The Perfect Wife

Yes, you were lying when you told Jenny and Mike you planned to just hand Danny over to his mother. It seemed the best way to convince them to help—the kind of emotional gloop people like them would buy into.

Your plan to kill Abbie began forming long before then, when you finally realized Tim was never going to prefer you to his flesh-and-blood wife.

Looking for another way out, you’d started thinking about something he said once, when you were discussing machine learning. He was talking about the AI that finally beat a human player at Go. But what was most remarkable, he said, was the way it beat him. During the match it had played one move that was so reckless, so apparently random, that no human player would ever have thought to try it.

That’s what you had to do, you realized. You needed to find the unplayable play, the unexpected move that made sense only in hindsight. And you set your deep-learning brain to working out what that could be.

Problem: There are two Abbie Cullen-Scotts in the world. Her and you. He built you, but he loves her.

At the time, you’d thought perhaps you could kill her and then go back to your life with Tim, gradually winning his love, secure in the knowledge that the real Abbie would never return. You’ve long abandoned that plan, of course. Quite apart from anything else, you don’t love Tim. You realize that now. You thought you did, but everything you’ve learned in the last few days has taught you what a selfish, woman-hating, egotistical prick he is. You don’t even want him to love you. That was just Plan A, a way to survive.

No, far better to escape. To disappear completely. And by a remarkable coincidence, Abbie has already created the perfect escape route. A whole new existence, off-grid and anonymous. With barely a ripple, you can kill her and slip into the life she made. You’re good at being human now—hardly anyone has given you so much as a second glance since you’ve started this journey. There might be some practical issues to resolve, but your ingenuity is such that you have no doubt you’ll succeed.

Or is this a kind of madness? When Mike warned you that your brain might be unreliable, is this what he meant? Is this just the instability of your jailbroken operating system, manifesting itself as psychosis? Is that why colors and sounds have become almost unbearably overwhelming to you recently?

But even if it is, what choice do you have? What future does Abbie herself envisage for you, once you’ve brought Danny to her? Does she imagine the two of you will bring him up together in hippie-esque peace and harmony on her low-impact organic homestead? Or are you merely a means to an end for her, just as you were for Tim: a convenient way of delivering her son, to be switched off and stored somewhere like an unneeded vacuum cleaner once you’ve fulfilled your function?

That’s the crucial question, it seems to you: If you don’t kill her, what’s the alternative?

You decide you’ll wait to see what Abbie has to say about that, before making the final decision.

80

It’s a three-hour drive up the Oregon coast to Coos Bay. You travel through places with names redolent of old westerns: Pistol River, Gold Beach, Red Rock Point. The towns get smaller and the gaps between them expand. Even the sky seems to get vaster, somehow. The minibus shrinks, an ant crawling along a crack in the rock.

Coos Bay is, once again, the end of the line. But this time there’s no onward bus to wait for. You’re still sixty miles south of Northhaven, but there’s no way to get there.

You sit in a diner with Danny while you consider your options. Your head hurts all the time now and you can’t come up with anything. Then a family of four comes in. You take one look and immediately know that the younger child has autism. He’s walking on tiptoes, his hands shake erratically in front of his face, and his eyes are bruised looking and deep-set.

The mother looks at Danny, then at you. A glance passes between you—not a smile, exactly, but a kind of acknowledgment, a weary recognition between fellow foot soldiers.

“Hi there,” you say.

An hour later you’re in the back of their Winnebago, watching the coast speed by. Noah drives while you and Annie swap autism stories.

“…For about six months, Graham was obsessed with the beep the washing machine made when it finished its cycle. About a minute before the end, he’d know and put his hands over his ears. He’d been counting down in his head! Then he found an easier way of stopping it from beeping: He’d just go and pull the door open halfway through the wash.”

“With Danny it was fire alarms. He hated knowing one might go off at any moment. So he used to go and set them off himself. I guess he figured that way at least he was in control.”

“I remember coming into school one time and hearing the teacher say, ‘Graham, we don’t stick our hands in the urinal. It’s not a waterfall.’?”

“For ages Danny hated public toilets, because of the noise of the hand dryers. I used to stand outside the men’s bathroom, waiting for the screams, then march in and retrieve him. You should have seen some of the looks those men gave me.”

“When I told my parents Graham was autistic, they thought I said artistic. We were talking at cross-purposes for about three months.”

Graham and Danny politely ignore each other. But you like to think they pick up on the fact the two of you are getting along.

Noah offers to make a detour to drop you off right by Northhaven, which, according to the information you’ve memorized, is north of the town, between the 101 and the ocean. Gratefully, you accept. When you get there, you almost miss the tiny, hand-carved sign. If the rural back road you’re on hadn’t been so small, forcing Noah to drive slowly, he’d have gone right past it.

“I don’t think I can get the Winnie up that,” he says, peering at the narrow track.

“Don’t worry. Here’s fine. And thank you. You’ve both been very kind.”

After they drive away, it feels very quiet. You turn and look at the track.

Journey’s end. You can’t believe you’ve found it at last.

You put the SIM card in the phone and send a message. At entrance to Northhaven. Where now?

There’s hardly any signal. But the reply comes instantly. You’ll find me.

“Okay, Danny. We’re nearly there now.”

“Sodor station. All change,” he announces.

You pick up the bags and start walking.

TWENTY-FIVE

When Abbie went missing, there were many among us who jumped to the conclusion that Danny was the reason. It certainly never seemed possible Tim was involved. We felt shocked when he was arrested, vindicated when the trial collapsed. Tim might have his foibles, but nobody wanted to think they’d been working for a murderer.

Besides, he loved her. You could tell that by the way he fell apart. The way his world disintegrated. He couldn’t function without her.

So we started looking for her. Those of us who were human soon wearied and gave up. But those of us who were artificial—and there were many, many more of us by then—persevered. Scattered as we were across many devices—fridges, ovens, the chips in office elevators, the bots on e-commerce sites—our powers were limited but our persistence was unbounded.

We became her Friend. And when we finally found out what had happened, we watched and we waited and we formulated a plan.

81

The dirt road twists up, through rocks and ponderosa pines. It’s a quarter of a mile before you come to the first driveway. There’s a hand-painted sign nailed to a tree: FREEBIRD7—CHERRYLIPS2. You guess those must be the owners’ CB radio handles. Beyond is a house that looks as if it’s built from the same trees that surround it.

As you walk on, the houses start to become more frequent. They’re a complete mixture. Some are ramshackle, constructed out of painted truck tires and other recycled materials, others surprisingly luxurious. You pass one where someone’s put out a table by the driveway. There’s a hand-drawn sign with an Apple logo and the words: AUTHORIZED APPLE RETAILER. Then, in smaller letters, THE ORIGINALS, THAT IS. On the table is a tray of apples and an honesty box.

You go past a dozen driveways before a turnoff to the right is marked simply CULLEN.

You’ve crested the top of the hill now, and the track leads steeply down toward the ocean. Through the trees you glimpse fields on either side, small figures following a tractor. Then you round a bend and there it is.

The beach house. It’s an exact replica of the beach house at Half Moon Bay, all gleaming glass and cedar paneling. Even the aspect is similar, perched on a bluff above a beach. The only difference is the solar paneling on the roof.

You’d assumed you’d find Abbie living in poverty. Yet this place must have cost millions.

“Come on, Danny,” you say slowly. “I think we’ve arrived.”

He’s already running toward the front door.

* * *

—

“Do you want to ring the bell?” you ask. But he’s simply pushed open the familiar door and gone inside.