Genre
Books
Short Stories
Things Best Left Unsaid
“Is he going to understand where he is, Dr. Soma?” Somasundaram, but most people call me Soma, the
“Is he going to understand where he is, Dr. Soma?”
Somasundaram, but most people call me Soma, the man had said when they met for the first appointment. A doctor in jeans and a worn-out tee I wouldn’t use to wash the floor or even garden in. What happened to a shirt, tie, and white coat?
“Not unless you tell him, Ms. Ruhl, certainly not at first, and perhaps not ever…” He paused. “Though he may appear confused or repeat certain questions at times. That’s completely normal.” He let the absurdity of that statement hang in the air, fighting a sheepish grin from taking over his cheeks and climbing up his face. The effect was unpleasant.
“He graduated top of his class and has over 1,000 positive reviews”, my earbuds whispered. I sighed. You knew. Knew what you were getting into, even when you found that box, certainly knew before you walked into Dr. Unpronounceable’s office nearly a year ago. But still…
The keyboard’s back light was shining indigo, then green, shifting through the colors of the rainbow with some speed, awaiting my input. A gamer’s keyboard. Figures…
“Typing is best, at least initially,” Dr. Soma had said. “Most people won’t be able to keep the emotion out of their voice until much later, and I think you’re probably in the same camp, Ms. Ruhl.”
“Dad?” I typed slowly, each letter registering a full, satisfying click.
Nothing. “Dad?”
Then he answered.
I found the box a month after Mom passed away. Gary had moved to Europe in the mid-Twenties and didn’t even come for the funeral. “You know how it is with visas, nowadays, Sis,” he’d said. I could feel him shooing away his wife to keep her from barging in, though it was just audio. “I want nothing to do with you, Dad, and this whole crazy country”, that’s what he’d told Mom five years earlier, grabbing only his backpack and phone, and storming out. He’d only called once or twice since, so it was not a surprise. Getting rid of a lifetime of accumulated odds and ends was up to me.
It wasn’t fast work. My tiny city apartment would fit pretty much nothing, and I’d been warned, by friends and well-wishers, about the pitfalls of getting a monthly storage unit, so I tried to err on the side of efficiency over sentimentality.
The record collection was a find though, worth at least a few thousand on eBay, as were the Hummel figurines — who knew? A local library had graciously agreed to take the physical books. When is the government going to shut down that boondoggle?
I was nearly finished with the upstairs bookshelf when I came across the photo albums in the bottom cabinet. I couldn’t believe how many paper photographs they still had, some of Grandma’s stuff, but plenty of their own. Anything I wanted to keep was already digitized, so these would probably go.
It was then that I discovered the box. Why would Dad keep a pair of Nikes next to his precious books? I wasn’t sure I’d ever even seen him exercising. Curious, I opened it, expecting to see — perhaps — some collectible basketball shoe. But it was a box full of videotapes.
It wasn’t a set of recorded classical masterpieces or some old audiobooks in an ancient format. These were TDK videotapes, the winding kind, meticulously labeled and dated monthly, all twelve of them, with the last two only a week apart. The last one recorded just two days before he died.
“Gary?”, he said, looking and sounding just as he did before getting sick, the ThreeV image betrayed by a tiny bit of dust passing through the projector’s rays.
I drew a sharp breath. Of course, why wouldn’t you think it’s your firstborn? He’d only left long before you died, and wouldn’t want anything to do with you, while I was there bathing you when Mom would collapse for the night under one too many Xanax. Of course, you would…”
“He has no way of knowing who is typing until we turn on the video,” Dr. Soma added, somewhat unhelpfully. I gave him a look.
“It’s Janine, Dad,” I typed. “Your daughter.”
“Janine…”, his voice trailed off, more resigned than questioning. “Where am I, honey?” He paused, coughed a few times. Just like it was towards the end. “Why can’t I see anything?”
It was ready to pour out of me, a short, vindictive “because you’re dead, dammit, dead, and buried with your secrets!” Dr. Soma put what he must have thought was a reassuring hand on my shoulder, slowing me down.
“Easy now, Hon,” the earbuds whispered. “You got this…”
“Dad, it will get better. But I have a few questions for you. Is that ok?”
They didn’t have a video recorder. At least none that I could find. I don’t know if I’ve ever even seen one before, but I wasn’t sure how I knew these were tapes in the first place. Maybe it was the labels, or the tell-tale winding gear wheels inside them.
Should I just throw them out? I focused my glasses on one of the labels. No response. “Where can I digitize these?” I asked — as if the question wasn’t obvious.
A few names appeared before me, inviting me to check their recommendation level.
“A few of them also offer avatar services,” the earbuds added, highlighting “Undying Love.” As if I haven’t seen their ads a million times.
“Ugh, no. Find one that will just get me the videos.”
“Sure thing, Hon. Close them up and leave them on the front porch.” The AI paused, calculating. “Drone will be here to pick them up in thirty minutes.”
“Dad, do you remember making some video recordings before you…” I stopped myself. “Do you remember?”
His eyes darted around, and he looked away for a moment, as if he wasn’t comfortable answering. Looked back at me. Through me, really.
“Gary?” he asked plaintively. I almost jumped out of my chair.
“One moment, one moment, Ms. Ruhl.” Dr. Soma’s assistant rushed to do something on the large remote control panel on the side wall. “I have to adjust the memory buffer size. Sorry about that…”
I settled back. “It’s Janine, Dad. Can I ask you some questions about the video recordings you made?”
“Janine,” he said, pausing, just like the first time. It was unnerving. I looked up at the doctor — he nodded encouragingly.
“Yes, Dad. Do you remember?”
“I remember, Janine.”
“Why did you record these? And why tapes? Couldn’t you store them in the house AI?” Or you could have just talked to us.
He took a few seconds to respond, eyes blinking; it was the one way you could still tell. “I’d wanted him to put in an effort. Gary. And you,” he hastened to add, at last remembering who he was talking to. “I wanted both of you to care enough to do it. Otherwise, what is the point…” He trailed off. “Am I dead?”
I was out jogging and working up a sweat on a balmy November afternoon, typical for Austin, when the inbox icon flashed in front of my eyes, unobtrusive but persistent. “Do you want to see it now, Hon, or save it back to the house?” The earbuds chimed in.
“To the house,” I muttered under my breath, then decided to do a couple more miles, afraid of having to come home, afraid of having to listen to whatever he had to say. The earbuds gave in first: “You’re running dangerously low on electrolytes, Hon. We don’t want a heatstroke. Let’s go home.”
I listened, as I’ve done all my life, legs soon turning in the right direction, as if by themselves, and then one step after the other, delivering me to my doors, seemingly none too worse for the wear. I gulped down a StayLo, ugh, why do they make them taste so sweet, and jumped in the shower, leaving the waterproof earbuds on the vanity, though the water pressure would have probably drowned them out anyway. Whatever, a few minutes of peace. If that.
The vent’s turbine kicked in for a few seconds, clearing the remnants of the steam. I let the mirror scan me, the first full scan of the day, as I sleep in pajamas, AC blasting — hey, it’s Texas.
BMI is in check, the mirror was showing. Reminded me to get that one mole on my right leg checked out. No concerns in the urine sample taken earlier. No changes overall. Thank God for small favors…
I put the earbuds back in. “About time, Hon,” they said, trying to guilt me.
Was about to put the glasses back on, then decided against it and left them on the counter, the home computer would do.
“Okey, dokey,” I said, nodding to myself in the mirror, “let’s go see what the old man has to say…”
The abrupt existential question startled Dr. Soma and his staff, sending them into a frenzied whisper session. As if I’m not even in the room…
“Dr. Soma? What do I say now?”
He didn’t seem to mind that I interrupted their little symposium. “This is very interesting, Ms. Ruhl, they rarely realize it this early in the conversation, but perhaps because of the topic… Would you mind asking him why he thinks he’s dead?”
“Why are you asking me that, Dad?” I hesitated, then added, “Do you already know the answer?”
The medical crew went back to whispering furiously. The ThreeV image flickered momentarily, then resumed.
“I had asked Mom to share these only once I died, Janine. Did she not tell you? Is she there?”
No, she didn’t tell me! “Your blood pressure is elevated, Hon,” the earbuds said in a voice calibrated to soothe.
I turned to Dr. Soma. “Doctor, I think I’m ready for the full video feed now. I’m not sure that I can get what I need otherwise.”
The doctor opened his mouth, started to say something, looked at me, and thought the better of it. Nodded curtly and made a gesture. The assistant fiddled with the remote control panel.
“Ah, there you are, Janine. You look good.” He smiled, a smile warmer than it had any right to be, warmer than any smile of his that I’ve seen at least in the last few years of his life. “Mom couldn’t come?”
It was hard to hold back the tears. “Yes, Dad, you are dead. More than five years now.” I hesitated for a moment. “And no, she didn’t tell me. And now she is dead, too.” I studied his face, waving away the tissue offered by the considerate Dr. Soma. Let him see my tears. Let him see me, for once.
He started crying.
The digitized archive opened up to show twelve separate files. I opened the first one…
If I expected a major revelation, it wasn’t there. Just the realization that he was dying, and the decision to create a video diary, to capture things left unsaid.
I listened to most of the first recording. Skimmed through a few of the others.
It was tough, watching him deteriorate a second time, his face growing gaunter from month to month, but still making excuses. The universe, as always, was still out to get him.
I finally got to the last recording. It was noticeably shorter than the others. He was in a coma towards the very end, so these might be among his last few lucid moments…
He was in his hospital bed. “Gary,” he started. “It’s almost over. Almost… And you haven’t called. I wish… I wish you could forgive me. I… I forgive you for leaving…”
He got into a bad coughing fit that lasted an eternity. Finally catching his breath, he wiped away a tear from his flabby, unshaven cheek.
“Janine…,” he started, then went into another coughing fit. This time it wouldn’t stop. He dropped the camera and the frame went all out of whack, though I could hear nurses rushing in.
And then the video went blank.
I sat there, stupefied. Mom must have collected it from his bed.
“Hon, Hon, it’s ok,” the earbuds whispered, trying to comfort me.
“Undying Love,” I said out loud when I could finally speak. “Gather everything we have, including these, and send it to them. I want to talk to him.”
“Yes, Dear” the AI replied meekly.
The ThreeV image made him look less gaunt than in those few final videos. Figures, since they had to work with a much larger set of images. Or perhaps because the good doctor doesn’t want to upset you too much.
I couldn’t touch him, couldn’t wipe away his tears. The tech hadn’t quite gotten there yet, so I sat there, watching him sob, until he finally sighed, that sigh of relief you make when the grief finally releases the pressure on your heart and acceptance settles in. Uncanny, had he ever done that in real life? I don’t think so…
“I’m sorry, Dad. But no, Mom never told us… Never told me anything. And Gary…”
I thought about saying: “You know he’d cut us off long ago” but left it unsaid.
“Will you tell him, though? Will you tell him I’m sorry?” Gary, always Gary.
“He is happy, Dad. He’s married now. Still lives in Europe. We’ve all long gotten past that idiotic election and moved on with our lives.” But he is not really a part of ours, anymore is he?
A frown on his face. Realization? Memory?
“Dad, on that last tape, you never finished it. You started to speak to me, but… You never got to say what you wanted to say.”
I let it hang in the air, that last coughing fit playing out in my mind even as his now calm, tears-wiped ThreeV image looked at me reassuringly.
It’s been a month since that day at Undying Love’s offices.
How can I know the truth of those last words? How can anyone know it wasn’t some clever manipulation by Dr. Soma or his staff? Who’s going to buy an avatar of their loved one for unhappy memories?
I cannot know. But I choose to believe it. Most days, I do.
“I wanted to say that I love you, Janine.”
That was all he had to tell me that day…
Mom talks to me all the time, through my earbuds.
But him?
I haven’t turned him back on since.
Looking California
Feeling Massachusetts
Feeling Massachusetts
“Whatever you do,” they kept telling us at the MIT Temporal Arts Academy, “do not create a time loop. You’ll regret it. Forever.”
Paradoxes were not dangerous at all, tending to resolve themselves in increasingly complicated and inventive ways as time would rush to heal itself. They did result in lots of dead grandfathers and shameless grandmothers, of course, especially among the members of the freshman Practical Applications of Time Travel class, but as the scrupulously celibate Dean Thompson was fond of saying, “If it’s not experimentally verified, it’s just dogma.”
The saying was far from the Dean’s most important academic contribution, of course. His true claim to fame was a seminal paper describing time as the set of rivulet-like flows of faster-than-light tachyons. Redirect a substream this way or that, he argued, and you can visit the past, quite safely, for the most part, and for far less energy than could be generated by even the smallest house fusion reactor.
No wonder then that the lengthy treatise, breathlessly summarized in Physics Today as “You Can Now Choose Your Grandpa”, gathered the gentle Professor not one but two Nobel Prizes, the second in History, and how could it not, once he’d conclusively proven that infamous “Et tu, Brute” was in fact but a friendly verbal prompt by Julius Caesar, who’d wanted nothing more than for his family friend to join him in the sampling of an excellent red wine of recent Gallic vintage, the words spoken a full hour on the sundial before the dictatorship-weary young senator helped turn the First Citizen into a leaky sieve. (It should be noted that whether the potent grape was in fact of Bordeaux or Burgundian origin does remain the matter of some debate, with a time expedition slated to settle the argument just in time for a major revision of the Shakespearean classic to be performed by a Patrick Stewart AI in the title role, and an Olivier Brutus, after the O’Toole people backed out, citing irreconcilable differences.)
I was the Professor’s star disciple, of course. “Follow Theodore,” he used to tell my young lab assistants whenever he would visit our lab, “and in time, you would go places, heh, heh.” Our field of research, inspired as it was by his profound Groundhog Day lecture, was far beyond the state of the art: Climate Modification Through the Application of Temporal Paradoxes. Really important stuff, and I would spend many a weekend and most evenings staring at the tachyon flow simulations generated by the endlessly self-improving GPT, the rivulets churning this way and that, to shift an Antarctic current here, end a drought in Africa there.
Now, I wish in fact that I could blame the AI here. True, our IT department’s mandate to always download and install the very latest updates, supposedly for the sake of cybersecurity, did result in the loading of an as-yet-untested agentic framework onto the lab’s quantum processor. But it was completely my decision, unfortunately, to turn on the beta “casual, conversational” mode. To the extent I have any defense, I only did it because I’d grown tired of the endless “are you sure?” style confirmation requests after every command, and not because the entity’s voice was now perfectly calibrated to elicit an emotional response from its user. “Work as a true human assistant,” I told the GPT, and it appeared to comply happily, making the entire lab significantly more productive in the process.
All of which would have still been perfectly fine, had I not been in a particularly sour mood that evening, having been caught by a cold, miserable thunderstorm on my bike ride back to the dorm. Drenched, cursing, I returned to the lab, where, after crashing into my chair and pushing back from the desk, I uttered those horrible, unconsidered, fateful ten words, words that continue to haunt me as I spend countless days next to my apartment’s window, looking at perfect, moonlit evenings.
I said, “Can we do something so that this never happens again?”
You good folks know the rest. The AI complied, and though the lab lights did dim ever so slightly, an unusual occurrence given our multi-terawatt power supply, and the churning tachyon rivulets did form a few worrisome eddys, these straightened eventually, and so I did not give it much thought at the time. It was only a few weeks later when it became evident that Boston was suddenly experiencing a permanent Northern-California-style February, that I began to become concerned.
Oh, of course, just like in Groundhog Day, most of humanity remains blissfully unaware. I use “blissfully” advisedly here, as to who can really complain about permanent California weather in their backyard? And yet, and yet, they can sense that something intangible is missing, something feels wrong. I should unequivocally state here, nonetheless, that I completely discount the notion that the recent Congressional subpoenas to our lab have anything to do with the matter: the usual grant budget debates are a much likelier cause. We, of course, will continue honoring any such subpoenas, though I do appreciate the school’s offer of legal assistance.
But today, my esteemed colleagues, Dean Thomson first and foremost, I come to you with a most urgent appeal. Please let me continue my research. Please reinstate my building pass and take the padlocks off my lab doors, and Dean Thomson, you, most particularly, please remove the rather insulting restraining order that has made appearing at this hearing in person so challenging.
Let me continue my important work. Let me continue improving the world’s weather conditions through these carefully calibrated time paradoxes, just as we’ve successfully done before. I’m happy to submit to any supervisory regime, any Quality Assurance process. After all, we all share the same goal, don’t we?
We all want that day to come, and for those of us in the know, it cannot come soon enough, can it?
The day that will end, just as it used to, just as it’s been immortalized in our culture in countless compositions.
The day whose end may once again be described, quite simply, as:
‘It was a dark and stormy night.’
If you know, you know:
You've Got Male
“Will that be all?” she asks, not even the slightest hint of a smile on her face, as
“Will that be all?” she asks, not even the slightest hint of a smile on her face, as my last item, a pale head of lettuce, rolls down the checkout counter’s conveyor belt towards the bagging area. Ann Boleyn’s head must have rolled something like this, I find myself thinking as I watch the counter’s mechanical arms grab the head of lettuce by their fingertips and place it gingerly into the bag they’d just opened for the purpose.
“No,” I tell her. “I want to marry you and have lots of children together. But that’s not bloody likely, is it?”
No reaction, though I get a snicker from the fat lady behind me in line. I turn to her, giving her what I hope is a warm smile, my arms spread, palms open. “I’m here all week, lady.” She nods, though her smile seems to melt into the lines of her face. Oops, I may have overdone it. Did I?
The cashier’s irritated “Next” wakes me from the momentary self-reflection. “I’m going, I’m going.” I grab the rusty shopping cart, ignoring the squeal its wheels make in protest. Better hurry up, tons of driving ahead of me, then the grass in the backyard and whatever else needs doing. Then back to the store tomorrow, though my specific window won’t be announced until the early hours of the morning.
Keeping it random. Avoid recognizable patterns. They don’t like that.
The training augmentation packet arrives well past midnight, and just as well, as I haven’t been able to identify even a single fly on the wall or ceiling. No spiders today either. Lying in bed, lights out, is super important for normalcy, they tell us. They don’t say just how boring it is.
The packet tingles as I absorb it. Not sure if “hurts” is the right word, but not pleasant. Reinforcement learning, they call it. See, it tells me, this is where you pushed it too far, and the lady realized what you were doing. Not good. Remember your purpose. Do better next time.
I sigh and look at the ceiling again. Wait, what’s that whine? Oh, a mosquito. Oh, that’s great. Common sucker, come here. Here, let’s increase my left hand temperature and pump some CO2 for you. Come on, now…
It didn’t work. Somehow, the suckers can tell, though the texture of my skin is designed to be nearly identical, and the manufactured scent of it is human, down to the pheromones. And I know this because I can recognize them in others.
Just as I recognize them in her now, as I put up the cans of Spam and Skippy’s on the counter. I pause to run an internal check on the Venn diagram; everything is spot on, a perfect bullseye.
I grab a Doublemint the endcap. “Gives me something to chew on,” I offer, flashing my pearls and making sure my cheeks display just the right level of redness.
“Cash or credit,” she says, mouth as stern as ever. And then “Next,” as soon as my carefully chosen triple-reward card taps the reader.
My supervisor must be getting worried because the call comes even before I get back to the house. I let the car take over and turn FaceTime on. “Yes, sir?”
The larger-than-life “Lothar.io“ logo is blazing on the onyx-black wall behind his back. He shakes his head. “What are we going to do here, Johnny? It’s been two weeks.”
What can I say? “More, really, sir, if you count my quick run-in on Sunday evening. I don’t know what’s wrong… It’s certainly a new experience for me.” It has never taken more than two or three days to get a smile. Into bed within a week. Real human connection. That’s what we advertise.
He makes a face. “I don’t have to tell you what we’ve tied up in this version of you, Johnny.” He doesn’t; it overlays his face out of the corner of my eye. “The Board might move for a reboot here.” He pauses, his face grim. “Or maybe even a rollback.”
I run a super-quick diagnostic on replying with “but sir, it’s just a test case.” But it doesn’t score well, not with the level of stress I’m reading in his face.
So I sigh with as much sincerity as I’m designed to master. “I’ll see what I can do, boss.”
I lie in bed again, running through all my options. Hand her a note with my phone number? Show up in the parking lot after her shift, flowers in hand? That one is risky. Can you imagine having the girl freak out over something like that, the boss having to drag me out of a police precinct after making bail on a harassment complaint? That’ll be even worse than a reboot. Or a rollback.
What else then? She seemed utterly impervious to Johnny’s charms, even this latest, battle-tested version 9.59, that had been trained on everything from romcoms and selfies to soft-porn and romantasy… if you differentiate the two, that is. But nothing worked on her. Nothing at all.
My left eye flashes with a sudden alert: a slight penetration of my skin sensors halfway up my left arm. I focus on it, incredulous, and there it is, a mosquito happily sucking on whatever it is they put in us to substitute for blood. I consider applying the proper “get it” probability and attempting to smack it. That’s what Johnny is supposed to do. And then I realize what’s been going on. I shoo it gently off my arm. Lucky for you, partner.
Late the next day, the boss calls me in the car again, but this time, he is beyond happy. “So how did you do it, finally, Johnny? That was one hell of a smile she gave you. The Board was impressed. What did it take? And when are you getting her into bed?”
And I smile at him, and think about the tiny virus that I’d snuck into my credit card’s RFID chip, a virus whose only purpose was to put up a few lines of text on the card reader.
I’d spent all night programming it, deciding what to say exactly, trying and dismissing dozens of sentences:
“Gotcha, sucker!”
“I know what you are!”
“You work for Succub.us”
“You can’t beat Johnny!”
I considered all of these and rejected each one in turn. This is what I chose instead:
“If you don’t give me a big smile, they might scrap me for metal.”
I saw those blue eyes light up as she saw the message, my right hand lingering ever so slightly above the credit card terminal.
Then she gave me that big smile for the recording I shared with the Board.
And maybe it's just my imagination. Certainly, it could have been an accident. But her finger brushed mine, barely a touch, as she handed me the receipt. Barely a touch.
It was electric.