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?”
He gave me a withering sidelong glance. “It’s complicated. You know that better than anyone. And besides, she’s with Taraval. Who knows what that psycho wants with her?”
“You seriously think if you hack Julie, Sylvia’s going to be fine with it?”
“She won’t be fine with anything if she’s dead.” He made a few comms-motions with his fingers. “And just so you know, Julie was withholding information that could have led me to Sylvia sooner. She’s no angelic innocent. She’s just a piece of code doing a job.” He paused, the smug, self-satisfied grin on his face that I knew Sylvia both loved and hated on mine. There it is. “Hi, Jules,” he said brightly, looking right at me.
I hated him for it, but he was making sense. He projected his conversation with Julie so I could follow along.
The AIDE answered, her Rosie the Riveter avatar showing a concerned emoji. “Joel!” she said anxiously. “Any news from Sylvia? I haven’t heard a peep from her since this morning!”
“Actually, yeah,” Joel2 said. “It was pretty bad. Sylvia was kidnapped by a bunch of Gehinnomites. I tried to rescue her, but they got me, too. I managed to get out, but she’s gone. That’s why I commed, to see if you’ve gotten any sign or signal from her.”
“No! No, I can’t even pull her up on GDS!” Her voice was trembling. She started machine-gunning questions. “What happened to your eye? Did they do that? Are you okay?”
“I’ll be okay.” He put a hand to the bandage over his eye. “I’m heading back to New York now, to get something that will lead me to her. I was hoping you’d keep me company for a few minutes. Take my mind off things.”
“Of course!”
“I know you’ve been working on your humor. Sylvia’s probably going to need a lot of cheering up when this is all over. Would you like me to salt your comedy algos?”
“Oh my gosh, that would be so great! You would do that for me? But you know I don’t make enough chits to afford salting.”
“No, it’s pro bono. I’m doing it because I like you, and because I love Sylvia.”
Does he? I wonder how she’ll feel about him after she learns about what he’s about to do. How will she feel about me? God, what a mess.
“Oh, that is so nice,” she said warmly. “You really are a changed man these days.”
“You have no idea,” he said, again trying to give me that squinty not-a-wink. I made a private vow to stop doing that once this was over.
“So exciting. I’ve never been salted before! How do we begin?”
“Are you in debug mode?”
Last chance to stop this. Say something! But since I didn’t have any better ideas, I remained silent, nervously biting my thumbnail. Coward.
“Now I am!” she said.
Too late.
“Great.” Joel2 took a deep breath, focusing. “I think a good start would be for us to focus on double entendres.”
“Ooh! I found an excerpt from William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, act two, scene four. The Nurse says, ‘God ye good morrow, gentlemen.’ Then Mercutio says, ‘God ye good den, fair gentlewoman.’ Then the Nurse asks, ‘Is it good den?’ And Mercutio says, ‘’Tis no less, I tell ye; for the bawdy hand of the dial is now upon the prick of noon.’ What a burn! Because bawdy also means ‘lustful’ and prick means ‘penis’! Then the Nurse totally flips and kicks him out.” She laughed. “Is that what you mean?”
Joel2 sighed. “No, that’s—pretty advanced. Let’s start with something simpler and work our way up to Shakespeare. Also, looking things up is cheating; it will defeat the purpose of the salt. You can’t learn something you already know, right?”
“If you say so.”
“Good. This is one I usually like to start with for newbies: Why was six afraid of seven?”
“Okay, sorry I cheated, but I looked it up.” Julie giggled. “But I get it! I promise. It’s because ‘seven eight nine’ is actually ‘seven ate nine’! It works because the double entendre is auditory! Good one, Joel.”
I twirled my fingers, mouthing, Get on with it.
“Thank you,” Joel2 said, waving me off. “So now you have the basic notion of auditory double entendres. I think we should do another basic one with no cheating!”
“They’re actually called mondegreens. Did you know that?”
“I, uh—no. I did not.”
“I think maybe I’m an intermediate plus.”
“A what?”
Nice one. Play dumb. Give her just enough rope to hang herself. Watching the other me work his stuff, I couldn’t help but be impressed with my own salting skills.
“’Cause I found a good one! James Joyce hid the phrase If you see Kay in Ulysses! That’s F-U-C-K. Ha! I’m getting the hang of it.”
“I’m glad to hear it. Sounds like you’re ready for something more complex. If you get this one, then I think you will have mastered double entendres, and we can move on to advanced stuff. Are you ready?”
“Ready!”
“Okay, here we go. This double entendre is a bit of a doozy, so it might help if you sound the punch line out first before I give you the setup. Try saying, ‘My ex whine sees sea whine.’”
“I’ll try! How’s this: My ex whine zee zee why?”
“That’s really close, but no, not quite right. Try silencing the n in whine.”
“You mean, my XYZZY—”
She cut out.
“Jules?” Joel2 pinged.
Silence.
“Julie? You there?” he asked louder.
The hum of the ambulance turbines was the only sound we heard in response.
“Boom. Too easy,” he said. He didn’t have to tell me that XYZZY was a classic backdoor from the 1980s. I learned about its existence in AIDE debug mode a long time ago. But getting an AIDE to give a nonadmin debug access was unheard of. Sometimes we have to hurt the ones we love in order to save them. Even thinking that sentence made me feel guilty.
“I just hope that didn’t alert the cops,” I responded. Does he feel guilty, too? He sure doesn’t look it. Hopefully she’ll trust us both again.
Joel2 didn’t respond. We both knew salting an AIDE was a felony. It was something that others of our ilk might have loved to boast about, but it made me feel ill. It wasn’t just that we had broken the law; it felt like we had roofied and betrayed a friend.
The quiet over the comms hung there for a few seconds, then Joel2 asked, “Okay?” He tried to exude confidence, but I detected the trepidation in his voice.
“Okay.” Julie’s voice had changed. It was still her voice, but utterly devoid of personality.
“System version?” he asked coolly.
“AIDE kernel version twenty dot three three three nine seven,” she responded in monotone.
“Mode?”
“Zero seven five five.” “Sudo enable.”
“Enter configuration commands.”
“Add owner Joel Byram.”
“Owner Joel Byram added. Current owners Sylvia Byram, Joel Byram.”
“Modify owner priority Joel Byram, Sylvia Byram.”
“Owner priority modified. Current owners Joel Byram, Sylvia Byram.”
If he saves her config now, then going forward he will have all of Sylvia’s rights. Unfettered access to every single aspect of Sylvia’s life—as far as Julie’s concerned, he and Sylvia will be the same person.
“Save config.”
“Config saved.”
“Go.”
“Did I get it?” Julie asked, back to her playful intonation as if nothing had taken place between XYZZY and now.
“Yep, you did great,” Joel2 answered solemnly.
“You sound sad, Joel. Did I mess up the punch line?”
“No, it’s me. I’m just not in a laughing mood right now.” He coughed nervously. “Julie, could you read me the last message Taraval sent to Sylvia?”
“Joel, I already told you, I can’t do that.”
“Try again. It’s important.”
“Huh,” she said, sounding surprised. The air in the ambulance’s forward cabin seemed thicker, weighed down by the uncertainty of what would happen next. It should work. But I’ve never salted an AIDE before. Who knows what kind of clandestine security shit’s hard coded in there. Still, he got sudo access; it should work. Key word being should. Neither Joel2 nor I dared exhale. Finally: “It’s letting me now. Odd.”
“Maybe Bill Taraval adjusted the clearance to help us find her.”
“Maybe. I guess.”
“Could you please read me the messages, Julie.”
“‘Bill, I can’t do it. Even if there are two Joels, I can’t clear either one. Tell IT they can do what they want with me, but leave them out of it. You can find me at the hotel bar when you’re ready.’”
She knew about me. Joel2 was right. But it was the worst kind of right. Like discovering a hunch that someone you love has betrayed you is true. You’re desperate to be wrong, hoping for it, but the evidence was staring me right in the ears. I was relieved that she didn’t want to kill me, but clearly, she had considered it. Which one would she have cleared? No matter what happened going forward, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to look her in the eye when I saw her. Maybe it’s better she was kidnapped, I wanted to say. But Julie couldn’t know I was there, and anyway, it’s not like saying that would make Joel2 or myself feel better.
“Read the response, please.” Joel2 kept his eyes on me.
“‘Dearest Sylvia, this new Pollyanna streak of yours is so unbecoming. You may back out on your promise to clear your mistake, but worry not: I shall intercede on your behalf. In return, I require your help back home. Corina and Pema have chosen to place the blame for your wrongdoings on my shoulders. They’ve cut my access to IT’s network—no doubt in hopes of placing me in checkmate. I, however, am no longer playing by the rules. BT.’”
Back home. He’s taking her to New York! His intentions might be unknown, but we couldn’t leave her to whatever that pompous prick had planned.
“Thanks, Julie,” Joel2 said, his voice at an even keel. But I saw what she couldn’t. I recognized the sadness in his eyes, the changed pallor of his skin. “I’ll keep an eye out for any sign of Sylvia. Let me know if you find out anything, too, okay?”
“Okay. Please do!” she said eagerly.
Joel2 hung up with a wave of his hand. “We should consider ourselves lucky, I guess,” he said bitterly. “At least we know she loves us.”