Over coffee, my sister is telling me she had erotic dreams during the last trimester of her pregnancy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat kind of erotic dreams?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cTwo Olivers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cTwo\u2026 of Oliver, your husband?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou were sleeping with your husband, but there were two of him?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the most faithful erotic dream I\u2019ve ever heard.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I host a dinner. Six of us around the table. Saul, Albert, Leon, Susannah, Ruth, and me. We eat watermelon with lime and red pepper flakes, gazpacho, bread and butter and salt. Enough wine to tip the conversation into abstraction. A big salad with basil. Sliced peaches. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Saul, a psych resident, has just started a rotation at Kirby on Randalls Island, and everyone wants to hear how it\u2019s going. He\u2019s doing inmate evaluations and tells us many patients have an incentive to try to get to Bellevue, to be deemed insane or unfit for trial. He finds the work challenging and a little harrowing so far. Tells us what the Uber driver said to him when he dropped him at the hospital one morning, when he was picking up bloodwork: \u201cBon courage!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As I bring out the last bottle (put in the freezer to chill), Albert tells the table about the show he\u2019s curating \u2013 AI-generated images that riff on DNA, 23andMe, family trees. He describes helices and matrices, photos and diagrams rendered by Dall-E, one of the generative bots. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Susannah asks Albert where his relatives are from, then, and he tries to remember out loud in real time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI think\u2026 Ohio,\u201d he says. \u201cOr Iowa?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s okay,\u201d says Saul. \u201cI don\u2019t know if my dad works at Intel or IBM, and it\u2019s too late to ask.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOne of those flyover companies,\u201d says Albert. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDad\u2026 I hate to ask\u2026 what\u2019s your name?\u201d says Leon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Susannah\u2019s been quiet throughout dinner, and I know it\u2019s because she\u2019s recovering from the egg-freezing retrieval procedure. Hormones rebalancing, her system in flux. Ruth is herself \u2013 more so, with Ben out of town. That\u2019s everyone. It\u2019s the first time I\u2019ve hosted in a year, which makes me feel myself again, too. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I work in AI these days as well \u2013 a low-level trainer of a Large Language Model. The job\u2019s mostly remote. Once a week, we contractors stream into the tech company\u2019s spacious, sterile complex for in-person deskwork and facetime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Otherwise, several hours a day, I chat with the bots from home on my couch, or at my desk, or in my bed. I ask them questions and correct their answers \u2013 separating what\u2019s dangerous from what\u2019s merely wrong. Harmful error from innocuous misfire. The bots often make me laugh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today at our in-office meeting, the higher-ups tell a story. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Once, when a group of engineers was teaching an AI model to play a boat-racing video game, they instructed it to get as many points as possible. The engineers assumed this would involve finishing the race. Instead, the boat found an isolated lagoon where it could turn in a circle, racking up a high score despite catching on fire, crashing into other boats, and going nowhere. Maximizing points, the engineers learned, was a \u201cmisspecified reward function.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is one of many parables I take with me into the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the past year, there\u2019d been a breakup, a lost job, and a move. Then a second move to fix the first. But at last I\u2019d felt settled enough to host, which Susannah told me was a sign, a signal. She told me to redownload the dating apps, and I promised I\u2019d think about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The next week at the office, one engineer keeps comparing bots to people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe rate of human learning is just two bits a second,\u201d he says. \u201cWhich means most inputs are lost on people. To a computer, our speech \u2013 our outputs \u2013 would sound slowed-down, the way a whale\u2019s song sounds.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This same day, I chat with an unknown man who sits down next to me in the cafeteria. He\u2019s notably handsome, and I\u2019ve never seen him before. The man tells me he\u2019s a movie actor, just in for the day. I ask him what he\u2019s doing at the company and he says he\u2019s in the office \u201cto be scanned.\u201d He\u2019s an extra, he tells me, though he prefers the term \u201cbackground actor.\u201d Then he looks sheepish. The extra says he understands that most actors don\u2019t want to be scanned, because of the implications for the future of the profession.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI just need the money right now,\u201d he says, heading back to the buffet for a second helping. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
That evening, courting possibility, I re-download the apps. One app. I reassess my profile, swipe, match, and message. At last, sufficiently restless and lonely, I agree to go out with a photographer. We decide on a bar near his apartment. After two drinks, I follow him home. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the morning, the photographer makes me coffee on the stove, plays a vinyl record. The one-bedroom is full of carved objects, prints, books of photography, and an unusual lamp with a fern pressed into its shade. His darkroom\u2019s in a closet with a red light above the door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The photographer warms milk for our coffee and froths it with a frother on his counter, which is the kind of small luxury I\u2019ve never cultivated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Distracted, I look through his shelves and take down a copy of Richard Avedon\u2019s \u201cIn the American West.\u201d It\u2019s a book of his signature large-format, documentary-style portraits, but of people instead of fashion models. I read Avedon\u2019s introduction, and his prose is as clear and clean as the photos. He describes the \u201cinherent manipulations\u201d of his profession, which \u201ccould never take place with impunity in normal life.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Flipping the book\u2019s heavy pages, I see: oil workers, secretaries, housekeepers, gas station attendants, slaughterhouse workers, miners, drifters. There\u2019s a rodeo publicist paired with a pastor \u2013 she in rhinestones, he in that collar. Avedon\u2019s captions are efficient. He gives only his subjects\u2019 occupations, locations, and a date \u2013 cursory information, but enough to be evocative. \u201cPig men,\u201d \u201cSheep men,\u201d \u201cHutterites.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I flip a page and see Avedon\u2019s famous beekeeper \u2013 pale, bald, and stoic. Bare-chested, his skin and face covered with fuzzy honeybees. The photographer comes up behind me, then, and tells me how much film Avedon spent on him, how many shots. There are several images of the beekeeper (the word is \u2018apiarist,\u2019 I read), and the photographer points out how the bees are in a different location in each image, a slightly different pattern, the care with which Avedon chose which to print.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I ask if a particular image is a \u201cplatinum print,\u201d the kind of work the photographer said he makes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Well, that’s ink on paper,” the photographer says. He’s half-kidding. It’s a reproduction of what had been a platinum print, yes. The photographer talks about the inherent trouble with looking at photographs in books, then, or on a website. Online in particular, the images are always backlit by the screen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe way photographs are meant to be viewed,\u201d he says, \u201cis by having light fall on them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The next week, the office day is dedicated to \u201cedge cases\u201d \u2013 close calls and near-misses, on the margins. These are the ones that cause long dark nights of the soul in engineers. Like the time a self-driving car killed a human: Although the vehicle was programmed to avoid both cyclists and pedestrians, the car didn\u2019t know what to do when it saw someone walking a bike across the street.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Saturday evening, I go out with a physicist. A postdoc, technically. (The photographer is out of town for some weeks, for a shoot.) We make a plan at a location equidistant from our apartments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s a rooftop, and the temperature of the air is perfectly comfortable. I get the postdoc talking about his work. He\u2019s studying what happens to space-time inside a black hole. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Take a bathtub,\u201d the postdoc says. \u201cFor most purposes, you could think of what’s inside a bathtub as a liquid \u2013 that description is enough. But you could think of circumstances under which it\u2019s important to know that the liquid\u2019s made up of molecules and the molecules of particles. Freezing, evaporation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFor most purposes, our understanding of space-time is sufficient with the \u2018liquid\u2019 description,\u201d he goes on. \u201cBut my lab is looking for a molecular description, which could help us understand what happens to space-time in a black hole, under an extreme set of pressures.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I sip my cocktail. Seeing I\u2019m wrapping my head around the bathtub, the postdoc tells me he spends most of his days \u201cplaying with toy models of black holes,\u201d which I do find endearing, even though I know he means entering data into a sophisticated computer program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As we\u2019re finishing our drinks, the physicist becomes melancholy. His research has reached a point of frustration, he tells me. Part of being a good scientist, he says, is knowing how to pick which problems to solve \u2013 which means knowing which might be solvable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
August. I housesit for Ruth and Ben while they\u2019re away. Their backyard is all flowers, weeds, mosquitoes, vegetables, herbs, strings of lights, and melted stubs of candles on weather-worn furniture. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The height of their ceilings makes a difference \u2013 the books on their shelves, tile in their bathroom, its grime-free grout. Dust-free floors. In the spring, they scattered sunflower seeds in the backyard, and now the stalks are taller than I am, their faces bending and drooping. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Over the two days I house-sit I eat: their ripe tomatoes, leftovers from their fridge, soup from their cans, toast with butter and jam, the last of their arugula with lime and olive oil, salt and pepper, their cheeses (brie, goat) and crackers (seeded), some white wine, a canned iced coffee with oat milk, peppermint tea, oatmeal with nuts and brown sugar and maple syrup, pitted dates, a bagel with cream cheese and lox and dill and red onion and capers from a bougie cafe nearby, coffee from their beans. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I know Ruth and Ben have been trying to have a child, and their backyard and pantry seem so stocked\u2026 so full\u2026 The word is \u201cfertile.\u201d I recognize this thought is like when one lets the weather dictate one\u2019s mood, and that there\u2019s a name for it: The Pathetic Fallacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now I\u2019m on the ferry back from the office. With me are Hasidic women in long skirts and men in black silk coats, the men’s hats stiff circles of fur. Children everywhere, demanding their mothers\u2019 attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I hear one of the women complain to another about the delay, how long she waited before and after running errands. The wasted day, her husband.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“So, what, you took a ferry ride,” the second woman says, having none of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then the first tells the second she prefers the subway, finding her way in the city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Without the phone, you find your way?” the second says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“With the phone, I have a phone,” the first says, apologetic. “For work.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Their hair is wigs, or the same blunt cut, or covered. I feel free beside them. My beer in a brown paper bag, the air. I think of my sister and her two children already. These women with a half dozen apiece. Double-decker strollers. The kids run everywhere in old-fashioned clothes, holding binoculars. Beneath their black pants, the men wear white tights, leather shoes. They twirl the curls from their temples. One sits across from a young woman, hugely pregnant in a brown and black dress. His wife or sister? Several of the women look pregnant in fact, but she\u2019s the most dazed and beatific. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I get off in Sunset Park alone among them. They walk in groups of six to ten, a throng. All different heights and ages. All dressed alike, out of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That evening I get a drink with childhood friend Henry, who works at a flash trading firm. He always pays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the end of each year, Henry says, there’s a number that tells you how well you did, and the number is bigger or smaller. He describes the company as “printing paper.” For a long time, the company had Henry working on the trading algorithms and models, he tells me, but now everyone there is smarter than him, and the smartest thing he can do is put the right people to work on the right problems, rather than work on the problems himself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The photographer is back. At his apartment, he draws us a bath, with bath salts. Candles. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOkay, Archimedes,\u201d he says before we get in. \u201cLet\u2019s see how we did.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The next weekend, Ruth and I train to the New York State Wolf Conservation Center. Another IVF round has failed, and I want to distract her. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat brought you to work here?\u201d Ruth asks our guide, a woman with long gray hair fixed in a complicated braid, twined with a ribbon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m passionate about human-predator coexistence,\u201d the guide says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The woman had previously volunteered at the zoo, but she was drawn by the center\u2019s project of reintroducing wolves into the wild. The organization focuses on places where they\u2019ve been hunted to near extinction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWolves have been the subjects of negative propaganda since Europeans first came to the Americas,\u201d the guide says. \u201cSince the Brothers Grimm.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The creatures are extremely shy, it turns out. The center also cultivates this in them. The shyest wolves will survive when reintroduced, while the friendly ones will get themselves killed \u2013 usually by approaching humans with the kind of curiosity attributed to death-bound cats. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When wolves were wiped out as apex predators in Yellowstone, the environment changed so much that the rivers changed course, the guide tells us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThat was due to the loss of what we call the \u2018landscape of fear,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cWhen the elk would graze, they used to never graze down to the bud, because the wolves would get them. But without that anxiety \u2013 without the wolves \u2013, they ate and ate. That meant fewer trees of the kind the beavers needed to survive the winter and build their dams, which affected the direction the water flows. As the wolves come back, the willow, aspen, and cottonwood stands have begun to recover.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ruth and I take in the maned wolf\u2019s stilt-like legs and the silver arctic called Cooper after the news anchor. We learn when each species vocalizes \u2013 some howl to attract members of the opposite sex, or so their pups can find them. Others as the moon rises. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf you really want to hear them, come on the first Monday of each month at 11 am,\u201d the guide says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThat\u2019s eerily predictable,\u201d I say. \u201cWhy that time?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s when the center tests the fire siren alarm system for three minutes.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I keep seeing the photographer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou\u2019re leaving!?\u201d I say, the next Sunday, when he says he\u2019ll go out to get groceries. We\u2019ve been in bed for hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDon\u2019t say that,\u201d he says, wounded. \u201cI\u2019m like the sun. It leaves, but it always comes back.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Summer is ending. Susannah says her parents will be away for a week soon, and would I like to come to Florida? Train the bots from the sand? The photographer is off on another shoot. I go. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The second day is bright and clear. We take out the tiny sailboat, all confidence. Early, a coolness in the air. The tide\u2019s going in, the water rushing out to sea, sand rising out of the shallows. On the shoal, we pull the centerboard up. In irons, sails luffing, I get out, the water ankle deep, and pull the boat towards the buoys that indicate deeper water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Susannah tells me to drag my feet, to cause vibrations to scare the stingrays away. We hit the fiberglass hull with the palms of our hands, causing vibrations that mimic echolocations, to draw the dolphins. Some break the water \u2013 tails, fins. The air is still, windless. Water smooth, untroubled. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then, far out in the water, we catch it. When I go overboard, laughing, and soak my shirt, she takes off her father\u2019s and gives it to me, something dry against my skin (she\u2019d managed to stay in the boat as I tumbled). Warm again, dragging the boat again, I walk invincibly on the sandbar, towards the wind we\u2019ve once again lost. To anyone in the distance, some son of God \u2013 out in the ocean, but moving above it. Some saint or martyr, rescuing the skiff. I take in Susannah\u2019s laughing face, her swimsuit, her father\u2019s other open shirt, her eyes the color of the sea. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSusannah, your eyes are the color of the sea,\u201d I say. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Green-gold, out where we are, in that light. In direct sun, the centers are nearly yellow, cat-like, around the irises. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSunflower eyes,\u201d she says, when I describe them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
At certain hours here, the sea looks as though it gives off its own light, the way the moon looks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Back in the city, work has planned a weekend-long retreat at a local hotel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDon\u2019t go,\u201d the photographer says, at the door. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI won\u2019t be gone long,\u201d I say. \u201cTwo nights. Like the sun \u2013 I leave, but I always come back.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cTwo nights,\u201d he says. \u201cCan you imagine if I didn\u2019t see the sun for two days and two nights?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And I discover I\u2019m in the palm of his hand. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cora Lewis<\/strong> is a writer and reporter whose fiction has appeared in Joyland<\/em>, The Yale Review<\/em>, The Cleveland Review of Books<\/em>, and elsewhere. She received her MFA from Washington University in St. Louis and currently works at the Associated Press in New York. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Over coffee, my sister is telling me she had erotic dreams during the last trimester of her pregnancy. \u201cWhat kind of erotic dreams?\u201d \u201cTwo Olivers.\u201d \u201cTwo\u2026 of Oliver, your husband?\u201d \u201cYes.\u201d \u201cYou were sleeping with your husband, but there were two of him?\u201d \u201cYes.\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s the most faithful erotic dream I\u2019ve ever heard.\u201d I host … <\/p>\n