The Cough Conflict (Part 3)

‘Nessa, it’s me,’ I said.

I could have said nothing. I could have pretended to be artificial. But I liked my boss; I didn’t want to humiliate her. 

‘Well, of course it is, honey,’ she smiled, opening her scarlet silk bathrobe to reveal that she was wearing only underwear beneath. 

Now I felt conflicted. I thought reacting like an employee suddenly seeing his line manager wearing only the flimsiest black lingerie might brutally embarrass her. But keeping calm only made me seem like I was AI.

She stepped up to me and hooked her arms over my shoulders. 

‘No,’ I said gently, ‘it’s really me. Joel.’ 

‘Okay, we’re past that part,’ she said and pushed herself up on tiptoes to kiss my mouth. 

I was responding to her physically. How could I not? But now I felt the guilt of my deception. 

‘I’m not an AI companion pretending to be Joel,’ I persisted. ‘I’m actually Joel. I ordered a companion who looked like me, and then I took its place to visit its next client — you.’ 

But she didn’t even raise an eyebrow at my confession. Her mouth flickered into a sly grin, and she said, ‘Oh, that’s good. How did you come up with that story? Do other people do this?’

Her hands were on my chest, unfastening the buttons on my shirt.

‘I’m serious,’ I said, pulling her off me. 

‘What the—?’

For the first time, her faith in the little scenario she had going on here was shaken. She looked at me with a crinkle of doubt between her eyes.

I sighed, trying to think of a way to prove myself before she made a fool out of both of us. It took me a moment, and then I felt like an idiot for not coming up with it sooner. 

‘Cough.’ 

‘I’m sorry, excuse me?’ 

‘I said, ‘cough,’’ I said. ‘Then you’ll see for sure, right?’ 

Her eyes widened, her confusion becoming surprise. I could tell she was wondering how the hell a random AI Companion could possibly know about the Cough Conflict. 

But then she did, indeed, cough. 

I remained still. No twitch, no flinch, not even a blink. 

‘Joel?’ Nessa gasped, putting her hands over her mouth. 

I gave an apologetic shrug. ‘I wanted to get out of my apartment — I was going crazy. I wanted to get out without using an avatar.’

‘Oh mother—’ she said, realizing she was exposing herself to her subordinate, before covering up with her bathrobe. 

‘I thought it would be easiest to leave my apartment posing as an AI companion. But I didn’t know someone else had already booked it this evening…’ 

She sighed and sat down on her bed. ‘Well, this is embarrassing.’ 

I smiled, trying to make light of this situation, saying, ‘What were the chances that the first time I wanted to make use of an AI companion who looked like me… so did you…?’ 

She shrugged and looked up at me, guilty. ‘Well… I’ve been doing this for a while…’ 

‘Seriously?’ 

‘You must think I’m a creep…’

’ No, I—’ 

‘…I was going to ask you if you wanted to… have dinner or something… only, then came the Canberra Variant… and, of course, now the Kamchatka Variant…’ 

‘I would have liked that.’ 

‘You would?’

My insides felt all melty. I hadn’t felt like this in a long, long time. Somebody attractive was interested in me. Nessa. And she wasn’t artificial. 

The way she looked up at me, I think she felt the same way. It was surprising how powerful the feelings were — and how different it seemed now that we were real people sharing those feelings. This wasn’t a real person ordering up an artificial person who would then pretend to be attracted to them. 

She said, ‘We could get something delivered… I mean, since you’re here now…’ 

I was about to agree wholeheartedly to the idea. And then the thought of us attempting a first date in Nessa’s tiny apartment made me think of that big, wide world out there that I’d just walked through on my way here. 

I said, ‘You know, we could probably go out to a restaurant?’ 

‘What?’ she laughed. 

‘On my way over,’ I explained, ‘everything seemed normal outside. You know, people walking along the streets… the roads full of traffic… bars and restaurants teeming with people…’ 

‘Avatars?’

I shook my head. ‘These weren’t avatars. Not even high-end ones. I saw people eating real food…’

‘They’re breaking lockdown rules?’ 

‘If they are, it’s the whole city breaking lockdown rules. I mean the bars and restaurants are open. The cops could come along any time and shut them down for good if they were breaking regulations.’ 

Nessa looked to the left and splashed five different news feeds from the major broadcasters on her wall. I glimpsed at the headlines blaring out from each of the screens — four of them were about the Kamchatka Variant, one of them was about food shortages in Canada. As we looked on, Nessa expanded one of the screens, that of NewsRight, and the sound of its anchor faded in.

‘…the City has reported 23,560 cases of the new Kamchatka Variant among essential workers in care facilities and import warehouses…’

Then she flipped to another of the feeds, and we heard:

‘…Experts believe that if you are fully up to date with your vaccinations, there is a 57.8% chance of avoiding severe symptoms from the Kamchatka Variant, but…’

Then another:

‘…the Mayor said it could be another three months before a vaccine is developed for the Kamchatka Variant. He urged citizens to continue to abide by the city’s strict lockdown rules to protect the very old and the very young—and those with medical conditions that make them susceptible to severe effects from the virus…’ 

Nessa stood up. ‘It sure seems fairly clear the lockdown is still in place.’ 

I leaned against the kitchen counter that jutted out from the wall opposite the various news feeds Nessa was displaying. ‘I checked everywhere I could think of before I left my apartment. There aren’t any reports anywhere of people in the city breaking lockdown rules.’ 

Nessa now flicked through various other sources—ViewTube channels, social media threads, CommsBoards—they were all full of people moaning about the lockdown, sharing ideas for continuing the lockdown without going insane, and so on. Nothing about significant numbers of people flouting the lockdown rules. 

‘Maybe there’s a new kind of avatar available?’ my line manager suggested. ‘One that looks more realistic than drone-projection technology, perhaps…’

But we searched for news of developments in avatar technologies, and there simply wasn’t anything out there that matched what I had seen out on the street. 

Eventually, Nessa said, ‘Come on. I wanna see.’ 

Over in the corner of her apartment, by the door, a closet silently emerged from the wall, opening to reveal her clothes hanging neatly. 

‘You think I should order up a companion who looks like me?’ she joked as she stepped over to her closet. 

‘I don’t think you need to,’ I laughed. 

She glanced over her shoulder and, seeing that I was watching her, purposefully dropped her bathrobe to offer me a tantalizing show of flesh. I took in a full eyeful before pretending to avert my eyes to protect her modesty. Nessa giggled, and I could tell she enjoyed my attention.

She put on a pretty blue dress that looked sensational on her and called up a mirror beside her closet to check herself out. Makeup appeared on her face while she did so — her lips turning rich crimson, the lines of her eyes darkening, her cheeks taking on a subtle but romantic glow. 

She was ready in two ticks, and my heart was fluttering because she had dressed for a date.

As the closet quietly sank back into the wall, she stood by the door and offered me her arm. ‘Come on — let’s go check out all these lockdown-breakers.’

*

When we left the confines of Nessa’s apartment, I had sudden fears that it would turn out that I’d imagined everything on my way over. That there were no lockdown breakers out there on the street in reality. We’d emerge from her building to be surrounded by an armed SWAT team pointing hideous-looking machine guns in our direction.

But as we stepped out of the elevator on the ground floor and walked through the large entrance lobby to the exit, my fears were soon proven unfounded. 

There wasn’t anyone in the lobby except the concierge. He flashed a relaxed smile toward Nessa as we went by, and then we were out on the street. There were plenty of people out there, going about their business as though there had never been any kind of pandemic. 

‘Fucksticks,’ Nessa said, as we stood in front of her building and just gazed at this normal world like we were aliens who had never seen human beings before.

‘I know, right?’ I said, feeling relief since my earlier observations of the world were proving correct.

‘Nobody’s even wearing a mask.’ 

We spoke quietly, worried that passers-by would catch on that we weren’t like them. That we’d been in lockdown and were supposed to remain in lockdown.

‘What the hell’s going on?’ Nessa whispered. 

Without warning, my line manager stepped up to a man wearing a suit, who looked like a commuter on his way home from the office. She said, ‘Excuse me, I’m so sorry for bothering you — would you mind if I asked you a question?’ 

The man stopped and looked surprisingly unbothered by being confronted in the street. He smiled genially and said, ‘Of course. How can I help you?’ 

I was a little shocked at Nessa’s forwardness — but then I had always been fairly introverted, and three years locked up in my apartment had kept my social skills on ice. I guess Nessa was a line manager for a reason, though. 

She just went straight ahead and asked him, ‘Are you fully up-to-date with your vaccinations?’  

Like she was a pre-pandemic poll worker, or a charity fundraiser or something. 

The man looked at her a moment, mulling over her question, but then furrowed his brow with what appeared to be bemusement or even puzzlement.

‘I’m sorry?’ he said. ‘Vaccinations?’

It was as though he’d never even heard of the whole inoculation thing.  

Nessa clarified, ‘You know… for the pandemic.’ 

The man just chuckled and said, ‘Good one!’ As though Nessa had told him a joke. Then he wished us a good evening and walked off on his merry way. 

Nessa asked a couple more people — an old woman and a guy about our age — with similar responses. They didn’t seem to have heard about the pandemic, or lockdown, or self-isolation, or vaccinations, the Kamchatka Variant or any previous variant.

‘Are we being pranked?’ she asked me as we continued walking, around the corner and up toward the South Quay Plaza, where there had been plenty of product showrooms, bars, and restaurants before the lockdown.

‘That’s what I thought,’ I said. ‘But who would want to play such an elaborate prank on us?’ 

*

We felt like tourists in our own city. And yet, if we’d both stayed in our respective apartments that evening, we would have been under the impression that tourists were not currently allowed in our city. 

But here were people milling about on the quayside, between the water and the restaurants, who also could have been tourists. Or office workers hanging out after work, or lovers out on a date, or whatever. 

The sun had gone down, but there was still a last splash of orange in the sky in the west, where we could see the various towers and skyscrapers lit up as you might expect. And yet here on the ground level, the street lamps filled the plaza with a romantic ambiance for countless people to enjoy in a very relaxed manner. 

There was no hint of a lockdown here. 

Nessa and I walked up to Canary Wharf, through the mall, down by West India Quay — and the same was true. There was no concern anywhere about the pandemic. No suggestion that the city might still be under siege from another variant. 

‘There isn’t anybody wearing a mask,’ Nessa said, hugging my arm tight as though she wanted everyone to know we were just young lovers out on a date.

We went by the Manilow bar, and it was exactly as I remembered from pre-pandemic times. Financial industry executives in suits hanging out with beers in their hands, preppy students supping cocktails by the waterside, locals in jeans and comfortable sweaters — and even folks who looked like tourists, with their white sneakers, brightly-colored coats, their backpacks containing their touristy supplies. 

It seemed so normal. 

Buses passed by on the street, the subway train soared overhead. 

Life was getting on as usual while we’d been locked up. 

I stopped to ask Nessa if she would like some dinner somewhere after all when I realized she was no longer by my side. She’d stopped a few meters back.

She was standing by the quayside, gazing out at the buildings reflected in the water.

‘Hey—’ I said and then saw from the tiny lights in her eyes that she was accessing news or social media on her corneas.

‘Even while we’re out here,’ she said, assuming I was still near her, ‘the media is warning everybody to keep indoors, to maintain the lockdown. That we’re all at risk from this damn Kamchatka thing.’ 

‘But there’s no sign of it out here,’ I pointed out. 

‘There’s no sign in the media that anyone in this city is breaking the lockdown. Why would they keep all this quiet? And the whole media… the whole Internet…’

‘The city doesn’t want to admit it has a problem?’ 

But she shook her head. 

I smelled the irresistible garlicky scent of professional cooking in the air. I’m pretty sure Nessa did, too, because when I suggested something to eat, she hooked her arm in mine and practically dragged me over to Fishburne’s. 

It was a little unnerving, though, going into an establishment like that. There were so many people in there. Such a dense collection of potential carriers. 

‘Are we at risk here?’ Nessa asked me quietly as we waited for a table.

‘We’re both fully vaxxed, right?’ 

‘But that only gives us a 57% chance of getting really sick, doesn’t it?’ 

‘Only against the newest variant. Maybe it’s not widespread in the city yet.’ 

I was already trying to be optimistic. My best guess was that there was something wrong with the Internet service that both Nessa and I used. What if we’d been receiving out-of-date data from our service provider? The entire media feed we had been receiving was past history, keeping Nessa and myself in lockdown much longer than necessary. 

I so wanted the pandemic to be over, for life to go back to normal. And here, it seemed to be normal.

But then, while the waiter was showing us to our table right in the middle of the busy restaurant, I felt a tickle in my throat. It wasn’t serious — just a dry throat, something that a drink of water might solve. But it caused me to cough, quite loudly, right in the middle of that crowded venue. 

I coughed.

And every single person around us twitched. Without exception.

*

We asked for piper salads when the waiter returned to take our order—taking our cues from the other diners seated around us. They were all artificial, but they seemed to be acting just like real people would at a restaurant like this. 

If I hadn’t have coughed, you might have never known they were all artificial. 

Nessa and I just tried to act calm and pretend everything was normal. 

‘You think everyone out here is… you know…?’ Nessa asked quietly after spending enough time making sure nobody around us was eavesdropping. 

‘It sure as hell seemed so,’ I said. ‘Didn’t it?’ 

‘Did you see anyone that didn’t twitch?’ 

‘No. You?’ 

‘Nope.’

The food was surprisingly good. We ate it in silence—what could we talk about when this whole situation was the only thing we could think about. But we didn’t feel comfortable talking about that because there were too many people around. 

We ate, and anyone else might have thought we were a couple having relationship problems.

When we were done, we paid the bill and left—and it all seemed just like ordinary people settling up and heading out of a restaurant. But Nessa and I were treading carefully, breathing lightly, trying to watch for any signs that these artificials around us might detect that we were not like them. 

Out on the street, we walked away from the restaurant. Nessa coughed, and it was pretty clear that everyone within earshot twitched in that distinctive way. 

We calmly headed back toward her apartment building—and we tried to conceal our growing horror as it appeared that everyone we passed was artificial. 

Only as we returned to her building and were about to enter the lobby did we notice the three men in suits who had been walking a few yards behind us. We tried to continue our act pretending everything was normal as we stepped through the entrance, but then the three men in suits followed us there, which was too much coincidence for me. 

I nudged Nessa, and when she turned to look, I saw her face sag in disappointment. 

‘Nessa Hutchins?’ one of them asked her as we stopped in front of the elevator. 

‘Yes?’ 

‘We need you to come with us, please.’ 

‘Just… just me?’ she said, trembling with fear. 

‘You can send your companion away.’ 

Nessa looked at me, and I could only look apologetically back at her as we realized that the men in suits believed I was merely an AI companion because I’d stolen Hayward’s digital ID. In their eyes, I wasn’t anyone of concern.

Then she said to me, ‘Hayward, you can go, now.’

I hesitated, but Nessa narrowed her eyes, and it was clear she was telling me to get out of here. That there was no point in both of us being caught.

Pretending to be calm— pretending to be artificial—I said, ‘Thank you, Nessa. Have a good evening.’ I gave her a brief—very brief—look of apology, and she responded with a momentary smile. Then I turned to leave. 

While walking down the street, I saw the men in suits escorting Nessa to an unmarked vehicle that was undoubtedly a police car.

Fucksticks.

*

I went home. 

On my way, I was meticulous not to do anything that might seem irregular, unexpected, or out of the ordinary. I had to minimize the chances that anyone around me would suspect that I wasn’t artificial. 

During my walk to the subway and on the train, I snatched sly glances at other artificials to check how they acted, moved, and even breathed. They were, I have to say, very realistic. It gave me confidence that my own behavior would not necessarily mark me out as different. 

Nevertheless, it was a huge relief when I returned to my own apartment unchallenged. 

Here was Hayward, lying in my bed as though sleeping. 

I gave him back his clothes and changed into something comfortable myself before waking him up to resume my code-testing. I acted as though I had merely taken a break from work. 

After a while, I allowed my doppelgänger to leave. I called Nessa, hoping she would be available, that she would be okay. I desperately hoped she would be given only a minor warning about breaking lockdown rules and then allowed back to her apartment. 

My stomach dropped as she did not answer, and it became clear to me that she could be in real trouble. 

My mind was reeling. 

*

I called my parents. I apologized for calling so late, said I just needed to check on them, considering that there was a new variant of the virus. They smiled and seemed grateful for my concern, telling me they were fine. 

We shared small talk for a while. 

I started thinking about telling them that I’d been out of my apartment, that everyone out there seemed to be artificial. That something awful was going on. 

Then I coughed, and both my parents twitched like Bugs Bunny.

* * *