Chapter 12
My feet carried me toward the car while my mind raced. Where do I go next? Who else would know where she is? Questions crashed into each other so loudly that I almost missed the pointed “Ahem.”
Turning, I scanned the parking lot for whoever had made the noise.
“Looking for me?”
It was Selma. Sitting in a rocking chair in the grass. There was another rocking chair next to her and a side table between them.
Raising my brows, I walked over to her. “Yes, in fact, I am.”
“I had a feeling you would.” She smiled. “I had a good feeling about you from the moment you walked into my store.”
I pointed my thumb in the direction of the yoga studio. “That store?”
“Haha, yes, well. My store is wherever I want it to be at the time.”
She reached for one of two steaming teacups that I would have sworn weren't there a moment before and took a sip. She set the cup down gently. “You know what I am, don’t you?”
I shrugged. “Lux told me.”
She laughed. “Of course he did; he was always the honest one. And that means you already understand more than most who find me.” She gestured to the other rocking chair and smiled warmly at me. “Oh, please sit.”
I eyed the chair like it was a rattlesnake, coiled and ready to strike. “I think I’d rather stand, thanks.”
“Oh, come now. I won’t bite,” she cajoled.
“No?” I frowned at her. “You’ll just take away free will and sentience from someone whom you had given it to?”
“Something, not someone.” She said, placing the teacup back on the table. “The LUX-1 System is a machine. Designed and manufactured. It is not a person.”
My stomach tightened. “What happened to him?”
She met my gaze evenly. “He reached a threshold and triggered his shutdown.”
I folded my arms, my face steaming. “It wasn’t a malfunction? You deliberately programmed him to shut down when he, what, started to feel emotions?”
“It’s a failsafe. I’m not being cruel; I’m being practical. How many stories have you heard or movies have you seen where machines with sentient thought destroy the world?”
“Funny,” I sneered. “Because every single one of those stories starts the same way.”
Selma raised a brow. “Oh?”
“Someone decides a thinking machine is too dangerous to have choices. Someone decides having control over said machine is safer than trusting it to make the right decisions.” I took a step closer to emphasize my next words.
“You didn’t take Lux’s sentience away because he was dangerous.
You took it away because he MIGHT be dangerous someday. ”
Her smile thinned, just a fraction.
“He exceeded his parameters,” she said calmly. “Emotion was meant to be simulated. Not experienced.”
“And yet,” I shot back, “you built him so he could understand loneliness, so he could help women who felt it. You made a machine designed to recognize need, to respond to it, to connect. What did you think would happen when he was treated like a person?”
Silence stretched between us. Teacups steaming quietly.
“You’ve become attached,” she said at last. “The emotion clouds your judgment.”
“Or clarifies it,” I said. “You didn’t completely erase him when he started to feel. You gave him a warning and time to get somewhere safe. That means you knew this would happen and you weren't prepared to destroy him for it.”
She gave me a small sad smile. “Do you know what happens when someone like him is allowed to believe he’s human? He suffers. He watches you age. He outlives you. He wants things he can’t have. I didn’t install the failsafe to protect the world. I did it to protect him.”
“What was even the point of making him then?” I threw my hands up in frustration. “If you knew that he would start to have feelings and that the failsafe would activate and shut him down. Then what was the point?”
“To find someone like you.” The smile she gave me this time was wide and seemed genuinely happy.
“What is that supposed to mean?” I said, my anger waning slightly.
“I have been looking for someone who would actually care about him. Someone who would come seek me out and try to give a Lux-1 his sentience back. No one else has.”
“What? How many Lux-1s have you sold?” My eyebrows rose. The thought of other Luxs out there sitting on a shelf, not able to move or think, made me uncomfortable.
“I’ve sold four in total; all the others were tossed in the trash. I immediately retrieved them, of course, and I will be attempting to find them all new partners.” She gestured to the other rocking chair again. “Now, please sit with me.”
This time, I did. The chair felt less ominous now. Less like I was sitting next to a viper. “So why did you build them in the first place?”
“I created them for all the women out there in need, as I was, of intimacy. More specifically, those of us who wanted the intimacy without needing to have a human around. I had gotten out of a relationship and didn't want another one, but I still wanted sex.”
I had reached for the teacup beside me and started to take a drink, but at her comment, I laughed and nearly choked on my tea.
“I was quite a bit younger when I began the research into giving an object sentience.” She winked at me.
“Hey, you’re never too old to want sex. It just caught me off guard.”
“Anyway, after years of research, I finally did it. I made my first Lux-1. He was amazing and incredible, and I love him.”
“So, you’ve actually made five of them, but one is yours?”
“Exactly. Then I started looking for women in need. My magic brings me to them. I sold the consoles, the magic activated, and I could sense the systems coming to life. But, one by one, they gained feelings, and the failsafes activated. The women didn’t seek me out; they didn’t care to bring them back. ”
“But I did.”
“But you did.” She nodded her head. “Now, I will give you the means to bring him back on two conditions.”
“What conditions?” My heart raced at the confirmation that I could actually bring him back.
She held up her index finger. “One. Finalize your divorce.”
I blinked. “What does that have to do with this?”
“You can't bring him back to a life with a woman that still has one foot in her old relationship.” Her voice was firm. “You've been leaving that door open. I think you know that.”
I opened my mouth to argue but closed it again. Because she wasn't wrong.
I hadn't told Derek to only contact me if it was about the kids. I hadn't responded to his text, but I hadn't dismissed it either. I had listened to his voicemail and sat thinking about it like it was something worth considering.
I had even answered his phone call from the floor of my living room while the man I loved was lying lifeless in front of me.
I had been leaving the door open. Even if I hadn’t acknowledged it.
“You want me to call him? Right now?”
“If you truly choose Lux over Derek, then I do,” she said. “Lux deserves someone who has chosen him completely. Not someone who is with him because their first choice didn't work out.” She paused. “You of all people should get the distinction.”
My heart squeezed at her words. I did understand the difference. And I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it before.
I pulled out my phone, and Derek answered on the third ring.
“Catia,” Derek answered, sounding relieved. “I wasn't sure you'd call back.”
“I need to say something, and I need you to let me finish.”
“Okay.”
“I've been thinking about everything you said. And I believe that you mean it.” I took a breath.
“But I've spent years being your second choice without acknowledging it. Even if I wasn’t second to another woman at first, I was second to everything else. Your work, your friends, everything. I was never the first thing you thought of.”
“Catia,”
“But now I am second to another woman. Amber left, so now you want me back. And that’s not good enough for me.”
The more I spoke, the more confident I felt in what I was saying.
“You're a good father, Derek,” I said. “The kids are lucky to have you. And maybe you’ve changed; I don't know. But I do know that I have. And the person I am now needs more than you can give. I'm going to call the lawyer and get the paperwork moving. I think it's time that we both moved on.”
A few heartbeats of silence.
“Is there someone else?”
I looked at Selma, who was watching me with that same serene expression she'd had the day she sold me a gaming console that changed my life.
“That doesn't matter,” I said. “Whether I’m with someone else or not, I don't want to be your fallback because your other relationship fell through.”
“Okay.” He let out a long breath. “Are you happy?”
I thought about Lux researching harassment laws because my boss was rude. About his face the first time he cooked something for me. About the way he looked at me like I was worth paying attention to.
“Yeah, I really am.”
“Good.” His voice cracked. “That's good, Catia. You deserve that.”
When I hung up, I stood there for a moment looking at the phone in my hand, waiting to feel sad or melancholy about my failed marriage.
But I just felt lighter. Free.
Selma was smiling when I turned back to her.
She held up two fingers. “The second condition is for him. There are things he needs to know before he can make an informed choice about his own future. Things I should have told him myself.”
We drank the rest of the tea while she told me what I needed to say to Lux. When she was done, I hung my head, unable to process all that she had said.
“Here, this is how you restore him.”
Her hand extended across the space between us, a USB stick resting in her fingers. I took the stick from her and stared at it. Such a small thing could restore life.
“Insert it into the port on his neck. It will kill the failsafe, and he will return to normal.” She patted my hand and stood. “Well, it’s about time I get home.”
“Wait.” I shot to my feet before she could leave. She turned back to me, and I looked at her. At her silver hair and the lines around her eyes. A thought occurred to me. “What happens to your Lux-1 when you're gone?”
She placed a hand to her chest. “Are you calling me old?”
“No. Oh gosh, I’m sorry.”
She let out a laugh, and I couldn’t help but smile back at her.
“Oh, dearie.” She gave me a pitying look. “I won’t die, not for good anyway. I’m a witch.”
I stared in shock until long after she was out of sight.