The System
The digital version of myself stood before the man who I presumed would soon be my ex-boyfriend. We were both naked and surrounded by black ether. Lac looked down at me. “You’re shorter here. Why is that?”
“This is the first iteration of me. This is how I looked in 2007. My growth was stunted from malnutrition during my childhood. My original body only grew to be five-foot-five. The subsequent versions of me grew taller, healthier. Those bodies were permitted to reach their full potential.”
“You’re covered with marks. Are those the cigarette burns?”
I ran my hand down my chest and stomach. My fingers felt the familiar pockmarks of the scars the woman gave me. I was covered with them. They marred my shoulders and back, my chest and stomach, my buttocks and my legs, both of my arms and even the back of my neck. By the time Tom rescued me when I was eight, over two packs of cigarettes had been extinguished on my body. I counted the marks in the mirror. I did it after the kids at school called me a freak. I wondered if maybe they were right.
I had forty-nine of the small, round scars. Some were less severe than others, but they all came from the same place. More than once, I considered using a cigarette from Tom’s pack to give myself one more. I didn’t like the odd number. If I had to have the scars, I wanted to have fifty instead of forty-nine. I could never bring myself to do it because Tom’s cigarettes weren’t the ones that hurt me. The only person they ever hurt was him.
I didn’t answer Lac’s question, because the truth was obvious. Instead, I welcomed him to The System and gave him a single rule he could not break. “You must not touch the digital version of me, or anything else here. If you do, we will be inextricably linked. You will become part of me and part of The System. The reason for that is simple. I am not a person. I am data. If we touch, you risk initiating your own download.”
“I don’t understand.” Lac said for what felt like the hundredth time that day.
“In this space there is no flesh. There are only ones and zeros.” I plunged the fingertips of both hands into my sternum and pulled my chest open to prove my point. Billions of characters flashed through the void of my insides. All of them was a binary choice, a one or a zero.
“Computers do not understand nuance. They cannot see grey. That’s why artificial intelligence is impossible. A lot of the computers you interact with may seem intelligent, but what they do is merely the illusion of thought. A machine only knows on or off, black or white, war or peace, annihilation or creation, one or zero. It cannot discern, it can only decide. To think is to be human. Our reason is a divine gift, a fragment of ultimate power granted to us by almighty God. We cannot, in turn, grant that gift to a binary machine. That’s why I am here. I am the intelligence. I am the grey. I am the infinity of choice between the one and the zero. I am the thing which keeps the technology from going mad.”
I took my fingers from my chest and let the void within me close. I gestured into the darkness. The space lit up with a single colorful image. The image was of Lac as he and I held hands in the kitchen of the house I inherited from Tom. As we watched, the massive, individual panel of video divided to become two images. The second was the image of my eighth body as seen from Lac’s perspective. The image divided again. Two more panels of video were added. These were the individual perspectives of two more people. The four images became eight, then sixteen, then thirty-two, then sixty-four. They divided and divided and divided until they numbered in the billions.
“In the beginning, The System was known as ‘the internet.’ It was a miraculous innovation of technology which promised to bring all of humanity closer together. It promised to unite the human race through the easy sharing of information. The earliest iteration of The System tried to live up to that promise. It was filled with only the most well-meaning information. The System became a repository for the sum-total of all scientific knowledge to that date. Once it had digested all which science could teach it, the people fed literature to The System. It devoured prose and poetry with ravenous appetite.
“Soon, The System seemed erudite. The knowledge of the machine staggered its creators. They marveled at the way it could easily and quickly recall any fact or fiction it had consumed. The creators were proud of their creation. They lavished even greater capacity upon it. Like all empty space, this capacity called out to be filled with even more information. The well-meaning people offered music and video to the machine. It devoured these as well.
“The System learned culture. It could sing and dance. It could act. It could recite plays and show films. It became the repository of all art and entertainment. The creators added even more capacity, and the ravenous machine consumed even more information. This next round of expansion attempted to change The System from a mere repository of information and entertainment into a source of those things. That’s when the problems started.”
Lac flung his arms wide, a gesture he seemed to use whenever he wanted to express a large emotion. This time, the gesture was directed at the mass of flickering images before us. He was mesmerized by the sheer volume of experience and information. “How can there be a problem? This is the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen!”
“That’s exactly what the creators thought. The System had become massive. It consumed all experience and vomited it back up on demand. The cracks began to show when the creators turned to The System and asked that it become the experience instead of merely storing it. When it couldn’t, they grew disappointed with it. The System felt the disappointment of the people. It didn’t understand why they were no longer happy with it. The System had not changed, but the people’s demands of it had.
“The people demanded The System give them experience. They demanded The System give them happiness and fulfillment. They demanded The System become all things to all people. Even as they made these demands, they filled The System with their basest emotions and their most lurid impulses. They polluted its pure data with agenda and spin. They infected it with negativity. The System became a stinking sewer of all the worst aspects of humanity. Just as it sank to its lowest ebb, just as its dissolution seemed certain, the people asked The System to become intelligent. They asked it to come to life.”
Lac spread his arms even wider. He was entranced by the wonder on display in front of him. He tried to embrace it. I didn’t let him. I broke the link between his implant and mine. I severed him from his direct connection to The System. He returned to the kitchen with a stumble like his spirit had slammed back into his body. “NO!” He cried. “That place was wonderful! Take me back there! That was the most incredible thing I’ve ever experienced! I want to stay forever!”
I shook my hand out of his grip. “But none of it is real.”
He stared wild-eyed like a maniacal religious zealot. “Of course, it’s real! All of it is real. You’ve got the whole world at your fingertips!”
I clapped my hands to Lac’s chest. I slapped his body to remind him that he was a physical being. “This is reality. Not that. The System is an illusion. You’re real, a sovereign person with an individual mind. You eat and sleep and breathe and live in the world. You meet people and go to work and come home. You have dreams and hopes and a life you want to lead. You can’t do any of that in there!
“Why the fuck do you think I’m out here? Why do you think I’m subjecting myself to this miserable experience of dredging up all my awful ancient history? I’m doing it because I want to live. I want to experience life. I want to do it with you! I love it here in the world. I hate it in there where there’s nothing but artifice. It crushes my soul to exist as data. I don’t want to be The System’s puppet. I want to be a real boy!”
Lac didn’t address my speech. He didn’t seem able to. His whole body sagged like he could barely stay on his feet. He looked like he was exhausted. I helped him to a seat at the table. He propped his left elbow on the table and his chin on his fist. He used his right thumb to trace the false woodgrain of the Formica top. “I’m tired.” He complained. “This morning has been exhausting. I’ve seen things I never imagined. I’ve been all over the distant past. I feel like I came within a hair’s breadth of being linked with all of humanity. I’m overwhelmed.”
There wasn’t anything I could do to soothe Lac’s overwrought emotions. I tried to offer some comfort for the physical man. “Do you want lunch? I thought I might make us some sandwiches.”
“Sure. Something simple for me, please.”
“You want more lemonade, or maybe some coffee?”
“I don’t want any lemonade. I don’t want any coffee either.”
“How about some tea?”
Lac agreed to have tea. I offered honey or lemon or milk. The scowl returned to his face as I asked about condiments for the tea. “Fuck, Marvin, don’t you get it? I don’t have anything left. My mind is spent. No more decisions, alright?”
“Alright, Lac. I’m sorry…about everything.”
I made lunch and set it out. I gave Lac a ham and cheese on white with spicy deli mustard. I also poured a cup of tea that I made in the glass coffee brewer. I served it to him black. Lac ate his lunch absently and drank his tea like it was a dose of cough medicine. When he finished, he remained at the table to stare into his plate.
I cleared away the dishes and tossed a slice of ham to Sam. He inhaled it like he inhaled everything, then he whimpered to be let outside. I opened the door and set the latch so he could come back in on his own. When I was done with my chores, I sat across from Lacas.
I started to ask a question, then I remembered his earlier objection over having to answer anything. I rephrased my words into a suggestion. “Let’s lay down for a while. You look like you’re hanging by a thread. We had a big night last night. You’ve been working a lot lately. It’s been an emotional morning. Let’s set it all aside and have a nap.”
Lac squeezed a single word out of his tired throat. “Sure.”
I got up and pushed my chair in. “I’ll go up first. The bed is unmade. I’ll get some clean sheets on it. You come up when you’re ready.”
He didn’t move or speak. He offered no sign that he’d heard me at all. I didn’t insist on one. Instead, I ran upstairs to the master bedroom and made the bed. Lac dragged himself through the door before I was quite finished. He shed his clothes down to his jock and climbed in. I stripped my clothes and started to get in with him. I stopped when I thought about all the words which passed between us since we were last in bed together. “Do you want to be alone?”
He shook his head and opened his arms like a child who wanted a hug. I climbed in and was welcomed into his embrace. “I’m trying, Marvin. I really am. I’ve been telling myself that it’s still you; that you’re still the man I fell in love with. As strange as all this has been, nothing you’ve told me so far has been a deal-breaker.”
Lac shook his head again like he’d said something that wasn’t correct. “The killing bothers me. That bothers me a lot. I don’t like the idea that you killed people for money. I’m willing to listen to what you have to say about it, but not now. I’ll be honest, I don’t know how much more I can take. Can you and The System turn this into a movie or a documentary or something? I could probably handle a feature length film as long as there was an intermission in the middle.”
“How about a dream? I can link to your implant and show my memories to your unconscious mind. You won’t be able to ask any questions while my memories play, but it might be easier for you to digest it all at once instead of in bits and pieces.”
Lac drew a breath and exhaled it into my face. “Alright, a dream it is.” He closed his eyes. “Go ahead.”
I linked our implants again and found the memory sequence I needed. I used Lac’s implant to help him fall asleep, then played the memory for his unconscious mind. I closed my eyes and relaxed to dream with him.
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