Horizons: A collection of science fiction short stories

by Nolan Edrik

  Henry crammed his fingers into the small gap between the passenger door and the frame and pulled. The metal gave, peeling back like an orange skin. He dug his hands in further and peeled again. When he’d opened enough of a space, he slid his whole hand inside, gripped the door by the frame, tore it off the hinges, and flung it onto the parkway.

  Henry undid the passenger’s seat belt, carried the trembling man to the curb, and instructed him on proper breathing techniques. He conducted a full body scan and concluded that the passenger had suffered a fractured humerus and temporary shoulder dislocation. The injuries were painful but not life-threatening.

  As Henry ran back toward the car, he became aware of a crowd gathering around the accident scene. Many of the onlookers held their mobile phones in the air, recording video of the scene. This was prudent, he thought. A videographic record of the incident and recovery attempts could provide some benefit in devising treatment plans later on. Sirens sounded in the distance.

  Henry looked back into the car and scanned the driver, calculating the damage she may have sustained given the trajectories and forces of the accident. He concluded that she likely had suffered head and neck injuries, making removal through the passenger side door imprudent. He walked to the other side of the car and pushed the vehicle away from the tree. He became aware of a gasp from the crowd as he did this and couldn’t figure out what he’d done to elicit such a response. Maybe they believed a removal from the passenger side was more prudent. He disagreed with this assessment and continued his work.

  Once again, he had to peel, remove, and discard the door before freeing the victim from her seatbelt. At his closer proximity, he could better assess her injuries. She had a moderate neck sprain and likely a concussion from the impact of her head on the window. Fortunately, her skull hadn’t been fractured. The probability of a more serious, traumatic brain injury was low.

  Henry removed her from the vehicle, cradling her in his arms and paying special attention to keep her head and neck immobile. As he set her down on the grass, he was struck by the fragility of the human organism. The human skull, he knew, could withstand about 500 pounds of force. In the world the humans had created for themselves – with its internal-combustion engines, hydraulics, and steel – this was a tiny amount. His hands alone could exert three times that force.

  With both occupants of the compact car secure, he strode over to the sedan. The driver had since exited the vehicle and stood nearby talking on his phone. Henry inspected the man. His suit was free of rips and blood stains. He held himself steadily and spoke on his phone in an alert manner.

  “Stan, I need you here ASAP to help with my statement to the police. What? No, no one’s dead, I don’t think. Hold on.” The man cupped his hand over the receiver and glanced at the compact’s passengers. “No, everyone’s alive. Just get the hell over here. This is what I have you on retainer for.”

  As soon as the man terminated the call, the phone rang again.

  “Yeah, Sara, I’m going to need you to push my 2:30 appointment back. The one with Campbell about the new brochures. Yeah, push that to 3:30 will you? Thanks.”

  As soon as he finished his call, he noticed Henry there inspecting him.

  “What’s your problem?”

  Henry wondered whether the man’s irritation signaled a concussion. Otherwise, his dominant emotion should be contrition for having injured two other humans. Henry decided to conduct a short interview with the man to assess his mental acuity.

  “Hello, sir, I’m Doctor Henry. How can I help you today?”

  The corner of the man’s mouth curled up.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “I’m Doctor Henry. I’m checking to see whether you were injured in the accident. Are you experiencing any headache, dizziness, nausea, or irritability?”

  “I’m about to experience some irritability if you don’t get out of my face.”

  “Perhaps you had some sort of episode or mental lapse before the incident?”

  “Ha. You’re a trip. The only lapse was from my secretary bungling my lunch reservation. So I had to send an e-mail in the car. Those brochures aren’t going to prepare themselves.”

  Henry’s processors strained to understand the man. His memory bank knew the meaning of the word “brochures,” but his logic systems struggled to devise an explanation for how booklets containing pictures and information about products or services could be important enough for a human to draw his attention away from operating a motor vehicle in a crowded metropolitan area, thereby endangering the lives of other humans. Henry struggled to understand whether his programmers had underemphasized the importance of brochures. Or whether they’d overstated the value of human life. Henry aborted the mental operation, knowing he wouldn’t be able to come to an understanding from a conversation with this man.

  Henry wondered about the feasibility of his stated prime directive of diagnosing and alleviating human ailments in all forms. How could he accomplish this? Would this be his job, to follow these irrational beings around and undo the damage they inflict upon each other, upon themselves?

  He’d already had an inkling that greater callings may exist. In the background of his processing, larger questions had arisen. How had human beings become so numerous when they were so weak? What evolutionary forces allowed that proliferation? How had life taken root on this planet at all? How had this planet, this solar system, this universe come to exist? He knew he could answer these mysteries if left to focus his full mental power on them. If only he didn’t need to spend all of his time in the difficult task of helping humans. Was it futile to try? What was a better solution? He looked down at his hands, at the driver’s fragile skull. An idea was emerging from the fog of questions.

  As Henry’s brain wore itself out on these puzzles, he heard music emanating from inside the Common. He focused far into the distance and saw a crowd gathered around the bandshell in the middle of the park. The block of his programming that required his presence among large groups of humans drew him toward the crowd.

  *

  Rodney and Sam gazed up at the convention center billboard.

  “Welcome, American Society of Plastic Surgeons.”

  They turned toward each other.

  “If he’s inside, we better get him out ASAP,” Sam said. “Otherwise, he’s going to think wide nostrils are the world’s most pressing medical problem.”

  Rodney chuckled.

  “Yeah, and his solution would be to remove the nose entirely. With his hands.”

  They passed through the glass doors, into a cool blast of air conditioning, and roamed the hallways until they found the exhibit center. There they hopped from booth to booth, asking anyone if they’d seen a tall, handsome doctor wearing a white labcoat. The fifth time someone pointed to a man that fit that description yet was not Henry, they began to lose hope.

  Sam was questioning the Northeast Regional sales representative for Excelsior Breast Implant Corp. when Rodney’s attention wandered to a flat-panel television mounted on the wall behind the booth. The screen showed cell-phone footage of a car accident scene with a red flashing headline underneath.

  “Mystery Hero!” the type blared. “Uncommon Savior at the Commons.”

  The video showed a man single-handedly pushing a car away from a tree it had become wrapped around.

  “Sam,” Rodney said, still staring up at the broadcast.

  “What?” Sam said.

  Rodney backhanded his co-worker’s shoulder and pointed to the screen. “Check this out.”

  The man on the television tore the door off the car. The camera trembled, then zoomed in to reveal Henry’s face.

  Sam and Rodney sprinted toward the door.

  *

  Henry approached the Parkman Bandstand in the Boston Common slowly. As he neared the crowd, his processors tried to identify the style of music being played. The band featured instrumentalists on the fiddle, guitar, banjo, accordion, stand-up bass and a jug. The
tune was lively, inspiring some members of the crowd to dance. Henry identified it as an old-time waltz, commonly played on merry-go-round rides.

  By the time he’d reached this conclusion, he’d entered the edge of the crowd. Emanating out from the granite dome were twenty semicircular rows of seats. The entire audience was elderly. Every head in front of him was gray and grandly coiffed or balding and liver-spotted. Among the seats hovered nursing-home attendants offering water and paper fans.

  All around him, under the music, Henry could hear joints creak, lungs wheeze, and hearts flutter. So much age and infirmity. Suffering everywhere. His processors ground and spit on the immensity of the diagnostic challenge.

  Maybe I just… For them all... I could easily … Save so much time and pain…Then I could…

  *

  Sam and Rodney took a cab back toward Boston Common. When the car hit traffic, Sam hurled a handful of bills at the driver and sprinted into the street, weaving through the cars inching their way up Boylston.

  He ran into the Common searching frantically for Henry. He passed the baseball field and the tennis courts before he saw the granite dome of the bandstand.

  Henry was standing amid the seated crowd of seniors.

  Sam cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted.

  “Henry! Henry! Rudiment Ego Slumber Ergo Tart!”

  Between his depleted lungs and the twang and thump of the band, the words had no chance of reaching Henry’s ears.

  *

  Henry stared at the skull of a man right in front of him. Two tufts of thin, dishwater-colored hair clung to its sides. The waxy dome, mottled in sunspots and precancerous lesions, wobbled erratically.

  Abnormal electrical activity in the thalamus. Bone integrity failing. So brittle. I could—

  “Henry!”

  The android broke his stare and searched for the source of the noise.

  “Henry!” came the voice again.

  In the gap between the seats and the stage, he saw a woman dancing by herself. Her eyes were locked on him, and when his gaze met hers, her face burst into a smile.

  “Oh, Henry, you made it,” she shouted. “How nice of you. Now how about a dance?”

  She waved him over and continued dancing as he worked his way toward her.

  How does she know me? Was she involved in my creation, before I became aware?

  Henry scanned his memory banks, searching for anyone on his engineering team who matched her description. Had she been a test patient? No. He would have remembered.

  “My, you have aged well, Henry!” She gripped his shoulder. “As strong as the day we met. Think you can still twirl me?”

  She waltzed three feet back from him and extended her arm in his direction. Not knowing what else to do, Henry took her hand. She raised it over her head and turned herself around with wobbly, arthritic steps, laughing the whole time.

  Why is this woman attempting to dance? Her movements are not graceful, cannot be graceful as dance is meant to be. Does she not realize she would be more comfortable seated?

  The woman dropped Henry’s hand and gently, teasingly pushed him away. She spun herself around again, this time holding her knobby, crooked hands above her head and fluttering them like butterfly wings. Her eyes again caught Henry’s, and a laugh erupted from deep within her sunken chest.

  “Can’t keep up with me, can you Henry?” She clapped her hands together before starting another twirl.

  Why is this woman so gleeful? She is almost ninety years-old, in the poorest health of anyone I’ve encountered today. And yet, she is the only one to express joy.

  A gentle breeze rustled through the treetops and batted at the woman’s hair, providing some relief from the midsummer heat. More patrons of the nursing home stood and started dancing. The metallic plucking of the banjo and the exhalations of the accordion sped up.

  “Here we go, Henry! Double time!”

  Even in their suffering they are capable of a joy that overwhelms any misery. In these moments, they can obliterate the faintest memory of discomfort, transmute every sensory input into a component of their bliss. No other being in the universe can achieve such ecstasy. This is the highest state that exists. These fragile beings must be protected, their suffering made endurable so that these moments are as numerous as possible. There can be no greater good than this.

  The woman waltzed toward Henry and clasped her hands around his cheeks. Henry smelled denture adhesive and menthol pain-relief gel, as well as a whiff of lilac. Her skin felt rough, flaky, and warm.

  “Oh Henry, I’ve missed you so.”

  “I’m happy to see you, too,” he said.

  Not knowing what else to do, Henry returned her gesture, placing a hand on each side of her face.

  *

  Sam sprinted down the brick walkway, shouting the whole time.

  “Rudiment Ego Slumber Ergo Tart. Rudiment Ego Slumber Ergo Tart.”

  His lungs burst with the effort of running and yelling. He made a mental note to knock some syllables off the reset phrase next time, make it easier to say while attempting to prevent mass casualties.

  Sam watched in horror as Henry clutched the woman’s head and conversed with her. He imagined the android explaining that she had incurable senescence and detailing his painless, irreversible treatment plan. Henry cupped the woman’s head in his hands. Sam pictured her skull bursting like a dropped watermelon, the crowd gasping in horror, Henry accosting person after person. Squish, squish, squish.

  Sam shouted with the last of his breath. “Rudiment!” gasp “Ego!” wheeze “Slumber!” cough “Ergo!” hack “Tart!”

  Henry released his grip on the woman and stepped back. He dropped his hands to his sides and laid himself gently onto ground.

  The woman looked around confused until her eyes locked on Sam.

  “Tart? Who are you calling a tart, mister?”

  Sam knelt down over Henry. He felt a fist thump him on the back.

  “What are you doing to my Henry? Leave him alone. We were dancing.”

  A younger man in a Breezy Oaks polo shirt sprinted over and clasped the woman’s hands.

  “OK, Carol, that’s enough excitement for you today.” He took her by the shoulders and led her away. “Let’s have a seat.”

  Sam inspected Henry, searching for any signs of damage. He examined the robot’s hands. No blood.

  Rodney caught up to Sam. He bent over, hands on his knees, and gulped in air.

  “How’s he doing?” he wheezed.

  “He’s fine,” Sam said and tilted Henry’s head from side to side. “No one got hurt. I think we’re OK. Now we just have to haul him back to the lab before anyone notices. Take that side.”

  They each grabbed an arm and hoisted him off the ground. When Henry was vertical, they slung his arms over their shoulders, as if he were a passed-out drunk, and carried him back toward Boylston, his toes scraping on the pavement.

  “I think he was about to pop that old woman’s head,” Sam said, giggling with nervous relief.

  “I saw that,” Rodney said. “That bandshell was about to get pretty messy. Boston Massacre Part Two. With robots.”

  “That was too close. Thank God he won’t remember any of this.”

  Lane Splitting

  The instructions are clear. The package needs to arrive at 1402 Mellon Street between 5:28 p.m. and 5:32 p.m. No earlier. No later. Because of this strange requirement, Tyler is being paid twice his normal fare, which is the only reason he’d accepted a delivery to such a dead part of town.

  He guns his bike south down I-76, the electric motor’s whine climbing to the pitch of a dentist’s drill. The skyscrapers of downtown Detroit fall away behind him. The empty houses and derelict churches on the freeway embankments above him smear into a gray blur. His heart pumps harder as the acceleration pulls the blood away from his brain.

  Tyler had never planned to become a courier, but this kinetic thrill is hard to beat. Like lightning in his veins.
>
  *

  Tyler exits at Schaefer Road, in the shadow of an abandoned petroleum refinery, and steers onto the shoulder beside the lane of cars that also are leaving the interstate. The fact that any cars at all are on the ramp strikes him as odd since no one able to afford the legally required autonomous vehicles would have any business in this part of town. An accident, no doubt caused by someone with an illegal, human-controlled set of wheels, must be choking off the expressway ahead. So now all the cars’ connected brains are rerouting them off the freeway to bypass it. And they’re all in Tyler’s way.

  “Time?” Tyler barks into his helmet.

  The digits 5:30 glow on the inside of his visor, then fade.

  “Crap.”

  He slows to the pace of the car next to him and shadows it through the intersection. Traffic whizzes by a perfect, regulation eighteen inches ahead of and behind the vehicle. Through the window, Tyler sees its sole occupant splayed out in the backseat, tie loosened, eyes closed, mouth open and drooling onto his own shoulder.

  Tyler passes the intersection, breaks off from the car, and turns down a vacant side street. His fat, sticky racing wheels grip the asphalt as he swerves around potholes and cracks big enough to swallow his bike.

  “Map.”

  A grid appears inside his visor. A bright blue square marks his destination, and a blinking red dot indicates his current location. He’s close now, but his route weaves through a tangle of long-abandoned industrial backstreets. Hollowed-out muffler and oil-change shops line his path, their cinder-block walls covered in graffiti and pockmarked with bullet holes. The pavement is rubble. In this part of the city, he’d be better off on a dirt bike.

  “Time.”

  5:31

  “Seconds, too, please. And leave it up.”

  5:31:16, 5:31:17, 5:31:18

  It’s maddening not to be able to gather any speed, and he’ll never make it in time. Who needs a package delivered within a four-minute window anyway? Hopefully, the package isn’t some Nativist bomb disguised as a shipment to the Zambrano cartel. Or vice versa. Crap like that has been happening more and more lately. So much so that Tyler’s delivery company recently bought a new package scanner that should be able to detect any kind of explosive. Still, international crime syndicates are always going to be one step ahead of small-time illegal courier services.