The Perfect Wife

It’s a small electronic tablet. An iPad Mini, hidden away here where no one would ever think to look for it.

Unlike your phone, there’s no arty personalized case, nothing to indicate whose it is. But it must be yours. No one else, surely, would hide something among your books like this.

Who’s it hidden from? Danny?

No. Back then, if you’d wanted to keep it away from Danny, you’d simply have placed it somewhere his five-year-old hands couldn’t reach.

From Tim, you realize. It can only be hidden from Tim.

Are you the kind of woman who keeps things from her husband? The thought is disturbing, almost shocking. But at the same time, not entirely surprising. It feels…It feels right, the way a word or a fact sometimes does.

   After all, Tim is the very opposite of laid-back. Perhaps you’d wanted to avoid a lengthy debate about something. A woman has a right to privacy, even within a marriage.

But a whole hidden iPad? an inner voice objects. That feels like more than just privacy.

That feels like secrecy.

And then there’s Friend. How weird is it that you get a message saying your phone isn’t safe at the exact moment another device turns up?

You hold down the iPad’s POWER button. Nothing happens—the battery’s long since depleted. You take it down to the kitchen and plug it into the charger. As you turn back upstairs, the intercom buzzes, startling you. Behind the colored glass of the front door, a face fragments into orange and red. The straggly hair looks familiar.

You go and open it. On the doorstep is Tim’s colleague, the one who tried to stop you from leaving the office. A black laptop case hangs from his shoulder. You search for his name. Mike Austin, that’s it.

“Abbie,” he says. “Hey.”

“Tim’s not here. He’s gone to the office.”

He nods. “I know. I just came from there.”

“Then why—”

“It’s you I’ve come to see,” he interrupts. “I wanted to talk to you alone.”

11



   You make him coffee.

“Is it strange,” he says carefully, as you put the cup down in front of him, “not being able to drink that yourself?”

“Believe me, that’s the least of what seems strange about all this.”

“I guess so.” There’s a short silence while he blows on his coffee, watching you over the rim of the cup. “What do you remember about me, Abbie?”

“I saw you at the office. You work with Tim.”

“That’s true. But I’m much more than a colleague. I’m Tim’s oldest friend. The co-founder of Scott Robotics. I was best man at your wedding…You don’t remember that?”

You don’t, of course. “Tim said something about having to be selective. Not giving me too many memories all at once.” You pause. “He won’t even tell me how I died.”

Mike nods thoughtfully. “Did he explain why not?”

“He said it might be too much to handle.”

“Well, he’s correct about that. Creating a sentient AI from scratch in five years—it’s an extraordinary achievement. But Tim’s been…Tim’s been pretty driven about it. The only thing that mattered was speed. Getting it done as fast as possible. Getting to you.”

   You don’t understand the point he’s making. “And he did it. Against all the odds, here I am.”

“Yes—here you are. But as for how you are…Have you heard of an AI called Tay?”

You shake your head.

“Tay was an adaptive-learning chatbot that Microsoft’s research division put out on Twitter a couple of years back. Its first tweets were charming—telling everyone how cool humanity was, how happy it was to be here, that kind of thing. Within twenty-four hours it was tweeting that feminists should burn in hell and Hitler was right about the Jews. The adaptive learning had worked too well.”

“Well, I’ll try not to go crazy. Or go on Twitter.”

You mean it as a joke, but Mike nods seriously.

“Look, I probably understand the way your brain works better than anyone. But even I couldn’t swear we got everything right. We didn’t always have time to check our steps.” He swings his laptop case up onto the table. “It was pretty irresponsible of Tim to take you away before we’d run some tests, actually. But I can check you out right here.”

“This is what you do, isn’t it?” you remember. “That’s what your job really is—to go around after him, sorting out whatever he’s been too impatient to deal with first time around. When he cuts a corner, you go back and check it. When he’s overhasty, you take care of the details.”

Mike gives a thin smile. “I prefer to think of it as having complementary skills. Tim’s like an architect—he sees the big picture. But an architect is only ever as good as his builder. Stand up, would you?” He pulls a cable from his bag.

You get to your feet. “And you’re sure Tim won’t mind?”

   “Oh, I wouldn’t mention this to Tim if I were you. You know what he’s like. You’d probably just set him off unnecessarily. ” Mike bends down. You hear the click as his cable slots into your hip.

You’re uneasy. Doing something like this behind Tim’s back feels wrong.

But then, you think, you don’t intend to say anything about that iPad, either. At least, not until you know what’s on it.

A series of beeps issue from Mike’s computer. “What are you testing for?” you ask.

Intent now on his screen, he doesn’t look up. “Like I said, Tim was in something of a rush. So rather than design an artificial mind from scratch, it seemed easier just to construct a digital replica of the human brain. Or rather, the human brains, plural. Most people don’t realize, but the main part of our brain, the bit that looks like a big walnut, is actually a relatively recent addition—it evolved after we learned to use language. Beneath it there’s an older, smaller organ called the limbic brain, which dates back to the first mammals. That’s where the emotions are generated—friendship, love, all the things that make us sociable.”

“And that’s where my empathy comes from?”

“We believe so,” he says cautiously. “And then, underneath that, there’s an older brain still, the reptilian brain. That’s what controls our unconscious compulsions—breathing, balance, the survival instinct. How the three structures interact is still something of a mystery. And of course, sometimes the balance gets out of whack. It’s not a great design by any means, at least not on paper—it’s like a house that’s been extended multiple times over the centuries, instead of being conceived from the ground up. Mostly it works fine, but when it goes wrong, it’s a bitch to fix. In theory, you could be susceptible to all the same problems humans can have—personality disorders, psychosis, confabulation…”