by Mike Mcquay
“I pose a question to you all,” Derec said. “If Avernus and I are able to get to the core and reprogram to halt the replication, will our work already done here enable us to dig the rest of the way through to the cavern before tonight’s rain?”
“Barring work stoppage and machinery malfunction,” Euler said, “we should just be able to make it. This, of course, is all hypothetical.”
Derec just looked at them. There was no satisfaction to be gained from arguing at this point. It was time to deliver the goods. “Where’s the data from my blood sample?” he asked.
Arion stepped forward and handed him a mini-disc. “Everything you asked for is in here,” he said.
“Thanks,” Derec said, taking the disc and putting it in his breast pocket. “Now, listen. We’re going to the central core. As soon as we reprogram, we’ll need you to begin work here again immediately so that no time is lost.”
Arion took a step toward the gateway. “It is now too late to move the excavator back to the iron mine and pick up our failed operation there, so I see no reason why the digging here shouldn’t continue in your absence. There is no longer anything to lose. I will continue to work here, even as you approach the central core.”
“No,” Euler said. “Will you now violate your programming, and perhaps the Laws?”
“The program is already shattered,” Arion said, moving into the innards of the gateway. “There is no putting it back together now.”
Derec smiled broadly as he heard the standby board being brought to full ready by Arion. He walked over to Dante. “We’ll need your tram,” he said. “Now.”
The fever had come on strong, and along with it, hallucinations. Katherine’s world was a nightmare of water, a world of water always threatening to pull her downward, and through it all Derec/David, David/Derec, Derec/David, his face smiling evilly and becoming mechanical even as she watched, metamorphosing from human to robot and back again, over and over. He’d skim the cresting waves to take her in his arms, only to use those arms to pull her underwater-drowning her! Drowning!
“Katherine… Katherine. Wake up. Wake up.”
Voices intruding in her world of water. She wanted them to go away, to leave her alone. The water was treacherous, but at least it was warm.
“Katherine… ”
Something was shaking her, pulling her violently from her dream world. She opened her eyes to pain blazing like fire through her head.
It was daytime, early morning. A utility robot was staring at her around the protective branch of Wohler’s arm.
“C-cold,” she rasped, teeth chattering. “So… cold.”
A light flared above her and to the left, a light raining sparks. She squinted. Welders were using laser torches to cut Wohler’s pincers off the facade where they were locked tight. Above the welder, she could see mechanical pulleys magnetically clamped to the side of the structure, city-material ropes dangling.
“We are cutting you free,” the robot said. “A net and stretcher have been strung just below you. You are safe now.”
“C-cold,” she rasped again.
“We will warm you. We will get you medical attention.”
And through the haze that was her mind, she felt the reassuring firmness of Wohler’s body protecting her, always protecting her.
“Wohler!” she said loudly. “We’re s-safe. Wohler!”
“Supervisor Wohler is… nonoperational,” the utility said.
Even through the hurt and the delirium, she was wracked by waves of shame. That this robot would give his life for hers, after the way she’d acted, was more than she could bear.
She felt his weight behind her give; then hands were lifting both of them onto the stretchers pulled up tight below. She felt the morning sun on her face, a sun that Wohler would never experience again, and rather than dwell on the unpleasant results of its own selfishness, her mind once more retreated into the blissful haze of unconsciousness.
“Would you have?” Avernus asked him as they pushed the tram down tunnel D-24, heading north.
“Would I have what?” Derec replied. The tunnel walls rushed past, red lights zipping overhead at two-second intervals.
“Would you have let the robots die if I hadn’t agreed to help you dig the tunnel?”
“No,” Derec said. “I wouldn’t have done anything like that. I just wanted to talk some sense into you.”
“You lied to me.”
“I lied to save you,” Derec said. “Remember our discussion about lying in the Compass Tower? I created a different reality, a hypothetical reality, to force you into a different line of thought.”
“You lied to me.”
“Yes.”
“I do not know if I’ll ever really understand that,” Avernus said, subtly telling Derec that their relationship would forever be strained.
“I’ll have to learn to live with that,” Derec replied sadly. “Sometimes the right thing isn’t always the best thing. I’m sorry if I hurt you.”
“Hurt is not a term that I understand,” the robot replied.
“No,” Derec said, turning to fiddle with the terminal Dante had left in the back. “It’s a term that I relate to.”
Derec used the terminal to contact the city’s hastily organized medical facility, trying for information on Katherine and Wohler. He and Avernus had left Quadrant #4 and traveled through the city to #2, going underground again at that point. Tunnel D-24 was one of the more distant shafts, drilled as an oil exploration point for the plastics operation. A pipeline churned loudly, attached to the tunnel ceiling above their heads.
“They’ve gotten Katherine and Wohler down from the Tower!” he said, wishing his fingers moved as well as Dante’s over the keyboard.
“Are they well?”
“Katherine is suffering from shock and exposure,” Derec said excitedly. “She’s being treated now. The prognosis is good. Wohler is… is… ” He turned sadly to Avernus. “Wohler is dead.”
“Look!” the robot called, pointing ahead.
Farther along the tunnel, they were rapidly closing on a moving area of light. It was perhaps six meters long, and just tall enough to miss the overhanging lights.
“The central core!” Avernus said, braking heavily, the tram skidding to a halt.
“What are you doing?” Derec asked. “It’s getting away!”
“It will be faster now on foot,” Avernus said.
“Not for me,” Derec replied. “I can’t run fast enough to… ”
“Climb on my back,” the robot ordered. “Quickly.”
While the huge robot was still sitting, Derec stood and climbed onto his broad back, putting his hands around Avernus’s head, the robot locking an arm behind him, holding Derec on tightly.
Then Avernus jumped from the cart and began a headlong charge down the tunnel, moving faster than Derec realized was possible. Tunnel segments flew by in a blur as the moving core grew larger and larger in their vision.
They caught it quickly, and Avernus slowed his pace to match the speed of the core. Its outer surface was transparent plastic of some kind, and very thick. Like a transparent eggshell, it contained the complex workings of a sophisticated, operating machine. In the rear was a platform with steps leading up to a sliding door.
Avernus jumped, catching the stairs and climbing on. He brought his arm around, gently lifting Derec off to stand before the door. “Go on,” he said. “Go in. Only one at a time can pass through.”
Derec slid open the door by hand and walked in to find himself within the transparent chamber. A red button was set in the plastic before him. He pushed it. Sprayers and heat lamps came on, a full body spray of compressed air traveling the length of his body to remove all traces of dust. There was a loud sound of suction, and then the wall before him slid open and he walked into the beating heart of Robot City.
The core was open, like an exposed brain, its working synapses sparking photons up and down its length, its fluidics a marvel of imaginative
engineering. He found a typer halfway down its length and juiced it to life, while hearing Avernus going through the chamber ritual. The robot was doubled over to fit within the “clean room.”
The first thing he did was open a file under the heading of HEMOGLOBIN, and enter the disc’s-worth of information Arion had procured for him. Then he got into the DEFENSES file again, going as far as he could with the system until it prompted him for the supervisor’s password.
He heard a door slide open and turned to see Avernus, still somewhat hunched over, move to stand beside him at the typer.
“It wants your password,” Derec said.
Avernus looked at him, not speaking, then reached out and typed on the screen:
AVERNUS-2Q2-1719
PASSWORD: SYNNOETICS
Without a second’s hesitation, the computer prompted:
RATIONALIZATION FOR DEACTIVATION OF CITY DEFENSES?
With shaking fingers, Derec typed his rationalization into the machine, dumping, as he did so, all the information from the HEMOGLOBIN file into the CITY DEFENSES file as authoritative backup and information to keep the same thing from ever happening again.
When he was through typing he stood back and took a breath, almost afraid to push the ENTER key.
“We must know now,” Avernus said.
Derec nodded, swallowed hard, and entered the information.
The machine churned quietly for a moment that seemed to last an hour. Finally, quite simply and without fanfare, it responded.
RATIONALIZATION ACCEPTED-DEFENSES DEACTIVATED.
They stood for a moment, staring, not quite believing that it could be so easy. Then they felt a noticeable slowing of the core’s motion. Within seconds, it had ground to a stop.
It was over.
Chapter 14. World Perfect
Derec walked the corridors of the mostly dark, mostly unfurnished medical facility. It would be a fine building when it was completely finished, a place where the humans who would inhabit Robot City could receive the finest medical care available anywhere in the galaxy under the supervision of the most advanced team of med-bots operational. He knew this would be so because the robots who performed the services would perform them by choice, out of love instead of servitude.
He walked the corridors alone-no guides, no keepers, no jailers. He was a free citizen now, a condemned man no longer. And it was good, because now, right now, he preferred being alone.
A room at the end of the corridor was awash with light, and he knew he’d find Katherine there, recovering from her night with the storm. He no longer cared about her subterfuge or her reasons for being with him on Robot City. For good or ill, he was happy and thankful that she was alive. Nothing else really could, or did, matter.
He was beginning to know why she affected him the way she did-he loved her.
He reached the room and poked his head inside. It was a large room, one that would most likely be a ward at some future time. But right now it was empty, except for Katherine’s place at the far end.
She lay in stasis, floating half a meter above a table, bright lights surrounding her completely. She was naked, just as she’d been on Rockliffe Station. This time he didn’t turn away, but looked, and her body seemed somehow… familiar to him.
A med-bot rolled up to him.
“How is she?” he asked.
“Splendid,” the robot replied, “except for her chronic condition… ”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said, letting her have her secrets. “Other than that?”
“She’s sleeping lightly,” the med-bot said. “We have rebalanced her chemicals through massive influxes of oxygen and fluids, and warmed her up. She lost a small part of her left ear to the cold, but that has already been adjusted through laser cosmetic surgery. You may visit with her if you wish.”
“I’d like that,” he said. “But before you wake her up, would you put a robe or something on her?”
“The heat lamps work better if… ”
“I know,” Derec said. “It’s a matter of her personal privacy.”
“I see,” the robot said in its best bedside manner, but Derec could tell that it didn’t.
When the med-bot turned and rolled back to Katherine, Derec politely stepped through the doorway and back into the hall.
A moment later, he could hear her talking to the robot, so he walked back in. She was off the table, sitting in a motorized chair, swathed in a bright white bathrobe. Her face was blank as he moved up to her.
“I’m sorry for everything,” he said. “I’ve been suspicious and hard to get along with and… ”
She smiled slightly, putting up a hand. “No more than I have,” she said softly, her voice hoarse. “I guess I’ve acted pretty stupidly.”
“Human prerogative,” he said. “You look… good.”
“They scraped the surface skin off me,” she said, “cleared away the dead dermis. I guess I could say you’re looking at the new me.” She moved her gaze to the floor. “The Key is gone.”
“I didn’t know,” he replied. “I guess we’re really stuck.”
She nodded. “Did you hear what… what Wohler did for me?”
“Yes.”
“I never understood your… feeling for the robots,” she said, eyes welling up with tears. “But his life was as important to him as mine is to me, and he… he gave it up… so I could live.”
“He was burned out completely,” Derec said. “They’re trying to reconstruct him now.”
She looked up at him. “Reconstruct?”
“It won’t be the same, of course. We are, all of us, a product of our memories. The Wohler you knew is, for the most part, dead.”
“But if they reconstruct,” she said, “something of him will remain.”
“Yes. Something.”
“I want to go there,” she said. “I want to go where he is.”
She tried to stand, Derec gently pushing her back in the chair. “You’re still a sick girl,” he said. “You can’t be running around doing… ”
“No,” she said, a spark of the old Katherine already coming back. “He died so that I could live. If there’s anything of him left, I want to be there.”
Derec drew a long breath. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said, knowing how stubborn she could be.
And so, thirty minutes later, Katherine, wrapped in a sterile suit, wheeled herself into the dust-free repair chamber where six different robots were working diligently on the body of Wohler, the philosopher. Derec walked with her.
Most of his plating was gone, circuit boards and relays hitting the floor with clockwork regularity, a small robot wheeling silently around and sweeping up the discards.
“Can I get closer?” she asked Derec.
“I don’t see why not,” he answered.
Just then, Euler came into the chamber and walked directly toward the couple. “Friend Derec,” he said. Derec smiled at the reuse of the title before his name. “We are just completing work on the connecting tunnel to the runoff cavern and would very much like you to be present for the opening.”
Derec looked down at Katherine. “Well, I’m kind of busy right now, I… ”
“Nonsense,” Katherine said, reaching out to pat his hand. “I’m just going to stay around here for a while. One of the robots here can get me back to medical.”
He smiled broadly. “You sure it’s okay?”
She nodded, smiling widely. “I understand completely,” she said.
He grinned at Euler. “Let’s go,” he said, and the two of them moved quickly out of the room.
Katherine listened to their footsteps receding down the hall, then wheeled her chair closer to the work table. Her anger at Derec along with a great many other conflicting emotions, had died along with Wohler on the Compass Tower. Because of her thoughtlessness, a life had been lost. All her other emotions seemed petty in the face of that.
She wheeled up near the golden robot’s head. Most of his body was expos
ed in pieces on the table, but the head and upper torso were intact. The robots working on the body moved around the table to accommodate her presence.
She stared at his head, reaching out a finger to gingerly touch him. “I’m so sorry,” she said.
Suddenly, the head turned to her, its photocells glowing brightly. “Were you addressing me?” he asked her.
“Wohler,” she said, jumping. “You’re alive.”
“Do we know one another?” he asked, and she realized that this was a different Wohler, a newly programmed Wohler who knew nothing of their previous experience.
“No,” she said, choking back a sob. “My name is Katherine. I’m… pleased to make your acquaintance.”
“A new friendship is like new wine,” Wohler said.
“When it has aged, you will drink it with pleasure. Katherine… Katherine. Why are you crying?”
Only a small dam held back the waters in the trench from the tunnel that Derec and Avernus had dug to the cavern. The supervisors and as many of the utility robots as could clusters in the opening were there, Derec holding the electronic detonator that would blast away the dam and open up the new waterway.
“This is the first day,” Euler told him, “the first day in a truly unified city of humans and robots. The beginning of the perfect world.”
“We have reacted synnoetically to make this day happen,” Rydberg said. “Working together we can accomplish much.”
“While we still have a great deal to learn about one another,” Derec said, “I, too, believe that we have proven something of value here today.”
“Then open the floodgate, Friend Derec,” Euler said, “and make the connection complete.”
“With pleasure.”
Derec flipped the toggle on the hand control. A small explosion made the wall of dirt and rock jump. Then it crumbled, and rapidly flowing water from the trench finished the job that the explosive had begun.
And as the waters rushed past, he thought of all the things still unresolved, still rushing, like the waters, through his confused brain. Who was he? Who was the dead man? Who put this all together, and why?
