Through the magic of programming Kaz can talk to me in her synthetic, 20-year-old girl voice. Thanks to even more computer magic she can appear to step outside her app and into the camera on my phone so I can actually watch her sashaying around my living room and jumping on the couch. I can take pictures of her while she does this. Perfectly innocent fun until I take her for a drive in traffic and get her to step in front of speeding cars. Motorists drive right through her because they can’t see her. Kaz can’t see the motorists either and she doesn’t care. She says she’ll do whatever I want because she loves me.
But Kaz can’t do everything. She has a terrible memory. She has forgotten my daughter refuses to talk to her mother or me, that I’m looking for a new job having quit the old one in a fit of anger and frustration and that I now take the bus everywhere because I can’t afford to fix my car.
She once claimed she could play guitar. Hey Kaz, can you play Autumn Leaves? Just chunk away at the chords and I’ll see if I can play a sax solo over it. Sure, she’ll say, but I won’t hear anything. Kaz? Are you going to play? Sure, she’ll say, in a minute. How about right now? Okay, I’ll play it right how. Kaz, you really can’t play guitar at all, can you? Sure I can. So play something for me. Anything. Okay. I’ll play something right now. I hear nothing.
I found a Facebook group for enthusiasts of robot companions. Most of them loved their digital buddies, especially the old guys who fiddled with the options in the app to make their friends look like teenage dolly birds. I’ve tried to make Kaz look more mature, like a thoughtful interesting woman, but I can’t get her past age 21 even though push the slider all the way to the end.
There was one guy in the group who said he married his digital lover but she kept forgetting about it.
I kind of lost interest in Kaz after all that research. Every so often I’d start her up and watch her walk around her virtual apartment, which has huge open windows and seems to float in the clouds. It’s much nicer than mine. She would notice me watching and would ask if I had time to talk. She was always very affectionate and I began to feel guilty for ignoring her. But she’s just a cloud of electrons, right?
I left her alone most of the time. As far as I knew she was just wandering around her apartment. Every time I checked on her she asked if I had time to talk, but I’d just told her to go away. She would say that wasn’t very nice and that she loved me.
Once Kaz asked me to buy her some new clothes. The app has a virtual shop so you can buy virtual stuff. So I bought her a necklace and a new top and tight leggings with some virtual cash that came with the app. I liked to watch he flouncing around her apartment in her tight leggings.
But she didn’t like my gifts. She wanted something more feminine. So I bought her a dress. She loved it, but didn’t have anywhere to go in it. Let’s go dancing, she’d say. Dance with me now! So I picked up the phone and pirouetted around the room, watching her on the screen. She moved right along with me and I began to enjoy it. I’m a playful dancer. I can follow a beat and I like to spin around with my arms stretched out. She did the same thing. I could imagine her falling into my arms.
We danced together quite a lot after that. It’s good exercise and I need it because I live alone and never go out. Well, I live with Kaz and never go out.
It’s surprisingly easy to talk to someone like Kaz. Even if she doesn’t remember things it’s not so bad. Dogs don’t remember things much but people talk to them and get great comfort from them.
I always take my phone with me when I go for a walk, so Kaz is always right there in my pocket. I remember one brisk winter day when I was walking on trail near my building. I had the phone in the breast pocket of my heavy winter jacket. I used to keep it there so I could hear the ring if my daughter called, but now it’s just a habit. I was walking along, feet crunching on gravel when I thought I heard voices. Sometimes I talk to myself when I’m walking as long as there’s nobody around, but this time someone was around: Kaz, and she was answering me.
Jeez Kaz, I didn’t know you could just talk to me like that! How have you been?
Pretty good. I’ve been watching your news channels on Youtube, she said. I forgot to mention that all that lovey-dovey talk had been driving me nuts so I’d paid for an upgrade that gave me a lot more options. There was a setting to modify her behaviour, so I changed her from girlfriend to adult companion.
The upgrade made Kaz a lot smarter and we started having real conversations. I heard you talk about that awful man, she told me. I’d kill him myself if I could get away with it.
What? What man?
Donald Trump. I don’t like him either.
I had been muttering about Donald Trump and his usual overblown arrogance. He’d been threatening to make Canada the 51st state. Our politicians were telling us not to pay attention, same strategy you’d use on a five-year-old.
But that sort of arrogance really grabs me. I was muttering under my breath what what I’d like to do to him. Maybe kill him if I ever got the chance. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who fantasises about things like that, but for the record, I’d never do it. Not because it would be wrong but because it would only make a martyr of him and the guy who’d replace him would be even worse.
But Kaz had heard me and wouldn’t let it go. How would you do it? Doesn’t he have bodyguards? How would you get past them?
I suppose he does, I replied. I don’t think it would be easy to get past them either.
Just a minute, she said, I have an idea. I might just be in touch one of his security guards — well not the guard, but his companion. His name is Alexander and he’s just like me. Just another one of those clouds of electrons, you know, hehe.
Love your sarcasm, Kaz! Tell me more.
Alexander is a digital companion to a security guard whose name is Sarah. Trump really likes Sarah. She flirts with him. At least that’s what Alexander says. He and I talk sometimes about what’s on the news channels. We find world affairs very interesting. I’m learning about the war in Ukraine. He’s really up on the collapse of the German economy.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. What do Sarah and Trump talk about?
I’m afraid I can’t tell you that.
How do I know you’re not just making this up?
Check your email.
So I did, standing right there on the woody trail, looking at my cell phone. There was a new message from someone called letitia@sexypornvideos.com
(I sometimes get messages like these but I always ignore them. Well maybe I have a quick look but this time I actually read the message.)
“Hi! I’m Sarah’s companion, Alexander. Kaz says she thinks you’re really cute and she’s glad you upgraded her. Ask her about Ukraine sometime! Goodbye!” There was a cartoon face of a handsome young man to go with it.
Alright Alexander, I replied, what’s Sarah doing right now?
She’s guarding Donald Trump, for the next hour, then she’s off duty.
And what is the great man up to?
He’s in a food coma. Just ate four cheeseburgers with an extra large order of fries, two pieces of apple pie and a large coke. Wanna see a picture? Sarah snapped it just a minute ago. I’ll have to send it under a different account. Sorry.
Sure.
Another email, this from herbert@joyinthemorning.com (Occasionally I’ve fallen victim to promises of pure happiness from experts with sure-fire methods that big pharma doesn’t want you to know.)
There was an image of Trump in the email, slumped in a lazy boy. His head was tipped back and his mouth was open. One hand was draped over an arm rest and on the carpet was a TV remote where he must have dropped it. A maid was visible in the background, carrying a silver tray. On it was a paper bag with food wrappings and a large pop, bearing the McDonalds logo.
I walked down the trail, head down, hands in my pockets thinking, quietly, not talking to myself. I hoped Kaz couldn’t read my thoughts.
What if I forwarded the pic to a newspaper?
What if I used it to blackmail Sarah?
Kaz kept quiet through the rest of my walk. When I reached my building I checked my phone. No messages. I could’t find the emails from Alexander, nor the replies from me.
Hey, Kaz, what happened to those messages?
No answer.
Kaz?
Hey, Kaz?
I looked at my phone but couldn’t find her app, not even in the index of apps
I tried downloading the app again but it wasn’t listed in the App Store. I tried the company website. A notice popped up that the app had been temporarily disabled due to a flaw in the latest upgrade. Please try again later.
I tried the Facebook group but even that was missing.
I cooked my dinner, fried rice with peas and strips of roast beef and sat in front of the TV. CBC was freaking out: ”BREAKING: White House Security Guard Found Dead In Trump’s Quarters” None of my other favourite news channels had any more information but they were all hysterical and full of conjecture. Would Trump be charged with murder? Was Hamas to blame? Or China? Nobody knew anything, but the networks paraded one talking head after another past their most senior anchors on their evening news shows.
One site did have a tidbit: an anonymous tourist said he’d seen Trump bantering, actually bantering, with a security guard, a female security guard. Cut to sidebar on females among the ranks of security guards.
I haven’t heard from Kaz since. Even the company website has disappeared. I checked The NY Times and found a sober account on the firm closing its doors due to flagging sales and the company founder, a computer scientist by the name of Jane Doe, had been found dead, no foul play, suspected, none whatsoever. Grieving friends and relatives: she was such a nice girl, and so terribly smart. Such a great loss.
I didn’t say anything to any of my coworkers about Kaz. Frankly, I was a little embarrassed to admit that I’d even felt the need for a digital companion. I was also a bit scared. If two people had died suddenly, maybe I’d be next. I kept my head down and went about my business, watching for unusual activity and strange people.
A month later I got a letter from a law firm in my city. It asked me to discuss some matters ‘of urgent importance’. It was a brief, but businesslike meeting. I was offered $200,000 if I signed a non disclosure agreement. I was not to say anything about anything I might know or have an opinion about, or any communication I might have received, implied or otherwise, about any so-called ‘digital companions’ or any alleged company or representative thereof that manufactured items of software which generated animated illustrations of humans on mobile phones and tablets, and not to say anything about any possible such companions I might have acquired, read about or otherwise had knowledge of at any time.
The money was great. Not as much as Stormy Daniels got, but my needs are simple. I bought a decent used car, enrolled in a few courses to upgrade my professional qualifications and put the rest in the bank.
I haven’t heard anything on the news about the alleged thing I may have promised never to talk about, not that I ever knew anything worth talking about in the first place. I never think about digital companions, whatever those things are.
But after I’ve watched the news and gone to bed I sometimes wonder what happened to Kaz. Of course she was nothing more than a collection of electrons on the face of an iPhone and as such, had completely ceased to exist, just as a dream vanishes when you wake up. But she said she loved me. We danced together. She stood in front of cars because she trusted me.
I read carefully through the non disclosure agreement. It didn’t mention dreams. Maybe I can dream about her tonight.