social media curation in the region,” Mr. Chandra continued. “There are much larger compilers on an international level, but our niche is in the local crowd and human interest stories. When we heard about your miraculous recovery, we were intrigued. Then, when we learned that an I.I. had been installed while you were alive despite federal regulations, we had to know more. There’s not a lot of information out there with doctor-patient confidentiality, so we thought, ‘why not go to the source?’”
“Well,” Chris started, unsure of the exact nature of the preposition being made, “what can I do to help?”
Mr. Chandra started to rummage in his small briefcase. “I have a few questions that I wanted to ask you now, if you have time,” he said. “My thinking was to run a short promo with a few interesting facts about you that could act as a prelude to a larger feature. Would you mind answering a few questions?”
“I guess not,” the patient replied. He felt strangely vulnerable in his hospital gown.
The journalist had retrieved a tablet from his briefcase and pulled a stylus pen from his front pocket. “First question: after the trauma your body has been through, how are you feeling?” he asked.
“At first, it was real bad,” Chris answered, “but my treatment has been fast. It doesn’t even feel much worse than a bruise anymore.”
“That’s good news,” Mr. Chandra smiled as he watched Chris’s reply automatically input itself into the device. “Is it true that you were declared dead at one point of your stay in the hospital?”
“That’s what the doctor says,” the patient sighed.
“And is it also true that an installed intelligence was created of your mind?” the reported interviewed him.
“Apparently so, though I’ve never interacted with it.”
Mr. Chandra looked up from his tablet with an increase of interest. “We broke the story to our audience about the rumors of your condition earlier today, and few of our readers and viewers have been discussing it,” he explained, leading up to his next question. “A few have shared it and the conversation has gone mildly viral. A popular rumor has been spread around that you are able to control both your organic body and the actions of your I.I. Some have even dubbed you ‘The Man With Two Bodies.’ Is there any truth to these theories?”
“No, there is not,” Chris replied, a bit amused at the idea. “And I am thankful for that. I feel like controlling two different sets of consciousnesses would be a sensory overload. I’d be insane before the weekend.”
The reporter gave a generous chuckle in response. Then he turned back down to his tablet. “Okay, so one final question,” he started. “Would you have any interest in meeting with your own I.I. in a live broadcast? It would be the premise of our feature.”
Chris thought for a moment. He didn’t like the idea of having the world watching for the moment that he meets “himself,” but he understood the news interest in it. Were he just a spectator of this anomaly of medical science, he would want to see the meeting just as bad as everyone else. He couldn’t think of a reason to decline other than general shyness. He nodded at Mr. Chandra.
“I suppose I have to meet it sometime,” he said.
Gloria watched her son get out of the back seat of a compact black vehicle. He didn’t even have the bandage around his head anymore and was wearing the same hat that he had been wearing for the last twelve years. It was yellow with a large blue “HRHS” on the front, the acronym for the high school he attended. She had expected stiff movement, maybe even zombie-like, since he had risen from the dead. Instead, he walked as if nothing had ever happened to him and this day was no different than any of the previous ones.
“Hey, Mom,” Chris said once he had walked up to the porch. He turned back and watched the two remaining men in the vehicle retrieve their video stream recorder from the trunk. “Are you sure you’re okay with this?”
“Of course,” his mother replied. “I’m just as curious as everyone else is, to be honest. I just want you to know that I’m here for you. It’s more important that you are okay with this.”
"I suppose I'm intrigued, too," Chris replied.
"Alright, we are live," the crew member in charge of the upload said. He gave a sort of wagging gesture with his index finger to indicate the beginning of their feed.
The other man nodded to Gloria. "Whenever you're ready, go ahead and boot up the I.I.," he said.
The woman took a deep breath of anticipation before she hit the power button on the I.I.'s console. The screen illuminated black for just a moment before it showed Chris's 3D avatar sleeping. He seemed to wake up and even gave a little stretch before looking out of the screen at his mother. He could see her with the array of sensors that lined his display.
"Morning, Mom," he said. He noticed the other people in the room. "What's going on here?"
"Sweetie," Gloria said, leaning in towards the monitor, "there's someone I would like you to meet."
She stepped aside and revealed the real life Chris for the I.I. to see. He stepped forward in order to view the screen better, mouth slightly agape. Both Chrises stared at each other in a moment of bizarre surrealism.
The I.I. gave a bit of a nervous chuckle. "What is this?" he asked. He looked around at the other people in the room, hoping for an explanation. "What exactly am I looking at?"
"Hello, Chris," Chris said to the console. He felt so strange greeting himself in the third person.
"Who are you?" the I.I. wanted to know. "You look just like me."
"That's because I am you," Chris replied. "We are the same person."
A look of realization appeared on the digital avatar's face. "I'm your I.I.," he said after a moment.
"Yes," the man with the human body said. "I am Chris. We are both Chris."
The man in charge of the video feed watched the scene with fascination, moving closer with his recorder. The other man was trying to keep a hold on the flow of viewer comments that were washing in from all over the world.
"I thought you were dead," the I.I. commented. "I thought it was impossible for this sort of thing to happen."
"Apparently not," Chris replied.
"So we're the same person?" the I.I. asked. "We share a mind?"
"Sort of," Chris explained, looking back at the others for confirmation.
"What am I thinking about now?" the digital man said, crossing his arms.
The human Chris gave a bit of a snicker. "I don't think it works that way," he stated. "We have the same mind, but we don't exactly share it."
There was a moment of awkward silence as the two Chrises stared at each other.
"This is so weird," the I.I. said.
The man operating the feed gave Chris a waving gesture to get him to move along with the conversation. Chris remembered what they had asked him to do. He had just the memory in mind, too.
"Chris, I want to do an experiment," Chris started. "Something that will prove to me that we truly are the same person. I want to ask you a series of questions; firstly, about a memory that only I -- or we -- could know the details of. Are you game?"
The I.I. seemed wary. "I guess," he replied.
"Do you remember a girl named Lacy Bartum?" Chris asked.
With hesitation, the computerized avatar gave an embarrassed nod. "We went to school together," he commented.
"When you were eight years old, you wrote her a short note of affection," Chris continued. "You were so humiliated by what you had written that you decided not to deliver it to her locker. Instead, you destroyed it and never mentioned it to anyone. But you never forgot."
"That's right," the voice came from the speakers.
"What did you write?"
There was quiet as everyone leaned in to watch the I.I. think. He seemed only to hesitate because of the embarrassing nature of the answer, but he gave it nonetheless. "'Lacy is so tasty, can we go to spacey, and will you kiss my facey,'" it said. The avatar blushed.
Chris looked back at the faces that looked to him with silent
anticipation. "That is correct," he said. There was a low gasp from everyone else in the room. He turned back to the I.I.'s monitor. "This next question is in regards to a recent opinion change I underwent. The experts tell me that our opinions should change in the same manner since the structure of our minds are identical."
The I.I. seemed uneasy. "Okay," he agreed.
"It's just a minor opinion, don't worry," his prefaced the question. "Who was your favorite high school teacher?"
"Ah, I had changed my mind about this recently indeed," the I.I. said. "We both must have recently read up on the old faculty."
"It looks like we have," Chris replied. "Go on. Who do you say was the best?"
"Mrs. MacIntyre," the I.I. answered.
Chris was taken aback. None of the others could tell what had just happened until he said, "Mrs. MacIntyre? Are you sure?"
There was another slight gasp from the others. "Of course. I read about her efforts to get a local activist hero's intelligence installed," the I.I. explained. "She is a humanist to I.I.s just like me. Wants to get us basic rights."
"I didn't know any of that," the surprised Chris said. "I hadn't looked much into that sort of news, really. I was talking about Mr. Woods. He's the one who broke his neck skiing. He was paralyzed for a semester."
"I remember that, but wasn't he a bit of a technophobe?" the I.I. argued. "Seemed pretty against modernization, if you asked me."
"He wasn't like that," Chris defended the science teacher. "He was just in tune with nature. He liked the rustle of the leaves over