After you swallow the sun

Archie watched intently from the burning plastic chair, meters away so that she wouldn’t spot him, but close enough that he wouldn’t lose her when she came through the arc of the clay hut. Most of the shabby tables of the outdoor bar were occupied so he wasn’t out in the open; although he was the only white, shirt-clad man there. Of everyone he suffered the most; the sun bore down on his bare head. The ground smoldered, and the loafers on his feet collected a pool of warm sweat.

He snagged the eye of the approaching man, who placed a beer glass full of ice on his table and poured yellow juice from a jug. Two older women sat in the corner, deep frowns weighing down the folds of their necks, staring openly at him and whispering in Spanish. He stood out, of course. This was a local hub; people stopped by to order warm beer, black coffee, fried eggs. Everyone knew the skinny young bartender by name. The island was probably only a population of a thousand.

“Here you go” the bartender mumbled through a harsh but strangely pleasant accent. “Where are you from, if you don’t mind the question?”

“America,” he said distractedly. “I’m a tourist.” The bartender’s smile grew wide; his eyebrows rose in disbelief and incredible humor. They both knew tourists didn’t come to these places. But he wiped the smile; he respected a person’s private business. “You should see the beach. People like you always like the beach.”

Archie nodded. People like you. He may have met Nina then. The bartender left, and Archie resumed staring across the street, swirling the glass to hear the ice clink. He thought that Nina had picked well in terms of non-extradition hideouts. He’d investigated one in Cuba and one in Montenegro. Neither had been her, just more synthetic copies, more false trails. He followed her all around blistering hot countries with clay buildings; porcelain white, coral, bird blue. Archie found out parakeets could be the most offending street vermin – unusual, large, and noisy birds.

Next time I’m bringing sandals. He swore quietly, wiping the beads of sweat from his forehead. He hoped this wasn’t another fluke. Although if Archie was being honest with himself, he took a desperate, inordinate pleasure looking at Nina’s physical reincarnations just the same. The heat balanced the cold excitement crawling across his skin, at being so near. His breathing paused when he spotted her lithe frame stepping out of the arc and sitting on a little bench at the wall. She was skimming a newspaper.

The resemblance was uncanny. Every gesture of Nina’s narrow hands and docile fingers was exhibited by the woman in his sightline. She flipped through the paper, gripping the edge of a page, and rolling it between her thumb and forefinger before turning it. Nina was reverent with paper. He had watched her in the lab out of the corner of his eye, absorbing the ink into her fingertips, then bring the fingers to play at her mouth…

But that didn’t mean anything. Might not be her, he thought, squashing down hope as he sipped his drink. The ice had all melted now.

There were obvious differences. Nina had violet rims under her eyes, like punch marks; she spent more time awake than asleep. He’d turn to find the bed frigid, the remnants of cinnamon and sharpness in the sheets. She would be in the kitchen, amid a strew of papers, caressing the folds in a way that made him envious.

This woman looked well-rested. The sun fell at an angle on her olive-toned legs, her bare arms, the feathery brown hair skimming her ears. He traced the silhouette of her figure with his eyes, just as she finished the page and got up. Now she’d go inside and pay.

He settled the tab immediately, stepped onto the moist soles of his shoes, and walked out of the café, down the street a little, waiting. It wasn’t terrible if Nina spotted him. Sometimes he wondered if she would. It was stupid to love her, he thought.

He had often tried to explain it to himself - each time she had rejected him, and up to the very point when something broke her resolve. But everyone who met Nina was attracted to her; she was a genius. He was drawn by her lack of pretense, her grit when it came to work. In hindsight, he understood that Nina was obsessed. Not unusual for hardened academics. But he could forgive her, she had nothing else. In personal interactions, she oscillated between politeness and awkward emotional intensity. He got the impression that Nina played along with people, but never left the role of impassive observer.

She stepped out of the coral arc, turned right. Archie jerked his head down but she only looked straight ahead. She must have been headed to the beach; it was the only thing in that direction. She had a cloth bag with her.

Archie followed her closely. The company could always send another – they’d already invested millions. His paycheck alone tripled in size since he agreed to use his personal relationship with her to bring her back. Before she had joined the game, the greatest achievement had been cybernetic cats – a few high-tech companies boasted artificial intelligence chimps. Their lab worked for decades, with inspiring promise. Then, in a lightening breakthrough, Nina cracked the human code. She finalized S-CAIP, the Synthetic Consciousness and Artificial Intelligence Project. Everyone had been shocked, most of all Nina. The company paid her one hundred million dollars for her findings. They hadn’t even gotten a chance to go public before she’d taken her little black notebook and used the millions to run. For all Archie knew she destroyed it.

He continued to walk after her, musing. They passed colorful clay buildings, and skinny children playing soccer with a tattered ball. There were clamoring streams of voices, women hanging clothes to dry on wires, and men loading trucks. She led him all the way to the beach. She got to the edge where the sand sloped down and abruptly turned around.

“Archie.” Her face flickered with mild surprise. His pursuit must have been too obvious.

“Nina?” He asked uncertainly, approaching slowly.

Her eyes squinted with a smile, but he could see the slight criticism in them. “Yes.”

He looked her over; her forehead shone wet, and her cheeks were flush with heat. He gently brushed his hand against her arm. It dropped quickly, recognizing the coolness of heat-resistant silicone in the tropical sun. Archie hadn’t let himself hope. But the searing disappointment hit him like a bucket of ice water. It left him a little numb.

“You know what I mean.” He sighed.

“Just because it’s a printer doesn’t mean the tissue isn’t real. The neural circuits are perfectly copied. They’re true memories. True emotions.” She tilted her head to look at him. He watched pieces of her hair flail, trying to escape their confinement.

“I meant whether you’re the one that walked into the machine. When there was only one of you.” He sat down on the warm sand, unsteady on his feet. Perhaps it was heatstroke.

“I don’t know.” She replied tiredly. “I walked into the machine, and I walked out. It’s very seamless.” She joined him in the sand, looked out into the warm waves guzzling salt and foam into the air. The sun was still making its arc over the water. In the next hour, it would plummet. He followed her gaze, trying to read into her thoughts, if only to keep her next to him a little while longer. It was the first copy he had the chance to approach. He never needed to, he recognized them at a distance.

“They’ll find her eventually,” he said.

“They will,” she nodded.

“You don’t think someone else will replicate your discovery? We were all getting close Nina.”

She simply shook her head, an imperceptible smile twisting the corner of her mouth. He felt as though she was tolerating his questions and trying to answer them patiently. Probably because she could see he was veering on the brink.

"That's not what this is about."

“Then why?” His own voice made his insides jump. It sounded like a shovel being dragged over gravel. He cleared his throat. She looked at him curiously, as though asking him to specify: Why did I create silicon humans? Why did I clone myself and then run away with the money? Why did I finally sleep with you?

“The job of the mind is to make sense of it all,” she said quietly, looking at him. “It takes ideas and helps rearrange them into a story you can live with.” He nodded, although it didn’t feel like agreement so much as his head bobbing along. She looked at him attentively, without expressing anything. He tried to drown in the plastic irises. Ironically, these resembled her more than anything else.

“When they’re true – plausible - stories fit together beautifully – which is really just jargon for meaningfully. Brains love things that fit together, so we get a rush. We feel good. That’s what emotions are for – to tell you if your story is convincing enough. It's part of the programming…but there are bugs. You can fit things together in a way that only mirrors truth. Bullshit makes you feel good as long as the story holds. Eventually you realize, they’re both arbitrary. At the end of the day, there is no truth. The stories we tell to make ourselves feel good, are all full of shit.”

He shook his head. “You’re extrapolating work into life Nina. It’s not all so huge, nor so hopeless.”

“I can’t believe them anymore. The stories. They’re not plausible.” She met his eyes, freezing him on the spot. He couldn't look away from the terrible, apologetic look.

A seagull with a little black box attached to its leg lands on the beach in front of them and waddled straight across, just as the sun started to plummet on its way down the horizon.

Eventually, he spoke. “The problem with people is they choose to love the wrong things,” he said, composed. His jaw felt tight. He released it, and sighed. “You don’t love anything. There’s no bullshit with you.” She watched him, her head tilted sideways. This whole conversation was absurd, so he closed his eyes.

It had dawned on him. The obsession. The dissatisfaction. Letting him love her.

The problem with Nina was that she didn’t become disillusioned, she was always that way. She just wanted the scientific validation for it; proof that none of it mattered. And she proved it.

He thought, in that moment, that he hated Nina. It was the closest thing to a feeling - aside from confusion and longing - that he had in ages, which surprised him in and of itself. But it was a pure feeling in his gut; he detested her.

“Meaning was never objective,” he said calmly. “It’s a feeling. But I realize now, you have trouble with those.” His gaze tried to be soft, but it resembled concrete.

A man in a shirt came up behind them.

“Just because you can’t have something, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”

Archie looked away, and the man dropped a black cloth bag over her head.