Page 49 of Coldwire
I pull my legs up and cross them. “How can a machine be psychic?”
“How can humans be psychic?”
It’s got me there. “Fine. Go on.”
A pop-up appears in my display asking for five Medan dollars. That’s like fifty cents in Atahua, so I send it without thinking twice. The screen ponders for a moment. Its waveform vibrates, the booth purring.
“I’m getting a lot of resistance from your aura,” the booth says slowly. “Focus your energy on what you want to understand. Think of two questions about love, and then ask me one.”
I resist the urge to laugh. I’m the one who sat down in this seat voluntarily, so I’m not allowed to roll my eyes, but of course it needs a question. It’s failed to read anything out of my mannerisms. I fidget too much for an algorithm to decide which twitch was intentional.
“Okay,” I say, tilting my head back. “Will I ever be in a normal relationship?”
The question falls from my mouth before I know I’m going to ask it. I watch the screen’s sound wave display turn flat entirely, processing in silence.
“Define ‘normal.’?”
“You know.” I wave my hand around. “Pull a search for every depiction in media. It’s pretty well-defined already.”
“I understand. And you identify with the majority depicted in this media?”
“Probably not.” I pause. “I suppose that’s where my question comes from.”
“I am running a quick scan on your feed,” the booth reports. “Three percent of the human population is asexual or on the asexual spectrum. ‘Normal’ fits there, too.”
My eyebrows shoot up. “I didn’t realize you were allowed to look at my feed.”
“You identify as demisexual in your social profile’s bio. The answer is right in front of me.”
“You’re supposed to be a lovepsychic.”
“Psychic in the age of technology means I am all-seeing to data. Your question is very easily answered. Your normal can be constructed on your terms.”
Whoever built this booth should be sued for false advertising. It’s not a psychic love AI, it’s a data-conscious love AI. They probably reuse this code in therapy services somewhere.
“I don’t think that explains everything,” I say stubbornly, “and I feel wrong for it.”
“You have friends who identify similarly, is that true?”
The booth’s tone rises on the end of its sentence, as though it might be a question for me to answer. I know it means it as a statement. It’s probably scanning through my friends list on my feed.
“Yeah.” Every few weeks when I have a solution for Rayna’s misery, she’srolling around the floor bemoaning that she can’t justget over Hailey, okay? It’s hard for me to like someone, and when I do, it’s all-consuming, soplease,Lia, just help me talk to her, I’m so bad at this.“A few.”
“And do you think they’re… wrong for it?”
“No,” I say instantly. “Of course not.”
“Then why think differently for yourself?”
“You tell me,” I say. “What does your psychic reading say?”
It asked me to think of two questions, after all, one spoken, one kept. In the back of my mind, within proximity during any exchange, always hovering somewhat within reach, there is one question:Why don’t I ever feelright?
I’m always loath to leave virtual because it takes away that reason for there to be a barrier between me and the world, me and being normal, me and how most people experience emotion and sensation. I hate that going downcountry takes away my excuse for that disconnect, that there’s only my organic body down there, and if I think too hard on why, why, why I can’t respond the way everyone else does, I fear my clutch on reality may disintegrate, my arms and legs will stop moving, and I’ll find that I’ve never been real, that this is some mass hallucinated state and I don’t exist.
“Your user panel tells me you’re a tourist from Atahua. Do you think this has any bearing? To grow up in a place where you are cast as the enemy must have shaped how you view yourself.”
“Of course it did,” I say, and then I’m irritated, because even this stupid psychic box in Medaluo thinks being Medan is why I’m constantly floating one layer removed from everyone in this world. “So?”
