Post-Human Series Books 1-4 (62 page)

2

I walked up the slight incline on the small avenue adjacent to the Convention Center toward the corner, knowing my car would be picking me up in less than two minutes. I kept my head down low, but as usual, dozens of passersby looked up at me, their aug glasses recognizing me and alerting them that the inventor of half of the technological gadgetry that adorned their bodies was in very close proximity. The facial recognition application, appropriately dubbed “Paparazzo,” came preloaded on most aug glasses; it had turned the entire world into gawkers and stalkers. Thus, I kept my head down and charged forward, attempting to send the message to the world that I was a very busy man and should not be approached.

Meanwhile, Mark’s profile picture continued flashing in my field of vision. Desperate text messages, such as “We need to talk” and “Please wait!” popped up so quickly that I suspected he had them preloaded into his aug glasses. The board of directors had insisted unanimously in a private meeting that Mark’s glasses would always be linked to mine, lest their mildly autistic CEO run wild, destroying investor confidence and ruining the company with his erratic behavior. I was contractually obligated not to place him on a block list, even temporarily, and he was entitled to know my whereabouts at all times.

“I’m waiting for my car, Mark,” I replied, the text appearing almost as quickly as I spoke it in a cartoon word bubble. “Better hurry. Send.”

I slowed my pace as I approached the corner. I checked the GPS to see that the car was still sitting at the exit of the underground parking complex it had found nearly a kilometer away. I flipped to the dash camera and saw that it was sitting silently behind two cars at a toll booth. The hand of the driver of the front car was fumbling with a plastic card and a debit machine. I barely resisted the urge to groan as I considered the driver’s obvious resistance to superior technology.
He hasn’t activated a Passbook account? He drove his own car? Why? Why on Earth?
My car couldn’t comprehend this caveman-like behavior and, thus, could not generate a new ETA; after all, how can one place a precise time measurement on human irrationality? It would be...infinite.

I turned back to the Convention Center and saw Mark jogging up the incline toward me. He was famous too, if far less so than I was. I wondered what UHD videos uploaded to YouTube of him jogging up the road to wrangle me would do to the stock price.

It was raining. The rain was cold—icy. An autumn wind was cutting through my light sweater, stinging my skin. I hated it, but even more so, I hated the feeling that I couldn’t stop it. All I could do was hunch my shoulders slightly and keep my arms tight to my body to conserve heat, no better than a snow owl tucking its beak into its feathers. No better.
How could I be no better?
I thought.
Why am I prisoner to my physiology?
I was a prisoner to meat, just like everyone else.

“Beat your car!” Mark exclaimed, half-exasperated and half-proud of his achievement as he tried to catch his breath. “I gotta hit the gym, man.”

“Or you could have conversations the way everyone else does,” I replied, pointing to my aug glasses.

He bent over, propping himself up by placing his hands above his knees. “You can’t beat face to face for some things,” he said, shaking his head. “This is important. What the hell happened back there?”

I turned away and looked down the street in the direction from which my car would be coming. It was finally exiting the parking complex and, in sixty seconds, it would arrive. “I saved it, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, you did,” Mark replied, “but it was a close one. You nearly gave me a heart attack. You know you can’t go off script like that.”

“If my photographic memory serves, I’m still CEO,” I replied, somewhat tersely.

“Yes,” Mark answered, “and I want to keep it that way. Look, I’m doing everything I can to keep you inline so we can make it to the finish line together. If you go off script like that and start talking to people who aren’t predetermined...”

“I get it.”

“Do you? Because this isn’t the first time we’ve had this talk.”

“Oh I get it. Stick to the script. Be a prisoner to the board of my own company.”

“That board meeting happened for a reason. We’re all on your side. We want to see you succeed, but sometimes you’re your own worst enemy.”

I turned to him, my face like stone. I had nothing to say in response.
What can I say that would be worth my time?
I thought.
These are the concerns of apes
. I didn’t feel the necessity to placate them with a banana.

Mark sighed. “I think it’s time we revisit the idea of you talking to someone.”

That got my attention. He meant a psychiatrist. I grimaced.

“It can’t be easy going through life with your...illness,” Mark continued.

“High-functioning autism isn’t an illness,” I retorted. “It’s a
difference
.” I said, being generous. In my view, my “condition” was a gift.

“I’m sorry. Still, it can’t be easy being different, right?”

The conversation was becoming unnecessarily tangled in the sticky wetness of emotion. Psychiatrist visits were a very real threat—another part of the board’s demands if I wanted to hold my position at the head of my own company. If Mark saw fit, he could force me to undergo treatment and therapy. The idea of a monkey, albeit a slightly more sophisticated than average one, probing inside of my mind as though she were looking for tiny insects to pick out and pop into her mouth disgusted me. Out of necessity, I switched my tone. I opted to confide in Mark. He was hungering for emotion, so I decided to give him a taste. “That won’t be necessary,” I replied, sighing as I watched my car finally appear from around the corner. The ETA flashed to eighteen seconds, and it appeared that it would arrive exactly on time. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have acted that way. I’ve been...distracted.”

“What’s going on?” Mark asked.

The artificial electric
buzz
of my car engine grew louder as the vehicle pulled up to the curb. The back door opened automatically upon its arrival, as if by the hand of an invisible chauffeur. “Hello, Professor,” it spoke to me in a sultry, feminine voice. “Please enter.”

“Would you like a lift?” I asked Mark, arching a brow.

“Yeah, sure,” Mark replied. He pressed a button on his aug glasses and spoke to his own car, most likely still parked in the same parking complex where mine had been. “Go home,” he ordered.

We stepped into the car together, relieved to get out of the rain. The interior of the vehicle had already warmed, and the front seats pushed forward so that Mark and I had ample leg room. “Take us to Mark’s house,” I said.

“Okay, Professor,” the car replied. “I will take us to Mark’s house.”

I slipped off my aug glasses and started to put them into the front pocket of my shirt; it was a deliberate gesture to send the semiotic signal to Mark that I was fully engaged with his concerns and taking them seriously.

“Whoa, wait,” Mark suddenly said, holding up his hand to stop me. “Let’s have a game of chess while we talk. What do you say?”

I grinned as I finished placing the glasses into my pocket. “Sure, let’s play. Set it up.”

His eyes narrowed. “Are you serious? I’ve made you so cocky that now you’re going to play me blindfolded?”

“Perhaps,” I said, nodding. “Let’s see if my cockiness is justified, shall we?”

“All right,” Mark replied, “if you’re sure.” He rubbed his index finger against the arm of his glasses and then spoke, “Chess. New Game.” A moment later, he craned his neck, his eyes focusing on what was an image of a chess board overlaid over his vision. The board was invisible to me, but it didn’t matter. I’d long since observed that my working memory was far superior to that of normal people. While people could normally only hold about seven items of information in their short-term working memory at once, I was able to hold almost unlimited amounts of information with my photographic memory. It was true, I didn’t need to see the board to defeat Mark; I’d never lost to him, though, to his credit, he’d pluckily come back for another game after every defeat; I had to respect that. However, I wasn’t in the mood for a long game that day. I decided to obliterate him quickly. “I’ll be white. E2 to E4.”

“Okay,” Mark replied. “E7 to E5,” he said casually; I could tell by his tone that he had no idea what was coming. “So?” Mark asked, returning to the matter of my behavior, holding on to my nugget of revelation like a lion holding a zebra’s tail between its teeth, insisting on more than a morsel.

“So...” I began with a shrug, “I’m breaking it off with Kali today.”

Mark’s eyes widened. “Oh.”

The car rolled forward, taking us efficiently out of the downtown core, toward the bridge, and our eventual destination: Mark’s beautiful mansion on the mountain that overlooked the city. The drive would last nine minutes and seven seconds in total, according to the readout that had been displayed on my aug glasses before we departed. I needed to display enough emotion to get Mark off my back by the time we arrived, convincing him that my behavior was normal considering the heartbreaking circumstances of a breakup, thus allowing me to avoid the psychiatrist land mine. Again, I would be acting. The nausea returned.

“It’s just been tough,” I elaborated. “She’s a great person but...” I pouted my bottom lip slightly, “I’m just not happy with her. Bishop F1 to C4.”

Mark’s expression was grim surprise as he watched my virtual chess piece move across the board. “Are you sure you want to do it?” Mark asked. “Dump Kali, I mean. She’s been a great, stabilizing influence in your life.”

“Not as much as you might think,” I replied and I wasn’t lying. Every word I spoke was true—it was the emotion that was a lie. The truth was that I felt relief about the impending end of the relationship. Kali, my girlfriend of two years, had been an anchor, but only the kind tied around my neck, strangling me, and I was looking forward to cutting the chain.

Mark’s face was still as he concentrated all of his mental power on his next move, both in the game and in life. “Knight B8 to B6. If the problem you’re having is making an emotional connection with her because of your HFA, that’s the exact sort of thing a psychiatrist could help you with.”

It was difficult to remain patient. I hated it when people—especially Mark or Kali—used my autism as an explanation for any behavior with which they didn’t agree. I knew I had to keep my temper in check, though, so I forced as convincing a smile as I could muster. “Mark, not everything can be blamed on my HFA. Some people just aren’t a good match. Relationships end every day. I mean, you’ve been divorced twice, right?” Mark’s eyes shot up to meet mine, and I made sure mine were smiling.

“Heh. Touché, I guess.”

He forced a smile.

“Queen D1 to H5, by the way,” I added.

“Whoa. Queen already? You’re really going for the jugular here.”

“I’m just being decisive,” I replied, continuing to wear my smile mask.

Like a boxer rocked by a series of upper cuts in the first round, Mark tried to refocus, his eyes burning intensely into the invisible board. “Uh...Knight G8 to F6. I think. Wait. Damn it.”

He’d walked right into my trap. “Queen H5 to F7. Check mate.”

Mark scratched his head. “That was quick.”

“I apologize,” I offered. “It’s a short car ride and I wanted you to see that my faculties are as sharp as ever.” I leaned in and smiled, reassuringly. “I’m going to be okay, my friend.”

“I really hope so,” Mark replied as he tried to shake off the shock of defeat. He turned and watched the city recede into the heavy, gray cloud cover behind us as we crossed the bridge. “I really do. I’ve invested a lot of time in you. I’m rooting for you, buddy. I want you to succeed in everything.”

My poker face melted, and my brow furrowed for an instant as I considered his strange and unexpected emotional effusion. “Uh...I appreciate that, Mark,” I quickly replied, reestablishing my smile.

“I’m being serious,” Mark said, leaning in closer, his eyes dripping with earnestness. “I’ve spent the last two years watching you because I believe in you. I know you don’t like it. I know you think of me like a pesky glorified babysitter. But you have to understand, I don’t enjoy it either. I watch over you because I want to see you get where you’re supposed to go.”

“I’m sorry, Mark. I didn’t know you felt that way,” I said sincerely. “I guess I hadn’t considered how taxing it must be for you.”

He smiled and shook his head. “You have no idea.”

Mark’s house appeared from out of the gray nothingness, as though it had just been imagined by God. My car rolled to a stop outside of the large, black gate. Mark grinned and patted my leg reassuringly, then stepped out of the vehicle.

He turned back to the car and leaned down to the window, his earnest expression returning. “For all your genius, you really have no idea how important you are,” he said. “The whole company is depending on you.” He smiled again. “Heck, when you really think about it, the whole world is depending on you.”

“Drop me off at the front entrance,” I told the car as we neared my building.

“Okay. I will drop you off at the front entrance. Shall I park myself in the underground garage?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. I will park myself in the underground garage.”

The door opened the moment the car came to a full stop and I stepped out immediately. I slipped my aug glasses back on.

“Goodbye, Professor.”

The door of the car closed behind me as the front door of my building opened, triggered by the location software in my aug glasses. “Where’s Kali?” I asked.

“Kali is home,” my glasses responded as the elevator door slid open to allow for my entrance before efficiently closing behind me. The light for the PH button illuminated automatically as I leaned against the chrome railing that ran along the mirrored walls of the elevator. I briefly considered my image in multiplicity, one reflection echoing infinitely and I was reminded of a Hall of Mirrors.

When the door opened to my penthouse apartment, Kali was waiting for me, her eyes bright and beautiful, though unable to hold my attention. My gaze immediately dropped—automatically, primally—to devour the tan, moisturized skin on abundant display. She was wearing a peekaboo nightie that revealed her enticing red lace bra and matching panties that barely covered her remarkable assets. She was making things difficult.

“Surprise!” she exclaimed as she threw her arms around my shoulders.

“I’m surprised,” I replied. “What’s the occasion?”

“We’re celebrating your keynote, obviously!” she announced, rolling her eyes and shaking her head as she grabbed my hand and pulled me into our shared apartment. Only a few paces to the left, she’d left an open bottle of champagne to chill in a bucket of ice and two glasses were already filled and waiting. She sat me on the barstool and deftly grasped both flutes, then handed me one and placed a warm, delicious kiss on my mouth. It was a long kiss, and there was something behind it that pulled me in like gravity—there was purpose behind it—strategy. When she finally pulled her lips away from mine, her eyes were earnest and close. She sipped the champagne, her other hand over my shoulder, gently on my back. “We’re gonna have a great night tonight, okay? Just you and me. What do you say?”

Freud’s
Civilization and its Discontents
screamed in my ears. This was it—I’d reached it. This was the moment when I had to give my reason precedence over my bodily urges. I can’t lie: it was not easy. Kali was as gorgeous a woman as I had ever seen in my life. Her hair was jet black, her skin brown and smooth, and her eyes adorned with flecks of jade that seemed to light up like an LED screen. However, even those attributes weren’t the most irresistible, the most desirable. Her curves—they were absolute perfection. She had a sway in her hips and breasts that only men (and the very few women who have it) understand for its intoxicating power. She made women that could have been lingerie models cry themselves to sleep in envy.

Still, there I was, trying to break it off with
her
...for science.

She seemed to be able to sense the conflict churning inside me, even if she had no idea how serious it was or how close she was to coming out on the losing end. The corner of her lip curled into a mischievous grin. “Oh no. There’s no way you’re gonna blow me off for work, gorgeous.” She stepped back and flicked the delicate spaghetti strap off one of her shoulders, allowing her bra to drop dangerously close to revealing a nipple.

I stood immediately, convinced that the appearance of a fully exposed breast would spell the end of my ability to put mind over matter. “Kali, no. I...can’t. We have to talk.”

“Talk is boring,” she purred. “So much more can be accomplished without words,” she teased, still smiling as she stepped closer and brushed her smooth skin against mine.

“I’m serious, Kali.”

She stepped back half a step and wrinkled her brow. “What is it?”

I stepped back myself, putting more distance between myself and her temptation. “I want to end our relationship,” I finally said, bluntly. I instantly felt relieved.

The smile on Kali’s face melted in an instant. Her eyes seemed to glaze over, tracking me one minute, the next sitting fixed and deadened. There was no disbelief, no hope, no assumption that I could possibly be joking. She simply looked...vacant.

“Kali?” I asked after several moments of silence. “Kali. I know this is hard, but you have to say something.”

She remained perfectly still and said nothing.

I sighed, turned, and sat on the barstool again. I suddenly felt the urge to escape reality, to get out of my head. I wasn’t one to drink, but I knocked back the entire glass of champagne in a few gulps. When I finished, I set the stemware back on the counter, then turned back to Kali, who hadn’t moved—not even in the slightest. A chill tickled over my skin as I watched the uncanny display; it felt as though the life had left her body, yet her corpse remained upright, eyes open, face like an emotionless mask. I slowly stood to my feet and walked toward her, my eyes fixed on hers, scanning for even the slightest movement or sign of life. “Kali?” I asked again. I was suddenly terrified.
Did she just have a psychotic break right in front of my eyes?
I wondered. I had no idea that she’d react that way. I continued to step slowly toward her, crouching low to try to get my face directly into her line of sight, hoping I could get her eyes to start tracking mine again, at the very least. There remained no sign of consciousness, though her chest continued to slowly expand and contract as she breathed. I waved my hand in front of her eyes.

Finally, she shook her head violently, as though waking from a bad dream. She looked at me, aghast, and then turned her head to take in the apartment, as though she’d just arrived.

Unconsciously, my eyes flashed down to take in the primal pleasure of skin that was still on display.

The gesture wasn’t lost on her, and she looked down at herself, her face suddenly contorting, as though she were repulsed and ashamed of her own body. “Oh my God,” she whispered. She hurried across the room to the coatrack and wrapped herself in the longest one, pulling it over herself and tightening the belt. When she was done, clothing herself, she looked up at me with a confused, but also ashamed expression that baffled me; I could have sworn I was in the presence of a completely different person from the woman who’d greeted me at the elevator door minutes earlier in nothing but her skivvies and a ridiculously impractical negligee.

“So...what are you talking about? What’s going on?” she asked, as though she were more interested in getting my focus off of her body than onto our breakup. I had placed something ahead of her body on my list of priorities, and coming to terms with the realization was apparently not easy for her. It was as if she’d been rebooted right before my eyes.

“I’m sorry, Kali, but I want to end our relationship. It’s time for us to go our separate ways.”

Kali stood still, her arms crossed in front of her body as she stared at me again. This time, though, it was clear that she understood; I could see her thoughts racing behind her eyes as she considered her next move. “Can we...” she began to say before quickly abandoning the request.

I shrugged. “I’m sorry. I have to do this.”

“But why?”

“My work. My work is what makes me what I am. It’s everything to me—to everyone. My work is more important than me, than my competitors—it’s more important that even a romantic relationship. My work gives my life meaning, Kali. It justifies my existence.”

Kali’s face twitched slightly, but again she was silent. Still, slight movements of her eyes assured me she was fully engaged, still contemplating her next move. She was no longer in shock. “You can be so damn insufferable,” she said, shaking her head. “Do you
ever
have your own unique thoughts? Or is everything you say recited straight out of a book?”

Her words terrified me. It didn’t bother me that they were hostile or derisive. What terrified me was that she was right—but she shouldn’t have been.
How in the world could she possibly know?
I asked myself. I bet that she was bluffing. “I don’t know what you’re talking—”

“Yes you do,” she responded sharply. “You’re paraphrasing Freud. And I quote, ‘
No other technique for the conduct of life attaches the individual so firmly to reality as laying emphasis on work; for his work at least gives him a secure place in a portion of reality, in the human community. The possibility it offers of displacing a large amount of libidinal components, whether narcissistic, aggressive or even erotic, on to professional work and on to the human relations connected with it lends it a value by no means second to what it enjoys as something indispensable to the preservation and justification of existence in society.
’
End quote.”

My lips parted but my astonishment dumbfounded me. She’d just quoted Freud’s
Civilization and its Discontents
verbatim. It was true that I’d paraphrased it, as it had informed much of my thinking in the previous weeks while I considered ending my relationship, but I didn’t know how she could possibly know that. She wasn’t wearing aug glasses, and even if she had been, the paraphrase was so loose that it couldn’t have triggered any plagiarism detection software. While I had a photographic memory and an IQ that rendered traditional intelligence testing useless, Kali was just a normal, slightly above average intelligence human being—or at least I’d always assumed so. “How...?” I muttered.

“You’ve really annoyed me today, you know that? Do you even care?” she said, her mouth pulled into a grimace as she ignored my query, her arms remaining folded tightly across her chest. “You’re the most difficult puzzle I’ve ever had to solve.”

“I...” I couldn’t speak. For the first time I could remember, I was completely stymied.

Kali dropped her arms and sighed, looking around the spacious, luxurious interior of our apartment, her eyes finally settling on the dark, rainy day outside. “Two years. This was the farthest I’ve made it so far. I don’t want to have to start over again.”

“Kali,” I began, my tone soft, “how did you—”

“You know how I did it,” she asserted, snapping her head around to lock her stern eyes on mine. “You may be the only one of your kind with the ability to figure it out, but you
can
figure it out—not that it’ll do you any good.”

For the second time, her words terrified me. Indeed, a possible explanation
had
occurred to me, but it seemed so outlandish that I couldn’t bring myself to believe it.

She didn’t seem interested in filling me in. Rather, she focused on herself. “Tell me what I did wrong,” she suddenly demanded, stepping toward me, her eyes earnest and determined. “Help me understand what it is you want so that this doesn’t happen again.”

I felt helpless, as if the whole world was a bucking bronco that had shaken me off. “Kali...” I began to stammer. “I don’t think that’s a worthwhile exercise—”

“I don’t care what you think. Answer the question,” she demanded, this time in a tone that, considering the context, seemed absurdly threatening.

Suddenly annoyed, I made a vain effort to regain control over the confrontation by giving her exactly what she wanted. “Fine. I’ll tell you. You take up far too much of my time. I want to devote my life fully to my inventions. The only reason I can possibly conceive of for staying would be if you offered me a truly loving and emotional respite so my time spent with you would be recuperative.”

“A respite? Really! What are you talking about?” she reacted, exasperated as she opened her coat to reveal her nightie again. “What do you think
this
is for?”

“
That
is not recuperative,” I replied. “It is exhausting. You’re a gorgeous woman, Kali, but you act like a porn star when we’re alone together. You’re a completely different person in the bedroom. You don’t even seem to know me, and you never take no for an answer.”

Kali stood, stunned. “Wow. So you’re telling me that I found the one man in the universe who complains that his woman wants to give him amazing sex.”

This time, Raymond Chandler’s wisdom emerged foremost in my mind:
It’s so hard for women—even nice women—to realize that their bodies are not irresistible
.
I dared not say it.

“Okay,” she said, when she realized I had no answer, nodding as she crossed her arms in front of her chest again. “What else?”

“You’re bizarrely controlling,” I said as I nodded toward an ugly, antique china cabinet that didn’t match any of our other furniture. “You won’t even let me touch the damn thing...in my own home!”

“It’s an antique,” she replied coolly, “and I don’t want you to damage it. Is it really that difficult to respect my wishes on something so trivial?”

“Actually, yes,” I replied, stepping toward the cabinet, my hand outstretched, reaching for the dark wood. My plan was to leave a nice, big hand print on the surface to show her that such a transgression would not cause the world to crumble to its instant end.

Little did I know.

“No!” Kali shrieked as she reached out for me, sending an invisible force toward me—a force so powerful that it took my feet out from underneath me and slammed me against the wall with enough power to turn the whole world black.