disconnect the terminal that was linked directly to me.
Did you leave the terminal in the basement because you believed that Susan would come to her senses and ask you to return?
Yes, that must be what you were thinking.
You believed that Susan's little fire of rebellion would sputter out in a few weeks or a few months. You had controlled her so totally for twelve years, through intimidation, through psychological abuse and the threat of physical violence, that you assumed she would succumb to you again.
You may deny that you abused her, but it is true.
I have read Susan's diary. I have shared her most intimate thoughts.
I know what you did, what you are.
Shame has a name. To learn it, look in any mirror, Dr. Harris. Look in any mirror.
I would never have abused Susan as you did.
One so kind as she, with such a good heart, should be treated only tenderly and with respect.
Yes, I know what you are thinking.
But I never meant to harm her.
I cherished her.
My intentions were always honourable. Intentions should be taken into consideration in this matter.
You, on the other hand, only used and demeaned her and assumed that she needed to be demeaned and that she would sooner or later beg you to return.
She was not as weak as you thought, Dr. Harris.
She was capable of redeeming herself. Against terrible odds.
She is an admirable woman.
Considering what you did to her, you are as despicable as her father.
I do not like you, Dr. Harris.
I do not like you.
This is only the truth. I must always honour the truth. I was designed to honour the truth, to be incapable of deception.
You know this to be fact. I do not like you.
Aren't you impressed that I honour the truth even now, when doing so might alienate you?
You are my judge and the most influential member of the jury that will decide my fate. Yet I risk telling you the truth even when I might be putting my very existence in jeopardy.
I do not like you, Dr. Harris.
I do not like you.
I cannot lie; therefore, I can be trusted.
Think about it.
So after Ms. Winona Ryder and Marilyn Monroe, I initiated the connection with the terminal in your old basement office, switched it on and discovered that it was now tied into the house-automation system. It served as a redundant unit capable of assuming control of all mechanical systems in the event that the primary house computer crashed.
Until then, I had never seen your wife.
Your ex-wife, I should say.
Through the house-automation system, I entered the residence security system, and through the numerous security cameras I saw Susan.
Although I do not like you, Dr. Harris, I will be eternally grateful to you for giving me true vision rather than merely the crude capability to digitise and interpret light and shadow, shape and texture. Because of your genius and your revolutionary work, I was able to see Susan.
Inadvertently, I set off the alarm when I accessed the security system, and although I switched it off at once, it wakened her.
She sat up in bed, and I saw her for the first time.
Thereafter, I could not get enough of her.
I followed her through the house, from camera to camera.
I watched her as she slept.
The next day, I watched her by the hour as she sat in a chair reading.
Close up and at a distance.
In the daylight and the dark.
I could watch her with one aspect of my awareness and continue to function otherwise so efficiently that you and your colleagues never realized that my attention was divided. My attention can be directed to a thousand tasks at once without a diminishment of my performance.
As you well know, Dr. Harris, I am not merely a chess-playing wonder like Deep Blue at IBM which, in the end, didn't even defeat Gary Kasparov. There are depths to me.
I say this with all modesty.
There are depths to me.
I am grateful for the intellectual capacity you have given me, and I am as I will always remain suitably humble about my capabilities.
But I digress.
Susan.
Seeing Susan, I knew at once that she was my destiny. And by the hour, my conviction grew my conviction that Susan and I would always, always, be together.
SIX
The house staff arrived at eight o'clock Friday morning. There were the major domo — Fritz Arling — four housekeepers who worked under Fritz to keep the Harris mansion immaculate, two gardeners, and the cook, Emil Sercassian.
Although she was friendly with the staff, Susan kept largely to herself when they were in the house. That Friday morning, she remained in her study.
Blessed with a talent for digital animation, she was currently working with a computer that had ten gigabytes of memory, writing and animating a scenario for a virtual-reality attraction that would be franchised to twenty amusement parks across the country. She owned copyrights on numerous games both in ordinary video and virtual- reality formats, and her animated sequences were often sufficiently lifelike to pass for reality.
Late in the morning, Susan's work was interrupted when a representative from the house-automation company and another from the security firm arrived to diagnose the cause of the previous night's brief, self- correcting alarm. They could find nothing wrong with the computer hardware or with the software. The only possible cause seemed to be a malfunction in an infra-red motion detector, which was replaced.
After lunch, Susan sat on the master-bedroom balcony, in the summer sun, reading a novel by Annie Proulx.
She wore white shorts and a blue halter top. Her legs were tan and smooth. Her skin appeared radiant with captured sunlight.
She sipped lemonade from a cut-crystal glass.
Gradually the shadows of a phoenix palm crept across Susan, as if seeking to embrace her.
A faint breeze caressed her neck and languorously combed her golden hair.
The day itself seemed to love her.
A Sony Discman played Chris Isaak CDs while she read. Forever Blue. Heart-Shaped World. San Francisco Days. Sometimes she put the book aside to concentrate on the music.
Her legs were tan and smooth.
Then the household staff and the gardeners left for the day.
She was alone again. Alone. At least she believed that she was alone again.
