Page 100 of Life Out of Order

Beck: I unlock my studio door, and as soon as I walk in I know someone has been here. Isadora has been pulled out of her corner. She’s frozen in an awkward pose with her head hanging, as though she’s deep in thought, or very ashamed. Her garbage-bag cover is on the floor. The orange I left on my table has been smashed; ants have discovered its sticky dried juice. Later, I find fifteen seconds of video of the orange rolling across the floor. It’s enigmatic and disturbing.

“Isadora,” I ask, “who was here?”

She shows me photographs of two parrots.

I ask the question every way I can think of, then I open her event log and get a bad surprise: there’s a blank that covers nearly two hours of yesterday morning. The deeper I delve, the more dead space I find. Code has been written over, deleted, moved to other directories. There are long passages of code that make no sense. Is this malware? The system is not, and never has been, online. Is this the work of yesterday’s intruder? Or, worse: “Did you do this, Isadora?”

Silence: the AI equivalent of a shrug. I watch the orange roll across the floor again and again. At the beginning of the file there is a blur: a human hand. The hand opens, the orange rolls. Again and again. The hand, the orange. I stare at Isadora and think. No explanation, only questions, only a silent machine and impossible code.

Lost Love Last Laugh

Friday, December 6, 2013 (Clare is 42, Beck is 37, Alba is 12)

Clare: It’s one of those days when Chicago’s extra-early winter sunset feels like a personal punishment. It’s four o’clock in the afternoon and the weak sunlight is draining from the dining room. Beck and I have been sitting here in the dim for an hour trying to make sense of today’s letter from her soon-to-be ex’s lawyers. Alba comes in and flicks on the overhead light. We squint, surprised to notice our surroundings.

“What’s wrong?” Alba asks. She sits down at the table next to Beck, who gestures at the letter lying on the table. “Oh.” There have been quite a few of these letters recently.

“He wants everything,” Beck says to Alba. “Alimony. Who gets alimony in this day and age? We don’t even have children. These lawyers are wolverines.”

“What’s alimony?” Alba asks.

“Money you pay someone you used to be married to because they can’t support themselves,” I tell her. “Jasper’s lawyers are asking for it because they say he’s mentally ill and not able to work.”

“That would make sense if he didn’t have all those patents,” Beck says. “But he has more money than I do, unless he’s burned through it in the last few years. I mean, damn. Our actual divorce is not as painful as the struggle for the Museum. Jasper imagines that he’s entitled to half of my patents and a whole pile of my IP—”

“What’s IP?” Alba asks.

“Intellectual property,” I say. I make the tippling gesture that means please bring us alcohol, sweetie. Alba disappears into the kitchen. She loves to play bartender.

“And now he wants the work I’ve done on the Museum since we split everything. I’m sure if he knew Isadora existed, he’d want her, too. We’re going to end up in court.” Beck sighs. “The only upside is that I have all his texts and emails, so there’s no question of what the arrangement was. You know what’s weird, I think he’s taken up heavy drinking or something, he always replies late at night and his spelling has deteriorated like you would not believe.”

“Maybe he’s overmedicated? Or undermedicated? When was the last time you actually saw Jasper?” I’ve never met him and can’t imagine I ever will. In the few photos I’ve seen online he is wearing a suit and seems to be at someone else’s wedding. In one image, Beck nestles into his half embrace and they are both smiling broadly. Those photos are five years old now. Beck hasn’t been to Detroit in more than a year.

“In real life? Hmm. Summer before last.”

“Did you move your servers over here, like older Alba said?” Alba calls from the kitchen. She comes in with two gin and tonics and an orange juice on a tray. I taste her orange juice and she rolls her eyes and says, “That’s not yours.” Alba is big on eye rolling these days. She hands out the drinks.

Beck says, “Your basement is much smaller than my studio, so there’s still a few racks over there. I’ve been wondering if I should put the studio servers somewhere else, maybe a storage unit or something.”

“It’s too late now,” Alba says.

We both stare at her. Beck goes ashen. “What do you mean?” she asks.

Alba gives us her isn’t it obvious expression. “If older Alba told you to move your servers here, then something is going to happen to the servers at the studio. Nothing has happened yet, but if you had moved all the servers, I don’t see why Alba would bother to mention it to you. So—”

“Something weird will happen to those servers. Oh, lord. I’d better get over there.” Beck leaves her drink untasted and bolts from the room.

I say to Alba, “Why didn’t your older self tell her to hide the other servers?”

She shrugs. “Probably because whatever is about to happen had already definitely happened in my future and I knew we couldn’t prevent it? I mean, future me told her to move them all, so don’t be mad at me, okay?”

“I’m not, sweetie.” I take a few deep breaths. “I’m not.” Alba stares at me. “What are the consequences?”

She shakes her head. No clue.

“Let’s go with Beck,” I say.

The three of us get into Beck’s car, worrying, not speaking, imagining the possibilities. The drive from Lincoln Square to Pilsen seems longer than usual; we inch along I-90 in end-of-the-week rush hour traffic. When we finally turn onto Racine, we have trouble finding parking and end up three blocks away. We speed-walk to Beck’s building and arrive just as one of the graphic designer dudes whose studio is down the hall from Beck’s exits the building.