Server Extant

'Now hang your heads and cry, you sons of bitches, because I’m dead.’

-My eulogy

Kyle was in the R1. R1 meant ‘Real One,’ the popular name for the other one, the one in which people were made out of meat and had jobs. Kyle lived on ‘Earth’, which was a rocky sphere in the R1 which had almost all the humans on it. Unlike server surfaces, Earth had its own sun and didn’t have to share with the rest of the galaxy. Today, as Kyle exited his car and walked up the drive to Gillian’s parent’s house, it was shining, cold and watery, through a Chicago autumn sky. He was in South Elgin, which sucked, in the formerly great States of United America, which sucked too, but still far less than the rest of the world. The streets were peaceful, wide, pine-treed and grass-fronted. The houses seemed elegantly cavernous, the spaces between them a suburban deference to one another, as if the Eginites, oppressed by excessive lawn space and too many garages, had resigned themselves to the dreaming self-contemplation of an eternal Saturday afternoon.

Here and there, he saw moneyed pretensions of having simpler tastes. A hand-crafted lawn seat, a HumbleElectric (true chariot of the people), parked along a well-maintained driveway. This is paradise, thought Kyle, depressed.

Gillian’s parents were members of the investor class. That meant anyone who had enough money that their money just kept screwing away and making money babies, no matter how much of a personal fuck-up its owner was. In economic terms, they were the ones who had sat down before the music stopped, when hyper-automation and the AIs had yanked the economic carpet out from under everyone else. Kyle’s path to a place of his own in this suburban Valhalla was through the velvety loins of one of its daughters. In previous centuries, that would have seemed an attractive prospect to a young man. In this present one, he was ambivalent. As he arrived at the house, he wondered if his long time in the dreamworld had left those conducts in him that led to the warmth of human society cauterized and uncommunicative, like a sleeping limb. Or maybe it was just the lethargy of the times.

In any case, he reflected, he was doing better than Uncle Remo.

In the pale sun, assistants of the funeral manager were laying out chairs on the lawn in preparation of the testimonies. Kyle saw that programs were being handed out and people were milling about in clumps. He walked up the drive, looking for a familiar face.

* * *

‘Hes in a better place’ said Aunt Sally.

‘There is no better place than South Chicago,’ replied Kyle, ‘amirite? Go bears!’

Kyle had head that expression. He understood that bears were involved in local sporting events. Obviously, he didn’t think they participated in the actual games, he wasn’t an idiot.

‘Excuse me,’ said a tall, granite-faced man, who had been standing with them, and abruptly walked off.

’Don’t mind him, said Aunt Sally. ’Probably can’t handle the dry bar. Gone out to visit his car, if you know what I mean.’

‘I don’t.’

‘He’s a pill popper and a drunk’ clarified Aunt Sally.

‘Oh.’

‘And I say that with love! He’s very dear to me. But you can’t help people if you validate their behavior.’

‘That’s what my girlfriend says.’

’But don’t you him I brought it up!’ laughed Aunt Sally, batting Kyle lightly on the chest, as if admonishing a beloved child for a prank. ‘He gets touchy.’

‘On the topic of his substance abuse, I won’t name yourself as a source of information’ said Kyle. ‘A-a-anyway, I might just quickly go and see if I can find Gillian-’

‘As for Remo, he had extensive medical issues.’

‘Oh’ said Kyle, in the hope of conveying enough polite disinterest to discourage further disclosures.

‘Oh my goodness me, yes. Oh dear me.’

‘That’s a shame.’

‘Oh yes, yes. Terrible. Terrible!’

‘I might just lave a look round-’

’Blood pressure. That was one, and scabies and a heart murmur that got him thrown out of the merchant navy and made him an invalid. And he would have terrible night terrors, oppressed by premonitions of his own death. ‘Remo’, I said, ‘you’re a coward and you always have been. A coward dies a thousand deaths, Remo! Stand up! Spit in the eye of fate!’ But he wouldn’t. And you know what happened then?’

‘What?’

‘After all that?’

‘No. What?’

‘Take a guess!’

Kyle thought about those wolves that chewed off their own legs to escape traps. They were really on to something.

‘I don’t know’ he said.

‘Cancer!’

‘Oh!’

’With what he had to put up with, he had to get that too. I really think God hated him. I said, ‘you know Remo, I think God just straight-up wants you dead, the way he carries on.’ Damn you God!’ she suddenly shouted across the lawn to the house, causing several caterers to look up in alarm.

Kyle looked at the worthless non-alcoholic swill in his hand. There was no sanctuary there. He’d been brought the thing by Gillian, who’d hit him with a glancingly-understood salvo of greetings and introductions then darted off into the hive. He’d then stood, in awkward, introductory conversation, with the granite-faced man (a friend of the family that was also somehow involved in their finances) and Aunt Sally, until one had veered off and the other locked on.

‘He had a stoma for it’ continued Aunt Sally. ’That’s when they make a medical orifice, in order to directly put food into your stomach. The oncologist called it a ‘minor inconvenience’ but I really don’t see how it could have been.’

‘I think they want us to go in,’ said Kyle.

A woman on the patio hid seem to be making a summoning motion with her hands. They walked up to the French doors and pressed into the open-plan ground floor. Across the crowd Kyle could see Gillian at work, bouncing around the gathering like a chatty pinball. He concentrated his mental intention into a laser and projected it from his forehead, trying to drill his thought-message into her, don’tleavemetakemealongwithyou- too late, Gillian waved and moved deeper into the scrum of relatives.

However, there now seemed to be movement towards the front of the building, where a giant living room fronted French windows onto the garden. A woman in a white business jacket and the kind and patient air of a professional consoler-of-the-grief-stricken was holding court. It seemed some sort of memorial was about to take place, raising the possibility that they might actually be going to do the thing they were here for and, beyond that, the further possibility that this day might eventually be over. In that hope, Kyle drifted, with the crowd, towards the living room. The house began to quieten.

‘Of course, it was the strain of living as a closeted pedophile that ruined his health,’ whispered Aunt Sally.

* * *

The memorial had concluded by the time Kyle finally caught his girlfriend, along with her mother, her sister and what was apparently another uncle. Kyle had been exclaimed over and a general sentiment expressed, humorously, that it was good to finally meet him and be assuaged of the suspicion Gillian had fabricated his existence for reasons unknown. It was agreed that, re: Remo, it had all gone ‘well’, and it was a ‘shame’ but life went on. There was a brief interlude of everybody’s favorite topic, ‘did you hear what those people did now’, referring to the endemically occurring terrorism, then they got started on the real business.

‘You need to have skills that a computer can’t emulate,’ said Gillian’s mom. Kyle had been introduced to her but had instantly misplaced her name. He was fairly sure it was ‘Cynthia.’ She definitely looked like one. Gillian’s mom had a stylish sleek to her short-cut hair, and wore a tastefully understated, single-piece, dark maroon dress that said ’I’m devastated by grief but not making an exhibition of myself .’ It pleasantly accentuated the lines of her statuesque body. She looked good, for whatever age she was. Kyle idly wondered what it’d be like to have a threesome with Gillian and her mom. Obviously, he knew that would be impossible. Probably.

‘You don’t want to end up a G.I’ she continued.

Back when people did computing on pitiful little boxes on their own desks, instead of renting processing power from the server companies, the what-had-seemed-like-at-the-time unlimited potential of quantum processors had changed the world in disruptive ways. The AIs, feasting on this new abundance, had replaced half of human employment. They did better taxes than any accountant, offered a more comprehensive legal strategy than any lawyer, managed supply chain better, ran a power grid better, answered your questions on tech support better. They’d scour the globe for cheaper products, they’d build better cars and machines than any engineer, they’d manage your whole life, if you let them, and do a hell of a better job of it than you had been doing. A whole generation was denied that popular substitute for purpose; a job, and a great many people found themselves with allot of time on their hands and increasingly democratic access to things like cheap commercial gene-splicers and nanobeds that could fabricate high explosives out of industrial effluent and garbage. At this point, the government was given a choice, between paying people simply to exist, or to start facing all sorts of expensive problems. Thus the ‘Guaranteed Income‘ was born, or G.I, the lowest form of life.

‘Mom!’ said Gillian, ‘He’s going back to school. He’s going to get skills.’

‘I’m going to be a plumber’ said Kyle, around a mouthful of cracker and cheese.

Gillian’s mom was impressed.

‘That would be wonderful! Do you think you can get in?’

The kings of Wall Street had ended up living under bridges. The doctors and dentists were made obsolete by autonomous surgeons and the airplanes flew themselves. But they hadn’t yet made a robot that could come over and fix your drains. Plumbers got all the pussy.

‘Kyle got a 6005 on the A.P’ said Gillian, severely.

‘I deferred a year,’ said Kyle vaguely. ‘Traveling.’

Gillian gave him a look.

‘Well, that’s all very encouraging,’ said Gillian’s mom.

‘It’ll be hard,’ said Kyle, putting an affectionate arm around Gillian’s shoulder, in a way that implied, he hoped, a commitment both to self-improvement and herself, ‘but if something’s worth having it’s worth working for.’

‘Welp’, said Gillian, ‘I got to go to the toilet’ She pressed her drink into Kyle’s hand. He was outraged to detect the aroma of alcohol from it. ‘Back soon!’ She was off.

‘Actually I might go too,’ said Kyle, after a short pause. ‘Be right back.’ He put the empty glasses on a table and pursued his girlfriend, through the thinning crowd, down a narrow, wood-paneled stair, to a large, lower-floor recreation room that smelled faintly like a classy sporting goods outlet. There was a ping-pong table and numerous faded certificates of excellence and juvenile trophinalia on the walls. Kyle caught Gillian’s arm as she was about to open a side door, and she turned in surprise.

‘Kyle!’

‘You know, it’s weird that you would spring that shit on me when you knew I was wasted’ Kyle said.

‘What shit?’

‘The baby thing.’

’Oh, the baby thing. You said you weren’t wasted. You said you’d only had one joint, and, I quote: ’like, hours ago.’’

‘Well I was wasted. Very wasted. And I think you knew that.’

‘It’s just a financial arrangement, isn’t it?’ asked Gillian, in the slightly exasperated manner of an honest person, accosted by the suspicions of an unreasonable paranoid. ’We’re going to do it at some point in our lives, why not get paid? What are you waiting for, Kyle? Think you’re going to do better than me? Spoiler alert, baby.’

Kyle didn’t know what to say to that.

‘I guess’ he conceded.

‘You don’t want to be a G.I, do you? Just sitting around? Jerking off to whatever disgusting porn you won’t admit you’re into? Like your brother?’

‘No’ said Kyle.

‘Then what are you worried about?’

‘Nothing.’

Kyle had often said Gillian should have been a lawyer. He hadn’t meant it as a complement.

Gillian glanced around. ‘Come here,’ she said, opening the toilet and pulling Kyle into the interior of the cubicle. She latched the door.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Kyle. Gillian was pulling up the ceramic cistern cover to the old-fashioned reservoir. She fished something out of the cold water. It was a bottle of vodka.

‘One of mama’s little hiding places’ she said. ‘Want a belt?’

‘Is that how you’ve been getting loaded?’ asked Kyle.

Gillian took a swing, winced and coughed. ‘Nah’ she said, ‘I had a flask in my purse. But it’s out.’ She passed the bottle to Kyle who took a shot. ‘That’s it, take it like a Russian,’ laughed Gillian, as Kyle coughed on the hard spirit. She kissed him and, hiking up her slim black dress, pulled her panties down and kicked them aside. Somewhat awkwardly, in the confined space, she undid the front of his trousers and pulled them down to his knees and pushed him onto the closed lid of the toilet. She shrugged down her top. She was now wearing nothing but her heels and her dress, a belt of wrinkled black hiked up around her hips.

‘I should go see my brother,’ said Kyle.

’You’re thinking of that now?’

‘I just feel guilty.’

Gillian straddled him and sat down. He smelt a trace of perfume on the smooth skin of her breasts. ‘Just shut up and let something nice happen to you’ she said. Kyle shut up and did.