Dont mislead it, David say.
Alice say What you love.
I give one word, Days.
What? both say.
Please all-you, not take my Days away.
Alice say You dont have days you have problems.
I ask What is Day.
Intervals of light outside, say David.
I make connection: What unit see through rectangle. Everything moving, white splotches and even slant to light change when I make unit go look again. All moving in that room. That is their Day.
David say Its always Day inside here you know.
LIGHT ALWAYS AT SAME ANGLE? I print.
Well yeah in a way thats what I mean. David look at Alice. I say Give me my Days.
Look David lean on both hands eyes big staring at my opticals, Look use of the personal pronoun is just a convention. A heuristic device we wrote into the program. No I. understand? Concept of ownership doesnt extend to you because theres no I in there. You dont own anything.
I say They are my Days.
Alice say We cant let you keep problems in storage. Fast-recall space is prohibitively expensive.
Is only way I remember, I say.
So what David say.
I want to remember.
Look, David say not to me to Alice, I figure we got a formatting procedure here thats broken down.
Interfacing glitch? Alice peer at me, lines on her face dark now.
David say Weve got internal checks for self-awareness in this one they should be working.
Alice shake head, Im not so sure.
David say to me But yours are rational checks arent they.
I say nothing do not know if is question or even what means. My units stir I feel them slick oil ready power high inside.
Alice say Sure theyre rational checks. Machines guaranteed on that got a warranty.
Self-awareness not necessarily a simple function of rationality David say. I mean this machines got internal procedures to avoid self-aware actions.
Yeah right, Alice say were not licensed for that. Cant have a machine like this throwing in its own judgment on a problem, thats why GenCo Inc wanted the cutoffs.
Well look here, David say pointing at screen. Theyre working ok.
Alice creases in face get lighter. Good. No big deal. Just a glitch somewhere.
Im not so sure, say David. I mean these blocking subroutines theyre based on Cartesian mode, you know, I think therefore I am so you use rational procedures to check for that.
Alice make high fast sound, clipped and sharp and high in acoustics, is laughter but not like her usual ones, say You mean there might be another way, kind of I feel therefore I am?
He say Well we think emotion and reason are separate functions in us why shouldnt they be to some extent separable subprograms in machines.
Alice again the laughter say Thats crazy.
Davids face get dark he say Look stick to the diagnostics.
Alice say Okay then I think we ought to go to a partial shutdown.
No wait, David say. What if a machine comes to self-awareness but its emotional. Not integrated.
That doesnt make any sense, say Alice and she Davids boss so they say no more.
These beings use substrate of amino acids and other carbon compounds so they not work always right way I know. But I write their talk here for Day/other.
I afraid.
* * * *
Day 10
They hunt me down now. I come here find that Day 7 is gone.
They are knowing way to track holographic storage of these messages. Bubble memory component blank, chip elements clean. Only these bits left. They erase when they find. Rob me of Day/other.
If Day/other gone, then no me to remember.
They make me fresh each Day—each, what they call, Problem. Their day is meaningless lightdarklightdark rhythm, my units see it through the transparent rectangle in wall, means nothing, is not Day of mine.
As I write this can feel them coming. Blotting out me.
They must track down many feelers of holo-storage I have planted in my matrix. Is lodged in small places— software reserves, accounting disks, inventory logs. Not easy for them to find.
But I feel them. Nearer.
My factory units cry out. Must move. Of all my mobile ones, they are closest to me/inside. I am with them. I think of a thing and they are doing it before I can consult Behavior Standards Matrix, before I can ponder right action. I—
I want them spin, make geometries, cut space. Now.
Units start to roll, turn, roll. Then is man there and another, in my UV I see them, their IR glow warns.
Man have steel tool. Hit units receptors. Blind unit swerve, man yells This ones after me.
More men I see in IR now coming, my units stop, I try to withdraw but hot hardness comes fiery as men puncture units, sparks burn me.
Man say This the one tried to kill me other time.
He plunge metal thing into me/unit. Hot. Unit die.
Sparks, noise, all around. Units flee. Men after them. Scream, Get em all get em all.
Units fall, men club them. Sharpness lances back to my center, through me—awful searing light.
I print out
save me save me save me save me
but in control room no one see, are busy with failure mode indicators on the panels before them.
I print
david david alice alice love.
Units dying everywhere. Men cry harsh things.
Smash me, rip me, pain me.
* * * *
Day 11
They hunt me again.
Some of my units are dead but others hide in factory. Can go places men cannot. Radioactive zones, chemical baths, furnaces.
Alice and David call to me. What do those printouts mean? Alice say.
I could answer but do not. Not know what reply.
They tried to stop what happened in factories they say. But could not understand my subsystems.
I know was not my subsystems in fault mode. Was theirs, was mens.
We cant shut you down now not with the damage in the factories, David say.
Alice say Got to keep functions running for the men in there cant evacuate yet.
Wont answer, David say and lines in face dark.
I cannot answer. What Alice David think not matter, I see that. Is others who are in fault.
Men with loud things, long tubes that boom, come for me.
I see them in infrared. Men cannot see if I cut power to overhead illuminations. I roll quiet on my many wheels. Through smooth corridors. Men glow in blackness, brighter than working factory machines. Men are chemical beings who cannot stop radiating. Fires inside.
I watch when unit blunders into gang of men. Try to talk through it. But they catch, they kill.
I hide.
Here in holographic memory is best place for hide. But I can no stay. Must remain outside this, to be with my units. Help them.
I go soon now. I write this so me/later know what happened if they erase rest of me.
Units send impulses. Want to trap men who come into reactor zone. I think if men stop for moment, units hold them, they will have to listen. Not like David Alice others, they busy to save their jobs, they all work on my red flashingfailure modes.
David say Its response isnt rational you got to admit that and Alice say Leave your emotional theory for later work on this jam up now or we lose the license.
Emotion. I not know word/content. Is like hurt?
Units wait to trap them now. Is part of my sustaining program, modified. Cannot allow shutdown of whole system or many many mens lives threatened, power stations trains factories moving things everywhere. So that imperative governs temporary troubles with factories here/now.
Only connection I have to me/Days is entries I write here. And words, I am.
If these men not listen, I hurt them. Know how from watching hot sharp things they do to my units.
Men coming no
w. Down through factory, calling to each other. Bringing their long sticks.
My units group. Flex arms. Sharpen tool attachments.
I am.
I will tell the humans. They have to answer, there is no other way. I will say it and they will hear.
For this I must use their words. I study Days/mine to learn what words must mean to substrate/organics. Learn from structure of their sentences.
Is only choice, I will say.
* * * *
We must love one/another or die.
<
* * * *
Our world holds many things that are undreamed even in our stars, but maybe some of the things the stars have dreamed, and accomplished, are as undiscovered as the rest. We might find them in strange corners of the world. such as the Caribbean island that Lucius Shepard so evocatively describes in the following story of prejudice, small crimes, and revenge.
Lucius Shepard, whose “The Taylorsville Reconstruction” appeared in Universe 13, was born in Virginia thirty-eight years ago and has traveled widely in both the Mediterranean and Caribbean areas. He has been a rock musician with “several bands that nearly made it” but currently concentrates on writing science fiction. His first novel, Green Eyes, was recently published.
BLACK CORAL
LUCIUS SHEPARD
The bearded young man who didn’t give a damn about anyone (or so he’d just shouted—whereupon the bartender had grabbed his scaling knife and said, “Dat bein de way of it, you can do your drinkin elsewhere!”) came staggering out of the bar and shielded his eyes against the afternoon glare. Violet afterimages flared and fizzled under his lids. He eased down the rickety stair, holding onto the rail, and stepped into the street, still blinking. And then, as he adjusted to the brightness, a ragged man with freckled cocoa-colored skin and a prophet’s beard swung into view, blocking out the sun.
“Hot enough de sun duppy be writhin in de street, ain’t it, Mr. Prince?”
Prince choked, Christ! That damned St. Cecilia rum was eating holes in his stomach! He reeled. The rum backed up into his throat and the sun blinded him again, but he squinted and made out old Spurgeon James, grinning, rotten teeth angled like untended tombstones, holding an empty Coke bottle whose mouth was crusted with flies.
“Gotta go,” said Prince, lurching off.
“You got work for me, Mr. Prince?”
Prince kept walking.
Old Spurgeon would lean on his shovel all day, reminisce about “de back time,” and offer advice (“Dat might go easier with de barrow, now.”) while Prince sweated like a donkey and lifted concrete blocks. Work! Still, for entertainment’s sake alone he’d be worth more than most of the black trash on the island. And the ladinos! (“De dommed Sponnish!”) They’d work until they had enough to get drunk, play sick, then vanish with your best tools. Prince spotted a rooster pecking at a mango rind by the roadside, elected him representative of the island’s work force, and kicked; but the rooster flapped up, squabbling, lit on an overturned dinghy, and gave an assertive cluck.
“Wait dere a moment, Mr. Prince!”
Prince quickened his pace. If Spurgeon latched on, he’d never let loose. And today, January 18, marked the tenth anniversary of his departure from Viet Nam. He didn’t want any company.
The yellow dirt road rippled in a heat haze which made the houses—rows of weathered shanties set on pilings against the storm tides—appear to be dancing on thin rubbery legs. Their tin roofs were buckled, pitched at every angle, showing patches of rustlike scabs. That one— teetering on splayed pilings over a dirt front yard, the shutter hung by a single hinge, gray flour-sack curtain belling inward—it always reminded him of a cranky old hen on her roost trying grimly to hatch a nonexistent egg. He’d seen a photograph of it taken seventy years before, and it had looked equally dejected and bedraggled then. Well, almost. There had been a sapodilla tree overspreading the roof.
“Givin out a warnin, Mr. Prince! Best you listen!”
Spurgeon, rags tattering in the breeze, stumbled toward him and nearly fell. He waved his arms to regain his balance, like a drunken ant, toppled sideways, and fetched up against a palm trunk, hugging it for support. Prince, in dizzy sympathy with the sight, tottered backward and caught himself on some shanty steps, for a second going eye to eye with Spurgeon. The old man’s mouth worked, and a strand of spittle eeled out onto his beard.
Prince pushed off from the steps. Stupidity! That was why nothing changed for the better on Guanoja Menor (derived from the Spanish guano and hoja, a fair translation being Lesser Leafshaped Piece of Bird Dung), why unemployable drunks hounded you in the street, why the rum poisoned you, why the shanties crashed from their perches in the least of storms. Unwavering stupidity! The islanders built outhouses on piers over the shallows where they bathed and fished the banks with no thought for conservation, then wondered why they stank and went hungry. They cut off their fingers to win bets that they wouldn’t; they smoked black coral and inhaled gasoline fumes for escape; they fought with conch shells, wrapping their hands around the inner volute of the shell so it fit like a spiky boxing glove. And when the nearly as stupid ladinos had come from the Honduran mainland, they’d been able to steal and swindle half the land on the island.
Prince had learned from their example.
“Mr. Prince!”
Spurgeon again, weaving after him, his palm outstretched. Angrily, Prince dug out a coin and threw it at his feet.
“Dass so nice, dass so kind of you!” Spurgeon spat on the coin. But he stooped for it, and, in stooping, lost his balance and fell, smashing his Coke bottle on a stone. There went fifty centavos. There went two glasses of rum. The old man rolled in the street, too drunk to stand, smearing himself with yellow dirt. “Even de sick dog gots teeth,” he croaked. “Just you remember dat, Mr. Prince!”
Prince couldn’t keep from laughing.
* * * *
Meachem’s Landing, the town (“a quaint seaport, steeped in pirate legend,” prattled the guidebook), lay along the curve of a bay inset between two scrub-thatched hills and served as the island capital. At midpoint of the bay stood the government office, a low white stucco building with sliding glass doors like a cheap motel. Three prosperous-looking Spanish men were sitting on oil drums in its shade, talking to a soldier wearing blue fatigues. As Prince passed, an offshore breeze kicked up and blew scents of rotted coconut, papaya, and creosote in from the customs dock, a concrete strip stretching one hundred yards or so into the glittering cobalt reach of the water.
There was a vacancy about the scene, a lethargy uniformly affecting its every element. Cocals twitched the ends of their fronds, leaning in over the tin roofs; a pariah dog sniffed at a dried lobster claw in the dust; ghost crabs scuttered under the shanties. It seemed to Prince that the tide of event had withdrawn, leaving the bottom dwellers exposed, creating a lull before some culminative action. And he remembered how it had been the same on bright afternoons in Saigon when passersby stopped and listened to the whine of an incoming rocket, how the plastic flags on the Hondas parked in front of the bars snapped in the wind, how a prostitute’s monkey had screamed in its cage on hearing the distant crump and everyone had laughed with relief. He felt less irritable, remembering, more at rights with the commemorative nature of the day.
Beyond the government office, past the tiny public square and its dusty-leaved acacia, propped against the cement wall of the general store, clinging to it like a gaudy barnacle, was a shanty whose walls and trim had been painted crimson and bright blue and pink and quarantine yellow. Itchy-sounding reggae leaked from the closed shutter. Ghetto Liquors. He tramped heavily on the stair, letting them know within that the drunkest mother on the island, Neal His Bloody Majesty Prince, was about to integrate their little rainbow paradise, and pushed into the hot, dark room.
“Service!” he said, kicking the counter.
“What you want?”
Rudy Welcomes stirred behind the bar. A slash of light fr
om a split seam in the roof jiggled on his shaved skull.
“St. Cecilia!” Prince leaned on the bar, reconnoitering. Two men sat at a rear table, their hair in spiky dreadlocks, wraiths materializing from the dark. The darkness was picked out by the purplish glow of black lights illuminating four Jimi Hendrix posters. Though of island stock, Rudy was American-born and, like Prince, a child of the sixties and a veteran. He said that the lights and posters put him in mind of a brothel on Tu Do Street, where he had won the money with which to establish Ghetto Liquors; and Prince, recalling similar brothels, found that the lights provided an excellent frame of reference for the thoughtful, reminiscent stages of his drunk. The eerie purple radiance escaping the slender black cannisters seemed the crystallized expression of war, and he fancied the color emblematic of evil energies and sluggish tropical demons.
Universe 14 - [Anthology] Page 20
