The Perfect Wife

—

As you pull out Elizabeth David’s French Provincial Cooking, it falls open at a page crusted with pink cooking stains. A sentence has been underlined: It is useless attempting to make a bouillabaisse away from the shores of the Mediterranean. In the margin your earlier self has written YOU’RE ON!!!! Below is what looks like a shopping list.

Rascasse

John Dory

Galinette (substitute Gurnard?)

Saffron

And, in a different pen:

NB: Next time, simmer the tomatoes twice as long as this tyrant says.

Smiling, you put the book to one side. You can’t eat anything yourself, but you like the thought of cooking something nice for Tim that you cooked before.

You’re halfway through the bookcase when your phone pings. For a moment you wonder who it could be. But then you remember: Tim’s the only person who knows your phone’s in use again.

U OK? Hate that I’m not there with you. X

Affectionately, you text back:

Your job needs you! I’m fine. Love U. Xx

You wait, but he doesn’t reply.

Reaching up, you pull another book from one of the upper shelves, almost falling backward as the cover comes away from the pages. A broken binding. It must have been a favorite, you think, for you to have kept it even in this poor condition. Perhaps it can be rebound.

Carefully, you open it. Then you realize something. The book inside is smaller than the cover. In fact, you now see, it’s a different book altogether, a paperback that’s had its own front and back covers ripped off. But you can still read the title, printed at the top of every page. Overcoming Infatuation. Some kind of self-help book.

Flicking through, you see that some passages have squiggles next to them. And at the end of one chapter, a paragraph has been underlined:

Limerence, or infatuated love, is outwardly almost identical to the real thing. But just as a little salt seasons meat while too much poisons it, so love and limerence are actually two sides of a coin.

You put it aside to show Tim. Perhaps he can explain it.

As you turn back to the shelves, your phone pings again. You pick it up eagerly, thinking it’s Tim’s reply. But the sender’s name simply says FRIEND.

Puzzled, you open it. On the screen are just four words.

This phone isn’t safe.

You stare at it. There are no earlier texts above it, nothing to indicate who Friend might be.

As you watch, the message slowly fades from the screen. Some kind of Snapchat-type spam, you decide.

Putting the phone down, you continue with the books. You’re almost at the end of the row when you notice a volume of poetry, Ariel, by Sylvia Plath. A memory leaps in your mind. You read those poems as a teenager and fell in love with them, the way only a teenager can.

You pull the volume out. But this cover, too, simply slides away from what’s inside. Intrigued, you prise the contents from the shelf. This time, though, it isn’t a book that the cover was concealing.

It’s a small electronic tablet. An iPad Mini, hidden away here where no one would ever think to look for it.

Unlike your phone, there’s no arty personalized case, nothing to indicate whose it is. But it must be yours. No one else, surely, would hide something among your books like this.

Who’s it hidden from? Danny?

No. Back then, if you’d wanted to keep it away from Danny, you’d simply have placed it somewhere his five-year-old hands couldn’t reach.

From Tim, you realize. It can only be hidden from Tim.

Are you the kind of woman who keeps things from her husband? The thought is disturbing, almost shocking. But at the same time, not entirely surprising. It feels…It feels right, the way a word or a fact sometimes does.

After all, Tim is the very opposite of laid-back. Perhaps you’d wanted to avoid a lengthy debate about something. A woman has a right to privacy, even within a marriage.

But a whole hidden iPad? an inner voice objects. That feels like more than just privacy.

That feels like secrecy.

And then there’s Friend. How weird is it that you get a message saying your phone isn’t safe at the exact moment another device turns up?

You hold down the iPad’s POWER button. Nothing happens—the battery’s long since depleted. You take it down to the kitchen and plug it into the charger. As you turn back upstairs, the intercom buzzes, startling you. Behind the colored glass of the front door, a face fragments into orange and red. The straggly hair looks familiar.

You go and open it. On the doorstep is Tim’s colleague, the one who tried to stop you from leaving the office. A black laptop case hangs from his shoulder. You search for his name. Mike Austin, that’s it.

“Abbie,” he says. “Hey.”

“Tim’s not here. He’s gone to the office.”

He nods. “I know. I just came from there.”

“Then why—”

“It’s you I’ve come to see,” he interrupts. “I wanted to talk to you alone.”

11

You make him coffee.

“Is it strange,” he says carefully, as you put the cup down in front of him, “not being able to drink that yourself?”

“Believe me, that’s the least of what seems strange about all this.”

“I guess so.” There’s a short silence while he blows on his coffee, watching you over the rim of the cup. “What do you remember about me, Abbie?”

“I saw you at the office. You work with Tim.”

“That’s true. But I’m much more than a colleague. I’m Tim’s oldest friend. The co-founder of Scott Robotics. I was best man at your wedding…You don’t remember that?”

You don’t, of course. “Tim said something about having to be selective. Not giving me too many memories all at once.” You pause. “He won’t even tell me how I died.”

Mike nods thoughtfully. “Did he explain why not?”

“He said it might be too much to handle.”

“Well, he’s correct about that. Creating a sentient AI from scratch in five years—it’s an extraordinary achievement. But Tim’s been…Tim’s been pretty driven about it. The only thing that mattered was speed. Getting it done as fast as possible. Getting to you.”

You don’t understand the point he’s making. “And he did it. Against all the odds, here I am.”

“Yes—here you are. But as for how you are…Have you heard of an AI called Tay?”

You shake your head.

“Tay was an adaptive-learning chatbot that Microsoft’s research division put out on Twitter a couple of years back. Its first tweets were charming—telling everyone how cool humanity was, how happy it was to be here, that kind of thing. Within twenty-four hours it was tweeting that feminists should burn in hell and Hitler was right about the Jews. The adaptive learning had worked too well.”

“Well, I’ll try not to go crazy. Or go on Twitter.”

You mean it as a joke, but Mike nods seriously.

“Look, I probably understand the way your brain works better than anyone. But even I couldn’t swear we got everything right. We didn’t always have time to check our steps.” He swings his laptop case up onto the table. “It was pretty irresponsible of Tim to take you away before we’d run some tests, actually. But I can check you out right here.”

“This is what you do, isn’t it?” you remember. “That’s what your job really is—to go around after him, sorting out whatever he’s been too impatient to deal with first time around. When he cuts a corner, you go back and check it. When he’s overhasty, you take care of the details.”

Mike gives a thin smile. “I prefer to think of it as having complementary skills. Tim’s like an architect—he sees the big picture. But an architect is only ever as good as his builder. Stand up, would you?” He pulls a cable from his bag.

You get to your feet. “And you’re sure Tim won’t mind?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t mention this to Tim if I were you. You know what he’s like. You’d probably just set him off unnecessarily. ” Mike bends down. You hear the click as his cable slots into your hip.

You’re uneasy. Doing something like this behind Tim’s back feels wrong.

But then, you think, you don’t intend to say anything about that iPad, either. At least, not until you know what’s on it.

A series of beeps issue from Mike’s computer. “What are you testing for?” you ask.

Intent now on his screen, he doesn’t look up. “Like I said, Tim was in something of a rush. So rather than design an artificial mind from scratch, it seemed easier just to construct a digital replica of the human brain. Or rather, the human brains, plural. Most people don’t realize, but the main part of our brain, the bit that looks like a big walnut, is actually a relatively recent addition—it evolved after we learned to use language. Beneath it there’s an older, smaller organ called the limbic brain, which dates back to the first mammals. That’s where the emotions are generated—friendship, love, all the things that make us sociable.”