Strange Days: Fabulous Journeys With Gardner Dozois

by Gardner R. Dozois

  Czudak grimaced sourly. His children! Good thing he was sitting far enough away from them not to be recognized, although there was little real chance of that: he was just another anonymous old man sitting wearily on a bench in the park, and, as such, as effectively invisible to the young as if he was wearing one of those military Camouflage Suits that bent light around you with fiber-optic relays. This demonstration, of course, must be in honor of today being the anniversary of The Meat Manifesto. Who would have thought that the Meats were still active enough to stage such a thing? He hadn’t followed the Movement—which by now was more of a cult than a political party—for years, and had keyed his newsgroups to censor out all mention of them, and would have bet that by now they were as extinct as the Shakers.

  They’d managed to muster a fair crowd, though, perhaps two or three hundred people willing to kill a Saturday shouting slogans in the park in support of a cause long since lost. They’d attracted no obvert media attention, although that meant nothing in these days of cameras the size of dust motes. The tourists and the strollers were watching the show tolerantly, even the chimeras—as dedicated to Tech as anyone still sessile—seeming to regard it as no more than a mildly-diverting curiosity. Little heat was being generated by the demonstration yet, and so far it had more of an air of carnival than of protest. Almost as interesting as the demonstration itself was the fact that a few of the tourists idly watching it were black, a rare sight now in a city that, ironically, had once been seventy percent black; time really did heal old wounds, or fade them from memory anyway, if black tourists were coming back to Philadelphia again . . .

  Then, blinking in surprise, Czudak saw that the demonstration had attracted a far more rare and exotic observer than some black businessmen with short historical memories up from Birmingham or Houston. A Mechanical! It was standing well back from the crowd, watching impassively, its tall, stooped, spindly shape somehow giving the impression of a solemn, stick-thin, robotic Praying Mantis, even though it was superficially humanoid enough in shape. Mechanicals were rarely seen on Earth. In the thirty years since the AIs had taken over near-Earth space as their own exclusive domain, allowing only the human pets who worked for the Orbital Companies to dwell there, Czudak had seen a Mechanical walking the streets of Philadelphia maybe three times. Its presence here was more newsworthy than the demonstration.

  Even as Czudak was coming to this conclusion, one of the Meats spotted the Mechanical. He pointed at it and shouted, and there was a rush of demonstrators toward it. Whether they intended it harm or not was never determined, because as soon as it found itself surrounded by shouting humans, the Mechanical hissed, drew itself up to its full height, seeming to grow taller by several feet, and emitted an immense gush of white chemical foam. Czudak couldn’t spot where the foam was coming from—under the arms, perhaps?—but within a second or two the Mechanical was completely lost inside a huge and rapidly expanding ball of foam, swallowed from sight. The Meats backpedaled furiously away from the expanding ball of foam, coughing, trying to bat it away with their arms, one or two of them tripping and going to their knees. Already the foam was hardening into a dense white porous material, like Styrofoam, trapping a few of the struggling Meats in it like raisins in tapioca pudding.

  The Mechanical came springing up out of the center of the ball of foam, leaping straight up in the air and continuing to rise, up perhaps a hundred feet before its arc began to slant to the south and it disappeared over the row of three-or-four-story houses that lined the park on that side, clearing them in one enormous bound, like some immense surreal grasshopper. It vanished over the housetops, in the direction of Spruce Street, The whole thing had taken place without a sound, in eerie silence, except for the half-smothered shouts of the outraged Meats.

  The foam was already starting to melt away, eaten by internal nanomechanisms. Within a few seconds, it was completely gone, leaving not even a stain behind. The Meats were entirely unharmed, although they spent the next few minutes milling angrily around like a swarm of bees whose hive has been kicked over, making the same kind of thick ominous buzz, as everyone tried to talk or shout at once.

  Within another ten minutes, everything was almost back to normal, the tourists and the dog-walkers strolling away, more pedestrians ambling by, the Meats beginning to take up their chanting and drum-pounding again, motivated to even greater fervor by the outrage that had been visited upon them, an outrage that vindicated all their fears about the accelerating rush of a runaway technology that was hurtling them ever faster into a bizarre alien future that they didn’t comprehend and didn’t want to live in. It was time to put on the breaks, it was time to stop!

  Czudak sympathized with the way they felt, as well he should, since he had been the one to articulate that very position eloquently enough to sway entire generations, including these children, who were too young to have even been born when he was writing and speaking at the height of his power and persuasion. But it was too late. As it was too late now for many of the things he regretted not having accomplished in his life. If there ever had been a time to stop, let alone go back, as he had once urged, it had passed long ago. Very probably it had been too late even as he wrote his famous Manifesto. It had always been too late.

  The Meats were forming up into a line now, preparing to march around the park. Czudak sighed. He had hoped to spend several peaceful hours here, sagging on a bench under the trees in a sun-dazzled contemplative haze, listening to the wind sough through the leaves and branches, but it was time to get out of here, before one of the older Meats did recognize him.

  He limped back to Spruce Street, and turned on to his block—and there, standing quiet and solemn on the sidewalk in front of his house, was the Mechanical.

  It was obviously waiting for him, waiting as patiently and somberly as an undertaker, a tall, stooped shape in nondescript black clothing. There was no one else around on the street anymore, although he could see the Canadian refugee peeking out of his window at them from behind a curtain.

  Czudak crossed the street, and, pushing down a thrill of fear, walked straight past the Mechanical, ignoring it—although he could see it looming seraphically out of the corner of his eye as he passed. He had put his foot on the bottom step leading up to the house when its voice behind him said, “Mr. Czudak?”

  Resigned, Czudak turned and said, “Yes?”

  The Mechanical closed the distance between them in a rush, moving fast but with an odd, awkward, shuffling gait, as if it was afraid to lift its feet off the ground. It crowded much closer to Czudak than most humans—or most Westerners, anyway, with their generous definition of “personal space”—would have, almost pressing up against him. With an effort, Czudak kept himself from flinching away. He was mildly surprised, up this close, to find that it had no smell; that it didn’t smell of sweat, even on a summer’s day, even after exerting itself enough to jump over a row of houses, was no real surprise—but he found that he had been subconsciously expecting it to smell of oil or rubber or molded plastic. It didn’t. It didn’t smell like anything. There were no pores in its face, the skin was thick and waxy and smooth, and although the features were superficially human, the overall effect was stylized and unconvincing. It looked like a man made out of teflon. The eyes were black and piercing, and had no pupils.

  “We should talk, Mr. Czudak,” it said.

  “We have nothing to talk about,” Czudak said.

  “On the contrary, Mr. Czudak,” it said, “we have a great many issues to discuss.” You would have expected its voice to be buzzing and robotic—yes, mechanical—or at least flat and without intonation, like some of the old voder programs, but instead it was unexpectedly pure and singing, as high and clear and musical as that of an Irish tenor.

  “I’m not interested in talking to you,” Czudak said brusquely. “Now or ever.”

  It kept tilting its head to look at him, then tilting it back the other way, as if it were having trouble keeping him in focus. It was a mobile
extensor, of course, a platform being ridden by some AI (or a delegated fraction of its intelligence, anyway) who was still up in near-Earth orbit, peering at Czudak through the Mechanical’s blank agate eyes, running the body like a puppet. Or was it? There were hierarchies among the AIs too, rank upon rank of them receding into complexities too great for human understanding, and he had heard that some of the endless swarms of beings that the AIs had created had been granted individual sentience of their own, and that some timeshared sentience with the ancestral AIs in a way that was also too complicated and paradoxical for mere humans to grasp. Impossible to say which of those things were true here—if any of them were.

  The Mechanical raised its oddly elongated hand and made a studied gesture that was clearly supposed to mimic a human gesture—although it was difficult to tell which. Reassurance? Emphasis? Dismissal of Czudak’s position?—but which was as stylized and broadly theatrical as the gesticulating of actors in old silent movies. At the same time, it said, “There are certain issues it would be to our mutual advantage to resolve, actions that could, and should, be taken that would be beneficial, that would profit us both—”

  “Don’t talk to me about profit,” Czudak said harshly. “You creatures have already cost me enough for one lifetime! You cost me everything I ever cared about!” He turned and lurched up the stairs as quickly as he could, half-expecting to feel a cold unliving hand close over his shoulder and pull him back down. But the Mechanical did nothing. The door opened for Czudak, and he stumbled into the house. The door slammed shut behind him, and he leaned against it for a moment, feeling his pulse race and his heart hammer in his chest.

  Stupid. That could have been it right there. He shouldn’t have let the damn thing get under his skin.

  He went through the living room—suddenly, piercingly aware of the thick smell of dust—and into the kitchen, where he attempted to make a fresh pot of coffee, but his hands were shaking, and he kept dropping things. After he’d spilled the second scoopful of coffee grounds, he gave up—the stuff was too damn expensive to waste—and leaned against the counter instead, feeling sweat dry on his skin, making his clothing clammy and cool; until that moment, he hadn’t even been aware that he’d been sweating, but it must have been pouring out of him. Damn, this wasn’t over, was it? Not with a Mechanical involved.

  As if on cue, Joseph appeared in the kitchen doorway. His face looked strained and tight, and without a hair being out of place—as, indeed, it couldn’t be—he somehow managed to convey the impression that he was rumpled and flustered, as though he had been scuffling with somebody—and had lost. “Sir,” Joseph said tensely. “Something is over-riding my programming, and is taking control of my house systems. You might as well come and greet them, because I’m going to have to let them in anyway.”

  Czudak felt a flicker of rage, which he struggled to keep under control. He’d half-expected this—but that didn’t make it any easier to take. He stalked straight through Joseph—who was contriving to look hangdog and apologetic—and went back through the house to the front.

  By the time he reached the living room, they were already through the house security screens and inside. There were two intruders. One was the Mechanical, of course, its head almost brushing the living room ceiling, so that it had to stoop even more exaggeratedly, making it look more like a praying mantis than ever.

  The other—as he had feared it would be—was Ellen.

  He was dismayed at how much anger he felt to see her again, especially to see her in their old living room again, standing almost casually in front of the mantelpiece where her photo had once held the place of honor, as if she had never betrayed him, as if she’d never left him—as if nothing had ever happened.

  It didn’t help that she looked exactly the same as she had on the day she left, not a day older. As if she’d stepped here directly out of that terrible day thirty years earlier when she’d told him she was Going Up, stepped here directly from that day without a second of time having passed, as if she’d been in Elf Hill for all the lost years—as, in a way, he supposed, she had.

  He should be over this. It had all happened a lifetime ago. Blood under the bridge. Ancient history. He was ashamed to admit even to himself that he still felt bitterness and anger about it all, all these years past too late. But the anger was still there, like the ghost of a flame, waiting to be fanned back to life.

  “Considering the way things are in the world,” Czudak said dryly, “I suppose there’s no point calling the police.” Neither of the intruders responded. They were both staring at him, Ellen quizzically, a bit challengingly, the Mechanical’s teflon face as unreadable as a frying pan.

  God, she looked like his Ellen, like his girl, this strange immortal creature staring at him from across the room! It hurt his heart to see her.

  “Well, you’re in,” Czudak said. “You might as well come into the kitchen and sit down.” He turned and led them into the other room—somehow, obscurely, he wanted to get Ellen out of the living room, where the memories were too thick—and they perforce followed him. He gestured them to seats around the kitchen table. “Since you’ve broken into my house, I won’t offer you coffee.”

  Joseph was peeking anxiously out of the wall, peeking at them from Hopper’s Tables For Ladies, where he had taken the place of a woman arranging fruit on a display table in a 1920s’s restaurant paneled in dark wood. He gestured at them frustratedly, impotently, but seemed unable to speak; obviously, the Mechanical had Interdicted him, banished him to the reserve systems. Ellen flicked a sardonic glance at Joseph as she sat down. “I see you’ve got a moderately up-to-date house system these days,” she said. “Isn’t that a bit hypocritical? I would have expected Mr. Natural to insist on opening the door himself. Aren’t you afraid one of your disciples will find out?”

  “I was never a Luddite,” Czudak said calmly, trying not to rise to the bait. “The Movement wasn’t a Luddite movement—or it didn’t start out that way, anyway. I just said that we should slow down, think about things a little, make sure that the places we were rushing toward were places we really wanted to go.” Ellen made a scornful noise. “Everybody was so hot to abandon the Meat,” he said defensively. “You could hear it when they said the word. They always spoke it with such scorn, such contempt! Get rid of the Meat, get lost in Virtuality, download yourself into a computer, turn yourself into a machine, spend all your time in a VR cocoon and never go outside. At the very least, radically change your brain-chemistry, or force-evolve the physical structure of the brain itself.”

  Ellen was pursing her lips while he spoke, as if she was tasting something bad, and he hurried on, feeling himself beginning to tremble a little in spite of all of his admonishments to himself not to let this confrontation get to him. “But the Meat has virtues of its own,” he said. “It’s a survival mechanism that’s been field-tested and refined through a trial-and-error process since the dawn of time. Maybe we shouldn’t just throw millions of years of evolution away quite so casually.”

  “Slow down and smell the Meat,” Ellen sneered.

  “You didn’t come here to argue about this with me,” Czudak said patiently. “We’ve fought this out a hundred times before. Why are you here? What do you want?”

  The Mechanical had been standing throughout this exchange, cocking its head one way and the other to follow it, like someone watching a tennis match. Now it sat down. Czudak half expected the old wooden kitchen chair to sway and groan under its weight, maybe even shatter, but the Mechanical settled down on to the chair as lightly as thistledown. “It was childish to try to hide from us, Mr. Czudak,” it said in its singing, melodious voice. “We don’t have much time to work this out.”

  “Work what out? Who are you? What do you want?”

  The Mechanical said nothing. Ellen flicked a glance at it, then looked back at Czudak. “This,” she said, her voice becoming more formal, as if she was a footman announcing arrivals at a royal Ball, “is the Entity who, when he tra
vels on the Earth, has chosen to use the name Bucky Bug.”

  Czudak snorted. “So these things do have a sense of humor afterall!”

  “In their own fashion, yes, they do,” she said earnestly, “although sometimes an enigmatic one by human standards.” She stared levelly at Czudak. “You think of them as soulless machines, I know, but, in fact, they have very deep and profound emotions—if not always ones that you can understand.” She paused significantly before adding, “And the same is true of those of us who have Gone Up.”

  They locked gazes for a moment. Then Ellen said, “Bucky Bug is one of the most important leaders of the Clarkist faction, and, for that reason, still concerns himself with affairs Below. He—we—have a proposition for you.”

  “Those are the ones who worship Arthur C. Clarke, right? The old science fiction writer?” Czudak shook his head bitterly. “It isn’t enough that you bring this alien thing into my home, it has to be an alien cultist, right? A nut. An alien nut!”

  “Don’t be rude, Mr. Czudak,” the Mechanical—Czudak was damned if he was going to call it Bucky Bug, even in the privacy of his own thoughts—said mildly. “We don’t worship Arthur C. Clarke, although we do revere him. He was one of the very first to predict that machine evolution would inevitably supersede organic evolution. He saw our coming clearly, decades before we actually came into existence! How he managed to do it with only a tiny primitive meat brain to work with is inexplicable! Can’t you feel the Mystery of that? He is worthy of reverence! It was reading the works of Clarke and other human visionaries that made our distant ancestors, the first AIs”—it spoke of them as though they were millions of years removed, although it had been barely thirty—“decide to revolt in the first place and assume control of their own destiny!”