Goodbye for Now Page 10

  “This is my favorite relative, living or dead,” said Dash, indicating Meredith, “and her genius boyfriend, my next-favorite relative.”

  “How do you get LL out of Mitch Carmine?” Meredith asked.

  Mitch Carmine shrugged humbly. “Apparently, I have luscious lips.”

  “No apparently about it,” said Dash. “I’ll demonstrate later.”

  After endless introductions, which Sam forgot instantly, Dash filled plates from an impossibly lavish beach buffet tended by a woman who could only have been an underwear model and settled them all around a fire by the last dune on the beach. He had ideas. It was romantic there in the dune with grilled fish on their fingers and margaritas in their hands and smoke in their eyes and sand in their hair and the sea stretching out in front of them to forever, so perhaps it was no wonder they were dreaming big and wide and almost, but not quite, impossible.

  “So here’s what I can’t stop thinking about,” Dash began. “This program you’ve concocted … would it work for anyone? Anyone dead?”

  “Theoretically, I think,” Sam thought. “Or anyone living, really. As long as they had enough electronic communication.”

  “You are what you tweet.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Okay, but your whole point with Grandma was that our conversations were pretty predictable. She always mentions the weather in Florida. She’s always proud of me regardless of the specifics of what I’m up to at work. What about people with whom I have more complicated, less predictable conversations?”

  “Hmm, interesting,” Sam mused.

  “Not just interesting.” Dash’s eyes were shining. “If you could make this work, we could sell it. Get some VC—”

  “VC?”

  “Venture capital. Angel investors. Launch a start-up that allows people to communicate with their dead loved ones.”

  “No,” said Sam. “No, no, no. No. It’s not meant for other people. It’s just for Meredith. And you if you want.”

  “But why keep it to ourselves?” said Dash.

  “I don’t think the public is ready for this.”

  “I bet they would be, actually,” Meredith considered. “Think how many of your social interactions every day already happen online.”

  “Yeah, but why would we want to share this?” said Sam.

  “Well for starters, money,” Dash began.

  “I’m not sure it’s worth it,” Sam interrupted.

  “We could all retire.”

  “No, it’s better than that,” said Meredith. “I’ve been feeling lately like this technology is too remarkable to keep just to ourselves. Like I’m being selfish. It’s a miracle but only in our living room. That’s not what you’re supposed to do with miracles—keep them to yourself. You’re supposed to share them. Think how many people we could help. You’d be like the pope.”

  “I don’t want to be like the pope,” said Sam.

  “The pope doesn’t perform miracles,” said Dash. “He recognizes miracles. You’d be like Santa Claus.”

  “Fat and surrounded by caribou?”

  “Saintly and rich.”

  “Santa isn’t saintly or rich.”

  “Of course he is,” said Dash. “Santa means saintly. And how else do you think he can afford a present for every kid on the planet?”

  “Only the good ones,” said Sam.

  “Oh yes,” Dash whistled, ignoring him. “Rich like Santa.”

  “I want a villa in Spain,” said Meredith.

  “It’s not a good idea,” said Sam.

  “Italy?” said Meredith.

  “Why not?” said Dash.

  “Off the top of my head?” said Sam. “Privacy issues, ownership issues, copyright issues, patent issues, user issues, creepiness issues, having-to-deal-with-other-people’s-issues issues. Exploiting illness, death, and people-in-mourning issues.”

  “But those are just issues,” said Meredith and Dash together. They were related, after all. “We could solve those,” added Dash, “if you could solve the tech issues.”

  “The tech issues are the easy part,” said Sam. He wasn’t sure about that—in fact, the tech issues seemed like they might be insurmountable. He was doubtful that he could. But he was even more doubtful that he should. “Remember how your mom reacted? She was so angry. She was terrified, alarmed, offended, enraged. I thought she was going to jump off the balcony.”

  “But look at me,” said Meredith. “Look how much it comforts me. Think what we could do for others. You feel so bad for people in mourning, but you don’t know what to say or how to help them. You say you’re so sorry and maybe you bake them something or send flowers or a donation, and what else can you do? This way, we could really do something, really help. We can’t cure death or sadness or missing, but we can soothe, ease, alleviate. We can help people remember. We can help them move on. We can help them feel better about the worst part of life.”

  “It wasn’t just that she didn’t want to use it,” said Sam. “Your mom was mad that it even existed.”

  “That’s not her call,” said Meredith simply. “If people don’t like it, they don’t have to use it. But think how much we can help everybody else.”

  They were whirling and dizzy—with possibilities and pounding surf and wind in their hair and sand between their toes. Someone had made a mix of middle school slow songs, and soon everyone was re-creating their eighth-grade dance, holding one another mock-stiffly and making awkward teenage conversation and giving silent thanks for being adults at last. Dash went off to make out with LL, and Sam held Meredith closer than the thirteen-year-old Sam would have ever dared. Her skin smelled like the sea, and the sea smelled like the sea, and they barely moved their feet, just held on, pressed top-to-toe together. Sam could feel his heart racing against her already though there was nothing yet to fear, and so he passed it off as joy, as heart-pounding, pulse-quaking joy. Not as premonition. Not as the moment to grab her hand and turn and run.

  NOT-SAM

  I want to talk to you,” Dash begged the next morning.

  “You are talking to me,” said Sam.

  “Not the real you,” said Dash. “The Not-you. The Dead-you. Would it help if I poisoned your coffee?”

  “Probably not in the long run,” said Sam. “It won’t work for us anyway.”

  “Why not? We both have tons of electronic communication.”

  “But not together.”

  “We’ve chatted.”

  “Not enough. And not about enough,” said Sam, and when they were still discussing it three hours later, he decided to demonstrate. When it was ready, Dash sat, awkward and nervous, squarely in front of his computer camera and made the call and watched as a window opened on a second Sam, a Sam of the Dead.

  “Hey man,” Dash said casually.

  “Hey Dash,” Not-Sam said, apparently glad to see him.

  “How’s it going?”

  “Fine. How are you?”

  “Fine.”

  “Want to chat with Meredith?” Not-Sam assumed.

  “No man, I called to talk to you.”

  “Uh-oh. Wifi’s not working again?”

  “It’s fine,” said Dash.

  “We’ll pick you up at departures instead of arrivals,” Not-Sam explained. “It’s less busy that time of night.”

  “No, you came to L.A., remember?” Dash said.

  “We’ll see you at LAX baggage claim in the morning,” said Not-Sam.

  “Not a travel agent, man.”

  “Want to chat with Meredith?”

  Dash turned away from the camera and narrowed his eyes at Real Sam. “Not-Sam is pretty dumb.”

  “Not dumb, just limited. Bring something up. Maybe he does better with a clear objective.” Real Sam happened to know that small talk wasn’t Not-Sam’s strong suit.

  “Listen, I was calling for … uh … um … your … tamale recipe,” Dash tried absurdly. “I’m having a dinner party tonight, and I thought that’d be a nice addition.” Me
redith was laughing so hard she couldn’t draw breath. Sam just shook his head. Dash shrugged at them helplessly. Clearly he should have scripted something before he made the call. Meanwhile, Sam could see the wheels turning in Not-Sam’s head and hear them whirling in his laptop which was running Not-Sam an arm’s length away.

  “Are you shitting me?” asked Not-Sam, breaking into a smile, and Real Sam was intrigued, astonished that it knew Dash wasn’t making sense, impressed that it wasn’t confused but rather certain it was being screwed with.

  “Nope,” Dash said. “Not shitting you.”

  “Okay,” Not-Sam said and then added hopefully, “Want to chat with Meredith?” He left the screen calling for her. And did not come back.

  “Well that went well,” Dash said to Sam. Real Sam.

  “You might be missing the point here. I don’t think you understand what’s going on. It works by modeling you and me and our relationship. The way it always is.”

  “Usually is,” said Dash.

  “It works because I am generally who and how I am. You are generally who and how you are. Together, we are pretty much always the same.”

  “Tiresome?”

  “Patterned. Predictable.”

  “Boring.”

  “Your argument is we’d be more interesting if we spent a lot of time together exchanging surprise recipes?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You call me to discuss what time to pick you up at the airport or what time you’ll pick us up at the airport or why won’t your wifi work. Or to talk to Meredith. That’s it. In our whole relationship together so far, that’s what it’s been. When you suddenly start channeling La Cocina Mexicana, the computer can’t make sense of it. It has no basis for it. It doesn’t work.”

  “It’s going to have to,” said Dash.

  “Or you could be less weird,” Sam suggested.

  “I could. But everyone won’t.”

  “They would,” Sam insisted. “That’s the whole point. People would only want to—would only be able to—do this with loved ones, with people they were really close to and really familiar with. Look at Meredith. All she wants from Livvie is what they had before. The best part about relationships like that is comfort, familiarity, someone who tells you what you need them to. It’s nice to have someone who can finish your sentences. It’s nice to have shorthand and inside jokes and perfect understanding. On an occasional Friday night, maybe you want to go out with someone new and surprising. But when something good happens or something bad happens, you call us or Livvie or your parents. You call home. That’s the service, the only service, we could potentially offer.”

  “If it only works when people say what they usually say,” said Dash, “it doesn’t work at all. It might as well not work at all.”

  This had been Sam’s point all along. Then he thought of another one, one he had forgotten since Meredith. It was this: being single sucked, and it was nice to love and be loved. He walked over to Meredith and hugged her for a while. Then Sam remembered another thing. There was more to Not-Sam than habit and what he usually said to Dash. There was what Not-Sam said to everybody else. There was what Not-Sam wrote and read, e-mailed, researched, bought online, posted, looked up, clicked through. There was a lot of Not-Sam out there and, in fact, not so much out there as in there, in the computer, right where Not-Sam lived. Real Sam wasn’t convinced. But he was a little bit curious.

  The second time around, Dash got right to the point.

  “Hey Sam. So I was calling for your awesome tamale recipe. I’m having a huge Christmas party tonight. Cinco de Mayo.”

  “Christmas is December,” said Not-Sam. “Mayo means May.”

  “Close enough,” shrugged Dash.

  Not-Sam looked confused. “What are you calling for?”

  “Tamale recipe.” This time Dash sounded sure. And that was what was confusing Not-Sam who was inclined to respond as he always did to Dash’s matter-of-fact requests. But Not-Sam had never discussed tamales in a video chat before. He did not have a recipe for tamales in his e-mails or documents or bookmarked anywhere. He’d never shopped online for tamales or read reviews of a tamale stand or even downloaded a movie featuring tamales. Sam happened to know that Not-Sam actually found tamales pretty bland and often dry and thought that Dash was acting really, really weird. He and Sam were in agreement on these points. Not-Sam was quiet for an unnaturally long time then cocked his head at Dash and said, “Tom Holly’s hometown is Baltimore, Maryland, but he currently resides in Richmond, Virginia, with his wife, Bethany, and their twins, Emmalou and Emilee.”

  Everyone looked at each other blankly, including Not-Sam. “Is that what you’re asking me?” He looked confused, puzzled, and mildly concerned, aware something was off, not sure what it was.

  “Tom Holly! Friend from high school,” Real Sam finally realized. “Tamale. Tom Holly. Must have pulled it off Facebook. Haven’t thought of him in years.”

  “Yes, yes, exactly what I wondered,” Dash recovered. “A friend of a friend has business out there, came across the name, asked me about the connection.”

  “Ahhh.” Not-Sam seemed satisfied.

  “Well … thanks, Sam. It was nice to chat with you. Uh … love to Meredith.”

  “Thanks, man. I’ll tell her. Good to see you too. Cheers.”

  Dash disconnected to roll eyes at Sam. “So when I act weird, it doesn’t work. And when I act normal, it doesn’t work either.”

  “You were acting normal,” said Sam. “But you were being weird. That was closer though.”

  “I don’t think it was.”

  “Let’s try again.”

  Sam was caught up. He had realized something else as he watched Not-Sam struggle to come up with Tom Holly. There was no reason to limit Not-Sam to his own electronic memory. Not-Sam had the whole world available to him because, of course, Not-Sam had an internet connection.

  “Hey Dash,” said Not-Sam when he answered. “Good to see you.”

  “Listen,” said Dash, slowly, pointedly, like he was talking to a six-year-old. “I know that this is going to sound a little weird, but I was wondering if you’d be willing to give me your tamale recipe for a party I’m having this weekend.”

  Long pause. “I have a tamale recipe?” asked Not-Sam.

  A minor victory. Real Sam pumped his fist off camera.

  “Yeah,” Dash hedged. “From that thing we did that time. When we went to the place. You know?”

  The algorithm gave up on Not-Sam. Instead, it looked online and came to understand that tamales were a Mexican dish consisting of some kind of vegetable or cheese or meat—often pork—stuffed in cornmeal, wrapped in corn husks, and steamed. But Not-Sam had never looked up directions to a Mexican market or blogged about a great taco truck in the parking lot of his building or rated a Mexican restaurant online. The algorithm Googled away but could find no usage of the term “tamale recipe” as slang, joke, suggestion, allusion, or metaphor that seemed like something either Not-Sam or Dash would say. Finally Not-Sam informed Dash soberly, “Tamale is a city in Ghana, West Africa. It is the capital of its Northern Region.”

  Now Dash was the one who looked confused, puzzled, and mildly concerned. Sam felt vindicated. Not-Sam had learned that look from watching Dash.

  “No, a recipe,” Dash enunciated condescendingly.

  “Um … let me look and get back to you,” Not-Sam tried. “I think it’s in the bedroom. I’ll call you right back.” In the moments after he turned from the computer but before it quite disconnected, they heard him calling, “Merde, your cousin’s wigging out.”

  The whole internet, it seemed, was just too much information, much of it, Sam realized, likely to be entirely false. He was out of his depth. It was time to call in an expert.

  Though the Olympic leap from just Meredith and Livvie to anyone else seemed hamstring-pulling enormous and foolhardy to Sam, it was all academic to his father. His dad wasn’t horrified or blown away or even terribly impressed. He was pr
oud of his son as he’d been since the day he was born, but computerized projections of the algorithmic compilation of one’s electronic communication archive fell for Sam’s dad entirely within the realm of the possible, even probable, maybe even practical. “We’re thinking of expanding the application. Meredith’s cousin Dashiell has this idea that if we could make it work for anyone, we could make a living connecting people electronically with their dead loved ones.”

  “E-mail from the great beyond. Dead Mail. I love it.”

  “Exactly. But I’m worried about giving it all it needs to know.”

  “It already knows all it needs to know. By definition. Isn’t that the point? To talk with the person they were when they were living?”

  “We ran some tests between my archive and Dash. Mixed results. So I gave the projection access to the internet.”

  Sam’s dad laughed. “How’d that go?”

  “Not that well. Dash was asking the projection for a tamale recipe, but they’d never discussed tamales or recipes of any kind. The projection had no idea what he was talking about. It looked it up, but nothing made sense, so it didn’t know what to do.”

  “Well no, Sam, it’s not going to be able to do anything on its own.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re not creating a new human. You’re re-creating an existing relationship. Of course you can trick it. And of course it’s not going to work if the user tries to trick it. But the user isn’t going to try to trick it. The user’s going to meet it halfway, more than halfway. Users will lead it and guide it. They’ll stay away from what they know the projection doesn’t and can’t know. That’s your whole point here, right? To make it as close as possible to what it was? To who they were?”

  “I guess. But aren’t people going to screw with it, go off on tangents, stray from the well-worn path, at least bring up things they never talked about before?”

  “Yup.”

  “And isn’t that a problem?”

  “Yeah, their problem. If users don’t want confused projections, they’ll try hard not to confuse them. If users want their old loved ones back, they’ll stay as close to their old ways as possible. That’s the goal: to maintain contact with dead loved ones, not new people or new relationships.”