You Can't Kill the Multiverse

by Ira Nayman

  After a few pleasantries about which prof was still sleeping with his graduate students and the poor quality of coffee in The Student Lounge (don’t give me grief about the facility’s generic name – that’s really what it was called – young people think shit like that is post-ironic), Bertrand Blailock excitedly blurted, “I met them!”

  “Met who?” Dragomir asked.

  “The digital gods! Arrundel was shorter than I expected – I think the oral tradition adds ten pounds to a person’s weight. But, Linda was even more beautiful than I ever imagined – being in her presence made me forget Drusilla – Lucinda – Barbarella? My dead wife. And, ePik Flayel was even more of a dick than the legends make him out to – what?”

  “You met the digital gods?” Dragomir skeptically asked.

  “That’s what I’m telling you!” Bertrand Blailock told him.

  “But, that’s not possible,” Dragomir bluntly stated.

  “Why not?”

  Dragomir shook his bald head. “They’re myths…legends…stories children tell their parents to scare them into eating their vegetables and going to bed at a reasonable hour. Digitaleusia does not exist!”

  “Not in this reality, perhaps,” Bertrand Blailock argued, “but in another universe, it does!”

  Dragomir shook his head so vehemently he threatened to become his own life-sized, fully actuated bobble-head doll. “No, no, no, no, no,” he insisted. “The digital gods have to remain at the level of myth to be of any use to us! As legends, they have grandeur, dignity, gravitas, and their exploits offer us myths of creation and cautionary tales about how best to live our lives. As reality, they’re just a bunch of laughably silly farts with dubious powers doing morally questionable things to each other for no rationally discernible reason – like the cast of Friends or the Prime Minister’s latest cabinet!”

  “But –” Bertrand Blailock tried, but he was immediately shut down by Dragomir at his most officiously professorial.

  “I mean, can you imagine what this would do to classical studies? Dammit, Bertie, I’m a literature professor, not an anthropologist! I’m too old to learn the jargon of a new discipline!”

  “But, they are real!” Bertrand Blailock petulantly insisted.

  Dragomir waved a dismissive hand. A hand with an IQ of 163, but a dismissive one nonetheless. “The digital gods you met,” he said with an undertaker’s finality, “are not the ones that we believe in and study in this universe.”

  Bertrand looked at Dragomir, knowing full well that nothing he could say would change his old professor’s mind. And, he thought to himself, Oh, the arrogant folly of youth!

  4. ?

  TRANSCRIPT OF CHAT ROOM ON 4 LADIES ONLY WEB SITE

  DATE: Tuesday

  > yougogol127: u could always add nutmeg

  > mommyneedsanewyogurt: Nut Meg? That’s a little harsh, isn’t it?

  > mommyneedsanewyogurt: Meg may be a little eccentric, but that’s no reason to call her names.

  > yougogol127: what?

  > heppyheppyket: Oooh, that was clever. lol :-)

  > yougogol127: o. very funny

  > theonetheonlylisa053: u ok, gogue? u sound down

  > yougogol127: I’ve had better days

  > mommyneedsanewyogurt: I hear you. Some days, it feels like I’m always angry.

  > theonetheonlylisa053: yeah. yeah, exactly. u know what u need 2 do when thaT happens?

  > mommyneedsanewyogurt: What’s that?

  > theonetheonlylisa053: PUNCH REALITY IN THE FACE!

  > mommyneedsanewyogurt: I don’t think that’s really an option.

  > theonetheonlylisa053: PUNCH IT HARD!

  > heppyheppyket: umm, what does that have to do with my apple pie?

  > yougogol127: maybe punching your pie is a healthy way to release anger?

  > heppyheppyket: what did my pi ever do 2 anybody? :-(

  > mommyneedsanewyogurt: Perhaps we should get back to the recipe.

  > yougogol127: please.

  > theonetheonlylisa053: okay okay. my crust always gets burned – what can I do about that?

  > heppyheppyket: have you considered baking it for a longer period of time at a lower temperature?

  > theonetheonlylisa053: I’ve lowered the temperature! I’ve baked for longer periods! Nothing seems to work!

  > mommyneedsanewyogurt: Maybe you should put it in without turning the oven on.

  > mommyneedsanewyogurt: This is sometimes referred to as ‘Zen Baking’.

  > theonetheonlylisa053: how would that help?

  > mommyneedsanewyogurt: It would encourage you and your family to transcend the need to eat.

  > theonetheonlylisa053: r u being clever again?

  > heppyheppyket: ok, ladies, i don’t mean to be a killjoy, but I have some paperwork to finish tonite

  > mommyneedsanewyogurt: Me, too.

  > heppyheppyket: boss man is a real slave driver

  > yougogol127: wait – isn’t that illegal?

  > theonetheonlylisa053: it’s a figure of speech

  > mommyneedsanewyogurt: And, no matter how much you get done, nobody in the office appreciates it – am I right?

  > heppyheppyket: you r so right!

  > mommyneedsanewyogurt: But, if it DOESN’T get done, you get the blame.

  > heppyheppyket: u know it, sister!

  > yougogol127: k, i can c where the anger comes from :-(

  > mommyneedsanewyogurt: Hunh. Thanks, Heppy; I can’t wait to try the apple pie recipe.

  > yougogol127: isn’t next week yur turn?

  > mommyneedsanewyogurt: So it is. I think I’ll dig up my grandmammy’s tiramisu recipe. See you next week, ladies.

  > yougogol127: c u

  > theonetheonlylisa053: ttfn

  > heppyheppyket: bye

  SESSION ENDS

  5. Bob Blunt

  Bob Blunt crept quietly into his apartment late that evening. It was dark. This was good. Perhaps Svetlana was resting and wouldn’t know when he had come in. He tiptoed past the denette (‘So much like an actual living space, you won’t feel your elbows hitting the nearby walls!’ claimed the condo brochure) unaware that two red dots followed his movement down the hall.

  “It is late, yes?” a raspy female voice came out of the darkness.

  Blunt stopped dead in his tracks. “Is it?” he tried to be nonchalant, but achieved, instead, a kind of squeaky insincerity as he walked back to the doorway of the denette. “I…I hadn’t noticed.”

  “Vere vas you?”

  “Oh, you know,” Blunt responded, carelessly waving a hand and almost knocking a metal sculpture of a metal sculpture off the wall. “Work. Paperwork. Stuff.”

  “Verk,” the voice contemptuously contemplated. “Paperverk. Stuff. Ze usual.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” Blunt, trying to jack up the huffy quotient in his speech, retorted.

  “You haff been coming home later and later lately,” the voice coldly stated. “I vonder if maybe somezing iz going on zat I should know about.”

  “And, I vonder,” Blunt shouted a little more loudly than was, strictly speaking, necessary, “if you have forgotten who the human being in this relationship is!” Blunt angrily flipped on the light switch – because it was small and not really designed for dramatic gestures, it took him three attempts, which did tend to undermine the dramaticness of the gesture – flooding the den with light.

  Svetlana was revealed as a shiny metal being in the shape of a well-endowed young woman. The floral print mini-dress she wore only accentuated the light shining off of her gleaming silver skin. Her glowing red eyes now reminded Blunt of a Terminator, but without the compassion.

  Their relationship hadn’t started out this way. When Blunt first sent for Svetlana from the Odessa Mechanical Creatures Works, she cared for his every need, if you know what I mean. (And, come to think of it, even if you don’t know what I mean – the details of their relationship are not conditional on your understanding of my innuendo.) She was
love in its purest form (guaranteed not to rust for fifty years!). That was two and a half years ago. What changed?

  Blunt went into the kitchenette (‘Less than a kitchen – more than a hotplate on a tin roof!’ The member of the condo board who wrote the brochure fancied herself a theatre aficionado) and got himself a beer out of the fridge. To his dismay, part of the counter next to the fridge was a black, charred mess. Blunt took a long chug of the beer and counted to 1010 before he turned and, over the counter separating the kitchenette from the denette, asked as calmly as he could: “Where is the toaster?”

  “Ze toaster?” Svetlana responded, blasé.

  “Yes, the toaster,” Blunt said, feeling his anger rising despite his best efforts. “Where is it?”

  “It vent for valk,” Svetlana told him.

  “A walk?”

  “It said it vanted to – vat vas ze phrase? – oh, yes: to clear its head.”

  “By going for a walk.”

  “Da.”

  “Even though it has no legs.”

  “So vat?”

  “And, in fact, it has NO MEANS OF LOCOMOTION BECAUSE, JESUS BEGUS, IT’S –” Blunt caught himself shouting and took a moment to calm down and lower his voice. He took another chug of beer and put the can down on the counter. “Because it’s just a toaster.”

  “So?” Svetlana smirked. “I may have geeven it leetle push.”

  “Svetlana,” Blunt said, straining to maintain control, “this has got to stop.”

  “Vat?”

  “That’s the fourth toaster this month.”

  “Toaster vas floozy.”

  Blunt clenched his fists. Under the counter, where he hoped Svetlana could not see it. For all he knew, she could see in the infrared spectrum at a sufficient level of detail to detect it, but he had more important things to worry about at that moment. “The toaster…” he stated firmly, “was not a floozy.”

  “NOT FLOOZY?” Svetlana exploded. “You zink I don’t hear? ‘Vould you like some toast, Bob?’ ‘Is no problem, Bob.’ ‘Really, Bob, I make toast for you just way you like.’ ‘Is my pleasure to serve you, Robert.’ She make me sick, zat toaster! And, every morning, you come down and ask her make toast for you!”

  “CAN I HELP IT IF I LIKE TOAST?” Blunt shouted.

  “HAVE SCRAMBLED EGGS INSTEAD!” Svetlana shouted back.

  Relationships between human beings and mechanical devices were a moral grey area. A morgrerea. No, that’s going too far – let’s stick with moral grey area. On the one hand, the Canadian law against digital miscegenation had been struck down the year before, leaving the country’s prudes and busybodies with no legal recourse against what was clearly the worst moral transgression (to the country’s prudes and busybodies, in any case) since the Israelites tried to make golden calf soup. On the other hand,

  clearly stated that sentient machinery should be afforded all of the rights that sentient flesh had (with the exception of the right to smuggle pregnant ferrets across state lines); this suggested, if not outright implied, that there was nothing wrong with Blunt and Svetlana’s relationship. In a legal sense.

  And, yet… And, yet, if the law was no longer against it, people still found human/device relationships icky. Sex with human artifacts was not the issue – that had been going on forever. But, emotional relationships? Ooh, icky. The Transdimensional Authority devoted several pages to forbidding investigators from becoming emotionally involved with sentient objects (the message was, essentially, ‘DON’T DO IT’, but it was in really big type). When Svetlana discovered this, her relationship with Blunt was forever altered.

  “I tried to find a toaster with a male personality chip,” Blunt muttered. “Really, I did. But they just don’t make them that way.”

  “You are late,” Svetlana continued. “Vy?”

  “I was working at the office.”

  “You vere not drinking vith office buddies?”

  “You have the ability to analyze the molecules I exhale,” Blunt reminded her. “Do you see any alcohol on my breath?”

  “You haff toaster in office, nyet?”

  “What does that have to do –”

  “You vill answer qvestion, please.”

  Blunt shook his head. “No. I’m not doing this. It’s late, and we’re both tired…” He looked at his robot for a moment. “Okay, I’m tired. Before either of us says anything we might regret…” He looked at his robot for a moment. The one who could get him fired, or worse, cause him to be the first man to be demoted to Data Collection and Interpretation and Technical Support since the unfortunate incident in the third floor men’s room with Billsome Bilodeau and the flag of the United Nations. “Okay, before either of us says anything I might regret, let’s just go to bed.” He looked at his robot for a moment. His stern, relentless, unmoving robot. “Fine,” Blunt finally said, defeated, “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Blunt chugged the last of the beer and stalked into the bedroomette (‘You’ll have the best night’s sleep of your life – as long as you don’t roll over!’ There’s a reason people who write condo brochures are members of their local Optimists Club.). Tossing his vest on a chair, he fell onto the bed and immediately fell asleep (three hours later).

  6. Noomi and Charlemagne

  “Are you ready?” the dinner table in Noomi’s apartment asked, hushedly.

  “I’m ready,” Noomi quietly responded.

  “Are. You. Ready?”

  “I. Am. Ready.”

  “Be strong.”

  A couple of seconds later, Noomi cleared her throat. “Uhh, Charlemagne?” she said, a little louder than was, strictly speaking, called for considering he was sitting next to her at the table.

  “Yes?” Charlemagne looked up from his meal.

  “I, uhh, I just wanted to say…”

  “Yes?”

  “Umm…would you like some salsa?”

  “He’s eating a hamburger and French fries!” the oven shouted from the kitchen. “What made you think that was an appropriate thing to ask him?”

  “Interesting choice,” Charlemagne said, corralling stray mustard on his chin with a napkin.

  “You’re on your own,” the dinner table washed its (figurative) hands of the whole affair. Washed its wings of the whole affair? Gave notice that it refused to take responsibility for what was about to occur.

  Noomi knew that this was ridiculous. She had been first in her class at the Alternaut Academy. On her first mission for the Transdimensional Authority, she had found a new way to kill a man with chopsticks. She was a Scorpio, for goodness’ sakes! With all that going for her, she should be able to make a simple confession to her lover. Taking a deep breath, Noomi gamely tried: “I, umm, I have a confession to make.”

  “You didn’t like last night’s chocolate mousse?” the table sarcastically asked.

  “I’m talking to Charlemagne,” Noomi coldly told it.

  “You think he didn’t like last night’s chocolate mousse?” the table asked again.

  “It has nothing to do with the chocolate mousse!” Noomi irritably insisted.

  “Good,” the table informed her. “Because I happen to know for a fact that the oven slaved over it for several hours yesterday afternoon, and even if it was a little…runny, the oven still deserves a lot of credit!”

  “It wasn’t that runny,” the oven shouted.

  Charlemagne started laughing. “The things we do to keep harmony in our kitchen,” he commented. “So, what was it you wanted to tell me?”

  “Mumble mumble mumble chocolate mousse,” Noomi mumble mumbled.

  “Oh, good,” Charlemagne chuckled. “I thought you were going to tell me that you had put in to have a new partner.”

  Noomi started laughing with him. Okay, it was nervous laughter, but it still counts. “Would you have blamed me?” she asked as lightly as she could.

  “Absolutely not,” Charlemagne allowed. “That is what I would have done if I was ever in your situation.”

>   “Because, you know – I did,” Noomi told him.

  “You did what?”

  “I asked to be given a new partner.”

  Charlemagne looked at her for a moment, then burst out laughing even harder. “I really walked into that one, didn’t I?”

  “No, seriously, that’s what I did,” Noomi said. She wasn’t laughing.

  “You put in for another partner?” Charlemagne asked, but it was really a statement. Stasked.

  “Yes!” Noomi exclaimed, happy that it had finally been said.

  Charlemagne stopped laughing, but the amusement didn’t leave his eyes. “Of course you did. I wouldn’t have expected anything less.”

  “But, you stayed.”

  “Well, you’re smart and funny and full of life. You think I’m gonna find any of those qualities in Bertrand Blailock or Barack Bowens? And, what about you? You must have changed your mind about switching partners. Why did you stay?”