“He loves me,” you say defensively. “He couldn’t wait a day longer than he absolutely had to.”

You say it, but once again you have that uneasy feeling about Tim’s love for you—that it’s as driven and uncompromising as everything else he does. There could be something claustrophobic, even frightening, about being loved so much and so inflexibly.

“Yes,” Jenny says. “Tim turned out quite the romantic, in the end.” And again you have a sense of hidden history, of backstories and shared memories and past events that are still unknown to you.

36

While they wait for the pizza to arrive, they finish the Batard-Montrachet and start on the Pernod, which is eighty-six proof. Only Alicia refuses—she’s still barely touched her wine. Jenny fills a shot glass along with the rest, but sips it slowly. The others down theirs in one, then reach for refills.

John Renton keeps coming back to the same issue.

“There are only two drivers for emerging technology.” He taps the table in time with his words. “Productivity and sex. You’ve already ruled out the first. So that just leaves sex. Everyone knows VCR beat Betamax because the porn industry adopted VCR. Snapchat beat messaging apps like Slingshot because it made sexting possible. You make your robots—how shall I put it?—fully functional, maybe you have a chance.”

“Cobots are completely sentient,” Mike says. “That implies they could withhold consent.”

“I don’t see how that would stack up, legally. Can’t rape a robot, am I right?” Renton thinks for a moment. “Slutbots. Now, there’s a product.”

“Sexting and watching porn are private activities.” Tim speaks calmly, but you can tell how angry he’s getting. “Having a relationship with a cobot is very public, as I’ve already proved. No one’s going to pay millions of dollars for people to laugh at them.”

“Then, my friend, I don’t think you have a market,” Renton says with finality.

“You don’t get it, do you, you stupid prick,” Tim says. Renton laughs, a short happy bark, and you realize this is what he’s been working toward all along, that he’s been deliberately goading Tim into losing his temper. “This isn’t about millennial self-gratification. Look at the fucking bigger picture. Forget the robot for one second—that’s just the delivery mechanism. Abbie’s mind now exists as something purely digital. And therefore transferable. Don’t you see the potential of that?” He gestures at you. “She’s not some fucking toy. Effectively, she’s immortal.”

There’s silence. Mike looks at Elijah, as if to ask whether he’s heard any of this before. Elijah gives a slight, mystified shake of his head.

John Renton laughs again. “Immortal? Are you fucking kidding me?”

“I don’t kid,” Tim says coldly. “Abbie’s mind will go on growing and learning forever. Her body—the shell—is replaceable, and therefore upgradable. Everything else can be transferred. Effectively, our bodies—our original bodies—are now just the boot program for something better. For version two point oh, if you like.”

“That’s insane,” Renton says. But he says it with delight, as if the idea is a shiny new present he’s just been handed.

“Most people think death is inevitable,” Tim goes on. “But what if that’s just a failure of our collective imagination? What if death is just another problem to be hacked? Right now it’s a massacre out there—fifty million human beings mown down every year. If that resulted from any cause other than old age, don’t you think we’d have done something about it?” He looks slowly around the table, then back at Renton. “Robots aren’t just the potential saviors of humanity. Robots are the future of humanity. And once you start to see it like that, you realize they’re way, way more important than some stupid texting app. Peter Thiel, Sergey Brin, Larry Ellison—they’re all investing billions in this area. I’m meeting Larry in a couple of days to see if he wants to come on board.”

“Whoa. Now, this is big,” Renton says, drumming his fingers. “This is visionary.”

He stares at you hungrily. Something has changed, something you can’t altogether get your head around. “How much?” he says abruptly.

Elijah opens his mouth but it’s Tim who answers. “Eighty million. Initially. If you’re talking exclusivity.”

“For a company that doesn’t even have a business plan? You’re shitting me.”

Tim shrugs. Renton continues to drum his fingers. “And you can do this for anyone? You can do it for me?”

“Of course,” Tim says calmly. “There are some issues to iron out, but nothing that can’t be fixed. Forget cutting your head off and sticking it in some scummy tub of liquid nitrogen. Living forever will become as simple as making an upload. It’ll be expensive, of course. But we see that as a good thing. By restricting it to a select few founder investors, we’ll avoid putting additional pressure on the earth’s resources.”

There’s something creepy about the expression in Renton’s eyes as he looks at you. It was bad enough when he was talking about slutbots, but now he’s almost salivating.

“I want to see her without her skin,” he says abruptly. “I want to see what—what I’ll end up like.”

You wait for Tim to tell him to get lost, but he only says calmly, “That’s up to Abbie.”

Renton turns to you. “Well?”

You freeze as you realize he’s serious. You try to think how to say no without giving offense.

But then you think of Tim, who against all the odds has turned this evening around.

“Of course,” you hear yourself say. You look over at Jenny. “Could you give me a hand?”

Together you get up from the table and go upstairs, where you take a robe from the bathroom door before removing your clothes.

“I know what to do,” Jenny assures you. “It’s pretty straightforward, actually.”

She fiddles with the back of your neck, looking for the seam. As she peels your face off, you close your eyes. You can feel the seam opening all the way down your back.

You step out of your skin as if from a wet suit, Jenny’s hands gently tugging it away from your torso. You try not to look, but when it catches on your knees you can’t help glancing down at the hard white plastic you’re made of, perfectly smooth, your contours sleek and elegantly molded.

You think how typical it is of Tim that he made even this aspect of you, a part not intended to be seen, as perfect as it possibly could be.

You put the robe on. Silently you go back downstairs, Jenny behind you. You feel like a prisoner being escorted to the scaffold.

But you feel something else, too. Without the heavy rubber skin your movements feel lighter, less constrained. You feel strangely…liberated.

Outside the dining room you take off the robe and hand it to Jenny. You pause for a moment, summoning your resolve, then step inside.

As you enter, there’s complete silence. All of them, to varying degrees, have the same expression on their faces.

They look awestruck.

“Well, here I am,” you say. No one replies. Renton swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing nervously.

You turn around. You walk out, a little taller than before.

“Holy shit,” you hear Renton say wistfully behind you. “She’s beautiful.”

37

The evening breaks up soon after. Renton leaves first, promising he’ll get straight onto his money people. When he’s gone the rest of you look at one another, not quite sure what just happened.

It’s Tim who speaks first. “Well done,” he says to you. “That made a huge difference, Abbie.”

“Immortality, Tim?” Mike says suddenly. “Really? That’s your vision? That’s our business, now?”

“In the early twentieth century,” Tim says thoughtfully, “rich men from all over the world traveled to the French Riviera to have monkey glands injected into their ballsacks. It was painful and expensive and there was absolutely no evidence it worked. But thousands of people thought it was a price worth paying for a second chance at youth.”

Mike frowns. “What’s your point?”

“And in the fifteenth century, when Pope Innocent the Eighth was close to death, the Church paid ten-year-old boys a ducat each to give him their blood. The boys all died. So did the pope, of course. You might have supposed an organization that already believed in eternal life wouldn’t have been quite so desperate.” Tim gets up and stretches. “My point is, Renton’s an idiot. Someone who’s just rational enough not to have any faith in religion, but not nearly rational enough to accept his own mortality. But if he chooses to believe I can make him live forever, great. We’ll take his cash.”

“So you don’t have a vision,” Elijah says.

“Oh, I have a vision,” Tim replies. “Just not the one Renton thinks.”

TWELVE