Hugo Awards: The Short Stories (Volume 2)

by Anthology

  I’ve spent the past three hours writing these words, so that whoever reads them will know that what I am about to do I am doing willingly, even joyfully, and that far from giving in to depression I am, at long last, yielding to hope.

  It’s almost three in the morning. The snow stopped falling at midnight, the sky is clear, and Mars should come into view at any moment now. A few minutes ago I gathered my favorite photos of Lisa; they’re lined up on the desk right beside me, and she seems more beautiful than ever.

  Very soon I’ll take off my clothes, fold them neatly on my desk chair, and walk out into the yard. Then it’s just a matter of spotting what I’m looking for. Is it Mars? Barsoom? Something else? It makes no difference. Only a realist sees things as they are, and it was John who showed me the limitations of reality and how could someone as perfect as my princess not transcend those limitations?

  I believe she is waiting for me, and something tells me I shall soon know.

  SHED SKIN

  Robert J. Sawyer

  I’m sorry," said Mr. Shiozaki, as he leaned back in his swivel chair and looked at the middle-aged white man with the graying temples, "but there’s nothing I can do for you."

  "But I’ve changed my mind," said the man. He was getting red in the face as the conversation went on. "I want out of this deal."

  "You can’t change your mind," said Shiozaki. "You’ve moved your mind."

  The man’s voice had taken on a plaintive tone, although he was clearly trying to suppress it. "I didn’t think it would be like this."

  Shiozaki sighed. "Our psychological counselors and our lawyers went over the entire procedure and all the ramifications with Mr. Rathburn beforehand. It’s what he wanted."

  "But I don’t want it anymore."

  "You don’t have any say in the matter."

  The white man placed a hand on the table. The hand was flat, the fingers splayed, but it was nonetheless full of tension. "Look," he said, "I demand to see to see the other me. I’ll explain it to him. He’ll understand. He’ll agree that we should rescind the deal."

  Shiozaki shook his head. "We can’t do that. You know we can’t. That’s part of the agreement."

  "But–"

  "No buts," said Shiozaki. "That’s the way it has to be. No successor has ever come back here. They can’t. Your successor has to do everything possible to shut your existence out of his mind, so he can get on with his existence, and not worry about yours. Even if he wanted to come see you, we wouldn’t allow the visit."

  "You can’t treat me like this. It’s inhuman."

  "Get this through your skull," said Shiozaki. "You are not human."

  "Yes, I am, damn it. If you–"

  "If I prick you, do you not bleed?" said Shiozaki.

  "Exactly! I’m the one who is flesh and blood. I’m the one who grew in my mother’s womb. I’m the one who is a descendant of thousands of generations of Homo sapiens and thousands of generations of Homo erectus and Homo habilis before that. This this other me is just a machine, a robot, an android."

  "No, its not. It is George Rathburn. The one and only George Rathburn."

  "Then why do you call him ‘it’?"

  "I’m not going to play semantic games with you," said Shiozaki. "He is George Rathburn. You aren’t not anymore."

  The man lifted his hand from the table and clenched his fist. "Yes, I am. I am George Rathburn."

  "No, you’re not. You’re just a skin. Just a shed skin."

  George Rathburn was slowly getting used to his new body. He’d spent six months in counseling preparing for the transference. They’d told him this replacement body wouldn’t feel like his old one, and they’d been right. Most people didn’t transfer until they were old, until they’d enjoyed as much biological physicality as they could and until the ever-improving robotic technology was as good as it was going to get during their natural lifetimes.

  After all, although the current robot bodies were superior in many ways to the slab-of-flab ones how soon he’d adopted that term!–they still weren’t as physically sensitive.

  Sex the recreational act, if not the procreative one was possible, but it wasn’t quite as good. Synapses were fully reproduced in the nano-gel of the new brain, but hormonal responses were faked by playing back memories of previous events. Oh, an orgasm was still an orgasm, still wonderful but it wasn’t the unique, unpredictable experience of a real sexual climax. There was no need to ask, "Was it good for you?," for it was always good, always predictable, always exactly the same.

  Still, there were compensations. George could now walk or run, if he wanted to for hours on end without feeling the slightest fatigue. And he’d dispensed with sleep. His daily memories were organized and sorted in a six-minute packing session every twenty-four hours; that was his only downtime.

  Downtime. Funny that it had been the biological version of him that had been prone to downtime, while the electronic version was mostly free of it.

  There were other changes, too. His proprioception the sense of how his body and limbs were deployed at any given moment was much sharper than it had previously been.

  And his vision was more acute. He couldn’t see into the infrared that was technically possible, but so much of human cognition was based on the idea of darkness and light that to banish them with heat sensing had turned out to be bad psychologically. But his chromatic abilities had been extended in the other direction, and that let him see, among other things, bee purple, the color that often marked distinctive patterns on flower petals that human eyes the old-fashioned kind of human eyes, that is were blind to.

  Hidden beauty revealed.

  And an eternity to enjoy it.

  "I demand to see a lawyer."

  Shiozaki was again facing the flesh-and-blood shell that had once housed George Rathburn, but the Japanese man’s eyes seemed to be focused at infinity, as if looking right through him. "And how would you pay for this lawyer’s services?" Shiozaki asked at last.

  Rathburn perhaps he couldn’t use his name in speech, but no one could keep him from thinking it opened his mouth to protest. He had money lots of money. But, no, no, he’d signed all that away. His biometrics were meaningless; his retinal scans were no longer registered. Even if he could get out of this velvet prison and access one, no ATM in the world would dispense cash to him. Oh, there were plenty of stocks and bonds in his name . . . but it wasn’t his name anymore.

  "There has to be something you can do to help me," said Rathburn.

  "Of course," said Shiozaki. "I can assist you in any number of ways. Anything at all you need to be comfortable here."

  "But only here, right?"

  "Exactly. You knew that I’m sorry; Mr. Rathburn knew that when he chose this path for himself, and for you. You will spend the rest of your life here in Paradise Valley."

  Rathburn was silent for a time, then: "What if I agreed to accept your restrictions? What if I agreed not to present myself as George Rathburn? Could I leave here then?"

  "You aren’t George Rathburn. Regardless, we can’t allow you to have any outside contact." Shiozaki was quiet for a few moments, and then, in a softer tone, he said, "Look, why make things difficult for yourself? Mr. Rathburn provided very generously for you. You will live a life of luxury here. You can access any books you might want, any movies. You’ve seen our recreation center, and you must admit it’s fabulous. And our sex-workers are the best-looking on the planet. Think of this as the longest, most-pleasant vacation you’ve ever had."

  "Except it doesn’t end until I die," said Rathburn.

  Shiozaki said nothing.

  Rathburn exhaled noisily. "You’re about to tell me that I’m already dead, aren’t you? And so I shouldn’t think of this as a prison; I should think of this as heaven."

  Shiozaki opened his mouth to speak, but closed it again without saying anything. Rathburn knew that the administrator couldn’t even give him that comfort. He wasn’t dead nor would he be, even when this discarded biological
container, here, in Paradise Valley, finally ceased to function. No, George Rathburn lived on, a duplicated version of this consciousness in an almost indestructible, virtually immortal robot body, out in the real world.

  "Hey there, G.R.," said the black man with the long gray beard. "Join me?"

  Rathburn the Rathburn made out of carbon, that is had entered Paradise Valley’s dining hall. The man with the beard had already been served his lunch: a lobster tail, garlic mashed potatoes, a glass of the finest Chardonnay. The food here was exquisite.

  "Hi, Dat," Rathburn said, nodding. He envied the bearded man. His name, before he’d transferred his consciousness into a robot, had been Darius Allan Thompson, so his initials, the only version of his birth name allowed to be used here, made a nice little word almost as good as having a real name. Rathburn took a seat at the same table. One of the ever-solicitous servers young, female (for this table of straight men), beautiful was already at hand, and G.R. ordered a glass of champagne. It wasn’t a special occasion nothing was ever special in Paradise Valley but any pleasure was available to those, like him and Dat, on the Platinum Plus maintenance plan.

  "Why so long in the face, G.R.?" asked Dat.

  "I don’t like it here."

  Dat admired the derrière of the departing server, and took a sip of his wine. "What’s not to like?"

  "You used to be a lawyer, didn’t you? Back on the outside?"

  "I still am a lawyer on the outside," said Dat.

  G.R. frowned, but decided not to press the point. "Can you answer some questions for me?"

  "Sure. What do you want to know?"

  G.R. entered Paradise Valley’s "hospital." He thought of the name as being in quotation marks, since a real hospital was a place you were supposed to go to only temporarily for healing. But most of those who had uploaded their consciousness, who had shed their skins, were elderly. And when their discarded shells checked into the hospital, it was to die. But G.R. was only forty-five. With proper medical treatment, and some good luck, he had a fair chance of seeing one hundred.

  G.R. went into the waiting room. He’d watched for two weeks now, and knew the schedule, knew that little Lilly Ng slight, Vietnamese, fifty would be the doctor on duty. She, like Shiozaki, was staff a real person who got to go home, to the real world, at night.

  After a short time, the receptionist said the time-honored words: "The doctor will see you now."

  G.R. walked into the green-walled examination room. Ng was looking down at a datapad. "GR-7," she said, reading his serial number. Of course, he wasn’t the only one with the initials G.R. in Paradise Valley, and so he had to share what faint echo of a name he still possessed with several other people. She looked at him, her gray eyebrows raised, waiting for him to confirm that that was indeed who he was.

  "That’s me," said G.R., "but you can call me George."

  "No," said Ng. "I cannot." She said it in a firm but gentle tone; presumably, she’d been down this road before with others. "What seems to be the problem?"

  "I’ve got a skin tag in my left armpit," he said. "I’ve had it for years, but it’s started to get sensitive. It hurts when I apply roll-on deodorant, and it chafes as I move my arm."

  Ng frowned. "Take off your shirt, please."

  G.R. began undoing buttons. He actually had several skin tags, as well as a bunch of moles. He also had a hairy back, which he hated. One reason uploading his consciousness had initially seemed appealing was to divest himself of these dermal imperfections. The new golden robot body he’d selected looking like a cross between the Oscar statuette and C-3PO–had no such cosmetic defects.

  As soon as the shirt was off, he lifted his left arm and let Ng examine his axilla.

  "Hmm," she said, peering at the skin tag. "It does look inflamed."

  G.R. had brutally pinched the little knob of skin an hour before, and had twisted it as much as he could in either direction.

  Ng was now gently squeezing it between thumb and forefinger. G.R. had been prepared to suggest a treatment, but it would be better if she came up with the idea herself. After a moment, she obliged. "I can remove it for you, if you like."

  "If you think that’s the right thing to do," said G.R.

  "Sure," said Ng. "I’ll give you a local anesthetic, clip it off, and cauterize the cut. No need for stitches."

  Clip it off? No! No, he needed her to use a scalpel, not surgical scissors. Damn it!

  She crossed the room, prepared a syringe, and returned, injecting it directly into the skin tag. The needle going in was excruciating for a few moments. And then there was no sensation at all.

  "How’s that?" she asked.

  "Fine."

  Ng put on surgical gloves, opened a cupboard, and pulled out a small leather case. She placed it on the examination table G.R. was now perched on, and opened it. It contained surgical scissors, forceps, and–

  They glinted beautifully under the lights from the ceiling.

  A pair of scalpels, one with a short blade, the other with a longer one.

  "All right," said Ng, reaching in and extracting the scissors. "Here we go . . ."

  G.R. shot his right arm out, grabbing the long-bladed scalpel, and quickly swung it around, bringing it up and under Ng’s throat. Damn but the thing was sharp! He hadn’t meant to hurt her, but a shallow slit two centimeters long now welled crimson across where her Adam’s apple would have been had she been a man.

  A small scream escaped from Ng, and G.R. quickly clamped his other hand over her mouth. He could feel her shaking.

  "Do exactly as I say," he said, "and you’ll walk out of this alive. Screw me over, and you’re dead."

  "Don’t worry," said Detective Dan Lucerne to Mr. Shiozaki. "I’ve handled eight hostage situations over the years, and in every case, we’ve managed a peaceful solution. We’ll get your woman back."

  Shiozaki nodded then looked away, hiding his eyes from the detective. He should have recognized the signs in GR-7. If only he’d ordered him sedated, this never would have happened.

  Lucerne gestured toward the vidphone. "Get the examination room on this thing," he said.

  Shiozaki reached over Lucerne’s shoulder and tapped out three numbers on the keypad. After a moment, the screen came to life, showing Ng’s hand pulling away from the camera at her end. As the hand withdrew, it was clear that G.R. still had the scalpel held to Ng’s neck.

  "Hello," said Lucerne. "My name is Detective Dan Lucerne. I’m here to help you."

  "You’re here to save Dr. Ng’s life," said GR-7. "And if you do everything I want, you will."

  "All right," said Lucerne. "What do you want, sir?"

  "For starters, I want you to call me Mr. Rathburn."

  "Fine," said Lucerne. "That’s fine, Mr. Rathburn."

  Lucerne was surprised to see the shed skin tremble in response. "Again," GR-7 said, as if it were the sweetest sound he’d ever heard. "Say it again."

  "What can we do for you, Mr. Rathburn?"

  "I want to talk to the robot version of me."

  Shiozaki reached over Lucerne’s shoulder again, pushing the mute button. "We can’t allow that."

  "Why not?" asked Lucerne.

  "Our contract with the uploaded version specifies that there will never be any contact with the shed skin."

  "I’m not worried about fine print," said Lucerne. "I’m trying to save a woman’s life." He took the mute off. "Sorry about that, Mr. Rathburn."

  GR-7 nodded. "I see Mr. Shiozaki standing behind you. I’m sure he told you that what I wanted isn’t permitted."

  Lucerne didn’t look away from the screen, didn’t break the eye contact with the skin. "He did say that, yes. But he’s not in charge here. I’m not in charge here. It’s your show, Mr. Rathburn."

  Rathburn visibly relaxed. Lucerne could see him back the scalpel off a bit from Ng’s neck. "That’s more like it," he said. "All right. All right. I don’t want to kill Dr. Ng but I will unless you bring the robot version of me here within th
ree hours." He spoke out of the side of his mouth to Ng. "Break the connection."

  A terrified-looking Ng reached her arm forward, her pale hand and simple gold wedding ring filling the field of view.

  And the screen went dead.

  George Rathburn the silicon version was sitting in the dark, wood-paneled living room of his large Victorian-style country house. Not that he had to sit; he never grew tired anymore. Nor did he really need his chairs to be padded. But folding his metal body into the seat still felt like the natural thing to do.

  Knowing that, barring accidents, he was now going to live virtually forever, Rathburn figured he should tackle something big and ambitious, like War and Peace or Ulysses. But, well, there would always be time for that later. Instead, he downloaded the latest Buck Doheney mystery novel into his datapad, and began to read.

  He’d only gotten halfway through the second screenful of text when the datapad bleeped, signaling an incoming call.

  Rathburn thought about just letting the pad record a message. Already, after only a few weeks of immortality, nothing seemed particularly urgent. Still, it might be Kathryn. He’d met her at the training center, while they were both getting used to their robot bodies, and to their immortality. Ironically, she’d been eighty-two before she’d uploaded; in his now-discarded flesh-and-blood shell, George Rathburn would never have had a relationship with a woman so much older than he was. But now that they were both in artificial bodies his gold, hers a lustrous bronze they were well on the way to a full-fledged romance.

  The pad bleeped again, and Rathburn touched the ANSWER icon no need to use a stylus anymore; his synthetic fingers didn’t secrete oils that would leave a mark on the screen.

  Rathburn had that strange feeling he’d experienced once or twice since uploading the feeling of deep surprise that would have been accompanied by his old heart skipping a beat. "Mr. Shiozaki?" he said. "I didn’t expect to ever see you again."