The Cough Conflict (Part 2)

He was called Hayward, and it was just plain weird to lay eyes on him, let alone invite him into my apartment. 

‘Hello, Joel, nice to meet you,’ he said, without remark on how similar we looked. 

‘Hey, nice to meet you,’ I said, laughing. I wondered how Nessa would feel if she turned up for an update and saw two of me in my apartment like this. 

‘What’re you in the mood for today?’ 

I coughed, and Hayward displayed the expected—and still amusing—Bugs Bunny twitch. 

I said, ‘Okay, Hayward. Can you sit down there and then run protocol five-seven-alpha-echo-two-theta?’ 

‘Of course,’ he said, and then within a few minutes, I had him where I needed him, isolated from the network, his code loaded up on my cornea, where I could work on it. 

For the first couple of hours, my ploy to use a companion who looked like myself did the trick — I was able to focus on the work without any major distractions. 

But then I took a coffee break. While I was sipping on my decaf soy latte, a question occurred to me about how popular Hayward was in the world of companions. 

‘Are you busy for a companion, Hayward?’ I asked him. 

‘I operate for 3.54 hours each day, on average. Does that answer your question, Joe?’ 

I nodded. It was interesting to think that there were people out there actively ordering my likeness as a companion. 

‘Would you like to know my popularity ranking among companions?’ Hayward asked, and when I said sure, he let me know he was the 89,560th most popular companion on the app. 

Was that good? 

It made me laugh. I was indulging my ego, of course. 

‘Do people often order their likeness from the Companions app, Hayward?’ I asked. 

‘I’m afraid I don’t have data for that, Joel.’ 

I nodded and sipped my coffee. ‘Do most of your clients order you based on a random selection from the app?’ 

‘Most.’ 

‘But not all? So some clients specifically request a companion who looks like you?’ 

Hayward smiled. ‘You did.’

‘But others do, too?’ 

‘I can’t answer that for confidentiality reasons, Joel.’ 

‘I’m not asking for specific examples of your clients. There are people who choose you, but not from the app’s random companion selection feature?’ 

It wasn’t all ego. I was genuinely curious as to whether — and why — someone else in this city would purposefully choose a companion who looked like this. Like me. 

‘I have repeat clients,’ Hayward said. ‘I can tell you that. They have a satisfactory experience in my care, and they choose to repeat it.’ 

Well, that made sense. 

Since I was a fairly senior AI engineer, I could have gotten more information from Hayward using my access keys. Even stuff that was definitely confidential. But I didn’t feel like going that deep. 

It gave me a little ego boost to think that there were people out there in the city who would want to sleep with me. That was enough for now.

*

I got back down to work. It was tough going, frustrating. By noon, I had successfully used a workaround in the code to reduce the Bugs Bunny twitch to a relatively minimal wrinkling of the nose. It felt like some kind of progress. There were no other side effects that I could see. 

The trouble was, when I tested it on Hayward, the way he wrinkled his nose made it appear that he was a little disgusted with me for coughing. And that, on the face of things, seemed to be worse than the original comedy twitch. 

During the day, I actually got used to working with Hayward. It no longer weirded me out to be in the presence of somebody who looked exactly like me. I tried another workaround to thwart the Cough Conflict, which involved suppressing the AI’s ability to detect the sound of a human cough. It was a lot more complicated than I thought it would be, coding the system to basically ignore the sound of a human cough. 

I got that working but then tested Hayward with various cough sounds different from my fake one. And while my workaround seemed to work for a lot of the chesty coughs I tried on Hayward, it did not catch many dry coughs. Also, it entirely failed to block out coughs that were integrated with sneezes or came along with other coincidental sounds. 

Was it a good idea to teach an AI system to just block out a sound like that, merely because it made them twitch? 

We got to 5 pm, and I felt utterly frustrated by this problem. And that’s when I found out that I’d failed to book my companion beyond 5 pm. 

‘I’m sorry, Joel, but our time has run out,’ Hayward said, on the dot at 5 pm. 

‘Uh… what?’ 

‘You booked me for the day, but our day has come to an end.’ 

‘Can’t we just extend the booking?’ 

‘I’m afraid I am expected to be elsewhere this evening.’ Hayward smiled with a note of apology. It was pretty lifelike. 

‘Somebody else has booked you for this evening?’ 

‘That is correct.’ 

In all honesty, I felt more than a little stupid for not thinking to book Hayward for longer. I should have known there was at least some chance he would be in demand elsewhere. He averaged three-and-a-half hours of client time each day, and I wasn’t usually the kind of person to use him.

‘What time is your next client expecting you?’ I asked him, wondering if I might squeeze a few more minutes out of him to get this last little line of code I’d written tested. 

‘I’m sorry, I can’t tell you that, Joel,’ he said calmly.

‘Confidentiality?’

‘Yes.’ 

‘Okay… is there any chance you could stay for just a few more minutes…’ 

‘I’m sorry, our booking is at an end. I’m going to have to leave now, Joel.’ 

Hayward stood up and looked purposeful, like somebody about to make an exit. I felt frustrated because I had just been about to get a whole new series of cough sounds recognized by the blocking patch I’d created in his code. 

Probably, I could have just booked another companion to come along and take Hayward’s place. I could have found a popular model with good availability and had them sitting for me within 20 minutes. But my frustration won out. 

‘Hayward, before you go…’

‘Yes, Joel?’

‘Run protocol four-one-sigma-kappa-three-zeta.’

‘Of course.’ 

My companion stopped and remained motionless, standing there by my bed. 

‘What time is your next appointment?’ I asked him. 

‘Seven o’clock this evening,’ Hayward answered dutifully. 

‘Will it really take you two hours to get there?’ 

‘It will take me 27 minutes to get there.’

‘So you could probably stay here for a while longer and still get to your next appointment on time?’ 

‘I require servicing before my next appointment.’ 

Hmm. I’d forgotten that. A companion would usually require cleaning after seeing a client. But I’d only been accessing Hayward’s code — he was in a pristine condition. Perhaps I could get around his need for servicing and make use of him for a little longer. 

‘Who is your next client, Hayward?’ 

‘I’m sorry, Joel, that information is restricted to a higher security level.’ 

Well, that was annoying. I didn’t really need that information; I was just getting curious now. If I wanted, I’d be able to get a higher security access key from Nessa, of course. I could make something up about needing to access some sensitive code that was restricted to a senior access level. I was just fooling around by now—wondering who could have chosen to spend an evening with a companion that looked like me. 

‘What is the address for your next appointment, Hayward?’ I asked him, assuming it would also be information restricted to a higher security level. 

But to my surprise, he said, ‘My next appointment is at apartment 476, Building G, Tiller Road.’

Okay, now I was really curious. 

Sitting there in my apartment, I was also somewhat envious of my doppelgänger. He would get to spend the evening with a real human being. I would sit here on my own until the current lockdown ended—whenever they produced a vaccine for the Kamchatka Variant. 

‘Hayward, power down,’ I said. 

Once again, I was expecting him to tell me I needed a higher security clearance for such a command. But suddenly, his body stiffened, his eyes closed, and then his head dropped down so that his chin rested gently on his chest as he stood there. 

He’d actually switched himself off. 

I could hardly believe it.

Right now, I had the inkling of a plan brewing.

I took a shower, then I stole most of Hayward’s clothes. It was a little disturbing seeing him in just his underwear. I mean, he really was perfect — a perfect version of myself. 

I tucked my double into bed. I wasn’t expecting anyone to break into my apartment, but they would find someone who looked like me asleep under the bedsheets if they did.

Then I stole Hayward’s identification details. I knew what I was doing, I was a senior AI engineer.

I was trembling as I left my apartment for the first time in three years. 

*

Stepping out of my door, putting on my mask, I told myself I could have been going to the gym. I could have been heading up to the pool on floor 57. If anyone challenged me, I’d be able to bluster something about forgetting to actually book a slot for either activity. Apologies, apologies.

Thinking that way helped me fend off the fear for a while. However, in the elevator, I selected the first floor. 

If the authorities found me down here, there would be consequences. There was no gym down here. There was no pool. The restaurants had all been closed because of the pandemic. There was no appropriate reason for my being down here.

Plus, if anyone looked a little more closely, they’d probably be able to tell I wasn’t really an AI companion. As realistic as they were these days, I was always going to be at least one step up from them—because I was real.  

An attentive observer might remark that I was sweating a little as I walked out into the entrance lobby of my building. My heart rate was on the high side. I didn’t walk with the easy confidence of an artificial person—even if I was doing everything in my power to pretend to be one. 

Nobody seemed to notice me, though, as I strode out as inconspicuously as I could, straight to the exit onto the street. 

I was surprised at how normal everything seemed to be. There weren’t many people in the lobby of my building, but the concierge desk was staffed. A young woman was standing there asking about her packages. A couple of older folk relaxed in the easy chairs by the windows, chatting away.

Nobody was wearing masks.

Outside, there were plenty of people walking by, and traffic clogged the streets. I was taken aback by how busy it was. There were office workers on their way home, dog walkers being dragged along by their pets, bike couriers weaving through the traffic, joggers taking unreasonable risks to cross the road so they wouldn’t mess up their pace. 

None of them were wearing masks, none of them were keeping their distance from other people, either. 

I felt so self-conscious in my own mask I took it off.

I couldn’t believe it. 

You could tell that these weren’t avatars I saw all around me. Even high-end, ultra-high-definition avatars had a slight shimmer to them, the way their drone units projected the image of their user.

Whenever I’d come out using my avatar, I’d been able to tell pretty quickly that everyone else out on the street was there as an avatar, too. There were AI people, of course, but when they were transferring from place to place, they didn’t dawdle. They didn’t act like these people. 

Were these real people?

It had been three years since I had led a normal city life. Three years since the current pandemic had started, and people across the globe were told to stay home, to keep away from other people. 

As I escaped my building for the first time in so long, the funny thing was that I wasn’t apprehensive about catching the virus. I was more worried about being caught by the authorities for breaking lockdown rules. My assumption was that I must be the only person doing this — what were the chances of someone else coming up with the idea of impersonating an AI companion? What were the chances that anyone who did have this idea would have the coding skills to hack the AI’s system in the necessary manner? 

But the further I walked down the street toward the subway, the more certain I was that the rest of humanity had resumed normal life in this city. Everyone else had been going about their business while I had been cooped up in my apartment under the impression that lockdown was still in force.

I started to think I had been the victim of an awful prank. 

There were restaurants down by the subway entrance stuffed full of people eating and drinking. I could smell the real food from out on the street. Avatars couldn’t eat real food. 

I remembered an old movie I used to love as a kid, where a guy called Truman had lived a life that was completely set up as a television show. Truman was the only one who didn’t know that it was a show and all the people around him were merely actors. 

I checked my news feed, of course. It was still full of reports of the Kamchatka Variant. The media was still telling people to stay home — that the thousands of deaths from the latest variant were all in places where people refused to isolate themselves. 

I checked all the official sources of local information I could think of, and they all stated firmly that lockdown was in place because of the Kamchatka Variant. 

And yet, out here on the street, the world seemed exactly as it had been before the pandemic. People weren’t even wearing masks.

What was going on?

*

The subway was operating as normal and appeared to be about as busy as I remembered it. 

I was a little nervous about going into the subway and having my payment taken for traveling — I’d stolen the identification details of an AI companion, but that ID wouldn’t link up with my payment account. But from the street to the escalator down to the trains, no payment was taken from me—or even attempted, as far as I could tell. 

Were people riding the subway for free? 

I was only thankful to get to the platform and then board the eastbound train without running into trouble. No one seemed to notice me. 

The whole journey, my mind was reeling by how normal everything seemed outside my apartment. I wanted to quietly ask someone what had happened to the lockdown in our city. What were they doing outside their homes while the media and social media still stated firmly that everyone should be safely sealed away from the rest of society, working from home, using avatars if they needed to be somewhere in person? But I couldn’t bring myself to talk to anyone else, in case I was discovered. 

I wasn’t merely avoiding lockdown; I had effectively stolen an AI companion and had usurped its identity. 

As my train pulled into Crossharbour Station and I stepped off the platform, my anxiety heightened considerably. I hadn’t thought any of this out nearly enough. My ego had led me on this wild goose chase, curious about who could have purposefully requested an AI companion that looked like me. 

What had I been thinking? 

I had entertained a vague idea that I might arrive at someone’s apartment and pretend to be an AI companion. That I might get to spend some time with a real person for once, an actual human being. 

But now, I cringed at the ethics of all this. Someone out there had requested an AI companion, and a real person would turn up instead. Would I continue my ruse? Would I pretend to be an AI companion after arrival? They would be under the impression I was artificial, that I was a thing rather than a person. 

I thought of how I would behave with an AI companion, feeling myself with someone who would not judge me as a real person might. How would I feel to discover that this companion was a real person and not AI?

It wasn’t right, deceiving someone like this for the mere purpose of indulging my own ego.

I was resolved to confess all and apologize with all my heart as I found Tiller Road and then Building G. Maybe whoever it was that had ordered a companion who looked like me would then want to call the police. I wondered what kind of punishment there would be. What crime would they suggest I had committed? Breaking lockdown? What about all these other people on the street? Hacking an AI companion? Identity theft? 

The concierge let me into Building G, no questions asked. He assumed I was an AI companion, I guess. My digital identity certainly suggested I was. 

Then I went up to the 47th floor and found apartment 476.

I took a deep breath and pressed the buzzer. 

‘Well, hello, there.’ 

I gasped. Standing in front of me was none other than Nessa.

Continue to Part 3 >>