We found the joint they rolled, the one that fell down between their bed. They scored some from a guy in Koh Tao and brought it with them to Phi Phi. We get stoned and they tell me about how they met in China at a language submersion school. For the first three months they only spoke Mandarin to each other. A week from now he'll be back in Berkley and she'll be back in Jersey.
I tell them a story about a man who was sent to space to live on a space station for twenty years free of earth contact. The space program created him an android that looked identical to his wife—a women he loved dearly. The android was programmed with an advanced artificial intelligence. It had all the qualities he loved in his wife and none of the one he hated. Several years they lived together before the man realized it wasn’t his wife he had been in love with but the android. In desperation he lit the space station afire, triggering the release of the escape pod that would take him back to his wife. When the pod entered earth’s atmosphere and crashed into the ocean a retrieval team took little time getting him to safety. Once debriefed and let free he went to see his wife. When she told him that she wasn’t in love with him anymore but rather in love with the android the space program had provided her upon his absence he told her about the people he killed to see her and how it was only a matter of time before they found out what he had done. She says she never wants to see him again, that she’s happy with what she’s got. The story ends with the man being escorted from his own house by an android that look and sounds identical to him.
She wipes a tear from her eye before excusing herself. I can hear her crying in the bathroom over the wiz of the fan. “I don’t know what I’m gonna do without the girl,” he says.
No comments:
Post a Comment