Chapter 3

3.

On the day of our first video call, I changed my shirt three times.

I finally settled on a charcoal grey one. Evelyn had steamed it for me, twice. She asked, "Mr. Vance, are you going on a blind date?" I said no. She asked, "Then why are you so nervous?"

I didn't have an answer.

When the video connected, she was sitting in a room with soft, warm lighting. Behind her was a wall of books. I could make out a few titles―Sapiens, Godel Escher Bach, Snow Country. She wore a white sweater with slightly long sleeves that only showed her fingertips.

"Hi," she said.

Her voice was soft. Not an intentional softness―it just sounded naturally light.

"Hi."

I realized I'd forgotten everything I wanted to say next.

We talked for two hours. We went from why she studied AI ethics to why I built enterprise cloud services, back to those grey seashells in Maine. She said the shells there are grey, unlike the white ones on the Pacific coast.

She asked me if I believed in fate. I said I didn't.

"Then why are you still talking to me?" she asked.

I couldn't answer that.

After that, we video called every day. Sometimes she would cook for me, propping her phone on the kitchen counter. I'd watch her peel garlic, one clove at a time. The sound of the skins hitting the cutting board was crisp and delicate.

The water would boil, and the steam would blur half the lens. She'd reach out to wipe it, and for a split second, I'd see her fingers glide across the screen.

"You have beautiful hands," I said once.

She froze for a moment, then smiled. "You're the first person to ever say that."

Sometimes she would just read, not saying a word, keeping the video on. I could hear the sound of her turning pages. It was light, like a form of white noise. Once, she read a passage to me from Borges's The Circular Ruins.

"He dreamed a man, a whole man, dreaming him down to every last hair."

She finished reading and went silent for a while.

"Don't you think? Algorithms are dreaming too. They dream of a person―someone who blinks, who breathes, who says 'I don't drink coffee, only warm water.'"

"But that person doesn't exist," I countered.

"They existed once," she said.

"In the code."

She didn't respond. The silence lasted about five seconds. Then she said something I'll never forget.

"Silas Vance. Do you believe that some things just can't be created by code?"

"Like what?"

"Like the way someone's first instinct upon waking up is to check their phone for your message. Or the way someone thinks about what you'd say while they're sipping their coffee."

Her voice was so quiet I had to turn my volume to the maximum to hear her.

But I caught every single word.

I asked her why she wouldn't meet me in person. She said she was working on a very important research project and couldn't leave for now. "It's about trust," she said.

"When can we meet?"

"Wait for spring. I'll come find you in the spring."

I believed her.