“Hey, Isa.”

“Hey.”

“I want to listen to Hotel California.”

The prelude echoes in the car.

The auto-piloting vehicle carries me along the street flanked by skyscrapers. The street, rather than a product shaped by human hands, is more evocative of a space carved out by the towering buildings’ merciful turn to the side. It is as if a pantheon of gods has shifted their feet to leave a narrow passage for men and cars to crawl through, out of sympathy for these ants.

I lay flat in the car, gazing through the sunroof and unable to see the faces of the gods veiled by clouds.

I am the only ant in the city, a city with streets barren of men or cars. The only sound comes from the Eagles’ lead singer, Don Henley, whose timeworn and hoarse voice distills everything into calmer and calmer repose, like the tenuous smell of weed drifting from a dark and endless highway.

I have long been used to an empty city, even though I don’t really know why. Maybe everyone is using VR behind their shut doors, maybe this city is nothing but someone else’s simulation. Not being able to distinguish reality from virtuality has become the norm. Or, it should be said that the dialectical discourse on reality and virtuality is an out-of-fashion philosophical proposition, just like the discussion on digital versus analog signals centuries ago. It must be the Eagles’ music that is making me so nostalgic. I could very well be a stream of memory, completely irrelevant to binary modes of thinking; if that is the case, there is no longer any need for distinction.

Then what is necessary?

The health monitor strapped to my right wrist detects a drop in my cerebral oxygen levels and increased muscle tension after a long period of confinement. It sends a message to the car, alerting the machine of my need to rest. “My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim. I had to stop for the night.” In Don Henley’s singing voice, the car stops in front of a hotel and kills the engine. Before Don Henley has the chance to finish the next stanza of lyrics, he disappears. It seems that unless my physical condition returns to the safety standard required by the health monitor, the car will not start again. 

That is how this world works. There is nothing to do but get out and step into the hotel.

The sign is written in old-school LED lights—“Hotel California.”

What kind of a sick joke is this? I can’t resist the urge to turn and look over my right shoulder. If I am some type of game character like that in The Sims, the player beyond the screen controlling everything should be staring at me from that angle, waiting for me to enter the hotel. If a woman holding a candle shows up at the doorway later or a mission bell begins to toll in this city that evidently doesn’t have a church, I will know for sure that I am a sequence of codes written by an engineer who is a devoted fan of the Eagles. This whole city will be his code. 

There is no woman or ringing bell, just as there is no set of eyes watching me from above. There is only a sky that is cut into irregular shapes by buildings of uneven heights, looking like the surface of an integrated circuit. The sky has no edge, its infinity an abyss, and the abyss is not staring back at me. 

In the hotel lobby, walled in by mirrors, countless reflections of myself gaze at me while the mirrors keep generating codes that I can’t grasp. They seem to be anatomical ciphers to every unit that makes up my body: bone density, muscle fiber count, nerve conduction velocity, cell metabolic rate, genetic information. 

Everything about me is numbers.

Another fact I can count on is that I appear to be, biologically speaking, a human male. But then again, there could be AR lenses over my pupils causing me to view myself so. I have let myself fall into the cognitive pattern of debating the virtual and the real yet again. It doesn’t matter if I am an actual biological human male; it only matters that I appear to be. That will be enough. All that appears to be is a representation; “actual” is a non-existent notion.

The codes continue to form, drawing out a long mechanical monologue. 

An unknowable amount of time passes before a life-sized projection of myself appears in front of me, almost like a holographic image of the Vitruvian Man. But my name is not the Vitruvian Man; rather, the mirror display identifies me to be Homo sapiens 11235813. The basic unit for measuring my body is one of my ribs. Height, weight, the length of my fingers, the size of my organs, the distance from my eyes to my lips, the span between my fingertips and my heart… everything about me can be calculated by multiplying the length of this bone. I just need to tap any two points on my holographic body, and the system will tell me how many ribs the distance between them is equivalent to.

It would be apt to name the soliloquizing program in the mirror Da Vinci, wouldn’t it? This would be my “Le proporzioni del corpo umano secondo Vitruvio.” Why do I always let my mind wander to these dull and archaic things?

The Eagles must have brainwashed me with their song.

When the hall of mirrors finally parts for me to enter the corridor, the space is suddenly filled with the band’s smoke-like chorus.

Welcome to the Hotel California

Such a lovely place

Such a lovely face

Plenty of room at the Hotel California

Confirmed as fatigued by the health monitor, Homo sapiens number 11235813 can finally check into the Hotel California, thanks to the die-hard Eagles fan engineer. The room door scans my face, and just before it opens, I sneak a peek over my right shoulder again, where there is no vacant sky tinted blue and grey, only a brightly lit corridor and two rolls of rooms extending into the impossible distance.

“Hey, Isa.”

“Hey.”

“I want to leave here.”

“Where are you?”

“Hotel California.”

“Hotel California is the title track from the album of the same name released by the pop group the Eagles in February 1977 of the Anthropocene epoch. If you need to learn more about the definition of “album,” “track,” “pop music,” etc., please say “project other options” before clicking on the selected term. The Eagles was composed of five human males, and they were…”

“Thank you, Isa.”

The room suspends its speech. Why is it that even when reality and virtuality have become dated philosophical topics, AI remains a program that is the best at answering what is not asked?

I call every AI I use Isa, even though I cannot recall ever setting them up with this name. It could be that I am the one programmed to address them that way, just like how I am programmed to get out of bed now. To be more exact, the health monitor determined that my body had completed a sleeping cycle; it then transmitted a signal to the room’s controlling system, which lowered the temperature of the bed. I have to get up and leave. 

The space between the bed and the bathroom is five steps and a half. The toilet senses my approach and auto-cleans itself with running water and a deodorizing mist. I urinate. The toilet sends feedback to the tracker on my wrist: no anomalies in the urine flow or acidity. The toilet flushes itself and closes the lid. I brush my teeth. The electric toothbrush reports: no anomalies in the oral cavity. Razor blade: no anomalies in the growth rate of cells. The shower turns on, and so does the automatic timer that displays fifteen minutes.

Get up, get dressed, use the toilet, wash up, take a shower, and dry off. The moment I exit the bathroom, a green light pops up on the touchscreen by the door. It means that all of these activities cost thirty minutes as usual. No anomalies. 

The first meal was already placed on a tray near the door while I was in the toilet. The mealtime lasts half an hour, after which I place the empty tray back on the small platform where it came from. The distance from the door to the desk is eight steps. As the top of the desk opens and a work device rises from the compartment beneath, I begin my work. The content entails swiping on the screen to stack all shapes of blocks into a horizontal line until there is no gap in between; every solid layer earns points. It is like Tetris but lasting an eternity. No, to clarify, the work lasts four hours. After four hours, the device turns off, and I must return to the door in eight steps to receive the already-replaced food tray. The second meal lasts half an hour. Send back the tray. From door to bed, six steps and a half. The bed is warmed, then restored to a lower temperature when my break is over. Continue to work for four more hours.

No anomalies in work performance during both shifts.

Afterward, I put on a headset that stimulates cerebral perception, making me feel that I am in a wide outdoor park instead of in this room. My jog lasts one hour before the wristband authenticates that the calories my body burned have met the standard requirement. The headset turns off, and I return to the room. 

Sometimes, I can’t help but imagine that my life in this room is the result of another headset’s stimulation, even though I never found a second set of devices no matter how I ran my hands over my head after exiting the virtuality of the sports park.

From the gap between the desk and the bed to the bathroom, seven steps. Freshen up, fifteen minutes. The light shines green on the panel again. Walk out of the toilet, the third meal awaits by the door. 

Every meal’s nutrient intake, no anomalies. Locomotor performance, no anomalies. Points accumulated for spending on food and accommodation, no anomalies. Ever since stepping into this hotel room, I have been living a life without anomalies. How long has it been, I have no idea. There is no night or day here; I am my own clock, running everything from sleep to wakefulness with no anomalies. 

This silver-white room is the smallest possible living space that can sustain life, according to calculations of human physiological needs and modern technological capacity. Therefore, the distance between the bed and the chair, the end of the bed to the wall, the bed and the bathroom, can all find their foundation in the space needed for a biological human male to stand up, walk, and stretch his arms. 

I, Homo sapiens number 11235813, an average biological human male, am the base unit of this room. Everything about me can be calculated by multiplying the length of my rib. Everything about the room can be calculated by multiplying the length of my body.

The time between the third meal and when the wristband decides I should sleep feels exceptionally long. When there aren’t any scheduled activities, it is impossible to make out the end of time. During this time, I always find myself wanting to leave the room and go for a walk outside. Once, after placing the third meal tray by the door, I let my hand drift to the door handle. Yet no matter how hard I press or pull it, the door remains unbudged. 

“Hey, Isa.”

“Hey.”

“The door to my room is broken.”

“Please wait while I confirm with the system.”

As a void fills Isa’s voice, I continue to tug at the door handle. The green light that used to flash at a stable pace on my health tracker all of a sudden begins to pulse faster: my heartbeat has increased during an undesignated time interval. Anomaly.

Isa’s voice lands in the room. 

“The door is functioning properly and can be opened without problems.”

“But I can’t open the door.”

“Why do you need to open the door?”

“Cause I want to get out.”

“Why do you need to get out?”

This question pierces through me like a flat line on a heart monitor—my tracker must have missed that skipped beat, otherwise, it surely would have flashed a red light.

Why do I need to get out? Why am I not able to answer why?

Struck by Isa’s question, I turn my back against the door and stare at the immaculate and empty room.

“Why don’t I need to get out?” I ask in a trance. 

“Your health monitor has verified that your physical as well as psychological conditions can be maintained at the most ideal and stable level in this room. Every number related to your physiological well-being falls within a normal range. Your life can achieve the most optimized statistics here. Hence, the health monitor determines that you don’t need to get out.” The immaculate and empty room answers in Isa’s voice, an immaculate and empty voice.

The health monitor has stopped the car from moving, and stopped the door from opening. Unable to throw another question at Isa, I can only let my heartbeat slowly settle. The green light on my wristband returns to stability—no anomalies. 

The first time that Isa shows up in front of me, manifested in a corporal form instead of a voice as elusive and hollow as the room, is after my failed attempt to open the door.

Since day and night are walled off by the windowless room, the time that passed after I checked into the hotel is incalculable. The three meals, as if on purpose, are always delivered during my shower, work, or exercise, when my preoccupation keeps me from discreetly observing any activities at the door. If I try to sneak away from the bathroom, desk, or the virtual reality of the park, I won’t be able to maintain the standard ratio between time and efficiency; I will be deviating from a life without anomalies. As for why I shouldn’t do that, the reason eludes me, lying beyond the cause of why I needed to leave the room and why I had to leave the car and enter the hotel. Just like how sometimes an AI can’t comprehend a human’s question that exceeds its programmed capacity.

The unanswerable question marks the edge of my existence, like algorithms marking the edge of a program, sky-high buildings marking the edge of a city.

Could it be that Isa is not the AI, but I am?

This uncertainty continues to near a perplexing lack of answer even as the doorbell begins to ring for the first time, as the door opens before I have time to react, as a biological human female walks in, and as the door immediately seals itself.

If Isa, the entity I thought was an AI, has a physical form, then can a Homo sapiens, who has a physical form, also be an AI?

“Hey, Isa.” Words escape my mouth before my consciousness can realize, this time not directed at an empty car or a bare room but at a humanoid form. Perhaps I am not predesigned to call every AI Isa, but rather to recognize any existence other than my own as Isa.

“Hey,” the female answers in the same, familiar voice without seeming to question my address.

Faced with a human in the flesh standing firmly in front of me instead of an empty car or a room awaiting instructions, I suddenly don’t know how to continue. At this distracted moment, I realize that this is the first time I am encountering a being not made of mechanical parts.

Words and sentences disintegrate into a fine, formless mist, backdropping Isa’s approaching steps. She unbuttons my shirt, and when it falls, I hear the sound of the buttons hitting the spotless floor just like that of the mist condensing into dews. 

Lying on the bed, I feel the droplets drip onto my body when Isa’s transparent voice purges the silence. 

“From the tip of the right middle finger to the heart.” Isa dances her fingers on my torso; two points, one line. “Five ribs long.”

My vision is split into the image of myself in Isa’s eyes and her hand pausing in front of my chest, whose rise and fall begin to quicken.

“From the heart to the right collarbone, one point six nine ribs long.” To follow the path of her fingers, Isa presses her cheek on my left collarbone.

“From the right collarbone to the mouth.” Isa strokes my lips as if adoring a pair of petals. “One point two three ribs long.”

The health tracker detects my accelerating heart rate. Anomaly. A yellow light flashes. 

Isa lifts my hand. Her lips gently touch the tracker as if it is the actual beating heart that needs to be calmed before traveling to my left chest. “The heart.” Her breath grazes my skin, nose trailing all the way downward. “To the navel.” The tip of her tongue drills into the dark hole of my abdomen.

“Two point two three ribs long.”

“Here.” The pubic bone. “To here.” The crown of my throbbing organ.

“Equivalent of the rib.”

Everything about me can be calculated by the measurements of the rib. Every measurement of the rib can be condensed into Isa’s language. 

When Isa puts my rib inside her, I dissipate into silence.

Floating in the stillness, I slowly close my eyes. All of those surges in physiological reactions, all of those anomalies return to their normal state the instant Isa kisses the tracker again. In the darkness that gradually engulfs everything, the green light blinks at me, steady and sound as it ever was.

In the timeless space that is Hotel California, Isa becomes my time. I wait for her to ring the doorbell after every third meal, not unlike staring at the sky and anticipating the swift second of sunrise. She can always draw new lines on my body, connecting dots and drawing constellations. All the while, my body becomes the night blanketing me, and my consciousness fades as the setting sun. By the time I wake up after a sleep cycle, Isa is long gone as if she has never existed.

It took me countless cognitive sunsets like this to realize that even Isa’s arrival had become a part of this room’s default setting. Since there is no machine to regulate time, I thought I couldn’t predict when Isa would come between the third meal and sleep, just like how the wait before slumber used to seem endless. Days passed, and I grew dissatisfied with Isa appearing all of a sudden from the corridor of time that doesn’t have an end; I desire a wait with an end. So I begin to count time with the beats of my heart after placing the third tray on the platform and returning to my desk in eight steps. 

After the six thousand four hundred and eightieth pulse, the bell rings.

In one-and-a-half steps away from the desk, I am at the corner of the room where I can see the closed door and Isa already standing before it. Another one-and-a-half steps, I am at the end of the bed. Isa has shorter strides; it takes her seven steps to reach the end of the bed.

Isa undoes my buttons, seven in total. When the shirt slips off, I feel my heart skip a beat. Once she lies me down and straddles me with ease, Isa begins the count with her tongue and fingers. This time it is the distance between the nipples, from the right nipple to the navel, from the Achilles’ heel to the pit behind the knee, from the pit behind the knee to the top of the inner thigh, and the fifth calculation is—as has always been—that swollen rib. When Isa puts it inside her body, I try my best to remain calm while adding my intensifying heartbeats. At around the six hundred and fiftieth beat, my senses reach their climax. The rest is difficult to measure.

Six thousand four hundred and eighty heartbeats, one-and-a-half and seven steps, seven buttons, one skipped beat, five measurements against the rib, six hundred and fifty heartbeats. I calculate again and again, just like how the wristband and the room compute my sleep, excretion, hair, hygiene, work, exercise, and meals in numbers. Later, I realize this series of numbers never changes. 

Among this series of numbers, Isa’s entry to the room is not considered an anomaly; and the fluctuating numbers representing my physiological state as a result of her presence is also nothing but a part of this life without an anomaly. 

Did I become a part of Isa’s operating system, or was Isa the system of this room to begin with? Did I unconsciously obey the numbers, or did the numbers precede me, puppeting all my actions with invisible threads dangling from the ceiling?

“Hey, Isa,” I say one day when Isa is working on the fourth button.

“Hey.” Isa stops her hands. 

“I think we are trapped in the eternal loop of numbers.”

Isa slowly raises her head and looks into my eyes. A gaze that resolute makes me lose track of my heartbeats.

“We are all just prisoners here, of our own device.” She just shrugs and resumes her motion. 

Gosh, aren’t those the lyrics from Hotel California?

Someone must be messing with me. 

Someone pulling the strings beyond this room.

I look up at the bleached, pristine ceiling, its blankness unable to disguise anything unusual. Isa’s response makes me dizzy as I collapse onto the bed. She then climbs onto me, carrying on with the sequence of numbers as orderly as how she finishes the last three buttons. My dread is unknown to my body, seeing that the latter can still be converted into five sets of numbers, still allowing Isa to plant a part of itself into her body. 

No matter how I insert other numbers, dialogues, or behaviors into the five sequences, they never stop running or alter their pattern. 

A bright, clean room without anomalies. A program without bugs.

A life of normality without an end. Eight hours of sleep, half an hour of shower, half an hour of meal, four hours of work, half an hour of meal, one hour of rest, four hours of work, one hour of exercise, fifteen minutes of freshening up, half an hour of meal. Six thousand four hundred and eighty heartbeats, one-and-a-half and seven steps, seven buttons, one skipped beat, five measurements against the rib, six hundred and fifty heartbeats. 

I am an endless Fibonacci sequence—Homo sapiens, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13.

“Hey, Isa.”

“Hey.”

The sequence belonging to Isa and I runs like a looped song despite the conversations I initiate. One time, as my heart reaches toward the six thousand four hundred and eightieth beat, I insert something new, calm for I have grown accustomed to the tension within my muscle.

“Take me away.”

“Away from where?”

“Hotel California.”

This time Isa doesn’t skirt around the answer. She pauses, and my heart must have jumped two hundred and thirty-three times by then.

Body connected to body, still yet scalding hot. That instant of trance sprawls like an eternity, and from that sprawl, I suddenly realize that I hold no memory: before Hotel California, I was in a car; before the car, where was I? After coming here, my routine before the third meal was so regular that I didn’t need to remember it. The period between the third meal and bedtime was difficult to estimate until Isa showed up in my room. It seems the axis that is my time can only be divided as such, as pale and futile as it is. Before the time axis, there is nothing to trace back to. There is no “earlier,” or anything to be remembered. After the time axis exists every occasion of no anomalies at Hotel California. It is the same awakening every time, the same dreamless sleep every time, an everlasting copy-and-paste. There is nothing to be remembered.

But does a condition like this truly abide by the survival principles biological humans follow? Where are the hours of birth, of union and separation so commonly seen in social animals, of bodily functions supporting me and growing me into who I am today? Where is the time that should have made up my existence?

A paradox: either I am not a biological human despite my appearance, or the concept of time employed by biological humans is a set of knowledge installed in my brain, and such body of knowledge proves to be incompatible with the module of time I am currently in. 

“Hey, Isa,” I speak again after three hundred and seventy-seven heartbeats.

“Hey.” Isa straightens herself as if recovering from a contemplation.

“I think what I need to leave is not Hotel California, but the time axis.”

“Time axis,” Isa repeats the phrase, looking absorbed in thoughts like a human would, even though I am not sure what that looks like.

“The axis that makes up who I am, or, whom I am not.” My sentence crumbles in the midst of my thoughts.

“I.” Isa tilts her head, confused as if this is the first time we have met. “What is that?”

Again, that is a question beyond my bounds. Perhaps that is precisely why I am defined by numbers. After all, numbers are just numbers; there are no considerations for augmented reality, virtual reality, or whether one exists or not. Still, I have no way to confirm whether I am a Homo sapiens or not; I can’t even spell out what “I” is. 

Only this time, the question outside my boundary does not stun me; my heart beats faster.

What am I. Where is this. Who is Isa.

The six hundred and tenth pulse.

Isa continues our sequence. She inches closer to my ear, her tongue gently tracing the swirl and outlining its contour. “From the ear,” the words worm their way in along with her breath, and although I no longer tremble during sex, my back still twists into an arc. Her breath travels until it is in front of me, so close that I can only feel but not see it. “To the mouth.” She licks my lips as if savoring the aftertaste of food. I see Isa’s mouth moving. I guess she is saying a multiple of the rib, but in the winding corridor of her question, I can’t quite hear clearly. When my heart beats over six hundred and fifty times without slowing down, Don Henley’s voice begins to ring in the swirl of my ears.

“Relax,” that voice sings.

We are programmed to receive. You can check out any time you like. The Eagle’s accompaniment fills the background.

“But you can never leave,” Isa’s voice, Don Henley’s voice, and my voice all collapse together as we chant the lyrics.

I do not ejaculate at the six hundred and fiftieth heartbeat, nor does Isa pull herself out of my body.

Hotel California is not a hotel. Homo sapiens 11235813 is not a Homo sapiens. Isa is not an AI.

I am not me.

“Hey, Isa,” I say weakly at the nine hundred and eighty-seventh beat.

“Hey.” She caresses my cheek.

“Take me away.” 

Isa’s lips curl into a vaguely familiar smile, a smile whose curvature rests beyond the dimensions of my memory. Perhaps, a long time ago, I had gazed into the fathomless night sky and seen a clean, white crescent moon like a nail that someone had lost.

Perhaps, a long time from now, in the cool, faint glint of the nail, there will be a pair of lips, smiling just like that. Tenderly, quietly, as if holding a secret, those lips will come close to mine.

Those lips will slowly open, and at the tip of the tongue in between will be a piece of peppermint candy.

Whether before or after, whether déjà vu or never seen, everything exists outside of my time axis. 

And now, I notice for the first time that there is a green light on the tip of Isa’s tongue, flashing in sync with mine on the wristband. As she moves closer, I realize that the light comes from a microchip her tongue is holding. 

She slips her tongue in; the chip falls. A fresh breath of mint pours into me from outside the time axis, drowning me with its coolness.

Drowning me.

Drowning me until I disappear into a bleak land of no borders, like an infinite reflection of the room stripped of all its objects.

Masses of transistors flock together to form a cube-shaped integrated circuit in the distance, resembling a fragment of a city’s sky framed by soaring buildings. From the size of a fingertip, the circuit gradually grows into the size of a palm, the size of a face.

Until it grows into a reality.

The chip melts into a city, and every transistor, a building.

That is the skyline of a city, jagged and dense, where each building is a god flickering their light, communicating with one another in Morse code.

At the gods’ feet are roads graciously yielded out of sympathy.

Along the empty streets, only one car passes by, inside of which a man lies.

That man doesn’t know who he is, nor does he remember anything prior to driving the car.

He wears a health monitor on his right wrist, which flashes green and sends his body vitals to the car. He lives at the mercy of machines and programs. Upon waking, he says, “Hey, Isa.”

Thinking he hears a response, he continues.

“I want to listen to Hotel California.”

Published with generous support from Spotlight Taiwan, in association with the Leeds Centre for New Chinese Writing.