28

Silvana feels strange, she’s not used to hiding where she’s going and why, though she’s always claimed she doesn’t have to explain herself to anyone. Luckily she’s already in the aero’taxi and on the way to CraftER, without having raised any suspicions within the ComU. Baltasar being totally snowed under all week with the preparations for the annual gathering of ComUs made it easy for her; and when it came to Sebastian, she’s avoided being alone with him the last few days, just in case. She’s convinced that she has to keep quiet about it, but some part of her nature, which she’s been suppressing, keeps nagging at her. See how foolish she’s being: not only is she mixing with a pro-techno, like when she was with Jul, but she’s also going right into his lair. No matter how much proof she might obtain of extinct emotions that might be recovered, no one at the Ideological Committee will ever approve of her having taken this step. Not even she would agree with it, if she were a member.

This is a good reason not to assume that kind of responsibility, Silvana tells herself fiercely: If she had to give up her sense of adventure, what would she have left? A long string of years stretched out before her, dedicated to the same old bodies and identical slogans, what a stimulating perspective. She’d always have old books to turn to, of course, and cases like Celia’s … Celia. With her it’s been difficult not to let slip anything she didn’t want to say. Every time Leo has come up in conversation, and he’s come up a lot over the last few days while they’ve been doing the sessions at the ComU, a spike of adrenaline has put her on high alert inside, though on the outside she’s made an effort to maintain her voice and posture, so as not to give anything away, or, on the contrary, to come across as too inscrutable. It’s been really difficult, as Silvana is moved when Celia confides in her, but she always has the sense that Celia keeps her most intimate thoughts to herself. Rarely in her entire life has Silvana felt so powerless. The more she learns about Celia’s hidden depths the more it seems she has to discover. And the more she realizes, painful as it is to accept, that her massage is but a superficial tool, completely useless for any further excavation.

She wishes she could convince herself that the bioengineer, for whom Celia feels a strange affection, she’s sure of that now, could help the girl in some way. Maybe by putting herself in the child’s skin and experiencing her feelings, she will be able to help her too. She’s not afraid of suffering if it’s for a good cause, and Celia is the best cause she’s had anywhere near her since she became affiliated with the ComU. Yesterday, when the tips of her fingers were manipulating those muscles that form part of a landscape she now knows so well, she felt a bit treacherous keeping today’s appointment a secret, but on a conscious level she didn’t know how to tell her. She has no desire to cause Celia any more harm than they all already have.

As soon as she begins to discern CraftER’s shining facade, the aero’taxi starts its descent. Today it won’t be landing on the eighth floor like last time, nor will she have to remain on the platform. Leo has gotten her a permit to enter not only the company, but also his cubicle, a privilege that not even Celia enjoyed but that would certainly make her happy.

Silhouetted against the brightness of the main entrance, a masculine figure begins to take shape as she gets closer. The backlighting, the angle of approach, the imminence of the unexpected as the figure gets closer and closer, everything comes together in a flash: a memory of Jul coming to find her, without warning, to give her a heads up that things weren’t going well in the negotiations between her commune and his colleagues. It was the best result of a long and otherwise sterile mediation: confirming that she could seduce a pro-techno to the point that he would risk betraying his convictions. How moving, that gesture of loyalty that kept her company at her lowest moments. She can’t believe she’d forgotten that. If it weren’t for this combination of circumstances she might never have remembered, and her memories of Jul would have been reduced forever to the moments of hand-to-hand combat—both the rational and the not so rational—with that powerful yet inexperienced colossus that are so easy to evoke.

For Silvana it’s an excellent sign that Leo has arrived early and is waiting for her outside. He’s wearing a jacket similar to the other day, but this time it’s a maroon color that suits him better, with the same horizontal, black stripe across his chest that highlights the width of his shoulders. She was already looking forward to the meeting, but now it feels even more exciting.

When she gets out of the aero’taxi, holding his hands, she feels an impulse to kiss him on the lips, but she suppresses it just in time. She must avoid any outpouring of emotion that could embarrass him; last time they met it was pretty obvious that the mere touch of her hand, outside of the established conventions, made him uncomfortable. They’ve come so far with technology, these pro-technos, she thinks, as she puts her hand into the opening the boy is showing her, but when it comes to physical contact, they haven’t moved on since Jul’s time. Perhaps they’re even more ignorant: the third and fourth generations probably don’t even know why they live here and us over there, what it is that separates us.

Neither the downstairs security system nor the mobile platforms that take them to Leo’s cubicle surprise her much compared with what he explains about the timeout device. She’s not at all pleased that, when she leaves, she’ll forget part of what has happened, and, most of all, she fears there may be harmful side effects. Frozen before the device, she complains that he hadn’t warned her when they made the appointment, and at the same time wonders whether she should back out.

“I was so surprised you offered to come that I didn’t think to warn you about it. But there’s no need to worry: I can guarantee it’s totally harmless. I’ve been in and out loads of times.”

“And has your brain been wiped every time?”

“It’s not wiped, the information is still in there, but you can’t access it.”

“How terrible to be denied access to a part of oneself.”

“Actually, it’s not that strange or artificial. Memory works like that anyway, you must know that. Often an old object or specific visual or auditory surroundings can recall a memory that, otherwise, we never would have recovered.”

The boy has a gift for this, Silvana thinks: the other day, despite his total ignorance, he guessed that she longed to discover extinct emotions, and now he’s hit the nail on the head with that perfect memory of Jul, without knowing anything about it.

“So with which object or surroundings will I associate what happens in here?”

“I’ve simplified things a little: it’s not actually a physical object, but signals that are captured by the brain when it crosses the threshold of the cubicle. Everything related to the project uses this encryption base. When you come out, the base disappears and it becomes impossible to decode the information.”

“I don’t really understand, but since I’ve come this far …” The analogy of the natural mechanism of memory has put her well enough at ease.

She crosses without thinking twice and, despite not knowing what she expected to find, the extreme starkness of the cubicle surprises her. This brightly lit space, with all the devices embedded in the walls, is less welcoming than the worst clinics, and, from what he’s told her, the poor boy lives here; he really must have turned to wood. Pure survival.

“Question: Will you watch the recordings first or shall I prepare the sensory booth for the lady?”

The metallic voice behind her comes as a surprise, just like the other day, and has given her a good shock once again. She’ll never get used to the monitored solitude in which the pro-technos reside.

“Ah, the pilot! Is it completely necessary that it handles the machines today as well?”

“Sorry, I forgot that it being here bothered you. ROBco, keep testing the R72 interface we were having problems with this morning.”

She hadn’t thought it would be so easy to get rid of the robot: maybe the boy is less dependent on it than she thought.

“But we’ll still be able to watch the images and see Celia’s reactions, I hope.”

“What do you take me for? That’s the ROB leaving, not me.”

“Of course, I forgot, you built it, so you’ve already mastered everything it knows how to do.”

“Not quite. He accumulates knowledge from lots of different people.”

“Okay, okay, I meant that you’re not a typical PROP, you take the initiative, not the other way around, like usual.”

“I don’t understand. All ROBs serve people.”

“Exactly. It’s just that the service is often poisoned. Why do you think we’re against those mechanical contraptions?” She feels she can say this now that the dummy’s not around. “Because we’re snobs? Well, no.” She’s set her course and there’s no stopping her now. “Overprotective robots produce spoiled people, slaves produce despots, and entertainers brainwash their own PROPs. And worst of all you people don’t care what happens to the rest of us as long as they sell.”

“Stop, stop. If you’ve come to hold a rally, it’d be better to give up now. I thought you’d come to get a better understanding of Celia’s feelings.”

He’s right, she’s gone off on a tangent that really doesn’t interest her right now; she should just get to the point. She’s quick to make it clear that, for now, she’d prefer to see the images and, according to what she finds, decide whether she will allow Celia’s brain signals to be injected into her. It’s all starting to feel a bit more imposing than she thought it would.

Two armchairs emerge from the floor in front of a screen, and Leo shows her how to regulate the speed of projection, the zoom, and most important of all, the perspective, which can put her either inside or outside of the person being filmed, in this case, himself.

“Doesn’t it make you uncomfortable to know that I can examine all your darkest corners?”

The boy catches her eye for the first time since they met. His eyes are full of life, always moving, it’s difficult to pin them down.

“Why?” It’s like he really doesn’t know what she’s talking about. “I trust you to help me find out what’s going on and, in order to do that, you’ll have to see it …”

Silvana folds indifferently to her opponent’s flawless logic. He’s obviously more naive than Jul, less experienced. Everything points to her being able to rely on him, but also that he won’t generate an awful lot of interesting debate.

She works through the first images, in which Leo is static and inexpressive, very quickly, in order to get to the ones that really interest her. When his face starts to contract into an expression of suffering, Silvana closely follows the auxiliary screen, where the series of answers Celia was giving in the test provide the key:

“The girl was making a great effort to please you, to be as good as you expected. Look at the huge quantity of answers she gives to each question, and how the tension in your face is in crescendo from the first to the last. Now, for example, it’s getting harder and harder for her to find different uses for this stick with a ball on the end. What is it?”

“A control lever. If it’s something that simple, why did her signals affect me so much, while she, on the other hand, didn’t show any sign of being in any discomfort?”

“Maybe because it’s quite the opposite, and she’s really enjoying it.”

“How can you say that? I can see you don’t believe in my transmutation invention. I assure you every one of Celia’s encephalic records has been carefully injected into the corresponding area of my brain.”

“Calm down, you misunderstand me.” Leo’s reaction was so vehement that, in trying to reassure him, Silvana has taken his arm, and their startled gazes meet. “What I mean is what’s irritating for you might not be for her.” She makes it obvious that she’s letting go of him. “In the same way that physical contact doesn’t bother me.”

“Nor me,” he hurriedly replies. “It’s just I’m not used to it.”

Such honesty disarms her once again, just like the other day. It seems he is longing to taste something that’s been off limits until now, and she won’t be the one to stop him. But, as ready to try things out as they might be, right now the girl’s feelings are her priority.

“You’re not used to making an effort like Celia is, either. Don’t be offended, I’ll probably make the same face when you inject the signals into me. The capacity for sacrifice they had a hundred years ago is incredible.”

“So what is it then? Was she enjoying herself or making a sacrifice? I thought you’d calm my doubts but I’m getting more and more confused.”

“I might be wrong, of course, but I think it’s both at the same time. As far as I know, in the past they enjoyed working for future reward, so they didn’t think twice about sacrificing their immediate well-being.”

“What are you saying … that it’s not just characteristic of the girl? Do you really think we’ve changed so much as a species in such a short period of time?”

“It’s not that I think so, the evidence is clear.”

“And what is this fabulous reward the girl was looking forward to?”

“We’ll have to find out for ourselves. Pay attention to the screen: your expression here is of profound anxiety rather than suffering. What are you looking at so attentively?”

“My hand. Celia did so too, I checked: for a moment she took her eyes off the test to look at my hand. How could that be interpreted?”

Silvana’s not sure if she should tell him. They’ve infiltrated the girl’s privacy in a highly irregular manner, and the exquisite emotion that she hides there might be as indistinguishable to Leo as a diamond would be from some old-fashioned silicon connector. How can she make a pro-techno party to such a delicate emotion, so secret that it’s not even been openly confessed to her?

She would never have imagined she’d be so thankful for the robot bursting in:

“Urgent interruption: Bet wants to talk to you. Clarification: I told her you were busy with an experiment, but she insisted.”

Leo consents to appearing on camera.

“Hello. I’d thought about calling you later. Is it an emergency?”

“Who’s that behind you? She doesn’t look like the girl you were telling me about …”

The irony rubs Silvana the wrong way, though in any case she considers it a positive sign that the boy’s been speaking about Celia. It shows that she’s important to him.

“She’s helping me with the project.” The half lie and the forced smile make it patently obvious that he’s trying to take the drama out of the situation. “But what do you want?”

“And she’s not wearing a CraftER uniform? She’s not company staff then?”

“Bet, please, we’ve got work to do.”

“I see, she’s not. So she can go into your cubicle on a Saturday, while I’m relegated to pointlessly flying around in that damned aero’car. It’s over, do you understand me? I’m going to sue you for stealing my happiness app. You keep saying what you’re working on here has nothing to do with your private projects … even though you’ve brought the booth in from home. And I’ll sue CraftER too for not paying me my share of the rights. I’ll get more out of it than if we’d commercialized the app together. So you thought you could do it alone? You, the great inventor, trying to get into business, but you’re completely useless!”

Once the communication has been cut off, ROBco disappears without a word.

“I’d prefer not to have heard that. I’m sorry if because of me …”

“Forget it. It’s got nothing to do with you. We should have broken up a long time ago, this was just the final straw.”

“But she said she’d sue you …”

“That’s just bravado. I can demonstrate that I haven’t even touched the happiness app, and she knows full well that the booth belongs to me. She’s as terrible at engineering as I am at business. We were searching for a symbiosis together that just never came into being. She’ll soon find someone else.”

So much rationality leaves her dumbfounded. And even more so when she sees him, without further ado, rewind the sequence in which he’s anxiously looking at his hand and get back on track:

“How should this anxiety be interpreted? Is the girl afraid of me? Maybe my hand reminds her of some terrible experience?”

His desire to find out seems genuine, as opposed to the exchange he’s just had with his ex. When she’s about to succumb to Leo’s tenacity, Silvana asks herself if he’s interested in the girl or purely in the investigation, and in the end opts for a professional tone:

“First of all, you need to know that emotional signals like sweat, cardiac acceleration, gestures … can be the same for many different kinds of emotions: fear, excitement, rage, love … What allows us to resolve the question of whether a person is hopeful, frightened, jealous, or just crazy, is the logic of the situation they find themselves in.”

“You mean no matter how many images and signals we collect, we’ll never know for sure what Celia, or anyone else, is feeling, if she doesn’t confirm it herself?”

He’s got his neurons wired right, this naive copy of Jul.

“More or less. We can suspect what might be going on, but we’ll never have absolute certainty.”

“So why do you want to submit yourself to Celia’s signals, if you don’t know what emotion you’re going to experience? It might not even be one of the extinct ones you’re so interested in.”

“I have evidence that it is in fact the emotion I’m looking for, and it’s an attractive enough prospect for me to risk being wrong. In any case, it was a new experience for you. That wouldn’t be so bad either: if it’s not an extinct feeling, maybe you’ve created a new one with your machine, unclassifiable according to the established categories … The missing dimension, like you were saying the other day.”

“Injecting someone else’s encephalic recordings could be creative … that is a good idea.” Leo stops to think this over, weighing its possible implications.

“And, if it’s unclassifiable, we’ll have to give it a name. What do you think of ‘exquished’?” Silvana rewinds and they watch the boy’s contorted face again. “You look pretty exquished, don’t you think?”

They both laugh and it’s like the sound waves have wrapped them up in their own private bubble. They stand up simultaneously, and Leo feels inspired to take her arm to lead her over to the sensory booth.

“You haven’t told me what this fabulous emotion you’re looking for is, the one that you’re prepared to be exquished for.”

“Admiration. Maybe you don’t know what it means.” She sits down, challenging him with her eyes.

“It must have something to do with looking.”

“Yes, looking up at someone who’s higher than you … like you are now.”

Leo feels touched for a moment, and doesn’t dare step back. He doesn’t know if she’s asking him to bend down and embrace her, if she’s putting words in Celia’s mouth, since she was sitting in the same position the other day, or if she’s enjoying confusing him. The serious way she’s staring at him is what sways him.

“Am I meant to understand that the girl was looking up at me … to me?”

“You understand what ‘up’ means, right? We look like that at someone we believe to be superior. I think you remind her of her father.”

“Me?” Now she really has him confused.

“Celia would do anything for you, to see you, to be on your level.”

“And just looking at me makes her feel anxious?”

“Of course, looking up always …” The boy’s stupidity is making her impatient. “Doesn’t your boss at CraftER make you feel like that?”

“But he … I …”

Leo’s profound astonishment makes Silvana immediately regret having offended him without realizing. Before she can make it right though, a threatening voice booms out:

“Leo Mar’10, that’s enough nonsense. That woman has come into the cubicle to contribute to the prosthesis, not to your crazy ideas. I want the final demo ready for Monday at ten o’clock sharp.”

Could it be possible that this unibrowed raving lunatic has been spying on them the whole time? Silvana feels caged, humiliated, vexed. She stands up immediately and heads for the door, while the boy stutters, “Okay, Doctor, it’ll be ready, Monday,” and follows her out, flustered, shouting “Where are you going? Wait!” Since no reply is forthcoming, he grabs her arm in an attempt to stop her, but she pulls it away sharply and, agilely boarding a descending mobile platform and without turning back, spits:

“I don’t talk to ROBs; actually, I hate them. I’d even get on better with that terribly rude PROP of yours.”

Rooted to the spot at the top of the ramp, like someone has taken his batteries out, Leo’s ghost-like, lifeless figure only serves to prove her right.