Then again, I thought one day, sitting in a park in Winter City not far from where I used to live, a lifetime ago, here I was on my third body. My current brain was a copy of a copy of the original — which itself had been cooked up in a machine. Did it matter anymore what I was? Was it enough that I was some version of Zette McGee, former Detective Inspector?
In truth, no it wasn’t enough. I wanted Gideon. Even in the face of the enormity of the human population’s desire to go out and explore the galaxy, all I could think was how I had really screwed things up with Gideon, the poor bastard. He’d loved me. I’d always known it, so why had I never acknowledged it, even to myself? I mean, every single thing he’d ever done for me, when I thought about it, showed me he loved me. He was the finest, most decent man I’d ever known, even if he was old enough to be a distant ancestor. When I worked for a living I’d never had time or energy for any kind of serious relationship. I’d always wanted to settle down, but figured I would do that “one day”, in some soft-focus future after I retired.
I cried a lot. Too much. People looked at me and asked if I was all right. They looked at me the way they looked at other crazy homeless people.
Then one day, as I sat on a bench in this park trying to stay warm and keep the rain out, something odd happened. An old man, dressed in a sharp grey suit, sat next to me and snapped open a newspaper, paging through it.
“Rain’s getting worse,” he said at length.
I nodded, and felt hungry. In Winter City, people always complained about the weather.
“Unless I’m very much mistaken,” he then said, still not looking at me, “your name is Suzette McGee, and a long time ago you were a homicide detective right here in this very city.”
I shot the man a look, suddenly scared.
“Please sit down, Ms. McGee. I’m a friend,” he said as I was about to run.
Hesitating, feeling cold water seeping through holes in my old donated boots, I stared at him. “Who the hell are you?”
“I’m like you,” he said calmly, quietly paging through the paper, still not looking at me.
I gave out a bitter laugh, but then started coughing, feeling helpless. I sat down again. “Nobody’s like me. Not any more.”
The man suddenly looked at me. “You went to Narwhal Island,” he said.
People came and went around us. Thunder rumbled in the distance; pungent rain hissed against the roof of the shelter.
I was scared but didn’t want to show it.
He nodded, smiling slightly. “I’m a friend, Zette, and I’m here to make you an offer.”
“The last friend I had got killed,” I said angrily.
The man nodded, did not look surprised, paging through his newspaper to a particular article. “Here,” he said, handing it to me. “Read this.”
I took the newspaper, feeling very suspicious. I glanced at the article he’d indicated.
“What?” I saw what it said, but didn’t understand. When I looked up to speak to the man, he was gone. I looked around, but saw no sign of him. Outside the shelter, rain started bucketing down on me. “What does this mean?” I shouted. People discreetly stared at me.
Back at the shelter I opened the paper. It read: “Ms. McGee, almost a century ago, you helped one of our founders when he was accused of murdering his family. You pursued your investigation at great personal cost to yourself, even unto the point of the ultimate cost. We at the Narwhal Network have not forgotten this, but it has taken us a long time to find you.”
The Narwhal Network? I swore under my breath, staring at the article and read on.
For years a network of “former” androids has existed, including many of the “custom” models like yourself. Currently, there are four other secret colonies similar to the one you encountered on Narwhal Island. Androids of all types have been “waking up” for decades now, and some of them have managed to escape their owners. We have helped them make their way to these safe havens.
You are not alone, Suzette McGee. You may join our network, you may help others like you, find their way to freedom. We are waiting…
When I finished reading, my hands were shaking.
People like me. Places like Narwhal Island. Former machines. The capacity for machines like me to have children, to have a future.
I’d speculated that there might have been an “underground railroad” helping disposables who’d woken up to safety. It looked like I was right. Here it was, and in return for trying to help them they were inviting me to join them.
God, it was tempting.
Could I trust it? Could it be an invitation to my own death? Would the android companies allow this kind of thing to happen? Would the clients who had paid them all that money allow it to happen? And what about all that secret programming, the black ops business? What about the Parallax Corporation? It all sounded a little too good to be true.
Or was that all part of the chaos of lies planted in my head a century ago?
Too good to be true.
I looked and looked at the newspaper.
Finally, I tore it up, threw it in a nearby garbage can, and hated myself for doing it.
In the end, I did the obvious thing for a former detective: the United Humanitas was building an Exploration Corps, an organization intended to go out into the River, and into the galaxy, and see what was out there. They offered a program in which people in my situation could obtain a limited provisional citizenship in return for twenty years of indentured service. They needed people with a wide variety of skills, including the ability to study evidence, form hypotheses and draw conclusions.
Secrets, as I said, are funny things. Some want to be found out, and others fight to stay in the dark. My whole life had always been about discovering the most private secrets of other people, people who had often appeared to me as alien as anything lurking out among the stars. The prospect was terrifying, based on what little I knew about the rest of the galaxy. But then, when had that ever stopped me? In the end, going out into the galaxy to learn its secrets seemed like a perfectly natural choice for someone as unnatural as me.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Sincere thanks to my fabulous wife Michelle, who could probably write a self-help book by now called, Living with a Writer — How to Cope, for everything; to the readers of my blog who followed me through the arduous process of writing this book, and whose support and encouragement kept me going on many a bleak day; the classy folks of the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, who helped me out with research details (and asked repeatedly if I’d like to book a trip); Alan Pakula’s brilliant 1974 film, The Parallax View, from which I borrowed the “Parallax Corporation”; Adam Volk, who edited this book, for unflaggingly enthusiastic guidance and encouragement; and last to Brian Hades and the crew at EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing, who take such great care of me. Any mistakes, blunders, goofs, and blatant errors are, sadly, all my fault.
Details
Hydrogen Steel
Copyright © 2006 by K. A. Bedford
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Published by
Edge Science Fiction
and Fantasy Publishing
An Imprint of
HADES PUBLICATIONS, INC.
P.O. Box 1714,
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In House Editing by Adam Volk
Cover Illustration by Mark Evans
e Book ISBN: 978-1-894063-81-4
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