The sim responded at once. He hadn’t felt this much excitement since … well, since never. It was almost as good as adrenaline.

The money involved wasn’t exactly pocket change, but the sim knew all the proper codes for accessing Hobson Monitoring’s corporate accounts. And, after all, it was, in a way, his company, and his money.

Yes, indeed, thought the sim. One could get almost anything on the net.

CHAPTER 22

Cathy had gone again to see her therapist. Peter realized that he envied her: she had someone to talk to, someone who would listen. If only—

And then it hit him.

Of course.

The perfect answer.

It wouldn’t compromise the experiment — not really.

Sitting in the office in his home, Peter called into the computers at Mirror Image. When prompted to log on, he typed his account name, fobson. When he’d gotten his first computer account, back at U of T, he’d been assigned his first initial and last name as his login — phobson. But a classmate had pointed out that he could save a keystroke by changing the “ph” to an “f,” and Peter had adopted that as his standard login ever since.

He descended through layers of menus and finally came to the AI experimental system. Sarkar had set up a simple menu for bringing any one of the sims into the foreground:

[Fl] Spirit (Life After Death)

[F2] Ambrotos (Immortality)

[F3] Control (unmodified)

Peter tried to choose, and, in so doing, realized he was facing the very question he and Sarkar had set out to answer. Which one would lend the most sympathetic ear? The after-death version? Would a being with no physical body really understand marital difficulties? How much of marriage was emotional/intellectual? How much of emotion was hormonal?

What about the immortal version? Maybe. Immortality meant permanence. Perhaps an immortal would have a particular affinity for questions of fidelity. After all, marriage was supposed to be forever.

Forever.

Peter thought about Spenser. And Susan Silverman. And Hawk. He was enjoying the books about them. But when was the last time Robert B. Parker had found a new situation to put them in, a new facet of their personalities to explore?

A century with Cathy.

A millennium with Cathy.

Peter shook his head. No, the immortal version wouldn’t understand. Immortality surely didn’t confer a sense of permanence. Not at all. It would give one perspective. The long view.

Peter leaned forward and pressed F3, selecting the Control simulacrum. Just him, only him, unmodified him.

“Who’s there?” said the speech synthesizer.

Peter leaned back in the chair. “It’s me, Peter Hobson.”

“Oh,” said the sim. “You mean it’s me.”

Peter raised an eyebrow. “Something like that.”

The synthesized voice chuckled. “Don’t worry. I’m getting used to being Peter Hobson simulacrum, Baseline edition. But do you know who you are? Maybe you’re just a simulacrum, too.” The speaker whistled the opening strains from the Twilight Zone theme — doing a better job of whistling than the flesh-and-blood Peter had ever managed.

Peter laughed. “I suppose I wouldn’t like it if our situations were reversed,” he said.

“Well, it’s not so bad,” said the sim. “I’m getting a lot of reading done. I’ve got about eighteen books going at once; when I get bored with one, I switch to another. Of course, the workstation’s processor is a lot faster than a chemical brain, so I’m going through material quite quickly — I’m finally making my way through Thomas Pynchon.”

It was a remarkable simulation, thought Peter. Remarkable. “I wish I had more time to read,” said Peter.

“I wish I could get laid,” said the sim. “We all have our crosses to bear.”

Peter laughed again.

“So, why did you summon me out of the bottle?” asked the sim.

Peter shrugged. “I don’t know. To talk, I guess.” A pause. “We created you after I learned about Cathy.”

No need to be more specific. The manufactured voice was sad. “Yes.”

“I haven’t told anyone about it yet.”

“I didn’t think you would,” said the sim.

“Oh?”

“We’re a private man,” it said, “if you’ll forgive the mangled grammar. We’re not given to revealing our inner self.”

Peter nodded.

“A little louder for the court, please,” said the sim.

“Sorry. I forget you can’t see me. I was agreeing with you.”

“Naturally. Look, there’s not much advice I can give you. I mean, whatever I think of, you’ve probably already thought of yourself. But try this on for size. Just between you and you, so to speak: do you still love Cathy?”

Peter was quiet for several seconds. “I don’t know. The Cathy I know — the one I thought I knew, anyway — wouldn’t have done anything like that.”

“How well do we really know anyone, though?”

Peter nodded again. “Exactly. Forgive me for using you as an example, but—”

“People hate it when you do that, you know.”

“What?”

“Use them as an example. You’ve got this tendency to use whoever is at hand as a case in point. ‘Forgive me for using you as an example, Bertha, but when someone is really fat—’”

“Oh, come on. I never say stuff like that. You know that.”

“I’m exaggerating for comedic effect; another trait of ours not everyone finds endearing. But you know what I mean: you’ll take a hypothetical conversation, and draw people into it as examples: ‘Take your own case, Jeff. Remember when your son was arrested for shoplifting? I wonder how tough you’d want to be on young offenders in that situation?’”

“I do that to make a point.”

“I know. People hate that.”

“I guess I knew that,” said Peter. “Anyway” — he said the word forcefully, taking back control of the conversation — “to use what Sarkar and I are doing as an example: we’ve created models of my mind. Models, that’s all. Simulacra that seem to operate the same way as the original. But when a real person builds a relationship with somebody else—”

“Are they in fact really having a relationship with that person, or just with a model — an image, an ideal — that they’ve built up in their own mind?”

“Uh, yeah. That’s what I was going to say.”

“Of course. Sorry, Pete, but it’s going to be hard for you to dazzle yourself with your own brilliance.” The voice chip laughed.

Peter was a bit irritated. “Well, it’s a valid question,” he said. “Did I ever really know her?”

“In a broad sense, you’re right: we probably don’t ever really know anyone. But, still, Cathy is the person we know best in the entire world. We know her better than Sarkar, better than Mom or Dad.”

“But, then, how could she do this?”

“Well, she’s never been as strong-willed as we are. That asshole Hans obviously pressured her.”

“But she should have resisted that pressure.”

“Granted. But she didn’t. Now, what do we do about that? Do we give up on the most important relationship in our lives because of it? Even setting that aside, on a more pragmatic level, do you really want to go back to looking for a mate? Dating? Christ, what a pain in the ass that would be.”