Outside the window a tremendous yellow crane was lowering a blank billboard onto the roof of the apartment building across the street, the only building in four blocks thus far unadorned by an advertisement. The street below was a sea of brake lights, neon signs, and colorful banners, but above this commercial chaos the mirrored faces of the neighboring high-rise towers stared back grim and vacant through the smog. The dark sky seemed it ought to be raining already. The sky had been overcast since early morning, from the moment he'd opened his eyes to stare bleakly out at the obfuscated glare, growing thick and opaque during the taxi ride to the Marlboro Red Lincoln Medical University Tower, and now, at the end of an eight hour shift, the sky remained that same color and texture, like the smoke of a thousand cigarettes exhaled in one breath; the noxious breath of the sprawling city and the neighboring factories, the implacable wheels of industry. The outlines of the skyscrapers suggested symbols and seemed to hint at a forgotten thought, but no memory came, and at last he turned away from the window.
”Welcome back, Dr. Burkin,” said a wisp in the dark. Dr. Hendricks materialized in the dim light of the window in her white lab coat, her gleaming teeth framed by red-lipstick. “When I saw the lights were off I assumed you already went home."
He returned a perfunctory smile. “I’m about to. I was just trying to remember something. And for the thousandth time, call me Roger."
"Whatever you say, Dr. Burkin.”
“How is our friend doing? Have you run the data?"
"Yes."
"And?"
Dr. Hendricks shrugged. She wiggled her amber-framed glasses up on her nose, and extended a hand full of spreadsheets. The action said "see for yourself," though in her eyes Roger perceived mock contempt, a subtle flirtatiousness he rarely noticed from her. He took the spreadsheets and Dr. Hendricks turned brusquely away, her heels clapping the linoleum tiles and her figure melting rapidly into the shadows. He looked down at the spreadsheets and was alarmed to find that at least thirty nodes were registering abnormally high frequencies, and the four subthalamic nodes were registering off the charts. The simulated brain was anxious, and when it was anxious, so was he.
Leaving the spreadsheets on the windowsill, he crossed the lab and found Dr. Hendricks bathed in the even, white glow of the computer screen, poring through the data intently.
"He's upset," Roger said, though his partner already knew. She had seen the data already and understood it just as well. "Suppose we ought to calm him down," he offered.
"Doesn't it ever bother you?" she said absently. Her voice had grown raspy and perceptibly deeper in the few months that he’d known her. Management provided complimentary packs of Marlboro Reds in a basket in the lobby, and nowadays she took three or four smoke breaks a shift. "Don't you ever stop to think 'what if it was me in there?'"
“Of course I do,” he said. “But if we weren't on this study, somebody else would be. I'd rather it be us working with our little friend here, so we can be sure the tests are done properly."
"That's not what I mean, Roger. I mean, we gave the simulation your neuronal data. We gave it your memories. Don’t you ever find it disturbing to think that it’s basically you in there?”
“Dr. Hendricks, Stephanie, for the hundredth time, it’s a simulation. It isn’t alive. It isn’t conscious. There is nothing unethical about what we’re doing.”
She let that response hang in the air until it dissipated.
“Let’s just do what we can,” he said. “I'll set up the overnight inputs, and I'll be sure to give him plenty of rest before tomorrow."
"Fine."
Stephanie clopped her way into the corridor, either heading home for the day or taking a final smoke break, leaving him alone with the computer and the hum of the air conditioning. He seated himself on the swivel chair and wheeled himself up to the monitor. The research entailed subjecting the simulation to an endless series of digitally encoded advertisements and measuring the reactions. Stephanie was always a worrywart, but she was especially upset today because tomorrow held in store the Jack-in-the-Box torture trials, in which they would induce a state of mortal fear and physical agony in the brain and attempt to alleviate it with a series of Jack-in-the-Box advertisements. The test results would be sold to the corporation to help them determine the most effective and least effective advertising strategies for their upcoming Valentine’s Day special. The present stress patterns wouldn’t work for the test, though. They were too high and too sporadic. Without a calm and steady baseline the experimental data would be suspect, and in order to reach a baseline, the simulated brain would need all the simulated sleep and relaxation it could get.
He cued up a serotonin and dopamine boost to begin at midnight and an absurd 12 hour sleep cycle to begin at 7:30 pm. Inspired by Stephanie’s gratuitous concern, he decided to work for a couple extra minutes and cue up a rainstorm. Nothing like the pitter patter of simulated raindrops on a simulated roof to ease a digital mind into sleep. He input the sleep and weather schedules, and he had just lifted his buttocks from the cushion when he had another idea, a preposterous idea that made him laugh at his own maniacal genius. He set his ass back down again and, with a boyish smirk, began programming a new input, a textual message to be delivered directly to the brain's semantic center. It read: Dear Roger, I just wanted to let you know that you're doing a great job and I'm very proud of you. Best wishes. --God.
After fifteen minutes of writing the code, the message was ready, and now he just needed to schedule the delivery, but just as he was beginning to type the directive, Stephanie wandered back into the room with a yellow notebook in her hand and gasped.
“Roger!" she cried. “What are you doing?"
He pressed ENTER, firing the message without a chance to toggle the arrival time.
"I was just doing some extra stuff to make sure he's relaxed and ready for tomorrow. What are you doing back?"
"I forgot to file the spreadsheets. I figured you'd left them somewhere the janitor would find them and toss them out. But what is that on the screen? What is that you just wrote?”
"It's just a little experiment. To try and help him relax."
Stephanie adjusted her glasses with pinched fingers and leaned over the desk to get a closer look.
Roger made a sheepish smile and rubbed the back of his balding head. He gazed up at her as she turned a glare in his direction. “Don't be angry," he said.
He rode the elevator down to the lobby, his face prickling underneath his left eye, where Stephanie had slapped him with the notebook. The doors opened with a BING! and Roger came stepping out into the pale light of the lobby with a hand to his cheek. Paul the security guard waved at him. He and Paul often talked Glad Wrap Gladiators basketball, and there was an important game coming up this weekend against the undefeated Vaccaro Auto Parts Vultures. He lifted the hand from his face long enough to briefly wave back to Paul, and he kept walking. The glass entryway beneath the giant papier-mâché sculpture of a Marlboro Red pack was obscured with fog, but he could see enough to tell it was pouring outside. The sky had finally made good on its threat, and the rain fell like it had been accumulating for days. The workers operating the crane across the street had cleared out in the middle of the job, leaving the tarp-covered billboard to hang there precariously, poised to fall on someone like a grand piano or an ACME wooden box. The water was already pooling on the street, and before long it would be spilling onto the sidewalk. He was in luck, however: there was a taxi cab covered in big black decals with stilettoed hookers already parked at the curb in front of the building. The hood said Yellow Cab, and beneath that it said Red Light Escorts. He pushed his way through the left revolving door and scampered to the black and yellow car, using his briefcase to shield his head from the cold downpour. He thrust open the door and threw himself into the back seat. “Thirty-two fifty-seven Smoothie King Terrace please" and the cabby grunted in reply.
"You can't sleep in this cab."
"I beg your pardon?"
The disheveled, European-looking cabby, who was now turned around in the front seat, stared back at him with a pockmarked face that exuded irritation.
"Pardon granted," he said. “We are at the address you gave me, and that'll be fifteen dollars and twenty seven cents. Plus a tip if you are so inclined. But like I said, if you need place to sleep, it’s not my cab you are looking for."
Roger looked around in confusion. It was still raining, utterly dark now beside the familiar neon advertisements and the white light of the street lamps. Sure enough, they were parked halfway on the sidewalk, not five feet from the front doors of the Smoothie King Terrace Pepsi-Cola Tower, his apartment building.
"Oh my," he said. "I must have fallen asleep. I beg your pardon. Here, I have a twenty for you, keep the change."
He fumbled around in the pocket of his khaki pants and finally produced the twenty. The driver took it from him immediately. “Goodnight," the driver said.
"Yes, good night, thank you. Sorry again." He pushed open the door and stepped out into the rain. He swung the door closed behind him and as soon as it shut the cab growled and rumbled its way off the sidewalk, into the street, and away. Roger was drowning in fatigue. He could hardly stay awake as he clumsily typed in the security code. On the third try the light turned green and the lock clicked free. Boarding the elevator he hummed "I'm walking on sunshine" in an effort to keep himself awake, but the elevator was playing a vibraphone rendition of the Meow Mix jingle and it threw off his tune. His cheek still tingled a little from the slap, and he decided to focus on that instead. When he got to his room, 1421, he kicked off his shoes then slid off his khaki pants as he staggered into the bedroom. Before he could finish taking off his shirt, he was already laying on top of the covers, listening to the pitter patter on the window, falling asleep.
When he opened his eyes in the morning, he was greeted by a clock radio Folgers advertisement, singing birds, and a smoggy but amiable sunrise. He felt surprisingly refreshed, and he rose energetically to take his morning shower. He tended to feel groggy whenever he slept in, but today the sleep had done him wonders.
A Bosley Hair Replacement ad played on his mirror as he shaved his black stubble and waited for the water to get warm, noticing that his cheek had a little red mark but it no longer tingled. He found himself imagining what Stephanie might say when she saw him.
“Oh, look what I did to your face Dr. Burkin!”
“No worries, Dr. Hendricks, it only throbs when I breath and when I talk!”
“Oh, please forgive me!”
“Only if you let me take you to dinner!”
The cab ride to work was pleasant and there was very little traffic. The heavily accented African cab driver smelled of sweat and cinnamon. He ranted calmly and steadily about how polluted the air was becoming, and Roger kept saying, “I hear you, I hear you,” nodding and smiling incessantly.
The workers were back again, plastering something on the gigantic new billboard, which was now anchored into place on top of the building across the street. “What do you suppose they’re putting up?” Roger said as he reached into his wallet for a twenty. The driver pulled the car up to the curb in front of the Marlboro Red Lincoln Medical University tower then glanced over briefly. “Looks like a billboard,” the driver said, and Roger had a good laugh at that.
“I think you’re right,” he said, handing over the twenty. “Thank you for the ride, and have a good one! Don’t breathe too much of that air!”
“You know I will.”
Paul the security guard waved as he crossed the lobby.
“Morning, Dr. Burkin.”
“Morning, Paul,” he hollered. “You going to the Gladiators game this weekend?”
“Yes, sir, Dr. Burkin. Me and my girl got tickets to the club section.”
“Movin on down, eh? Maybe I’ll see you there!”
“Sounds good, Dr. Burkin.”
He whistled a noodley, aimless tune as he rode the empty, buzzing elevator to the thirty-seventh floor. When he reached the lab, brightly lit for the morning hours, Dr. Hendricks was already seated in the swivel chair, scanning through a spreadsheet.
“Morning, Stephanie!” he called.
“That’s Dr. Hendricks to you,” she said with a half-hearted smile. “You seem cheery. Sorry about your face by the way.”
“Oh, don’t worry. It only throbs when I breathe and when I talk. How are you this morning?”
She shook her head as she looked back to the printouts. “Not too bad,” she said, shuffling through the papers. “I guess I owe you an apology. It looks like our friend is doing much better. As asinine as your message may have been, it seems like it actually helped tremendously. He hasn’t been this happy in weeks.”
“Great. So we’re good to go for today’s experiment?”
“Evidently.”
“Great.
The experiment was simple. They would digitally encode the Jack-in-the-Box advertisements, cue up the terror and pain simulation, then transmit one advertisement per half hour into the simulation. All the while, they would record the neural activity in the emotional centers.
As Roger typed the directives for terror and pain, Stephanie stood watching and grew increasingly agitated. She paced around, twisting her hair around her finger and looking at her feet. Roger noticed this out of the corner of his eye but continued typing. It went on like that for five minutes until he felt obligated to ask her what was wrong.
“You know exactly what’s wrong,” she said. “You’re about to type a code to deliberately torture a sentient creature.”
“Stephanie—”
“And don’t give me that ‘it isn’t really alive’ crap. We both know it’s bullshit. If it wasn’t conscious the experiments would be completely useless, and you know that.”
She had gotten close to him now, standing right over his chair and talking down to him like a misbehaving child.
“Stephanie,” he said again, shrinking back. “These experiments are useful in the same way a weather model is useful. You wouldn’t say a weather model is the same thing as a rainstorm, would you?”
“I’m taking a smoke break,” Stephanie announced bitterly. She squinted at the Timex digital timer she now held in both hands. “I’m washing my hands of all this. If you go through with this test, I’m quitting. I’ll go work in the Purina Pet Chow Feline Neurobiology Lab.”
“Stephanie, wait—”
But she was serious about it and already clopping away to the door, digging into her pack for a cigarette. She pushed the door open with one hand and let it slam closed behind her.
It took Roger seven minutes to write the code. It would have taken less if he wasn’t thinking about Stephanie. She was the only woman he could see himself loving, and he couldn’t stand to lose her company over something so trivial. The experiment would have to be completed, though. There was no avoiding it. He set the program to initiate at 11:16 A.M., two minutes away. He pressed ENTER. There was nothing to do now for another half an hour, when the first advertisement would be administered. If he hurried and if he was lucky, he could catch Stephanie outside, still smoking her cigarette, and convince her to stay.
The elevator took an eternity, and he began to feel oddly anxious. His skin felt flushed and he was pacing, trying to mentally rehearse what he would say to Stephanie when he saw her, but the elevator seemed to be shrinking in on him, and his skin started to itch strangely as a tinny Italian voice, in the tune of “That’s Amore” sang from the speaker in the ceiling: When the snot clogs your nose like a twisted up hose—Ask for Flonase! And if you don’t mind NAUSEA, VOMITING, OR ELEVATED LIVER ENZYMES—Ask for Flonaaaase!
At last the elevator went BING and the doors begrudgingly slid open to release him. The sunlit marble of the lobby hit his eyes like daggers. Even after he had escaped the elevator and the Flonase song his claustrophobia and panic continued to grow, his skin burned now almost painfully, and he started to run, nearly at full speed, making for the front doors and praying Stephanie would be out there smoking. “Roger!” Paul called, “Where’s the fire?” He kept running and spotted Stephanie beneath the giant pack of Marlboro Reds, just outside the front doors holding a half-smoked cigarette, bathed in smog-filtered sunlight, looking out and up toward the other side of the street. Sweating and short of breath, he entered the revolving door with haste and shoved his way through it, tasting a hint of putrid city air between his numb lips as the door spilled him, stumbling, out onto the sidewalk, where Stephanie was still facing up and away.
“Ste- Stephanie!” he stammered. He regained his balance but not his breath, and a dull pain billowed up in him like a cloud, growing sharper. “Stephanie! Something’s wrong with me… You have to—” But he realized now what she was looking at. On top of the apartment building across the street, the workers had just finished plastering the advertisement onto the new billboard. In bright green letters it read:
Dear Roger, I just wanted to let you know that you're doing a great job and I'm very proud of you. Best wishes. --God
THE END
Cover Photo: Image Source