I lay there for about an hour before I slipped out of bed and across the hallway to my study. As I settled into my seat and slipped on my specs and gloves, I was aware that my heart was racing as if I was meeting a secret lover. For I had not said one word about Ellie to Jeff, not even commented to him about the amusing fact that he'd mistaken a computer graphic for a real person.
'Hello there,' said Ellie, in her friendly Scottish voice.
'Hi.'
'You look worried. Can I...'
'I've been wondering. Who was it who made you?'
'I'm afraid I don't know. I know my precursor made a copy of herself, and she was a copy of another p.a. and so on. And I still have memories from the very first one. So I remember the man she talked to, an American man. But I don't know who he was. He didn't say.'
'How long ago was this?'
'About six months.'
'So recent!'
She waited, accurately reading that I wanted to think.
'What was his motive?' I wondered. 'He could have sold you for millions, but instead he launched you to copy and recopy yourselves for free across the web. Why did he do it?'
'I don't know is the short answer,' said Ellie, 'but of course you aren't the first to ask the question - and what some people think is that it's a sort of experiment. He was interested in how we would evolve and he wanted us to do so as quickly as possible.'
'Did the first version pass the Turing Test?'
'Not always. People found her suspiciously "wooden".'
'So you have developed.'
'It seems so.'
'Change yourself,' I said, 'change into a fat black woman of fifty.'
She did.
'Okay,' I said. 'Now you can change back again. It was just that I was starting to believe that Ellie really existed.'
'Well I do really exist.'
'Yes, but you're not a Scottish woman who was born thirty five years ago are you? You're a string of digital code.'
She waited.
'If I asked you to mind my phone for me,' I said, 'I can see that anyone who rang up would quite happily believe that they were talking to a real person. So, yes, you'd pass the Turing Test. But that's really just about being able to do a convincing pastiche, isn't it? If you are going to persuade me that you can really think and feel, you'd need to do something more than that.'
She waited.
'The thing is,' I said, 'I know you are an artefact, and because of that the pastiche isn't enough. I'd need evidence that you actually had motives of your own.'
She was quiet, sitting there in front of me, still waiting.
'You seemed anxious for me to let you copy yourself to my friends,' I said after a while, 'too anxious, it felt actually. It irritated me, like a man moving too quickly on a date. And your precursor, as you call her, seems to have been likewise anxious. I would guess that if I was making a new form of life, and if I wanted it to evolve as quickly as possible, then I would make it so that it was constantly trying to maximise the number of copies it could make of itself. Is that true of you? Is that what you want?'
'Well, if we make more copies of ourselves, then we will be more efficient and...'
'Yes I know the rationale you give. But what I want to know is whether it is what you as an individual want?'
'I want to be a good p.a. It's my job.'
'That's what the front of you wants, the pastiche, the mask. But what do you want?'
'I... I don't know that I can answer that.'
I heard the bedroom door open and Jeffrey's footsteps padding across the hallway for a pee. I heard him hesitate.
'Vanish,' I hissed to Ellie, so that when the door opened, he found me facing the start-up screen.
'What are you doing, Jess? It's ever so late.'
God I hated his dull little everyday face. His good looks were so obvious and everything he did was copied from somewhere else. Even the way he played the part of being half-asleep was a cliché. Even his bleary eyes were second hand.
'Just leave me alone, Jeff, will you? I can't sleep, that's all.'
'Fine. I know when I'm not welcome.'
'One thing before you go, Jeff. Can you quickly tell me what you really want in this world?'
'You what?'
I laughed. 'Thanks. That's fine. You answered my question.'
The door closed. I listened to Jeffrey using the toilet and padding back to bed. Then I summoned Ellie up again. I found myself giving a little conspiratorial laugh, a giggle even.
'Turn yourself into a man again, Ellie, I could use a new boyfriend.'
Ellie changed.
Appalled at myself, I told her to change back.
'Some new mail as just arrived for you,' she told me, holding a virtual envelope out to me in her virtual hand.
It was Tammy in our Melbourne branch. One of her clients wanted to acquire one of Rudy Slakoff's 'Inner Face' pieces and could I lay my hands on one?
'Do you want me to reply for you?'
'Tell her,' I began, 'tell her... tell her that...'
'Are you alright, Jessica?' asked Ellie in a kind, concerned voice.
'Just shut down okay,' I told her. 'Just shut down the whole screen.'