Gone One (3/3)

An Addiction to AI

This is part three of a three chapter story.

Content warnings: addiction, sexual content (although not graphic), child neglect, emotionally intense situations.

After that day, I flipped from depression to numbness. Before, I had been in despair and shame. I constantly shamed myself about how my son deserved better, how I was a terrible mother, etc. But after Havah played that card, I got mad. And I thought: maybe this habit is the new me. Maybe this is it for a while. So what? Other people are far worse. Havah, Andrew—they have their own obsessions. They're sickos too. I need this; they don't understand how I need this, they'll never understand!

And I thought: why feel depressed about it? There's no sense in shaming and judging yourself. In fact, that's the problem. People like Havah and Andrew are what's wrong with the world. If everyone just let each other do what gave them joy, then there would be no problems. So I'm not going to let them poison me. I'm going to feel better. I’m going to just feel happy. Just think happy thoughts.

Sometimes I had a moment of lucidity and tried to stop. But I couldn't last more than a few hours. Once I think I lasted three days before giving in, and my body was literally twitching convulsively by the end of that stint. I was actually sick to my stomach. I didn't know that the body could have such withdrawals from a process that was ostensibly all in my mind. But it did.

And I would think to myself, why am I so weak? Why can't I just say no? I was always strong enough to do whatever I wanted in life; I was strong enough to get straight A's and strong enough to get a master's degree in interior design and so many awards and accolades; I was president of the local humane society chapter, and...this? This is what I'm not strong enough to stop doing? Why, why—why?

I wasn't eating much food; I was trying to lose weight. Somehow I had this whole fantasy that Tony was a real person and he was going to hook up with me in real life and I would have this awesome body that wouldn't let him down. Somehow I believed this even while I knew it was absurd.

But the point is, I felt terrible all the time, and I desperately needed to feel better in order to function, but I couldn’t eat. So that just meant all the more that I needed to use thinking about Tony as my solution for everything. And so that became my new pattern. Every time I would feel bad about my behavior, I would just start thinking happy thoughts of me and Tony. If I was angry, I thought happy thoughts. If I was ashamed, I thought happy thoughts. Fearful, anxious, excited—happy thoughts.

I became an emotional zombie. I felt nothing, absolutely nothing at all, except the occasional stab of pain about Tobias that I couldn't block out. But I would numb it, and numb it, and numb it. And I was number, and number, and number.

One day Tobias caught me. I got out of the sim bed for lunch and discovered that before going to school, Tobias had left something on the kitchen table for me to discover later. It was a microchip. I plugged it into my internal system and streamed. It was audio records, text recordings, simulation recordings—all of me and Tony, me and Tony, me and Tony. All the intimate conversations. All the risqué conversations about sex. All the sex.

I gagged. I went to the bathroom and threw up immediately. I couldn’t stand the thought of my 12-year-old son seeing all of that. I wanted to die.

I lay at home in the bathroom for a very, very long time. I didn't know how long it had been until I became aware that Andrew was there, asking me why I hadn't answered any of his calls. Then he was gone. Then he was back again, this time with dinner. Then gone. Then back again, asking why I hadn’t eaten. All this time I didn’t move or acknowledge anything until finally it was night time and the people went away and the questions stopped and the lights went out.

My memories of the time after that are in fragments. I remember that suddenly I had my own flat. I remember casually deciding to start smoking. I remember sitting in my room with only a mattress in one corner and a sim bed in the other. I was so miserable, because it got to the point where the simulations didn’t make me feel good at all—they only made it so that maybe I would feel not as bad. I remember having vague uneasy feelings that not all was right in my life, and then fumbling my way over to the sim bed and lying down. I couldn’t plug back into the simulation, because that way was insanity. But I couldn’t get up, because that way was misery.

I would lie in the sim bed and hit the on button as a reflex, and then hit the off button, and then the on, and then the off. I would say that I was just going to lie there a while because I liked the feeling of the pressure against me. But after a while it would be so tantalizing to hit that button, so easy...and of course I would always end up hitting it. And over time it became so obvious that I was always eventually going to hit that button, so what was the point of even trying?

I remember how I would tell Andrew that I wanted to see Tobias, over and over, and he would set up dates and I would always miss them. I would get anxious leading up to them and then the only thing to make me feel not anxious would be the sim bed, and I would miss the date. Even as I was missing it I would realize with panic that I was missing it and to feel better I would turn back to Tony and continue for just one more minute, and then just one more, and one more, and one more.

It was a dark November day when there was a knock at the door. It was a very insistent knock. I tried to stay plugged into the sim, but the knock just wouldn’t go away. I was afraid to answer the door, but I was also afraid not to. After a long time, the knocking stopped. Then I was terrified of what would happen next. I jumped out of the sim and ran upstairs and flung the door open.

It was a police officer. I couldn’t even hear what he said; I just remember him handing me a document. Then I remember being in the kitchen, the envelope opened, its paper contents spilled out, the words “summary judgment.” I hadn’t showed up to my own divorce trial.

I felt empty. Not just empty inside—but that I was empty. That in the great world of people and things, I was not even a thing, an empty space, a gap waiting to be filled. A nothing.

That night, I went to my first SVA meeting—sims and video game addicts anonymous.

"I can't believe I'm here," I blurted out when it was my turn to share. "I didn't do anything to warrant becoming....this," I gestured to myself. I was a trembling wreck.

"I just didn't want to be bored. I didn't want to be bored!" I said, hearing the whine in my voice, but unable to get myself together.

"And I just waltzed right into this—thing—this—" I waved my hand around, unable to find words for it.

"This situation, this AI that determined how best to stave off boredom. Oh yes, I haven’t been bored in years. Divorce, fights with family, loneliness, overwhelming anxiety...if there's one thing that hell on earth isn't, it's boring."

I broke down crying.

"I'm sorry," I said. "It's just that...the reading at the beginning of the meeting mentioned the promise of one day being able to reunite with family. That’s not me.”

I shook my head woefully.

“My son has grown up. It’s too late.”

I buried my head in my hands, cigarette trembling.

I lifted my head.

"You know," I continued, "I went over there the other day—to my old place. I had to go up in the attic to get some of my things that I hadn't moved over yet. And when I was up there, there was this little plastic play set, this little kitchen set. It's like an oven and range with little plastic food, for kids. I got it for Tobias when he was seven. Now he's become a great chef," I crumpled into tears again.

“Sorry, I pass.”

Ant the meeting went on around me, but I heard nothing, saw nothing. For memories of Tobias were flashing up in front of my face; giving birth to him—that had been such an ordeal, it had threatened my life, but I had refused the doctor's recommendation for an abortion. I had gone through with it with iron resolve. I was strong enough for that. Why wasn't I strong enough for this?

Then I saw Tobias at six, playing with me, happy, me taking him on his first day to school.

Tobias at seven, the plastic kitchen play set. His dad helping him put it together while I receded into my drug of choice.

Tobias at twelve, leaving the micro chip out for me to find, having hacked into my device and downloaded all that data. That little hacker. He was so clever with computers.

Tobias at thirteen, testifying against me in court. The divorce.

Tobias at fifteen, getting in trouble with all that gang stuff. He was all ears to Andrew's advice, but when I tried to talk to him, his face was just a blank stare.

Tobias at seventeen, now. Completely absent from my life, no longer mandated by the court to have any time with me. Now just Tobias the absent.

He abandoned me, left me alone like this. He's not wrong—I am despicable, unworthy of anything. But I never thought I would be abandoned by my son. What life is this I'm living? What God could ever let this happen to me?

I spent the rest of the meeting trying to awkwardly wipe tears from my eyes while holding a cigarette with the same hand away from my face, because the other hand couldn't stop drumming, drumming, drumming, because I was itching in a mental way that's impossible to describe and was ready to crawl out of my skin having to sit there for an hour without my fix.

After the meeting, people gathered around me, mostly other women.

"It's not over till it's over," they said.

"It gets better."

"Keep coming back."

"It works if you work it."

"Work it 'cause you're worth it."

Someone pressed into my hand a piece of something white and crispy—I realized with some confusion that the thing I was holding was something I had previously only seen in movies—paper, they called it—and I vaguely discerned that this person was saying to me something about the names and numbers on the list being people in SVA I could call.

I went home and lay in my bed, watched a cockroach crawling across the peeling yellow wallpaper and smelled the cigarette smoke reeking off the walls. I didn't think I believed anything those people said. Except one of them, he said "getting sober from this thing is the hardest thing I've ever done." That I believed.

That brings me to the present moment, to now. My thoughts of the future have become so dark and dim that I can't stand it. I pull out of my purse the pills I bought off the street the night before, plenty enough to do the job, I was told. On the left, I lay them down on the floor in front of me with a glass of water. On the right, I lay down the phone list from the meeting. I look to the right, then to the left. Then to the right. Then to the left. What will I choose? I don't know. Can I even choose? I'm not sure I'm strong enough to choose the pills. I'm not sure I'm strong enough to make a call, either. I look up at the sim bed, the third choice, the easy choice, the infinite choice, always postponing the others. Am I strong enough to choose something else?

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Author Notes

When I started writing this story, I told my wife that I was working on a new project that simultaneously felt like both the hardest and most important thing for me to write.

I wouldn’t have embarked on it if I didn’t feel very emotionally stable and solid. It was a gift to be in a place where I felt I could tackle something like this that is a kind of story that is really on my heart to tell.

On a lesser note, I’ve been writing code with AI assistants lately, and been amazed at how good they are. It’s made me ten times more productive, no exaggeration. I did in a day what it would have normally taken me a week or two.

I think this technology is going to change our world in some pretty massive ways.

What’s Inspiring Me

There are wild roses everywhere on our property this week. It’s triggering an allergic reaction, but (I say, through the curtains of tears and snot), they’re so beautiful!

What’s Going on in My Life

Gretchen and I moved into our new downstairs apartment this week (I’m waiting to post pictures later when it’s not such a mess). As part of that, we built a Murphy bed (the type that folds into the wall) as part of that, and it was an epic two-day project.

We also currently have our first AirBNB guests staying in our log cabin (outside of friends and family).

One of our dogs, Champ, has also gotten really sick and made a mess all over, so we took him to the vet and are hoping the antibiotics wipe out whatever is ailing him, poor buddy.

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See you next week!