The Fountain of Age

by Nancy Kress

  “Big. You want big.” Frantically I scanned the cages, before Blue could choose another one like Vicious. “This one, then.”

  “Why the hell not?” Blue said.

  It was young. Not a puppy but still frisky, a mongrel of some sort with short hair of dirty white speckled with dirty brown. The dog looked liked something I could handle: big but not too big, not too aggressive, not too old, not too male. “Hey, Not-Too,” I said, without enthusiasm, as Blue dissolved her cage. The mutt dashed over to me and tried to lick my boot.

  A natural-born slave.

  I had found a piece of rotten, moldy cheese in the garbage, so Blue could now make cheese, which Not-Too went crazy for. Not-Too and I stuck with the same routine I used with Mangy, and it worked pretty well. Or the cheese did. Within a few “days” the dog could sit, stay, and follow on command.

  Then Blue threw me a curve. “What to do now? The presentation.”

  “We had the presentation,” I said. “I don’t need to see it again.”

  “What to do now? The presentation.”

  “Fine,” I said, because it was clear I had no choice. “Let’s have the presentation. Roll ’em.”

  I was sitting on my elevated platform, combing my hair. A lot of it had fallen out during the malnourished years in the camp, but now it was growing again. Not-Too had given up trying to jump up there with me and gone to sleep on her pillow below. Blue shot the beam out of his sphere and the holo played in front of me.

  Only not the whole thing. This time he played only the brief scene where the big, patchy dog pulled the toddler back from falling into the cesspool. Blue played it once, twice, three times. Cold slid along my spine.

  “You want Not-Too . . . you want this dog here to be trained to save children.”

  “This dog here does not behave correctly.”

  “Blue . . . How can I train a dog to save a child?”

  “This dog here does not behave correctly.”

  “Maybe you haven’t noticed, but we haven’t got any fucking children for the dog to practice on!”

  Long pause. “Do you want a child?”

  “No!” Christ, he would kidnap one or buy one from the camp and I would be responsible for a kid along with nineteen semi-feral dogs. No.

  “This dog here does not behave correctly. What to do now? The presentation.”

  “No, not the presentation. I saw it, I saw it. Blue . . . the other two humans who did not make the dogs behave correctly . . .”

  “Killed.”

  “Yes. So you said. But they did get one dog to behave correctly, didn’t they? Or maybe more than one. And then you just kept raising the bar higher. Water rescues, guiding the blind, finding lost people. Higher and higher.”

  But to all this, of course, Blue made no answer.

  I wracked my brains to remember what I had ever heard, read, or seen about dog training. Not much. However, there’s a problem with opening the door to memory: you can’t control what strolls through. For the first time in years, my sleep was shattered by dreams.

  I walked through a tiny garden, picking zinnias. From an open window came music, full and strong, an orchestra on CD. A cat paced beside me, purring. And there was someone else in the window, someone who called my name and I turned and—

  I screamed. Clawed my way upright. The dogs started barking and howling. Blue floated from his corner, saying something. And Not-Too made a mighty leap, landed on my platform, and began licking my face.

  “Stop it! Don’t do that! I won’t remember!” I shoved her so hard she fell off the platform onto the floor and began yelping. I put my head in my hands.

  Blue said, “Are you not operative?”

  “Leave me the fuck alone!”

  Not-Too still yelped, shrill cries of pain. When I stopped shaking, I crawled off the platform and picked her up. Nothing seemed to be broken—although how would I know? Gradually she quieted. I gave her some cheese and put her back on her pillow. She wanted to stay with me but I wouldn’t let her.

  I would not remember. I would not. Law #5: Feel nothing.

  We made a cesspool, or at least a pool. Blue depressed part of the floor to a depth of three feet and filled it with water. Not-Too considered this a swimming pool and loved to be in it, which was not what Blue wanted (“This water does not behave correctly”). I tried having the robot dump various substances into it until I found one that she disliked and I could tolerate: light-grade motor oil. A few small cans of oil like those in the dump created a polluted pool, not unlike Charleston Harbor. After every practice session I needed a bath.

  But not Not-Too, because she wouldn’t go into the “cesspool.” I curled myself as small as possible, crouched at the side of the pool, and thrashed. After a few days, the dog would pull me back by my shirt. I moved into the pool. As long as she could reach me without getting any liquid on her, Not-Too happily played that game. As soon as I moved far enough out that I might actually need saving, she sat on her skinny haunches and looked away.

  “This dog does not behave correctly.”

  I increased the cheese. I withheld the cheese. I pleaded and ordered and shunned and petted and yelled. Nothing worked. Meanwhile, the dream continued. The same dream, each time not greater in length but increasing in intensity. I walked through a tiny garden, picking zinnias. From an open window came music, full and strong, an orchestra on CD. A cat paced beside me, purring. And there was someone else in the window, someone who called my name and I turned and—

  And woke screaming.

  A cat. I had had a cat, before the War. Before everything. I had always had cats, my whole life. Independent cats, aloof and self-sufficient, admirably disdainful. Cats—

  The dog below me whimpered, trying to get onto my platform to offer comfort I did not want.

  I would not remember.

  “This dog does not behave correctly,” day after day.

  I had Blue remove the oil from the pool. But by now Not-Too had been conditioned. She wouldn’t go into even the clear water that she’d reveled in before.

  “This dog does not behave correctly.”

  Then one day Blue stopped his annoying mantra, which scared me even more. Would I have any warning that I’d failed, or would I just die?

  The only thing I could think of was to kill Blue first.

  Blue was a computer. You disabled computers by turning them off, or cutting the power supply, or melting them in a fire, or dumping acid on them, or crushing them. But a careful search of the whole room revealed no switches or wires or anything that looked like a wireless control. A fire in this closed room, assuming I could start one, would kill me, too. Every kind of liquid or solid slid off Blue. And what would I crush him with, if that was even possible? A piece of cheese?

  Blue was also—sort of—an intelligence. You could kill those by trapping them somewhere. My prison-or-sanctuary (depending on my mood) had no real “somewheres.” And Blue would just dissolve any structure he found himself in.

  What to do now?

  I lay awake, thinking, all night, which at least kept me from dreaming, I came up with two ideas, both bad. Plan A depended on discussion, never Blue’s strong suit.

  “Blue, this dog does not behave correctly.”

  “No.”

  “This dog is not operative. I must make another dog behave correctly. Not this dog.”

  Blue floated close to Not-Too. She tried to bat at him. He circled her slowly, then returned to his position three feet above the ground. “This dog is operative.”

  “No. This dog looks operative. But this dog is not operative inside its head. I cannot make this dog behave correctly. I need a different dog.”

  A very long pause. “This dog is not operative inside its head.”

  “Yes.”

  “You can make another dog behave correctly. Like the presentation.”

  “Yes.” It would at least buy me time. Blue must have seen “not operative” dogs and humans in the dump; God knows there
were enough of them out there. Madmen, rabid animals, druggies raving just before they died, or were shot. And next time I would add something besides oil to the pool; there must be something that Blue would consider noxious enough to simulate a cesspool but that a dog would enter. If I had to, I’d use my own shit.

  “This dog is not operative inside its head,” Blue repeated, getting used to the idea. “You will make a different dog behave correctly.”

  “Yes!”

  “Why the hell not?” And then, “I kill this dog.”

  “No!” The word was torn from me before I knew I was going to say anything. My hand, of its own volition, clutched at Not-Too. She jumped but didn’t bite. Instead, maybe sensing my fear, she cowered behind me, and I started to yell.

  “You can’t just kill everything that doesn’t behave like you want! People, dogs . . . you can’t just kill everything! You can’t just . . . I had a cat . . . I never wanted a dog but this dog . . . she’s behaving correctly for her! For a fucking traumatized dog and you can’t just—I had a dog I mean a cat I had. . . . I had. . . .”

  —from an open window came music, full and strong, an orchestra on CD. A cat paced beside me, purring. And there was someone else in the window, someone who called my name and I turned and—

  “I had a child!”

  Oh, God no no no . . . It all came out then, the memories and the grief and the pain I had pushed away for three solid years in order to survive . . . Feel nothing . . . Zack Zack Zack shot down by soldiers like a dog Look, Mommy, here I am Mommy look . . .

  I curled in a ball on the floor and screamed and wanted to die. Grief had been postponed so long that it was a tsunami. I sobbed and screamed; I don’t know for how long. I think I wasn’t quite sane. No human should ever have to experience that much pain. But of course they do.

  However, it can’t last too long, that height of pain, and when the flood passed and my head was bruised from banging it on the hard floor, I was still alive, still inside the Dome, still surrounded by barking dogs. Zack was still dead. Blue floated nearby, unchanged, a casually murderous robot who would not supply flesh to dogs as food but who would kill anything he was programmed to destroy. And he had no reason not to murder me.

  Not-Too sat on her haunches, regarding me from sad brown eyes, and I did the one thing I told myself I never would do again. I reached for her warmth. I put my arms around her and hung on. She let me.

  Maybe that was the decision point. I don’t know.

  When I could manage it, I staggered to my feet. Taking hold of the rope that was Not-Too’s leash, I wrapped it firmly around my hand. “Blue,” I said, forcing the words past the grief clogging my throat, “make garbage.”

  He did. That was the basis of Plan B; that Blue made most things I asked of him. Not release, or mercy, but at least rooms and platforms and pools and garbage. I walked toward the garbage spilling from the usual place in the wall.

  “More garbage! Bigger garbage! I need garbage to make this dog behave correctly!”

  The reeking flow increased. Tires, appliances, diapers, rags, cans, furniture. The dogs’ howling rose to an insane, deafening pitch. Not-Too pressed close to me.

  “Bigger garbage!”

  The chassis of a motorcycle, twisted beyond repair in some unimaginable accident, crashed into the room. The place on the wall from which the garbage spewed was misty gray, the same fog that the Dome had become when I had been taken inside it. Half a sofa clattered through. I grabbed Not-Too, dodged behind the sofa, and hurled both of us through the onrushing garbage and into the wall.

  A broken keyboard struck me in the head, and the gray went black.

  Chill. Cold with a spot of heat, which turned out to be Not-Too lying on top of me. I pushed her off and tried to sit up. Pain lanced through my head and when I put a hand to my forehead, it came away covered with blood. The same blood streamed into my eyes, making it hard to see. I wiped the blood away with the front of my shirt, pressed my hand hard on my forehead, and looked around.

  Not that there was much to see. The dog and I sat at the end of what appeared to be a corridor. Above me loomed a large machine of some type, with a chute pointed at the now-solid wall. The machine was silent. Not-Too quivered and pressed her furry side into mine, but she, too, stayed silent. I couldn’t hear the nineteen dogs on the other side of the wall, couldn’t see Blue, couldn’t smell anything except Not-Too, who had made a small yellow puddle on the floor.

  There was no room to stand upright under the machine, so I moved away from it. Strips ripped from the bottom of my shirt made a bandage that at least kept blood out of my eyes. Slowly Not-Too and I walked along the corridor.

  No doors. No openings or alcoves or machinery. Nothing until we reached the end, which was the same uniform material as everything else. Gray, glossy, hard. Dead.

  Blue did not appear. Nothing appeared, or disappeared, or lived. We walked back and studied the overhead bulk of the machine. It had no dials or keys or features of any kind.

  I sat on the floor, largely because I couldn’t think what else to do, and Not-Too climbed into my lap. She was too big for this and I pushed her away. She pressed against me, trembling.

  “Hey,” I said, but not to her. Zack in the window Look, Mommy, here I am Mommy look. . . . But if I started down that mental road, I would be lost. Anger was better than memory. Anything was better than memory. “Hey!” I screamed. “Hey, you bastard Blue, what to do now? What to do now, you Dome shits, whoever you are?”

  Nothing except, very faint, an echo of my own useless words.

  I lurched to my feet, reaching for the anger, cloaking myself in it. Not-Too sprang to her feet and backed away from me.

  “What to do now? What bloody fucking hell to do now?”

  Still nothing, but Not-Too started back down the empty corridor. I was glad to transfer my anger to something visible, real, living. “There’s nothing there, Not-Too. Nothing, you stupid dog!”

  She stopped halfway down the corridor and began to scratch at the wall.

  I stumbled along behind her, one hand clamped to my head. What the hell was she doing? This piece of wall was identical to every other piece of wall. Kneeling slowly—it hurt my head to move fast—I studied Not-Too. Her scratching increased in frenzy and her nose twitched, as if she smelled something. The wall, of course, didn’t respond; nothing in this place responded to anything. Except—

  Blue had learned words from me, had followed my commands. Or had he just transferred my command to the Dome’s unimaginable machinery, instructing it to do anything I said that fell within permissible limits? Feeling like an idiot, I said to the wall, “Make garbage.” Maybe if it complied and the garbage contained food . . .

  The wall made no garbage. Instead it dissolved into the familiar gray fog, and Not-Too immediately jumped through, barking frantically.

  Every time I had gone through a Dome wall, my situation had gotten worse. But what other choices were there? Wait for Blue to find and kill me, starve to death, curl up and die in the heart of a mechanical alien mini-world I didn’t understand. Not-Too’s barking increased in pitch and volume. She was terrified or excited or thrilled . . . How would I know? I pushed through the gray fog.

  Another gray metal room, smaller than Blue had made my prison but with the same kind of cages against the far wall. Not-Too saw me and raced from the cages to me. Blue floated toward me . . . No, not Blue. This metal sphere was dull green, the color of shady moss. It said, “No human comes into this area.”

  “Guess again,” I said and grabbed the trailing end of Not-Too’s rope. She’d jumped up on me once and then had turned to dash back to the cages.

  “No human comes into this area,” Green repeated. I waited to see what the robot would do about it. Nothing.

  Not-Too tugged on her rope, yowling. From across the room came answering barks, weirdly off. Too uneven in pitch, with a strange undertone. Blood, having saturated my makeshift bandage, once again streamed into my eyes.
I swiped at it with one hand, turned to keep my gaze on Green, and let Not-Too pull me across the floor. Only when she stopped did I turn to look at the mesh-topped cages. Vertigo swooped over me.

  Mangy was the source of the weird barks, a Mangy altered not beyond recognition but certainly beyond anything I could have imagined. Her mange was gone, along with all her fur. The skin beneath was now gray, the same gunmetal gray as everything else in the Dome. Her ears, the floppy poodle ears, were so long they trailed on the floor of her cage, and so was her tail. Holding on to the tail was a gray grub.

  Not a grub. Not anything Earthly. Smooth and pulpy, it was about the size of a human head and vaguely oval. I saw no openings on the thing but Mangy’s elongated tail disappeared into the doughy mass, so there must have been at least one orifice. As Mangy jumped at the bars, trying to get at Not-Too, the grub was whipped back and forth across the cage floor. It left a slimy trail. The dog seemed oblivious.

  “This dog is ready,” Blue had said.

  Behind me Green said, “No human comes into this area.”

  “Up yours.”

  “The human does not behave correctly.”

  That got my attention. I whirled around to face Green, expecting to be vaporized like the dead puppy, the dead Vicious. I thought I was already dead—and then I welcomed the thought. Look, Mommy, here I am Mommy look . . . The laws of survival that had protected me for so long couldn’t protect me against memory, not anymore. I was ready to die.

  Instead Mangy’s cage dissolved, she bounded out, and she launched herself at me.

  Poodles are not natural killers, and this one was small. However, Mangy was doing her level best to destroy me. Her teeth closed on my arm. I screamed and shook her off, but the next moment she was biting my leg above my boot, darting hysterically toward and away from me, biting my legs at each lunge. The grub, or whatever it was, lashed around at the end of her new tail. As I flailed at the dog with both hands, my bandage fell off. Fresh blood from my head wound blinded me. I stumbled and fell and she was at my face.