city blues 01 - dome city blues by Jeff Edwards

Author:Jeff Edwards [edwards, jeff]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stealth Books
Published: 2011-07-21T00:00:00+00:00

We had breakfast off the kitchen counter tops. There was a table and four chairs in the corner of the kitchen, but Lisa ignored them, so we did too. The cat feasted on a can of tuna.

The waffles turned out to be the frozen store- bought kind, but Lisa had worked a little magic on them using liberal amounts of honey-butter and a real oven instead of an ultrawave. With a bit of maple syrup and a few fresh strawberries, they were quite tasty.

After breakfast, Lisa filled the sink with hot soapy water and began to collect the dishes.

Sonja looked at her strangely. “What are you doing?”

“Washing the dishes.”

“I can see that. Why don’t you use the dishwasher? Is it broken?”

“It’s controlled by the apartment AI.”

“So?”

“So, I keep the AI turned off.”

Sonja crossed her arms. “This I’ve got to hear.”

Lisa picked up a kitchen sponge and scrubbed a soapy plate. “It’s kind of weird,” she said. “You’re going to laugh.”

“I won’t laugh,” Sonja said. She drew an X across her heart with one finger.

“You will,” Lisa insisted.

“Okay,” Sonja said. “I promise to try not to laugh. How’s that?”

“I turned off the AI so that I wouldn’t fall in love with him.” She rinsed the plate, set it in the drain rack and grabbed another one. “When I first moved into this apartment, the management had wiped the AI and reloaded it from scratch. Just the default, factory personality. The voice didn’t have any character, so I reprogrammed it to sound masculine... sexy.”

“I don’t see anything weird about that,” Sonja said. “A lot of people program their AI’s to have sexy voices.”

“I didn’t stop at the voice,” Lisa said. “I started experimenting with the personality script itself. It’s a tricky piece of code, but eventually I got it down to a system. Little by little, I changed things. I made him compassionate and nurturing. Then I made him impetuous and romantic. I gave him a name: Anthony. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was building the perfect man. It was great for a while. I could come home from work to someone who adored me. When Tony started starring in my dreams, I knew it had to stop. So I turned him off. I’ve been living without an AI for over a year.”

“Why don’t you just wipe his code?” Sonja asked. “Reload the default AI. At least you could run the dishwasher.”

Lisa made an uncertain face. “I think about doing that sometimes. But I can’t seem to make myself do it. It’s like, as long as Tony’s personality script exists, there will always be somebody who loves me. Even if it’s not a real somebody.”

Her eyes drifted down to the cat at her feet. She nudged his back playfully with a toe. “If I erase Tony, it’ll just be me and Mr. Shoes, won’t it Sweetheart?”

Mr. Shoes responded by gently butting the side of his head against Lisa’s ankle. Lisa looked shyly over her shoulder to see if we were laughing at her foolishness behind her back.

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