Android Karenina

by Leo Tolstoy

  “Alas… you are no longer.”

  Anna Karenina jabbed wildly for her beloved-companion’s neck, but to no avail: this model had eliminated the exterior Surcease switch entirely. But when Android Karenina lifted her end-effectors from Anna’s shoulders to swat her away, Anna rolled off the sofa, leaped out the empty hole where the windowpane had been, and escaped down the street.

  CHAPTER 16

  IT WAS BRIGHT AND SUNNY. A fine ram had been falling all morning, and now it had not long cleared up. Anna tore along the rain-slicked streets, her boot heels skidding on the muddied stones, racing through the broad avenues and down the grimy alleys of Moscow, in and out of crowds, around corners, past posters bearing the formidable non-face of her husband. It was not long before she heard the clatter of metal footsteps close behind her. Android Karenina Class IX, her pursuer, her shadow, similarly dressed, of similar shape and size-and constructed, she now knew, of the same materials that hid within her own being. She herself, hot on her own heels.

  How can I do what she bids me? Anna asked herself. To slay my own husband, with my own hands, in cold blood-no matter what kind of monster he is or may become! I have done many selfish things, and yes, I have been crueler than I meant to be, but I am not a murderer!

  And yet, she thought with bitterness and spiraling confusion, if what Android Karenina says is true-and already, in a dark corner of her heart, she had admitted to herself that it was, it must be true-then I am not even a person at all!

  The iron roofs, the flags of the roads, the flints of the pavements, the wheels and leather, the brass and the tinplate of the carriages-all glistened brightly in the May sunshine as she ran past them, Android Karenina behind her in determined, mechanical pursuit. It was three o’clock, and the very liveliest time in the streets.

  Anna ran up alongside a passing carriage, and with a burst of strength pulled herself onto the running board. Turning her head, she beheld the figure of Android Karenina, framed in the doorway of a grocery shop, growing smaller behind her in the distance. Anna exhaled, pushed her way into the window of the empty carriage, and threw herself in a seat. With a pang of pained longing, Anna thought of Android Karenina, thought of the odd sensation she had had long harbored, of feeling more connected somehow to her Class III companion than others felt to theirs. And no wonder! Both of us machines!

  As she sat in a corner of the comfortable carriage, which hardly swayed on its supple springs, while the horses trotted swiftly, in the midst of the unceasing rattle of wheels and the changing impressions in the pure air, Anna ran over the events of the last days, tried in her feverish mind to arrange the pieces of the world into something making sense. The one thing she knew was that, despite everything, despite what she now knew of the true nature of her being, she yet loved Alexei Kirillovich.

  I entreat him to forgive me. I have given in to him. I have owned myself in fault. What for? Can’t I live without him? And leaving unanswered the question, she fell to reading the signs on the shops. “Office and Warehouse. Dental Surgeon. Filippov, Bun Shop. They say they send their dough to Petersburg. The Moscow water is so good for it. Ah, the springs at Mitishtchen, and the pancakes!”

  And she remembered how, long, long ago, when she was a girl of seventeen, she had gone with her aunt to Troitsa. “Riding, too. Was that really me, with red hands? That was before, before this thing happened to me, when I was still a creature of flesh and spirit, not an android with a mind of spinning metal! How much that seemed to me then splendid and out of reach has become worthless, while what I had then has gone out of my reach forever! Could I ever have believed then that I could come to such humiliation?”

  Anna peeked up from the rear seat, in time to see Android Karenina run out from a side alley and plant herself in front of the carriage, her veil flown back and her eyebank flashing.

  “A Class Three!” the coachman screamed, as Android Karenina pivoted on her back foot, turned one shoulder toward the carriage, and leaned forward into the oncoming vehicle, letting the horses pass on either side of her and the trap smash into her body. At impact, the coachman flew from his seat and landed on the street, while the horses bucked and whinnied. Android Karenina climbed calmly and deliberately into the carriage and cornered Anna in one side of the seat.

  “You are blessed, Android Karenina Twelve,” the beloved-companion intoned in that strong and loving voice. “So few people have a purpose in life, but unto you a purpose has been given.”

  Anna sank back into the seat, calculating her odds of out-muscling her tormentor and slipping through the opposite window of the coach. I am, after all, she thought bitterly, the more advanced model. But Anna saw no escape.

  “A simple mission, so easy to discharge. Accept your destiny, Anna. Accept what you are.”

  Android Karenina grasped her by the midsection and began to drag her trembling body from the seat of the carriage. Anna saw over her shoulder, through the opposite window of the carriage, two girls in animated conversation. She wondered what they could be smiling about. Love, most likely. They don’t know how dreary it is, how low… The boulevard and the children. Three boys running, playing at horses. Seryozha! And I’m losing everything and not getting him back. I will go and kill him… what point to resist? Yes, I will do it… Yes, I’m losing everything… These horses, this carriage-how loathsome I am to myself in this carriage… I won’t see them again…

  “You! Robot! Off of that woman!”

  Anna heard the hollering voices, felt the carriage rock with laser fire, before it was clear to her what was happening. A troop of Toy Soldiers had surrounded the carriage, and now they were pulling Android Karenina off of her. Standing on the street was the terrified carriage driver, gesticulating wildly; the children screamed; the horses bucked; all was confusion.

  Her mind in a fog, Anna tumbled out of the carriage, slipped past the huddle of soldiers around Android Karenina, and staggered alone down the street.

  CHAPTER 17

  A CCEPT WHAT YOU ARE,” Android Karenina had said; Anna tried to shake those grim and terrible words from her mind. Yes; what was the last thing I thought of so clearly? She tried to recall it. Yes, of what they say, the struggle for existence and hatred is the one thing that holds men together.

  No, it’s a useless journey you’re making, she said, mentally addressing a party in a coach evidently going for an excursion into the country. And the dog you’re taking with you will be no help to you. They sought happiness, as she had, but all happiness would soon be drowned in the rising tide of the New Russia. Unless… unless…

  No, she thought, her humanity asserting itself, as it were, against the logical imperatives of the Mechanism inside her. I cannot!

  Leaning momentarily against an ancient stone wall of an old factory to catch her breath, she saw a factory hand almost dead drunk, with hanging head, being led away by a policeman. Come, he’s found a quicker way, she thought. Count Vronsky and I did not find that happiness either, though we expected so much from it.

  Anna now for the first time turned that Visionary-Hundredfold through which she was seeing everything onto her relations with him. What was it he sought in me? Not love so much as the satisfaction of vanity. She remembered his words, the expression of his face, which recalled an abject setter-dog, in the early days of their connection. And everything now confirmed this. Yes, there was the triumph of success in him. Of course there was love too, but the chief element was the pride of success. He boasted of me. Now that’s over. There’s nothing to be proud of. Not to be proud of, but to be ashamed of. He has taken from me all he could, and now I am no use to him. The zest is gone, as the English say. That fellow wants everyone to admire him and is very much pleased with himself, she thought, staggering past a red-faced clerk, who gaped at her disheveled, exhausted appearance. Yes, there’s not the same flavor about me for him now. Only imagine I were to tell him this truth that I have discovered, that I am not a proper woman at all, but a Class XII android; he will flee fr
om me. He will report me to the Ministry, he will ensure that I am melted in the Tower basement, and he will be glad for his freedom.

  She felt she saw the truth distinctly in the piercing light.

  We walked to meet each other up to the time of our love, and then we have been irresistibly drifting in different directions. And there’s no altering that, especially now. Now I see that it never could have been otherwise-he is a person, and I a machine. But… She opened her lips, aroused by the thought that suddenly struck her. If I could be anything but a mistress, passionately caring for nothing but his caresses; but I can’t and I don’t care to be anything else. If without loving me, from duty he’ll be good and kind to me, without what I want, that’s a thousand times worse than unkindness! That’s-hell! If I cannot have his love, his passion, I would rather be the killing machine Android Karenina tells me I have been engineered to be! And that’s just how it is. For a long while now he hasn’t loved me. And where love ends, hate begins.

  “A ticket to Petersburg?”

  She realized now that she had stopped her progress just outside the gates of the Grav station; she had utterly forgotten where and why she was going, and only by a great effort she understood the question.

  “Yes,” she said, and, answering her befuddled inquiry, the ticket-taker gruffly informed her that the Grav had some minutes still before it was bound to arrive. As she made her way through the crowd to the first-class waiting room, she gradually recollected all the details of her position, and the plans between which she was hesitating. To go to St. Petersburg and complete this terrible errand; or to stay, to seek out Vronsky, explain what she was, stake her hopes on his understanding, his willingness to begin afresh under such changed circumstances. And again at the old sore places, hope and then despair poisoned the wounds of her tortured, fearfully throbbing heart. As she sat on the star-shaped sofa waiting for the Grav, she gazed with aversion at the people coming and going, and they were all hateful to her. She thought of how Vronsky was at this moment complaining too of his position, not understanding her sufferings, and how she would find him, and what she would say to him. Then she thought that life might still be happy, and how miserably she loved and hated him, and how fearfully her heart was beating. If her mind had been overrun by the machine, her heart at least belonged to her…

  A tear, comprised of a complex assortment of proteins and silicates suspended in an aqueous solution, rolled slowly down her cheek.

  CHAPTER 18

  STILL ANNA WAITED. She read but could not understand, in her overwrought state, a sign announcing the impending replacement of this Grav with something called a “train,” and explicating in righteous and moralistic terms the spiritual benefits of the longer waits, cramped conditions, and ricketier rides that could be expected. Finally a bell rang, announcing the Grav’s arrival in short order, and some young men, ugly and impudent, and at the same time careful of the impression they were making, hurried by. Some noisy men were quiet as she passed them on the platform, and one whispered something about her to another-something vile, no doubt. A grotesque-looking lady wearing a bustle (Anna mentally undressed the woman, and was appalled at her hideousness) and a little girl laughing affectedly ran down the platform.

  Even the child’s hideous and affected, thought Anna. To avoid seeing anyone, she walked past them quickly and seated herself at a far bench. A misshapen-looking peasant covered with dirt, in a cap from which his tangled hair stuck out all round, shuffled slowly by, staring at the long, powerful magnet bed, and Anna was reminded of the man who had been struck and killed by the Grav, at this very station, the day she first met Alexei Kirillovich; she moved to the next bench, shaking with terror. A moment later, a man and his wife motioned to the seat next to her.

  “May we sit here?”

  Anna, lost in her thoughts, gave no answer. Alexei can never love me; that I must admit to myself: he has already ceased to love me, and once he understands that I am a machine-woman, he will be glad for the excuse to be through with our connection.

  The couple did not notice, under her veil, her panic-stricken face. They seated themselves, and intently but surreptitiously scrutinized her clothes. Both husband and wife seemed repulsive to Anna. The husband asked, would she allow him to smoke, obviously not with a view to smoking but to getting into conversation with her. Taking her silence for assent, he said to his wife in French something about caring less to smoke than to talk. They made inane and affected remarks to one another about how they hoped this ride would be free of koschei, and about how someone or other’s old maiden aunt had been eaten by an alien; all these comments, she felt sure, made entirely for her benefit. Anna saw clearly that they were sick of each other, and hated each other. And no one could have helped hating such miserable monstrosities.

  A second bell sounded, and was followed by moving of luggage, noise, shouting and laughter. It was so clear to Anna that there was nothing for anyone to be glad of, that this laughter irritated her agonizingly, and she would have liked to stop up her ears not to hear it. At last the third bell rang, there was the electric crackle in the air, the loud, bright hum of the repulsion magnets engaging, and the man next to her crossed himself. It would be interesting to ask him what meaning he attaches to that, thought Anna, looking angrily at him. She rapidly rose from the bench; in a moment she forgot the couple who had so irritated her, and she stood on the platform, breathing the fresh air.

  Yes, what did I stop at? That I couldn’t conceive a position in which life would not be a misery, that we are all created to be miserable; some of us are created by God, and some of us by man. We all invent means of deceiving each other. And when one understands the truth, what is one to do?

  Yes, I’m very much worried, for my mind has been subsumed by a machine, a machine with a deadly purpose in contravention of all that my heart cries out that I am! This is what reason was given me for, to escape; so then one must escape: why not put out the light when there’s nothing more to look at, when it’s sickening to look at it all? But how?

  Why are they talking, why are they laughing? It’s all falsehood, all lying, all humbug, all cruelty!…

  The cruelty, the cruelty of this machine that was a part of her, forever a part. She had insisted to Android Karenina that she could not perform such a mission, and yet-as long as she lived, this cruel Mechanism would be lurking within her, bidding her to kill, to destroy, to do evil.

  With a rapid, light step she went down the steps that led from the platform to the magnet bed and saw in the near distance the approaching Grav.

  She looked at the lower part of its carriages, at the rivets and wires and the long, vibrating pylons of the first carriage slowly oscillating, and tried to measure the middle between the left and right pylons, and the very minute when the Grav would arrive.

  There, she said to herself, looking into the shadow of the carriage, as the sunlight reflected magnificently off the spotless prow of the Grav. There, in the very middle, and I will punish him, and I will escape from this hateful machine that I have become.

  A feeling such as she had known when about to take the first plunge in bathing came upon her, and she crossed herself. And exactly at the moment when she could wait no longer, she drew her head back into her shoulders, fell on her hands under the carriage, and lightly, as though she would rise again at once, dropped on to her knees. And at the same instant she was terror-stricken at what she was doing. Where am I? What am I doing? What for? She tried to get up, to drop backward but something huge and merciless struck her on the head and rolled her on her back. Lord, forgive me all! she thought, feeling it impossible to struggle.

  And the monitor on which she had viewed that great communiqué filled with troubles, falsehoods, sorrow, and evil, flared up more brightly than ever before, lighted up for her all that had been in darkness, flickered, began to grow dim, and was quenched forever.

  “I WILL PUNISH HIM, AND I WILL ESCAPE FROM THIS HATEFUL MACHINE THAT I HAVE BECOME”


  CHAPTER 19

  ANDROID KARENINA, HAVING ESCAPED the crowd of Toy Soldiers who set upon her at the carriage and having found Anna nowhere in sight, retreated to the safe house in an obscure Moscow neighborhood where her one confidante in this world awaited: a squat and bearded man in a dusty white laboratory coat, who wore a small box with numerous small buttons on his belt.

  The man from UnConSciya recounted to Android Karenina what had become of Anna Arkadyevna. The Class IX robot from the future took the news of Anna’s fate with evident sadness, her eyebank flashing to melancholy blue.

  “And the body?”

  He nodded, smoothed his dirty beard. “We shall disintegrate all trace of it, that Tsar Alexei may not discover the Mechanism.”

  “No,” said Android Karenina, softly. “I have another idea.”

  ***

  The Phoenix godmouth disgorged Anna Karenina’s body in the same place, on the magnet bed of the Moscow Grav, on a cold day some years earlier. At the moment the body emerged from the maw of the godmouth, the sky ricocheted with a queer sort of thunder-a crack in the sky that echoed across all the infinities of that instant and was noted with apprehension both by Count Alexei Kirillovich Vronsky, who was at the station to meet his mother, and by Anna Arkadyevna Karenina, a fashionable lady and the wife of a prominent government minister.

  Shortly thereafter, there occurred a frightful commotion on the platform, as the news raced about of a grim discovery: a pair of battered bodies, a man and a woman, evidently smashed by the rushing weight of the oncoming Grav, had been discovered together upon the magnet bed. Count Vronsky, who only moments earlier had been introduced to Anna Karenina and utterly bewitched, now felt deeply disconcerted by the sight of these two corpses, man and woman, lying together amid the grim finality of death.