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virtual death

"Sit down, Bob," the lawyer said. "My name’s Jerry."

"Hi." Bob sat down at the table across from Jerry, put a manila folder down, and looked out the conference room window. It was still raining. It had been raining for two straight days.

Bob shook his head. His shellacked dark hair didn’t move. "This weather’s a bitch, ain’t it? I wanted to get in the garden last week - forget it."

"It’s a bitch."

"You garden?"

"Grow veggies from seed each summer," Jerry said. "It’s about all I see of nature. Frankly, it’s all I want to see of nature."

Bob laughed politely.

"So, why don’t you tell me what happened?"

Bob opened the folder and took out a spreadsheet. "These are the backups. The backup schedule, actually."

"No," Jerry said softly, "not what the documentation says - that’s important, and I’m sure you’ve kept clear records and good backups. You’ve been here how long? Twelve years."

Bob looked at the lawyer cautiously. "Thirteen in November."

"So you know your business. I took that for granted." Jerry leaned back and yawned, stretching his long, skinny arms. Bob wondered how tall the guy was. Quite a bit taller than he was. "What I want is what happened in your own words. Facts, theories, what other people were doing, any other problems the computers had. Anything you can tell me."

Bob scratched his bald head. "The computers were fine. They still are fine."

"It’s not an accusation," the lawyer said pleasantly. "I just need to find out everything I can. The husband is going to press this suit, and we want to be fully prepared going in."

Bob nodded.

"So the computers tested okay."

"We test them once a week. We have redundant servers, mirror drives. Shit, this shouldn’t have happened."

"Precisely what their attorneys will say. Who does the testing?"

"All four of us. I want everybody to be familiar with every aspect of the operation. If somebody’s out sick, we can’t just shut the system down for the day. All the loving little parents would have a shit fit."

"You don’t sound like you’re too fond of our customers, Bob." Jerry smiled. "You can say that kind of stuff here, but one statement like that in court and it doesn’t matter how right we are, how careful we are, we’re screwed. Screwed, blewed and tattooed."

"I know that. I just...." Bob shook his head and looked out the window at the rain. "It’s just that they should have real babies."

"They’re playing at parenting," Jerry said. "It’s a bunch of frenzied rich idiots too busy with their careers to actually have children. Something like that?"

Bob laughed. "Do I sound like a fucking dinosaur?"

"No. You sound like you know what the situation is, quite frankly. But that’s the business we’re in."

"Hell, They’re the only people who can afford to have kids, and they don’t? That’s crazy."

Jerry smiled, and said, "It isn’t easy these days."

"Tell me about it. We couldn’t even have afforded a pet for our kids if that mutt hadn’t wandered by."

"You have a dog? We have three cats. My wife’s idea. I think they’re sneaky little bastards myself."

Bob laughed. "Damn straight they are."

Jerry sat back and laughed. "Jesus, I’m an idiot. You want some coffee?"

"Sure. No, sit, I can get it. You want one?"

"No, thanks. Caffeine wires me too much." So he hadn’t asked about the coffee, even though it was in plain sight on the sideboard at the front of the office. Not pushy. And pretty fed up with his job, by all the signs. Jerry knew what the Psych Consultant in Personnel would make of this report. At least the guy was safe ‘til after the settlement.

Bob wandered over to the window and looked out at the rain. "Why do the people who can afford kids not have them? Hell, I’m not sure why we had ours, sometimes."

"Well, if they did, Bob, we’d be out of business."

Bob looked at him, and went back to his seat. "I’m a loyal employee, and I can parrot the party line with the best of them. Did you know I’m in the training video?"

"Really? That must have been interesting."

"Yeah, right." Bob laughed. "I had hair back then. Not much, but some."

"Baldness run in the family?"

"Yep. Family reunions look like a box full of golf balls."

Jerry laughed. "Okay."

"Listen, I know a lot of people can’t have kids, or do want their careers. And I guess for some people maybe we offer a great service. But Jesus, she kills herself? Over a virtual baby? That’s craziness. It gives me the creeps. I have a real flesh-and-blood daughter, and I had a nightmare after I found out about this. That I could hear her crying and couldn’t find her." He shivered.

Jerry nodded. "It’s spooky." He had to get this guy off this attitude before it got any worse, or there would be a new supervisor very shortly. "But you have to consider what happened to the child. And I know," he said, holding up a hand as Bob leaned forward to speak, "it’s not a flesh-and-blood child. But it was important to this woman. She was twenty-seven, Bob. She had her life in front of her. And we’re contractually obligated to have a client’s child or children ready twenty-four seven. And in this case, we can’t even find the little bastard."

Bob smiled.

"I know," Jerry said, "but you have to sound as if the child is real. That’s part of what we sell."

Bob was silent for a long moment. "I know. I feel bad for her. Hell, I feel bad for her husband. Coming home and finding her hanging like that. But Jesus, think about it. A photo pinned to her blouse?"

"I know. But again, to her it was a picture of her kid."

Bob looked at him. "Jesus, you’re good. You got the spiel down pat." He tilted his head. "I guess my evaluation ain’t too hot so far."

"Bob, I don’t have any input on that. I’m just here fact-finding."

"Well, factually, we brought a bad backup tape, whatever the tests say. And I think the kid’s file was corrupt from the start."

"So you don’t think there’s a problem communicating between the hub frame and the support drives."

"If that were the case, we wouldn’t have had just one image go bad."

Jerry nodded. "Makes sense. I really don’t know a lot about how it works." He smiled, and added, "As you can tell."

"Well I can answer any question you have on that." Bob grinned sourly. "You know what we call the hub frames and the support drives? Mothers and daughters. And the image drives are grandchildren." He nodded, as if that proved something.

"I was told that most of the actual image assembling is done by the support drives, off of the image drives, and the hub frame brings everything together and makes it come alive." Bob had nodded agreement until the last phrase, and Jerry continued quickly, before the damn fool said something else to screw himself, "And there’s redundancy all over the damned place."

"Has to be. Oh, and I wrote a memo last year saying we needed an additional independent level of backup, by the way."

"You didn’t delete it, did you?"

"Around here?"

"Good. Back that up as well."

They both smiled, and Jerry thought that the memo might just save Bob’s ass.

"So how does all that redundancy fail?"

"Like I said, the original image was corrupted somehow. And it worked for a while, but it was going to blow out sooner or later."

"How can that happen?"

Bob shrugged. "It’s not supposed to. But nothing in life is perfect. Computers are fallible. And they’re physical, and the files on them are physical. And everything that is flesh is subject to corruption," he concluded melodramatically.

"Bible?"

"Probably. Not the most comforting verse, if it is."

They talked for another hour, and Jerry had a pretty good grip on where the vulnerabilities were, and which points they could hammer on to force the best possible settlement. When they were done, they shook hands, and Bob went back to his work for as long as he would keep it, which might not be long. Jerry dashed through the rain for two blocks, and his meeting with Monika, his mentor and occasional lover. They’d gotten in the habit of dinner and sex every Thursday, unless her work schedule interfered.

"He’s a pretty nice guy, but he’s kind of - been working there too long for his own good."

Monika laughed. "And you’re going to try and help him stay there. That sounds like a dubious gift."

"He’s got kids. And from what I understand, he’s damn good at his job."

"For what we pay him, he should be. Anyway, I’m sure that when they evaluate the tape, they’ll pick up on what you were trying to do. It’s always a good idea to show your humanity early on in this firm. It makes a very good impression. And God knows it’s tough enough to do once you move up."

"So how did the meeting with the husband go?"

She frowned. "He’s got Martin DeLong."

"Shit."

"Hey, this is the kind of case he loves. The guy can damn near make jurors weep money on demand. But it’s going to be a long waltz, and a lot of posturing, and then they’ll settle."

‘What about the waiver?"

"That’s why they’ll settle."

The meal came and they ate in silence - he’d found out early on that she hated talking during meals. As they sipped at cognac afterwards, she returned to the case.

"The husband is still pretty broken up. He brought in all these tapes he had of them with the baby. Can you imagine it? Both of them there in the ‘nursery,’ making baby talk? And I’m sure they would have shown the tapes to the kid when it got older."

"It’s kind of frightening how much data and processing power it takes to make all that possible. Are we lucky it doesn’t break down more often?"

"No such thing as luck. We have backup, redundancy, the only other problem we’ve ever had was the time that hacker tried to kidnap his brother’s kid." She suppressed a giggle.

Jerry laughed. "Who the hell would try and kidnap a virtual baby?"

Monika looked at him, and he looked down. "I’ll put that down to the bad influence of your friend this afternoon. Hey, smile." He did, and she continued, "The brother was another one of these overattached parents, and the hacker was pissed off at him, and tried to steal all the files. The copy/delete security feature, whatever the hell that is, tripped him up, and made a backup of the files, and we tracked him down, and nailed his ass to a tree." She was a petite woman with a concentration that was legend, and a fierceness that was for Jerry far more erotic than terrifying. When she was cold was the time to be scared.

"Was there any thought of actually prosecuting it as kidnapping?"

She nodded. "Some. It would have been even better publicity. The brother wanted to. But there were too many problems that a precedent like that would have created - like this damn situation." She took a long slow sip of her cognac, and leaned toward him. "I thought about having kids when I first started working here. If I hadn’t decided not to already, this thing today would have convinced me." She leaned back. "I’m not sure how my parents did it. Or why."

"Well, neither of our parents had this option."

"True." She frowned. "DeLong insisted on showing me one of those damn tapes. In front of the guy, for God’s sake. That bitch was twisted. Doted on her ‘Sweetness,’ she called her. Wouldn’t even use our virtual baby-sitters - said she didn’t trust them. Ordered clothes for her from the virtual store, and couldn’t wait for them to arrive, so she could ‘dress’ her little Sweetness up."

"In front of the guy he plays these tapes?"

"Yeah. Hell, Martin’s always on stage, that’s why he’s so good." She shook her head. "Totally twisted - I didn’t want the guy to get any more upset than he already was, he might use us again sometime, but I’ll mention the cuckoo clock aspect to Martin when I speak to him tomorrow."

Jerry nodded. "She took the standard psychological profiling. Cleared the bar, but not by much."

Monika smiled. "I like good little boys who do their homework."

Jerry laughed. "So you won’t spank me."

"Actually, I was thinking maybe you might spank me tonight. If I’m not too tired. Oh, and I saw the Picasso Exhibit in London. You should check it out."

"I’ll check the site out."

"After you check out my site, I hope. Oh, don’t look so sad, you like it that way too, and I really am exhausted. And I probably smell like compost to boot." She smiled, and added, "You’re still the only one with the password."

Jerry smiled. "You look a bit worn out. But look at what you accomplished over there."

"True. And I do like London, it’s very pretty when it isn’t raining. You know, if you get a chance, you really should go see that exhibit in person."

"I like what I’ve seen of his stuff."

"Oh, he’s wonderful," Monika said, and waved for the check.

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