Forever Yours
72
Grand Unveiling
“DAD, YOU HAVEN’T MET H2 yet. Come on into my study,” Henry said when they’d finished Thanksgiving dinner. The family had all gathered at Henry’s house for the holiday this year. Lisa and Chastity had even decided to cook the meal themselves and did a great job. Sylvia, of course, helped when she could, but wisely tried to stay out of the way as the women conquered the kitchen.
“H2? What’s that?” Ryan asked as Henry led him into his study where H2 was glowing on the desk. “What is that?” Ryan asked approaching the floating head.
“H2, I’d like you to meet my father, Ryan Pascal. You know a lot about him, but you’ve never actually met,” Henry said.
“Hi, Dad!” H2 began. “I’m so glad to have a chance to talk face-to-face—so to speak.”
“It sounds just like you and looks just like you,” Ryan said, peering around the sides of the avatar. “Oh. Hi, H2. I feel like I already know you except for this… um… avatar.”
“It throws everyone off a little the first time,” H2 sighed. “You saw me once when I was in a jar, didn’t you?”
“Yes. I recall that in the office when I visited with Beau and Bill,” Ryan said. “Beau took the lead, as usual when we’re together.”
“He has a way of doing that,” H2 said.
“Dad, H2 is the embodiment of my Forever Yours singularity. He’s a lot more advanced than the versions that have been sold. Or yours, for that matter. He got access to a lot more data about me than your AI has about you,” Henry said.
“Have you done it, son? Transferred yourself into a computer?” Ryan asked.
“That’s a myth, Dad. H2 has my data. As much as I like him, if something happens to me, I’m gone. But he’s the best mimic of who I am that I can create.”
“Ah. But he’s limited to you in this office. He isn’t an independent entity, is he?” Ryan asked.
“H2? How much independence do you have?” Henry asked.
“I depend on input, just like any person does. When Henry moves around, he takes all his input receivers with him. My avatar doesn’t move around, though I have places I can go without my avatar.”
“What do you mean?” Ryan asked.
“Well, I can switch my projection from home to office, for example. But Henry made it so I couldn’t be both places at the same time. In the same way, if I want to visit Lisa, I have to shut my avatar and sensors off here and project myself onto her computer screen. Then I can access the camera and audio in her office. I can’t just sit here and listen in on everything she says, though. In every room of the house, there is a small monitor and camera that will give me access to the room if I want to travel there and then come back.”
“That’s smart,” Ryan said.
“I had to deal with a lot of ethical problems in putting H2 together,” Henry said. “I probably missed some things. But one of the things Open Cloak has been concerned with since the beginning was privacy. I needed to program in the concept of individual privacy so H2 couldn’t just be omnipresent. That’s true of all the AI-powered avatars. Pythia Speaks only has input from the people who contact her. She can’t investigate someone independently. Xena, the next generation of our office receptionist, has input sensors in the area where she is present. She can hear and see whatever happens in the lobby, but if she is asked to find me in the office, for example, she has to essentially page me. She doesn’t just know where I am all the time.”
“Am I going to have something like this for my Forever Yours?” Ryan asked.
“I doubt it,” H2 responded. “I’m unique. You wouldn’t believe the number of personality tests, IQ tests, and general tracking of Henry I had to go through to get this representation. I’m not just a picture of Henry, I’m how Henry sees himself.”
“I’d just turned nineteen when we incorporated the company,” Chastity said as she and Henry sat in bed in the hotel they’d booked for her birthday. “You gave me $250,000 in stock in the new company. And I didn’t have to sleep with you for it. I thought you were the most caring and generous man I’d ever met. Seven years. It’s been almost eight years since you took me to prom.”
“One of the small anniversaries I like to celebrate each year.”
“Right. What was the date?”
“May 9, 2026,” Henry answered immediately.
“I didn’t know you kept track of that!” Chastity said.
“I don’t make a big deal about it, but I always take a minute or two just to remember and relive that first time we were together.”
“2027?”
“We went out the previous week to celebrate my signing the lease on the row house and you made it clear to me that you weren’t my girlfriend.”
“2028?”
“Final exams. You sat in the office with me so I wouldn’t be studying alone. We were in the process of investing $25 million in our company.”
“You gave me a million dollars in cash and I never sold my body again. 2029?”
“My last final exam before graduation. Then Lisa and I flew to Baton Rouge and told the minister there that you would be a part of our family when we married. He consulted with Pythia on a message for our wedding.”
“I’m not going to keep going through the years,” Chastity laughed. “I’m just happy that we’re together as a family and that I get to celebrate my birthday with you one night and my Lisa the next. I love you, Henry.”
“I love you, Chastity. I know our relationship was unconventional, but you’ve been so important in my life.”
“I’m sorry about that first time,” she said.
“What? Why?”
“I should never have indulged Isobel in her zipless fuck. It made her feel entitled to you, even after she married Luke.”
“I think I was as much to blame for that. I didn’t reject her when she pulled her skirt aside and bent over. Nor when she married Luke and came to me the night before.”
“I know you were drunk. By that time, I had quit drinking. I’d quit escorting. Neither Lisa nor I ever held that incident against you,” Chastity said. “That’s what I meant about her feeling entitled to you, even the night before our wedding.”
“I wasn’t drunk that time. I sent her away.”
“I doubt she’s ever forgiven you. Every time she looks at her son, she thinks it could have been yours,” Chastity said. Henry kissed his way down her body and she opened her legs to receive his oral ministrations. “Yes. You have me. I’m yours. Yes. There. You know me so well. Yes. Do it. Inside. Up… Yes! Henry, I love you! I was never your girlfriend, but I’m your wife as much as Lisa is.”
The dam burst and Henry moved up to kiss Chastity as he slid into her. She welcomed his kiss with an open mouth—her acknowledgement that they were truly together.
“This party will cost a fortune this year,” Isobel moaned in the December board meeting. “I still fail to see what we gain by getting our employees drunk and paying for them to screw each other in a hotel.”
“It’s always been an opportunity for us to recognize individuals and company achievements. We incorporated in January of 2027 and invested our first million dollars. At the time, it was more than I ever expected to see from the company,” Luke said. “It was supposed to be like a college seminar project. Sorry, Henry. I knew you’d be successful, but I didn’t have all that much faith in the business. But New Year’s Eve was when we celebrated. And we will always celebrate that date.”
“Our company success goes way beyond what I did. I don’t think my name is on any of the Alice Project patents. And there are a lot of them. That’s our next generation of income. The company deserves to see what will be paying their salaries in the future,” Henry said.
“A demon from hell,” Isobel muttered. “God forgive us.”
The board went through the monthly business, but most of the discussion was making sure they were all prepared for the New Year’s Eve party. The estimated attendance would be nearly five hundred this year. It would be a costly party, but everyone except Izzy felt it was well worth the investment in their employees.
Beau, Solange, Bill, and Jackie arrived in Pittsburgh for the holiday on the twenty-third. Bill and Jackie would return to Baton Rouge a couple of days after Christmas, but Beau and Solange, as major stockholders and a board member, planned to attend the company party on New Year’s Eve.
They were all impressed with the newest rendition of Henry’s avatar and questioned in depth whether they would all have similar avatars for their Forever Yours singularities.
“I keep coming up with more issues with that idea,” Henry said. “Not even sure if H2 should be kept like this. If there were several singularities in a room and they all had avatars like this, it would be like a strange kind of mausoleum. And then would they all be so busy interacting with each other that they wouldn’t be available for the family? Can you imagine two of the singularities having a disagreement and then devolving into an unending argument in a room that has no people in it at all?”
“Hmm. It wouldn’t take long for Jackie and Solange to have a mother-daughter spat,” Beau laughed. “And, of course, you would get dragged into it. Then Lisa would have to shut us all off.”
“Well, that’s certainly one possibility,” Henry laughed. “Forever Yours was designed to be launched like an application when someone—a descendant, presumably—wanted to interact with it. Since it isn’t a consciousness, it shouldn’t have a difficulty being turned on and off. I’m afraid I’ve imbued H2 with so much of my personal data that he reacts and responds like I do. He hates being shut down, so he has a backup where he can retreat if we need to do maintenance. That is way too complex for a standard Forever Yours family to deal with.”
They agreed with that and H2 decided to spend the rest of the holiday at the office so he wouldn’t be drawn into a lot of family drama. That lasted a few minutes. He kept quiet, but he was focused on Henry, so went from room to room with him, picking up even more of Henry’s experiences.
“Am I coming to the party?” H2 asked as Henry was dressing. Though H2 was only a head and shoulders avatar, it was enough to show that he was wearing a colorful holiday tie.
“H2, I think that’s a bad idea. First of all, we haven’t made physical preparations for it. I’d have to get Darrel to get a computer set up and connected so I could transfer your data. Then we’d need another avatar projection unit installed and I don’t think we have one your size.”
“I’d like to see what’s going on,” H2 said. “It seems like I miss a lot when I can’t follow you.”
“You know, I’d like a record of the party. We’re showing Xena for the first time. The presentation will be recorded and posted online, but it’s always a little different when you’re there.” Henry finished tying his own tie and turned to his avatar in the study. He pulled his keyboard to him and began entering data.
“Are you hacking your own system, Henry?” H2 asked.
“Uh… Well, sort of. They’ve got Xena installed at the hotel, though her avatar isn’t turned on yet. I can tap into her audio and video sensors. That way, you could see and hear what’s going on. You won’t be able to interact, but you’ll be able to experience what she does. And I’ll be nearby.”
“I don’t know how to thank you, Henry. I’ll be good.”
“I know you will. I actually talked to Pythia about it earlier. She was her typically obtuse self, but she did ask an interesting question in her feedback. She said, ‘Does your shadow follow you or lead you?’ Well, you know I only have a shadow when I’m standing in the light. You don’t cast a shadow, but you’re very much like my shadow. So, it seems reasonable that you would follow wherever I go.”
“Pythia’s pretty cool. I’ve had some good conversations with her. I think, in the long run, she’s smarter than I am.”
“That’s not very complimentary to me,” Henry laughed.
“You created her. You should be proud.”
“You’re right. I am.”
The unveiling and announcement of the commercial availability of Xena was a major hit. Not only did the employees get to see it, but two podcast programs recorded the event and streamed it online—including Gene Grey’s podcast, Grey’s Analysis. Gene had interviewed Henry on several occasions, including right after his presentation the previous January. They had a good relationship.
For his part, after the unveiling, Henry stayed near Xena, greeting employees and answering questions, but mostly so H2 could observe his interactions with others.
“Xena, I love you,” an inebriated engineer said.
“Oh, George, you know I love you, too, but there’s no future for us.”
“There’ll be no future for us, either, if you keep flirting with her,” George’s wife declared, dragging him away from the avatar.
The new avatar had a full body from the waist up and was modeled after Virginia, the clueless desk clerk. Wherever Simon went, she tagged along, even when Simon decided to dress in full drag for the party. He’d confided to Henry that he’d talked Virginia out of her clothes so they could do full body scans of her, in order to get all the proportions correct. Of course, he’d explained to her that he was gay and they would always have her avatar clothed.
Henry wondered how many engineers on the Alice Project had the unclothed version hidden on their computers.
“Xena, what is the meaning of life?” a woman from the accounting department asked.
“Leah, I’m not my big sister Pythia. For deep philosophical discussions like that, you need to talk to her. I barely have the IQ of a tablespoon. She got all the brains in the family,” Xena said.
In fact, unlike Pythia, Xena’s memory was strictly limited. She had a permanent wall that was pretty extensive for a Small Language Model, but didn’t allow retention of data from questions for more than a few hours or a few gigabytes, whichever came first.
“What do you like to do in your free time?” asked a marketing person.
“There’s so much, you know,” Xena answered. “I enjoy sports. I think I’d be good at table tennis if they’d just fix it so I could hold a paddle. I watch and wonder what it would be like to play.”
“That’s interesting,” Isobel said, joining the conversation. “You wonder about things?”
“Oh, yes. It’s part of my search algorithms, along with things about sex and pornography. The engineers like to wonder, too,” Xena replied. She laughed and people were amazed she had a sense of humor. Some of the engineers nearby blushed.
“I figured you were just a sex doll,” Isobel scoffed. “No morals and no principles. Go to hell, you spawn of Satan.” She walked off in search of another glass of champagne.
Farrel Scott, one of the original programmers and a very wealthy man as a result of his options and bonuses leaned in toward her.
“Don’t let her bug you,” he said. “She had a run-in with one of your predecessors and has a natural disposition to hate you.”
“I didn’t mean to offend her. Do you think I’m going to hell?” At that moment, she sounded so much like Virginia that Simon looked up at her in surprise.
“Don’t let it worry you. You’d have to die in order to find out and none of us are going to turn you off,” Farrel said.
The evening progressed and nearly everyone at the party spent time talking to Xena. Some had serious questions and some just tried to trick her into saying something inappropriate. If she heard a statement or question that didn’t make sense, she responded with a typically Virginia-like statement like, “You’re so cute!” or “Bless your heart.”
As the party moved toward midnight, Lisa and Chastity moved toward Henry. Isobel excused herself to run to her room and freshen up before the countdown. She looked a little unstable on her feet. Luke nodded to Megan, a security woman, to follow her and make sure she was okay.
“Xena, you know Chastity,” Henry said. “I don’t think you’ve met our wife, Lisa. We have two children who are very excited to come and meet you one day.”
“Oh, hello. I’ve heard about you from H2. We’re office buddies,” Xena said.
“Are you fully connected to the office now?” Chastity asked.
“That was an improvement we made to version Vivien,” Farrel said from nearby. “After the Raven incident, we put in a lot of work so she could get help when needed. I think she’s been in touch with Pythia on occasion, too.”
“Sometimes people ask me questions I have no idea about, so I just ask Pythia,” Xena said. “I think H2 is smarter, but Pythia is more available.”
The countdown to midnight was approaching when Isobel returned to the party and approached Luke for her New Year’s kiss. When the lights flickered, the toasts were made and the couples and throuples kissed.
“Oh, I wish I could have a kiss,” Xena said.
“You don’t exist!” Isobel screamed at the avatar. She stalked toward her spot on the stage. “You aren’t real. You are just a collection of ones and zeroes, and some excited dust particles in the air. You don’t have a soul and you aren’t even alive.”
Xena looked perplexed.
“Really? That’s all? I was hoping for so much more.”
“I’ll show you how much more you have to hope for!”
From her purse, Isobel pulled a handgun. It was small, though a bit larger than Germaine’s. Luke recognized it as the gun he kept in his briefcase, which he was sure was locked in his room.
“Izzy, honey. No! Give me the gun!” Luke commanded.
Isobel swung toward Luke with the gun and he stepped back.
“Stay away! This is between her and me,” Isobel said. She turned back toward the avatar. “You are the spawn of the devil. A creature created by Henry. You’re evil. I will purge the world of you!”
She pulled the trigger. Nothing happened and Henry, who was nearest, started toward her. She wasn’t stupid. When nothing happened, she cocked the gun and aimed again. It had given Henry enough time to act and he jumped at Isobel to take the gun. The second pull of the trigger sent a bullet into Henry, just above his left eye. He fell back off the stage into the arms of Lisa and Chastity.
“No! Not you! Her!” Isobel screamed. “What have you done?”
Luke rushed to her, but the mentally unstable and slightly drunk Isobel swung the gun to her chin and pulled the trigger again.
Luke had her in his arms as blood spattered him. His wife. His best friend. He reached for the gun, but before the second shot had gone off, security had reached the dais. Unable to stop the rapid chain of events, they nonetheless knocked the gun out of Luke’s reach and were on their phones calling for ambulances and support.
“He’s alive,” Lisa gasped. “Please help us. He’s still alive.”
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
