“You’re very ignorant and you know nothing about art,” is the most polite thing she can muster.
Kate almost decides that the night has been long enough already. Evan thinks how nice it is that even androids can understand when they are not smart and don’t try to put on airs. Kate doesn’t like Evan’s preemie bald spot, soft belly or adolescent laugh.
But since she invited him into the square and because one never knows when they may be transferred out of Moosejaw for better or worse, better to take an opportunity when it comes.
Evan thinks about the white of the inside of the AynRandroid’s mouth. Kate thinks about Luke’s blue gaze and the two both shag with their eyes closed. Evan is fumbling and pinches her breasts too hard, groping her like he is milking her.
Kate can’t seem to get her teeth to not touch his cock so it is not really pleasant for either of them, though they both exchange fluids as is the norm in such situations.
When he leaves to go back to his larger, but less sheened square in Midtown Moosejaw, Kate permits herself the self-pity to cry. Then she has a temper tantrum. She begins throwing things, dumping out drawers, littering her square with her old certificates. Her wins.
And she kicks her old toolbox, which she carried to robotics competitions across the states, where she wiped the floor with the boys. She was queen. Everything was ahead of her. She thought she’d rule the earth and the moon. But no, she is a Junior Executive, an underling. Worth far less than the bots she used to design.
She is old now. She is finished. She is seducing younger men with no brains, drives, abilities or cultural appreciation. She didn’t even have a proper orgasm. She helps herself to one now with the assist of the handle of a screwdriver. She climaxes thinking of driving it the other way into Luke.
<~~O~~>
Metal and Meat
She schedules an appointment. She says she has an office related concern she must discuss with him. She needs to make an official complaint. It has to wait until the light fades; dark has come early the past months with the time crawl back. She is happy it is dark when she finally sees him.
The lights in his office make small glowing orbs and he always has soft music playing.
She sits across from him. He sits at a desk, not because he has to—he could attach himself upside down to the ceiling for all it mattered—but because studies show human workers are more comfortable voicing concerns to bots when they sit behind desks like “normal” humans.
His blue eyes dilate to show an appropriate sense of concern for her.
“I exchanged fluids with a co-worker last night,” she tells Luke. It is a confession, and such confessions when they are work-related are appropriate to share. Oh —it is her imagination that there is something that flares in those eyes of jealousy!—but how she clings already to how she will replay it again and again in her mind. On a loop.
“I appreciate your sharing this confidence with me as part of policy #243, Kate,” Luke says. “While fluid exchange is generally discouraged, it is not legally grounds for censure, but it can lead to employee dissatisfaction and distraction. Do you feel it will lead to either of these ends?”
Machines such as Luke are always encouraged to describe things to humans in terms of feelings. He is so good at what he does, his delivery is so perfect, his vocal intonation as practiced and yet present as a movie star from yester-year.
“I don’t,” Kate tells him. “It was a really poor fluid exchange and connection, but there was nothing horrible in it. It was just like having sex with a fumbling robot. Oh—I mean no offense,” she says, looking up at him.
“None taken,” Luke says.
“I am sure if you were to do it, it would be perfection, like everything you do,” Kate says in a racing lilt.
“No,” Luke says. “Actually that is not correct. And, comparing your relations with a man to that of a robot or any Office Machine is not an apt simile, for unless you are talking about those specifically designed for that function, most of us cannot exchange fluids or perform sexually. As you must know from your education and expertise.”
Here it is.
“Actually,” Kate says, “I believe your extension power plug-in could be utilized like a human cock.”
Luke’s eyes do not show alarm, fear, or desire. They are reflective water of her own eyes, burning back at her.
“Would you like to try?” she asks.
“My programming would never allow me to willingly participate with such an activity, and would require you to conduct illegal tampering with my wiring.”
Kate gulps. It is as close to a “yes” as she could dream.
“You know that I know exactly how to do such tampering,” Kate says, softly, lowering her eyes and then looking up into Luke’s. All the chemicals in her body releasing cocktails because she knows it is now. At last.
She pulls the screwdriver out of her purse.
His eyes are so blue and locked on hers.
“I love you,” she says.
He doesn’t blink.
<~~O~~>
Evan sits in the copy room, where he has been waiting for hours for this moment, as Ayn has entered and is making and collating copies.
The paper is flying from her hands when suddenly the power goes out.
It is entirely dark as the copy room is enclosed and windowless.
Evan’s breath catches. While there are no lights, he can still hear Ayn’s hum, and the copies continuing to process.
“Ayn,” Evan calls in the dark.
“Yes, Evan,” she replies.
“Do you have a light?”
A blue glow illuminates her body. She glows as if in a furnace.
“I am not sure why there is a power outage. There must be a problem. I apologize for the inconvenience. I will go and check with Luke.”
“No,” Evan begs. “Please don’t. Please stay here.”
His hands—all meat—touch her cold metal face.
Meat to metal, metal to meat.
Does she feel?
Does it matter?
No.
She stays—staring off into space, doing as she is told—defective.
She stays.
Aphanisis
—John Langan
When he looks up, the child is standing in front of him, offering a glass of cloudy liquid that he supposes is water. Does it matter? He accepts the drink and, careful not to slice his lip on the jagged edge of the container, samples its contents. Though chalky, it’s cold, and he gulps it down so fast his temples ache. Its coolness spreads through his throat and chest, makes him shiver. His breathing is still heavy, but not as labored as it was when he collapsed into a half-sit. Rising on one knee, he pushes himself to his feet, returning the empty glass to the child, who takes it and cradles it against her worn T-shirt.
The null-sword juts from the ground like some sinister Excalibur. He takes hold of its hilt and tugs it loose from the dirt. He has the impression he should feel more self-conscious about this, a grown man well into his middle-age, wielding a sword, and not just any sword, but one whose ornate guard and engraved blade lend it the appearance of a costume weapon, an artist’s fancy. Yet he is not embarrassed in the slightest. If anything, grasping the sword gives him an almost primal comfort. And what better for slaying the products of the imagination, than a fantastical weapon?
(If you can say, that is, that the imagination and the unconscious are the same thing, which he’s not sure you can. Certainly, they seem to be connected to one another, the imagination the mask the unconscious wears when it wants to make itself known. Certainly, too, the null-sword has proven effective at dealing with the unconscious’s productions. He doesn’t understand the exact mechanism by which it does this but he doesn’t think it matters.)
A few meters away, the ground halts in a ragged cliff that extends to either side as far as he can see. He’d thought the edge of the world a figure of speech, a way for the residents of Spittle to congratulate themselves
on their assorted depravities and decadences: We’re as far as you can go; after us, there’s only nothing. Beyond the ragged margin of the dirt, however, is a gulf that reaches the limit of his vision, farther. It might be confused with outer space, except that there are no stars visible in its expanse, only vast ribbons of color that undulate into and out of visibility, occasionally intersecting one another and engaging in a twirling dance before rippling out of sight. Less frequently, great spheres of braided light flare into view and, as quickly, wink out. Once, there was a thunderous burst of sound like a chord played on an organ the size of the moon.
It shouldn’t surprise him. After escaping the mines and making his way to Moosejaw, where he found the null-sword wrapped in burlap sacking in the back room of an abandoned grocery store, as the woman with the hole in her cheek had said he would, and after witnessing the weapon’s effectiveness against the horde of sand-hobos that bushwhacked him outside of Spittle, he should have been prepared to find the literal edge of the world across the barren plain on the other side of Spittle’s ash heaps. But it does, which may be why he finds himself monologuing to the child, who appeared at his heels as he was on his way out of the last of the dumps.
“The annihilation of consciousness,” he says. “That was what I had decided upon. All the things that brought me to the mines—that made me think I deserved the mines, that they were a punishment I had earned, as if I were subjecting myself to a kind of personal justice, manufacturing justice by acting as if it was real—as far as I was concerned, all of those debts were long paid. I only wanted rest. But they—the overseers—would not permit me to die, which was perverse, bizarre, because plenty of other miners perished on a regular basis. Because I wanted it, because I sought it out, they thwarted me. I believe it amused them to do so. I suppose I should thank them for not allowing me to die before I met her, Merida. When I told her I was after the annihilation of my consciousness, she said, ‘Yes, but what about your unconscious? What are you going to do about that?’
“After first, I thought her question absurd. The moment my consciousness was extinguished, I was certain my unconscious would be snuffed out, as well. No, Merida, said, I was treating the unconscious as if it were an adjunct to the conscious, when it was the other way around. The conscious, she said, sits atop the unconscious like the penthouse suite of a skyscraper. Those top storeys could be removed, and everyone living beneath them would register some disturbance, and then continue with their routines. But, I said, I’ll be dead: there won’t be any place for those residents to live. They’ll continue as information, she said. So will your consciousness, but that breaks down almost instantly. Your unconscious is made of sterner stuff.
“To be honest, it sounded as if she was talking about my ghost, but she said there were ways for this information to be accessed after my body had been mulched. There were rumors of a conglomerate in Wire who had worked out a means of collecting your residual information, distilling it, and injecting it, to trip through your unconscious. It was supposed to be a treatment for Black Dog, but she had her doubts.
“Why the prospect of someone ranging through my unconscious should have bothered me, I’m not sure. It’s not as if I would be aware of it; although, I guess I might, in some strange way. It was more a case of, I had decided to erase myself from existence, and I meant to do so as thoroughly as I could. Merida took me to the pit-witch, who told me about this,” he brandishes the null-sword theatrically, “and where to find it in Moosejaw. She also directed me here, where, she said, the proximity of the gulf would allow me to manifest the contents of my unconscious. Once they had been incarnated, the null-sword would destroy them completely, down to their information. As soon as the last of them had been expunged, I could complete my original plan safely.
“I don’t mind telling you, I had a hard time believing the pit-witch. Everything she described sounded like it had been hacked from the plot of a Moorcock. After I escaped the enclave, I did head for Moosejaw, but that was because I figured the trackers wouldn’t pursue me very far into it. I didn’t expect to find the null-sword there, not really. Even holding it in my hands, I didn’t know if it was what the pit-witch had said it was, a blade of irrational metal. It wasn’t until I saw the sword in action that I realized the witch had been telling the truth; whereupon, I set out for Spittle, and the edge.”
The child has wandered away a few paces, to the milky pool from which she scooped the water she gave him. Embarrassed at having been abandoned by his audience, the man strides to the edge of the dirt and stops there. The drop off is steep, immeasurable. Gazing at the gulf, he allows his eyes to lose their focus. He doesn’t try not to think. This, Merida said, was likely to be his principle danger. In trying not to think you wound up thinking about how you couldn’t not think, and in so doing, blocked your unconscious. The trick, she said, must consist in remaining open—to his thoughts, to what was swimming underneath his thoughts—and to fashioning the openness into a space into which the denizens of his unconscious could be coaxed. Once they were contained, the peculiar energies of the gulf would act upon and manifest them. In his time at the edge of the world, he has learned to identify the particular sensation that heralds the beginning of the process, a fullness starting in his belly and reaching up to the top of his throat, as if he has consumed a large, rich meal that is not sitting especially well. As soon as the feeling has established itself, he retreats a safe distance from the dirt ledge and waits.
It never takes long. The fullness becomes a tightness. Sometimes the tightness remains centered on his gut; other times, it shifts to his chest, or his back. Once, it moved to the right side of his neck. The tightness becomes painful, as if the skin is being stretched to breaking from within. His nerves fire white hot. Since the first manifestation, he has continually promised himself that this time he will remain standing. He will not permit the pain to get the better of him. He has broken every one of those vows, dropping to his knees and then to his side, his eyes streaming tears, his jaw clenched, his breath hissing through his teeth. The tightness becomes a tearing, as if someone had worked a knife under his skin, taken hold of it, and begun peeling it off him, employing the knife to assist them. His nerves burn so hot, they’re freezing, absolute zero. Amazingly, he does not lose his grip on the null-sword. He has the impression of something exiting his body, and the manifestation is accomplished.
Initially, his unconscious released versions of himself, alternate selves he’d long ago dreamed as his future. He found it surprisingly difficult to raise his weapon against them, especially the ones who understood what he was doing and pleaded with him not to. A couple of them had run. A heartening number stood and did their best to fight him. In the end, he cut every last one of them down, the effect of the sword’s blows rendering their remains a fine, colorless powder that the next breeze carried away. The unrealized selves were followed by versions of his immediate family members (his mother, young as she was when she sang to his childhood self in the back yard; his father, punctured and pierced by the machines that were keeping him from death), his close friends, favorite film characters, more distant family members, friendly acquaintances, favorite cartoon characters, and on and on through the multitude which inhabited his unconscious. So many, he had not thought his depths contained so many.
Eventually, the recognizable figures gave way, first to generic forms he realized must be early memories, when his child’s brain lacked the context to identify a fireman in fire gear, or a clown, or the bishop in his regalia, and then to things at whose origin he could only guess, a figure made of bent and twisted wire netting, its head a tire whose treads opened in a cacophony of mouths, a thing like a short tree, its branches flowered by severed fish heads, their mouths gaping in idiot unison, a form that was little more than a collection of shadows and a sound like nails tapping on glass. Some, he fought for a minute, others, for an hour, a few for the better part of a day. At the end of each contest, he swung the null-sword down in an ar
c and slew his opponent.
The new adversary his unconscious releases wrenches itself from his gut and side and lower back, as it’s been coiled half around him. He cries out, flailing the blade to back it away from him. There’s no blood, no visible wound to his flesh, but the pain takes long enough to subside for anything with a notion to attack to do so. As soon as he can stand, before he’s ready, he heaves himself up, the blade pointed at what’s in front of him.
Through eyes still awash in tears, he sees what might be a centipede, if centipedes grew longer than a man. Its exoskeleton is dull grey, translucent; beneath its surface, schools of black squiggles like half-written letters stream. The creature’s head consists of a cluster of heads taken from baby dolls. All are hairless, their eyes missing. At its other end, the thing dissolves into a puddle of greasy liquid. From somewhere, possibly the doll heads, the creature emits a clicking sound, like the spinning of plastic wheels. At the sight and sound of it, he feels what he’s felt with all of the manifestations, no matter how bizarre, how repugnant: a deep sense of the familiar. He shifts his grip on the null-sword, lowering the point, and adjusts his stance.
When the thing lunges at him, he steps to the right, slashing up and to the right, then pivoting to chop down. He retreats as the creature whips around after him. His blows have opened a pair of gaping vents in its armor, through which streams of black liquid swimming with black squiggles pour. The thing darts at him again, and this time he moves left, slicing a long opening in its right side, above the row of its long legs. As it twists after him, he spins and strikes the center of the dolls’ heads. A trio of the heads goes spinning; clear fluid sprays from another four. Now he is the one pressing the attack, swiping at the creature’s head to force it to rear. He cuts it just above the middle, bisecting it. The halves fall heavily, writhing. What had been a contest has turned to butchery. He severs the dolls’ heads from the top section, slices it into three parts, and slices the bottom section into three. Once the creature begins to lose definition, its surface becoming pale, granular, he knows he is done.
Slave Stories Page 2
