The Undertow
Amy Bernstein
The first time Didi enters the dimly lit basement lab, she is told to sit facing a curved bank of monitors surrounded by snaking black cables and metal boxes winking green and yellow lights. The cameras light up all at once, revealing multiple Didis: left profile, right profile, scalp downward, chin upward, full frontal. The real Didi stares into her lap to escape her own uncanny valley. A force like the ocean’s undertow grabs at her. She grips the chair as if to keep from being ripped apart.
Is this normal? she asks the back of a white lab coat. The lab coat replies that it is. Perfectly normal.
How long does it last? Didi asks. The tugging induces swells of nausea, like the ocean rising up inside her.
Thirty minutes today, she is told. Longer next time. And the time after.
No, Didi says, swallowing metal. The undertow. It’s awful.
The what? The back remains turned. The hums and whirs rise and fall. Didi is told to tilt her head this way, then that way. Eyes open, please!
Toward the end of the ordeal, Didi accidentally catches a glimpse of her face in the monitor. The face, jerky and oddly flat, has a secret. There’s something in the eyes, her eyes taking on a life of their own, as if the camera lens really could steal one’s soul.
A day before Didi is scheduled to enter the lab a second time, she has words with her bosses. She brings up electromagnetic waves and risk-reward scenarios and asks again whether they’ve thought through this whole idea of creating AI-empowered avatars to hold meetings, dash off memos, and make presentations when she — and others — are engaged elsewhere, say, at the doctor’s or on vacation.
The bosses remind her that digital cloning is a privilege reserved for the most valued employees, of which she is one. This will all work out to her advantage by empowering her to focus on big-picture issues, and besides, this is cutting-edge and who doesn’t want to live on the cutting-edge? Cutting edge of what, they do not say.
Didi brings up the unpleasant undertow and asks if they planned for this. She is met with blank stares. They suggest, in the gentlest tones, that perhaps she is letting fear of the unknown get the better of her, and caution her not to set a bad example for the selected few among her colleagues who are also undergoing the avatar experience. They make it sound like a new ride at Disneyworld.
Didi has a nightmare about wading out into the ocean, where a strong undertow does not pull her under the waves, but instead, cleaves her in two. One Didi swims out to sea, while the other returns to shore. When she wakes, Didi isn’t sure if she is the original or the copy.
Back in the lab, under duress, she submits to voice capture, the phase after head-and-face capture. She recites the alphabet. Speaks all the vowels, lips exaggerating each phoneme. Reads from a passage of text handed to her by the white-backed technician: an excerpt from a Nissan Altima owner’s manual. She reads aloud the instructions for setting temperature controls and replacing the oil. This is followed by a sonnet by Shakespeare. When to the sessions of sweet silent thought…
By the third line of the sonnet, the undertow is stronger than ever. She is asked to begin again, more smoothly, and please keep your tone steady. She struggles to read, the letters receding to fuzzy pinpricks as her flesh is sucked away into the monitors and black boxes, the cables dancing like vacuum hoses.
This is not in her job description.
I can’t, she says. You must, she is scolded, or else we must start over.
Didi wants to explain that she is being taken away, or broken apart; it’s hard to say, exactly, but she cannot say anything because she is, in fact, still sitting there, in the chair, facing the microphone and the monitors.
The technician plays back a voice clip. A quality control check, she says. Since you bobbled.
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past…
I said those words, yes, Didi thinks. But who is saying them now?
Is that me? she asks. Of course, the technician sneers. Who else?
The other…Didi stops.
The other what?
The other me.
The technician snickers and shakes her head. You’re due back here tomorrow for full-body motion capture. Don’t be late.
Didi leaves the lab, but not really. She’s caught there. A piece of her, anyway. Or, not a piece, but an echo.
She invites her avatar-enrolled colleagues out for a drink. She raises the question once the second margaritas arrive.
Are you getting the undertow in the lab? She’s casual about it. Like asking, who’s got plans on Friday night?
The what? one of the three asks. It’s a noisy place. Didi tries again. The tugging…the yanking …You feel it, right?
She hasn’t thought this through. She isn’t prepared for what happens when the three give her that look, the look that tells her she’s alone. There’s nobody to explain, or sympathize, back her up or let her off the hook because, after all, this isn’t panning out as expected… except that it is panning out as expected…just not for her.
The others are being digitally cloned and it’s all upside. Their avatars will take notes for them in upcoming meetings in the conference room. Bang out spreadsheets. Sort resumés. How nice. How convenient.
And where will I be? Didi wonders, staring into her drink as the conversation resumes around her. Or we? She shudders.
In the lab a third and final time, Didi is directed to twist her body, to walk backward and forward, then hands on hips, hands over head, arms crossed.
She might have stayed away. But she couldn’t make herself do that. The undertow in the lab is a gravitational force drawing her into its vortex.
Her avatar has taken on heft, weight, gravitas since their last encounter. It regards Didi from its bank of monitors with bright eyes that appear lit from within, a figure clad in black, cocky and sure of itself. As if, in all its simulated glory, it is going places.
Without me?
The lab goes quiet. The undertow subsides at last. Didi stands motionless while the avatar gyrates. She closes her eyes, yet every gesture the avatar makes registers on the back of her eyelids like a filmstrip she cannot turn off.
I’m Didi. Let’s get this meeting started.
No, I’m Didi.
Didi isn’t sure who has spoken — whether in her head or out loud. The technician presses keys on a laptop.
I have a question about Figure 6 in the report.
What report?
You can’t do this, Didi says out loud. (Or so she thinks.)
You’re all set, the technician says. Isn’t she beautiful? She’s so…like you.
Can you delete the file? Didi asks.
Don’t be ridiculous. You can go now. I have some final adjustments to make before she’s perfect.
She isn’t a she, Didi says. And she isn’t me.
But she’s our Didi, the technician says proudly. You’ll get used to her.
Didi leaves the lab. Then she exits the building, the city, the country. As if putting distance between them would matter in the long run.
Didi dreams of electric sheep.
Didi runs marketing meetings from a galaxy light years away.
Didi is a person, a place, a thing.
Didi never closes her eyes.
Didi is an idea.
One Didi lives, one Didi dies. And neither Didi knows which has won.
