The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories

Sai wakes up to a violin concerto and reflects how Tilly the AI has awakened him at the right time with the right song. He speaks to her, telling her so. As he goes about his morning routine, Tilly reminds him about a date he has after work. Sai recollects that the last relationship Tilly arranged for him worked out well. He asks Tilly about his breakfast and his schedule. She suggests a smoothie place, and he agrees, saying, “Tilly, you always know best” (17).

Sai’s neighbor, Jenny, is wearing a strange getup for a sunny morning in California. She tells him she didn’t want the door camera installed, and Sai says he has a right to keep an eye on his own door. She thinks Tilly is intrusive, and Sai and Jenny have a short altercation about the issue. Sai thinks Jenny is a freak; after all, Tilly is “the world’s best assistant” (28).

After work, Tilly accompanies Sai on his date. Ellen is eminently compatible with Sai, but Sai realizes the date was boring. He remembers something Jenny said: “Tilly doesn’t just tell you want you want. She tells you what to think” (30). He turns Tilly off and tries to suggest Ellen do the same. She is confused and ends the date early. Sai turns Tilly back on, but when she continues to make suggestions that he doesn’t agree with, he turns her off again.

Back home, he meets Jenny again. His ShareAll lifecast has alerted her that he turned Tilly off twice that night, and she thinks he is ready for the truth. She leads him to her shielded apartment and seals his phone away in a baggie she puts on the desk. They discuss Tilly, with Jenny saying that Centillion, the company behind Tilly, wants power. Centillion toppled three governments that didn’t want the company in their countries. Sai argues, “But that’s just business. It’s not the same thing as evil” (37). She takes him to a bad part of town and explains how Centillion made it that way, then recruits Sai to help her take Tilly down with a virus.

Sai and Jenny plot to give Tilly the virus, and become romantically involved. When Centillion’s General Counsel John Rushgore visits his law firm, Chapman Singh, Sai manages to attach the thumb drive virus to Rushgore’s laptop, but he doesn’t realize until later that his webcam was still on.

Strange men take Sai and Jenny to meet Christian Rinn of Centillion. He tells them their plan almost succeeded, but the two have been under surveillance for a while. He tells Sai that Jenny is using him, which she denies.

Rinn talks about the good things Tilly has done, saying, “Centillion is in the business of organizing information, and that requires choices, direction, inherent subjectivity” (48). He says that humans rely on Tilly, from remembering phone numbers to knowing what happened the day before, and calls the human race “cyborgs.”

Rinn offers Jenny and Sai jobs. He wants people who can see through Tilly and detect imperfections. When Jenny asks why they’d do that, he says: “Because as bad as you think Centillion is, any replacement is likely worse” (49).

Sai returns to his apartment, and Tilly asks about Jenny. Then the AI suggests hot organic cider delivery before bed. He thinks that sounds great but says no and asks her to turn off and wake him up tomorrow with Frank Sinatra’s “My Way.” She shuts off, but a red light still blinks in the darkness.