The Perfect Wife

Step seven: Make the bouillabaisse.

Chop a dozen leeks and a dozen onions very fine, and sweat in an open pan along with a bay leaf and another pinch of saffron. Dice and deseed ten tomatoes, and whisk in a bowl along with yet more finely chopped garlic, more orange peel, and a glass of white wine. Add to the softened onions and pour in the fumet. Then add the chunks of seafood and poach for three to five minutes, until just done. Remove and keep warm.

The reason it’s called a bouillabaisse is because of what happens next: You boil up the cooking liquid, very hard and fast, so everything emulsifies and acquires a soupy consistency.

Add more Pernod to taste, more saffron and pepper to taste, and you’re done.

Except, of course, you couldn’t actually taste it.

35

By the time Tim comes home, the kitchen is tidy again and the table laid. White wine—three bottles of Batard-Montrachet—is chilling in the fridge, as per his texted instructions. It’s his best wine, a mark of how important this evening is to him.

“You’ve changed your hair,” he says, kissing you as he passes.

“Yes. Do you like it?”

“You should wear it any way you choose,” he says, frowning. “That’s the whole point. You’re autonomous, not some Stepford Wife. Whether I like it isn’t the point.”

“You hate it.”

“No, I like it. I’ll get used to it, anyway.”

While Tim’s in the shower Mike arrives with Jenny, his wife. She’s geeky and boyish in a T-shirt and jeans. “I worked on your deep-learning capabilities,” she tells you earnestly when you’re introduced. It’s hard to think of an answer to that. You’re rescued by Mike, who adds proudly, “Jenny has a PhD from Stanford in logistic neurons.” You nod as if you know what on earth that means. But after a moment, of course, clunk, you do. An antisymmetric sigmoidal function that can be trained from real-life examples rather than explicitly programmed.

“You mean you built my brain,” you paraphrase.

She nods. “I guess.”

Elijah brings his husband, Robert. A woman called Alicia Wright arrives on her own—late thirties, toned, her blond hair glossily smooth. “Hi! I’m Scott Robotics’ PR consultant,” she says brightly, holding out her hand. “Pleased to meet you.”

“I thought Katrina was the PR consultant,” you say.

“Tim fired her this morning,” Elijah says. “Alicia is new.”

“But fully up to speed, and super excited to be working with the famous Abbie!” she assures you.

Tim comes down from his shower. He’s changed from the black jeans and gray James Perse T-shirt he came home in, into fresh black jeans and another gray T-shirt. While you open the wine, the others brief him.

“Try to behave,” Mike suggests. “Renton’s an idiot, but he’s a smart idiot. He’ll want to test you. Stand your ground, but don’t let him rile you.”

“I always behave,” Tim says, bristling.

“Just not always well,” Elijah mutters.

As if on cue, John Renton arrives. To your surprise, given their descriptions of him, he’s much younger than Tim and Mike. But his manner is of someone older—brash, confident, dominating the room. You see Tim stiffen as Renton slaps him on the shoulder, and know instantly that your husband dislikes this man.

When Renton’s introduced to Alicia he interrogates her about who else she’s worked with. Each person she names, he tells her about his own last interaction with them—“You PR for Shaun? He called me the other day, trying to get me to invest in that lame app he’s building.” “Oh, Catherine? Smart lady. We just shared a platform at TED.” You see her responding to his attention, how her body moves just a little more sensuously, how she touches her hair when he speaks. He has the opposite of good looks or charm—indeed, he’s almost ugly—but you can see how some women might be charmed by him.

At last he turns to you. “So this is her!” he exclaims, holding out his hand.

You shake it. “Pleased to meet you.”

He laughs delightedly. “An AI with feelings. Get that! What are you feeling right now?”

You think. “Happy. And a little nervous.”

“Do I make you nervous?” he says eagerly.

You shake your head. “I’m just worried about how my bouillabaisse will turn out.”

“Anything else?”

“Well, I do feel a certain amount of monachopsis.”

Renton frowns. “Monachopsis?”

“It’s a persistent feeling of being out of place.”

His eyes widen. “Monachopsis. I never even heard of that.” He turns to Tim. “Impressive.”

Tim rolls his eyes. He clearly thinks that someone who’s impressed by your use of a long word to describe a feeling—as opposed to the fact you can have a feeling in the first place—has missed the point of you completely.

“I’ll get the wine,” you say hastily.

Half an hour later, you’re opening a second bottle, and Renton’s in full flow.

“I gotta tell you, Tim, when I first heard about this I thought you were nuts. I mean, feelings? Feelings are what made my wife my ex-wife, for chrissake. Sure, I can see some possibilities. Healthcare, maybe. The sex industry.” I see Tim wince. “But fundamentally, there’s an acceptability issue. People don’t want their robots to have feelings. Because if machines feel like humans, pretty soon some bleeding heart will decide we should treat them like humans. And then the whole economic argument for AI vanishes. Instead of being mechanical servants, tilling our fields and toiling in our sweatshops, suddenly they’re indistinguishable from people. But making people is cheap, right? It’s running them that’s expensive. With AI, it should be the other way around. We start giving robots the same rights, the same consideration, maybe even the same pay, then where’s the viability in that?”

“If you prick us, do we not bleed,” Mike says, nodding.

“Bleed?” Renton repeats, clearly puzzled.

“The Merchant of Venice. I forget how it goes on.”

“If you prick us, do we not bleed?” you say. “If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”

There’s a silence. “My point exactly,” Renton says. “You’re not ticklish, right?”

You shake your head.

“The Shylock question is an interesting one, actually,” Jenny says thoughtfully. “If the capacity to feel emotion means experiencing pain as well as pleasure, by what right do we inflict that on other intelligences?”

Tim’s eyes flash. “You’re both missing the point. Cobots aren’t slaves or pets. They’re people. Just in another form.”

“Whatever they are, they’re an expensive luxury item,” Renton says dismissively. “An economic dead end. Your problem, Tim, is that you’ve invented this thing but you have no real vision for what to do with it.”

You stand up. “I’ll get the bouillabaisse.”

The debate—which is not quite an argument, but at times so fierce it almost sounds like one—only pauses when you bring the soup to the table. You sit back and watch as they lift the first spoonful to their mouths.

Tim frowns. But it’s Renton who speaks first.

“Whoa!” he says, staring at his bowl. “What happened here?”

Mike sniffs his spoonful. “That’s rank,” he says quietly.

“What’s wrong?” you ask anxiously.

“I think some of your fish may have been off,” Jenny says nervously.

“That’s not possible—” you begin, but then you remember. The employee who couldn’t understand why you wanted fish bones. Who only agreed to add them when he thought they were for your cat. Clearly, he’d simply tossed a bag from the trash in with the order, assuming your pet would sort out the edible ones.

Your stock—your beautiful, elaborate, saffron-infused fumet—was poisoned from the start.

“I’m so sorry—” you say helplessly.

Tim pulls out his phone. “Basilico can have pizza here in thirty minutes. That good for everyone?”

Numbly, you collect the full bowls and carry them back to the kitchen. Jenny gets up to help.

“I feel like such an idiot,” you say miserably when you’re alone.

“It isn’t your fault.”

“I’ve let Tim down. John Renton came here convinced I’m an expensive white elephant and I’ve just proved him right. Of course I can’t smell anything. I’m a robot.”

“I wouldn’t necessarily assume that’s Renton’s view,” Jenny says cautiously. “He wouldn’t be here if it was. He’s just sparring. He’s like that. All those tech guys are.”

You glance at her. “Mike’s not, though.”

“Mike’s not,” she agrees. “Or not so much. Which is why I married him.” She gives you a sideways look. “Why do you say, of course you can’t smell?”

“I can’t, can I?”

She shrugs. “The food industry already uses artificial taste buds. The deep learning for an artificial nose has existed for years.”

“So why…” You stop, thinking through the implications. “He wanted to build me as quickly as he could,” you realize. “To get me back. Even if it meant having to cut a few corners.”

“Well, I guess that’s men for you. Their priorities come first.”