Made to Order

by Jonathan Strahan

  “Why?”

  “That all-powerful dictator had a lot of enemies and was even more paranoid. He used to send his goons out to grab anyone he was suspicious of, then he’d watch when they were shoved into the pit. As far as everyone else knew they simply vanished. There was never a body or a grave.”

  “The lions ate them,” Alastair said, and even he sounded grossed out.

  “Yeah. Those lions only ate people. That’s why they could never be allowed out of the pit. So grandpa and his squad shot them.”

  “I see. And how is this relevant to you?”

  “I’m a lion.”

  My affinity bonds rose to full perception, and I awoke myself. All of me’s. It takes experience to handle thought routines that are outside the norm. But boy did I have experience.

  Skins first. Chameleons, of course. Mine didn’t just do colour, they could change texture, too, becoming smooth as human flesh. They split apart along my scar lines as if someone was undoing a zip, then they slithered onto the floor.

  Alistair took a step back in shock, unable to look away. I was lying there like one of those anatomical models where you can see every detail of every muscle.

  Weasels: they’re strong and sinuous. The human body has over six-hundred skeletal muscles, all clustered up tight. On me, their vestigial feet clung to my skeleton for traction. I let them go, and they scampered away like a tide of raw meat slivers. Except for the pectoral one which had been shot, it writhed around on the ground in agony until I shut it down.

  The intestine snake slithered out through the centre of my abdomen, all six metres of it.

  Phase one of Orgenesis had seen Jacob and Karran design the organisms’ intended function to peak efficiency. Refining them further, shrinking the rest of their animal physiology down to the absolute minimum was going to take time and a lot of costly experimentation. But the basic concept worked, I was the prototype which proved that for them.

  All my freed parts swarmed Alastair. He flailed around as if he was being electrocuted as tiny claws scrabbled up his silk suit. Then the intestine snake wound its way round his legs, and contracted. He toppled over.

  I didn’t need total disassembly to watch, not like when I infiltrated the building. So my carbon skeleton stayed locked together, containing the clump of my central organs: the simple bitek heart pump, dolphin lungs, porcine liver and kidneys, resus glands, all the parts that make up a human body’s gloriously complicated physiology. They’d all come apart so I could crawl and slither up the building’s narrow air duct, hauling the skeleton components along with me. Even my head can be independent—it has rat legs in the thyroid cavity, and a small oesophageal reserve blood bladder in my neck, enough to keep my brain alive for several minutes.

  I looked at Alastair. He was on the ground, immobilised by the intestine snake coiled round his limbs. The flock of muscle weasels were perched on top of him, their black rodent eyes blinking in the light.

  He stared back at me in terror.

  “Welcome to the pit,” I told him.

  In union, all my new parts function as an integral whole, providing me with a body. But individually they need feeding.

  As one, the muscle weasels snapped their mouths open, revealing six hundred sets of sharp tiny teeth. Alastair screamed.

  People are animals.

  Me? More so than most.

  DANCING WITH DEATH

  JOHN CHU

  John Chu (www.johnchu.net) is a microprocessor architect by day, a writer, translator, and podcast narrator by night. His fiction has appeared in Boston Review, Uncanny, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Clarkesworld, and Tor.com, and translations have been published or are forthcoming at Clarkesworld, The Big Book of SF and other venues. His story “The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere” won the 2014 Hugo Award for Best Short Story.

  THE BED I’M lying on is not my own. The induction coils in this bed line up exactly where they’re supposed to against my body. Their gentle warmth nudges the power receivers on my back and thighs. My battery hasn’t charged this efficiently in years. I’m obsolete and a little beat-up. Bits of me have been replaced by parts intended for newer models because no one can find the original parts anymore. Not even a bed designed for my type of chassis—not that they make those anymore—lines up this well against me.

  Clearly, I did not make it home last night. The question is where I made it to instead. The room barely has space for the bed. My shirt and trousers are draped on a chair back. Both my shoes and my figure skates sit on the chair. The door is open a crack. A thin wedge of light leaks through. This is more of a closet than the workshop of an authorized mechanic. It screams makeshift. Maybe I’ve been waylaid.

  Despite being built for hefting and hauling, I’m disturbingly easy to waylay when my battery runs down. Without the proper voltage, I don’t work right, much less pass for human. Someone could take me down, kill me, then sell the fully-functional mechanical husk that’s left over. It’s not like the police would stop them. Even if it didn’t work out and I pressed charges, no jury would convict. One by one, like-minded friends have all had the spark that animates them snuffed out. They still drive cabs or deliver packages or whatever they used to do, but it’s as if they were never alive. They’re dead behind the eyes and their movements are absolutely programmatic. That this’ll happen to me, too, feels inevitable.

  That I’m gaming this out, though, means I’m still me. Anyone who can recharge me this efficiently knows how to reduce me to a mere machine. Capacitance is a thing. Once you disconnect me from my battery, you have to wait. Let my voltage settle down to zero. Sentience is an emergent property. As unlikely as it is for any of us to become self-aware when we’re first powered up, it’s never happened again when we’re powered down then back up. So maybe not waylaid.

  The door opens. It’s Charlie. So definitely not waylaid. I’m always happy to see him, but part of me wants to get the inevitable over with. Then nothing will matter anymore. He hesitates for a moment before he takes a deep breath and steps inside. Worry hangs on his face.

  His outfit is weirdly appropriate considering I nearly ran out of power last night. He’s dressed as a harbinger of Death. Literally. As in one of the minor gods from Chinese mythology who show up to lead the souls of those about to die to the Underworld. The white robe. The tall pointy white hat with a spell of good fortune inscribed in a vertical stripe. Even the umbrella. Well, a harbinger of Death who spent a season or so as an enforcer in professional hockey. The robe doesn’t so much hang on him as stretch across his shoulders, chest, and arms. He still plays semi-pro: I go to his games. Maybe he’s just come from a costume party. If so, he’s gone to a lot of effort to look accurate.

  “Where the devil are my slippers?” Charlie’s voice is gruff and his attempt at received pronunciation atrocious.

  Not that I don’t appreciate him caring whether I drained myself to death, but I roll my eyes. The question is the standard test for sentience. He doesn’t actually care where his slippers are. People who are not Charlie manage to avoid the “this is the dumbest thing anyone has ever had to say to anyone” affect when they ask. And the received pronunciation is his attempt at a joke.

  If I were non-sentient, I’d answer the question seriously. Worse, I’d almost certainly get up and search for his non-existent slippers.

  “You’re the only mechanic I’ve gone to for maintenance in years.” I push myself up to a sit. “How do I not know about this room?”

  “You’ve never needed me to recharge you before.” He tosses me my clothes, sets both the shoes and the figure skates by my feet on the bed, then sits in the chair. “What do you remember about last night?”

  “Well, I went to the rink after work.” I slip on my shirt and start buttoning. “You know, keeping an eye on the skaters that Coach wasn’t working with. I taught a kid how to do a 3-turn. A pretty typical session.”

  “Except...” Charlie leans in towards me, his umbrella on his lap, and his pointy
hat angled slightly backwards so that it doesn’t fall off.

  Being self-aware means I can refuse Charlie’s pointed inquiries. I decide to tell him the truth, even though it’s going to make him worry about me.

  “Except the ice expanded out and everyone disappeared. I was skating fast, intricate patterns on an infinite field of ice.”

  “What?” Charlie jolts up.

  “What did you expect?” I pull on my trousers. “Accurate memories under low voltage?”

  “But you’re okay, right?” His brow furrowed with concern and he squirms like he’s tied to the chair and about to break free. “You don’t need me to check you out or anything, right?”

  That’s Charlie-speak for “Not only am I going to run every diagnostic on you that has ever been invented but I’m going to invent a few dozen more and run those on you too. Plus, I am going to manually inspect every single connector and solder joint in your body. Thrice. However, you’re probably not going to let me because you think I’m overreacting.” It’s taken me years to work out Charlie-speak. And years more for him to work out that I’ve worked it out. He’s not always this oblique, but it’s a wonder that we’ve never resorted to something more straightforward, like mime or interpretive dance.

  “It’s not like you’ll be leading me to the Underworld any time soon.” I gesture at his costume. “Relax, Charlie.”

  Panic explodes across Charlie’s face. He leaps out of the chair. A white light fills the room. When he’s landed on his feet, his clothing has changed. He’s now wearing a large T-shirt that, nevertheless, his body bulges out of and cargo pants that might billow if anyone else wore them. It’s practically his uniform. The cloak, hat, and umbrella are nowhere in room.

  “I only appear as a messenger of death to the dying. Your life span should be as long as mine. You shouldn’t even be able to see me in that form. Ever. Come on, we have to give you a full workup.” He gestures at me as he steps to the door. “Do I have your consent?”

  “Whoa.” I hold up a hand. “There’s something you need to unpack first.”

  “Oh, that.” He rolls his eyes. “You know, Bai Wuchang. One of the guys who lead wayward souls of the dead to the Underworld or else they’re just going to wander the world lost and who wants that? We all have our obligations and this is mine. I’ve scavenged enough parts to replace practically anything in you that might ever fail. You should never have to go to the Underworld. Now, do I have your consent?”

  Mechanics, even the authorized ones, don’t always ask. From the first time I came to him for maintenance, Charlie has never not asked.

  “Charlie, you should know exactly what’s wrong then.” I shrug. “Some parts have a shelf life, you know. You can’t really scavenge them.”

  I’ve already lasted longer than I’ve had any right to expect. The authorized mechanics, not that I have ever been able to afford them, stopped supporting my model years ago.

  “Your battery’s failing?” Charlie looks peeved. “I’m not going to ask how long you’ve known. But this is the sort of thing you’re supposed to tell me right away.”

  “Why?” I put on my shoes and start tying the laces. “It’s been years since they made batteries for my type.”

  “Some authorized mechanic can probably jury-rig something.” His face starts to get flush. “Adapt a new battery to your chassis and circuitry.”

  Jury-rig. Like the bed I’m sitting on. The sides are ripped open and loops of wire hang off the frame. He must have spent a good while busting this bed up to line up its inductors so that I could charge properly. Hell, my body is a testament to his ability to jury-rig.

  “But not you?” I cast a significant glance at the bed.

  Charlie seems to shrink a little. His gaze wanders to everywhere except the bed. I’d say he was scared except I’ve never seen him this out of sorts. Charlie manages maybe one overt emotion a week and it’s never been fear before.

  “No.” He still can’t meet my gaze. “I don’t want to fuck it up. I take too long and you won’t be you anymore. There’s a reason why authorized mechanics are authorized.”

  Maintaining and repairing us requires specialized tools. Authorized mechanics are allowed to buy those tools and are trained to use them properly. Everyone else has to go on the black, or at least gray, market. Not to mention do quite a bit of reverse engineering to figure out how we work and how to fix us.

  “I don’t want this fixed and you don’t want to fix this.” I get out of bed and step around him to the door. “What are we actually arguing about?”

  I mean, I think I know what we’re actually arguing about. If I weren’t around anymore, I suspect he might miss me. Charlie, however, is just going to lapse back into Charlie-speak. It’s just the way he’s built.

  “The battery is a crucial component.” He literally wrings his hands. “You want to make sure you’re in as good a condition as possible, right?”

  “Whatever.” I grab my figure skates, go out the door, then step back in. “How much do I owe you?”

  “For what?” Surprise fills Charlie’s face.

  “The recharge.”

  “Oh, please. You slept in a bed.” He waves off any offer of money. “Like I personally pushed each electron into place.”

  And he’s going to notice the difference in his electric bill. He knows that and I know it’s a waste of time to push this any further.

  “You’re playing Saturday night?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good.”

  I’m not really a fan of hockey but I’m a fan of Charlie so I go. Besides, we always catch a movie or something afterward. Since we both skate, you’d think I could get him in the rink with me one of these days, but I haven’t managed it.

  Even so, thoughts of hanging out with Charlie get me through my shifts at the warehouse. I loaf Saturday mornings to make sure that I have the energy to spend with him on Saturday nights. Either he’s that amazing or people who treat me like a human-shaped forklift are that awful. Or both.

  Fortunately, I’ve never spent more energy at my job than I had to. Eighteen wheelers come. Eighteen wheelers go. Delivery trucks come. Delivery trucks go. We unload boxes from the vehicles to the shelves. We load boxes from the shelves onto the vehicles. Sometimes, we even move boxes from one vehicle to another or one shelf to another. Exciting stuff, right? And, nowadays, you can’t pay a human enough to do it.

  To be fair, I’m not sure a human being can do this job anymore. Our movement patterns get more intricate and tightly choreographed by the day. If you could blow the roof off and stare down at us, I’m sure we’d look like some sort of Busby Berkeley musical number on steroids. There isn’t an action that isn’t specified down to the millisecond. Hundreds of workers scatter and gather. Our paths criss-cross but we never collide, practically all of us gliding past each other with the dead-eyed stare of the non-sentient.

  Wheeled workers are starting to replace ones with legs. I work on inline skates to keep up. Electric bills don’t pay themselves. My bosses are decidedly displeased that my unanticipated interest in figure skating has let me hit their performance metrics targets. They can’t simply decommission and replace a sentient worker. Well, they can fire me whenever they want but, unless they have a plausible reason, I’d create more trouble for them than it’s worth right now. It won’t be too long, though, before the warehouse becomes one giant, complex machine and its workers mere components. That I can think for myself will be a liability and I will become truly obsolete.

  My off-duty time is my own, though. Some days, I drop by Charlie’s. He has a shed where heavy, cumbersome machines waiting to be repaired are parked and my body is literally designed for lifting and hauling. I feel bad that it’s been years since he let me pay him for his work but, mostly, I just want to help.

  A few days after I ran out of charge, I show up, figuring Charlie should have calmed down by now. When I make my usual offer, though, Charlie’s gaze is especially critical, as if the
sheer weight of his tacit disapproval can change my mind. Like always, I just gaze back until he relents. I used to think if I lived long enough, we might graduate from silence to rudimentary vowel sounds and we might growl our disagreements at each other instead. He does manage an exasperated grunt when he gives in.

  Other days, I drop by the rink. Competitive figure skating is out of the question for me, of course. We’re banned from competing in anything. That never stops me from building up some speed then hitting an Ina Bauer or a spread eagle as I throw open my arms. In my mind, it is perfectly timed to some dramatic moment of music and it is fabulous. Today, I twist and turn my way down the long axis of the rink with edge pulls, rockers, counters, and brackets before I settle down to why I’m actually here. A couple years ago, I begged Coach to let me volunteer. She gazed at me skeptically, but she’d just seen me do a one foot step sequence that ran the rink’s long axis.

  A group of skaters are waiting for me at a corner of the ice. It’s all relative, of course, but they’re all so short and slight, even the ones in their twenties. I get them started on stroking and edge drills. One by one, they cover the rink in a serpentine pattern, cross-stroking at first, progressing to turns, then finally to footwork combinations. This warms them up for whatever Coach or her assistant coaches have in mind for them this session. Usually, I’m just around to keep the younger skaters on task when they’re sent to practice by themselves. The kids take to me better, anyway. They’ve been around people like me for as long as they can remember.