…I believe you,” Renner told Alan, “but what would you say to your critics, the Shadow-phobes, the skeptics, and the Luddites?”
Before Alan had a chance to answer, Charlie interjected, “Emotions are impossible to prove. They are internal states and therefore beyond measurement. Even in humans, even with the highest resolution brain scans, we can never be sure. But I will say this: Alan is more human than many humans I know. Almost to the point of being annoying.” Charlie shot Alan an angry glance.
“Annoying?” Renner asked.
{Alan: I’m sorry if my concern for your well-being is annoying, Charlie.}
Charlie couldn’t deal with Alan right now. Her brain was starting to fatigue under the strain of two simultaneous conversations. She decided to focus solely on Renner. “Like most Shadows, Alan and I share the same body. But unlike most Shadows, I’ve given him a lot of latitude to make his own decisions. Perhaps too much.”
{Alan: You have a cancerous tumor in your pancreas. Thirty-four millimeters. I’m sorry.}
That was it. Charlie checked out of both conversations.
Cancer. She had heard that diagnosis before. It had led to several months of dread, culminating in the loss of someone very close. Charlie felt herself being swallowed by a visceral anguish, one she’d tried to repress for too long. Every muscle in her body tightened. She gripped her chair. It would take all her strength to avoid breaking down in front of this studio audience.
{Alan: Charlie?
Charlie: …
Alan: I’ve already called your father.}
“No!” Charlie screamed. She instantly covered her mouth, realizing the scream was out loud.
Renner threw his hands in the air like a bank teller in an armed robbery. “Wow! Where did that come from?”
Charlie’s eyes shifted toward the wing of the stage. The glowing red EXIT sign beckoned to her. She desperately wanted to walk right out the door. “Um, actually, I wasn’t listening. Sorry. What was the question?”
“Am I boring you?” Renner asked.
“That was the question?”
“No.” Renner wasn’t exactly angry, but his usual funny-man persona had all but vanished. “The question was: Do you have any business plans with Alan? I’m sure a lot of companies would love to get their hands on him.”
“Alan is not for sale,” Charlie said flatly.
“So we shouldn’t expect to see Alan at our local Shadow store?”
“Alan is my best friend. He can be thickheaded sometimes, but he’s still my friend. You wouldn’t sell your friend, would you?”
“I suppose not. Well, even if we don’t see Alan on store shelves, I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot more of you.” Renner turned to the camera and said, “Remember the name Charlie Nobunaga. She has a bright future ahead of her.”
Charlie forced a smile.
* * *
Charlie elected to walk the ten miles home from the studio in Burbank to her apartment in Pasadena. She preemptively disabled all of her comms. No Internet, no calls. She would have plenty of time later to deal with the fallout of her diagnosis. For now, she just wanted to restore the world to the way it had been two weeks ago when her biggest concern was trying to win a Turing Test Competition.
“Four missed calls from your father,” Alan informed Charlie as he walked beside her. “What should I tell him?”
“Don’t answer,” Charlie said.
“I may not have firsthand knowledge of human familial relationships, but—”
“Don’t make me disable you too.”
“Are you mad at me?”
Charlie stopped abruptly to face Alan. He looked like a scolded child, confused and scared, with pleading eyes. Charlie had never seen him like this before. “No,” she assured him, “you didn’t know. But next time, don’t make decisions for me.”
“I’m sorry. I won’t.”
Charlie resumed her walk, but Alan’s concern was not abated. He continued, “But you really need to address this situation.”
“I am,” Charlie said. “By letting it be.”
“You’re just going to let the tumor grow? Let it kill you?”
“I don’t expect you to understand.”
“Because I’m a Shadow?”
“Because you haven’t lived my life.”
By the time Charlie and Alan reached the apartment, the sun had set. Monkey toddled to the door to greet her. Charlie bent down and patted the robot’s chrome head. When she lifted her eyes, she shrieked in horror. Someone else was in the room.
The figure stepped into the light, commanding Charlie’s attention. With his grim expression, imposing physique, and executive suit, he was as foreign and unwelcome in this setting as a person could be. Yet Charlie knew the man. Andrew Nobunaga, her father. He lorded over her cluttered living room, making her feel small and slovenly by comparison.
“Long time no see,” Charlie said.
Andrew nodded.
“Are you really there?” she asked.
To Charlie’s surprise, Andrew blinked in and out of sight. Of course, it was perfectly within her father’s MO to send a holographic avatar to Pasadena instead of making the trip himself, but such a transmission usually required consent from the receiver. Charlie had given no such consent, and considering the strength of her network security, Andrew might have had an easier time simply breaking down her door. He must have paid some hacker a lot of money.
