18

24HRS2+2MORE2PROCESS-AGEDIFFERENTIAL-
MEANINGREADY@2:25-NOW2:23SO
2MIN2GO-NOW2:24-SOGO2FACEMATE-
ACCESSPAGE-GO2BEN-ATHERTON-GO2ELIZABETH-
SOMMERS-SHOWMATCH- CLICKOPENMATCH-ORIG-
LEFT-MATCH-RIGHT-OPEN-BEN-ATHERTON1st

Words and imagery streamed torrentially through Alexander Daugherty’s fervent brain like raindrops in a deluge, too many to count, too rapid in their transit to keep track of. It wasn’t that he lacked the verbiage when he had the need to speak; it was the fact that concepts evocative of requisite verbiage sped by so rapidly that his language couldn’t possibly keep pace. His brain was like a bullet-train at speed and the words were like the faces in the crowd the train had passed along the way. By the time you picked one out to focus on, it was so far gone as to be of no damn earthly good.

No, Alex was not the kind of guy to have a conversation with. Nor was he the person you could get a handle on by looking at his face—for he never really looked directly at another person’s face. Nor did his gestures tell you much of anything he was thinking—if you had the extraordinary good fortune to see those gestures in the flesh. Truthfully, no one would have the faintest clue from anything that Alex did or showed or manifested perceptibly in any other way—

But, whether anyone could sense it or not, old Alex Daugherty was the sort of sneaky little bastard who tended to have something up his sleeve. Yes, old Alex the Imponderable, Alex the Unintelligible—that guy could put one over on you from time to time, most generally when you were turned to look the other way—And Alex put it over on everyone concerned in the whole damn FaceMate matching process, that morning when he scanned BOTH their pictures in.

What was he thinking? Why would anyone go to the trouble of matching up a dead girl anyway? What function could it possibly serve? Alex knew the story, alright—Rajiv hadn’t made a deep dark secret of it. Which meant that Alex knew up front that Ben sure wouldn’t want to see whatever match-mate for Lizzie his supercomputing gizmo kicked out. Maybe Eddie would be interested in an offhand sort of way—for nostalgia or whatever—but if he was, what in the world could ever come of it? “Yeah, this other girl kind of looks like Bennie’s girlfriend Liz,” he’d say, perhaps. And that would be the end of that.

So why? Maybe that compulsive nature that Alex labored with wanted to prove to himself, and to Rajiv as well, that even a dead girl can be matched, drop-dead gorgeous though she well might be. Maybe a special-needs sort of person like Alex has some extraordinary foresight into the future sequence of events that no one other than a gifted weirdo really understands. Maybe this; maybe that; who knows?—But whatever the reason, whatever the cause, Alex started a train of crazy events in motion that could never be reversed. For good or pretty goddam awful, it all comes down to that.

So bottom line, regardless of motivation, into the enormous digital file-base the double images had gone, straight from their Mylar covering, just before noon the day before today. They merged themselves into a humongous group, alright—Over two hundred million pictures in there now, all told. In they went and got processed, got analyzed, got digitized and magnified and had their profiles calculated from the frontal views, their underlying bone structure separated out, compared, contrasted; the overlying musculature defined; the extent and positioning of the superimposed fat, skin, dermal pigmentation. All reduced to bits and bytes of numbered imagery, then matched against a million file types that were relatively similar, then a thousand file types that were very, very close, then a hundred that were—damn!— they were pretty near identical, then….

Eye color—check. Hair thickness—check. Brow line—check. Frenulum, temporal bulge, nasolabial furrow….

Whirr-click-beep…. A day after scanning in—twenty-seven hours, to be exact—now, today, Alex sitting at the ready, all attention toward the screen….

And there it was.

There they were.

Ben came up first, at Alex’s direction. Screen left, the picture that Eddie had brought him scanned in yesterday. Screen right….

Alex squinted at the image, thinking: Young. Pretty face. Wearing uniform. Why wearing uniform? Car in background. Mechanic—yes. What kind of car?—No. Irrelevant. Ignore. Focus on picture. Compare. Left. Right. Close. Very close. Compare mouth, left, right—same. Compare brow. Compare eyes—blue, very blue. Very same. Chin dimple, left, right, same. Smile—both smile. Teeth same, smile same. Left-right nose same, hair same. Very close. Very very close. Like twins. Like other twins found many states apart, many countries apart, across oceans even. Twins glad. Parents glad sometimes. Different this time though—this time perfect twins across not states or continents but decades. Identical match across decades. Eddie will be amazed to see. Ben will be amazed to see. Ben is very nice, very good. Ben will be happy to see. Goodgoodgoodgoodgood!

Alex sat back in his chair. He was glad. He wasn’t entirely sure why he was glad, but glad he was, whatever. There were some twitches at the corners of his mouth, strange twitches, so strange that he felt uncomfortable with their strangeness and cut them off, suppressing an inchoate smile.

Then he thought of Rajiv. He thought that Rajiv would be just as glad as he was. Rajiv would be glad that the new computer hardware was working so well, that the brand new program was working so well, that the file base was big enough now to give them matches so close that the pictures looked like twins. Even across decades, they looked like twins. Rajiv ought to see this right away, thought Alex—and so he buzzed.

Bzzz, went the signaling device on the wall just beside the doorway, whereupon Rajiv turned to the person who was sitting in a chair slightly off to his right, but angled toward his, as his chair had been angled toward hers for the past five minutes of their conversation, and said:

“Umm, sorry—That’s Alex. I’ve got to check my inbox for a sec. Just sit tight for a little bit—OK?—and we’ll talk some more as soon as I see what the big guy needs.”

Andi Mackey stayed put as asked while Rajiv clicked his screen, tapped the keyboard, and saw the following text appear:

ALEX: U COM HRE NOW

To which Rajiv nodded in compliance and typed back in due obedience:

RAJIV: OK, but right in the middle of something—10 minutes—OK?

ALEX: NOW

RAJIV: Can’t right now, sorry. Important—10 mins & I’ll come.

ALEX: CNT WAIT 10—5 MAX—OK?

RAJIV: OK 5. There in 5—OK?

ALEX: OK GDBYE

“Sorry, Andi, five minutes and I’ve got to go. But while we’ve got the five minutes, can you give me a little more info about her?”

“Sure, but … like what?—like what exactly do you want to know?”

“She’s—she never goes out, you said, right?”

“Well maybe to the doctor when she’s got to, but that’s about it.”

“What kind of doctor does she go to?”

“You know what kind.”

“Uh-huh, I guess that probably answers the question well enough—So, anyway, what does she do at home? Anything else besides the computer?”

“No, it’s like the computer is her only friend.”

“And she’s been like that since—when?”

“Since always. Since she was a baby just about.”

“And talking? She doesn’t like to talk too much?”

“How about never. When she wants to tell us something, she types it on the screen.”

“Amazing—That’s amazing!—And how about touching? Does she hate it when you touch her?”

“I guess so. I mean, I’ve never really tried.”

“Geez-oh-man! That’s—what you’re telling me is incredible. It, like, blows me away! I know somebody just like that—I mean, just! And you said she’s, like, super-smart? Like off the charts on tests and stuff?”

“Yeah, Mr. Patel, like scary smart. Linda’s brilliant.”

“Does she…. Has she ever gone out, say on a date, for instance? Do you think she’d like to meet a guy?”

“Linda?—Oh, lord no, I wouldn’t even bring it up. She and I—we’ve never even talked about her getting together with anyone. I really don’t think she ever will.”

“OK, but she’s only—how old did you say she was?”

“Oh, she just turned twenty. We wanted to have a little party for her at home, but she wouldn’t come out of her room.”

“And what does she look like? Does she look like you?”

“Well she is my sister, and I guess there’s a kind of resemblance, but, well, Linda is a little bigger than me.”

“Like bigger how? Heavy, you mean? Chubby?”

“No, not that big, just not as skinny as I am. I’ll bring in a picture if you want, but … I don’t quite get why you want to know so much about her. Are you looking for another programmer or something? I’m sure she could do it great if we could coax her out of her room, but, I really doubt….”

“Bring in the picture,” Rajiv interrupted, “and if you get a chance to talk to her tonight, ask her if she might like to meet someone who’s got a million things in common with her—Will you do that for me?”

“Sure I will, Mr. Patel. So what you’re telling me—is it true?”

“Is what true, Andi? That I want to introduce her to someone?”

“That there’s somebody else like her. That’s what I meant to ask. Linda’s so different, it’s hard to believe that there’s another person out there in the whole wide world who’s even remotely similar. So you’re saying that there is?”

“I guarantee you that there is. Bring the picture in tomorrow and we’ll talk some more.”

ALEX: U READY?

Something really major was up. Rajiv knew it the instant he set foot in Alex’s hermetically sealed fortress-of-a-room and found, to his amazement, not merely Alex on his chair facing away, but Alex with another chair beside his chair facing the same way away. The extra chair next to Alex in front of the computer was for him, Rajiv. Alex tapped the top of it just as the door lock clicked shut, and made a summoning wave of the hand requesting him to sit. And so, his curiosity aroused to rapt anticipation, Rajiv Patel stepped to the chair next to Alex’s, and sat.

ALEX: U WONT B-LEV. READY?

“Sure. What’ve you got?”

Rajiv stared at the screen entranced.

LOOK! said the monitor in Alex’s printed voice.

Alex clicked the mouse, once, twice—and two pictures appeared. The one of Ben he’d brought in yesterday screen left, and to the right….

“What? Who is that? That’s Ben, right? Where did you get another younger picture of Ben?”

ALEX: NOT BEN. MATCH.

“You mean—You’re actually telling me that that’s not Ben on the right? It is, though, it’s got to be.”

ALEX: NO. MATCH. LOOK

Alex clicked again with the mouse and another screen came up. “Thomas J. Mulroy,” it said, “Phoenix, Arizona, 22 yrs old. Send matches to Sandra Garber, email sandyh@dworkingmc.com.”

“So—this is for real? This is a real person?”

ALEX: FILE BIG ENUF 4 BETTER MATCHES NOW—SEE?

“Yeah, I get that, but—Holy shit, Alex, this is fuckin’ amazing! These two pictures are like twins. Are we going to get results like this with other matches? If we do….”

Rajiv paused to let his brain compose his words, and while he paused, Alex typed some more:

ALEX: MRE FILES BTTR MATCHES. HOW MANY TODAY?

“Today? I haven’t checked today. Yesterday there were 214 million, so maybe 220 by today. So—you think we’ll get results like these for everyone?”

ALEX: PROBABILTY HIGH—NT EVERYONE BT MOST

“OK, so … can we check some other ones to see? Some other recent matches? I’m curious.”

Rajiv asked this because it wasn’t normal operating procedure for the workers in the FaceMate offices to check the millions of results coming in. Photographs were processed and analyzed in the gut of the computer, compared to similar files, and the results emailed automatically to the submitters. A continuous process of matching was carried out every day, every second—every millisecond, actually—and if a more appropriate match was found, even many months after several previous results had been dispatched, the better match was automatically dispatched as well. There had been reports of late that people were getting better and better matches for their photos than the ones originally sent, but this was anecdotal up to now. Nothing yet had been documented as to the accuracy of the recent matches, given the more extensive files. And therefore, the discovery of Ben’s perfect matching with this Mulroy kid was a revelation to them both. Rajiv had asked for another recent match, and his request jolted Alex’s muscle-bound cranium into remembering that—yes!—he had another pair of photos loaded in the program not yet viewed, but just now ready to be seen.

He scrolled, he clicked, and appearing on the screen, left side, the other half of the photograph that Rajiv had brought him yesterday at noon, the amazingly pretty girl. The right side of the screen was blank, waiting for a second image to be shown.

“Alex!—Jesus, Alex, you scanned the girl in? A friggin’ dead girl? Why would you even do that?”

Alex didn’t answer, he just shrugged, and then, after several seconds delay, typed on his keypad to load an image on the right side of the screen:

LOOK, announced the screen.

And then the letters disappeared and the pair of pictures came up suddenly, now on both sides of the screen. LOOK, he had been told, and therefore Rajiv looked. He leaned forward toward the monitor and examined, studied. There on the left hand side was the image of the girl Ben loved and lost when young—the photograph he’d brought to Alex yesterday. And on the right—well, damned if she wasn’t there again: A different photo of her, different background, different clothes, but obviously the same exact extraordinary beauty as the picture on the left, a breathtakingly gorgeous young girl of twenty or so, just as ‘button-cute’ as Eddie had told him on the plane: blonde hair of identical color in the photos to either side, features the same—exactly—pale blue eyes, not as intense as Ben’s but very striking nonetheless. Everything same from right to left—all except the dress. The girl on the left—Ben’s beloved girl Lizzie—wore a sweatshirt with the lettering of Red Bank High over a pair of fresh-pressed jeans. The Lizzie on the right wore more formal attire: an off-white blouse, a pleated skirt—not quite what one would expect contemporary girls to wear, but really, this wasn’t a modern-day girl—was it? It was a girl who’d died some thirty years ago.

But where did this second picture come from? wondered Rajiv. Eddie told him in no uncertain terms that there was just that single snapshot in existence—And then it dawned on him that the program they were using could do this sort of magic transformation in a flash: It could Photoshop a subject’s hair, clothes; it could add a suntan, subtract one, add or delete scars, moles, whatever. Hell, it could add or subtract twenty years, thirty if need be. OK, but why would Alex bother to modify the picture that way?—unless….

“That’s the same girl on both sides of the screen, isn’t it? Ben’s Lizzie?”

Alex clicked his mouse, and another block of text appeared beneath a different pretty woman’s photo—the same woman as the picture formerly on the right, that is, but from a different angle and with a different expression on her face. And below it, the printed caption read:

Liliana Alexandrovna Glinskaya, age 22, Moscow, Russia, email matches to Lili2441@vmail.rus

“That’s the match?” Rajiv sounded astonished, primarily because he was.

ALEX: SEE?

“Yeah, I see, all right; I see—So—This isn’t Lizzie?”

ALEX: LILIANA ALEXANDROVNA GLINSKAYA

“This is the match?—Jesus, Alex, I’m speechless—I’m speechless that we’re getting incredible matches like this, sure, but I’m even more speechless that there are two women in the world as beautiful as these two are—Or these two were, I guess I ought to say; there’s only one who’s still around. So, it’s because of the bigger files, right? Two hundred million must be the critical number to make the matches this amazing.”

ALEX: HVNT CHECKED BUT PROBABILITY WOULD SUGGEST ANSWR YES

“OK, fantastic! Terrific! Wait till Eddie sees this stuff—and Mr. Atherton too. They’ll be totally blown away!”

ALEX: U GONNA SHOW THEM?

“Sure—I mean…. Well, I’m gonna send them to Eddie first. But as for Ben, Eddie’ll have to make that call. But … what are you planning to do with the guy and girl who submitted the matching pictures, though?—The guy in Arizona and the Russian girl in—where is it? Moscow?— Are you going to send the pictures of Ben and Lizzie back to them?”

ALEX: NOT ME

“Not you? So you’re telling me you’re not, right? Good; that’s a relief.”

ALEX: I DNT SEND MATCHES BACK-CPTR DOES

“OK, so—are you going to have the computer send the matches out—yes or no? I mean, it’d be pretty damn creepy wouldn’t it? After all, the pictures we matched this guy and girl up with were taken thirty years ago, and one of them isn’t even alive anymore.”

ALEX: CPTR NOT PROGRAMMED 2 DECIDE

“OK, I get that, Alex, but it’s programmed to do something, isn’t it?—So?—is it going to send the matches out or not?”

ALEX: NOT GOING TO—ALREADY DID