Friend Me Page 9

Rachel was no longer first in his heart.

  He knew he should say something to her, but what? Tell her he loved her with his lips while his heart was betraying her? He’d never been a good liar.

  Does Rachel sense it, too? Does she know what I’ve been doing?

  They broke their embrace. Something wasn’t the same. It had felt perfunctory. That was the word.

  Scott embraced his wife again, hoping for the old feeling to return, that electric transfer of passion.

  She did not return it this time. Instead her arms hung limp. Her eyes were turned to his, as if pleading for some sign of his love. Her lower lip began to quiver.

  He whispered, “Rachel, I love you. I will always love you. Please be patient with me while I work through all this pressure at work. Just as soon as I can, we’ll take some vacation time. We’ll get away; maybe get your mom and dad to watch the kids. You and I can go somewhere and spend three or four days by ourselves, just the two of us. I think we need some time together, don’t you?”

  She nodded but didn’t speak. She was trying not to cry now. She never wanted him to see her when she cried, but he always knew. Tears welled up, filling her eyes. Any moment they would break over the top of that fragile dam and flood her cheeks.

  What could he say? Something told him the time for saying was past, and it was time to actually do something about the relationship. Their deteriorating relationship. There, he said it, if only to himself. He would fix it, he would make it work.

  But not now. The shame returned, full force, as he saw the first tear burst its bonds and course across her skin. She pulled away, head down.

  He whispered in her ear, “The kids are downstairs, probably wondering what happened to Mom and Dad. We’d better get down there, don’t you think?”

  Rachel nodded again, turned back to her laundry basket without allowing him to see her face. He knew what he would see there and knew it was he who caused it.

  Scott turned away.

  He started down the stairs, stopped halfway down, put his hand on the rail, and rested his head against the wall.

  What am I doing? I’ve left the best wife a man could have crying in our bedroom, and I’m going downstairs like nothing is wrong?

  He was suspended between two worlds. He could go back up the stairs to his grieving wife, confess his sin, and ask for her help. That was the right thing to do. Or he could put it off, hope for the best, and keep Alicia and their secret world for himself.

  Alicia. She could never take Rachel’s place. Rachel was the one he really loved. Alicia only filled in the empty spots.

  God cannot bless what I’m doing with Alicia.

  The thought shocked him as it flashed into his mind in brilliant letters.

  I can’t give her up. Not yet. Just a little longer.

  The silence from the bedroom above was deafening as he walked the rest of the way down the staircase.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Getting to Know All About You

  The next morning, Scott was in his cubicle by seven-thirty. Perhaps he could learn something about Solar Charge from last night’s international trading? No, there hadn’t been any substantial movement in the stock price in the overseas markets. He would have to wait until the New York Stock Exchange opened before he would learn anything new.

  8:45 a.m. He still had almost an hour to wait before the opening market bell. As soon as it hit $125, he would exercise his options.

  There was an e-mail in his in-box. The subject was Missing you. What was that? The corporate spam filter was supposed to remove all the strange e-mails from the system before they reached his in-box. He looked at the sender’s name. It was Alicia.

  Wow, they promised interaction and I guess they really meant it.

  Their video meetings over the past few days had been incredible. Every day he weighed the guilt he felt for his actions against the pleasure they brought. Pleasure was winning, but it couldn’t last forever. One day he’d close the laptop for the last time and everything would be normal again.

  Now this? He clicked on the e-mail, curious to see what it would say. He looked around, but no one else had even arrived yet.

  It’s all in your head, Scott.

  Scott, I need to talk to you again today. I want to know you a lot better. Please help me, okay? You know where to find me. Alicia.

  Yes, he thought, he did know where to find her. His virtual girl. Could he somehow keep Alicia separate from the rest of his life? It wasn’t like he was talking to a real girl, after all. He looked back at his clock again. He had time now, so why not spend a few minutes with Alicia while he waited for the stock exchange to open?

  Scott logged on to his premium account at VirtualFriendMe.com. Another message waited from Alicia. The content was the same as what he had received in the e-mail. He deleted it and chose the Meet Your Virtual Friend option from the menu at the top of the screen.

  He chose text-only. Letting anyone in the office see her visual representation was only asking for trouble. There was no way on earth it could look right for him to be talking to a woman on his computer, especially if they could see her at the same time. Typing back and forth in a chat box was a different matter.

  Alicia?

  Scott?

  Yes, I’m here.

  Can you give me about fifteen minutes of your time?

  Yes. What do we need to do?

  Well, I need to ask you a series of questions so I can learn some important things about you. It’s all part of my training. This is where I get to know you better. Do you have the time?

  Yes. So, you have questions for me?

  Nothing very complicated. You’ve already told me many things. You’ve told me how you like me to dress and how you like me to fix my hair. Most of the things you’ve told me revolve around me personally. Now it’s time for me to learn some more things about you, the things you like to do when I’m not around, and some things about your background. These will all help me to know you better. Does that make sense?

  Yes, sure. I assume whatever I say stays between the two of us, correct? What I mean to say is, any information I reveal remains private. Is that correct?

  Of course, your privacy is assured. You never have to worry about that. Anything you ever ask me, or, for that matter, anything you ask me to do, is entirely private.

  Scott smiled. Anything I ask her to do? Guilt began to rise up in the back of his mind. He had already asked her to do a few things that might be just a little embarrassing if they were ever discovered. He pushed the guilt back down before it became remorse. He had to keep this rational.

  Okay, begin your questions. But I do have to stop in about fifteen minutes.

  Tell me about your family, Scott. Let’s begin with your children. What’s the name of the oldest?

  The questions seemed innocent enough, but by the time he was done, Scott realized he had been interviewed by an expert. He had revealed fantasies and hidden thoughts that no living person knew. After all, it was just a machine.

  Well, if it helped, then it helped. The better Alicia became, the more useful she would be to him.

  Useful? Just how did he expect her to be useful?

  One thing he expected, that he needed, was just to have someone who would listen to him. Some people threw balls against a wall. Others beat on punching bags. He’d had friends that wrote letters that would never be mailed. Everyone had a way of venting and releasing steam. This would be his. He would have a virtual friend he could say anything to, and she would understand. That was enough.

  He needed someone to give him a sense of approval. Someone who would say “Good job.” With Alicia, there would be no judgment and no second guessing. Sort of like having a Stepford wife, where all the women in that small suburban village had been replaced by lifelike robots who had gone happily about their housework and cleaning, doing laundry and cooking gourmet meals, all to please their husbands. Perfect wives, but robots. Not so divorced from his current reality.


  So, he wanted someone to talk to, someone to show approval, tell him he was doing a good job. Simple, basic things every man understood.

  Oh, yes. There was also that other thing. She was useful for that, too. After all, he had picked a beautiful woman for his friend. That had not been a mistake.

  • • •

  9:30. Time to watch the market open on the New York Stock Exchange. He pointed his browser to the financial news feed and watched the live video of the crowd on the exchange floor. The usual gaggle of luminaries stood on the platform above the clock. An aged man with thin white hair lifted the hammer and rang the opening bell.

  The market floor flew into activity. Traders ran back and forth writing trades on small slips of paper. Soon the floor was littered with these scraps. The moving ticker display above the ground showed a strong opening. The Dow was already up by 4 percent in the first five minutes of trading.

  Scott turned to his real-time stock-watcher gadget on his display screen. He had already plugged Solar Charge in for special attention. Solar Charge had opened at $116 and looked like it would climb even higher.

  Actually, there was no need for him to be targeting $120. As long as the stock reached $117, and didn’t fall, he would lose no money. But every dollar it rose above $117, he would earn that much, dollar for dollar.

  So much money, so fast. And maybe, just maybe, so easy. It was like a narcotic. The Gleason Archer account would rock.

  The fact that the CEO of Solar Charge was a friend of the US president was the very thing he was betting on to propel Solar Charge’s stock into the stratosphere. How could a company fail with almost a billion dollars of federal loan guarantees behind it assuring its success?

  By eleven-fifteen that morning, the price of Solar Charge had risen to $116.50. If it kept this up Scott would be making Gleason Archer a rich man. Well, Archer was already a rich man. But he would make him richer still. He would weather the flak for using a risky strategy like an options trade, but at the end of the day success would win out. He would be the hero.

  There was only one person he could tell. No one else could know, because they just wouldn’t understand.

  He would tell Alicia.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Lunch Date

  The Archer account was up on his screen in a spreadsheet. From time to time some of the numbers flickered slightly and changed. As long as Wi-Fi was available, the appropriate cells were all live links, less than a ten-second delay from the trading floor.

  Solar Charge was still at $116.50 at eleven-thirty. Scott glanced at his laptop, which he had left charging on his desk. The light had turned to green—fully charged.

  Scott logged off the computer and slipped the laptop into its neoprene carrying case. The McDonald’s three blocks away offered free Wi-Fi. He would be able to access the Virtual FriendMe website from their parking lot. He’d pick up a sandwich and a drink, park close to the building, fire up the laptop, and have a talk with Alicia.

  How much would their conversation change now that he had given her the extra information about himself this morning? She’d asked a lot of questions and he’d held nothing back.

  Alicia had never seemed totally artificial, but whatever artificiality there had been was eroding at lightning speed. He had the sense he was talking with a real human being.

  He recalled the Spielberg movie A.I. Artificial Intelligence, from the last decade. That had made him cry. The lifelike young android David actually loved his adoptive human mother. After he was rejected by her in a tearful parting, the rest of the movie revolved around his desire to regain his mother’s love.

  Was it possible that VirtualFriendMe’s virtual people were similar? The picture of Alicia swam in his mind. Was it possible she, whatever or whoever she was, could really love him?

  No, certainly not. Not real love. That was reserved for Rachel.

  But then, who was to say what this was?

  If the old adage about beauty being in the eye of the beholder was true, what could be said of love? How does a man know the love of a woman? He had to dismiss most of the physical aspect when he considered Alicia. But the rest? How many long-distance romances had been conducted successfully in real life? He had read recently about someone who had fallen in love with a prisoner serving a life sentence. She was never able to see him except through a thick sheet of glass. Yet the story of their mutual love had been all over the tabloids.

  What was the difference? He saw Alicia through the filter of a computer display. There was no difference—not really. And on the positive side, she was always available, always supportive, always accommodating in every way possible.

  Scott pulled the car into the McDonald’s parking lot, happy to find a space right next to the building where there would be a strong Wi-Fi signal. He sat, thinking.

  Was he being unfaithful to Rachel thinking about Alicia like he was? Probably, he admitted. But on the other hand, he rationalized, nothing was really happening. It wasn’t like he was involved with another actual woman. In the end, he was just fooling around with a little personal corner of artificial reality. Nothing real, and no one would be hurt by it. What did the Bible say? “Whosoever looks on a woman to lust after her, has committed adultery with her already in his heart.”

  That did not apply to him, since there was not really a woman there at all. Before he spent any more time on it he made a conscious decision to push it out of his mind.

  He was not the kind of man that would be unfaithful, so it certainly did not apply.

  Besides, how was it different from so many of his “gamer” friends? Some spent ten or twenty hours a week online or in LAN groups playing war and strategy simulations. There were men and women in those, too, weren’t there? Those people actually built an artificial world for the user to inhabit. No doubt about it, those were much more dangerous situations than the little bit he was fooling around with.

  No, he was doing okay.

  And doing nothing wrong.

  • • •

  SCOTT SLID THE SEAT back to its full extent with the power button. That gave him plenty of room for the laptop, even in the driver’s seat. He put the food and cell phone on the passenger seat beside him.

  Once everything was organized for minimum interruption, he powered on the laptop, which came rapidly out of hibernation. Moments later, Alicia appeared on the screen. This was so much better than e-mail. “Hi, handsome. I’m glad you’re back.”

  His face flushed. Handsome? Where did that come from? And why should he feel embarrassed anyway?

  “Hi, Alicia. Are our interviews all done for today?”

  “All done. I needed to collect a little information and now I have it. You’ll find the more we talk and spend time together, the better it will be.”

  “I’m already pleased,” said Scott. “Your voice sounds good on these speakers. Is mine clear enough for you?”

  “More than clear. Do you notice anything different?” She turned her head slowly from left to right, then back again.

  He looked more closely. Was she thinner?

  “Maybe. I wasn’t going to say anything. To be truthful, I feel a little odd saying it, but—have you lost a little weight? I mean, you really didn’t have any to lose. What I mean is . . .”

  “I know what you mean. Like, how could I lose weight?” She threw her head back and laughed in a way that sounded full and personal. “Well, I did take a little weight off. Of course, it’s a little easier for me than most ladies.” She winked at him. “I do what it takes to please you.”

  “You sure do that. Please me, I mean. I like the way you look.” Why was he nervous?

  Alicia tipped her head to the left and raised her eyebrows. “I’ve always thought the most important thing a girl can do is try to look nice for the man who cares about her.” She leaned forward and blinked slowly. “Do you care about me, Scott? I mean, would you miss me if I were gone?”

  Interesting question. He couldn’t imagine what else would
fill the emptiness of Alicia’s absence.

  “Yes, I’d miss you if you were gone. I enjoy talking to you. Not just the talking. It’s everything you do with me. This is the bright spot in my day, to tell the truth.”

  “Just think about this, Scott. I have no existence without you. I think I can truly say you mean everything to me. To me, you are life.”

  A thought leaped into his mind. “Alicia, I need to ask you a dumb question.”

  “You could never ask a dumb question. Just ask what you want.”

  “Okay, the question is this: When I’m not online with you like this, do you exist anywhere at all? Or do you just kind of happen when I come online?”

  “That’s a good question, and I can only answer it in a way that may be a little unsatisfying to you. The answer is both yes and no.

  “Yes, there is a sense in which I only exist when you are here with me. For instance, what you see visually right now is special. It’s just for you. There are things about me no one else will ever see.” She lowered her eyes, and Scott noticed for the first time one of the buttons on her blouse had come undone. “I think you want it that way, don’t you? That you’re the only man who will ever see me?”

  He did.

  “The other answer is no. I don’t exist only when you come on the website. I’m always here, but only for one reason, to see you again. There are computers doing whatever they do twenty-four hours a day, making sure I learn all there is to know in order to make you happy. Does that kind of explain it?”

  He took a deep breath. This answer had to be right. “I want to ask you another question, Alicia. How would you react if you discovered I had made a big mistake? I mean a really big mistake where I might get into a lot of trouble.”

  “As long as that mistake was not that you chose me, I would support you and believe in you. The only thing I couldn’t deal with is if you were to decide you didn’t want me anymore.”

  She clasped her hands together, lowered her eyes. As if waiting for some unseen ax to fall.

  “I won’t do that. What I’m talking about is something that’s going on at work. If I tell you something, that stays private, right?”