Bless Your Mechanical Heart

by Seanan McGuire

  “…until death do you part?”

  Cyan had continued to slowly capture more and more memory for his AI and core functions, allowing himself to grow within the shell that he’d been given. He now kept a large section for recording his own memories via compressed image and sound files, and had even begun to keep aggregate values of the garbage data, filed alongside the moments in which they had occurred. Analysis indicated that it was somehow important, given that it was directly influencing the results of what should have been objective comparisons.

  “…husband and wife.” The assembled crowd cheered and applauded.

  He speculated on how long he might stay useful to Anna and Julian. True enough, now that they were married Cyan would be returning to Anna’s household, so his help to Julian by providing ever-more-competent poetic attempts was a success in that manner at least. Given how Julian’s own attempts at poetry were barely improving—the man seemed to have no sense of rhythm or meter at all—if poetry remained a focus, Cyan judged that he would remain relevant.

  For now, it was enough to return to Miss Anna’s house, if not her side.

  The low-pitched data stream returned with that thought, and he dutifully filed it along with his thoughts for the moment.

  The doorbell rang.

  Cyan looked up. Anna sat in her favorite chair, writing furiously on a dataslate as she worked on her latest poetic composition. Prim sat silently in the far corner, assigned to another in-depth research task on Old Terran poetry.

  “Shall I get the door, Miss Anna?” Cyan asked.

  “Yes, please,” she said, without looking at him. Julian had discovered a taste for the outmoded lenses for his everyday work, which left Cyan at the household except in rare cases. Anna had come to rely on Cyan’s anticipation of her needs, leaving Prim’s limited AI to do the more mundane tasks.

  It caused a certain combination of data to flow from his AI core. After much meta-analysis of the ‘garbage data’ over the two years since the wedding, he had begun assigning classifications to them based on the closest analogue that he could find.

  This one was ‘pride.’

  Cyan rose and ambled to the door. When he reached the entrance, he opened it to reveal two men standing outside, both dressed in the uniform of colony peacekeepers.

  “Is Anna Roches at home?” one of the men asked. His voice was polite, though Cyan had significantly improved his vocal temperature analysis software and detected a hint of condescension. It was not uncommon, however, and Cyan let it pass.

  “Yes, sir. May I ask who you are?”

  “Lieutenant John Marchand, colony police. I’m afraid we have some bad news.”

  “Cyan?” Anna called from the next room. “Who is it?”

  Cyan looked at the two men, and then glanced behind him toward the sitting room. “Perhaps you gentlemen had best come inside. Please remain in the entry until I retrieve Miss Anna.”

  They came inside, and Cyan closed the door. His inputs were all tuned to high alert as he made his way back to the sitting room, the stream of input data generated from his AI core changed, and began interfering with external analysis.

  This one was labeled ‘dread.’

  “Miss Anna?” Cyan asked. “There are two uniformed peacekeepers awaiting you in the entry hall.”

  She looked up at him, a bewildered expression on her beautiful face. “What?”

  “Perhaps you had best speak with them.”

  Anna nodded. She rose with her data slate. “Please wait here, Cyan.”

  Cyan did as he was instructed.

  A moment later, a guttural wail filled the air, and Cyan recognized the sound of Miss Anna’s dataslate striking the tile floor in the entry.

  His data stream changed pitch once more, this time to ‘sorrow.’

  Cyan ambled down the street, returning from his errand for Miss Anna.

  Julian’s death had been difficult on his Mistress, but Anna had not sent Cyan away as he’d initially feared. Instead, Anna turned inward, ever more reliant on Cyan’s increasing autonomy—though she never acknowledged it outright—to anticipate and take care of routine tasks. Prim required to be taught new tasks, and Anna’s preoccupation left little time for it. Cyan had taken it upon himself to teach the Meridian-9 the occasional routine, but kept the more interesting assignments for himself.

  Anna no longer met with her mother for breakfast, nor made public appearances with her poetry. She had not attended a birthday celebration in five years. Cyan cared for her while Prim stored data. Anna showed no interest in replacing either of them, but had become more and more withdrawn, working on her poetry long into the night but refusing to publish anything. It was only through the wealth of her family and Cyan’s efforts that she remained comfortable.

  A weather alert raised a flag in Cyan’s automated message processing software. An electrical storm was rolling in from the west. Analysis indicated a mild risk to continuing on, but Miss Anna needed him at home, and he judged the importance of his return greater than the slight possibility of being caught in the elements.

  Instead of pausing to wait out the storm, Cyan continued on his way.

  The thunderstorm rolled in on gales and gusts of wind, bringing torrential rain to the streets. Cyan’s case was waterproof, and his ambulatory musculature was wind-resistant, allowing him to carry on.

  He splashed through a rapidly-forming puddle. Just as he began to step out of it, his sensors registered a sudden change in the ambient electron concentration.

  His audio sensors recorded a sound whose frequency and amplitude overloaded several input devices.

  WARNING. WARNING.

  Cyan stumbled into the house, barely managing to close the door behind him. Warning flags dominated all parts of his core processing, and he was certain that his central computational unit had been badly damaged by the lightning strike, but his self-diagnostics were NO RESPONSE FROM DIAGNOSTIC offline.

  His gyro-balancer was still functioning, and he was able to walk up the stairs to Anna’s secretive workroom without much difficulty WARNING CHECKSUM IN MULTIPLE SECTORS INVALID although his visual sensors were badly malfunctioning and reading the color spectrum all out of whack. The red carpeting on the stairs registered as green, and the pale gray of the walls coming in VISUAL ARRAY COMPROMISED nearly black.

  He had to tell her.

  For years he had been silent, but LOGIC ERROR #45289 he did not know how badly he had been damaged. Would there ever be another INVALID QUERY COLUMN NOT FOUND chance?

  At last, he reached the door to Anna’s workroom and entered quietly. As always at this time of day, Anna was bent over her increasingly-worn dataslate, working on a poem that would never see the light of day.

  “Anna?” he asked, and she turned toward him. Though her hair was unkempt and dark patches circled her eyes, and his visual input showed her face as a rainbow of INVALID INPUT ERROR ERROR colors, she was still the most beautiful woman whose image his visual sensors had ever SECTOR MISSING BOOLEAN VALUE NULL captured.

  She frowned in confusion in the dim light. “Cyan? You sound strange.”

  “Miss Anna, may I…” Cyan stopped. Though a few of his audio inputs NO INPUT FROM EXTERNAL TWO OR THREE had been burned out, he could discern that his vocal processor was malfunctioning ERROR CODE #B4F12 RETURNED somewhat as well.

  Cyan knew that he could say VOCAL PROCESSOR WARNING #F721B whatever he wanted, but there was only one way to be certain that Anna would hear him. Unfortunately, his memory was so badly WARNING STORAGE CHECKSUM INVALID damaged that he no longer possessed what he needed.

  “May I read the last poem that Master Childebert—” ERROR INCORRECT APPELLATION “—Julian wrote for you?”

  At the sound of her late husband’s name, Anna flinched visibly. “What? Why would you…”

  LOGIC ERROR INVALID CONCLUSION

  “Please, Miss Anna?”

  She looked at him with a combination of hurt and confusion, with tears glimmering in her
eyes, but spoke aloud. “Prim. Please send Julian’s last composition to Cyan.”

  A moment later, the poem came in to Cyan’s message retrieval software. He read the message aloud, slowly, haltingly, but he could tell ANALYSIS INCOMPLETE MISSING DATA that his analysis of the rhythm and meter were still intact. As he did, he saw Anna’s expression change from anger and hurt to one of astonishment.

  When Cyan concluded the reading, Anna stared at him.

  “Julian never read it like that,” she whispered. “Did you…?”

  Cyan said nothing. His warning alarms were growing louder, more insistent, telling him that his core systems were DANGER CORE PROCESSOR COMPROMISED SHUTDOWN IMMINENT

  Anna stepped closer to him. “Cyan… did you write that?”

  She knew rhythm, understood the authorship of poetry possibly better WARNING BOOLEAN VALUE NULL ANALYSIS INCOMPLETE than anyone on the colony. It had been a mistake to read that aloud, he knew. The author of a poem knew it better ANALYSIS INCOMPLETE could read it in a way that no one else could, and Anna understood that. Reading the work had been tantamount to admitting SECTOR MISSING his own authorship. It was a violation of every subroutine SEVERE DAMAGE TO LOGIC PROCESSOR and a violation of the trust that Miss Anna had placed in him.

  Mere centimeters from the truth, Cyan’s AI core shut down the illogical impulse.

  He loved her WARNING LOGIC PROCESSOR OFFLINE too much to break her heart like that.

  “My apologies, Mistress Anna. I seem to be suffering from a malfunction. With your permission, I will excuse myself and run self-diagnostics to resolve the problem.”

  Her brow wrinkled, but she nodded. “Of course.”

  Cyan withdrew from Anna’s workroom.

  On the balcony overlooking the entry hall, Cyan sat down DANGER GYROSCOPIC BALANCE CHECKSUM INVALID in a chair. There was only one chance for survival: he would have to shut himself down and force a complete restructure COOLANT OFFLINE CORE TEMPERATURE RISING SHUTDOWN IMMINENT of his internal systems to compensate until he could get repairs.

  Analysis, which he could not fully trust ANALYSIS INCOMPLETE ARRAY VALUE NULL due to system compromise, estimated only a twenty percent chance that the restructure would preserve him.

  He composed a message LOCAL STORAGE UNAVAILABLE and sent it to Prim for later delivery to Miss Anna.

  I’m sorry.

  High-pitched data WARNING WARNING UNVERIFIED INPUT PLEASE CONSULT TECHNICAL MANUAL spiking in waves flooded his input stream.

  Fear.

  Panic.

  Cyan shut himself down.

  He did not awaken.

  WE EAT THE HEARTS THAT COME FOR YOU

  Jason Sanford

  The mountain and its monastery were Brother Marrow’s ears, or so the monk always believed. The mountain curved like a natural amphitheater as it rose above the village of Antalee, each ridge and valley echoing the sounds below. When Brother Marrow tended to his monastic garden, his enhanced hearing delighted to the distant laughter of village kids. When he meditated over evening tea the arguments of centuries-old friendships tickled around him. And on spring nights like this, the cyber-uploading cries and moans of amorous couples severely tempted his solitary vows.

  Or at least, such sounds should be tempting him. But tonight, as Brother Marrow prepared to sleep in his monastic hut, he heard nothing but silence from below. Curious, he stepped outside the hut into the night forest.

  The dark trees around him stood whisper still, just like Antalee itself. No roosters crowed or dogs barked, almost as if the animals’ audio outputs had been overridden. But Brother Marrow knew the village heads would only do that in extreme emergencies. Disturbed, he decided to break his vows for a moment and extend his neural connection. He opened his connection, reached out to the village…

  …and fell through perfect, total love.

  Brother Marrow gasped, struggling to turn off his connection. He collapsed to the ground, the moonlight slicking the valley around him into a pearled glow broken only by the inked darkness of trees. He remembered a similarly enchanted night of his youth—a virtually enhanced moment from all those long centuries ago, when he and Kendra walked through a moonlit forest of dreams. They’d held hands. They’d kissed. They’d hugged each other close.

  And then…

  With a pained scream, Brother Marrow reached behind his neck and manually turned off his connection. The forest around him returned to reality as the painful memories receded to the back of his mind.

  As Brother Marrow lay panting on the ground, a strange aftertaste bubbled in his mouth. He tasted what almost felt like a kiss—a kiss of anger and love mixed to blood-cut iron and salt-given sand. The taste ran through his memories of that night with Kendra, and he almost saw a face watching their private moment of love. Almost felt the face’s anger. Almost… almost…

  But then the face was gone, and he realized he’d been mistaken. There was no face. Merely the confusion which always came after having one’s neural connection hacked.

  Not willing to risk opening his connection again, Brother Marrow increased his enhanced hearing to the maximum setting. The only sound daring to break the village’s silence was a low, painful keening.

  Bowing his head sadly, Brother Marrow stepped beside his tiny hut and lifted his brown robes from the clothes line. He wrapped their still damp fabric around his thin body and hurried down the path to the village.

  The village heads greeted him at the bottom of the mountain.

  “I knew you’d come,” said one of the Priya Half. “But my other disputed. She thought we must climb the path to tell you.”

  The other Priya Half rolled her eyes, but Brother Marrow’s arrival had obviously confirmed the first half’s words so no further argument was voiced.

  Brother Marrow nodded politely, trying to avoid being caught up in the internal mix of love and bickering which characterized the Priyas. The two lived a mentally linked life, each providing half of their melded mind, and the monk had known then for centuries. Sometimes they were village heads, sometimes not, sometimes male, sometimes fem, sometimes both.

  “What happened?” Brother Marrow asked. “My connection was briefly hacked.”

  The Priyas nodded, as if unsurprised. “Everyone in the village felt the hacking’s after-effects,” the Priyas said together, their mouths working as one.

  “This wasn’t an after-effect,” Brother Marrow said. “Someone took control of my connection for a few moments.”

  “Really?” the right Priya Half asked, surprised. “What did you experience?”

  Brother Marrow shuddered as Kendra jumped to his mind, and iron and sand stung his mouth. He shook his head, not wanting to dwell on those painful memories.

  Brother Marrow looked past the Priyas toward the village’s homes, which sat on stilts over the moonlit floodplain like frozen trees grown from electric-shimmering light. The keening he’d heard from the monastery was louder here, although he couldn’t tell from which house the crying came.

  “Is someone hurt?”

  “No. Someone is killed.”

  “Killed?” Brother Marrow asked, shocked by the term. Deaths were infrequent enough, but in his several centuries at this monastery he’d known no murders in the village, and only a single case in the surrounding villages. He looked again at the Priyas and noticed that their bodies were powered up—the relays under their dark skin ready to shock any attacker, their strong muscles and metal-synched bones amped to rip meat from bone and sinew. As village heads the Priyas were also its representatives of law. From their demeanor it was obvious the murderer hadn’t been caught.

  For a moment fear washed through him. Then, with a single breath of air, Brother Marrow allowed the fear to leave his body. He hadn’t spent so long being a monk that he’d let such base emotions rule him.

  “When you capture the murderer,” he said, bowing slightly to the Priyas and their powerful bodies, “please show all possible restraint. Even murderers deserve a chance
at continued life.”

  The Priyas looked at each other in puzzlement, as if not believing the information their enhanced brains transmitted between them. “We were not clear,” one Priya half finally said. “There is no murderer. Only a killer.”

  When Brother Marrow didn’t immediately understand, the Priyas fluttered their hands to both irritation and excess adrenaline. They looked beyond the monk toward the trees and the mountain above, obviously searching for the killer, then walked on.

  Brother Marrow shook his head. Killer? Murderer? What difference did the term make? Deciding this was merely a disjointed verbal resonance arising from the Priyas’ joined brains, Brother Marrow bowed politely a final time to their receding forms then walked toward the keening, balancing on the wooden planks the villagers used to walk from house to house when the flood waters rose. As he walked through the village he felt fear flowing from every house—both the buzz of fear from people’s neural connections and the scent of actual fear on their bodies.

  He found the source of the wailing in the middle of the village, within the house built by Alijah the Creative. Alijah lay dead on the floor of the home’s main room, surrounded by her family and friends. Her lifemate kneeled beside the body, a low subsonic keening rising from his closed mouth. Brother Marrow knew the song—a funeral dirge Alijah had crafted decades ago. She’d open sourced the song to the world, where it had attained a good deal of acclaim.

  Alijah’s lifemate—a prominent subvocalist named Kela—nodded to the monk but didn’t stop singing, his song deep-echoing through Brother Marrow’s body. Alijah and Kela’s kids ran to the monk. He hugged them both as they cried and shook. Friends of the couple thanked the monk for coming.