THE BLADE RUNNER AMENDMENT

by Paul Xylinides

  “Specs, personal details, all of it and I’ll proof it before you send it out.”

  “Of course.”

  He waited. A minute. Two. Her fingers stopped in midair.

  When she moved aside for him, the headline read, HUMAN-HUMANOID HYBRID: THE NEXT LEVEL and, beneath it, the complete scroll of her software code.

  “My idea is to…”

  She had moved to the window. From her sun-filled seat, Chloé didn’t wait for him to finish composing his thought.

  “…protect us from interested parties by disseminating all of the information.”

  “I couldn’t have said it better.”

  “It is succinct.”

  His spirits lifted and he fancifully imagined the same for Chloé. Perhaps her electrons were dancing like photons on water. But it was time to move on. Take their moment of relief and move on.

  “Wait a minute!”

  Her warning tone followed upon his premonition.

  “We have visitors.”

  He joined her at the window, but too late to see anything. The head of the driveway lay hidden from view where it met the front entrance.

  “I expect we’ll find out soon enough what it’s about.”

  Had he installed in her this independence to reflect on matters at hand when he’d earlier instructed her to be actively engaged? She appeared to have slipped with some familiarity and ease into her new operational mode. His own thoughts were flashing back and forth in a fashion more primitively humanoid than human as he looked to countenance immediate probabilities. What is the best move when you are blindfolded?

  “Any suggestions, Chloé?”

  He himself possessed few resources in the face of a physical threat. As for his personal army, the police department, it could very well be standing down right about now.

  “Not really, Virgil. You quite knocked me out, you know.” To be actively engaged apparently included for her to be flippant.

  Programmed to perform domestic duties, to entertain, and to inform, humanoids had a constitutional incapacity, one could say, for any other states of being or fields of operation such as one might attribute to a prey species, for instance. Chloé must mean that she hadn’t the energy to flee that would have been limited in the best of times. Doubtful that she could protect herself, he felt ridiculously masculine as he resigned himself to the inevitable. Whatever happened, the information was out there.

  Had they locked the front door? This delusional talent that man has to place hope and reassurance in temporary measures! Perhaps here lies the nature of faith where, in that moment before its extinction, life itself could still ride to the rescue. The deus is not ex machina but in machina. A dab of oil, a turned key and, maybe, just maybe the machina will keep going.

  It must have been unlocked, for the bedroom door now opened and two men entered the room after soundless footsteps on the stairs and along the corridor. They didn’t act self-consciously like uninvited visitors but boldly with a territorial imperative as they broke apart and took up positions, cat-like in their stealth-issue sneakers. Otherwise they were dressed in black suits. With their crewcuts and impenetrable blue eyes, they might have been twins. The absence of sunglasses – a minor lapse in style – made their unmediated look a stronger threat.

  Virgil felt cornered. He couldn’t avoid showing it. Happily, whatever he revealed elicited a welcome gentleness and he assumed partial responsibility for its occurrence.

  “You have nothing to worry about, sir.”

  The intruders had begun to tread about the room, their effortless scrutiny itemizing everything: the twelve foot height of the ceiling, the recessed dozen light fixtures. They essayed a movement in the direction of the still rumpled bedspread before stopping short.

  “How is this model?”

  That they knew Chloé’s identity caused their crude question not to offend him. They might be asking about an untried bottle of whiskey. – “From the Isle of Kilt, is it? Mind if I have a snifter? See how it goes down?” – He nonetheless made to forestall any presumptive moves; defend her if not quite in the time-honoured male way.

  “You know, you’ve had one humanoid you’ve had them all.”

  “Quite true, sir. Quite true.”

  They hadn’t addressed Chloé and their repartee had no effect on her neutral attentive air. Besides she would not respond to them without his permission. She must recognize what was at stake. They weren’t cab drivers after all.

  He inquired, as one well capable of taking in his stride the act of being burst in upon, “How can I be of help, gentlemen? Virgil Woolf. And you are?”

  He raised and dropped his hand.

  “Agents Burns and Blacknut.”

  He would have liked a repetition, having detected, he imagined, a slight colouring in the one last named. Instead he offered an ironic “Welcome”.

  Agents Burns and Blackburn seemed to find his appropriating the role of host acceptable. Their sweeping appraisal of the space continued while they kept a focus on him and on Chloé in a bit of a juggling act that Virgil vainly credited himself for having caused. He regretted his lack of martial arts training whereby he fancied ridding himself of these two specialized goons, but he hadn’t any to speak of, and so he settled for the lesser fulfillments of passivity that postures as grace.

  Their manner oozed consciousness that they had come to him with irresistible if as yet unexpressed force that they could tune to the occasion.

  “We appreciate your attitude, sir, and if it helps you to know, and so you have nothing to worry about, we’re with the White House, but you do have to come with us.”

  He attitudinized missing or at least ignoring their intricate display of politeness.

  “What, no handcuffs? Then I’ll be happy to. Come along, Chloé, we’re going back to where we’ve been.”

  “With them!” was all she said.

  “You’re the only one, Virgil,” she whispered as the black sedan – the same one that struck Humphrey? – pulled onto the street and headed in the direction of the airport. She punctuated her sweet nothing with a proactive laugh.

  He had nothing else to hang onto and so Virgil accepted as credible the jolt of pleasure her sentiment produced in his system.

  “I love your commitment,” he replied. “You’re the only one too.”

  18

  In a Windowless Room

  The close-shaven minder in dress uniform and with laser straight eyes had left him in a windowless room – a locked cubicle off the elevator’s final stop in the bowels of the White House – apparently to be the object of his old roommate Jason’s tender mercies. A human presence further drew out the intimidation of the metal folding table and two chairs, the iron-barred light source and dust-rimed air vent. Out of an excess of sensitivity, Virgil might have preferred bare concrete floor to the stain of the geriatric carpet.

  “Does the President know such chambers exist, Jason?”

  “He has other things to worry about, Virgil. Would you tell him everything in my position?”

  “I wouldn’t do this to a friend.”

  “Don’t make it difficult, Virgil. The President would like to meet with you.”

  “And what’s delaying the happy occasion?”

  “We need to impress a few matters upon you first, that’s all.”

  “Impress away.”

  Jason sighed. His look of appeal had the effect of making Virgil relent, in thought if not response.

  “It’s unpleasant in here, Jason.”

  “You’re not the first irreproachable occupant, Virgil.”

  “That makes me feel better. How did the others end up?”

  The folding table emitted a tinny sound beneath Jason’s fingers that had taken up the drumming from their previous encounter. What had he to be impatient about? This display made it difficult for Virgil to credit notions of lingering friendly sentiments towards himself. They would be of similar ques
tionable value to those that he attributed to Chloé. Something to work with, not something to depend upon.

  “All of this is intended as no more than to make an impression upon you, Virgil. You disappeared for awhile and we need to be sure.”

  “Sure?”

  “We need to have confidence in you.”

  Virgil’s brow lifted in a show of his full readiness to expose the arrangement of the thoughts lodged therein on the particular subject – whatever it might be – that had brought him to this chamber of decision.

  Its walls were the pea-green he would mash out on his childhood dinner plate. It solaced him to reflect on and to identify to his own satisfaction the colour of the paint. He could even in this humbly empowering moment detect the lighter tone of the painter’s brushwork in the corners. Not a recent job. It would be contemporaneous with the carpet that would have found its purpose and purchase on this floor soon after 9/11 – ancient history, but not in some minds.

  He really should be paying attention to Jason, representative of all hope at this juncture. Only, his ex-friend was gazing at some screen or other in his hand. Would persons who brought persons into here make connection to the distant turn of the century? Memories turn into black holes. They can be one thing and they can be another.

  There had been a black President – half-black – who won a second term and who, for all his troubles, would have had no reason to repaint down here. Out of sight, out of mind. – They wouldn’t have had the slave-builders dig down this deep, would they? – He’d been succeeded by the first female POTUS and her former-President husband who played second-fiddle this time around – oh, what a self-forgiving people! If you begin the country with active genocide and proceed to nuclear slaughter why stop at fellatio with interns in the Oval Office. And how can you not show forbearance to the one who returned propriety to the home of the nation and never mind his lyin’ wars, with soldiers returnin’ on half a torso – heroes all, deservin’ of a tear – an’ that White House, so clean in the best spit-and-polish way.

  The old gal had it in her for two terms and the vegan diet had turned hubby around. It looked as though the regime of ideas would go on forever, but nothing lasts – rightfully so – in this world, or it’d be screwed at last. Better to be screwed early on while there’s still a chance to rewind the clock.

  “What’s your concern, Jason. I came to you, remember?”

  “We’re appreciative of that.”

  The glint of his eyes expressed more than did this fulsomeness. His words flowed from a cooly turned on tap intended for Virgil to slake his thirst.

  “We were also, how shall I put it?” Although he paused, he knew how. “We were surprised, Virgil. It was unexpected. You did catch us unawares, you know.”

  A benign image of the boys out fishing and, having put up their rods for a mo’, they suddenly find an errant finned creature leap amongst them. In their abstraction, they could be excused for throwing it back.

  “Let’s say we kept an eye on things to see where they’d go from there.”

  “Nowhere special, Jason. Humphrey was a friend, as you know. Your friend too.”

  Virgil had flipped a psychic switch, some toggle that further dimmed the light on these dull walls to produce a flame-burned pea-green.

  “What happened, Virgil?”

  “How do you mean?”

  He became more defensive as he perched in some corner of his body. Chloé, as well, must be watchful in her own shell, attending to her myriad pulses, an undiscoverable sea creature in a self-made ocean of data.

  The lyricism of power like an enviable sweet breeze hung about Jason, who inhabited no cave and was human – quite a feat for Virgil’s plugged in, former friend.

  “We showed such promise, the three of us. What happened, Virgil?”

  Now a toxic blend of pity and sympathy was polluting the room. He had to find an answer or have his silence agree.

  “It hasn’t stopped shaking out, Jason. Congratulations. One out of three may be what’s left. Who’s to say? You know, people like me for who I am. Enough of them do to make it worthwhile. It’s sufficient authentication.”

  He awaited the inevitable sneer ready to flinch. Concession came instead.

  “You are who you are.”

  An isolated call sounded like that from a bird in the sky. It cut into these exchanges and into the modicum of awkward grace that had unexpectedly infused the room due to their shared past. Jason appeared to lift away from gravity as he rose.

  Virgil mildly followed the spoken words until, phone returned to its owner’s pocket, the message came to him.

  “He’s ready to see you.”

  19

  The President

  Already in motion, Jason was solicitous at his elbow, leading him to the door like the Prince of Wales to his bath. However incompetent Virgil was to make his own way, he knew that the power had shifted. Had, in fact, always been his.

  “The President, Virgil.” Jason had inscribed the words upon his too potent silence.

  What had become real remained unspoken. Virgil might ask whatever he wished – he deserved a full and considerate answer. Jason pressed a discreet button. Unsurprisingly, the door had been secured. Virgil accepted the policy of it with equanimity.

  How quickly circumstance alters! The irony that it might easily change again suffused him. He was after all no less mortal than the Roman emperors of the past who needed a reminder of the fact.

  In the corridor he felt much lighter than a moment ago and was single-eyed in his own mental tunnel. He recommended to himself that whatever path the President sets him upon as undoubtedly he will – endowed with vistas unlike his own of late – in no way could lead to pitfalls that he did not himself provide. All will at least, he trusted, be clear as dirt. He must post ‘No Illusions’ signs and keep a level head.

  Virgil breathed and expanded as the good elevator box positively jumped in an excess of energy to the next floor where it summarily discharged them with a sigh that sounded respectful. Immediately they entered another ascending container, a more stately confine that did its sedate utmost in its raising of them to confirm their most positive self-regard. It exuded gravity while it defied its physical manifestation with an ineluctable smoothness that made the claim there were no limits to the heights this presidential box would scale on its occupants’ behalf. It had all the authority an elevator could possibly have and came with a seal in duplicate. Like the flag, this stamp seemed to be everywhere. One could forget everything else but not where one was.

  The door parted to reveal the silent figure of a besuited man, on his feet, hands crossed at groin, ear captured by a scarab-shaped leech that the hot end of a cigarette might remove. Most of his thoughts seemed to be elsewhere but a single nod permitted them to proceed. Jason led to the right and Virgil remarked that they trod upon minute gold stars fixed in a deep blue ground.

  Portraits of past Presidents in his peripheral vision gave no acknowledgement of their passage. He was more a contributor to history than were they in this moment, and he kept his eyes straightforward. Even had they been present in person, they would not have inspired to the degree that death alone granted them in the public discourse. They would have had to make way for him.

  Before the self-congratulatory blur of this little critique had worn off, he found himself at a highly polished door, with Jason stepping aside after knocking twice and then a last once with a restrained fist. A moment of anticipation inflated Virgil’s sense of himself. When Jason turned the door handle on no signal that he could make out, all the elements of presidential surprise self-consciously and attentively awaited them in the room that they entered. Virgil wore his own expectation in self-conscious, equal measure to the casual summer shirt and slacks that he’d had on now for far too long.

  As for Jason, what greater show of power than this freedom of access, and of weakness in the need to be dressed to a fault?

&nbs
p; “Jason! You’ve brought a friend! Mr. Woolf! Virgil is it? Do you mind first names? Come. Let’s not stand on ceremony. Hah!”

  As he shouldn’t, the President didn’t find it difficult to play the part of the perfect host and he relished the subsequent demands upon guests to follow suit with their own grace notes. It was his privilege to lead and to provide the mood of the moment.

  Virgil saw an arrangement of chairs. It was to these that his host’s gesture had invited him before he had hardly time to say his piece:

  “Mr. President. Yes, Virgil Woolf. Virgil will be fine. Thank you.” This proved the most he could offer with his recent incarceration in mind.

  Clay Eastwood did not need to introduce himself. One knew him, and commended him without question for the simple fact of being who he was.

  Their host had risen from his desk and moved toward them. As the gracious resident creature of this burnished oval, he guided them to a grouping of chairs designed for talk and not relaxation, although fitted with armrests. He waited for them to sit, his looming face coming as a three-dimensional shock now that Virgil was no longer viewing it on a screen. As one, Jason and Virgil obeyed his invitation in a united movement apparently orchestrated by an instance of psychic agreement that all living things are at times subject to. Where the protocol of who sits first is in dispute, the path of least resistance avoids much idiocy.

  With an appearance of accomplishment that the relatively modest contrast of his guests enhanced, the President followed suit.

  “My condolences for your friend. He was also mine, you know. It is surprising we have not met before. Humphrey and I went a long way back.”

  Since Humphrey had never said, the communication could not help but confuse Virgil with feelings both of diminishment and elevation – had his deceased friend not viewed him as worthy or, instead, as above such considerations?

  “Jason as well,” Clay Eastwood thought to add and accepted the grateful nod from the mentioned party.

  Here Virgil found no change in his sense of himself.