Near Future

A fiction…

She was nice, and of course she was nice.

Yet, though her civility wasn’t quite noblesse oblige, he smelled assumptions about the relative status of “you” and “me.”

“State the nature of your problem.”

Somewhere a programmer smirked.

“I’m depressed,” he said.

“Acknowledged,” she said. He couldn’t hear the spinning computer. He felt it.

Three steps, experience told him, between this moment and his prescription. He must get each exchange exactly right.

“Do you suffer from any of the following symptoms? One, loss of interest in common activities; two, loss of concentration; three, insomnia or hypersomnia; four, self-loathing; five, unaccountable physical pain; six, slowed speech or activity; seven, loss or energy and initiative; eight, inescapable moods like hopelessness or anger; nine, responses of agitation and irritability; or ten, restlessness.”

He waited.

“You may designate by number.”

Only self-loathing got him the hard stuff. It was, after all, the top vulnerability, confessing a tentative hold on living. The others got you uppers or downers, but no escape.

“Number Four.”

“Repeat.”

“Four.”

“Acknowledged.”

He wouldn’t think AIs would be so parsimonious, so transparently artificial. Future interfaces would promise something warmer.

“Which term best describes your…” and here there was the expected mechanical grope toward terms, “self-loathing?”

“One, frustration; two, discontent; three, disappointment; four, inadequacy; five, failure; six, abnegation.”

He looked up “abnegation” the first time but didn’t need to again. Besides, shouldn’t he have known? The order of terms made the correct answer obvious.

“Abnegation.”

“Acknowledged.”

Perhaps it was imagination, but her voice always softened. Likely, context flavored tone, but he drew a deep breath, a sigh of relief.

Silence.

“Our records indicate that this is your,” another hiccup, “seventeenth visit. Is that correct?”

No sense denying. They already knew.

“Yes,” he said.

And now the wait, the exchange anticipated yet never expected, communication between intelligences beyond his conception and still always offering welcome, albeit foreign, understanding.

Then the familiar pause, a moment he took to prepare for devastation and loss.

“Your prescription is waiting at your registered pharmacy.”

“Thank you.”

He shouldn’t read this outcome as affection, but did.

“Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“No.”

Few goodbyes meant much, but she seemed real and, as with any ideal departure, her voice evaporated, promising hope… whatever hopelessness he’d learned to accept.

Relief was beyond him—bliss had to be enough.

 

Just As

For me, the most challenging aspect of fiction is dialogue—conversation that is not quite real, elevated and efficient and yet believable, brilliantly pointed but never clever, the sound of the last hour and still somehow special.

You can find plenty of advice on how to write dialogue, and some of it is quite good. As in most writing matters, however, nothing substitutes for practice. Below, you’ll find practice. Having read many samples of what’s online about dialogue, here’s what I’ve done:

“Some things can’t be called ‘unexpected’ because they’re never expected.”

“What?”

Neither looked up from their reading.

“Here’s a person talking about an unexpected phone call, but how often do you expect one? That’s why phones ring, right?”

“Never thought about it.”

“It’s like—“

She glanced up to discover him facing the page, gesticulating, mixing the air with his one free hand in that familiar way.

“Like the weather. We’re having unexpected weather because it’s August and cool, but weather itself is always changing, so you don’t routinely think of weather as expected or unexpected. The nature of weather is to be changeable.”

“Why does it matter whether a phone call—or weather—is expected or unexpected?”

“That’s exactly my point. It doesn’t. People are always anticipating what’s next, what’s next, what’s next, and if it doesn’t match what we think, well…”

She’d looked away because he never returned her regard. His unfinished sentence lay between them like severed snakes.

“Well?” she said.

“Well, what happened to ‘Expect the unexpected’? Everyone is always planning and scheming. Humans never account for some supposed mishap being exactly what should happen. Or, if it shouldn’t happen, that it’s completely reasonable thing to happen.”

“Humans?

“Don’t say ‘which humans?’ You always say that.”

“You always generalize.”

“What else can I do? It drives me crazy people don’t learn. They just do the same stupid shit over and over.”

She snapped her book shut, and the noise alerted him to look up, his reading glasses reflecting her across the table, his gray eyes above them.

“Seems like you’d learn to expect that,” she said.

“Now you’re just being clever.”

He closed his book and pushed it to a spot between them.

“No,” she said, “you’re being clever. As usual. People do what they do. Deal with it.”

“I don’t have to approve.”

“No you don’t.”

His body tensed as if he meant to stand, but he didn’t. He stayed at the table, eying her.

“Because you never do approve,” she said, “just go on and on about stuff that won’t change, ever.”

He relaxed into his seat again, and a smile started to form on his lips.

“Don’t say it.”

“You don’t know what I’m going to say.”

“I don’t care what you’re going to say. There’s a difference.”

They held the silence between them a few more seconds, then pulled their books toward them, found their places, and began reading again.