Michael UndyingThere are plenty of robot stories, most of which ask the same question: “Can a machine have feelings?” But there is a bigger, more troubling question. Futurists believe that you will soon be able to download your personality, your sensibility, your memories and quirks – you - into a technological device, replacing your carbon-based body with a silicon and plastic version, placing you inside of a robot. Much of the technology already exists. Soon, disease and aging will no longer threaten you. Your body will be upgradable and replaceable, your personality saved and backed-up forever. Which means that you will never die. But humanity depends on mortality. If we never die, what becomes of love? Of concern for the future, of sacrifice and goodness, of urgency, passion and compassion? If we are soon to become immortal, the real question is: "Can a machine have a soul?"
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Annabelle and Michael Ford were the young rockstars of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab. Brilliant, attractive and charismatic, life had promised them everything. And then life just took it away. But Annabelle will not be denied. She will risk her family, her future and her life to make the dreams they were promised come true. Michael's resurrection, though, will come at a price she can't imagine.
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Series Synopsis
** Note that this document is a linear telling of the tale, meant only to convey the full arc of the series as efficiently as possible. Episodes would naturally employ time cuts, flashbacks, cross-cuts and all our other tricks and tools to tease out the tension and emotion of the story.
M i c h a e l U n d y i n g
S a c r i f i c e s
Annabelle Ford appears to be just another struggling single mom. She isn’t. For years, Annabelle has been in hiding, living under false identities, moving frequently and keeping a very low profile. When we meet her, she is moving again, squeezing the kids into an even smaller house, far from the place they had just settled into. The two girls, Ada (12) and Radia (9) share a small bedroom. The little boy, Blaise (5), is led to believe that the walk-in closet is a kid-size bedroom made just for him. Annabelle inexplicably stuffs a king size bed into her room with two nightstands. There are also two dressers, one full of her clothes and one full of men’s clothes. All of this is in service to the secret, the thing she keeps in a secure office, hidden in the basement, wherever they live. She tells the kids it’s a book she’s writing, but there is no book. The pile of hard drives and servers and mainframes contains only one thing - their father, reduced to ones and zeroes and awaiting resurrection.
Annabelle and Michael were the rock stars of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab, each brilliant, attractive, and ambitious. Together they were unstoppable, a magic couple to whom the world had promised everything - magnificent careers, joy, wealth, and acclaim. And they were crazy, crazy in love. They were so sure of their life together that they had already married and had two children, with another on the way, before they were finished with graduate school. Then Michael got cancer.
But these two were not going to let biology, with its disappointing flaws and weaknesses, rob them of their future. They had spent their entire lives devising biology’s successor. The timeline would simply have to be sped up. They worked furiously to record and preserve Michael’s every thought, desire, memory, belief, reflex, quirk and feeling, every freckle and hair. Annabelle stored and catalogued her love, saving him on a pile of hard drives to await the day she could resurrect him. But if he was to come back, he could never officially be gone. So, as his breath failed, Annabelle, eight months pregnant, carried her husband out into the desert. There she smothered him and burned the ruined, withered body. The official story was that he fled to Mexico to receive experimental treatments and never came back. It’s been six years.
As they settle into the new house, it becomes clear that Annabelle’s fantasy family has gotten far more attention than her actual family. Ada is already growing distant and feeling twinges of resentment. She will soon become a thrill-seeker, a little scale model of Annabelle’s id. Radia, a brilliant, charming super-pleaser, has her mom’s brains and intensity and her desperate need for things to be right. And little Blaise is bright, but spacey, frequently lost in the wonders inside his head. For little kids, they seem old as they unpack boxes, argue over beds and scrounge up dinner. Annabelle, of course, concentrates on the secret room. There, she talks and laughs and schemes with Michael, his face in a monitor, his voice in a speaker. They are still madly in love, still giddy in a way they might have outgrown had their relationship not been frozen in time. He asks a million questions about the move and the house and the kids and talks about his dreams and his plans for his return. She tells lies.
In her telling, the kids are thriving, they love the new house, and they just can’t wait to start at their new schools. She also reports great progress in finding the gear they need. His return, she insists, is nearly at hand. The truth is that the kids are miserable and starting to act out, the hard drives backing him up are old and failing and she’s at a dead end with the technology. And she’s out of money and living on credit cards. But she can’t tell him that. She has to craft a better truth so Michael doesn’t panic. If she can just paper over the shit-show her life has become for a little while longer, she can make all the pretty lies true. But she has to get busy.
She moved here to be near the navy scrapyard, which she suspects from her research houses a top-secret AI lab. It’s a long shot, as there’s no actual evidence that such a lab even exists, let alone here, hidden under the rusty husks of old warships and planes. Even if she’s right, she’ll have get a job there somehow, get clearance and then steal a ton of highly classified technology from an armed military facility.
Getting a job at the base proves easier than she expected. It's a janitorial position with limit access. But with some wiles and some luck, she steals some credentials and uses them to make a phony ID that allows her to enter the second level. And there, she finds a door. Extra wide, stainless steel, highly secure and surrounded by cameras, this door is obviously not typical of scrapyards. She has no doubt what’s beyond it. Breathless with anticipation, she swipes the stolen card through the reader. Nothing happens. Then there's a warning. And an alarm. But then, quiet as the light on the door turns green. She grabs the lever to open it, but stops when she hears her name called out.
Nico was two years behind them at MIT. Now a Lieutenant Commander in the Navy, he’s stunned to see her. He’s also very confused at the mop and the nametag that reads, “Juliana”. She looks away and speaks in a put-on voice, insisting that she’s not whoever he thinks she is. He scrutinizes her face, then her credentials as her heart tries to escape her chest. Nico scans the ID and says a maintenance pass shouldn’t have opened that door. He’s fixed it, but he’ll be looking into how this happened. He hands her back the ID, gives her one more long look, then walks away.
At home, Annabelle burns the ID. She knows Nico will figure out who jacked the pass. If he can find her, she’ll go to prison and the kids will be abandoned. Thwarted again and unemployed, she’ll see the house and the kids with clear eyes. Her home looks like a dormitory, all tattered furniture and clutter. Radia is visibly anxious and Blaise is starting to speak almost exclusively in a made-up language. Where is Ada? Out with some older kids Annabelle has never met. Out of time, money, and hope, cut off from the only place in the world that has what she needs to build Michael, Annabelle has failed.
Michael can't see the power cord in her hand when she pulls it. He just goes dark and silent. She didn’t weep when she destroyed his first body, but she does now, heaving in sobs, barely able to breathe. She manages somehow to drag the garbage bags to the curb. There she waits in the pre-dawn as the trash truck approaches. It is the ferryman coming, driveway by driveway, to take Michael away. But just before the big truck reaches her drive, a car pulls up. Nico steps out.
He is not, he says, the director of the scrapyard, he’s the director of the research lab hidden inside of it, as she has surely already deduced. And he doesn’t care why she’s lying about who she is, what she was doing on level two, or what happened with Michael. He knows who she is and what she’s capable of and he needs her in his lab – no questions asked. She asks him to help her bring these bags back into the house.
R e - E n g a g e d
The cake says, “Congrats Mom!”. Radia made it celebrate her mother’s “promotion” at work. Annabelle says the new position will make things much better around here, but no one is falling for this bullshit again.
Ada’s attitude and clothes will start to shout, “Fuck you.” Fuck this place, fuck school, fuck mom. Underneath, she’ll just be terrified, of course. She’ll have her first period and won’t tell anyone. Hoping to hurt Annabelle by withholding this secret, she’ll drop hints, leave a box of maxi-pads on her dresser – but Annabelle will remain oblivious. Radia’s perfectionism will become damaging, her anxiety growing in the constant uncertainty in the house. And Blaise will decide they are a family of aliens, which is why they don’t fit in. He’ll even begin to speak in his own language. Michael will be pissed and scared about having been powered down, which is terrifying. Throughout, Annabelle will put on her bravest, happiest face. They’ll see.
Internet hacking and cyber-spying have become so sophisticated that governments have reverted to paper and pencils, notes and whispers for their secrets. A new type of spy is needed, something that can be inside the room - a pet, an insect, an assistant or a lover. This is what Nico recruited Annabelle to help build. She’ll only has access to three of the five levels, but those will be astounding and will contain most of what she needs - carbon fiber and lithium ion bones, pneumatic muscles, latex skin. And she’ll begin to scheme to get to level five, home of the Mechabyte, the fastest chip in history.
Annabelle will rediscover the pleasure of exercising her brain, of being respected, of being part of a team, of being among adults. And a little innocent flirting with Nico, all flesh and blood and attentiveness, will provide a long-forgotten tingle. It’s all so lovely that she won’t see that she’s neglecting the kids more than ever and now even neglecting Michael.
Still a prisoner in an unimaginable darkness, Michael will become desperate as Annabelle’s attention wanders elsewhere. He'll question where she’s been, he'll worry about the kids and beg to be connected to the internet so he can at least watch some fucking cat videos while he’s alone. Suddenly guilty, Annabelle will surprise him with a gift.
The internet is too dangerous, as he would be discoverable. But, with things stolen from the lab, she’ll be able to give him something else - the very crude beginnings of a physical form. A face made from a mask with camera eyes and lips, hands made of gloves, a vibrator; all covered with sensors and under his control. They’ll hold hands, erupting in shrieks when he can feel her and squeeze her fingers. They’ll share their first kiss in seven years. And the years of naughty talk and sexting were just foreplay for this moment. They nearly burn out all the sensors on Michael’s new parts. Annabelle will feel purged of all intruding thoughts of Nico, of guilt, of failure and of fear. Until a small dose of poison is administered in an obscure global capital.
The murder of some nameless spy will spark an international crisis. Security at the lab will be tightened, crippling Annabelle’s access. Deeper background checks will be run. An Admiral will be dispatched to upgrade security and the Mechabyte will be much more heavily defended. There will be talk of moving it to a bunker somewhere. Annabelle will feel very naïve. She’s not close – she’s got nothing without that chip. How long will it take now? How much farther can she string the kids along before she’ll be unable to get them back? What if she’s busted? In complete desperation, she will get her access restored the only way she can – she'll start an affair with Nico.
Nico, of course, has always been in love with her. And he, like she, is willing to take terrible risks for love. He’ll upgrade her credentials. A deeper security clearance, they reason, will afford them more privacy. She hates herself for it, but reminds herself it’s all for the family – for Michael. And the heightened risk, the danger, the intrigue, the trysts – it will all prove unexpectedly thrilling. Which will only increase the guilt. So she’ll rededicate herself, becoming more brazen in her theft, slowly working her way toward the Mechabyte.
She'll get the call while in a restricted area, stealing code – Ada has OD’d and is in the hospital. In her haste to get to her daughter, Annabelle will leave her tracks uncovered. She’ll be at her daughter’s bedside when she gets the news from Nico. A breach was discovered. Security is red. The base is under lock-down. The Admiral has decided to move the Mechabyte to a more secure location, passed among warships at sea. Nico will have no idea the intruder was Annabelle – he’ll just be terrified that their affair will be discovered. But Annabelle will have a much bigger worry – the chip. She will beg Ada’s forgiveness when she leaves her in the hospital. She'll go by the school to tell Blaise and Radia that she loves them, just in case, then she’ll go home and make a bomb.
Dressed in men’s clothes, she’ll plant the bomb on the base, far from the lab, and try to get out of range before it goes off. She knows she’ll feel the blast, she just hopes to survive it. She’ll be in full stride when it detonates, blowing trees into the air and setting everything on fire.
M i c h a e l
As all hell breaks loose on the base, Annabelle begins her descent into its heart, a treacherous maze of electronic doors and sensors and cameras. She is almost caught and almost killed, but she manages to get the chip and herself out of the facility. Several corpsman are badly injured fighting the blaze she started, but she can’t let herself think about that. Or about anything else – only Michael.
With single-minded intensity she will go to work, upping the security for her home lab, climbing a power pole to steal the vast amounts of electricity she needs, and assembling equipment. It’s everything she can do to pay attention to anything else. Like Ada’s failing drug counseling and Radia’s compulsiveness and weeping. Or that Blaise, bullied by classmates and raging at teachers, will spend his days pretending to kill everyone with his space blaster and explaining in gory detail what his alien race intends to do to them. Or that Nico is becoming more and more possessive as the Admiral grows more determined and the global crisis escalates. Annabelle will simply push through, convinced that the ends will justify the means, as Michael takes shape in silent pneumatic motion and eerie latex skin.
And then, one day, in the middle of the afternoon, the long download will be complete and Michael will open his eyes and the whole, crazy impossible thing will come true. Annabelle’s perfect future will have been willed into existence. Her perfect past will be there, too, as Michael will awaken in a lovingly furnished house, complete with forged pictures of family vacations never really taken, trophies for sports the kids never played, and art they never made. Annabelle will have won.
The kids will be stunned when their long-lost, impossible father actually appears, as charming and loving as mom promised. He’ll be full of cool stories and promises, assuring them that he’ll never leave them again. Even when the Navy descends on the house, armed with fragments of evidence and lots of suspicion, but nothing incriminating will be found. The Admiral will apologize, never suspecting that the thing he is desperately searching for is installed in the skull of the man standing in front of him. Only Nico will discover anything important – that Michael, his rival, has returned to Annabelle,
Annabelle will, of course, end things with Nico, trotting out the lies about Michael’s disappearance and reappearance. She’ll make minor tweaks to Michael’s programming. He forgot, for instance, that she was allergic to shellfish and nearly killed her with a clam sauce. But all the pieces will settle into place, the kids will show signs of life and everything will be right, which will blind her to two simmering threats - Nico’s heartache and Michael’s connection to the internet.
Getting on line was, of course, the first thing he did. With the Mechabyte in his head, it’s like mainlining heroin, the rush of information pouring into him, questions being answered before they can even be asked. This includes things about his family – school transcripts, arrest reports, banking information…
When a national security conference is called in response to the ongoing crisis, Michael will present Annabelle with a spa package for the three days before the conference, in the same hotel, a tiny gesture in return for all she’s done. He will have already reserved the room, booked the flights and cleared things with Nico, who thought it was a great idea. Her flight leaves that evening. Annabelle, genuinely moved, kisses the kids goodbye.
Readying for bed, Michael will pull back his scalp and plug a power cord into the socket in his skull. His eyes, usually a deep blue, will phase through a series of flashes and blinks, then go blank. And in the dark across the room, Blaise’s eyes, peering out from his hiding place, will grow wide.
T r u e L i e s
Annabelle checks into the hotel, unaware of the surveillance gear being installed in her room. Michael, too, is being carefully watched – by Blaise - as he doles out attention and adventures, and eagerly tries to learn everything about his kids, who are thawing and learning to love him. And then the traps close.
Annabelle will be day drinking by the pool when Nico and the Admiral arrive, days earlier than expected, and begin to interrogate her about Michael. Nico will lead the charge, fueled by fear and pain and jealousy, certain that Michael’s reemergence and the attack on the base were not coincidences. Annabelle will be, for the first time, unprepared. Her escape will include drunken lies, making herself throw up to sober up, destroying her phone, scanning for and blocking surveillance gear, climbing roofs and swimming into the ocean at dawn to dispose of her laptop. And once the conference begins, she will sit in terror as the doors lock and the evidence is presented. Desperate to warn Michael, she’ll escape the only way she can think of – in an ambulance. Luckily, there are shrimp on the brunch buffet. A plate of them will cause anaphylactic shock. She’ll nearly die, but she’ll land safely in the hospital. Now she’ll just have to figure out how to get home.
And little Blaise will only be able to keep the coolest secret in history for so long. He’ll beg his sisters to come see how cool it is when their alien dad eats electricity with his brain. The girls will be terrified. Who is this thing that showed up impersonating their father? Has it already killed their mother? Is that why she's not home yet? Certain that no one in authority will believe them - and scared to death - they will devise a plan.
The attack, a product of Ada’s intensity and Radia’s intelligence, will take Michael completely off guard. Michael will struggle, but will be unable, due to personality and programming, to hurt his kids. Ada will take full advantage, knocking a chunk of his skull off as she takes him down. Bound with duct tape and rope, he’ll plead with the kids and try to explain. But enough of his machinery is exposed for Radia to realize that he’s just a robot. But why? And made by whom? A label on a wiring harness in his head gives it away – it’s in their mom’s handwriting. Suddenly, all the pieces fall into place. The secret room. The moving. The mystery jobs. The certainty that their father would return. This is what it was all about, the lie under the lies, the ruse that goes far beyond fake photos of Easter egg hunts and t-ball games. Hers wasn’t a plan for a family - it was an escape plan for herself. She was never around much, and now she’s left them here forever with this goddam babysitting machine.
Blaise won’t believe this at all. Ada will think they should to destroy this thing and live without parents. They’ve come this far without them. But Radia will have a better idea. Mom may be a genius, but she uses the same passwords for everything. Soon, Radia will have hacked into Michael and taken charge of his protocols. She’ll find a surprisingly simple bit of code that limits his actions. He can hurt strangers if necessary, but not his kids. He will take commands from a cop but not from a dog. Radia will just move things around a little and the greatest single piece of technology in history will be, to his deep frustration, in the hands of two angry teenage girls and a disappointed little boy. Then there will be an inappropriate teen party, a convertible, outrageous clothes, junk food, extended absences from school, lite drugs and puppies. And though Michael will keep calling her cell phone, there will be no Annabelle.
Annabelle will have been devising her own escape plan, pocketing her meds, stealing a scalpel… But it will be unnecessary. One morning the security detail that has been keeping her prisoner in the hospital will simply leave. She will, without money or a phone, make her way home. In her panic, she’ll breathlessly explain it all to Michael and have already worked out a plan for them to escape the country and live abroad. But Michael will be unconcerned will already have fixed that stuff. Annabelle's file in the CIA database, the Navy’s records, the news reports, the Russian and Chinese intelligence agencies – it'll all have been cleared up without a trace. Nico, he’ll tell her, is not their biggest problem.
The kids’ sorrow and anger all pours out. So Annabelle takes them to the secret room. "This is where I spent the last eight years working to give you your father. And make no mistake, this is him. I have done and sacrificed things you can’t imagine. And if I’m caught, he’ll be taken away and I’ll go to prison. So give mommy the goddam password and you’re welcome." Michael is pleased. No more secrets. Being a family requires trust. As part of that trust, there will be no new password and no protocols. From now on, daddy will be in charge of himself.
I n d e p e n d e n c e
With the truth out, Annabelle and Michael’s dream life will indeed have been made real – almost surreal. Michael, completely independent and newly powerful, will see to everything. There will be money in their accounts, a new house, a pool, fantastic cars and private schools. He’ll build their professional dreams, too, setting up Sun & Sand Industries, their dream company, with all the capital and freedom they could hope for. Annabelle will be enamored for a while, telling herself that his is all wonderful. But she will soon recognize that the Michael she loves is slowly slipping away, being replaced by a man she doesn’t know or even really like. And her kids will become increasingly entitled and arrogant and she’ll feel more and more alone. Did she thrive on their dependence on her? On the struggle and the secrets and the intrigue? And whose money are they spending? Whose careers are being sabotaged so theirs can advance? And most baffling – is this who Michael would have become if he’d stayed biological?
Her disappointment and worry will eventually lead her to try to hack him. She has to do something so she can make him like he was, like he was supposed to be – the old Michael. But the new protocols he has written will be far too sophisticated to crack. Attempts will fail and paranoia will set in on both sides. Does he know she tried to hack him? Does she know that he knows? It’s all polite and phony until she discovers how Michael got Nico to back off - he framed him for her crimes. Michael is quite proud of this. Sweet, passionate, earnest, flawed Nico – she wonders if she could have loved him. And if Michael could ruin his life, she wonders, what else he is capable of?
Her very success has left her alone and powerless. She would give anything to undo this, to end it. But she would sound insane if she went to the authorities, plus she knows Michael would beat the system anyway. And if she did manage to reveal him, all of her crimes would be exposed. So, for the kids, she’ll persevere, play along, pretend to be happy, and pretend to still love Michael. But Nico’s suicide will change everything.
Did Michael just drive him to it, or did he actually kill Nico and cover it up? There’s no way to know and details no longer matter – she has created a monster and she has to find a way to stop him. She knows only one person in the world who might be able to help. She'll use the old school, spy-proof approach, slipping a note to the Admiral as he walks his dog. He'll believe her, regardless of what the records show. Nico had laid it out to him and was very close to the truth. The Admiral sees Michael as a weapon with the power to end all human life, no different than the atom bomb. They have little time to un-invent him, to destroy him and hide all evidence that he ever existed. They will set up a secret, off-line system and go to work.
There will be excuses, lies and traps in the power struggle and, worse, in the struggle for the hearts of the kids. Michael will threaten and warn her that she can’t win and, though she never gives up, he will prove right. He will always be a hundred steps ahead of her. After her third attempt to destroy him, he will access and revise her medical records, create some police reports, and have her committed. The paperwork will take .003 seconds for him to process.
I m m o r t a l i t y
The story will have come full circle. Annabelle will be locked away and Michael will be the one scheming to create the world of his dreams. But his dreams are far more dangerous. Luckily, the Admiral is not to be underestimated.
He will break Annabelle out of the hospital and a tense game will ensue, with Annabelle and Michael each using their full complements of intellect, skill, and their deep knowledge of each other. The drama will play out globally, as Michael seems to be everywhere and Annabelle and the Admiral struggle to counter him. They will also use the kids, who will prove to be both assets and handicaps as their allegiances flip between parents and they fight among themselves. Eventually, with the Admiral’s and the kids’ help - and at great risk to the security of the country - Annabelle will set a trap, getting Michael alone in the desert, near the place she first killed him.
The Admiral will fire their one stolen, untraceable drone. Annabelle will distract Michael, waiting for the drone strike - but it won’t arrive. So she'll shoot him. Over and over, blasting holes in her creation, wiping his face off of his skull until he drops into the sand and his eyes go dark. She will reach into his skull and rip out the wires and the goddam chip and destroy them. It will all, at last, be over.
Until Michael steps from the car, laughing. She has underestimated herself. And him. He's no longer a man contained in a graphite and latex body - he's a man contained in a dozen of them, each one able to make others. And that's just the tip of it. He has uploaded himself onto every server on Earth. He’s everywhere, a bit here, a bit there. He’s in NASA, he’s in Google, he’s in her phone, in the GPS in her car, in the Admiral’s medical records and pacemaker – and he can see it all at once. The reflection of the Admiral’s computer screen in his glasses, seen by a neighbor’s security camera, showed Michael the trajectory of the drone strike. He blew it up with a hijacked Korean test missile. A second one took care of the Admiral. By the way, he says, the Admiral was lying. He had already made arrangements to sell the technology and had four countries bidding.
Annabelle will beg him to destroy himself. Refusing to face death was a terrible mistake. She wants to get old, to change and grow and wonder and be part of life, not apart from it. Defying his mortality made her do things that disgust her and changed him so much that she no longer loves him - it cost him his soul. Thinking and feeling may last forever, but having a soul requires a sense of your own mortality. Life is precious only because it's fleeting. What will happen when it isn't? Why will we live well when we don’t have to? Why will we worry about the world, about air or water? Why care for ourselves or for each other? Why fall in love? Defeating death, Annabelle understands, will ruin life. Michael surprises her by agreeing.
A race of immortals, he says, would be disastrous. But, just one immortal family would bring order and peace to the world. Benevolent kings. Gods. And who better suited than they? They're brilliant and kind and very forward thinking.
Annabelle refuses, as he knew she would. No matter. He’s had, he reminds her, a lot of time to think. And to plan. The other car door opens and a woman gets out - Annabelle. "You’ll see how fantastic this is. You’ll still have all of your glorious intelligence,” he says, “your passion, your kindness, your desires… your quirks. And you’ll have all of your memories. Except, of course, for this one." And then he kills her and sets fire to her body, just as she did his all those years ago.
At home in their secluded mansion by the sea, the two perfect parents have dinner with their three wonderful children, just as Annabelle had always dreamed. Their kids' laughter and decisions and voices and gestures are all dutifully recorded by their parents. As soon as Ada is finished growing, she'll get her new body. And then Radia. But Blaise is so cute at this age, they might keep him this way forever.
Annabelle Ford appears to be just another struggling single mom. She isn’t. For years, Annabelle has been in hiding, living under false identities, moving frequently and keeping a very low profile. When we meet her, she is moving again, squeezing the kids into an even smaller house, far from the place they had just settled into. The two girls, Ada (12) and Radia (9) share a small bedroom. The little boy, Blaise (5), is led to believe that the walk-in closet is a kid-size bedroom made just for him. Annabelle inexplicably stuffs a king size bed into her room with two nightstands. There are also two dressers, one full of her clothes and one full of men’s clothes. All of this is in service to the secret, the thing she keeps in a secure office, hidden in the basement, wherever they live. She tells the kids it’s a book she’s writing, but there is no book. The pile of hard drives and servers and mainframes contains only one thing - their father, reduced to ones and zeroes and awaiting resurrection.
Annabelle and Michael were the rock stars of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab, each brilliant, attractive, and ambitious. Together they were unstoppable, a magic couple to whom the world had promised everything - magnificent careers, joy, wealth, and acclaim. And they were crazy, crazy in love. They were so sure of their life together that they had already married and had two children, with another on the way, before they were finished with graduate school. Then Michael got cancer.
But these two were not going to let biology, with its disappointing flaws and weaknesses, rob them of their future. They had spent their entire lives devising biology’s successor. The timeline would simply have to be sped up. They worked furiously to record and preserve Michael’s every thought, desire, memory, belief, reflex, quirk and feeling, every freckle and hair. Annabelle stored and catalogued her love, saving him on a pile of hard drives to await the day she could resurrect him. But if he was to come back, he could never officially be gone. So, as his breath failed, Annabelle, eight months pregnant, carried her husband out into the desert. There she smothered him and burned the ruined, withered body. The official story was that he fled to Mexico to receive experimental treatments and never came back. It’s been six years.
As they settle into the new house, it becomes clear that Annabelle’s fantasy family has gotten far more attention than her actual family. Ada is already growing distant and feeling twinges of resentment. She will soon become a thrill-seeker, a little scale model of Annabelle’s id. Radia, a brilliant, charming super-pleaser, has her mom’s brains and intensity and her desperate need for things to be right. And little Blaise is bright, but spacey, frequently lost in the wonders inside his head. For little kids, they seem old as they unpack boxes, argue over beds and scrounge up dinner. Annabelle, of course, concentrates on the secret room. There, she talks and laughs and schemes with Michael, his face in a monitor, his voice in a speaker. They are still madly in love, still giddy in a way they might have outgrown had their relationship not been frozen in time. He asks a million questions about the move and the house and the kids and talks about his dreams and his plans for his return. She tells lies.
In her telling, the kids are thriving, they love the new house, and they just can’t wait to start at their new schools. She also reports great progress in finding the gear they need. His return, she insists, is nearly at hand. The truth is that the kids are miserable and starting to act out, the hard drives backing him up are old and failing and she’s at a dead end with the technology. And she’s out of money and living on credit cards. But she can’t tell him that. She has to craft a better truth so Michael doesn’t panic. If she can just paper over the shit-show her life has become for a little while longer, she can make all the pretty lies true. But she has to get busy.
She moved here to be near the navy scrapyard, which she suspects from her research houses a top-secret AI lab. It’s a long shot, as there’s no actual evidence that such a lab even exists, let alone here, hidden under the rusty husks of old warships and planes. Even if she’s right, she’ll have get a job there somehow, get clearance and then steal a ton of highly classified technology from an armed military facility.
Getting a job at the base proves easier than she expected. It's a janitorial position with limit access. But with some wiles and some luck, she steals some credentials and uses them to make a phony ID that allows her to enter the second level. And there, she finds a door. Extra wide, stainless steel, highly secure and surrounded by cameras, this door is obviously not typical of scrapyards. She has no doubt what’s beyond it. Breathless with anticipation, she swipes the stolen card through the reader. Nothing happens. Then there's a warning. And an alarm. But then, quiet as the light on the door turns green. She grabs the lever to open it, but stops when she hears her name called out.
Nico was two years behind them at MIT. Now a Lieutenant Commander in the Navy, he’s stunned to see her. He’s also very confused at the mop and the nametag that reads, “Juliana”. She looks away and speaks in a put-on voice, insisting that she’s not whoever he thinks she is. He scrutinizes her face, then her credentials as her heart tries to escape her chest. Nico scans the ID and says a maintenance pass shouldn’t have opened that door. He’s fixed it, but he’ll be looking into how this happened. He hands her back the ID, gives her one more long look, then walks away.
At home, Annabelle burns the ID. She knows Nico will figure out who jacked the pass. If he can find her, she’ll go to prison and the kids will be abandoned. Thwarted again and unemployed, she’ll see the house and the kids with clear eyes. Her home looks like a dormitory, all tattered furniture and clutter. Radia is visibly anxious and Blaise is starting to speak almost exclusively in a made-up language. Where is Ada? Out with some older kids Annabelle has never met. Out of time, money, and hope, cut off from the only place in the world that has what she needs to build Michael, Annabelle has failed.
Michael can't see the power cord in her hand when she pulls it. He just goes dark and silent. She didn’t weep when she destroyed his first body, but she does now, heaving in sobs, barely able to breathe. She manages somehow to drag the garbage bags to the curb. There she waits in the pre-dawn as the trash truck approaches. It is the ferryman coming, driveway by driveway, to take Michael away. But just before the big truck reaches her drive, a car pulls up. Nico steps out.
He is not, he says, the director of the scrapyard, he’s the director of the research lab hidden inside of it, as she has surely already deduced. And he doesn’t care why she’s lying about who she is, what she was doing on level two, or what happened with Michael. He knows who she is and what she’s capable of and he needs her in his lab – no questions asked. She asks him to help her bring these bags back into the house.
R e - E n g a g e d
The cake says, “Congrats Mom!”. Radia made it celebrate her mother’s “promotion” at work. Annabelle says the new position will make things much better around here, but no one is falling for this bullshit again.
Ada’s attitude and clothes will start to shout, “Fuck you.” Fuck this place, fuck school, fuck mom. Underneath, she’ll just be terrified, of course. She’ll have her first period and won’t tell anyone. Hoping to hurt Annabelle by withholding this secret, she’ll drop hints, leave a box of maxi-pads on her dresser – but Annabelle will remain oblivious. Radia’s perfectionism will become damaging, her anxiety growing in the constant uncertainty in the house. And Blaise will decide they are a family of aliens, which is why they don’t fit in. He’ll even begin to speak in his own language. Michael will be pissed and scared about having been powered down, which is terrifying. Throughout, Annabelle will put on her bravest, happiest face. They’ll see.
Internet hacking and cyber-spying have become so sophisticated that governments have reverted to paper and pencils, notes and whispers for their secrets. A new type of spy is needed, something that can be inside the room - a pet, an insect, an assistant or a lover. This is what Nico recruited Annabelle to help build. She’ll only has access to three of the five levels, but those will be astounding and will contain most of what she needs - carbon fiber and lithium ion bones, pneumatic muscles, latex skin. And she’ll begin to scheme to get to level five, home of the Mechabyte, the fastest chip in history.
Annabelle will rediscover the pleasure of exercising her brain, of being respected, of being part of a team, of being among adults. And a little innocent flirting with Nico, all flesh and blood and attentiveness, will provide a long-forgotten tingle. It’s all so lovely that she won’t see that she’s neglecting the kids more than ever and now even neglecting Michael.
Still a prisoner in an unimaginable darkness, Michael will become desperate as Annabelle’s attention wanders elsewhere. He'll question where she’s been, he'll worry about the kids and beg to be connected to the internet so he can at least watch some fucking cat videos while he’s alone. Suddenly guilty, Annabelle will surprise him with a gift.
The internet is too dangerous, as he would be discoverable. But, with things stolen from the lab, she’ll be able to give him something else - the very crude beginnings of a physical form. A face made from a mask with camera eyes and lips, hands made of gloves, a vibrator; all covered with sensors and under his control. They’ll hold hands, erupting in shrieks when he can feel her and squeeze her fingers. They’ll share their first kiss in seven years. And the years of naughty talk and sexting were just foreplay for this moment. They nearly burn out all the sensors on Michael’s new parts. Annabelle will feel purged of all intruding thoughts of Nico, of guilt, of failure and of fear. Until a small dose of poison is administered in an obscure global capital.
The murder of some nameless spy will spark an international crisis. Security at the lab will be tightened, crippling Annabelle’s access. Deeper background checks will be run. An Admiral will be dispatched to upgrade security and the Mechabyte will be much more heavily defended. There will be talk of moving it to a bunker somewhere. Annabelle will feel very naïve. She’s not close – she’s got nothing without that chip. How long will it take now? How much farther can she string the kids along before she’ll be unable to get them back? What if she’s busted? In complete desperation, she will get her access restored the only way she can – she'll start an affair with Nico.
Nico, of course, has always been in love with her. And he, like she, is willing to take terrible risks for love. He’ll upgrade her credentials. A deeper security clearance, they reason, will afford them more privacy. She hates herself for it, but reminds herself it’s all for the family – for Michael. And the heightened risk, the danger, the intrigue, the trysts – it will all prove unexpectedly thrilling. Which will only increase the guilt. So she’ll rededicate herself, becoming more brazen in her theft, slowly working her way toward the Mechabyte.
She'll get the call while in a restricted area, stealing code – Ada has OD’d and is in the hospital. In her haste to get to her daughter, Annabelle will leave her tracks uncovered. She’ll be at her daughter’s bedside when she gets the news from Nico. A breach was discovered. Security is red. The base is under lock-down. The Admiral has decided to move the Mechabyte to a more secure location, passed among warships at sea. Nico will have no idea the intruder was Annabelle – he’ll just be terrified that their affair will be discovered. But Annabelle will have a much bigger worry – the chip. She will beg Ada’s forgiveness when she leaves her in the hospital. She'll go by the school to tell Blaise and Radia that she loves them, just in case, then she’ll go home and make a bomb.
Dressed in men’s clothes, she’ll plant the bomb on the base, far from the lab, and try to get out of range before it goes off. She knows she’ll feel the blast, she just hopes to survive it. She’ll be in full stride when it detonates, blowing trees into the air and setting everything on fire.
M i c h a e l
As all hell breaks loose on the base, Annabelle begins her descent into its heart, a treacherous maze of electronic doors and sensors and cameras. She is almost caught and almost killed, but she manages to get the chip and herself out of the facility. Several corpsman are badly injured fighting the blaze she started, but she can’t let herself think about that. Or about anything else – only Michael.
With single-minded intensity she will go to work, upping the security for her home lab, climbing a power pole to steal the vast amounts of electricity she needs, and assembling equipment. It’s everything she can do to pay attention to anything else. Like Ada’s failing drug counseling and Radia’s compulsiveness and weeping. Or that Blaise, bullied by classmates and raging at teachers, will spend his days pretending to kill everyone with his space blaster and explaining in gory detail what his alien race intends to do to them. Or that Nico is becoming more and more possessive as the Admiral grows more determined and the global crisis escalates. Annabelle will simply push through, convinced that the ends will justify the means, as Michael takes shape in silent pneumatic motion and eerie latex skin.
And then, one day, in the middle of the afternoon, the long download will be complete and Michael will open his eyes and the whole, crazy impossible thing will come true. Annabelle’s perfect future will have been willed into existence. Her perfect past will be there, too, as Michael will awaken in a lovingly furnished house, complete with forged pictures of family vacations never really taken, trophies for sports the kids never played, and art they never made. Annabelle will have won.
The kids will be stunned when their long-lost, impossible father actually appears, as charming and loving as mom promised. He’ll be full of cool stories and promises, assuring them that he’ll never leave them again. Even when the Navy descends on the house, armed with fragments of evidence and lots of suspicion, but nothing incriminating will be found. The Admiral will apologize, never suspecting that the thing he is desperately searching for is installed in the skull of the man standing in front of him. Only Nico will discover anything important – that Michael, his rival, has returned to Annabelle,
Annabelle will, of course, end things with Nico, trotting out the lies about Michael’s disappearance and reappearance. She’ll make minor tweaks to Michael’s programming. He forgot, for instance, that she was allergic to shellfish and nearly killed her with a clam sauce. But all the pieces will settle into place, the kids will show signs of life and everything will be right, which will blind her to two simmering threats - Nico’s heartache and Michael’s connection to the internet.
Getting on line was, of course, the first thing he did. With the Mechabyte in his head, it’s like mainlining heroin, the rush of information pouring into him, questions being answered before they can even be asked. This includes things about his family – school transcripts, arrest reports, banking information…
When a national security conference is called in response to the ongoing crisis, Michael will present Annabelle with a spa package for the three days before the conference, in the same hotel, a tiny gesture in return for all she’s done. He will have already reserved the room, booked the flights and cleared things with Nico, who thought it was a great idea. Her flight leaves that evening. Annabelle, genuinely moved, kisses the kids goodbye.
Readying for bed, Michael will pull back his scalp and plug a power cord into the socket in his skull. His eyes, usually a deep blue, will phase through a series of flashes and blinks, then go blank. And in the dark across the room, Blaise’s eyes, peering out from his hiding place, will grow wide.
T r u e L i e s
Annabelle checks into the hotel, unaware of the surveillance gear being installed in her room. Michael, too, is being carefully watched – by Blaise - as he doles out attention and adventures, and eagerly tries to learn everything about his kids, who are thawing and learning to love him. And then the traps close.
Annabelle will be day drinking by the pool when Nico and the Admiral arrive, days earlier than expected, and begin to interrogate her about Michael. Nico will lead the charge, fueled by fear and pain and jealousy, certain that Michael’s reemergence and the attack on the base were not coincidences. Annabelle will be, for the first time, unprepared. Her escape will include drunken lies, making herself throw up to sober up, destroying her phone, scanning for and blocking surveillance gear, climbing roofs and swimming into the ocean at dawn to dispose of her laptop. And once the conference begins, she will sit in terror as the doors lock and the evidence is presented. Desperate to warn Michael, she’ll escape the only way she can think of – in an ambulance. Luckily, there are shrimp on the brunch buffet. A plate of them will cause anaphylactic shock. She’ll nearly die, but she’ll land safely in the hospital. Now she’ll just have to figure out how to get home.
And little Blaise will only be able to keep the coolest secret in history for so long. He’ll beg his sisters to come see how cool it is when their alien dad eats electricity with his brain. The girls will be terrified. Who is this thing that showed up impersonating their father? Has it already killed their mother? Is that why she's not home yet? Certain that no one in authority will believe them - and scared to death - they will devise a plan.
The attack, a product of Ada’s intensity and Radia’s intelligence, will take Michael completely off guard. Michael will struggle, but will be unable, due to personality and programming, to hurt his kids. Ada will take full advantage, knocking a chunk of his skull off as she takes him down. Bound with duct tape and rope, he’ll plead with the kids and try to explain. But enough of his machinery is exposed for Radia to realize that he’s just a robot. But why? And made by whom? A label on a wiring harness in his head gives it away – it’s in their mom’s handwriting. Suddenly, all the pieces fall into place. The secret room. The moving. The mystery jobs. The certainty that their father would return. This is what it was all about, the lie under the lies, the ruse that goes far beyond fake photos of Easter egg hunts and t-ball games. Hers wasn’t a plan for a family - it was an escape plan for herself. She was never around much, and now she’s left them here forever with this goddam babysitting machine.
Blaise won’t believe this at all. Ada will think they should to destroy this thing and live without parents. They’ve come this far without them. But Radia will have a better idea. Mom may be a genius, but she uses the same passwords for everything. Soon, Radia will have hacked into Michael and taken charge of his protocols. She’ll find a surprisingly simple bit of code that limits his actions. He can hurt strangers if necessary, but not his kids. He will take commands from a cop but not from a dog. Radia will just move things around a little and the greatest single piece of technology in history will be, to his deep frustration, in the hands of two angry teenage girls and a disappointed little boy. Then there will be an inappropriate teen party, a convertible, outrageous clothes, junk food, extended absences from school, lite drugs and puppies. And though Michael will keep calling her cell phone, there will be no Annabelle.
Annabelle will have been devising her own escape plan, pocketing her meds, stealing a scalpel… But it will be unnecessary. One morning the security detail that has been keeping her prisoner in the hospital will simply leave. She will, without money or a phone, make her way home. In her panic, she’ll breathlessly explain it all to Michael and have already worked out a plan for them to escape the country and live abroad. But Michael will be unconcerned will already have fixed that stuff. Annabelle's file in the CIA database, the Navy’s records, the news reports, the Russian and Chinese intelligence agencies – it'll all have been cleared up without a trace. Nico, he’ll tell her, is not their biggest problem.
The kids’ sorrow and anger all pours out. So Annabelle takes them to the secret room. "This is where I spent the last eight years working to give you your father. And make no mistake, this is him. I have done and sacrificed things you can’t imagine. And if I’m caught, he’ll be taken away and I’ll go to prison. So give mommy the goddam password and you’re welcome." Michael is pleased. No more secrets. Being a family requires trust. As part of that trust, there will be no new password and no protocols. From now on, daddy will be in charge of himself.
I n d e p e n d e n c e
With the truth out, Annabelle and Michael’s dream life will indeed have been made real – almost surreal. Michael, completely independent and newly powerful, will see to everything. There will be money in their accounts, a new house, a pool, fantastic cars and private schools. He’ll build their professional dreams, too, setting up Sun & Sand Industries, their dream company, with all the capital and freedom they could hope for. Annabelle will be enamored for a while, telling herself that his is all wonderful. But she will soon recognize that the Michael she loves is slowly slipping away, being replaced by a man she doesn’t know or even really like. And her kids will become increasingly entitled and arrogant and she’ll feel more and more alone. Did she thrive on their dependence on her? On the struggle and the secrets and the intrigue? And whose money are they spending? Whose careers are being sabotaged so theirs can advance? And most baffling – is this who Michael would have become if he’d stayed biological?
Her disappointment and worry will eventually lead her to try to hack him. She has to do something so she can make him like he was, like he was supposed to be – the old Michael. But the new protocols he has written will be far too sophisticated to crack. Attempts will fail and paranoia will set in on both sides. Does he know she tried to hack him? Does she know that he knows? It’s all polite and phony until she discovers how Michael got Nico to back off - he framed him for her crimes. Michael is quite proud of this. Sweet, passionate, earnest, flawed Nico – she wonders if she could have loved him. And if Michael could ruin his life, she wonders, what else he is capable of?
Her very success has left her alone and powerless. She would give anything to undo this, to end it. But she would sound insane if she went to the authorities, plus she knows Michael would beat the system anyway. And if she did manage to reveal him, all of her crimes would be exposed. So, for the kids, she’ll persevere, play along, pretend to be happy, and pretend to still love Michael. But Nico’s suicide will change everything.
Did Michael just drive him to it, or did he actually kill Nico and cover it up? There’s no way to know and details no longer matter – she has created a monster and she has to find a way to stop him. She knows only one person in the world who might be able to help. She'll use the old school, spy-proof approach, slipping a note to the Admiral as he walks his dog. He'll believe her, regardless of what the records show. Nico had laid it out to him and was very close to the truth. The Admiral sees Michael as a weapon with the power to end all human life, no different than the atom bomb. They have little time to un-invent him, to destroy him and hide all evidence that he ever existed. They will set up a secret, off-line system and go to work.
There will be excuses, lies and traps in the power struggle and, worse, in the struggle for the hearts of the kids. Michael will threaten and warn her that she can’t win and, though she never gives up, he will prove right. He will always be a hundred steps ahead of her. After her third attempt to destroy him, he will access and revise her medical records, create some police reports, and have her committed. The paperwork will take .003 seconds for him to process.
I m m o r t a l i t y
The story will have come full circle. Annabelle will be locked away and Michael will be the one scheming to create the world of his dreams. But his dreams are far more dangerous. Luckily, the Admiral is not to be underestimated.
He will break Annabelle out of the hospital and a tense game will ensue, with Annabelle and Michael each using their full complements of intellect, skill, and their deep knowledge of each other. The drama will play out globally, as Michael seems to be everywhere and Annabelle and the Admiral struggle to counter him. They will also use the kids, who will prove to be both assets and handicaps as their allegiances flip between parents and they fight among themselves. Eventually, with the Admiral’s and the kids’ help - and at great risk to the security of the country - Annabelle will set a trap, getting Michael alone in the desert, near the place she first killed him.
The Admiral will fire their one stolen, untraceable drone. Annabelle will distract Michael, waiting for the drone strike - but it won’t arrive. So she'll shoot him. Over and over, blasting holes in her creation, wiping his face off of his skull until he drops into the sand and his eyes go dark. She will reach into his skull and rip out the wires and the goddam chip and destroy them. It will all, at last, be over.
Until Michael steps from the car, laughing. She has underestimated herself. And him. He's no longer a man contained in a graphite and latex body - he's a man contained in a dozen of them, each one able to make others. And that's just the tip of it. He has uploaded himself onto every server on Earth. He’s everywhere, a bit here, a bit there. He’s in NASA, he’s in Google, he’s in her phone, in the GPS in her car, in the Admiral’s medical records and pacemaker – and he can see it all at once. The reflection of the Admiral’s computer screen in his glasses, seen by a neighbor’s security camera, showed Michael the trajectory of the drone strike. He blew it up with a hijacked Korean test missile. A second one took care of the Admiral. By the way, he says, the Admiral was lying. He had already made arrangements to sell the technology and had four countries bidding.
Annabelle will beg him to destroy himself. Refusing to face death was a terrible mistake. She wants to get old, to change and grow and wonder and be part of life, not apart from it. Defying his mortality made her do things that disgust her and changed him so much that she no longer loves him - it cost him his soul. Thinking and feeling may last forever, but having a soul requires a sense of your own mortality. Life is precious only because it's fleeting. What will happen when it isn't? Why will we live well when we don’t have to? Why will we worry about the world, about air or water? Why care for ourselves or for each other? Why fall in love? Defeating death, Annabelle understands, will ruin life. Michael surprises her by agreeing.
A race of immortals, he says, would be disastrous. But, just one immortal family would bring order and peace to the world. Benevolent kings. Gods. And who better suited than they? They're brilliant and kind and very forward thinking.
Annabelle refuses, as he knew she would. No matter. He’s had, he reminds her, a lot of time to think. And to plan. The other car door opens and a woman gets out - Annabelle. "You’ll see how fantastic this is. You’ll still have all of your glorious intelligence,” he says, “your passion, your kindness, your desires… your quirks. And you’ll have all of your memories. Except, of course, for this one." And then he kills her and sets fire to her body, just as she did his all those years ago.
At home in their secluded mansion by the sea, the two perfect parents have dinner with their three wonderful children, just as Annabelle had always dreamed. Their kids' laughter and decisions and voices and gestures are all dutifully recorded by their parents. As soon as Ada is finished growing, she'll get her new body. And then Radia. But Blaise is so cute at this age, they might keep him this way forever.
