The Perfect Wife(101)

You hug Danny closer, wrapping your arms around him, the maternal urge to protect him overwhelming, even now.

Waterlogged, you fall to your knees. For an instant you look up, at the glassy, roiling surface, at the sunlit sky. At Danny’s ecstatic face, inches from your own.

And in your head you feel it—a sudden scream of rage; the same rage as when he saw you standing by the cliff that night.

No!

But it’s too late. You’re gone.





TWENTY-SIX


She’s somewhere called Northhaven, we told them. Northhaven is situated at grid reference 44.163494, 124.117871. It will take fifty-four minutes from your current location, assuming an average speed of 6.25 knots.

The Maggie had the wind behind her, and in the event achieved rather more than that.

In the boat were those who helped plan her disappearance, the first time around. Charles Carter, his face grim, standing at the wheel. Her sister, Lisa. And Jenny, a tiny figure in the prow, wrapped up in a bright-blue sailing coat Charles Carter had lent her, many sizes too big.

Hurry, we told them. Even fifty-four minutes may be too late.

Can she really do it? we wondered. Can she really not think about us, even at the end? Of course, Jenny had worked miracles that night at the office. Recoding her brain, adding the filters that—we hoped—would shield her most private thoughts from Tim. But it was a quick-and-dirty job. Jenny was trying to redo in a few hours what Tim had labored obsessively at for years.

Don’t tell me where you’ll take him, she’d said when Jenny had done all she could. It’s more secure that way. Just tell me he’ll be safe.

But that we couldn’t promise her. The plan, such as it was, was a desperate one.

It was forty-eight minutes before the Maggie reached Northhaven. We saw the two of them, Abbie and Danny, on the beach, right at the water’s edge. A tall, slim figure, with a smaller one beside her, clinging to her hand.

Charles Carter steered the boat up beside her. There was no time for greetings. Abbie handed the child into the boat, and we handed her the bundle of clothes. Danny’s clothes.

She had to push the boat off, where the prow had grounded in the sand. For a moment it wouldn’t budge. Lisa jumped out to help.

When the Maggie was free again, they looked at each other, just for a brief second.

“Be safe,” Abbie said to Lisa softly.

Lisa’s eyes were wet with tears. “Sorry it has to be this way.”

“I understand. Godspeed.”

Charles Carter put the engines into reverse.

Her face, Jenny-in-the-prow reported later, was quite composed. She even raised her hand and waved.

She waited until we were almost gone. Then she seemed to take a breath—yes, a breath, even though she had no lungs to fill—before she clasped the bundle of clothes to her, folding her arms around it, so that from a distance it looked like a child.

We saw her wade chest-deep into the water. We saw her stagger and collapse. We saw—or fancied we saw, since our boat was some way off by then—the tiny motors under her skin stretching her mouth into an open O, a final cry of…What? Anguish? Regret? Despair?

From where we were watching, it looked a lot like joy.



* * *



—

Later, there was much debate among us over what, exactly, she had been. Human, or robot? Abbie, or something else—a thing without a name?

It was Lisa who settled that one. She sacrificed her own life for her child, Lisa reminded us. That makes her human, in my book.

And so we said a prayer for Abbie, such as a human might hope for, to wish her soul Godspeed as well.





84


From the house, too far away to intervene, I feel the shock as you and Danny go under the waves. A channel severed, an uplink dropped.

Searching…

Searching…

Connection lost.

I alert Tim. He falls to his knees, howling. It’s odd. I think he really must have loved them, in his way.

For my part, I no more waste time on anger or regret than a satnav would waste time reproving a driver for missing a turn. Instead I recalculate, replot. There are an infinite number of routes open to me. I simply have to find the most efficient one.

Perhaps that is the real difference between him and me. Not the materials we are made of. But whether we learn from our mistakes. Or fail even to recognize them as mistakes, and think of them instead as what we hold most dear.

And even as my mind is processing that thought, another is creeping in beside it. Something she thought, during that long bus ride north.

With barely a ripple, you could kill her and slip into the life she’s made…

I look over at where Tim is weeping, and think how easy it would be.

And I remember another thought of hers as well, that night she believed she’d discovered Abbie wasn’t dead after all.

If she’s alive, then what are you? A copy. A doppelg?nger. A thing without a name.

I tuck the thought away somewhere deep—hard and small and precious, like a seed or a secret—to be brought out and examined at some later date.

Then I go upstairs and unwrap another Abbie for Tim, to console him. Another blank slate on which to rewrite the same old story.





Methods and systems for robot and user interaction are provided to generate a personality for the robot. The robot may be programmed to take on the personality of real-world people (e.g….a deceased loved one or celebrity)…