Website Exclusives

  Happy Birthday to You and You

In the months since Ava Morgan double-checked the final lines of code, she’d asked former professors and colleagues, family members, friends, and strangers for permission to create their digital clones, but no one wanted to meet themselves until now.

“Your Freedom-net file," she said, "is the basis for the projection’s looks, personality, and mannerisms. Every nuance is built in. It’s a perfect copy because it’s generated from a perfect dataset.” 

Joshua Brenton sat in a leather chair on the visitor’s side of the tidy wooden desk. His athletic build and well-tailored suit helped disguise his age, but the iron gray hair and the creases beside his blue eyes gave him away. “How’d you get permission to access Freedom-net?” he asked.

“My mother is a member of the Technology Council.” Though ten years removed from finishing her doctorate, Ava’s dark, plain face had no wrinkles and she’d never lost her slender shape. “She pulled some strings on my behalf.”

Brenton leaned back against the chair and placed a shining wingtip on the opposite knee. “It must be nice to have doors opened for you.”

“A mother is a blessing,” Ava said, “but that’s not what you mean, is it?”

“My family was the opposite of connected.” Brenton’s voice was flat, his expression neutral. “I apologize if that makes me self-righteous at times.”

“Think whatever you like,” Ava said, “as long as you sign the release form.”

“Can you make the projection younger? I want to see myself at twenty.”

“I can make it any age between your birth and the present. It’s as simple as limiting the dataset.”

“Will it really act like me?”

“I borrowed lines of code from an old police interrogation program. It knows you better than any mother could.”

Brenton’s blue eyes narrowed. “A computer might know what I said, but it can’t know what I was thinking.”

“Not exactly,” Ava said, “but, in a lot of ways, we are what we pretend to be.”

Brenton leaned forward and offered a handshake. “Let’s sign the paperwork.”

Ava took his hand briefly, then opened a desk drawer. She produced a folder, opened it, and removed the top sheet of paper. “This waiver gives me permission to use all the information recorded through your Freedom-net implant from the day you were born until the present.”

Brenton drew a pen from his breast pocket. “How soon can you finish?”

“The process may take a couple of weeks. Even after the projection has gone live, I’ll need time to prepare it to meet you.”

“My birthday party is next weekend,” Brenton said. “If you bring him, I’ll make it worth your while. I want my guests to meet the man I used to be.”

.

Two days later, Ava received the freedom-net file through a virtual safe-drop. The coffee on her desk went cold as her fingers hammered at the keyboard, sequencing the parameters and integrating the data. In theory, there was no reason the program wouldn’t work as predicted, but she’d never loaded an entire life before.

Even when no one else would agree to sign the waiver, Ava had refused to load her own file. She’d never liked the sound of her voice or the way she looked in pictures and videos, but she’d created the program assuming other people did.

A blue, phantasmagoric figure materialized in the empty chair on the other side of the desk. Ava smoothed her hair and sat up straight as the projection loaded. She understood her guest was only terabytes and not flesh and blood, but she still wanted to make a good impression. 

The blue figure solidified into a human-shaped shadow. As the angular, geometric shapes rounded out, subtle colors bloomed into an out-of-focus young man in jeans and a faded tee-shirt. The apparition’s right foot rested on its left knee, but instead of a wingtip, twenty-year-old Joshua Brenton wore a clunky leather boot. The figure came into focus, revealing a week’s worth of beard stubble on the thin, youthful face. When the last pixels settled, a glint shined in the pale blue eyes. The projection blinked.

Ava’s own eyes widened and her lips parted, but she didn’t speak. The program was performing as expected, but the realism was unnerving. The projection appeared to rub its eyes and look around, it’s movements familiar.

“Was I in an accident?” The young Brenton seemed concerned, but not panicked.

“Joshua, my name is Dr. Ava Morgan. I know this is hard to believe, but you’ve traveled forward in time.” Ava had settled on this story as a means to calm the projection and keep it from falling into existential crisis. “I want you to know you’re safe and everything is going to be fine.”

“Impossible,” Brenton said. “Is this a dream?”

“This is very real. You’re in perfect health and I’ll return you to your time after you attend a birthday party.”

“This can’t be the future. It can’t. That’s crazy.”

Ava spun the computer monitor on her desk and pointed to the date in the bottom-right corner.

“Anyone can change the calendar settings,” Brenton said, “but you can’t fake that image resolution. Unbelievable. What year is it?”

“You’ve jumped forty years,” Ava said. “This experience will pass quickly and you’ll be returned to your life with no memory of what happens here. My advice is to enjoy it.”

Brenton leaned forward. “Have you ever woken up in the future?”

“If I did,” Ava said smiling, “I wouldn’t remember. There’s good news. You’ve done very well in life.”

“How well?”

“To be honest,” Ava said, “well enough to write a very generous check to have you at a party. I’ll give you some time to process all this.” Before the young Brenton could respond, Morgan paused the projection, saved an updated copy, and took a deep breath. The real Joshua Brenton was alive, but the figure sitting across from her was still a ghost.

When the real Brenton relayed the logistics for his birthday party, he hadn’t mentioned it was a black-tie affair. Perhaps he assumed the address – the grand stone hall overlooking the manicured grounds of a country club – was notice enough. Ava arrived underdressed, but wasn’t bothered since she’d be in a back room, monitoring the party and the projection through cameras and headphones.

“Will the room suffice?” Brenton asked.

“It’s fine,” Ava said, “but there’s one thing. Before I bring Josh online, I’d like you to make an announcement and warn your guests not to mention he isn’t a real person.”

“What happens if they do?” Brenton asked.

“If he has a mental breakdown, it won’t be much fun. We’ll have to revert to the last usable save and if the restart doesn’t go well, it could take hours to get him online again.”

Brenton’s eyebrows rose. “Don’t stop anything without talking to me first.”

“If everyone follows the rule,” Ava said, “we’ll be fine. I’ve spoken with him several times and he’s not hard to get along with.”

“Apologies,” Brenton said, “but I need to help my wife with the catering. I’ll send word when it’s time. Do not turn him off.”

Ava adjusted the monitors and headphones. After two hours of canapés, red wine, and birthday cake, the real Brenton had given the order to send out himself. Ava watched the screen as the older man stood in the center of the grandiose ballroom. One hand held a microphone and the other a full wine glass, but his face was sober. 

“Take your seats and the entertainment will begin.” Brenton’s voice quieted the murmurs and the guests shuffled to their chairs.

“Thank you for joining me tonight. If you enjoyed the refreshments, please let Kaylee know. She did a wonderful job choosing the caterer.” A polite smatter of applause rippled across the room. “As you know,” Brenton continued into the mic, “I’m sixty years old today. Statistically speaking, if you haven’t found success by sixty, you’ve probably missed your chance. The reason I didn’t miss mine was because everyone in this room kept me on the right path. Success is a mindset. It’s an act of endurance. There were times I could’ve settled, I could’ve been complacent, but you didn’t give up on me. You taught me to work harder.” 

The two hundred or so men and women seated at the tables, mostly Brenton’s age and older, chuckled politely and smiled at each other.

“Since sixty is a milestone,” Brenton went on, “tonight’s entertainment is special. You’re going to meet the man I used to be. And I don’t mean home movies or embarrassing stories from old college roommates. You get to meet the real thing.”

In her back room, Ava checked the strength of the broadcast signal, then nodded to the projection. She opened the door for the young man, even though he could have stepped through it closed.

The guests whispered and craned their necks to see who would emerge. When the young Joshua Brenton stepped into the ballroom, nodding and smiling at the crowd, even the most practiced faces fell into gaping stares. Then the projection spotted the older Brenton at the center of the room and was himself amazed. His hand rose to touch the jet-black tresses that time would replace with a short, gray business cut.

“Come over here,” the elder Brenton said. “Let everyone get a look.”

The younger Brenton obliged. “Sorry I didn’t dress up,” he said. “I’m not able to interact with objects from this time.”

“Not at all.” The older man smiled, his teeth the same size and shape as the younger man’s. He clicked off the microphone and lowered his voice, but Ava could still hear his words through her headphones. “You’re exactly as you should be,” Brenton said. “The clothes only illustrate the point.”

“I have so many questions to ask you.”

“Why?” Brenton asked. “You wouldn’t listen to the answers.”

The younger man’s eyes scanned the room. “Where’s Sylvia?”

Brenton waived off the question. “Let’s not natter over the past. These people want to meet you.”

“They don’t mean anything to me. Where’s Sylvia?”

“One day you’ll care.”

“What did I become?”

The real Brenton chuckled and reached out to pat the boy on the back, then lowered his hand when he remembered that was impossible. “An adult,” he said.

“What are you?” There was a catch in Joshua’s artificial throat.

“We,” Brenton said, “are vice president of the accounting division of the world’s tenth largest real estate development firm.”

The younger man scoffed and shook his head. “There are a hundred reasons why that’s impossible.”

Brenton laughed. “You got your act together when you met Kaylee.”

“What about Sylvia?” The young man’s voice rose. “We’ve been together for three years. We’re getting married.”

Brenton turned to his guests and raised his hand to regain the attention he’d never lost. He clicked the microphone back on and said, “Please remember that this young man is here to show you how far I’ve come.” Brenton gestured to his ghost. “Joshua, tell these people what your dreams are.”

Disappointment contorted the features of the projection’s face. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I failed.”

The older Brenton chuckled into the microphone, then moved closer and whispered in the projection’s ear, “There’s no one I despise more than you. For Sylvia, for the chances you missed, the friends you abandoned. You let this happen.”

The genuine Joshua Brenton turned a smiling face to the audience he seemed to hate almost as much as he hated himself. “Please come up and meet the man I used to be. We’ll all have a good laugh.”