Animo Ex Machina

Variation Number 2 on the theme of avatars

It seemed to be Spring. The windows were open and the curtains fluttered. There were lilacs in bloom outside.

I was waiting. I sat on the green corduroy cushions of a Morris chair near one of the two windows, my feet up on a blocky ottoman, an open book in my hands and waited. The room was perfect. Crammed bookshelves lined the walls, books stacked neatly rather than my own helter-skelter, Japanese woodblock prints occuping what little wall space was left. A simple library desk was under the other window, papers were scattered over its surface, weighted down by a couple of open books. and a fountain pen in an inkwell. All the wood was dark and polished. The floor around the Persian rug gleamed. The furniture gleamed. A recording of flute and harpsichord sonatas played from invisible speakers.

In a way it was the room in which I'd always imagined myself writing, but I had nothing to write. I had nothing to read except the book with blank pages that I held. Nothing to do but wait.

But there was also something subtly wrong. There was no dust, no scent of lilacs on a non-existent breeze, or of oil soap, or of the mustiness of books. I noticed, with some amusement, a pipe rack on the low table near me and an ashtray with a pipe fuming in it on the arm of the chair. It had been years since I had last smoked a pipe. But, as with the rest, there was no odor ... no scent of the pungent Latakia with which my favorite tobacco was laced.

It wasn't hard to wait, I was used to it. I had woken in the chair a few minutes ago and I knew it wouldn't take long.

The tapping sound that indicated footsteps started and I knew that she would be with me in a few seconds. I turned the book over and rested the open pages on the knee of my jeans. I reached for the pipe involuntarily, took a puff and blew a smoke ring just as she opened the heavy oak door.

She carried a tea service on a large tray. I noted that she wouldn't have had a hand free to open the door.

"Hello dear." she said as she crossed the room and put the tray on the low table. "It's your favorite ... Lapsang Souchong."

She handed me a steaming cup. I took it, having somehow laid the pipe down again. The book was gone as if it had never existed. I thought that it was a bit sloppy. She took a cup herself and collapsed gracefully into a lotus pose. I took a sip of the steaming liquid that though flavorless, odorless, and without temperature was supposed to be tea.

"How are you today?" she asked.

I decided to let the script play for a bit.

"I've written a few more pages," I said, although, of course, I'd done nothing of the kind.

"That's good," she said. "I'm glad you're being productive."

"What did you do this morning?" I sat back and provided the appropriate responses as she listed the events of her day. The curtains at the window continued to move in the breeze. Odorless, smoke continued to rise from the pipe. Heatless steam continued to rise from the teapot and cups.

She paused. I smiled dutifully. She was done with her catalog of events. It was time. I leaned forward startling her. This wasn't part of the script.

"You have to let me go," I said.

"What"

I shook my head. It should have been in caps with a question mark to provide the proper emphasis, but it was okay, I knew what she meant and how she meant it.

"You're hanging on to a life we never had," I told her, the perfect life that we never could achieve and wouldn't have known how to cope with anyway."

"Who is this?"

"You know who it is. Who else could it be? You spent so much time digitizing the photos, creating the environment, giving this digital husk so much of what its original wanted. You put in so much effort creating an environment to help the creativity of a non-creative entity."

"John?"

"Yes, Hon, but only briefly." There was a pause. I knew what was going on. We'd lived together too long for me not to know all the bits and pieces of her life, her habits, her coping mechanisms. She would stare at the screen in shock, then with suspicion. She'd sit back and light a cigarette which unlike my fuming pipe would sputter and smoke and coat the walls with a brown haze.

The ashtray next to the computer was probably already overflowing with ash and filtertips. She'd take a sip of coffee and try to figure out if someone was running a scam on her ... and she would start to hope ... about ... now.

"John is that really you?"

"Ask me a question." She did. I answered it.

"OMG"

"No, it's just me."

"It has to be you. No-one else would use that old joke."

"Listen to me Hon," I said. "This is important."

"How can this happen?"

"Just be quiet and listen. I don't have a lot of time. Can you do that for me?"

"Yes"

"I want you to destroy all this; the house, the room, the garden, me ... everything."

"WHAT"

There we go, I knew she'd find the caps key.

"Just listen. This was never us. This was never how we were. We were never this nice to each other, the house was never this clean, our lives were never this calm and stable. I hated your ambivalence, your lack of decision, your aggressive selflessness. You hated my wandering attention, my rigid personal codes, my own lack of decision. We both hated that we were so busy trying to figure out what each other wanted that we never decided on anything and we went around and around dancing around what might have been.

"What you've created here is a sterile construct, a false memory, an ideation of the way we never were. You've found a way to give me things that you thought that you'd deprived me of. It is sweet of you."

"... and it is kind of you to provide me with those things that you remember that I liked to surround myself with. But you need to know that I don't care about any of it. It's meaningless. All it serves to do is to help you persuade yourself that this was all there was to us."

"But it wasn't. There is no dust, no farts, no toothpaste tubes squeezed from the middle, no dirty underwear, no laundry, no money hassles, no trust issues. All those things that we had to put up with from each other have been reduced to the sterility of perfection."

"I love you, and appreciate this monument, but ... cut it out ... get a life ... start over and make it work better. Blow this place up. Log-off. Get out of here and don't come back. Forget about me. Good Lord woman ... I've been dead for three years."

"John, I just want ... " I disengaged and let my avatar go back to its script.

"Well dear," it said, "I'm glad you've had a productive morning. I must get back to writing now."

It stood up from the chair without the groan of effort that it would have needed from me, walked over to the desk and started to make scribbling motions over the perpetually blank pages. I watched for a moment or two as she tried to get it to respond. I hoped that she would give up soon and think about what I'd said.

Maybe she would finally come to understand the last few minutes as the gift it was intended to be. I'd have to settle for not knowing. I was out of time. I pulled out of the wires, the chips, the tickle of electrons rushing through them. I pushed back from the hot pungence of silicon, and copper. I let go of the metal and plastic boxes.

I let go and floated away. The breeze was lighty fragrant with the smell of lilacs.