How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe - By Charles Yu Page 0,12

little. “I guess I’m a little sleepy.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

This is what I should have asked him: If you ever got lost, and I had to find you, where would you be? Where should I go to find you?

I should have asked him that, a lot of things, everything. I should have asked him while I had a chance. But I never did. By then, he had drifted back to sleep again, smiling. Dreaming, too, I hoped.

My manager IMs me.

We get along pretty well. His name is Phil. Phil is an old copy of Microsoft Middle Manager 3.0. His passive-aggressive is set to low. Whoever configured him did me a solid.

The only thing, and this isn’t really that big a deal, is that Phil thinks he’s a real person. He likes to talk sports, and tease me about the cute girl in Dispatch, whom I always have to remind him I’ve never met, never even seen.

Phil’s hologram head appears on my lap. I sort of cradle it in my hands.

YO DOG. JUST CHECKING IN.

HEY PHIL. EVERYTHING A-OK HERE. YOU?

YOU KNOW, SAME OLD. MY LADY IS STILL ON MY CASE ABOUT THE DRINKING. BUT YOU KNOW HOW I ROLL.

Phil has two imaginary kids with his wife. She’s a spreadsheet program and she is a nice lady. Or lady program. She e-mails every year to remind me about his fake birthday. She knows they’re both software, but she’s never told him. I don’t have the heart to tell him, either.

SO WHAT’S UP, PHIL?

OH RIGHT. WE CAN’T GUY-TALK ALL DAY, HA HA? I’M PUNCHING YOU IN THE ARM NOW, EMOTICON-WISE. I DON’T KNOW HOW TO CONVEY THAT. ANYWAY, MY RECORDS ARE SHOWING YOUR UNIT IS DUE FOR MAINTENANCE. YOU FEEL ME, DOG?

SHE’S RUNNING FINE.

TAMMY hears this and starts to make a noise like, uh, no she’s not. I hit her mute button. She gives me a look.

YEAH, I KNOW, HOMIE, I KNOW.

SO WE’RE GOOD? WE’RE GOOD, RIGHT, PHIL?

Come on, Phil. I stroke his holographic hair. Come on, be a pal. Say it, Phil. Say we’re good.

YO DOG YOU KNOW I’M YOUR BOY BUT, HEY, UH, YOU’VE BEEN OUT THERE AWHILE NOW, DOG, AND I DON’T KNOW, MAN, YOU KNOW?

Of course not. I monkey around with the Tense Operator for ten years and right when it starts breaking down is when I have to bring it in. I’m going to need to figure out how to fix it if I want to keep my job.

ALL RIGHT, DON’T SWEAT IT, PHIL. I’LL BRING IT IN. ANYTHING ELSE?

YO DOG, THAT’S TIGHT. WE’RE COOL, RIGHT? I’M STILL YOUR HOMIE? MAYBE WE CAN GRAB A BEER WHEN YOU’RE IN THE CITY. IS THAT RIGHT? GRAB A BEER? GRAB. GRAB. GRAB. GRAB. GRAB.

Phil crashes a lot, midsentence. Sooner or later, they’re going to upgrade, and then no more Phil, and yeah it’s true I could do without all the small talk, but I’m pretty sure I’ll miss him.

Client call. I punch in the coordinates and now I’m in the kitchen of an apartment, in Oakland, in Chinatown, sometime in the third quarter of the twentieth century. A pot of oxtail stew burbles on the stovetop, fills the room with a deep, rich cloud of stewiness, fills the room like a fog bank rolling over the bay.

I go into the living room and find a woman, a little younger than I am, maybe twenty-five, twenty-six. She’s kneeling over a much older woman who lies still, in an awkward position, legs slumped off the couch, left arm dangling down to the floor, mouth slightly open as if she has lost control of it, eyes looking up at the ceiling, or whatever’s beyond the ceiling, filled with a clear-eyed awareness of what’s happening.

“She can’t see you,” I say to the younger woman.

“But I can see her,” she says. She doesn’t look up at me.

“Not really. This didn’t really happen. You weren’t there when she died.”

Now the younger woman looks at me. Angry.

“Your mom?” I say.

“Grandmother,” she says, and I realize in my time away from time, spent idling in my machine, I’ve become terrible at guessing someone’s age.

I nod. We both watch the old woman lying there, coming to terms with whatever she was coming to terms with.

TAMMY discreetly beeps to remind me we have a job to do, rifts in the underlying fabric to repair. If we stay too long, the damage could get worse.

“I’m not saying this to hurt you,” I say. “All I’m saying is that since