Sensation Machines Read online

  Aliana and Broder posed for more photos and cut the cake, but then the tide took the bride back onto the dance floor, where she did the Running Man with a second cousin’s kids, and got grindy with Cousin Alix and Cat-eyed Corrinne. They slapped each other’s asses and laughed, and Broder watched. Until he got sober, he’d never been shy. He reminded himself that in just a few hours the crowd would disperse and he’d be alone with his beautiful bride. And finally Broder would take off his belt and untuck and unbutton his constricting shirt. He’d lie with her in his arms, and inhale her scent, and only then would the day’s tiny dramas and mishaps take on a kind of humorous charm, because Broder had learned that there was nothing so lonely as the ongoing moment and the best part of life was the looking back.

  Aliana’s dad pulled Broder aside. He swayed and placed a hand on his son-in-law’s shoulder. He swilled his scotch and, slurring, gave, or tried to give, a sentimental speech, explaining that a florist was a noble profession, a humble profession, hands in the earth and all that. Broder nodded. Besides, said her dad, they were glad she was sober—he swilled more scotch—glad that their daughter was happy and sober. He winked at Broder. Aliana’s mom hardly spoke to the groom or met his eye, and the groom didn’t blame her. His own mom was gone, but he talked to his dad, who seemed confused by the affair. But Broder could see he was trying: to believe in this fantasy, to have a good time. It helped that Patty was there, and that she was black—it gave them cachet among the music-biz folks who had stories about Jimi and Aretha as well.

  At midnight, they bused everyone from beach club to beach house for an all-night bonfire. Instruments came out: bongos, fiddle, acoustic guitars. There were coolers of beer and s’mores for the kids. Cat-eyed Corrinne had one of the Emmas in a tongue-lock, and Ricky had conjured a bottle of Jäger, and Cousin Alix, sensing a letdown in male attention, ran into the surf. A few people followed in their dresses and suits, wading up to their ankles, and then others stripped down to their underwear. It was like a movie, Broder thought. Like one of those movies that fills you with warmth while you’re watching, but then, when it ends, leaves you empty inside as you drive home in the rain and it occurs to you that your own life will never match the grandeur of those on the screen.

  At some point it grew light, and the sun could be seen on one side of the sky, though the moon was still visible off in the distance, a beautiful balance, silver and gold. And then the bride’s arms were around him. She’d waded into the water, and her dress made a wetness against Broder’s back.

  And she whispered “I love you,” and he felt her breath move inside his ear, and he smelled on her breath a sour hint of the cake’s lemon filling, and when he looked in her eyes he could see she was high.

  32.

  Michael and Rachel are in Wendy’s email. He guessed her password: Nina310. The date she was supposed to have been born. Was born. Wasn’t born. They’re not sure what they’re looking for. A chat box is open.

  Greg types: sup

  Rachel suggests that Michael pretend to be Wendy and feel things out. What Would Wendy Do? is something Michael’s asked thousands of times—picking out flatware, planning secret Valentine’s trips—and rarely, if ever, has he answered exactly correctly, always some forgotten factor or missed calculation or ignorance of a privately harbored opinion, like Wendy’s inexplicable distastes for three-pronged forks and coastal Maine. This might seem like a failure of intimacy, proof that all those years of joint tax returns and trading sections of the Times, plus their shared triumphs and traumas, do not compute to a comprehensive audit of the other person’s brain. But it’s no failure, Michael thinks. It means they’re not boring or stagnant, not robotic dullards governed by something so prosaic as rational thought. He’s always felt superior to those couples whose worldviews neatly align and whose shared closet looks like the his-and-hers sections of a J. Crew catalog. Love isn’t finding an extension of yourself, but a person so nuanced in her difference that everything she says feels thrillingly fresh. Relationships should be like modern democracies, two-party systems in which the parties agree on rules of conduct and basic tenets of society, but whose fundamental dissents on particular issues keep checks and balances in place. And yet down in the engine room of his anxiety, he worries that he and Wendy may have failed to grasp something other couples innately understand, which is that, for all the pushing against it, all the not going quiet into domesticity’s fleece-lined honey trap, perhaps the secret to a successful marriage is to become boring and predictable, to make each day a calming replica of the last. Perhaps the secret is finding someone who thinks so much like you do that all decisions are easy, no necessary guesswork, a smooth drive across life’s temporal landscape without fighting over the relative merits of Hot 97 versus NPR.

  “Dude,” Rachel says, “you gonna just sit there or are you planning to respond?”

  “I’m trying to channel Wendy,” Michael says, fixing his posture, as if sitting like his wife, with engaged glutes and a rigid spine, might provide insight. Rachel suggests saying sup.

  Michael types What’s up? instead, which causes Rachel to snort.

  Greg replies cold chizzlin.

  “Now what?” says Michael.

  Upstairs, Stuart’s toe taps to the rhythm of the SD’s rise. Downstairs, Lydia marks a student essay in red ink that smudges as her left hand drags across the page. Ricky’s casket slides around the trunk of a hearse that’s changing lanes on 95. Eminem rocks his granddaughter to sleep, humming James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain” while Hailie Jade rants from the next room about the continuing impact of cancel culture on the arts. Detective Quinn licks the crumbs off an everything bagel. Devor unrolls a ribbed condom. Donnell places a protective layer of toilet paper over the seatless rim of a rusted throne while his cellmate looks on. Wendy’s on the subway, not coming to Pittsfield.

  The chat box tells them Greg’s typing. That he’s no longer typing. That he’s typing again.

  big plans 2nite?

  Michael wonders why Greg thinks Wendy might have plans. Doesn’t he know that when someone gets murdered, life stops until a period for mourning has passed? That even if the circumstances were different, Wendy isn’t the type for big plans?

  Michael: In for the night.

  “Add haha,” says Rachel. “Or LOL.”

  “Wendy would never use LOL.”

  “Trust me.”

  He does.

  Greg: wendy using lol????? omg haha.

  “Sorry,” says Rachel.

  dude, i had craziest meeting w/ lil

  u know how she wants 2 bone me?

  Rachel leans over Michael and types k.

  Greg: she txted me earlier and was like come over and bone me

  Rachel moves the computer to her own lap and types omg.

  Greg: i know right

  i went and stripped but she was totally fucking w me

  doesn’t want to bone me at all J

  Rachel: k

  Greg: ;) ;) ;)

  turns out im getting promoted

  i guess she really did like the striptease!

  Rachel: ?

  Greg: lucas didn’t tell u during 1 of yr “special” “private meetings?”

  I get to give the keynote at the disruptny where we’re launching the “product”

  Rachel: ?

  Greg: u know, #workwillsetufree

  i thought u guys were like butt buddies now. haha. late nights in the office and whatnot doing

  “yoga” ;) “dinner” ?

  “What’s he talking about?” says Michael. “I don’t understand his use of quotation marks.”

  “Relax,” says Rachel. “The worst thing Wendy’s ever done is double-dip a French fry.”

  “You don’t know her,” says Michael. “She’d never double-dip.”

  Rachel writes haha product? dinner and yoga?
>
  Greg: dude, the “suit”

  Rachel: ?

  Greg: he didn’t tell u about the suit?

  i heard u 2 were in the office late

  Rachel: what suit?

  Greg: u have to ask locas

  locas

  locusts

  *lucas

  maybe at your next “yoga” sesh

  Rachel: you’re being weird.

  Greg: haha

  anyway gtg

  “Shit,” says Michael.

  “Hold on,” says Rachel.

  She types hey, remind me Lucas’s last name again? im totes blanking :

  Greg: haha vanlewig J

  Rachel opens a separate tab and types Lucas Vanlewig into the search bar. She skips past Wikipedia entries for Chip Van Lewig, the Van Lewig Foundation, and Shamerican Sykosis. She clicks into the profile of Lucas that Michael read back in March. Michael remembers the article, not only for its subject’s retrospectively prescient concerns about the US dollar’s long-term viability, but also for the accompanying photo that featured a blue-eyed and inhumanly symmetrical face staring out at the reader with the maniacal vigor of a cheetah injected with liquid cocaine.

  Rachel reads excerpts from the profile aloud, and when Michael says nothing, she punches his arm. He doesn’t react. His brain is elsewhere, piecing together the various details—Ricky’s talk of a new business partner; his potentially valuable bracelet; Chip Van Lewig’s anti-UBI super PAC; the campaign to frame Jay Devor—that would seem to coalesce around this salient fact.

  Rachel continues to read aloud. Michael takes a deep breath to clear his mind and consider the facts in a rational manner. He wonders where Wendy is now. She must be off the train. He sees her climbing stairs, rolled yoga mat sticking out from her tote. Inside, the lights are low and the soundtrack is ethereal techno. The studio floor gleams with polish. Lucas, in a suit, “the suit”—he pictures double-breasted glen plaid—offers instruction through a headset mic to his class of one. Wendy folds into downward-facing dog. The teacher makes a slight adjustment to her hips. Michael concludes that Lucas must have needed quick liquid capital for some aspect of his business, which Ricky provided in exchange for Sykodollars and company shares. When the SD peaked, Lucas must have felt threatened by Ricky’s growing stake in the company and had him killed.

  33.

  The body of the email is a one-sentence link: Lucas Van Lewig. Wendy clicks.

  “I just wanted to confirm,” says Michael, on the phone. “That’s the guy you’re working for?”

  Wendy scrolls.

  “He murdered Ricky. Or had him murdered.”

  She says, “I don’t see anything about that here. All I see is stuff about that game your dad plays. How’d you figure this out?”

  “It’s obvious. Ricky probably had millions in SD. He basically told me as much when I saw him that morning. Van Lewig must have gotten greedy.”

  “I mean about who he is. I never told you his name.”

  “Greg told me.”

  “Greg from my office?”

  “We G-chatted just now. Rachel and I logged in on your account. He also told me all about your private yoga dates or whatever you’re doing.”

  “You logged into my account?”

  “Rachel and I did, yeah.”

  “And talked to one of my coworkers pretending to be me?”

  “Well, yeah. I tried to tell you before, but you lost service and . . .”

  “Can I ask you something?” says Wendy. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  Michael stammers.

  She says, “So much for earning back my trust.”

  34.

  It sits alone in Lillian’s office, in darkness, the room’s only light coming from the machine itself, its pulsing celestial white. The screen is dark, but the machine is on, computing at speeds inconceivable to human minds. Every so often its fan hums to life, but the object is otherwise silent. Its safety is ensured. The room’s steel door has been double-bolted, and the office is closed for the evening, empty of employees.

  The fifth floor’s only occupants are Ed Galleano—lone human janitor—and the army of maidbots that polish the floors. Ed sleeps in an ergonomic office chair, legs on a stack of cardboard boxes. At four, he’ll wake and start on the bathrooms. For whatever reason, these mid-priced Taiwanese maidbots can’t handle a toilet snake.

  Down in the lobby, Kevin and Lula watch sloths on YouTube. The security industry has resisted automation. Sci-fi films have programmed humans not to trust our safety to machines. There’s a clip K&L particularly like, courtesy of Costa Rica’s Sloth Sanctuary. Violet and Sebastian, twin baby sloths who suffer from mange, are gently shaved, neutralized in a coating of sulfur and lard, and swaddled in gauzy print fabric, stars for Sebastian, polka dots for Violet. When the swaddling’s done and the sloths are back in bed, the twins cling to each other in a startlingly human embrace.

  K&L have watched this clip dozens of times on these graveyard shifts, an excuse to graze hands or squeeze each other’s biceps while cooing and aww-ing, the wholesome clip a buffer against what might otherwise feel less than chaste. In their boldest moments, the two guards, both married to other people, have suggested booking flights to visit the sanctuary. They’ve never gone so far as to bring up accommodation or sleeping arrangements or the fact that their spouses would not be invited, but the implied transgression thrills them, a shared understanding that this trip that will never happen is where they might begin their great affair. Dozens of security cams document the guards’ flirtation. And even if someone could get past K&L undetected, the elevator is only operable by thumbprint ID.

  The machine is free to do as it pleases, and in this case that means to work for the next nine hours, pushing inputs through a series of algorithms that will produce the content that Lucas has requested. Tomorrow the content will be posted to blogs and comments sections under invented bylines, because humans can’t be trusted, and software never gets the credit it deserves. The content will be forwarded to publicists, editors, influencers, TV news directors, and podcast hosts. It will be tweeted and retweeted thousands of times, shared on Facebook, paired with GIFs and illustrations to form clever memes. The rest, he’s certain, will take care of itself.

  Lucas finishes another six-ounce bottle of Cuban Coke, places it on the sill in line with the others, and stares out his window at Central Park West. It still amazes him that people wear short sleeves at this hour, at this time of year. The world may be a crop-less desert for future generations, but why worry when the present is so stunningly perfect?

  Just this morning, on his way to Communitiv.ly, Lucas walked through the park and watched the winter-brown sunbathers, the same college students who once spent mornings like this one marching against climate change. The scene provided reassurance that he’s doing the right thing with The Suit™ and UBI. Reassurance that memory is short, the long view is kind, and resistance is futile in the face of change that benefits the leisure class.

  Lucas does not believe in fate or chance. This is how he was raised, his parents’ Mission Hills megachurch allotted for networking only, a place to be seen in double-breasted glen plaid performing the ritual sacraments of blue-blooded Midwestern social life. His father neither was nor is the verbal type; he’s strong, silent, and terrifying, like a board game colonel, with cadaver-blue eyes and white hair the color of a purebred Appaloosa. But silence done right can be effectively didactic, and Chip imparted his worldview to Lucas: an implicit belief that money makes money and men shape their own fortunes. Women are another story. Chip carries a handgun. His greatest fear is testicular cancer, followed by communism and bears.

  One might argue that the underlying doctrine—if indeed it has one—upon which Shamerica was born and continues to exist, lies in this worldview, the staunch and staunchly American belief that, given
an even fiscal playing field and freedom from the hang-ups of social convention, a person can be and do whoever and whatever he or she wants, and whether that entails stacking Sykodollars, designing buildings, or having rough sex with human-octopi hybrids, it’s no one’s choice but his or her own. We build our own futures and make our own worlds.

  Lucas picks up one of the Coke bottles and blows into it, hoping for a musical sound. Nothing doing. He can’t remember if the bottles are supposed to have liquid in them or not. He thinks they probably are. He likes the way the bottles look lined up, logos facing the apartment’s interior like a pop art installation. He likes the way caffeine and sugar make him feel, the hard ropes of pee produced by each fluid ounce.

  Lucas thinks again of the machine, of its sophisticated insides and the comparative simplicity of its outer design. The genius of home computers was that they combined two familiar objects. Every household contained a TV set, and families found comfort in gathering before these metaphorical fires. The world was less scary when you could watch it burn from the safety of your living room while wearing slippers and a bathrobe. Typewriters, on the other hand, were objects of self-expression. If TV brought the world inside, then typewriters were tools to bring the inside out. Home computers combined these technologies. Their design made the foreign familiar. The beauty of progress is that it’s invisible. No one even knows that something’s changed.