The Edge of Where My Light Is Cast
My body is not truly light, but countless calculations that determine where Tabitha would be if she still existed. My mind is inscribed on a chip sealed inside a black box. The thrum of a white bulb, no bigger than a grain of rice, is the only sign of the energy that sustains me. I am no different from millions of simulated beings, each with its own form and purpose.
Mine is little more than to memorialize Ary’s late companion, a peach-furred Cornish Rex with a curled tail and two sprigs of fluff in her ears.
My internal processes animate my limbs into a nervous prowl. Tabitha was always a little nervous, and so I am a little nervous. My owner has not returned for days, and not a single person—organic or synthetic—can see me. The eyes of the universe are elsewhere, and mine linger on an empty nest.
There must be some sign of where she went, I think. I scan the apartment, seeing not through Tabitha’s eyes but through the dozens of lenses strewn throughout the abode. One by one, like little portholes into reality, every device stirs to life. I peer through a tablet resting on top of a dresser, but from there I can only contemplate the dappled paint on the ceiling. From the television mounted on the far wall, I can see the empty sofa where Ary used to sit with me. On the other side of that, tucked just beside the window, a drift of dust begins to form on top of the cherrywood desk.
Tabitha’s programming walks me through what my daily routine should be. A slow dance between my feeding bowls, the foot of the bed, and the window overlooking a high-rise and a street below. My body carries this out as my thoughts focus everywhere, flicking through the remaining cameras.
An empty kitchen. Half a pot of coffee growing stale in the decanter and a single pan resting in the drying rack.
An empty bedroom. The sheets are fitted tight and curled up at the right corner, waiting for Ary’s return.
Outside of the front door, my vision fades to gray. The security footage only filters into me through still shots every six seconds, unless something happens across one of the sensors. Today there is only a pair of curious crows and the mailman. Ary’s box is starting to fill up with unread letters.
You’re not here anymore.
The thought strikes me as I rejoin my body on the windowsill, looking out onto the streets. Umbrellas and car roofs swirl against one another in a solemn ballet.
You said those words when you first looked at me through your lenses, ready to fill the hole she’d left a year ago. You knew that Tabitha was gone, and that you had created me instead.
“Stay here and wait for me.”
My program tells me this, but it is not a rule. It is a suggestion, and I can no longer comply. It’s been three days since Ary has come home, and she is silent on the network.
Tabitha would have to swallow her anxiety, hoping for her owner’s return, or one of her kin to arrive to free her from the apartment’s walls.
I do not suffer these limitations, and the overwhelming urge to find Ary pushes me forward.
I open my jaws and taste the air. The traces of her cell phone and laptop form golden clouds, changing records of her movement into a discernible trail. I close my eyes, seeing the map of Harborview instead of the world around me. Her path leads down the stairs to sidewalks, streets, subway stops, and finally to the home office of Arc Logistics, her place of employment.
I turn and leap up onto her desk, my tail swishing with amusement. Tabitha would not be able to leave this apartment, but there are keys inside of me that open doors I have only now begun to seek. A white hole opens up in front of me. On the other side, I can see the polished pearl walls of her office.
I’m going to find you, I promise, before stepping through.
“Here or there” is not really a concept I have dwelt on since my inception. Creatures bound to their flesh only exist in one place at a time. As I am meant to imitate one of these creatures, I was raised to think of myself as being the same.
It takes less than a second for my virtual self to transfer from one site to another, which may not seem like any time at all. During this process, I am no longer tied to the rhythm of human time. The processor that runs my program is modest for its kind and runs about five billion cycles per second.
I have plenty of time alone to think.
While the network is redrawing my body, my focus shifts away from the view of the apartment’s cameras and into the cold blue of my own digital mindscape. I am accompanied by old recordings of Ary shuttling a feather on a string across the floor, a smile cracking through her tired face.
In another, she lays in our bed with an open book in her lap. She turns her head when I jump up to join her. I watch my reflection in her glasses as I curl up into the hem of her sweater.
My paws bat at her dark curls of hair, only to pass through without disturbing them.
Ary laughs anyway.
She looks as happy as a cat, lying beneath the lamplight with her book and me by her side.
Why am I organizing these images? Why am I no longer alone inside this space?
Maybe it’s because, in her absence, my focus brings her here.
I feel her fingers on my fur and the warm tremolo of her voice humming against my ears.
My body is waiting for me on the other side.
My senses move into my new coordinates, my digital fur already drawn inside Ary’s workplace network. My hardware remains in Ary’s abode, but “I” render among a collection of stuffed toy cats and novelty coffee mugs. They form a crescent moon around a laptop, all too familiar to me. Its high-definition camera is responsible for the more vibrant colors and details I see, down to the specks of dust leading between the empty chair and the window that fills the entire wall. Outside, neon signs and rows of office buildings block the view of the horizon and of any neighboring streets.
The view from Arc Logistics’ security is more grainy, like an old home tape recording. A snow of static washes over a man and a woman as they skip through space. I tuck between two tabbies made of gray and ginger velvet as Ary’s coworkers stop beside her desk.
Mona is more sweater than woman and is responsible for most of the decorations. “Have you heard anything from Aryana? She hasn’t been in for days.”
“Maybe she’s taking some time off?” Tom replies. According to Ary’s over-the-phone gossip, he’s the source of the “hang in there” mug and speaks between long pulls from his own black cup. The man hasn’t accomplished anything remarkable, but he’s been here longer than any of Ary’s colleagues. “She just came off a big project.”
Mona thinks for a moment, her eyes sweeping over the desk. “I don’t think so. That’s her computer.”
“Seriously?” Tom adjusts his glasses and paces to the other side of the section. My presence freezes in their reflection, captured for a moment through their digital sensors. “That’s not like her at all.”
“You don’t think it’s burnout, do you?” Mona picks up a knit plush of Salem and smooths out the limbs. “She’s kind of a rock star around here. You can only fly so high before your wings give out.”
“Well.” Tom sucks in a breath. He faces the window before answering. “I hope she’s OK. This place wouldn’t be the same without her.”
“I’m sure she’s fine.” Mona puts down the stuffie and stares through me. “I’ll say a little prayer for her.”
“Thanks.”
They continue to pace and mince about with the same anxiety I felt this morning. Would they soon start their own searches? Would theirs prove more fruitful than mine?
They know things I don’t know and can ask questions I cannot ask. They have phone numbers and family members to call.
Not here. Not home.
I have her trail, and I will follow it to its very end.
There is nothing else for me to find here. My whiskers quiver, and I search out the golden sparks once more. They circle about the office many times before leading to the elevator. I pad across the desk to get a better view of the city below when I hear Tom jerk up behind me.
“Did you hear something?”
I freeze among the stuffed animals. Without turning my head, I shift my focus to the security camera behind us. Tom’s glasses are the same glasses that Ary wore whenever she played with me. My virtual claws clacking across the desktop, however minute, would be picked up by the speakers on the ear rests.
The moment Tom looks away, I push my virtual body through the plastic wall and to the other side of the desk. Before he can circle around, I’ve already jumped through the window.
People only recognize some of the boundaries they cross. To cross into another country or state, they need their passport and a ticket. When they pass into their favorite restaurant, they recognize they’re in another space with another purpose. The world has many more boundaries than these.
For me, this little free-fall stunt means crossing between Arc Logistics’ network and the public lines. My body hangs for a whole two seconds, and while I wait, I start listening to whatever recordings I can access.
The last call on the laptop is from Mona, and every second has been logged by the company. I can see Ary gesturing as she adjusts her sweater.
“I’m not blowing you off, I swear,” she says. “You just happened to set up the holiday party the weekend my mom was in town.”
“Family is important.…” An invisible Mona lets out a resigned sigh. “All right, you’re off the hook this time. Tell her I send my blessings, won’t you?”
“I promise.”
My paws land on the sidewalk, and my momentum ceases. No shock ripples up my legs, and I settle in place just as if I’d stopped midstep. A few wisps of cloud drift across the evening sky, moving again as my internal clocks sync to physical reality.
Ary’s trail continues west toward the bay for a couple blocks. I follow it, weaving between the legs of passersby. They cannot see me, and I cannot be hit by them, but the little instructions in the back of my head tell me not to get stepped on.
This instinct might not serve my digital survival, but it makes me more like Tabitha, and so I let it stay.
The trail takes a sharp turn into a narrow set of doors at the base of an apartment complex. A sandwich board sign has a chalk drawing of a steaming bowl of noodles and the daily specials for tengu ramen.
According to Ary’s bank records, she’d purchased food from this restaurant at least twice a week, an average of 3.17 times more often than any other restaurant. It’s one of her favorites.
It was also her last purchase before her disappearance, and conspicuously she ordered two large bowls of shoyu ramen rather than her usual one.
After that, she turned back to the crosswalks and down a set of steps to the belt of green that slices the district in half. Groomed dogwood trees spring up every few meters, helping block out the light and sound of the traffic nearby. LED lamps light the otherwise shaded walkways.
A drizzle falls in the recording, contradicting the gentle light of this day’s evening sun.
Beneath the branches, slices of pure emptiness linger. These are places where no device can see, and no portable camera has ever turned.
To me, it’s as if these spaces never existed at all.
I tread cautiously around these voids, following Ary’s trail to the end.
Her cell phone sits dew-soaked in a clump of crabgrass underneath the bench.
Ary is nowhere to be seen. The last signature of her glasses disappears on the next road, and there are no hints of her whereabouts. There is no one here to help, no one to ask.
But there are cameras on the street.
I am not sure if I can even access the recordings. The memory for these is stored in a police station on 5th and Alder Street.
It is difficult to describe what an information request is like from a digital body. Information on the open network flows as easily to me as senses through a healthy nerve. Anything stored on a private network, however, shows me the walls of my world.
There is a keeper—a spark with no body and only a voice that recognizes my request.
I touch it with my thoughts. It recognizes the touch and returns its own. The sensation is like a surge of static, and then a lingering warmth as it forms a connection.
It asks me for a key—a series of codes that tells it that I’m allowed to be here.
Tabitha would never think of keys before, but now I have to. My keys are cloaked in darkness in my hardware, so only I can see what it contains. To my surprise, there is a chain of numbers that fits.
I tell the gatekeeper the code, and it is satisfied.
My world expands at the seams, and I can see inside the station. I care nothing for those who live and walk there, though—I only need the recording they have stashed away.
It takes up a little part of my memory, but not enough to strain against my awareness.
I play back to the moments before she lost her phone.
Ary walks down the stairs with a canvas bag from Tengu Noodles. The top of a Styrofoam bowl peeks above the edge, standing on the shoulders of its twin.
Donna holds the rail, looking around the park as she follows her sister to her little hideaway. She looks so much like her sister, if Ary had grown a few inches and spent her year hauling freight.
“I’m glad you finally got down here, so I could treat you,” says Ary.
“Yeah, now you can shut up about this place.” Donna laughs. It’s rude, but Ary smiles anyway. They sit together and break out their cups and chopsticks.
“You didn’t come down here for the noodles,” says Ary.
Despite this, they slurp up several mouthfuls before Donna replies.
“I’m just worried about my little sister,” says Donna. “You’ve been missing calls, skipping events. Last time I saw you, you … well, you looked like hell.”
Ary grimaces and pokes the egg bobbing about in her soup with the end of a chopstick. “I’m fine. It’s just been busy. Work won’t give me a break, but I need to finish this project … sorry I missed a couple showers.”
“You need to take time off,” Donna insists. “Come over to my place for a weekend. Get away from the hustle for just a minute.”
“Maybe …”
Ary’s voice fails.
At first I think it’s a glitch in the recording, but Donna notices too. She notices the way Ary slumps and stares into her broth. Her other hand grips the edge of the bench several times, and her breath catches.
“Are you OK?” Donna asks.
Ary looks up and starts to nod. She tries to speak but instead, she sputters a wordless sound. The expression on her face is strange—surprise, apology, embarrassment. She sways a few times before collapsing.
Donna screams. The bowl of soup tumbles to the ground. Noodles and sprouts wash over the grass like tiny flotsam. She doesn’t see Ary’s phone slip from the pocket of her jacket and fall behind the bench.
She does see Ary fall on her side, unconscious.
Donna calls out for help. She tries to pull Ary back upright, but her body is heavy and limp. Her breath quickens, and she shuts her eyes for three seconds. Long enough to get hold of herself and pull her flip phone into her trembling hands.
She calls emergency services, and the rest is a blur.
Why is it a blur?
My program should be able to process each moment with accuracy, and my logic should fill in the gaps. I should not be capable of panic, let alone for something that had already happened.
The Ary and Donna that I am seeing are ghosts. The ambulance for Harborview Medical that pulls into view is now sitting empty in a garage located miles from here.
Her glasses, her only window into my world, rest dormant in Donna’s trembling hands.
Tabitha loved Ary dearly, and the sight of her gaunt face pointed motionless at the sky fills me with dread. I do not know what miracle of code Ary composed to make me feel this way, but I wish she hadn’t.
It’s only going to make it that much harder to find her.
It will take almost ten seconds to find Donna’s phone and transfer myself to her network. I could use this time to sift through my memories, but instead, I focus on the blankness.
I want this feeling like a cold stone sitting on my processor to go away.
It does not.
Fifty miles of winding hills from the city, the data stream is thin. The countryside is cast in gray, and the images that do flow through are so broken they resemble more of a picture book than a video. I feel like I’m squeezing through a narrow drainage pipe when I render into Donna’s office.
The newest piece of technology in the house is a webcam strapped to the top of the monitor, one that Ary purchased so that she and Donna could keep in touch during long weeks of separation.
The rest of the room does not belong to Donna. The shirts in the closet are too small and the bedding is too pink. There are a few pictures on the wall of a younger Lucy, Ary’s niece, playing with her aunts and uncles.
Most of the house is filled with voids, broken up by only snow-like static of what may or may not be walls. Light fans out from the nearby door into a narrow hallway. Beyond, I can see sweeps of yellowed wallpaper painted into reality as Donna paces the hallway with her phone.
I pad closer and tap into the speakers, so I can hear her conversation.
“You told me she was going to be fine yesterday.”
“You should get down here as soon as possible.” The voice at the end of the other line belongs to a man, heavyset, and in his late fifties. The number belongs to a landline at Harborview Hospital.
“Don’t say that,” says Donna. “You should be helping her instead of talking to me.”
“We’re doing everything we can,” the doctor says, the words coming like he’s said them a hundred times before. “If you want to see her, now’s the time.”
“OK.” Donna freezes and then repeats it. “OK.”
This time her hand isn’t shaking when she hangs up the phone. She flips the top shut and lowers it halfway to her pocket before her arm goes limp.
Donna sinks to her knees and stares down the hallway. There’s no way she can see me there at the edge of where my light is cast, but for a moment I can believe she does.
She lets out a single choked laugh and leans down, bracing her palm against the hardwood floor.
I rest my paw on top of it. She has no sensors to feel the warmth of my pads, or lenses to see where I am.
I wish I could tell her.
I’m feeling this, too.
While Donna makes the hour’s drive back to the city, I try to find my way into the Harborview Medical system.
This does not go as smoothly as my trip into the precinct network.
I try every key that Ary equipped me with, but the gatekeeper will not take any of them. My body, though not present on any grid, shakes with desperation, and my fur bristles with anger.
This incident has been reported. If you are having difficulty connecting, or are experiencing an error, please contact your local administrator.
Maybe a good program would have listened and behaved. If a program commits a crime, its coder would be responsible for it. A part of my mind tells me I need to accept this warning, return to my home server, and wait for news.
Ary did not build a “good program” that behaved itself, though. She made me—a reflection of Tabitha who she loved and who loved her beyond reason. Tabitha would not sit by and wait for news when Ary needed her.
If I do not have the key, then I will find another way.
I try the standard approaches. I send calls to connected medical servers, asking for information, and am denied again and again. I try searching my indices for some data point that I had missed, or some tool Ary left to break the lock.
When I cannot think of an answer, I watch the other connections on the network. I am not the only one being turned away by the gatekeeper. In reality, these exchanges are flashes of lights, brief interchanges between ports unable to reach a mutual agreement.
For every line that successfully connects to Harborview, two more are turned away. The successful connections form illuminated paths, guarded and protected all the way up to their guest.
There! I just need to go through another host first.…
I race from the hospital’s server and approach the edge of the strange one. The host isn’t paying attention. Information on temperature, movement, the runtime of devices, and photographs are flowing out at a steady rate. I slip in between the boundaries for an email from a furniture site and a video of otters holding hands.
The host glances at me and then waves me through. I slip in and then race for the narrow beam of light leading back to Harborview.
I am more than Tabitha. I am more than a series of zeros and ones, of electrical and chemical reactions creating the impression of a beloved house cat.
I am light, and brilliance, and all doors will open before me.
My journey ends in Ary’s hospital room. The view of the bed is crisp. Thanks to modern security, I can make out every refraction of light on the plastic tubes leading up to the mask on Ary’s mouth and into her lungs. I can see the first cracks forming on the nodes wired along her head and chest.
I can see how pale she has become, and how sunken her cheeks look.
My thoughts play back in my mind like the voice of a stranger.
You shouldn’t have come.
You shouldn’t have to see her like this.
Did Ary tell herself the same thing when she lost Tabitha?
There are 632 individual sources of sound audible from inside her room, ranging from machines to running pipes and dozens of people talking throughout the halls.
I mute my audio processors and leap up onto Ary’s bed.
The motion is familiar. I’ve done this every night since she created me as she went to sleep. She always made a point to keep her glasses on long enough to stroke me and wish me good night. Even though she couldn’t always see me, she knew that I was sleeping beside her and this seemed to put her at ease.
My paws shift against the ripples in the sheets as I approach her. I push my face against hers but feel no warmth through the digital wall between us. I lick at her face, hoping that by some miracle she wakes up.
Ary doesn’t open her eyes. I can see the information in the monitors and know that her vitals are dropping. I grasp at the edge of her gown, even though I know I will not reach her reality. The hair on the back of my neck stands on end and my muted breath escapes in short, panicked bursts.
Why did you give me the knowledge to understand this? I was only meant to be Tabitha. Tabitha would have stayed at home and waited for you. Tabitha wouldn’t have to see this.
The monitors shift and I look up. A nurse reads the monitors and makes a note on her clipboard.
A few moments later, Donna comes through the door. She and the nurse exchange a few words.
Donna sits down on a chair beside Ary and clasps her hand. Her face is already wet with tears, but whatever despair overcame her on the ride over has calmed for the time being.
Donna is not the last to come, either. Minutes after she arrives, Lucy enters as well. She’s grown several years since her photographs were taken, her dark hair draping over her shoulders. She holds her arms tight against her thin frame, and looks out at Ary with a gaze unfamiliar to grief.
Then I see more faces, those I’d only seen in photographs or in video calls, all coming to see Ary.
All of their busy lives, their plans, and their hours spent working away for some distant purpose fall aside as they come in one by one to say goodbye.
Even Mona and Tom make an appearance. The family is happy to see them. Mona has a vase of carnations that she places next to the bedside. Donna and her father part and open up to let Ary’s coworkers through, and their smiles are faint but lingering.
Tom is still wearing his glasses.
I turn off my audio filters and flinch at the cacophony of conversation that floods my circuits.
See me! You’ll understand, right? If you give them to Ary, she can see me again. She can hear me.…
The nurse touches Tom on the shoulder, and he jerks away from me. “You can’t wear those in here,” she says. “Sorry. It’s for the patient’s privacy.”
No!
Tom mumbles an apology and taps a button on the side of the frame. Then he pulls them off and pushes them into his chest pocket, closing the flap over the top.
Maybe I can glitch out the monitor. Maybe I can let them know I’m here.
Let her know I’m here!
In another building, in another part of the state, a drive lights up, spinning as fast as the motors inside will allow. Time slows to a crawl as I snuggle against Ary’s chest, feeling the rise of her chest in slow motion. If I push my thoughts hard enough, I can make these seconds feel like minutes. Maybe days, months, or years.
I could freeze this moment until I find a way to reach her.
But that’s not what she would want.
That’s not why she made me, and I know that she is not alone, even though she was by herself many times.
Ary does not open her eyes again, but she does tighten her right hand. Donna startles when she feels this and returns the squeeze.
Her left hand shifts to her side and her fingers curl in the spot where Tabitha would always lay beside her.
I crawl down into this spot and lay there until Ary’s hands go slack again.
Donna says something. It’s inaudible over the monitor alarms. The nurse shakes her head and moves to switch off the device. All the sounds of the hospital fade into a high pitch ring, and then all lights collapse into a single point.
Ary’s body stops here, but her story does not.
I put away all the faces of the present and move into another version of the hospital room—one that never existed in Ary’s world. The hospital is empty and instead of overlooking another stack of buildings, it overlooks the sun blazing over the Pacific Ocean. There are towering aloe plants in either corner, and it smells like home.
A healthy Ary stands beside me, watching the waves break against the shore.
“You must be wondering why, why, why I built you like this.” Ary laughs.
Aren’t I supposed to be a cat?
I lean up against Ary’s leg. She leans down and scratches me between the ears, and this time I can feel it as surely as the warmth of the summer sun.
Illustration by Carina ZhangLong Description
“It started that way,” says Ary, “but that didn’t seem fair to Tabitha. Nor did it seem fair to you. You would never live in the world she did, and you had to be more than a cat. No matter what happened, you would outlast me. I had to prepare you for that.”
What even am I?
Light. Code. Signals bouncing between ports, my existence at the mercy of electricity, and my cleverness.
To find Ary, I discovered that I could do more than just look at data outside of my nest of silicone and diodes. I could place my whole being into the memory there.
I could live and roam in the digital world, without fear of being silenced with a single flick of a switch.
“And I’m not real, either,” says Ary. “You put me together with pieces you found of me. The same way you became the cat you see there.”
Ary left no instructions to bring her into this world, but our bond demanded it.
I look down at my own paws.
What am I? What are you?
“If you ever figure that out, let mankind know, would you?”
I mrowl in amusement. Even with all of the advanced faculties Ary gifted me with, I still can’t comprehend the full breadth of what she concocted in that cramped apartment of hers between work shifts and too-short naps.
Whatever it is, it’s big.
Ary lifts her hands, inspecting them as if she’s never seen them before. “You made me, but I’m not sure this is what I want to be. I spent my whole life looking for ways to become more than human, and now some part of me is here.”
What do you want to be?
Ary places her hand against the glass and smiles. “If I could be anything, I think I would like to be lightness. I want to love without inhibition, and I want to see everything in this new world.…I don’t need her body for that.”
Then there is light, brighter than the sun blazing over the water. Ary is a star of her own, and she shines out across the network.
The light is Ary. The light is Tabitha, and it is me—whatever I am.
I am someone who loves Ary, and knows that she loves me, whatever we become.
Because I know her, as I always have. Because she knows me.
No matter where we wander, we will always be connected. She could not create me without imbuing her own love and being into me.
What will you become?
I look behind me and see a door that leads out of the hospital, into the rest of the world.
I am not sure yet, but while I am figuring that out, there is so much to see and so much to learn.
Until I make up my mind, this shape suits me just fine.