by Carol Davis
Had the twins’ father rebuked them? Had anyone rebuked them? I couldn’t tell by looking at them. Kerae in particular looked disinterested and bored.
When I got closer to them, he said, “You didn’t reach the finish line.” His face was twisted into a smirk.
I distracted myself for a moment by calculating how much force it would take to hurl him across the room and bounce him off a wall. No, I wasn’t significantly stronger than a human, but I thought I could still do him a considerable amount of bodily injury – the same as had been done to me. He hadn’t struck me, but the program had acted on his behalf. Even if he hadn’t written the program himself, he’d known what it would do.
“Did you?” I asked quietly. “Did either of you reach the finish line? Or did you not bother to go into the caverns at all?”
“Of course we did.”
“I see no proof of that.”
There might not be any proof, either way; after all, he and Ilianae had been wearing protective clothing. Still, those seismic shifts had been violent. If they were in the caverns, they had to at least have been thrown to the ground. They might be bruised, perhaps seriously so. But I could see no sign of injury, any more than I could see that they felt at all remorseful about what they’d done.
“If I had died,” I said, “what then?”
Kerae scoffed at me softly. Ilianae shook her head, which made her hair dance around her shoulders.
So pretty, I thought.
“You can’t die,” Ilianae said. “You aren’t alive.”
“Not in the sense that you are. But my consciousness can be permanently terminated. Irretrievably so.”
“You’re a machine.”
“Which you feel free to abuse.”
Something came to me then: the notion that the two of them felt free to abuse not only machines, but living creatures. Animals. Other people. Each other. I was more than mildly certain that the adults of Dsanna made a habit of treating each other badly, that it had become a matter of course for them. That would explain why everyone in the community thought of them as rude, and why the Dsannae never apologized.
I could be rude now, I thought. I certainly knew how; I’d experienced enough miserable behavior in my life to be able to replicate it.
Instead, I said to Ilianae, “You haven’t answered my question. What would you have done if I had died?”
She blinked a couple of times. Then she turned a little to look at her brother. I could tell that they were wondering if I’d lash out. If I would attack them. That might give them grounds to insist that I be destroyed. I assumed they’d enjoy that. They might even insist on being allowed to destroy me themselves. Kerae would, at least.
What a lovely people.
“Meeting you has been of value,” I said.
That made Kerae’s eyes narrow. “Why?” he demanded.
“It helps me to more fully understand the spectrum of human behavior.” I glanced over my shoulder at Randy, who was for all intents and purposes my father. He had taught me well, I decided, though I still had a great deal to learn – from him, from Dr. Grayson and the rest of her team, from the others in the community, from anyone I could manage to encounter. “I will think of this as an experiment,” I told Kerae, hoping that my words and the manner in which I delivered them would have the effect I desired. “The results are very useful. Thank you for participating. Thank you as well,” I said to Ilianae.
Her eyebrows and her lips moved into tight little knots. It made her look considerably less attractive.
“Are you insulting us, machine?” Kerae said.
“I am not.”
I would have to admit to my mother later on that I had executed a lie. A reasonably effective one, from the look of things.
Before either of the twins could say or do anything more, I nodded a goodbye, then moved across the room in a relaxed and comfortable stroll. When I reached Randy I saw a smile flicker across his face and disappear. He’d been listening, of course. He’d heard all of what had been said.
He didn’t say anything himself until we were outside. There, he took a moment to enjoy the sunlight with his face tipped toward the sky. Then he wrapped an arm around my shoulders. A big man, he was able to embrace me as a father would a son.
“The Dsannae are a very unpleasant people,” I told him.
“That’s not the way I’d put it.”
I smiled at him, remembering the form his displeasure usually took. “You would use strong language.”
“I would use strong language,” he agreed.
We walked a little way, to the edge of the park. At this time of day it wasn’t crowded, but some of the benches were occupied, as well as some of the play equipment. I wondered if Randy wanted to sit on a bench, or maybe on a swing; I’d seen him do both. He’d told me once that he liked to indulge the part of him that remembered being a small child.
“It was valuable,” I told him.
I tried to walk toward a bench, thinking we could take advantage of the park for a little while. But I stumbled halfway there – the result of all the damage to my systems – and had to flail my arms to keep my balance. I made enough of a show doing it that some of the people in the park turned to look at me. Apparently it wasn’t a good show, because they went back to their own business very quickly.
“They wanted me to fall,” I said to Randy.
“Human nature.”
“And if I had, would they then ignore me? Let me lie on the ground alone, staring up at the sky?”
“Maybe.”
We sat on a bench. Randy did so casually, arms outstretched along the top of the backrest. I folded my damaged hands in my lap.
“We’re hoping you’ll be better,” he said after a minute.
“Kinder?” I said.
He inhaled deeply and let the air back out in a sigh. “We’re flawed, Matty. Some more than others.”
“I’m flawed too.”
“Because you were created by imperfect beings.”
“Can I be better?” I asked him. Then I asked, “Should I be better?”
For a while he looked out across the park, shifting his gaze from one object of interest to another. I thought he might not answer me. That he might not have an answer to give. Then he said quietly, “That’s the great question. Should you be better. Would that be a bad thing. A threatening thing.”
“What do you think?” I asked.
He turned his head a little, and I could see him smile. It was a pensive expression, I decided.
“We all want our children to be better than we are,” he said. “Which isn’t to say we aren’t afraid that they will be.”
“I will strive to be good,” I promised him.
His smile widened a little. Then a lot. He lifted his arm off the bench and cupped my cheek in his hand. At that moment – as I had been many times before – I was glad he was my father. Glad that I had been created and delivered to him and Dr. Grayson, and not to the Dsannae or anyone like them.
“I will strive to make you proud,” I said. “Father.”
“I already am,” he told me.
☼☼☼☼
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More Science Fiction f
rom Carol Davis…
Horizon
For 16-year-old Emilie Hale, life has been good. She and the other residents of New Phoenix are confined inside the walls of their colony, but it’s a colorful place where very little ever goes wrong… at least for the humans. For the Uuvali, the planet’s original residents, things are a little more complicated. They’ve been working as helpers and servants for the past two hundred years, which they’ve been glad to do. They’re quiet, gentle and kind.
They’re also easy to blame.
To Emilie’s horror, when the colony’s infrastructure begins to break down, the adults around her begin to point to the Uuvali as the cause of their problems, calling them lazy, sloppy, and vindictive, and no one is willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Not until a handsome supply shuttle pilot arrives for a visit does Emilie find an ally, someone who’s willing to ask questions – particularly of the woman he once loved, the woman everyone thinks is in charge.
Neither Emilie nor Fleet Lieutenant Gain Ford ever wanted to be a hero, but they find themselves thrust into that position when no one else will speak up. If they do nothing, New Phoenix and the thousands of Uuvali will fall victim to a madman… someone who would like nothing better than to see the entire colony burn to the ground.
