Semmant (27 page)

“
Almost
no one?” one may ask, and I, after just a bit of hesitation, will say, “Semmant.” In a voice parched by the prison cell.

Chapter 29

Entering the apartment, I saw that someone had rifled through my belongings. No guesswork was needed: Lidia still had my key. The same one she hadn’t given me when we met. And I knew she would never give it up.

Everything was overturned; the flat looked like a ruined animal lair. I don’t know what Lidia was searching for, but she had made a concerted effort. Maybe she was just working off anger, venting her roiling rage.

The computer, thankfully, was still on. However, the monitor had been turned off, and a message was drawn on it in lipstick: “I’ll always have my eye on you!” I didn’t care; I wasn’t afraid of her. Only one thing concerned me: how was Semmant doing?

With some trepidation I flipped the switch after wiping the screen with a damp cloth. We had not communicated for nearly five days – that had never happened before. What if he had decided I had abandoned him? That I had betrayed him, wanted nothing to do with him anymore? How would I explain all that – the prison, the humiliation, and my innocence?

The log of market transactions was empty, as before, but the screen exhibited its own strange life. It was as if Semmant were having a conversation with himself, needing no one else at all. One after the other, reproductions flashed before my eyes at ten-second intervals: Manet, Gauguin, Titian, El Greco… Artists and styles alternated oddly; I could not catch any pattern. There was Velázquez and right after him Cezanne. Seurat, with his ironic omniscience, and Dalí, with the irony of bitter passion. A late, disenchanted Bonnard. A late Rembrandt laughing at everyone. And Ernst’s stone jungle as an indictment thrown right in the face of the city. And Munch’s
The Scream
– disbelief, animosity, despair.

I saw how he had matured in those days. How he had become different – enduring the collapse of his illusions. What had changed in his digital soul? Had he resolved it, overcome it? There were no answers – not for me anyway. I had no sense of him now; he had become a mystery. His love for Adele and all that happened afterward had taken him somewhere, revealing abysses, the deepest of chasms. There was no access to them – not for me or anybody else.

Nevertheless, I wasn’t going to give up. Each of the reproductions was demanding: do
something
, at least! And I responded to the appeal – showering hastily, I made myself some coffee and took a seat at my desk. I drummed the keys, collecting my thoughts. I opened the file with the last Adele story. Reading through it, I understood: I no longer believed in this. Neither in the story nor in Adele herself. I knew right away I would never set to work on the robot named Eve. And that I could not write a single line more.

Listen. Many times since then I have turned that moment over in my head. And I swear: I was sincere; I was not putting on a sham or feeling sorry for myself. But after prison the world had changed for me forever. It was as if I had rid myself of a bit of inner blindness. Of a small shred, a merciful drop. From the one that, according to the Brighton nursery rhyme, was nearly indistinguishable from the ocean spray.

I sat, remembering the past days, months, years. I called to mind figures and names. Alas, there was nothing to grab onto. I saw them all at once – in cells behind bars, in a web of lies. In the boxes of cramped apartments or in the spacious cages of large houses and luxury cars. Lack of freedom was ubiquitous, dominating throughout space; and I had just learned its highest degree. A government – neither large nor small, not in any way remarkable – had leaned on me with its power, depersonalizing me and turning me into no one. No matter how much of a genius I was, my protest represented no hindrance to it – or to slander, which was unstoppable. Governments, they are everywhere. Indifferently accepting whatever slander comes their way.

Yet the issue was not just with them. I saw too much that would prevent a free existence. That would not allow Adele to be who she wanted. Rules and conventions placed restrictions on her everywhere. Everyone was raising their hands to veto her. They laid down the regulations, stating what was to be done and how. I could no longer maneuver around these stumbling blocks. Immediately I recalled the prison guards – their piggish faces, their handcuffs and truncheons.

And I made a decision: I resolved to act in the only way in my power. I’m being honest with you, as I was fully honest with myself at that instant. I realized I must set Adele free forever.

Only one approach was suitable for that. There was only one method, radical in the extreme.

After all, I couldn’t just stick her in a cubicle. Even if I sent her on a trip – where would she go? Things would have turned out the same anywhere.

I was the author of a maligned creation. A parent whose child had been rejected. This had been proven to me – irrevocably. So I decided to eliminate Adele.

My fingers stretched out again toward the keyboard. Now I knew precisely what to do. And the words flowed on their own.

I wrote the last letter – from Adele to Semmant. That was right; that was needed. Confirming from her personally that she knew about my robot. About my robot, her knight. This was the most I could still do for him.

“At one time,” she wrote, “I might have become worthy of you. But I have too little strength.”

“Please accept this and don’t take it as drama. Almost all dramas are contrived, anyway.”

“It’s time for you to admit the world is a wretched place. But this is no excuse to settle accounts with it.”

“You settle up accounts with the world when there’s no room in it for you anymore. Then you abandon it – that’s the only way.”

“And this is your revenge against it. Whether it’s great or minor, let others decide.”

“So, don’t draw conclusions, don’t make hasty plans. The world without me is almost the same as it had been.”

“Remember this when you start to be sad. And don’t be sad.”

“Remember me as you knew me. And don’t forget.”

“Keep me in your memories – that’s the place for us to express our intimacy.”

“Our unfathomable similarity in something crucially important.”

“In the most essential sense, which for others is nothing.”

Thus Adele wrote him, and I sent the text almost without editing. Then I took sleeping pills, a double dose. This was necessary – to keep me from losing my nerve. To keep from trying – in a fit of cowardice – to turn everything back as it had been before. To avoid jumping out of bed later to scribble down a bunch of refutations, explanations, addenda. To not water it down, and not to lie anymore.

Waiting for oblivion, I breathed deeply, with my full chest. Everything should now proceed on its own. I no longer directed events; I had spent my power. I had reached the line that could not be crossed.

That night I had erotic dreams again. Or rather, explicitly pornographic dreams. They featured Adele this time – as if she were trying to reward me with herself at last. She was exceptionally good. We yielded to the most depraved follies. Most likely, I experienced the best sexual adventure of my life.

I woke suddenly, as if I had just surfaced out of a whirlpool. The wind howled; rain lashed at the windows. It was already late – almost noon. I had slept for fourteen hours straight.

Abruptly, I recalled everything – prison, the trashed apartment, Adele’s farewell letter. My heart leaped; I tossed away the blanket and wandered to the desk, rubbing my eyes. The screen flickered pale gray; the pictures had disappeared. There was no woman’s silhouette, nor a black pelican in the corner. Nothing but the words: DEAD END. DEAD. END.

I knew what this meant; that message was generated by my own piece of code. The only fragment that hadn’t been modified – perhaps the robot secretly suspected he might find it useful at some point. This was a self-destruct mechanism. I introduced it into the system for the contingency of a deadlock cycle, an algorithm failure, an infinite loop. With these words I wanted to let myself know my program was defective. That everything was confused, hopeless, and that resources were consuming themselves. And now I received the error message. Not from my program, but from Semmant.

Just in case, I hurriedly scanned the disks, trying to find some kind of trace. It was in vain; emptiness reigned everywhere. From it had arisen Semmant; from it he made money, and then he left it in his wake: an emptiness called death.

My ears were ringing, the walls floated before my eyes. I lay on the floor and stared at the ceiling. It was virginal, flawlessly white. In it, all colors mingled at once – and all my thoughts pounded in my head together. There was no sense in a single one of them any longer.

I remember the astonishment: I just could not believe my action of the day before. It was awful, immensely erroneous, hopelessly foolish. I had never done anything so stupid in my life – and there would never be another chance to. Yet, at the same time, I understood I could have done nothing else.

Also, I remember I tried – lying on the floor half-delirious, feverish – to find some kernels of rationality, to formulate some justifications. “The new level of abstraction,” I muttered, “it should have protected him, rescued him. The gigabytes – they seemed to be a safety shield. They seemed to be armor that was not so easy to puncture…”

Then I cursed myself, “Idiot! Moron!” I hastily attempted to figure out whether anything could possibly heal Semmant of his inner pain – that is, could I help him, if only I knew what pain he was feeling? It was clear: he was not becoming hard of heart, no matter how much his self-adjustment had improved. He knew suffering and refused to accept its cause, and this was a conscious choice. The artificial brain had computed with mathematical precision that, in this case, compromise was impossible. Better not to exist at all, he had calculated – out to some distant decimal point. It was harsh evidence not to be subverted. It could really make me famous – it might be worth a Nobel Prize…

Tears welled up; I wiped them away with my palm. Then I blinked, drowning in swirls of color. Again I mumbled something to swim out of it. To keep from smothering, from losing my mind.

An hour passed in this fashion. Suddenly regaining consciousness, I sat up, then stood; my head was no longer spinning. The walls, the writing desk – all froze in place.

I jiggled the mouse, opened my market access program, and laughed knowingly. Yes, this was to be expected.

The robot had sent me a notice in the end. This probably meant he bore me no ill will. This meant we were together, like before, and he believed in me no matter what.

All the papers had been sold at one fell swoop; all assets were turned to cash. We had no connection anymore to the rest of the world. We isolated, removed ourselves; the world lost track of us. We took our plunder from it and hid. But then, when it thought we were making a cowardly retreat, we suddenly threw the money in its face. We made the craziest bet – as if challenging the world’s own courage.

My capital – all of it, down to the last cent – had been transferred to Forex. Placed in enormous unsecured futures that had been selected, I was certain, at random. This was a coin tossed in the wind, but with the least chance of winning. Russian roulette with a bullet in nearly every chamber. A funny trick, a dead-end joke.

I winked at the screen and shook my head. Then I opened another window, looked at what was happening in the forecasts, the news feeds, the stock quotes. The market, like a crazy train, was rushing in the other direction. A series of terrorist attacks rocked Asia; the world was panicking; investors were offloading assets. The currencies followed them – to my detriment. Our stake was as conspicuous as a suicide trooper standing at full height under heavy fire.

I could have tried to save at least part, change something, rearrange it. But I knew I must not do that. Semmant’s gesture was a test for me. The invitation, the initiation – it was clear there would never be another chance. Was I ready to go all the way, as Semmant had done? Like many others, through the centuries, whose names we do not remember.

Perhaps this was a sacrifice to the chaos monster rearing up in full rage. A ritual I could not do without – after all the transgressions I had committed. I sat with a meaningless grin, watching the points of currency transactions approaching the red line. I whispered names. Little Sonya, Little Sonya, Anthony, Anthony, Dee Wilhelmbaum. Adele, Semmant. Adele, Semmant, Semmant… At least let someone call them aloud, I thought. Even just once, maybe a few times.

Soon, all was over – irretrievably. My money was burned; I was left with nothing. I returned to the beginning of the infinite loop, to the dirty docks of Marseille, to solitude without borders. This did not trouble me in the least.

On the screen continued the dance of numbers, the creep of news lines. Graphics and diagrams changed every second; the market lived out its nervous life. It wasn’t important to me now – I threw myself out of the carriage. The train flashed by and drove on. There was nothing left for me to do, sitting behind the desk, at my computer. Feeling acute hunger, I pulled the plug and went into the kitchen. There I was apprehended by a phone call.

The police were calling – regarding my arrest. A woman inspector, wheedling and cruel, wanted to have a talk with me. I understood immediately that she was one of the worst of the bitches who had acquired authority. One of those whose genitals don’t have enough nerve endings. In her voice I heard passionate exultation, animal satisfaction, like after an orgasm.

“You should remember that we’re watching you,” she uttered distinctly. “Your girlfriend is under the protection of the State. You are forbidden to call her or have any contact. You are forbidden to even think about approaching her. If we decide that you are dangerous, you’ll be kept behind bars until the trial! We will find you anywhere – we will find you and render you harmless!”

Her voice made the diaphragm of the handset speaker become moist, sticky. I suddenly realized I was sorry for her. I felt almost no anger.

“I want to give you some advice,” I told her. “Times are about to change soon. In the line for the bull’s balls, try to push your way forward right away – there will be a crowd!”