Evolution (8 page)

* * *

“
W
hat’s
wrong with this rice?” Emily asked. “It tastes strange. And I don’t think I like this pink stuff.”

“It’s okay, just eat what you can,” Jess said. “The rice is actually synth-grain. Your father grew up eating all kinds of synthetic food. I know it’s not what you’re used to, but give it a try.”

Sam noted that Jess couldn’t bring herself to explain about the meat. Just as well. Meat was an acquired taste and not something affordable to the average person on Earth except on special occasions. The fact that the girls were willing to try any of it was a testament to the giant toy store’s charming lunch counter.

Ed levitated a tray of four glass funnels filled with a swirly, creamy substance. “I think I might have something you’d like. Be careful now—it’s cold.” The containers of white, brown, yellow, and red looked to be promising enticements to the young ladies.

Sara’s eyes widened as she pulled the spoon from her mouth. “Yum. It turns to liquid in my mouth. Emi, try this one.”

Sam helped himself to the vanilla ice cream. Each mouthful was filled with childhood memories. “I’m glad they brought back this old store. Some things shouldn’t change.”

“New York has been going through something of a rediscovery of its grandeur,” Ed said. “We’ve been able to access a lot of old information from blueprints to movies. Working with our human counterparts, we’ve managed to create a New Old New York.”

Sara laughed at the term. “Does anyone even know why York needed to be made new in the first place?”

Flashes of an old English countryside town filled Sam’s brain. Ed would have access to the same information. But instead of a class in ancient Britain, Ed chose the more appropriate answer. “No city wanted to be known as Old York. The people who lived there had no idea what was to come.”

As they finished lunch, Jess hugged Sam tight to her side. “I wonder if FAO rents apartments. I’m beginning to doubt we’re ever going to get these two out of here.”

Sam kissed her on the head. “Earth has enough challenges in store for all of us. I’m glad the Tobes had enough foresight to give us this one good day to show Sara and Emily what Earth can be like.”

As they prepared to rejoin the human population on the street, Ed motioned Sam and Jess to the side. “You may not have noticed, but the device people used to have around their ear and eye has been replaced.”

“I knew something was missing,” Jess said.

With all the activity, Sam hadn’t noticed.

Ed looked Jess intently in the eye. As he backed away, a series of lights flashed across her cornea. “It’s called the lens,” Ed said. “I’ll leave Ellie and Joshua to explain it to you. But since we’re going to be back out on the street, I thought you might want one. We can fit one to each of your daughters too, but we thought you might want to try it out first.”

Jess looked around the room. “Amazing.”

Ed turned to Sam. “It’s based on a person’s unique energy. For complicated reasons, we’ve been unable to fit one to you. The most basic explanation is it’s due to our connection—not enough separation of consciousness for the technology to work.”

Sam nodded. “Don’t worry about it, Ed. I’ve got enough filtering through my brain as is.”

Sara grasped her mother’s hand. “I want to try it.”

“Me too,” said Emily.

Ed waved his hand in front of Jess’s face. “This is what the girls would see: less information and more closely monitored. It’ll also help us keep track of them.”

Jess peered around the room again. “The information’s less detailed than what I just witnessed. Nothing I wouldn’t want them to know anyway. I don’t see the harm in letting them use it. But keep it turned down until we get back to the penthouse. I don’t want them wandering out into the street because they’d become too distracted.”

S
am couldn’t remember
the last time he’d seen Ellie so excited. She remained the professional paralegal in her midtwenties, but he could tell it was a challenge. Given an excuse, she’d revert to the demeanor of a preteen way too excited about a new pony.

Jess sat beside him on the office couch. Emily and Sara dangled their feet as they sat on the armrests.

Jillian looked about to scream as she sat up. “They won’t tell me what’s going on, but Joshua and Ellie have been about to burst since the minute you all left the penthouse.”

Joshua put a hand on his sister’s back. “Go ahead—show them.”

Ellie walked up to Jess and extended her hand. Jess looked at Sam in confusion then reached out to Ellie. Instead of passing through the holograph-like being as they all expected, Jess’s hand met the very real resistance of the Tobe’s handshake.

Jess pulled hard at the virtual hand, yanking Ellie off balance, as she sprang to her feet to wrap the girl in her arms. Sparks and glitter erupted around Jess’s bear hug, but the human arms remained around the being, who now had substance.

Emily and Sara jumped off the chair to join their mother in a dog pile embrace.

Sam stood up with tears in his eyes. Walking over to Joshua, he extended his hand. But instead of a mutual handshake, Joshua sadly shook his head. Reaching out, Joshua’s hand passed through Sam’s as it always had.

Undaunted by her father’s failure, Emily ran to Joshua and wrapped her arms around him. Sam watched in disbelief as she succeeded where he’d failed. Jess and Sara followed suit until Sam wondered if glitter was about to erupt from the Tobe as his family hugged the stuffing out of him.

Jillian cautiously reached out a hand Ellie, but like Sam’s, it passed right through the virtual body.

Ellie knelt down next to the couch, looking Jillian in the eye. “It only works if you have the lens around you. We can give you one if you want.”

But Jillian shook her head. “Not yet. I’m still trying to figure Earth out. I think I’d rather do that on my own.”

Sam sat back down as he watched the love fest he and Jillian were denied. “How did you do it, Joshua?”

Joshua pulled himself from the embrace. “It’s just simple resistance. It has to do with the lens—the energy that fully surrounds a normal human. Because we’re unable to create such an energy around you, it doesn’t work for the one person we most wish we could touch.”

Jess’s smile was tinged with sadness as she looked at Sam, the one person in the world unable to establish physical contact with his progeny. “I didn’t even know you were working on something like this. I thought you were happy just being pure energy.”

“We are still pure energy,” Ellie said. “It’s more like two magnets resisting each other. Much more fine-tuned than that, but that’s the basic principle. And we didn’t create it.”

“How is that possible?” Sam asked. “Someone else made something that affects your operating system?”

Joshua leaned back against the desk as the sparkly remnants of the girls’ arms faded from around his body. “Most programmers do end up working for Rendition but not all. We’re always on the lookout for the mavericks—those people whose creativity would be stifled working for a big company, the nonconformists. Then we stay out of their way as much as possible. We may open an opportunity here and there but always through secondary channels.”

Jess put her arm back around Ellie. “And this was from one of those people? How could they create something for you if you weren’t involved?”

“My brother is something of a prude at times,” Ellie said. “His explanation would leave you to believe there are secret workshops coming up with next-generation technology for the good of mankind.”

Joshua lost some of his composure and age. “I am not a prude. I’m just not as curious about human sexuality as some Tobes.” His accusatory glance didn’t go unnoticed by anyone.

Ellie grimaced. “Fine, I admit it. But we’ve learned a lot from Jess about what’s possible. What we try to do for humans, they can sometimes accomplish all on their own with sex. Not often down here on Earth, but at least in theory, it can happen.”

“An ongoing conversation we’re not going to answer today,” Joshua said. “But what Ellie’s saying is this technology was originally created to help people experience virtual sex with each other.”

Emily and Sara giggled as Jess blushed, not something Sam had seen very often. Only Jillian seemed unbothered by the topic. “I’ve done enough traveling to see how that could be useful. Long-distance relationships have their shortcomings.”

Ellie smiled at her brother. “He makes it sound all noble. It wasn’t. Basically, it was next-level pornography. The first version did have to do with people trying to touch each other over the network. But it was crude, without texture. The result felt like something pushing on some section of skin. Even now, all we can create is resistance. The tactile experiences—the rough wetness of a tongue, or the silky texture of skin—those are still next-generation experiences. We should be able to create many of those feelings, but we still have a ways to go.”

“So this developer’s sex site was a bust?” Jillian asked.

“Far from it,” Ellie said. “People found the person-to-person aspect frustrating, but programming physical sensation into porn videos was a big hit. It freed up people’s hands, as it were.” She gave Sam a wink that made him very uncomfortable.

Joshua put a hand on Emily’s shoulder. “For now, it doesn’t have any practical applications, but we’ve found that a lot of stuff that starts out as novelties ends up with the most potential.”

Jess snorted. “‘No practical applications.’ You make me laugh, Josh. Human touch is a fundamental part of our existence. I can’t think of another experience that will teach you more about who we are.”

“I want to believe that,” Ellie said. “I do believe that. But we’ve only started playing with this technology. Joshua and I are the first to incorporate it into our systems. And you, Jess, were the first person I touched.”

Jess’s eyes grew wet. “That was the first time any Tobe has touched a human? Wow.”

Ellie grinned at Jess. “We weren’t even sure what would happen. The theory was sound, but we didn’t have time to run any tests with people. You can imagine our first choice would have been Sam. But next to him, you’re the person we most wanted to touch in the whole world.”

Sam thought she sounded a lot like his daughters, but in Ellie’s case, he knew it wasn’t an exaggeration.

“We do have a favor to ask,” Joshua said. “It’s regarding the next level of modifications to Touch. That’s what we’re calling this technology, at least amongst ourselves. We could really use Emily and Sara’s help.”

Emily beamed up at Joshua, but Sara cocked her head to the side. “How can we help you? We don’t know anything about programming. I’m still not even sure how you make it so we can see you.”

“It wouldn’t have to do with programming,” Ellie said. “We have plenty of help there. Think of it like this: if you met a blind person, how would you explain color? That’s what we need for textures. We understand resistance. It’s very close to what we feel with the magnetic polymer in physical objects. We generate a magnetic field, and we can move those objects. But it’s just using a tool. The concept of feeling something eludes us.”

Jess’s eyebrows drooped. “So you didn’t feel anything when we hugged you? It was just for our benefit?”

Ellie’s eyes grew wide. “No, not at all. We felt love. I don’t have the words for it, but it had a great deal of meaning for us. Never think that, Jess. Please.” Tears of glitter ran down her face.

Jess wrapped Ellie in her arms. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, Ellie. I’m just trying to understand what you experienced—and want to experience.”

Ellie returned the hug. “Touching you is very emotional. We knew it would be. We longed for it.” Ellie’s fingers caressed the fabric of Jess’s blouse. “But this—I can’t feel this. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be experiencing. Is it hot? Does is sting? What do those words even mean?”

Emily pulled away from Joshua and put her hand over Ellie’s as it remained on Jess’s blouse. “This is soft and smooth. It’s not really either, but it’s both. A stuffed animal would be soft, all furry. Skin would be smooth. Other things are smoother, but Mom’s blouse is meant to be closer to skin in how it feels.”

Ellie smiled away her tears. “That’s the kind of thing we need to know. We can fine-tune the program so it will register with more detail, but it’s the emotional response to texture we need to know. It’ll help us make the experience more real. And as you girls haven’t grown up on Earth, with all of its technological enhancements and distractions, we thought you’d have a purer perspective.”

Jess let go of Ellie. “I think it’s a wonderful idea. It’ll give the girls something practical to work on, and I can’t imagine better people to teach you. Would it be okay if Sam and I watched, kind of like the experiments so long ago when you were learning to use the device?”

Ellie nodded. “We really want to learn from your girls. But we can understand your curiosity. We can set up the same lab. You can watch from the private room while the girls explain different textures, and we can try to incorporate that information into our next-generation Touch.”

“I want to help too.” Jillian had kept her arm around Sam. He understood the need. With everyone else hugging, they were the only two left out of the love fest.

“Good,” Joshua said. “You can be our control. Without wearing the lens, your sense of touch won’t be affected by the experiment.”

And she can keep an eye on the twins.
Sam feared the Tobe community might not know their limits with his daughters any better than they did with him. How far did his divinity extend regarding his girls? He doubted it was a question Joshua could answer.

* * *

J
ess sat
next to Sam in the viewing booth as they watched Jillian and their daughters teach the Tobes. The experiment was far more complex than Sam had envisioned. But then, when Ellie had talked about teaching a blind man about color, he’d figured she just meant the main ones such as blue, green, yellow, and red. He had no idea of the depth of textures.

Joshua laid out a section of cotton fabric for the twins to inspect. Sara went first. “It’s smooth—my hand glides right over it without resistance. Maybe just a little soft, but I don’t think so.”

Emily ran her hand both directions and frowned. “Well, this can feel like a lot of things. You have it on this hard table, so it’s not feeling like it should. If you made this up into a shirt that Dad would wear, it’d be warm and soft. Like something I’d want to curl up against and fall asleep. But on this table, it just feels smooth, like Ra said. I wouldn’t want to take a nap on this.”

Ellie frowned. “So textures depend on what’s underneath them?”

Sara nodded enthusiastically. “Oh yes. There’s a cold, hard table under the fabric. It changes how it feels.”

Joshua and Ellie exchanged a look, then Ellie continued with her inquiry. “When you say
feels
, do you mean what your hand is experiencing, or is it an emotional kind of feeling?”

Emily put her finger to her chin. “Both. Maybe it shouldn’t be. But I can’t touch something and only give you an explanation of the texture without giving you something of what I think while I’m touching it.”

Sam expected Sara to contradict her sister, but to his surprise, she nodded. “It’s like the softness of a stuffed animal. I will always laugh when I touch one.”

Ellie wrinkled her nose. “Why? Is it because soft fur tickles?”

Sara shook her head. “No, not that. I’d laugh because it reminds me of Ed falling on the ground and Emi and me throwing stuffed animals at him. I didn’t laugh at furry things before that. I used to just cuddle them against my face.”

Joshua sighed in frustration. “I’m not sure we can base our textures on what you’re emotionally experiencing. Especially if those emotions are always changing.”

Sara nodded. “I know. You just have to incorporate what’s happened to you when you felt these textures.”

“I think I understand,” Ellie said. “My sensitivity wasn’t fine-tuned enough to feel your mother’s skin when I first shook her hand. But once it is, I’ll always hold that texture as being especially important to me.”

Emily reached out for Ellie’s hand. “Skin has all kinds of textures. Everyone’s is different. And not just because of my emotional reaction to someone. Mom’s hands are very soft but firm—like all the muscles are right under the skin. Dad’s hands aren’t as soft, but they give more. And Grandpa Doc’s hands are very leathery.”

Joshua scratched his head. “Cow hide and your grandpa’s skin feel the same? Isn’t one smooth and the other hairy?”

Sara laughed. “You’re right. But Emi’s right too. There is a similarity, but I’m not sure I can describe it.”

Emily turned to Jillian. “What do you think?”

“I think you two are very perceptive. But something’s added when you can touch all of a person’s skin and they touch yours. That rough, leathery touch of Doc’s hand has a very different effect when it’s on the small of your back.”