The Perfect Wife
“Well, why not?” you say wearily. “You’re already three-quarters artificial.”
Her smile doesn’t slip. “He hasn’t programmed you to be polite, I see!” Again she turns to the camera. “Earlier we spoke to Abbie Cullen-Scott’s sister, Lisa, to invite her on this show. She was too upset to take part, but confirmed the family will investigate whether data protection or identity theft laws have been breached.” She turns back to you. “That’s a problem, isn’t it? If you have feelings, how do you square them with the pain and suffering you’re causing others?”
For a moment you can’t think of an answer. You’re too distracted by thoughts of Lisa. Lisa, upset.
“No one wants to hurt other people,” you manage to say. “But sometimes in life you can’t help it.”
“Hmm,” Judy says, as if you’ve just proved her point. “Other people, indeed. After these messages— Can San Francisco afford the growing cost of crime?”
The monitors in the production booth cut to commercials. Judy looks up. “Nancy, could I get a wipe?”
The assistant is already at your side, waiting to guide you away. “That’s it?” you say disbelievingly.
Judy glances in your direction. “That’s it,” she says lightly. You both stand up. “I still don’t get it, though. If you can’t have sex with him, what’s the point of you?”
You can’t help it. You slap her. You do it instantly, without thought, although as your palm lands on her flawless, botoxed skin you find yourself thinking, Bet that’ll show.
The floor manager and production assistant have already leapt forward and pinned your arms to your sides. Judy gapes at you, shocked. Then she raises her own hand and slaps you back, hard.
A knot of production people grab you and bundle you out of the studio. “All right,” you say angrily, freeing yourself. “You can let me go now.”
“Abbie…” Tim rushes up. “Abbie, I’m so sorry you had to go through that. They promised us…But you were brilliant, Abs. Thank you.”
“I’m sorry about the slap.” Members of the makeup team elbow you out of the way as they rush into the studio. To work on Judy’s reddened skin, presumably.
“It doesn’t matter. They were already into the commercials. And she slapped you back.”
“She provoked me,” you say. “The whole time. It was deliberate.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Tim repeats. He looks at Katrina the PR adviser. “It was fine, wasn’t it?”
Katrina only shrugs.
29
You don’t want to go back to the beach house, so Tim takes you to Dolores Street instead, arriving just as Sian brings Danny home from school. She doesn’t stay, for which you’re thankful. You want to talk to Tim about everything that’s happened—her, the interview, the slap—but almost immediately, for no discernible reason, Danny has a meltdown. It takes hours to calm him down, his body arcing in pain and terror as he screams, on and on. You sit with him, trying to soothe him by holding him, but he’s too far gone. Even putting on one of his beloved Thomas videos makes no difference.
Eventually Tim takes your place, saying Danny’s more used to him now. It does seem to help, a little. Even so, it’s another hour before Danny calms down.
Tim comes downstairs, his face tired and drawn. “That was the worst in a while.”
“What caused it, do you think?”
He grimaces. “We used to think it was stomach pains, but we had all the tests and there was nothing conclusive. More likely it was some tiny, random thing—a fly, or a car alarm going off somewhere.”
“Perhaps he picked up some stress from Sian. Or me, for that matter.”
“Possibly. But I doubt it. People with autism have very low empathy—they find it hard even to identify emotions, much less understand them.”
You’re struck by something. “It’s odd, isn’t it, how what Danny suffers from is the exact opposite of what you’ve achieved with me. He’s a human with impaired empathy, and I’m—well, I’m an empathetic machine.”
“Yes.” He glances at you. “But it’s not entirely coincidence. It was thinking about Danny’s brain—wanting to understand him—that got me thinking about emotional intelligence. I thought…” His voice trails off. “I thought, maybe if I could get an artificial brain to become more empathetic, I might get some insights into how to help him.”
“And did you?”
Tim shakes his head. “The autistic brain simply doesn’t have the same capacity to learn that an AI does. With autism you have to use much more simplistic teaching methods.”
“Like the ABA program.”
“Like the ABA,” he agrees.
You’re both silent. “Tim, we need to talk about Sian,” you say at last.
“Yes.” Even though you’re indoors, he reaches for a baseball cap and pulls it firmly onto his head, bending the visor with both hands to get the shape just right. He takes a deep breath. “It was a mistake—a terrible mistake. I know that. It started a couple of years ago, when I was going through…it was a difficult time. I thought she understood that it was simply a physical thing, a couple of quick hookups that meant nothing. But I—well, I guess it became a habit. A habit I was too weak to break. And I was working so hard. Once you were on the scene, I assumed she’d realize that she and I were done. But instead she seemed almost jealous of you.”
You think back to last night—the strained atmosphere at the dinner table. And then there’d been that jibe about the salt, and how there were still some things a robot couldn’t do as well as a human. She’d been flirting with him, you realize.
And Tim—you recall the dark look he gave the TV when the reporter talked about you being creepy. Had he been having doubts about you? Was that why he didn’t say no to Sian more firmly?
“This is so new, isn’t it?” you say softly. “No one’s ever been in this position before. No one in all of history. We’re going to have to figure it out as we go along.”
“Thank you for being so reasonable. I don’t deserve it—”
“But the fact is, you do. You’re not even middle-aged yet. You can’t plan on being celibate for the rest of your life.” You hesitate. “Isn’t there anything we can do to make a physical relationship possible?”
He scowls. “You heard that bitch this afternoon. It’s the narrative people will always want to believe—that cobots are just million-dollar sex toys. Electronic Stepford Wives. I won’t let that happen. I can’t. I built you this way for a reason. So people couldn’t ever say my love for you is anything but pure. So they’d understand that you’re a person. Not some pathetic pleasure machine.”