The Leaf

Detection

Raymond

Humans in pre-modern times still had shame surrounding certain sexual practices. Even women who weren't afraid to experiment in bed, like Claire.

She stiffened, "You know about that? Watched a video?"

"We don't need videos. We can read data. Read a scene on hundreds of levels. I can produce a video output of the information I have, but it's only pre-modern humans who need to see it represented like that. To me, a thousand charts read in a second is much more relevant."

Claire didn't answer, probably wondering how the rest of her and Tony's habits would get reproduced.

"The problem with technology in my time," Raymond tried to keep it neutral. They still had a half an hour more until she would go to the bathroom, followed by him, minutes later. Apparently, Wesley also needed some time convincing her. "Is that we can't fake things like this. Everything has to happen, the monitoring of body responses and indicators is strict. There is no way a couple who regularly has sex and then stops out of the blue doesn't draw attention. Or if they like it and then they stop liking it. Or their marriage is sexless and now they're suddenly having sex. It's something an automated rule can easily track, send alerts. The only reason we are getting away with this conversation is that there are few ways to quantify emotion outside of measuring physical reactions. It's why lie detectors," it was the closest example from her time he could find, "Sometimes fail: you can't detect someone who's lying to themselves by measuring their body responses."

"It's why I think you slipped under our radars: you enjoyed sex with Wesley, so the overall emotional read was always higher."

No sound, no conversation. Just a couple who lived together for the rest of their lives in apparent peace.

The music had stopped, people were gathering around one of those long tables. The most Raymond had seen before in one place was one: randomly passing a fellow janitor. They didn't even need to say hello, quick access to a public folder revealing everything there was to ask. No need for a conversation, they could have it at any time, which they never would. Just do your task, go back to your virtual life, that person one click away forever.

"So are you saying," Claire finally looked up to him, blushing under thick foundation, "That we'll need to... imitate everything Tony and I did?"

"We have some leeway—because it's what happens when you let AIs monitor the History Logs. You see," Raymond was proud for having it figured out, "When a human watches over the information about an event, they immediately see if something is off. We can't train a machine to detect unusual behavior for a human—events that don't make sense, sequences of events that are off. Like people talking stiffly to each other, then running into bed, sleep with their backs turned to each other, change the dress they were supposed to wear. For an AI, these are small deviations, you still wore what you were supposed to wear. The events still happened more or less the same, over a day. It takes a human eye to say—Wait, why are they talking like they're angry? Why does a couple who's been married for years behave like that after a glitch?"

Claire interrupted him, "You arrived during another glitch?"

"They're pretty rare, so the one I used to... get rid of Tony... was one of the best possibilities I'd calculated. The Blackout erased information randomly, some got restored in patches. The glitch we're facing tonight is considered long by all standards, probably because this area was considered stable enough to not worry about making data recovery a priority. It's why I chose now." And because it had to be after she'd quit drinking, it was important that her mind was clear. "I planned everything around these glitches. The next time in our lifetime will be when we're forty. We get time to spend it our way, as long as we don't influence history. Think of them like vacations from our scripts."

Nico handwaved them to their places, Claire grinning as if asking him if it was alright with the logs to move.

Raymond smiled back, following her, "The one tonight gives us time to plan the more difficult parts to imitate—because it'll come a time where we can't afford to make mistakes. But I'll show you how when we get to that. I have a plan!"

They took the same seats as on The History Logs, Claire scanning faces. In the original timeline, the scene had looked the same: she had to make sure Tony didn't get into an argument, stiff by his side, smiling politely. She touched Raymond's shoulder with hers when she leaned into him so that no one else would hear, exactly like she did with Wesley.

Claire

"What happened to Tony?"Claire needed to know, but didn't look at Raymond. She sensed him turning to see her better as she tried to focus of the movement around them.

"I send him back in my time. We have no monitoring of our outside-the-pod lives—programs just read and log directly from our brains when needed. He probably ended up on an empty hallway that leads to more hallways. Someone will find him, it's in a place something always malfunctions. He'll be taken care of, even without information on how he got there."

"Because you see," Raymond disclosed, not knowing she didn't care if Tony died, "They can't read information off his brain, it's too ancient. They will have a Tony Wesley from around the late 2010s, unknown timeline -- and yours are all identical. They'll investigate, but their first concern will be his well-being, so it will take a while. It requires human intervention and it's rare, in my time. Seeing his personality up close, I doubt they'll send him back, even if they do find and remove me."

He assured Claire, "As long as we don't trigger the History Logs Monitors we should be fine."

Seated next to her new husband at the dinner table, her friends around her, Claire thought about what was really stopping her from playing her part in making sure Tony stayed gone. He would've hated vegan spaghetti. Her entire night would've been about that. 

"Why are you doing this? Why is it so important that you don't get caught?" Why did he want to live Tony's life so badly, especially since it was nothing out of the ordinary?

"I have a few months to live, in my time. Although my—I guess you could call it—afterlife is assured, I wanted to do something that mattered. Think of it as recycling: put those months to use, make someone's life better."

Claire's follow-up question—why her?—died unasked as she realized Raymond's main reason was altruistic, albeit born out of boredom over being too content. What did he call her, a leaf?

It surprised her how much she wanted his reason to be her. Not as a project to improve a 'pre-modern' human's life, but as a person. It hurt to think whether a man from the future would find a housewife so riveting that he'd time travel for her. And if she were honest to herself, him having done that would have scared her in a way only Tony had ever managed to.

"It's time," Raymond moved his eyes to the door, at the end of which the bathroom waited. "I'll follow you in five minutes."

Tony would've announced that by feeling up her leg. Claire ignored the sting of the thought that maybe Raymond just didn't want her as much.