Pax Omega

by Ewing, Al

  Or the illusion of it, at least.

  “I’m sorry, Madame Ambassador, I do not understand,” he said, then straightened, awaiting new input.

  She smiled, searching for the correct terms to explain it. “I was referring to an experience unique to myself,” she said.

  Anatole-744 nodded. “I see. Human experiences are fascinating to me,” he said. “I would like to hear more about this one.”

  She almost laughed out loud. It was the third time he’d said that in response to some statement she’d made. The first time, she’d taken it at face value, as an honest expression of curiosity, but now the illusion of humanity was slipping and she found herself amused by the naked programming beneath; people liked talking about themselves, so the guide would invite them to do just that.

  She considered telling Anatole-744 that she had once been a turtle swimming in a giant bowl of rice, just to watch him accept it without a qualm and relate the anecdote to some piece of tourist ephemera. Instead, she told him the truth.

  “Once I saw a painting so realistic that for years I thought it was the view from the window.” She smiled, then continued, without knowing why. The memories still disturbed her. “It was painted over my window, to make me think things hadn’t changed after the Nazis...” – she shuddered – “...after the Nazis invaded my hometown. My father was trying to protect me; I never quite forgave him for it.”

  She turned her head to Anatole-744, expecting him to break in with a comment about some tourist exhibit in Marseilles that related to the Ultimate Reich, or windows, or fathers, some destination she hadn’t seen yet. Instead, he kept a respectful silence, and she found herself warming to him, almost forgetting that all his responses were built into the clockwork in his head and chest.

  “I was imprisoned behind those paintings for nine years, until our village was liberated,” she continued. “Actually, the man who freed us went on to be quite a big name in the war. I heard rumours he’d retired and was living in Germany, but by the time I went looking for him he was long gone.” She shrugged. “But at one point he was quite the minor celebrity... have you ever heard of El Sombra?”

  There was a clatter of gears and tiny wheels inside Anatole-744’s robot brain, and he seemed to shudder. Eventually he responded, haltingly. “No, Madame Ambassador. That story was fascinating to me. May I make a recommendation?”

  Carina smiled wanly. Ah, here it comes. “Please,” she said, politely.

  There was another long clicking and whirring of gears, then a great grinding whine from inside Anatole-744’s head, and Carina stepped forward suddenly, to touch the robot’s sleeve. “Are you all right?”

  “That story was f-f-fascinating to me,” Anatole-744 said, his hands shaking. “May I make a recommendation?”

  “We should get you to a –” Carina started, and stopped. She was going to say doctor, but that wasn’t the right word. The illusion again. “A – a mechanic. You sound in pain.”

  “May I recommend – mend – mend –” Anatole-744 stuttered, “that you visit Pluto?”

  Carina blinked. “The planet?”

  “Yes. No. Yes.” Anatole-744 stumbled backwards, crashing to the floor. “May I recommend Pluto. Pluto.”

  Carina knelt at his side, tearing open his shirt to reveal the pink-painted metal underneath. She looked for a hatchway, some means of entry into his inner workings, but there was none, and she did not know what she would have done even if she’d found one. “Can you tell me what I can do?” She asked, desperately. “How can I help? Is... is there a button? A switch?”

  “Pluto.” Anatole-744 said, at a lowered volume. “Pluto lives in Paris.”

  Then he shuddered again, and ceased to move.

  His green eyes stared ahead, lifelessly, but then they always had.

  THE DEAD ROBOT was shipped back to the hotel, and Carina remained at the museum until a new one could be sent to her. For a moment, she had been astonished at the seeming callousness of the crowd, who had simply watched; but then she shook her head at her own foolishness. What was lying on the floor was nothing but mechanical parts, a machine that had gone wrong and broken down, that was all. Any personality she had chosen to imbue it with was all in her mind – the illusion, she thought. Her word of the day, it seemed.

  She had to smile. She had always been willing to believe a beautiful illusion over reality.

  While waiting for the hotel to send the replacement guide, she continued viewing the exhibit, a collection of Japanese art recently loaned to the Musee Cantini. The artist Kichida was responsible for the canvas depicting the game of Go, and also a tryptich of scenes inspired by Warhol; these were scenes of empty cities, overflowing with trash and vegation. In the rightmost painting were two children fighting over the corpse of a dog. The scene was covered with lights of every shape and size, the glass bulbs Warhol had popularised, but they were dark and dead. The only light came from the glow of the moon. Many had said the work was a commentary on society’s addiction to coal; Kichida’s only comment was that the work had come to him in a dream, as it had to Warhol, but most took that sort of talk with a pinch of salt these days, as more and more artists and writers tried to jump onto the dreampunk bandwagon, with varying success.

  Carina shuddered inwardly at the grim spectacle, and moved on, examining a work by the line artist Urasawa; the corpse of a dead robot, captured in ink on paper. The work was called Pluto. The coincidence made her uneasy.

  Anatole-744 must have been directing me to this, she thought, examining it carefully. Why did he think it was in Paris?

  Her reverie was interrupted by a polite cough behind her, and she turned to see another android, more advanced than Anatole-744. This one had a thin rubber coating, making him look like a dummy in a high-priced shop window. His eyes moved, and he could smile, after a fashion. Somehow, it seemed more artificial than Anatole-744’s motionless metal features. There’s a term for that, she thought. The uncanny valley. Try too hard to create the illusion, and the illusion vanishes completely.

  “A pleasure, Madame Ambassador,” he said in a musical voice which rose and fell harmoniously, but seemingly at random, like a child’s singing. “My name is Jean-Claude-56621, and I’m here to be your guide for today.”

  “Hello, Jean-Claude-56621,” Carina smiled, offering her hand. The robot pantomimed kissing it, his rubber lips brushing the back of her hand in a way that made her wince slightly. They were cold and clammy, and the effect was not nearly so charming as when Anatole had simply shaken her hand on their first meeting.

  “I can converse on many topics,” he said, as if that was the most appropriate comment to make. Then he nodded, quite unnaturally, at the Urasawa piece. “Pluto! One of several pieces by Urasawa that homages one of his idols, the artist Tezuka. Would you like to know more?”

  Carina shook her head absently, wishing the robot would go away. “Anatole-744 said Pluto was in Paris.”

  “I’m sorry, I do not understand.” Jean-Claude-56621 smiled, and his eyes moved back and forth, like a doll’s. Carina scowled.

  “Wait here,” she said, in a faintly disgusted tone. Then she made her way back to the hotel on her own, and told the concierge that she was almost sixty years old, an Ambassador for The South American Union, and more than clever enough to use a map and a guidebook.

  FOUR DAYS LATER, she met Rousseau as she came off the train.

  “Madame Ambassador,” he said, in a warm, deep, rich tone, and offered her his hand as she stepped onto the platform. “My name is Rousseau. Welcome to Paris.” His hand was warm, and his blue eyes sparkled, and she found herself thinking for a moment that Jorge would surely not find out, though he had the last time, and the time before.

  Then she smiled, breathing in the Paris air for a moment. “No number?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “No. How did you know?”

  “I didn’t, until now. You’re extremely advanced.” Now that she was looking for it, she could perhaps detect a slight
regularity about the skin, an infinitesimally plastic quality. And his movements were a little too efficient, his teeth too even. But then, he looked no more artificial than some of the older kinema-stars in Hollywood or Odessa. “May I ask how old you are?”

  Rousseau smiled warmly. “You may, but the answer is complex. When you change the head or the handle of a broom, how old is the broom?” He paused, then lifted her bag from the train, holding it easily with one hand. “My body is very new – three months. The latest model. Most of my clockwork is about two years old, and parts of my memory array are almost fifteen. Ancient, in robot terms. Obviously, back then, my thinking wasn’t nearly so good as it is now...”

  Carina nodded absently as he carried her luggage to a sleek black towncar. “I was going to say that your syntax was excellent. You sound... well, human.”

  “Thank you.”

  “It must be strange,” she said, musing, “to have some parts of you so much older than others.”

  “Oh, it’s no different from your situation. Most of your cells renew themselves many times over the course of your life – for example, the fat cells in your body are completely replaced every ten years. Other cells, like the neurons in your brain, never replenish themselves, in the same way that the core of my memory array is still as it was fifteen years ago, when it was first built.” He held the door for her, smiling. “We’re not so different, you and I.”

  As Carina settled back into the plush leather seating of the towncar, there was a clashing metallic noise in the street behind her, and she turned to see an old, horse-drawn wagon loaded down with scrap metal as it rattled past; an incongruous sight on the streets of Paris. As the wagon clattered away from her, she noticed that some of the metal in the back was painted pink, old severed arms and legs, occasionally a head, mixed in with the other rusting scrap iron. Then the wagon turned a corner and was gone.

  “Not so different at all,” Rousseau murmured, and slipped into the driver’s seat. The automobile started smoothly, the hydraulic engine propelling it forward at a steady pace. Once upon a time, such a car would have been prohibitively expensive, reserved for royalty; now, with the recent technological advancements, every citizen of France could have one, and most did. Rousseau parked in front of the hotel and helped her once again with her bag, then returned to the towncar while she rang the bell at reception.

  “Madame Ambassador,” said the manager of the hotel, “it is a great pleasure. Please, accept our apologies; your decision to visit our fair city was very surprising and we were not able to have all the facilities in place...”

  “Facilities?” Carina frowned. “Is there something wrong with the suite?”

  “Ah, non, Madame, the room is in perfect condition for your stay,” the manager smiled reassuringly. “But I can only apologise that we were not able to send one of our androids to meet you at the station.”

  Carina raised an eyebrow. “You weren’t?” She turned, looking back to the entrance, but Rousseau was gone, and the towncar with him.

  TWO DAYS LATER, she met him again.

  She was enjoying a cup of excellent coffee in a Parisian café – sampling the fruits of her labour, she supposed – and watching the beautiful people go by. There seemed to be so many of them; the men well-turned out in sharp suits with t-shirts underneath, the only signifier of age a dash of salt and pepper in their hair, the women ageless and uniformly beautiful in chic summer-dresses and kitten heels. Everyone seemed to follow the fashion, and yet no two of them were dressed alike. It wasn’t quite Milan – Paris followed the trend rather than set it – but it felt close.

  Even the robots were beautiful; very few were flesh-toned, instead painted with smooth pastel colour schemes, or with polished metal surfaces exposed to the world. Her waitress looked quite dazzling – an android in female shape with a high, pointed head, styled like the Chrysler building. Carina left her a large tip, to the stares of those at the next table: a portly old man and his over-tanned wife. They were dressed impeccably, but there was something ugly about their eyes and the set of their mouths, and their conversation was loud and boorish. They smoked incessantly, building a mountain of dead cigarettes in their ashtray.

  Occasionally, as she watched the crowds and sipped her coffee, she would try and spot another of the very latest model androids, like Rousseau, who looked so completely human. Despite this, she did not notice him approach until he sat down at her table.

  “Why did you tip the waitress?” he said, in his easy baritone. “It usually isn’t done to tip a robot. Gives them ideas above their station.” He smiled. “Or so I’ve heard.”

  Carina blinked. “Don’t sneak up on me like that, Monsieur Rousseau. You’ll give me a heart attack.” He grinned at that, showing off those perfect, artificial teeth, and she found herself smiling back. “If you must know, I thought her service was excellent. And she was herself a work of art.”

  Rousseau shrugged. “The fashions are changing. Once, people preferred androids to be humanlike – now, they find that distasteful. New robots produced in France are beautiful sculptures, like your waitress, rather than crude shop window dummies like poor Anatole-744, or Jean-Claude-56621. Some of the newer ones aren’t even humanoid – I believe there is a bar along the Seine where you can be served drinks by a mechanical octopus.” He smiled, absently. “Not so popular, that one.”

  Carina nodded. “Which raises a question about you.”

  Rousseau raised an eyebrow for a moment – the exact same gesture she had seen him make before, when they’d first met. “Oh?”

  “You are – if I may be indelicate – the epitome of the humanlike android, and your body is only three months old. Unless all of the robots I’ve seen today are even newer than you are...”

  “Then I’m not a French robot. Very good, Madame Ambassador.” He smiled. “Actually, I was assembled in Britannia. My name really is Rousseau, though – no number, or Number One if you absolutely must. I am unique.”

  Carina sipped her coffee. “I was under the impression British android technology had slipped far behind the European models, particularly the French. You put the most advanced robot I’ve seen here to shame.” She winced. “I’m sorry. We have very few robots in the Union – is it a faux pas to discuss your manufacture?”

  Rousseau grinned again, that easy, perfect smile. “Your French is excellent. No, British robots are still rather clumsy things, slightly behind the Jean-Claude series. My blueprints came from... elsewhere.”

  “You’re stringing me along, Monsieur Rousseau.” Carina frowned. “Why did you meet me at the station yesterday?”

  “Why did you come to Paris? Your business was in Marseilles – a trade meeting, I believe? Coffee exports.”

  She fixed him with a cold glare. “You know a little too much about me, Monsieur. I’m not so sure that I like it.”

  Rousseau shrugged again, leaning back in his chair. “I know what I read in the papers, and what I hear on the diplomatic grapevine. Why did you come here, Madame Ambassador?”

  Carina looked at him for a moment, frowning. “I’ve never been, and I can just as easily get the dirigible to Mexico City from here. I’m enjoying seeing the sights.” Rousseau did not respond. She sighed, and told the truth. “Pluto lives in Paris.”

  “Ah.” Rousseau smiled. “You want to meet Pluto.”

  Carina smiled. “Well, I’d like to know who he is first.”

  Rousseau nodded. “Pluto is, allegedly, the world’s largest and most intelligent robot.”

  “I never heard of him.”

  “You won’t have, unless you spend your time reading freesheets devoted to arcane conspiracy theories. Doubtless you’ve heard rumours that the current wave of technological breakthroughs pushing the French so far ahead of Britannia is down to assistance from cybernetic intelligences...”

  “Like MARX,” Carina said, referring to the vast ‘distributed analytical array’ that had been so useful to pre-war Italy.

  Rousseau
snorted, as if Carina had mentioned a drunken uncle or backward cousin; the family joke. “The Italians still talk MARX up as the future of artificial intelligence, but it’s the French who are leading the field these days – especially here in Paris. And it’s all thanks to assistance from Pluto.”

  Carina nodded for a moment, before she remembered that she was talking to an artificial intelligence herself. “I think it’s you that leads the field, Monsieur. And you’re not French.”

  “You’re too kind.” His smile was almost flirtatious. “I think of myself as the exception that proves the rule.”

  She nodded. “And Pluto? Did the French create him?”

  “No, no,” Rousseau shook his head. “Pluto has the distinction of being the final and most powerful creation of Hitler’s Ultimate Reich.”

  Carina spilled her coffee.

  “I’m all right,” she muttered, as Rousseau helped mop up the spill with a napkin, “I’m all right, I’m all right...” She took a deep breath and tried to keep her hands from shaking. The people at the next table were staring at her again, but they soon returned to their meal. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, after a pause. “I just... I had assumed everything the Nazis had built had been destroyed after the war.” She took a deep breath, held it, then let it out slowly. “I thought it was all over.”

  There was a crashing sound from the street; metal on metal.

  Carina turned to see a small boy – no older than twelve – running after a blue android in a pale cream suit. The suit was torn, and the robot was limping, and Carina quickly saw why; the boy had a metal pole, and was hitting the robot as hard as he could, aiming for the joints, the weak points in the design. After every strike, the robot murmured, “Well done,” in a faint voice, and the boy would laugh. None of the other passers-by seemed to notice or care. A plump matriarch in a fur coat followed the boy, calling after him, “Not too loud, Marcel! Not too loud!”