I keep wondering what the outside world is like now. I remember how Jake—that is, the whole vast computer establishment—looked on the day I made my translation into its banks: huge towers, with pylons tall enough that a few of the pinnacles re ached up through and pierced the pall over the earth. And connecting the towers, in an intricate tracery of lines, more than a hundred long, light, arching, glass-smooth bridges.
Why did Jake’s designers think the bridges necessary? There is no traffic between the towers, only an infrequent rolling of small servo-mechanisms over one or two of the lower connecting spans. The whole construction is futuristic nonsense. One of the designers must have seen something like it in a picture and imitated it.
And underneath the towers, pinnacles, stabbing Gothic spires of this nightmarishly bad plastic joke, there’s nothing but a roiling, heaving sea of stinging yellowish fog, strong-smelling, hostile to gentle life.
Oh, I wish I could see the earth again the way I saw it once when I was a child, the green hills gentle, studded with golden poppies and blue lupins, violets and a dozen other flowers. And beyond the hills, the incomparable splendor and radiance of the white foam and blue water of the sea.
I was lucky. I saw the beauty of the earth in one of the few islands of that beauty that were left. It must all be gone now… The proper epithet for human beings is not “sapient” or “toolmaking” or even “game playing.” We are Homo raptor.
Meantime, the mountains of pastry are growing even higher.
* * *
Later: Jake went on with its fancy baking a little longer. Then there was a slight pause, and J. began to create candies and sweetmeats. Truffles au chocolat came first, to be followed by almond, pecan, and walnut brittle, marzipan shaped like fruit and glittering with sugar, pastel bonbons, chocolate-covered nuts of every description, caramels, nougats, pralines, coffee nuggets, boiled sweets, fudges—again, I can’t begin to enumerate them all. Is this wave of candies resting on top of the previous mountains of pastry? At any rate, there seems to be room for everything.
The candy-making seems to be slackening. A few more trays of Victoria brittle materialize. A pause. And now, through Jake’s sensors, I perceive a new smell. Herby, thymy, oily, sharp, and over all, the smell of the divine herb, garlic. It’s a pleasant change from all that sugary stuff.
I suppose— yes, Jake has turned its talents toward salad making. We’re getting Caesar salad, Chefs salad, Russian salad, tossed green salad, potato salad, avocado and grapefruit, Waldorf, alfalfa and mung bean sprout salads, and even an assortment of lowly coleslaws and some wilted lettuce and dandelion greens. Pickles, relishes, chow-chows, kim chee, and antipas to follow. Yet I seem to feel a sort of despair in Jake’s thoughts as it works its way back through the cuisine toward soup.
Without any perceptible pause, Jake’s food production has switched from salads to meat dishes. But there’s not nearly the abundance here that there was earlier. Sweetbreads en brochette, steak Diane, saddle of venison, broiled salmon steaks and a few others, and then everything stops. I feel a long and somehow exhausted silence. But Jake can’t really have given up. It may have run out of optimism temporarily, but I doubt it has run out of ideas.
I wish I could curl up somewhere and go to sleep.
Actually, being “dead”—being in the deep freeze—wasn’t half bad. It didn’t hurt at all, and there was no anxiety connected with it. But I think my thought processes have been a little slow ever since. It’s as if a human brain had been a little too long deprived of oxygen, without being made positively imbecile. Perhaps some of my circuits—the electrical circuits that make up my dim and ghostly personality—may have been damaged or corroded in the long wait.
One thing I really don’t understand is how Jake can be so infernally stupid. Weren’t there, among the billions and billions of personalities in its memory banks, any geniuses, heroes, poets, saints? What became of those who “left the vivid air signed with their honor”? Jake isn’t so much a case of the lowest common denominator as it is a reaching of the lowest level of the lowest. The only answer that comes to me is my former analogy of stirring up all the colors in a box of paints.
Much later: There’s an enormous sense of bustle, of intense preparation, in Jake’s thoughts. It seems to have decided to focus all its resources (which used to be coterminous with the resources of the entire planet) on one last attempt. Changes—gross physical changes—seem to be taking place in a considerable portion of the enormous computer establishment. The mounds, the mountains, the avalanches of food have been cleared away, and shapes and structures are being tried and discarded one after another kaleidoscopically. It’s very confusing. I wish I knew—really knew—what is going on.
J. seems completely absorbed in this latest attempt I think—yes, I think it’s safe to risk it. In this vast expenditure of energy, any minute drain I might make ought to go unnoticed. I’m going to “think” real sensory perceptors for myself into being.
Later: My eyes and ears have been in existence now for what seems a considerable time. And I still have no idea what’s going on. It seems there’s a parallel construction and removal taking place. But why? And of what? I’ll try to sort out for my own satisfaction what I actually perceive.
Well, then, the servo-mechanisms seem to be clearing a space about fifty kilometers long in Jake’s entrails. I had to “think” an extension of my visual system into being to make out that much. What they’re clearing out seems primarily personality storage banks. It makes me a little alarmed. What if my own cell should be among them? But the servos appear to be concentrating on the older elements.
The cleared space is linear with, as far as I can make out, a slight curvature along its length. At one end it comes up against a blank wall of undisturbed personality storage banks. The other end of the long tunnel appears to be open to the air outside (if it still is air). The diameter of this horizontal shaft is about ten kilometers. These measurements are wholly approximate, of course. The surface of the tunnel is angular and rough, which is only reasonable considering what has been removed to make it.
The construction—but I am much less sure of this than I am of the removal—seems to be external. It’s a towering pylon, without the Gothicism of most of Jake’s architecture, probably a few kilometers longer than the interior tunnel and probably a little greater in diameter, with a roughly hexagonal tip. I believe it’s being constructed out of the memory banks that the servos previously removed from J.’s interior. Admirable economy! Waste not, want not. It contrasts strongly with J.’s profligacy when it was trying to win itself by its achievements as a cook.
The pylon-shaping process is still going on. The servos are using a good deal of force to make its elements cohere. The surface of the pylon appears to be, like that of the interior tunnel, angular and rough.
So far Jake has been using pre-existing parts of itself. Now a whole group of the servos—thirty at least—has withdrawn from the others and is waiting motionless. They aren’t silent, though. A continuous series of clucking noises, some soft and some loud, is coming from them. Are they making something? Time will tell. For the nonce, they have a quality that is both brooding and broody, a sort of cross between spiders and hens.
Later: The servos finally have begun to move around and around vertically over the surface of the interior tunnel, spirally and overlappingly, while they spray something on it out of openings on their sides I didn’t notice before. It’s a pinkish, spongy material that’s soupy and drippy at first but hardens to a deep cushion in a little while. Meanwhile, the external construction seems to have stopped.
The spraying of the interior tunnel goes on and on until the whole length of the tunnel is coated with it and all its roughnesses and angularities are erased.
The group of servos has moved on to the outside. Here, because of the gravity, it’s taking them considerably longer. But they seem to be spraying the exterior pylon with the same pinkish, fast -setting gunk they used on th
e inside.
Around and around and around, around and around and around. At last there comes a pause. The servos slip down the pylon and cluster around the opening of the horizontal internal tunnel. Another pause. Then a series of mighty creaks and groans begins, the shriek of metal on metal, a noise of unpliancy. It is coming, I think, from the towering, recently sprayed shaft.
The noises get louder and more grating. They’re concentrated at the base of the shaft. The smooth octahedral top of the pylon is moving. It’s bending lower and lower. It appears to be descending toward—Toward the external opening of the tunnel. Oh, God. For a moment I feel as disgusted with myself as I chronically am with humanity. How could I have been so stupid? For it’s plain that what Jake is trying to do now has been in the cards from the beginning, from the moment it conceived its idiotic passion for itself. The towering pinkish pylon, the long horizontal pink tunnel, for Jake’s last desperate attempts to consummate its love. Jake is going to try to diddle itself.
The servos have moved out of the way. The heavy pinkish shaft is almost horizontal now. It broaches the opening of the long, long tunnel. The tunnel seems to dilate the shaft enters it.
The pylon is moving rather slowly. But at last it reaches the end of the tunnel and crunches against the plastic-coated memory banks. Slowly it withdraws, almost to the opening of the tunnel. It comes back again, a little more rapidly. Soon all this part of the computer establishment is vibrating with the blows. How long will it go on?
Well, I suppose there are three possible ways in which this situation can resolve itself. If the plastic the servos sprayed on the shaft and tunnel was provided with something like nerve endings, endings that could carry messages to a pleasure center somewhere in Jake, both parts of Jake could achieve something like orgasm. Then the mighty blows of the superpenis would stop, at least temporarily.
If there’s no such pleasure center, and no nerve endings to carry messages to it, Jake could stop diddling itself eventually because the idiot perceived the futility of its attempt.
Or, finally, Jake can keep on with the working of the superpenis in the supervagina until something breaks. Those are all the possibilities I can think of.
Later (I don’t know how much later): It’s still going on. Jake has at least one advantage over the mammals it’s aping. Its superpenis is incapable of detumescence.
The copulatory, reciprocal motion goes on and on. On and on and on. And on.
I have been counting the number of strokes the pylon makes in the tunnel. If one figures one stroke per minute—a reasonable assumption, considering the length of the tunnel—and considers that there have been three thousand six hundred strokes since I began to count, then there have been at least sixty hours of continuous copulation. By now it’s plain, at least, that Jake must be deficient either in nerve endings in its self-created genitals, or in an adequate cerebral pleasure center where nerve messages could be received. The even tempo of the strokes has never varied, after the first initial speeding-up.
This has been going on too long.
Later: I lost count, stopped for a while, and then began to count again. I have got to 2,300 this time, but it seems that Jake is slowing down. The strokes are certainly coming more slowly.
Finally, the pylon withdraws completely from the horizontal female shaft. It seems sadly altered, shrunken, and bulging haphazardly. Has there been some sort of detumescence, after all?
No, that’s not it. The pylon is beginning to crumble. The plastic that held it together has been worn away, eroded, by the long-continued copulatory friction. Jake not only didn’t provide nerve endings for its genitals, it ignored the question of lubrication. The plastic that coated the pylon must have been of exceptionally high quality to have held the superpenis together for this long.
All activity has ceased. The servos seem frozen. I’m getting afraid, in the absence of any actions of its own, Jake may become aware of my sense organs, and infer from them that another individuality, besides its own messy conglomerateness, exists somewhere in it. I’ll have to be very careful. But I am genuinely curious as to what Jake will try next.
A better, more sensitive set of genitals, connected to a pleasure center somewhere in Jake? Actually, J’s center, as far as what used to be called a giant brain can be said to have one, is located not far from the end of its supervagina. It shouldn’t be much of a trick for the servos to install a pleasure-sensing mechanism there, and key it in with a simulation of vaginal nerve endings. That would be the obvious thing to attempt next, and Jake is nothing if not obvious. But it may be too convinced of that futility of its efforts to try again. Whatever it does, the computer remains ineluctably “it.”
Later: Still no action. The servos remain immobile. J. can’t have exhausted its energy reserves, and yet I don’t detect the shadow of any kind of thought in it. Perhaps it really has given up and genuinely isn’t thinking of anything.
At any rate, the services to its personality banks haven’t ceased. I haven’t gone back into the deep freeze. At times, I rather wish I had…
Something is coming along the faintly luminous bottom of the tunnel. It’s quite small, smaller than the smallest of the servos, and it’s moving slowly and cautiously. Sometimes it speeds up a bit, into a momentary cautious scampering. I wonder where it came from. I wonder what it is.
I daren’t use my sense organs very much, but it seems that seven or eight more somethings are following the first one. I wish I could get a better look at them.
They almost seem alive, in a way that the servos, no matter how competent and busy, never are. There’s randomness in Jake, of course. It’s built in. A scrambler used to provide variety and change to our thought-lives But it was a mechanism, after all. It never gave the skyrocketing change, the vertiginous variety, of actual life. The somethings moving along the bottom of the tunnel move like living things.
I’ll risk it. I think—I hope—that Jake is too empty and exhausted to pay much heed to anything I do. But I’ve got to get a closer look at them.
Later: I’m glad I risked it. It would have been worth any risk. I never was more happy in my life.
Now I know that I’m capable of another emotion besides a loathing for humanity, a wan curiosity, and an even wanner wish to survive. What I feel now is love and never more intense and joyous, because what’s moving along the bottom of the tunnel is a group—a troop—I don’t know what one would properly call it—of raccoons. Raccoons. Black and gray, prick ears, seven-striped tails, burglar masks, skinny paws, beady eyes, and all. A delight of raccoons! My adorable striped-tailed darlings, it’s unbelievable how glad I am to see you! A delight of raccoons, alive and real, in the midst of Jake’s dreary madness and the etiolated, time-eroded personalities in Jake’s memory banks.
How had they managed to survive? Never mind, here they are. And if there are raccoons, may there not also be possums, whales, horned owls, jackals, toads? Perhaps the earth has somehow managed to clean herself from our human pollution.
The raccoons are beginning to scatter out, to investigate the chinks and fissures in J.’s threadbare vagina. They scamper into crevasses, they stand on their hind legs and pivot easily on their lush, soft, bushy behinds and look about in all directions. I suppose those mountains of sweetmeats and pastries attracted them; their liveliness makes it seem that the food either couldn’t be consumed or was unsubstantial. And now, in the immemorial manner of raccoons, they’re beginning to investigate.
Their clever little paws, almost as adroit as hands, are being run into cracks, are pulling out wires, rolls of tape, panels of miniaturized circuitry. I wonder what they make of it all. Meanwhile, they’re getting nearer to Jake’s center, the point where, if anywhere, Jake is vulnerable. And the servos don’t move; they seem not alerted by the animal invasion. Has Jake already “burned itself out” in its protracted search for the consummation of an impossible love? I doubt it. But why are the servos so indifferent?
Now the ring-tailed wo
nders begin their climbing. They could almost climb up a strictly vertical surface, and here, with the irregularities and soft spots in J.’s makeshift vagina to cling to, they can go very high. Up and up, pulling out and investigating whatever comes in their way. Fortunately, the voltages in J.’s interior are very low. Fortunately, for I shouldn’t want my darling Procyonlotor to get a shock. (Was I a naturalist, I wonder, when I was alive?) And the computer remains inert, under all this murmuration of raccoons.
I feel a very slight—shock? The animals keep on pulling. Festoons of tapes and wires are dripping from their paws. The servos are at last galvanized into action, though rather slow action, at that. They start toward the disembowelers in a swift crawl. But I feel perfectly confident of the raccoons’ ability to elude any servo pursuit.
The animals scamper a few feet farther and repeat their poking and pulling. I begin to feel rather odd, dim and remote.
Am I going back into the deep freeze? If I am, I know I’ll never come out. Jake is breaking down, and it’s the last time.
Never mind. It’s all right. This is a happy ending, because things are safe after all. The future is secure in nonhuman hands. Thank God, I mean not hands, but paws.
1981
Book Information
The Best of MARGARET ST. CLAIR
Edited by Martin H. Greenberg
Academy Chicago Publishers
Copyright © Margaret St. Clair, 1967: “The Wine of Earth” © 1977: “Idris’ Pig”; “The Gardener”; “Child of Void”; “Hathor’s Pets”. © 1978: “The Pillows”; “The Listening Child”. © 1979: “Brightness Falls from the Air”; “The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles”. © 1980: “The Causes”; “An Egg A Month From All Over”. © 1981: “Prott”; “New Ritual”; “Wryneck Draw Me”. © 1982: “Brenda”; “Short in the Chest”. © 1984: “Horrer Howce”. Copyright © 1958 by Satellite Science Fiction: “The Invested Libido”; Copyright © 1960 by Galaxy: “The Nuse Man”. Copyright © 1961 by Galaxy: “An Old-fashioned Bird Christmas”.
The Best of Margaret St. Clair Page 28
