I shrug my shoulders and put the phone back in my pocket. “No it is not.”
After a pause, she asks, “Let me see that again.”
The second time, his eyes scan the screen, taking the time to study the image. She notices my angular eyebrows. The shine of silver on my cuirass. The slight lift of my chin. The effect of seeing your parents outside of their usual circumstances is a bit like seeing them naked. Annoying for everyone.
“Mom!” she finally cries, her voice both questioning and dismayed. “He looks like you, but he is not you.”
Well, she’s right. It’s not the version of myself that I show him. The version she sees is usually in leggings with a stray hole along the seam, without makeup, hurrying to pack a peanut-free snack while practicing a Vietnamese language lesson in the background. Mom Me listens intently to a story about playground politics. She drives carefully and doesn’t complain as she turns on JoJo Siwa for the hundredth time. She could never summon enough drama to become the protagonist of a story.
This version, for my child, is the only version of me that matters. And at his young age, that makes sense. She’s not quite ready to see the self beyond her, much less the AI version of me.
But in another life, couldn’t the AI version have been me? If I had made different choices – not having gone to the University of Chicago, where I met his father; devoted my life to kung fu; born into a military family destined for greatness—could I was a hero, not of my own story, but of all stories? The AI hero filter is just a small glimpse into another offshoot of the multiverse where I’m a different, bolder version of myself. The pull of an alternate self is intoxicating and disconcerting. It’s the stuff of movies.
In the movie Everything everywhere all at once, an exhausted and struggling Evelyn Wang (played by my AI doppelganger, Michelle Yeoh) learns to navigate the multiverse through verse-hopping technology. His mission is to save the multiverse by defeating a chaotic, life-destroying being called Jobu Tupaki, who travels fluidly between worlds. To do this, Evelyn must temporarily inhabit the lives of alternate Evelyns, learn their skills in order to reshape her reality. From an opera diva, she learns to hit the highest notes, confusing her enemies. From a kung fu fighter, she learns to slice through the air with her powerful limbs. From a bizarre but endearing multiverse where she has hot dogs for her fingers, Evelyn learns compassion and vulnerability.
Throughout the film, Evelyn asks several versions of “Why me?” Her guide, an alternate version of her husband Waymond, tells her that he thinks she’s special, that, really, what makes her so exceptional is her utter banality. It’s not said explicitly, but the reason Evelyn is able to take on so many skills is because she’s a blank canvas, a sponge capable of absorbing all the many identities. Until she isn’t anymore. Until the underlying promise of heroism – tragic and inevitable martyrdom – caught up with her.