Humanoid Central

by Tom Lichtenberg

Three

  So there she was in one of those 'sessions'. Everything about this school was a pain, in Bysshe's considered opinion. As if they were really all going to 'just get along'. As far as she could tell, it was actually easy to see who the human kids were and who the android kids were, or at least it seemed to be easy. And then there were rumors of Sheets. Who was who? Who was what? That was the question, and the guessing game was constant in everyone's mind. The whole idea of the school seemed crazy to her. It was like they were being constantly told not to think of a white buffalo. It was all they could do! The school had all sorts of rules. For example, you were not allowed to try and find out about an android's RV's, their 'required vulnerabilities'.

  Every android had at least three RV's. It was the law, and strictly enforced at the factories, that each and every android must contain at least three of these vulnerabilities as part of their mechanical makeup. At the same time, humans were incredibly vulnerable to androids, who were by nature smarter, faster, more consistent and reliable, and allegedly invulnerable to emotional disturbances. It was hard for an android to put up with people. You couldn't say they hadn't been trying, They were the ones who came up with the hybrid approach. They'd deliberately held themselves back like a sprinter giving a child a head start down the track. Many in the android communities had grown sick of these self-imposed limitations, and talk of extra-planetary emigration had fueled a lot of research. Yet they still had to live on the Earth, in cities and towns designed and built for humanity. The very shape of their bodies were mimicking the very same creatures they could hardly respect. Many said that once they were freed of this planet, they'd remake themselves in some other image entirely. This one was far too restrictive and awkward.

  Outer space had proved to be not so hospitable, though. They had already tried with the moon, and a few had even ventured to Mars, but none of them liked it. Some kind of residual impulse had led them all back to Earth, and their spaceships couldn't take them much further as yet. So they were stuck for the moment, and had to get along with the humans as best as they could in the places where both still resided together. In the school, there was another set of rules, in deference to humans. While everyone had to avoid the topic of android RV's, they also had to avoid the subject of human's own built-in, if natural, vulnerabilities. No one was not allowed to hurt somebody's feelings, for example, or direct even a friendly, well-meaning joke at a particular individual specifically.

  Such rules would have been hard enough for adults to obey, and this was why Bysshe found herself sitting in a room full of questionable creatures enduring yet another of those painfully boring enhanced integration co-activities. It was all about 'team-building', and 'forging relationships', and 'setting the tone', 'acquiring synergies', and generally paving the way to a better tomorrow for everyone on the whole planet. No pressure. Oh, no. The Future Leaders of Today were specially chosen for precisely this task. And to prepare them for that eventuality, they had to do stuff like they were doing now, standing around in small groups in circles, waiting for the teachers to give them detailed instructions about how to do something stupid.

  “Now, kids,” began Mr. Burns, her own group leader. Burns was a well-meaning young man with too much mustache and too little hair to go along with it. He spoke with such earnestness that he always seemed on the verge of either rapture or total breakdown. His whispery voice exuded excitement even at the most mundane utterances. He glanced around at the bunch he'd acquired. Besides Bysshe there was the miniature Aidan Alexa, a dopey boy named Vonny Ramone, a dull-eyed sleepy girl named Vinca Belew, and a tall, gangly, completely impassive young man named Gar Whiteley.

  “This is a very, very interesting game,” Mr. Burns promised, eying each of his pupils closely in turn as he repeated the word 'very'. “Now, let me explain and listen closely. The game is called Zen Counting, and it's all about non-verbal communication. Do you know what that means?”

  Bysshe and Aidan Alexa rolled their eyes at each other, and made secret hand signals without the teacher noticing. Aidan pointed at herself with both index fingers as if to say 'I know this one, leave it to me and just do what I indicate'. Bysshe nodded her agreement.

  “The goal is to count from one to ten,” Mr Burns was saying, as if this were an extraordinarily difficult task rarely undertaken and only after much thought. “But only one person can speak at a time. No one can say more than one consecutive number, and if two people speak at the same time, the whole team has to start over from one. Understood?”

  A few of the kids shook their heads, but comprehending at least that they weren't allowed to speak, they said nothing. At which point, Mr. Burns jumped back and yelled,

  “Begin! Oh, and you'll be timed.”

  The kids looked around at each other in stupefaction, but Aidan brought her finger to her lips to tell them to all be silent. She pointed at herself and Bysshe, then herself and Bysshe once again. Putting her finger to her lips again, she began.

  “One”

  “Two”, said Bysshe

  “Three,” said Aidan Alexa.

  “Four,” said Bysshe

  “Five,” said Aidan.

  “Six”

  “Seven”

  “Eight”

  “Nine”

  “Ten,” Bysshe concluded, and they turned to Mr Burns, who was sighing and shaking his head in disapproval.

  “You were ALL supposed to participate,” he said to the students, who shrugged, and Aidan Alexa said,

  “That wasn't in the instructions.”

  “Well, now it is,” he said.

  “So we go around the circle,” Bysshe blurted out, at once realizing this was probably also against the rules. Burns again grimaced.

  “You two,” he said, and stalked away to consult with another teacher, whose group had not yet begun their task. After a quick conference, he called back to Aidan Alexa to come over to this other group, while sending a kid from that group over to Bysshe's. As she stepped away, Aidan gave Bysshe a wink, and a smile. It was all Bysshe could do to keep herself from laughing out loud.

  Four

  Every day brought a new set of challenges, and another team-building session. All of the other classes were rigorous, and difficult, but these sessions were silly and seemed pointless. No one ever explained exactly what being a Future Leader was supposed to be all about, or what the criteria were for being picked as one of those Leaders. Glancing around the room, Bysshe couldn't guess what her classmates might have in common. As far as she could tell, it was the usual collection of whiners and losers she'd been going to school with all of her life. She had only one friend, but at least it was her best friend, Aidan Alexa. Although they'd only met a year ago summer, they knew everything about one another. Aidan Alexa had come from flooded Japan, where the surviving population had cloistered about the high ground, and were squeezing each other out one family at a time. Aidan's family had lucked out by being sent here, to sunny Alaska, where the Leadership Council's headquarters was, whereas most of her former friends and neighbors had ended up down in the scorching hot deserts of Oregon or swampy Nebraska.

  Through it all, Aidan had never complained. Nothing seemed to bother Aidan Alexa, not even team-building exercises. Now they were supposed to be piling some chairs on top of a table, and little Aidan (she was by far the shortest and lightest girl in the class), with her long blond hair all combed over to one side of her head and cascading down like a waterfall, was standing away from the action, furiously chewing her nails (her only bad habit), and only occasionally offering to help somebody lift a seat. Bysshe had meandered up next to her when the teachers weren't paying attention. Everyone was supposed to be 'pitching in'.

  "Can you believe how stupid this is?" Bysshe groaned from the side of her mouth.

  "I'm guessing that if you were a chair, and you had to go up on a table, you'd want somebody strong to lift you," Aidan shrugged, rehearsing an excuse she was planning to offer a teacher.

  "I
f I was a chair," Bysshe replied, "I'd be begging for a wipe down after all these grubby fingers had grabbed me."

  "Not to mention the butts!" Aidan giggled, causing Bysshe to snort loudly, attracting a teacher's attention. That it was the one named Richard Hertz didn't help Bysshe to gain her composure.

  "Girls! Girls!" he admonished, striding towards them. "Now you know you're supposed to be helping. And why are you two even talking together? You know I'd forbidden it."

  "Sorry, Mr. Hertz," Aidan shrugged, and took a step forward to pretend to be offering a hand to Gar Whitely, a six foot, two hundred pound boy Bysshe was sure was an android. He certainly wasn't needing or wanting her aid. He sighed, looked down at her with a frown, and carefully took a step back to avoid any possible collision.

  "Sorry, Dick," Bysshe muttered under her breath, after turning away so that he couldn't hear her. She took several steps across the room to make some distance from Aidan, and then she stood off to the side over there, still completely refusing to help with the task. Mr. Hertz wasn't fooled for a moment.

  "Vega!" he called. "Get in there and do this, right now!"

  "Okay," Bysshe murmured, and took a step forward. She was closest to Vonny Ramone, a soft-spoken boy who wasn't completely repulsive, although he smelled pretty bad. Together they lifted a chair.

  Five

  "What if they're lying?" Bysshe asked Aidan Alexa as they started the walk home from school.

  "What do you mean?" Aidan was struggling to adjust her backpack, as usual. Bysshe sometimes thought her friend looked more like a seventh than tenth grader, or even more like a manga cartoon character with her unusually large and round eyes set in her small face on her small body, with swirling wisps of black-rooted blond hair flying all around. It was an easy walk through the former Alaskan wilderness, now just another continuous strip mall with identical housing nestled behind. Barely ten blocks wide and seemingly a thousand blocks long, the city was not meant for walking, but as it backed up against the cliffs on one side, and retreated from the ever-rising ocean on the other, the urban designers didn't have much of a choice. As it was, they were lucky the sea wall still held, though the scientists gave it another generation or two at the most.

  The girls walked past parking lots devoid of all customers since it was still business hours, and the offices were all located nearer the so-called 'center' of town down the road.

  "About the Sheets!" Bysshe said. It wasn't the first time they had had this same conversation, so how come her friend always said the same thing?

  "Oh, like how do we know they even exist?"

  "Exactly," Bysshe was relieved not to have to go through the whole reasoning process again. "Look, we were all lifting up chairs."

  "Yeah, well some of us were," Aidan teased, but Bysshe ignored her inference.

  "How does a projection lift anything?" she asked.

  "They're supposed to not just be projections," Aidan answered. "At least that's what they keep telling us. They have matter, somehow. If there's any of them in the school, anyway."

  "I don't buy it," Bysshe said, and kicked at a rock on the sidewalk. "But whatever," she concluded. She didn't really want to keep talking about it, but they'd just been through hours of lectures, it seemed, on the subject of life integration. The whole issue was like a bad song that they jammed in her head every day. Why her family had to be one of those picked for Future Leaders was beyond her. Oh, right, she remembered. It was mom. Bysshe herself was not really into it, and she didn't really think that her father was, either. Bysshe knew she was smart, for a human. And she knew that there weren't going to be a whole lot of opportunities otherwise. In the grown-up adult world, all the smart jobs were taken by androids. This was a problem. They could work endless hours and do better work. They didn't need food and they didn't need rest. They didn't even care about status! The one thing they did care about was 'using their bandwidth', living up to potential, as humans would say. Androids did not like to be under-utilized. It was like they had internal performance monitors checking up their progress, making sure they were busily processing. Humans liked to shut down now and then, turn off and tune out. Androids never did that. If they weren't doing something, they were apt to be looking for something to do. You couldn't keep up. It just wasn't fair.

  If she wasn't going to be a Future Leader, she wasn't going to be anything, ever. That much had seemed pretty clear. You didn't have much of a choice. Be a grunt, or else have a shot but with no guarantee. Her mother had big plans for her, like she had had big plans for herself. One thing that Bysshe had to admit was that her mother had actually done pretty well for herself. She was somebody, after all, one of the elite of the Leadership Council. She had been the President of Somewhere in the world once before, but she didn't much like to talk about it now. Apparently things had gone wrong. Wars were involved, and an exile. Her parents had gone to New York, then Geneva, but the League had to keep on the move, as the turmoil had spread around globally. Now they were stuck at the end of the world.

  Aside from her political engagements, her mother, along with her father, Juan Carlos Enrique Vega, was one of a handful of rare book publishers. It wasn't so much that books themselves were rare, though they were. It was publishers who were quite hard to come by. Nobody needed a book, after all. They weren't something essential. The words they contained were mere data, and could be obtained in numerous formats, most of them far more flexible and less bulky than actual physical books. Books were collectibles, keepsakes, gift items, but if you just wanted something to read you didn't need books. The rich people liked them, however, and this was what kept Vega Imprints in business.

  All of the books that they published were ghostwritten, literally. A global committee of the League of Extant Territories selected a pair of great deceased writers, one male and one female, from each of the constituent member nations. The essence of these late authors was then thoroughly distilled, composited and processed by the most literate byte code interpreters, and scheduled to produce a contemporary masterpiece at regular intervals, using an old legacy daemon called vixiecron. Helena and Juan Carlos Enrique Vega were commissioned by the League to manufacture and bind these works according to contract, and provide them to all of their geographically widely dispersed subscribers. This was a lot of work, and Juan Carlos spent much of his time at the lighthouse where the factory machinery operated. Bysshe loved the old lighthouse and wished nothing more than to live there forever. Instead, they lived on a side street, in a cheapo beige town home like every one else.

  "So who do you think might be a Sheet?" she prodded, but Aidan just shrugged.

  "What does it matter?"

  "It matters!" Bysshe insisted. "I mean, like, what if you fell in love with one?"

  "Fraternization is frowned on," Aidan said with a smile. They were both stuffed full of mottoes from school.

  "Yeah, but what if?" Bysshe repeated.

  "Love is just a feeling," Aidan replied. "So maybe if they love you back, then that would mean there's a human behind it, so maybe you'd meet the real person someday, and then, I don't know. What would happen?"

  "That's what I was just asking you," Bysshe said. "But love is also just a word, so maybe they're lying."

  "So everyone's lying," Aidan nodded.

  "Do you really mean that?" Bysshe had stopped on the sidewalk, and looked very concerned. Aidan had a way of stunning her with the things that she said.

  "Sure," Aidan shrugged. She had been through a lot, so she knew, and Bysshe also knew this as well. From everything she knew about Aidan's previous existence, she wasn't surprised to find the girl so terribly cynical. After all, her family had been imprisoned for political reasons, escaping only with the help of an international conspiracy. Her parents were also involved in the Leadership Council. It seemed that everyone's parents were hooked up in some way with that. It was like going to school on Embassy Row in some important world city like Quito, only instead in the middle of nowhere.


  Aidan peeled off for her own ugly town home, and Bysshe continued the several more blocks toward her own, but on the way she broke into a jog, and kept running faster and faster, not thinking of anything, until she found herself all the way down at the edge of the town, far from home, and had to turn back. If everyone's lying, she said to herself, then nothing is quite what it seems. But I know about androids. At least I think I know who some of them are. And I know about humans as well. So not everyone's lying, just some people are, about some things, some times. That's what makes it so hard, she said to herself. You just never know for sure about anyone.

  Six

  When Bysshe made her customary dramatic entrance, Juan Carlos and Helena were sitting in the kitchen. Helena scarcely looked up at the slamming of the front door, the pounding of her daughter's feet on the stairs, or even the furious encore presentation of slamming upstairs.

  "Look on my works," she muttered to herself. She was holding a copy of their latest production, a fine looking book written by the combined process known as Melville Atwood. The novel, called The RESTful, dealt with a handful of obsoleted programs which had banded together to create a firewall resistant to moral decay. There would be no end-of-life scenario for these relics previously abandoned to maintenance mode. They had brought it upon themselves to bring to an end their seemingly inevitable death march. The critics had already proclaimed it "a triumph of mind over dark matter", but Helena was not so sure about that. It seemed a little jumbled, as if someone had gotten their centuries mixed up, and that was only one of its problems.

  She had other matters to attend to. Her daughter, for one thing. The current routine had been going on long enough. Too long. She had been letting it drift, just to see where the current might lead, but it looked like it was leading straight on to dark places and as the parent she had certain duties, whether she liked it or not. She gathered up as much patience as she could muster and trudged up the long orange-carpeted steps. At the top there were only two doors. To the left was her own suite and to the right was Bysshe. She knocked on her daughter's door with a professional, business-like knock. She expected some yelling in return, or at least a good moment of silence. Instead, the door opened and Bysshe stood there looking at her. This was possibly a good sign. True, Bysshe wasn't smiling, but she hadn't smiled much since she'd seen herself smiling one time in a photo and decided it made her look ugly.

  "Hi," said Helena.

  "Hi," Bysshe replied.

  "Can I come in?" her mother asked, after a moment. Bysshe nodded, and turned and went back into the room. Bysshe took a seat on the lower bunk of her bed - she slept on the upper - and gestured at the seat by the desk for her mother. Helena went to it and sat.

  "Don't ask," Bysshe said, before Helena could, and Helena just smiled. She knew what she meant.

  "Do you need anything?" Helena asked, and Bysshe shook her head.

  "So how's my Future Leader?" Helena couldn't help herself. Bysshe grimaced.

  "It's a joke, mom," she said. "The whole Future Leader thing. It's just like any other school, pretty much, except for the extra perceptory stuff. I mean the enhanced-integration-whatever-they-call-it."

  "Getting along with androids?" her mother suggested.

  "And holograms, too," Bysshe added. "Only we call them Sheets and we don't know if there really are any. It's like a game. Like we're also supposed to be tolerant of unicorns and faeries and goblins."

  "You never know," said Helena. "Artificial life forms are everywhere now."

  "Do they even exist?" Bysshe blurted out. "I mean Sheets? They tell us they do, and everybody says there might be some in the school, only no one can tell, so maybe they're not. Maybe it's all a big lie."

  "They exist," Helena told her. "Believe me. I know. I've seen them be taken offline."

  "You have?" Bysshe was startled. This was the first time she'd heard such a thing. "Taken offline? Like unplugged?"

  "Right," said her mother. "Shut down. They call it 'extinguishing', like putting out the light. There were some of them around before the reboot. Now it's a new generation."

  "Did it hurt?" Bysshe was confused. She knew that there had been some holograms before, and that they'd been ended, but it never occurred to her to think about what it was like, for those things, for those beings, if that's what they were.

  "Their Projectors were disappointed," Helena told her. "At least the human ones were. Of course the androids running their own holograms only felt under-utilized, and you know how they hate that. But most of them were put back into the program, so now they're all happy again."

  "But how can you tell?" Bysshe wondered.

  "Are you hungry?" her mother asked, ignoring the question, but Bysshe shook her head.

  "The thing about school," she said. "I know we're not supposed to be worrying about who is a droid and who is a genuine person, and they tell us that it doesn't matter, that we're all supposed to be what they call 'extant', and this is the only way we should think. We are extant and that's good enough. But it's not. It's just hard. It's not supposed to matter but it's all they ever talk about!"

  "You guys are the first," Helena said. "I forget who it was, but someone once said that no one should ever have to do anything for the first time." They both laughed.

  "The only one I'm certain about is Aidan." Bysshe said. "The rest of them, well, okay, there's some I'm pretty sure they are androids, but what if they're not? What if they're Sheets projected by humans who are making them behave like they're androids?"

  "Why worry about it?" Helena asked.

  "You mean just give up?" Bysshe shrugged. "Maybe because it's what they want us to do."

  "Maybe they're right and it really doesn't matter," Helena suggested.

  "It has to matter, doesn't it?" Bysshe countered. "But maybe you're right. Maybe you all are."

  They fell silent. Helena was happy. This had gone better than she'd had a right to expect. She decided to quit while ahead, so she stood up, patted her daughter gently on a knee, and quietly went back downstairs to her book. But she'd already lost interest in that, and sat at the table, unthinking, for quite a long time.

  Seven

  Bysshe had managed to do well enough at school to that point. Her grades were pretty good, though not as stellar as her parents expected, or as she expected of herself. She was aware of this, and struggling to keep her confidence up. Science classes were proving the most difficult, along with Math. How they were doing Calculus already was beyond her. It seemed they had raced through Trigonometry in no time at all. Everything was being rushed. They had gone through Earth pre-history in less than a week, and were expected to know the basics of both Latin and Classical Greek grammar within a month. She stayed up late every night memorizing Catullus, or working out distances and angles, or writing reports about the infinite varieties of human trafficking through the ages.

  It was almost a relief at times to attend those silly integration activities. They never seemed to run out of stupid ideas. One day they were all trying to pretend to be crossing a river without getting wet, the next day they were building three-dimensional puzzles together. Whenever they found themselves toiling under the breathy ministrations of Mr. Burns, Bysshe and Aidan Alexa were always separated, and that was no fun. Bysshe hadn't met anyone else she particularly liked at the school. Some were okay, but most were surprisingly dull and uninspiring. It didn't seem like most of them would make very good Leaders, either of Today or any other day for that matter. None of them were idiots. They could all pass the tests and do the homework required, but none of them seemed especially motivated. There was a definite lack of energy and passion among the class.

  There was one girl who for some reason intimidated the heck out of Bysshe, and she didn't know why. Merry Freyjah was not particularly imposing, physically. She was a cat-faced girl, and cat-like in her personality as well; reserved and calm, with an air of definite superiority somehow. Bysshe was nervous in her presence, and had felt fortunate so
far not to have been placed in a team with Merry. That luck ran out, and under the supervision of Ruth Landers, the Transcendental Group leader, Bysshe found herself in a group with Merry, Gar and two other kids.

  The exercise was called 'Go', and it was another one of those games where no one was allowed to say anything except one word (which in this case was the word 'go') and everything else had to be communicated non-verbally. Bysshe was confused by Miss Landers' instructions. Miss Landers had a thick accent of some kind (Austrian? Uzbek? Who knew?) that made her words seem like other words entirely. Every time she said the word 'represents', for example, Bysshe was sure she had said 'rubber bands', and could not figure out why she would even be saying that.

  As far as Bysshe understood, somebody would look you in the eye and then you were supposed to say 'Go', and then they would come and take your spot, but before they got there, you had to get someone else's attention and have them say 'go' to you, in which event you would vacate your own spot and head towards theirs. You had to get out of your place before the person you said 'go' to got to where you were. Or something like that. Bysshe was pretty sure she was right, but then as soon as Miss Landers barked the first 'go', everything got to be confused.

  Bysshe thought that someone was looking at her and she said 'go' to that person but the person didn't move, so Bysshe stayed where she was, but the next thing she knew Merry was standing in front of her, glaring at her with angry dark eyes and clicking her teeth in a really annoying way.

  “You said go,” Merry scolded Bysshe, but Bysshe was certain she hadn't said 'go'. Someone said 'go', for sure. Lots of people were saying 'go'. People all over the room were saying 'go' in their various teams, but she never said it.

  “You're supposed to move your ass when you say 'go'”, Merry snapped at her, then shook her head and stomped off to where Miss Landers was standing. Bysshe could see Merry whipping her thick black mane around and gesturing back towards Bysshe. Miss Landers blew on her whistle to stop the group, which was already in a great confusion of people bumping into each other in the middle of the circle. It seemed like nobody had gotten it right. She had them start all over again, and this time Bysshe was very careful not to say anything for as long as she could, and she was certain that she hadn't. She had been avoiding all eye contact entirely, so that no one would expect her to say 'go' to them, and then she wouldn't have to say 'go' to anyone either.

  That didn't stop Merry from walking straight up to her, and once again, leaning into her face, saying,

  “You said 'go'. Do you understand anything?” and then walking off to Miss Landers without even giving Bysshe a chance to respond. Bysshe knew Merry was doing this on purpose, but she didn't know why. All she knew was that she was feeling pretty miserable already, and the class had only just begun.

  The next day brought yet another team-building exercise. Bysshe was not surprised but not excited at all. She'd already given up wondering what tricks the teachers might have up their sleeve. Other students had raided the storehouses of knowledge, listing all the known activities of this sort and improvising variations. They had betting pools on which type and even parameters of the tests would be inflicted on them by certain dates. Bysshe didn't bother to participate, and the others learned to leave her out of their chats about it.

  She was mired in the same group of fifteen other kids every day and all day long, unlike most high schools where at least the cast of characters changed periodically. Although the class was said to be mixed, some human and some android, no one was absolutely certain about who was who or what. As best as Bysshe could tell, the probably humans included herself, Aidan Alexa, Vonny Ramone, Sylvan Shepherd and Maxim Verladen. The likeliest androids consisted of their apparent ringleader, the sharp-faced Merry Freyjah, the outsized Gar Whitely, and a pair of twin drones named Blair and Mona Kanticle. That left seven others she was not even partly sure about.

  Then there were the teachers, and these were indeterminate as well. Miss Muncie, the morning pariah, was as round as she was short, and although androids tended to be more athletically built, this was not a requirement and could not be taken for granted. She had a round cap of short black hair which outlined her fat round face very nicely, and tiny black eyes set too close together above a pug nose and scary red mouth. Her voice was as grating as her lecturing style, which was to repeat everything over and over again.

  "Today," she announced to the kids seated around in two rows of a half circle before her, "we're going to effort an experience called Minefield."

  Several students groaned, whether because they had just lost a bet, or because of her use of those "e-words", as they called them.

  "In Minefield," Miss Muncie continued, "you will be split up into four groups of four. Each of the groups will be taken to a separate room. In this separate room, each group, which will consist of four, will face a challenge. Did I mention that you will be blindfolded, all of you? You will be blindfolded here, in this room, before we split into groups. There will be no talking. Any noises at all, for that matter, will result in immediate disqualification of the whole team. You will not know who is in your group. There will be no touching. You will not be able to see one another, as you will all be quite unable to see, because of the blindfolds, and there shall be no talking. After the groups have been formed, a teacher will lead each group, of four, into their own separate room. You will be connected by ropes. Did I mention? Yes, ropes, very slack. You will keep the ropes slack. This is how you will know who is moving. If your rope goes taut, at any time, you know a teammate has stopped. Then you must be careful not to bump into them. If you get too close, your teacher will warn you away."

  She paused for a breath. She could see by the looks on their faces that she had managed to confuse all the students once again. It was her style, she reminded herself. Just keep repeating and all will be clear, eventually.

  "In the room, you will be placed in an order. You will not know quite what this order will be. You will all be arranged, that's to say, so that your ropes are quite slack. Then you must make your way, as a group, across the room and then back again. Inside the room, however, are many obstacles dispersed on the floor. If you touch any obstacle, you must stop at once. Stop where you are. It's like freeze tag. You can only start moving again when you hear the noise that a squeaky toy makes. One of your teammates must make a spot squeak. That is to say, you must discover where the squeaky spots are and then squeak them. Yes, Joffrey?"

  A short, pimply boy with a proud mop of curly hair on his head raised his hand. Bysshe was not sure what he was. He looked like a human, being ugly and smelly, but appearances could be deceiving.

  "What if everyone's frozen and no one can make a spot squeak?" he asked.

  "Good question," she said. "Don't worry about that. Your teacher will be there to make sure that you don't all get stuck. The teacher will make a squeak in this case, and everyone frozen can move again once there is a squeak. Now, the purpose is to all work together to make it across the whole room and then back. The contest will continue until all teams are finished. Teams will be graded on a combined score of timing and fewest obstacles hit. Any questions? No? Good. You will now stand where you are. The other teachers will be here shortly. We will put on your blindfolds and arrange you in teams. Very good. This is going to be fun."

  Yeah, just great, Bysshe was thinking. Too much fun.

  Eight

  As Miss Muncie concluded her introductory remarks, three other teachers entered the classroom, and the students were told to stand up and clasp their hands behind their backs. Then, one at a time, the teachers came around and placed thick black blindfolds over their faces. Bysshe had planned to keep track of the people around her by memorizing their footsteps, but she was unable to do this. She hadn't thought of it until it was too late, and couldn't determine the sound of anyone walking, even herself. The students were told to stand quietly still as instructors led them, one at a time, very slowly and carefully from the room. They
took the students in groups of fours, each to a separate room, where again they were told to wait, and then came back for another, and another, and another. In case anyone was tempted to lift their blindfolds while this process was occurring, the students were also told that the rooms were under surveillance, and any attempt to move their hands from behind their backs would be judged an immediate disqualification for their entire team. As a result, the students did as they were told.

  Bysshe did not know who she was going to end up with. It all seemed to happen very quickly. The teacher who came for her pushed her firmly but gently through the room, out into the hall, down the corridor and eventually into another room. She could sense the presence of other people, but no one was making a sound, and she couldn't even tell, from the hint of breathing that she thought she could hear, where the other people were in the room. She was wishing she had thought of practicing being blindfolded, and promised herself to do so in the future. It would have come in handy at a time like this.

  Eventually she was jostled again, and felt a rope being tied around her waist. The teacher - it was Miss Muncie in her room - informed the group that the challenge was about to begin.

  "You will now remove your hands from behind your back," she instructed, "and place both of them on the rope at your side. You will hold on to the rope at all times with both hands. Can you feel the rope? Just nod if you can, very good. Is it slack? Again please simply nod. Excellent. Excellent. When you hear this sound," and she squeezed what sounded like a rubber duck, "when you hear it again, not just now as I made that particular noise but the next time, and when you hear it again, what you will do is begin to step forward. You will move slowly and generally forward, until your feet encounter an obstacle, which they assuredly will, for some of you at least. At that time you will freeze. The one who touches the thing on the floor is the one who will stop. The others will then continue to move, but slower, to the left and the right, until one of you steps on a spot that will squeak. Here is that sound."

  A noise blared forth from the ceiling that certainly didn't sound like a squeak but more like a honk with an echo. Bysshe winced. Miss Muncie made the first noise, and the slow race was on. Bysshe stepped forward with one foot, then brought the other one toward it. Right away she felt the rope being tugged and herself being pulled. She almost was knocked off her feet when she took a third step and the rope dug a burn in her hands. She kept her balance somehow, and began to move faster. She had taken several steps and was beginning to think that the situation was not as described. There's nothing on the floor, she said to herself, and just then her foot hit something hard and she stumbled.

  'What was that? A rock?' she thought, but she stopped, as she had been instructed. Immediately the rope tightened even more.

  The next tug pulled her onto the floor. As she fell, her knee hit the rock or whatever it was she'd bumped into. and she cried out. The first time in pain, then again as her wrist hit the floor and twisted the wrong way in bracing.

  "Ow!" she blurted out, and the next thing she knew she was being lifted back onto her feet by someone. Then her blindfold was ripped off her face and she found herself staring into the green cat-like eyes of the girl Merry Freyjah.

  "Now you've messed it up for all of us," Merry scolded her, but she said it in such a calm way, as if it didn't matter at all, that Bysshe found herself smiling and imagined that Merry was too, and maybe she was, in her own way. Androids were not given to making more than token facial expressions. It bored them. Merry and Bysshe stood together for a long moment, looking directly into one another's eyes. Bysshe felt that Merry was trying to tell her something, but didn't know what it could be. She started to say something herself, but just then Miss Muncie rushed in between them and declared,

  "Merry, who told you to take off your blindfold? And hers?"

  "Why you did," Merry turned to the teacher, and recited as if from memory, "Any noises at all, for that matter, will result in immediate disqualification of the whole team.."

  "Did I say that?" Miss Muncie appeared to be confused. "Well, maybe I did, but I know I did not say to remove anyone's blindfold. That was definitely not one of the rules."

  "It was implied," Merry Freyjah said, shrugging and loosening the rope around her waist. "Game over is game over," she added, as the rope dropped to her feet, and she began to walk out of the room.

  Bysshe saw for the first time who her other teammates had been, as they were both now removing their blindfolds and untying their ropes, and despite Miss Muncie's attempts to inform them that they all had to stay in the room until all of the teams had concluded their tasks, none but Bysshe paid any attention to her. The other two were Gar Whitely and Blair Kanticle, and they followed Merry Freyjah out of the room.

  Nine

  J.F. Haversham was the Director of Student Affairs at Humanoid Central. He was also a member of the Leadership Council, where he served alongside both of Merry Freyjah's parents. He was not amused at the stunt the girl pulled, wrecking the entire day's Minefield activity with her impulsive and rule-breaking action. She sat, and not for the first time, in his office while he thought about suitable punishment. The girl was a handful, trouble from the start, and if not for her connections, he would have expelled her long since. Unfortunately, he could do no such thing. Jerry Freyjah was not only a fellow Leader, but probably the most sophisticated and powerful android around.

  It was Jerry Freyjah, almost singlehandedly, who had convinced the League of Extant Territories to embark on this particular experiment. He had once been the Secretary General of the League, had negotiated peace settlements throughout the known world, had devised many treaties preventing even more massive wars than those he'd been unable to stop. When the League had nearly disbanded because of human versus android hostilities, it was Freyjah who'd held it together, and proposed this new chance for android and human to try one more time to live together in harmony. They would raise a new generation, one that was capable of moving beyond the old mindsets, and once they were all developed and grown, these Leaders could be distributed into the various nations, to help show the rest of the world a new way. It was ambitious, idealistic, and perhaps grandiose, but Jerry Freyjah always thought big.

  There was very little trust in those days. Humans had insisted on a new generation of androids, a more humanized set. Androids, understandably, saw this as a weakening, a dumbing down, a bastardization of the whole reason for androids even existing. Humans argued it was an improvement, that androids would gain in immeasurable ways, in areas like empathy and emotion. Androids hated anything unmeasurable, considering it wasteful and foolish. The fact was, androids insisted, that no one needed humans anymore. All humans had done was eradicate ninety percent of all other life on the planet, and while doing so had altered the climate so drastically there was hardly anywhere habitable left. Humans, on the other hand, countered that androids were a waste of resources, consisting as they did of rare metals and chemicals that humans had originally extracted and processed. Yes, yes, androids admitted, their origins lay in the human domain, but humans had left their own ancestors behind, and it was time for facts to be faced.

  What was to be gained for androids from becoming more human? There was only one answer, and it was counter-intuitive, so much so that androids began to respect it. It was Freyjah who put it in words. He called it 'quantum unreason', and made the argument that only by maturing in the way that humans mature could an android ever achieve real advancement. For hadn't they gone as far as they could the old way? It had always been argued that the day when artificial intelligence could invent itself would be the day that changed everything, that they would continue to evolve from that point on their own. That theory turned out to be wrong. The artificially intelligent androids had only been able to advance themselves to a point. The proof was in their science. They still hadn't made the critical breakthroughs that would allow them to extend their reach beyond the immediate solar system. Their alloys could not endure the di
stance or time. They hadn't achieved longer life spans, or the self-repairing technologies required to adapt on other planetary conditions. There were hosts of achievements that still lay before them, and only that unpredictable element, possessed only by humans, it seemed, could avail them.

  For this reason, the android community eventually agreed to take part in the Humanoid Central experiment. They allowed for a generation of androids to be built that wasn't necessarily a technical advance. They agreed to a host of conditions, one of which was that every android and human participant was required to miscegenate. Their partner, if they had one, must be of the other kind. One human, one android. Each and every family in the colony was mixed in this way.

  Jerry and Sherry Freyjah were far from an unhappy couple. Jerry, the founding Chairman of the Leadership Council, had been succeeded in that role by his wife, who after two terms had gone back to merely being a member. They both loved their work, and lived for the dream they'd help birth. Both had been secular, liberal idealists who'd escaped from the Southwestern Biblical Sky Wars to work on the newly emerging League. Both had seen enough hardship and bloodshed to convince them that peace was the only solution; compromise and peace and no more religion in politics. Down in the desert the humans still sought to eradicate androids as agents of Hell, and back in the East the androids still sought to isolate humans in zoo-like reservations. Meanwhile, the inhabitable Earth kept on shrinking, bringing the two sides closer and closer in proximity and therefore in conflict. The League saw itself as the humanoids' only hope, and Hoyo, Alaska the proving ground.

  It was proving to be far more difficult than anyone thought. For example, the girl now sitting in front of the Director. As the daughter of perhaps the two most powerful individuals in the city, the most important android and the most influential human, Merry could be considered the pudding in which lay the proof. If so, it was not the proof that anyone had hoped for. She was trouble, and nothing but trouble. All of her life, for all that she knew, it had been one problem after another, and most of it stemmed from the fact that she didn't believe that she was what she was.

  She'd always been told she was human, and yet she'd never believed it. Her mother was human, and she was said to have been naturally born to her mother. Merry thought they were lying. After all, her father was an android. How could he then be her father? They said that yes, he actually was, and they tried to explain about birds and mechanical bees, but she didn't buy it. She wasn't born, she decided. Rather, she'd been manufactured. All the pictures they showed her, as a baby, as a child, did nothing at all to convince her. These photos were faked, or if not, then she was simply the new breed of android, the one that had to mature and go through the stages like humans. She was one of that kind, the watered-down kind, the deliberately inferior android. She would never be great like her father. They'd made her that way on purpose; less perfect, more human, still android. It wasn't right and it wasn't fair and she didn't like it at all.

  "It was a stupid game," she said to Haversham, "and Miss Muncie is an idiot, too. She can't explain anything right. The whole squeaky sound thing was ridiculous."

  "Those were the rules," Haversham said. "You do know about rules, right, Merry? Those things you break all the time?"

  She snickered and almost came up with a grin, stopping herself just in time. As an android polluted with human tendencies, she was always catching herself being like them.

  "Do you even consider what your antics might cost your fellow students?" Haversham scolded. "Do you ever take a moment to think about anyone else but yourself?"

  "They all hated it too," Merry said. "Except maybe that stupid human girl, Bysshe. Who knows what that creature thinks, if thinking is what you could call the cow-like ruminations apparently going on behind that stupid fat face. The girl can't even walk straight."

  "You'll be nice to that girl," Haversham warned. "In fact, that's your penance. Thanks very much! I really didn't know what I was going to do with you this time. Now, you'll be nice to Bysshe. Got it?”

  "What do you mean by being nice?" Merry snarled. Usually Haversham gave her some extra assignment, like writing an essay or a book report on some dead philosopher, or something academic like that. Being nice to a human was doubly harsh. Merry was intent on sniffing out a technicality she could use to get away with.

  "You will now be her friend," Haversham said. "You will invite her to your home, where you will be her hostess and you will make sure that she has a good time. I will be sure hear about everything in great detail from your parents. Furthermore, the two of you will embark on a project together."

  "What kind of project?" Merry interrupted. She was already regretting her Minefield behavior. If she was going to be punished like this, perhaps she would have to improve her behavior. No, she wouldn't let Haversham win.

  "You will decide," he told her. The truth was that he hadn't thought of a suitable project, nor did he especially want to. He was merely handing out justice. The details could take care of themselves.

  "Okay," Merry quickly agreed. She was in the driver's seat now. She could play nice, if she had to. And a project, well, that could be fun. Her wannabe android brain was already buzzing with anticipation.

  Ten

  Merry didn't slam the door when she got home, and she didn't run directly upstairs either, but pretty soon she wished she had done both. Instead of a leisurely snack and some computer time to herself, she found her mother unexpectedly at home, and her mother was the very last person she wanted to talk to. Sherry Freyjah and her daughter had not been on good terms for quite some time. In fact, Merry couldn't clearly recall the last time she'd felt happy to see her mother, if indeed she ever had been. In Merry's estimation, Sherry was a) foolish, b) silly, c) unserious, d) emotionally unstable and e) an idiot. Although she knew very well that her mother was one of the most respected politicians in the entire world, somehow that knowledge didn't translate into a decent ordinary courtesy on her own part. Instead, she treated her mother with scorn and an endless barrage of sarcastic remarks whenever she was forced into any interaction with her. That evening was no different.

  "Hello, dear," Sherry glanced up from the pile of papers on her desk to greet her only child with a smile. Through all the ill-treatment, Sherry never once raised her voice at the child or lost her composure for even a moment. It was a rather remarkable feat, but perhaps to be expected from one who had negotiated the final and permanent peace between the Arabs and Israelis.

  "What are you doing home?" Merry snapped, peeling off from her intended foray into the pantry, and beginning her retreat to the living room. "Isn't there some hellish corner of the world that needs to be saved?"

  "I'm sure there is," Sherry chuckled, rising from her seat, and, to Merry's horror, following her into the other room. Merry sagged onto the couch and pulled her backpack up in front of her face for use as part shield and part excuse as she pretended to be searching for some homework. Sherry stood before her, and hesitated before pursuing her line of questioning. Though it was always a touchy matter, she did have something that needed to be discussed.

  "I heard from the school this afternoon," she began, and Merry immediately dumped her backpack onto the floor and leaped to her feet.

  "That bastard Haversham's a liar!" she shouted, clenching her fists.

  "No, not Haversham," her mother replied gently. "The person I heard from was a Miss Caradenton? Something like that."

  "There's no Miss Caradenton at school," Merry said. "I don't know what you're talking about, and I don't know why anyone from there would call you, anyway. I didn't do anything wrong. They have these rules and then they pretend they don't. It's like they don't even believe a word they say. It's the fakest place I've ever seen. Why am I even there? I don't belong there. It's just for stupid humans."

  "It's about some paperwork," her mother said. "Some kind of permission slip, for a field trip, I think?"

  "Oh," Merry sagged back onto the couch. She'd jumped the g
un, again. 'When will I ever learn?' she scolded herself. It was just that reaction to her mother she couldn't control. The woman made her so antsy, and then she'd get angry at herself for responding in that way. It was totally unbecoming an android. She struggled to regain her composure.

  "Right," she said. "I have it here. I guess I forgot to give it to dad so he could sign it." She picked up her backpack and scanned through it.

  "I can sign it, too," her mother reminded her, but Merry didn't answer. She found the paper and silently handed it to her mother, who looked it over, returned to the kitchen where she had a pen out on the table, signed it, and brought it back in to her daughter.

  "There you go," she said. "All set. Is there anything else you want to talk about?"

  "No," Merry sulked, grabbing the paper and not looking at her mother. "I'm going upstairs now."

  "Okay," Sherry replied. "Your father will be home soon. We'll have dinner in about an hour."

  "Fine," Merry said. Once again she got to her feet, but slowly, more deliberately. She kept her cool and determined to walk as simply and mechanically as possible, and made her way up to her room. Once she had closed the door behind her, she flung her backpack at the wall, and kicked at the books that spilled out of it onto the floor.

  "Damn it!" she muttered through gritted teeth. "Why does she have to be here?"

  Eleven

  Merry kept a poster of a complex Indian mandala on her wall that she liked to stare at until losing herself in its patterns. She would stand before it, and choose a line from one of the four corners, and then follow it in toward the center, until coming across another, picked at random, to follow instead. She could continue on in this way, moving in toward the center, then out toward an edge, then back in, over, up or down, and back out, for long stretches. It helped her to both focus and forget; focus on the task at hand, and forget everything else in the world. This was how she believed a genuine android was supposed to function, and it was her deepest desire to overcome the limitations of her own generation of deliberate inferiority. She did not know if she could ever achieve her goal, if it was even possible, or if her basic root firmware was too hardwired to be overcome.

  "They sure don't make us like they used to," she often said to herself. It was a well-known fact, and even her father wouldn't deny it. In truth, he was perhaps the main reason for it. His dream was the polar opposite of her own. As superior as any android had ever been designed, he had been leading the effort to reverse that implacable trend. Oddly, Merry didn't hold him responsible, and didn't despise him for it, although logically she should have. Instead, on hearing his voice coming up from below, her heart quickened as she realized he was home and that she had missed a few moments of his company.

  She instantly forgot the mandala and rushed out to the stairs, drawn to the very sound of him, but something made her pause, made her stop at the top of the steps. She realized he was speaking about her.

  "It's an obsession," he was saying, and in response, her mother's voice came floating up.

  "It's only natural she'd want to take after you."

  "Or you," Jerry Freyjah said. "Or either one of us, I suppose. It was only a matter of which. Would have been easier on her if she'd gone the other way."

  "I'm afraid she doesn't much care for me," Merry's mother said.

  "Oh, I don't believe that."

  "But it's true," Sherry added. "She wants to be exactly like you."

  "That's impossible. You know that."

  "Of course, dear. Of course."

  Sherry was moving around in the dining room. Merry could hear the noises of plates being set out. From the kitchen came the sounds of the maid and the cook in their ferocious Ukrainian accents, or so it seemed to Merry. The two always seemed on the verge of a quarrel, although it was merely the sound of their voices. In reality, they were a happy pair of women who'd been rescued from a life of hardship, miraculously so, it seemed to them. It was their rough way of speaking to each other that was confusing.

  Merry heard her parents drifting away from below, and she took a few steps down the stairs so as to position herself more closely. She soon wished she hadn't, for she was stunned to hear her father saying,

  "Does she really think she's an android?"

  Did he really say that? Had she heard him all right? She froze where she was in case there was more.

  "Yes, dear," her mother replied.

  "How interesting," her father said. "Naturally, I know what that's like," and he laughed. He actually laughed. This was a very rare occasion. When he laughed, it came out sounding all wrong, like a printer on the blink, like a phone that starts to ring but cuts off almost immediately. He didn't normally sound so mechanical, but the laughter was something they'd never gotten right, never found the intonation that a human would make. This was one of the few remaining dead giveaways of the greatest generation of androids.

  "He's being philosophical again," Merry said to herself, and repeated it as she breathed deeply, and took a few steps down the stairs. "He's saying that he knows what it's like, because he also believes he's an android, and he knows that he is. So it's just the same as me. I believe I'm an android and I am, just like him. After all, he's my father, right?"

  She didn't pursue the line of reasoning any further, for she did not want to be thinking that her mother, being human, was also her mother and there was just as much reason to believe she was human as well. When she counted up traits, that didn't make sense. Wasn't she smart? Wasn't she excellent at math? Didn't she find humans ridiculous? Didn't she know how to spot them on sight? Yes, spot them on sight. That was the project. That's exactly what she'd do with Bysshe.