Claudia and I were both exhausted, and we fell asleep pretty early. The next morning, we were awake at seven. The sun was up, filling her room with light. I caught a faint whiff of wood smoke, like a fire in a fireplace, or more likely a candle that’s supposed to evoke that smell.
As we went downstairs to make coffee and breakfast, and to check on Chris, I could sense Claudia’s anxiety, her worry about him. She hurried ahead of me, so I was a few steps behind her when she got to the family room and froze. When I stepped up next to her, I saw Bonnie, asleep on the sofa, and Chris, wide awake, smiling beatifically at her.
He turned to look at us, and his smile widened. “Hey kids,” he said. Then he turned back to look at Bonnie. “Isn’t she beautiful?”
“How do you feel, Dad?” Claudia asked, her tone so flat that I wondered if she might be in shock.
“Never better,” he said, with that same smile. “Why?”
“Because you were in like, a coma or something last night,” she said, sounding exasperated and annoyed. A little more like herself.
“Oh, that.” He laughed, condescendingly, it sounded to me. “That was just a system upgrade.” He reached up and touched his Wellplant. “A powerful one, too.”
Claudia said, “Mom!” raising her voice enough to awaken her mother.
Bonnie jerked and her eyes half opened, looking at us, then at Chris. At the sight of him, wide-awake and smiling, she shot upright. For a long moment she just stared at him. Then she said, “You’re back.”
“I was never gone.”
“Bullshit,” she replied, her voice sharp with anger and fear and relief and hurt. “I don’t know where you were last night, but it sure wasn’t here.”
“Baby—” he said, but Bonnie cut him off.
“Girls,” she said, turning to us, “can you give us a minute?”
“Sure, Mom,” Claudia said. She lingered another moment, studying her dad as if making sure it was really him. Then she turned back toward the stairs. I glanced longingly at the kitchen, my system primed for coffee, then I turned and followed Claudia back upstairs. I guess the kitchen wasn’t far enough away.
When we were halfway up the stairs we heard Bonnie snap, “So what the hell was that?”
“Just a system upgrade. A big one. Making my Wellplant even better than before.”
“A system upgrade? With no warning? No scheduling? Sounds more like a system failure. You had us worried sick, Chris. I called the doctor, but they said only the Wellplant’s med team could help you, and when I called them, they said they’d come out here to have a look at you but they never did. What if it had been serious? What if you were hurt, or dying?”
“Well, I wasn’t, honey,” he replied. “I’ve never been better. I can see things clearly for the first time. I can understand complex problems at a level that would have been impossible as a mere human.”
“A ‘mere human’?” Bonnie cut in with a laugh that was absolutely devoid of any kind of mirth. “Do you even hear yourself?”
We were just at the door to Claudia’s room when her mom said, “I want you to get rid of that thing.”
Claudia glanced at me, then we went inside and she closed the door behind us. I couldn’t tell if she was just being respectful of their privacy or if it was too upsetting to hear them arguing. I think I would have listened in.
We sat on the bed, and she turned the holovid on and raised the volume.
“Smells like a lot of smoke today,” I said as she flicked through the channels.
She nodded. “I know. A lot of brush fires this year. The fire-drones will take care of it.” Then she nodded toward the holo image and said, “Hey, look at this.”
The title graphic under the image said WIDESPREAD OUTAGE ROCKS WELLPLANT CORPORATION. A trio of talking heads—none of them spiked—were discussing the ramifications of the outage as the graphic changed to MILLIONS INCAPACITATED WORLDWIDE.
“Holy crap,” I whispered.
“There are long-term, existential issues raised by this outage,” said one of the experts, a woman with close-cropped blonde hair. The graphic said, SYLVIA BASCONE, MD. “Wellplant Corporation has been hit by numerous crises this year, and during this, the company’s most serious, acute, and widespread outage, the entire leadership was incapacitated by whatever it was that knocked out everyone else.” As she spoke, the image cut to a montage of clips from around the world, important people with Wellplants suddenly rendered unresponsive: heads of state, CEOs, celebrities of all sorts. “Going forward, they are going to have to acknowledge that this is a vulnerability and come up with a strategy that will address this critical flaw.”
“Millions incapacitated,” Claudia whispered, reading the graphic.
The panel of experts shrunk and moved to the side as the host’s face took up the bulk of the holofeed. He had a shaved head, and a thick beard and mustache. He hadn’t been spiked, either. “And on that note, Wellplant Corporation just released a statement explaining that the outage was a ‘simple software update’ that should have taken place when the clients were asleep.”
He put his finger over his ear as if listening to something on his earbud then said, “I’m told we have a comment from Senator Hiddleton, who many expect to be joining the presidential race any day.”
The image cut to a paunchy man in his sixties with prominent jowls, penetrating eyes, shockingly bad hair, and no Wellplant. He was surrounded by a circle of reporters, all pointing microphones at him.
“The fact of the matter is,” he said in a broad Midwestern accent, “we have a man running for president who could be rendered comatose at any moment due to the technical flaws of his own technology.”
A reporter said, “Wellplant Corporation says it was a routine system update that should have been staggered to take place overnight in each time zone, while the wearers were asleep.”
Hiddleton laughed and shook his head. “Routine? So we’re supposed to feel better that this happens all the time? I don’t think so. And so what if it is supposed to happen overnight? When it’s three a.m. here, it’s mid-afternoon in Southeast Asia and mid-morning in the Middle East. International crises don’t always happen during business hours. If there’s a crisis in the middle of the night, we can’t have a president who is out of commission because of a, a system upgrade.”
The holofeed cut back to the host, who said, “Up next, we discuss with our panelists what impact this outage may have on Howard Wells’s presidential ambitions. But first, we have statements from some of the most prominent individuals impacted by the outage. While our expert panel and many others have expressed grave concerns about the ramifications, official statements from those directly affected seem crafted to minimize the issue and support Wellplant Corporation.”
The feed cut to the prime minister of Japan, who wore a Wellplant, addressing the Japanese parliament with a voiceover translation. “I would like to reassure the Japanese people that this temporary interruption was minor and short-lived and did not at any time impact my ability to lead. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Wellplant Corporation and Howard Wells for my Wellplant and for yesterday’s system upgrade, which have enabled me to provide Japan with a higher caliber of leadership than ever before possible. For this, I and the people of Japan are grateful.”
The anchor read aloud while the feed showed excerpts from similar statements released by the prime minister of England; the secretary-general of the United Nations; the CEOs of America’s two largest, rival software companies; and even several pop stars. He went on to read the names of other celebrities and leaders, while images of their statements piled up, forming a collage of sorts, all of them voicing support for Wellplant Corporation and Howard Wells.
“So what do you think of that?” the host asked with a nervous laugh. “Have you ever witnessed a technology suffering such a widespread and cataclysmic failure, and then had so many of its users—the people impacted by the outage—all come out in support of the company?”
The panelists all answered at once: “Never.” “Nope.” “This is unprecedented. And frankly a little creepy.”
“Creepy is an understatement,” Claudia said, muting the holovid.
I was thinking the same thing but didn’t want to say it out loud because her dad was part of the whole mess. I felt like I should say something, but with the holovid sound off, we could once again hear her parents downstairs.
“For the last time, no, I’m not going to get rid of it,” Chris was saying, his voice emphatic but even. “My Wellplant has made me a better person, in every sense of the word. It is without a doubt, the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“Really?!” Bonnie shot back, her voice raw and shaking. “Better than me? Better than your own daughter? Your brilliant, chimera daughter?”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it,” he replied. “And if you would just trust me and get one, as well, like I asked, you would see the same benefits.”
The last thing I wanted to do was to go downstairs into the middle of that argument, but I knew I shouldn’t be there at all. I turned to Claudia and said, “I should probably go.”
She nodded. “Yeah, I guess so. I’d give you a ride, but I should stay. Okay if I get you another pod?”
“Thanks. That would be great.”