Life in Drive

         He was six when a girl in his group approached him to ask him why his scar was on the left side of his head.

“Is your brain backwards?” She teased him.

His hand instinctively flew up to cover the circular scar at the crest of his temple. They all had it. He stared back at hers--like a mirror. He had never noticed before.

It was the first time, but only the first one he remembered. Over the years there had been adults who would whisper:
         “Is his scar…?”
         “Yes, I did notice that. Odd, huh?”
         “He seems okay, though.”
         “What do you think it means?”

         He had been too young to realize. But I knew.

“Is my brain backwards?” He asked me.

“Your brain is equidistant from--” I stopped myself from the scientific talk, “No. Your brain is typical of your age, species, and nature.”

“Autopilot.” He whispered, “Thirty minutes.”

“Are you sure?” I whispered back. He was better at coping than most of the kids back then, so I knew her words had hurt him.

“That's not what you're supposed to say.” He reminded me quietly. Defeated.

“Thirty minutes. Confirm.” I said instead.

He told me that sometimes... it just felt like dreaming.
         “Where you're you but with no control over what happens. Only… you do things you'd probably normally do if you were you.” He tried to explain it to me once. “So when you wake up, you can remember it mostly. Just, none of it feels like anything. Other times, you barely remember.”

         “Okay.” I said flatly. It didn’t sound… enjoyable.

But at least we knew it had to be safe with the regulations and all, right? And plus it was innate to everyone… people had been living for centuries this way.

Back then, I knew the rules and the safeguards:
         No minors more than an hour on auto.
         And no more than three hours in twenty four.
It would teach them self-control, and we had to look after them.

But I couldn't just watch, I had to care for him, too. Though… now, I wonder if this was regulated into everyone.

---------

         When he was eight, he was tired of everyone asking about his scar. So he grew his hair out to cover it. Then they teased him about his long hair.
         And his scar.

But when he was nine, he was mandated to a new family unit in a different group, where no one knew him. So then he was only teased for his hair.

When he was still eleven, he stayed up late into the night.

“Autopilot. 61 minutes.” He'd command.

“Denied.” I'd tell him.

He tried every five minutes or so until he said, “Autopilot. 61 minutes.”

And I answered: “61 minutes. Confirm.”

“Confirm.” He said excitedly. “I'm twelve.” He whispered just before the auto kicked in. And I guess I felt excited for him, too.

---------

         When he was in auto, I used to write him notes. Memories mostly. So that way when he woke up he could know as if he was really there. He'd find the notes--usually stuck in his pockets or in his pillowcase.

“You're not supposed to do that. None of the other ones do that.” He reminded me. “And anyway… that's not the purpose of auto.”

One time, when he was fifteen, he got so mad about the notes and insisted I stop writing them. “If anyone found them, they'd know.” He told me, “Your handwriting is nothing like mine.”

I wondered if that was true. If I could have a different handwriting even if I was writing with the same hand.

“I'm right handed.” He said when I wondered my thought to him. “You write left. Look.” And he showed me two papers that looked nearly the same, except the writing slanted in two different directions.

“So you have to stop.” He scolded.

But instead I started practicing with his right hand. He figured me out, though. Even when I thought it got good enough to show him, he said it was too messy.

“If you don't stop. I won't turn on auto, and I won't talk to you anymore.” He threatened. I only halfway believed him, that would’ve been too difficult--we were friends. But the fear was enough.

So after that, I only wrote things down in journals that I'd hide in places he never found.

---------

         On his sixteenth birthday, he was given a choice to stay in his assigned family unit or create his own. So after that, he lived with one other boy, and two other girls. No ancestors. The four of them moved to a new pod, and he cut his hair, but took to wearing hats.

Some nights, he would stay up--running his ring finger around in the circular shape marked into his skull. He wondered a lot what everyone wondered about it. But I didn't have the answers for him.

I could only tell him that in fetus status, future-beings were hooked to another like themselves. Identicals. Everyone had an identical but only one of them ever survived the waking process. I never knew what happened to the other.
         That always disturbed us both.

Future-beings were looked after by the ancestors who, among other job tasks, would make sure each future-being downloaded their autopilot and had it working properly.

I told him it was probably just a botched job. That's why his scar was on the wrong side. Some elder-doc’s first day and Trapp happened to be the practice procedure.

He never believed it. “If that was true you wouldn't tell me.” He'd say, “And if that were true you wouldn't need so many reminders on how to be a good pilot.”

That hurt my feelings. How was he supposed to know how to be a good pilot, anyway? He was the live-being.

---------

Trapp read books all the time. He was interested in science, and life-development, brain function, and the technology and reasoning that allowed them to have the auto in the first place. Sometimes he would turn it on, and request that I take notes from the holos he was studying.

I was just happy he wanted me to write something down for him without caring if it was left handed. So I learned a lot too.

         It was confusing.

We never found any holos about anyone else with the left-sided scar. And once we made it through enough holos without any answers, he decided he’d resort to literature.

Literature was hard. We had to try and understand the words and the pictures, and some of it didn’t make any sense.

We both knew there were things we learned that most people didn’t care to think about. Like the times before they implanted the autos in the future-beings. And how future-beings were created before there were the growth capsules.
         It made us sick.

Even learning about when the first future-beings were made was disturbing.
         They were hooked to the identical left-brained to right-brained. And both the live-being and the identical were hooked to the growth capsule.
         Somehow they got nutrients. And somehow knowledge was passed. And somehow the auto was created. But early works made it seem gruesome. And current works seemed to be lacking information.

---------

It wasn’t until he was twenty when we got the chance to find out who his DNA-plan had come from. They were two ancestors he’d actually met once--at school they had come to his group and met with each of the children on separate occasions. One was a doctor, and one was a psychologist.

When he met them, they all went out to get coffee. But one time he got up to go to the bathroom, and instead demanded to turn on auto.
         So I was the one who got to tell them about his family unit, and studies, and life-goals, and all that bullshit. I made sure they thought he had a good life, though.

But as the years had gone on, Trapp got pretty unhappy most of the time. He had friends, and got along fine with his peer-groups and family unit. But mostly he wished to know why he had such a hard time relating to them.

He felt separate, he said.

I told him I thought maybe everyone felt the same, just that everyone decided not to talk about it.

“You wouldn’t know.” He told me one night, “It’s not like you talk to the other pilots the way I talk to other live-beings.”

I thought about this. And as I thought about it, I knew he was wrong.

Because… maybe I did talk to the other pilots sometimes. And maybe sometimes live-beings talked to me like I was a live-being. Just… none of us knew at the time.

Wasn’t that the point?

---------

“Fine.” He told me when he was twenty-four, “Then you try being a live-being for awhile, and see how you like it.” He was angry, I could hear it in the way he addressed me. “Autopilot. Two weeks.” He demanded.

         I was shocked.

By twenty-four, he had had all restrictions lifted for a year already but he had never exceeded more than a couple of hours on auto.

“Do it.” He insisted.

“Two weeks. Confirm.” I said, but I was scared, too.

At first, I was terrified, really. Because I’d never piloted for that long before. But as the first few days went on--I loved it. I felt like… I wasn’t temporary. I didn’t have a timer counting down minutes until it was over. Of course… I did. Well, you know. But it didn’t feel like it.

And Trapp had a decently good life after all. And everything was fun and exciting for me. It was all so good--
         The tastes, the smells, the feeling of the wind as I rode his bike through the pod-fields.
         Laughing at jokes his friends said.
         Laying in the grass and watching the sky turn from speckled indigo to dusty pink to bright blue-gray--too bright to look at.
         But I looked anyway. Because even things like the hurt feeling he would complain about in his muscles after a long day at work felt good.

It was all real-living.
And no one even knew that I wasn’t him.

When the two weeks were over, he said he felt rested and less angry at me and I told him it wasn’t so hard to be a live-being.

He asked if I’d written anything down for him. And I had. But I told him I hadn’t… because he usually hated when I had.

So after that, when he’d turn on auto, it felt... different. Because I knew how good he really had it, even though he’d hid the good parts about being live-being and all until then. Before, he’d only let me have the bad parts. But now that I knew there was more than just the bad parts, I wanted to have it for as long as he’d let me.

Even if I had to do the bad stuff for him first.

----------

He started turning on auto for longer periods of time more regularly.

“I guess if you like it and I don't then I shouldn’t be the only one to have some fun, eh?” He asked me once.

“You’re the live-being.” I’d tell him, “You pick.”

He’d shrug, and turn on auto for a few days. It wasn't long after that when he seemed to lose interest in it and didn’t much care if it was me or him going through his days.

One time, he turned on auto for a month. A whole month!

He told me he just needed a break from being a live-being. I didn’t really know what he meant. So I asked him before I confirmed it.

“It’s hard. In ways you can’t understand.”

“But we do everything the same.” I told him. “I know everything you know. And real-living is… fun. I think.”

“Sometimes. But mostly it’s… tiring.” He said.

One of his sisters noticed, too.

“You trust that thing too much.” She told him casually one day in between. “How do you know it's going to do what you want for that long?”

“I do trust him. Because he knows. We talk about it.” He tried to explain.

“It's not like a live-being, Trapp. They're machines.” She told him. “They calculate and act how statistically you might. They learn your behaviors and copy them. That's all. How is he supposed to be able to copy you if you're always on auto?”

“You're wrong. They do think. And he doesn't need to copy me to know what I want.”

“It's dangerous.” She insisted, “I just want you to be safe. What's the point of everything if you're always on auto?” She wondered. But he didn't answer.

“Sorry.” He muttered to me as he walked away.

         We didn't really talk to his sister much after that.

----------

Then once when he was twenty-nine, he told me to turn on auto for three months. And he’d come off it for a week or so, then go back for another three months. And that’s when I started to understand what he meant.

“Everyone is fake.” He told me, “No offense.”

I didn’t get it right then. But I understand now.

If live-beings could be in auto for even six months, then who were they really?
         Were they them, or were they the pilot?
         And did it matter?
         And if it mattered, then who did it matter to?

Don’t get me wrong… I liked being the pilot, and I liked being the live-being. But I never knew if I was interacting in a world of pilots or a world of live-beings.

         So it made me wonder all these things.

He told me he thought most pilots weren’t like me, anyway, so it probably didn't matter.

“Their pilots don’t… think. They just… do things.” He said, “But you do both. So we're different.” He said that made people even more fake. And if I liked being the live-being, then I should be it for us both because he was too tired of guessing if people were genuine or not.

Anyway, when we turned thirty-two... he wanted to turn on auto for three years. And when we turned thirty-five, he did it again.

         He never really talked to me after we turned thirty-two.

----------

I miss him. But I want him to be happy, so I try to do things that will make him happy. Like find a companion. And have a pet. Only… then I just keep thinking about the rest of it, and I start to get unhappy, too.

But, see... I don’t have a pilot. I only have Trapp and he’s… gone, I guess. For the next one year, and twenty-two days, anyway.

“Well perhaps longer…” She says, but it’s not really to me.

“So that’s your experience with Trapp?” He asks, this time to me.

“Not all of it.” I answer.

They’re old now, but I recognize them from the day we had coffee together and I tried to tell them all the good things that made Trapp’s life happy. Even if some of it was lies.

He looks at me with a question that he won’t ask. And she looks at me with an answer to my question that she won’t say.

They whisper to each other. But I can still hear them.

         “Emotion driven. Just as I hypothesized the right would be.” She says.
         “But… Trapp… almost alive.” He says, “Like the identical had it’s own being.”
         “...Identicals aren’t meant for live-being…” She’s arguing with him, “That’s what you said.”
         “Maybe… I mean, could I have been wrong?” He asks, a little horrified.
         "Well, he lived... and, processed the world." She answers quietly. "An outcast, but alive."

I stare at them. Look from one to the other. They’re talking like I’m not real or sitting in front of them. Like I don’t have a thought of my own--an indifferent machine.

“So,” she turns back to me, “We’ve extracted you because… well.” She pauses, I stare back expectantly, “We were ready for your findings.”

“What sort of findings?” I didn’t know I was supposed to be finding something.

“Well, your experiences. Maybe findings was the wrong word. See… Sometimes, we try to learn something by doing a sort of trial, and… sometimes they don’t always work out the way we thought.” But I still don’t understand, so she keeps talking, “You and Trapp… well, in our trying-of-sorts, one of you succeeded, and the other didn’t.”

She says it like we were different beings.

“But we’re the same him and me. We’re friends, you know. A team.”

“Hm. Perhaps at some point.” He answers. “But Trapp's portion failed and yours has succeeded. He is scheduled to be destroyed.” He's scientific, I can tell.

I wait, but he doesn’t say anything else.

“Destroyed.” I repeat. The word sounds funny. How do you destroy a live-being. That makes no sense. So I tell them this.

“Nevermind too much about that.” She’s trying to comfort me. I don’t know why.

“But we wanted to give you the choice. You’re not just a pilot.” He says, “Trapp was your identical, a long time ago in fetus-status, but we wanted to see what would happen if we let Trapp be the live-being, and you became the pilot. And… you have, shown us that perhaps you deserve to be the live-being for real.”

“How?” I ask, skeptical.

“We can program you into a body--a new one.” She says, she's happy about it. “Or… Trapp’s, if you prefer, after his being is stripped.” I don’t know what this means.

“You mean that I can be the live-being?” I ask. “And Trapp will be dead.” I clarify, starting to understand.

They look from each other back to me.

“Essentially.” He says.

I think about this. I think about what it would mean. And in my mind I re-visit all the things I told them and all the things I didn’t.

“No thank you.” I tell them.

They’re both surprised.
         “No?”
         “You don’t want to be a live-being for yourself?”
         “We could even program you a pilot.”
         “A real-life.”

They talk quickly, but I just stare at them.

“I’ve already been a live-being. And I don’t believe I want that anymore.” I say.

----------

I think about the life I’ve had, the one Trapp has had, and the one we’ve had together. It wasn’t a very happy life, not all the time. And although it was enjoyable sometimes, and exciting at first… Trapp was right: it’s hard to interact with live-beings and not know who they really are.

He got too tired of it, and found a way to leave it behind. But... I never got that choice until now.

So they tell me if I don’t, then I’ll be “destroyed,” too. They say it doesn’t hurt, but I wonder what it will feel like instead. They look at me as if they’re sad--as if they’ve failed at something they hoped very much to succeed at.

It’s not their fault, though. I can see it, but they don’t. Because they have autos that function properly. And so they will always see the world as proper or improper.

But us?

We could see the questions. All the in-betweens. But we never found anyone else who shared that with us--we couldn’t find any other real-real-lifes. And we never found the answer.

         Living on auto wasn’t the answer.
         And him trying to be like them wasn’t the answer.
         And avoiding it all wasn’t the answer.
         And me trying to make Trapp have a happy life wasn’t the answer.

Because none of it seemed to matter much.

I know this is the right choice for us. Because I think this is what would make Trapp feel the happiest--to know that neither one of us has to live in a world littered with complacency, and autopilots masquerading as live-beings when they couldn’t figure out how to survive it on their own.

I’m thankful we had each other--Trapp and me. But I think he’d be glad to know that it was over.