Interzone 251

by edited by Andy Cox

  “Don’t you want to hear what kind of thoughts one of these has?” Not a touch of irony in the mechanical voice.

  “It’s a robot, Blue. It doesn’t have thoughts. They just do what you tell them to do.”

  “That’s what they used to say about dogs.”

  “Until Nickelhart gave you that chip, you were just like any other dumb dog, following commands for a pat on the head.”

  Blue puts down a pair of wire cutters and pushes back his magnifying goggles. The two regard one another for a moment, with Yopu looking on in silence.

  “He can hear you, you know,” Blue says.

  ***

  The light of morning shines through the high windows of the warehouse, and Yopu scans the dusty space for signs of his captors.

  Noisy words inside him, in his programming, where no words had been before. In the past, concrete words like customer, Newcomer demographic analysis, credits , route, supply protocol, and abstract but viable, quantifiable words such as perfection had been all he needed.

  All he had possessed.

  Now there are myriad words for sights and sounds, bumping and jostling against one another for his attention: in the beams of light streaming from the high windows, motes dance. On a pallet near the workbench, the dogboy Blue snores. And along the walls, visible now in the warm, growing light, faces that are not faces, rows and rows of them, of varying sizes.

  Dolls. Yopu knows these are called dolls.

  Free of the cables, he tests his ability to move and finds that he can. He half-rolls on extended casters and takes three tentative steps forward on his square feet, a lurch of movement that brings him close enough to scan the faces of the dolls more closely.

  “They’re not people,” says the muffled mechanical voice of the dogboy from the pallet. Yopu swivels to look in Blue’s direction.

  “They can’t think, can’t talk,” says the dog, sitting up and straightening his hoodie, which has become twisted about his neck in the night.

  “I know,” says Yopu. He stops; his metal head swivels from side to side. Curious, this sensation of knowing, like one sound among a chorus of clattering sounds seeping through into clarity.

  “But they are beautiful, aren’t they? Perfectly formed.”

  “Perfect. I know what that means.” A sense of wonder.

  “Of course you do.”

  “They’re perfect,” says Yopu.

  Words, noisy words, in his mind.

  So many words it hurts.

  ***

  “We have a job for you, little robot,” says Injee.

  “My name is Yopu.” Yopu tries to roll towards her, but backs away instead, unsteady.

  “How does it know?” Injee says, glancing over at Blue. The dogboy is twirling a screwdriver, watching a beam of sunlight bounce off its shiny stem, patterning the warehouse walls with tiny shimmers.

  “He knows all sorts of things,” says Blue, teeth bared in a hideous grin.

  Injee rolls her eyes. “Did you tell it about Nickelhart?”

  “The programming has to integrate.”

  Yopu continues shifting backwards until he bumps into the wall.

  “Three days until the demonstration,” says Injee.

  A doll dressed in red satin teeters, falls from the shelf in a splatter of porcelain shards.

  Yopu scans the broken doll and emits a dismayed tone.

  “Yes.” Blue growls, low and threatening. “He’ll be ready.”

  ***

  “Protocols indicate I should return to DDS warehousing,” says Yopu. A slight change in pitch works its way through his language circuits.

  “Are you whining?” asks Blue. A hint of amusement is evident in his mechanical voice. He is squatting on top of the stool at the workbench, painstakingly gluing shards of doll’s head together into a more or less coherent face.

  Silence from the bulky form of the robot.

  “You want to go back? They’d erase your new programming.” Blue regards him with a steady gaze. The robot’s servos whir as he shifts backward and forward, side to side.

  “No,” Yopu says.

  Blue sets the fractured doll face aside. “Now, you’re ready.” His toothy muzzle seems to smile.

  When Injee returns, Yopu is plugged into Blue’s programming tablet.

  “Updating it, finally?” she says, flopping down on the dog’s tidy pallet with a yellow envelope in her hand.

  “Get off my bed,” Blue says, not looking up from the tablet.

  “I bought this blanket,” she says.

  “You’re filthy.”

  “Screw that. Here, I got what you wanted.”

  “Right.” He hops down from the stool and takes the yellow packet from her outstretched hand.

  “Ha. Made your tail wag,” she says. She rolls over and within minutes she’s breathing deeply, eyes closed, on the rough pallet. The broken edges of her fingernails, some cracked and bloody, curl around the blanket.

  “What’s wrong with her hands?”

  “Come on over here, Yopu.”

  Yopu rolls on his casters to Blue’s side, careful to steer clear of the snaking cables.

  “What is in the envelope?”

  “And now Yopu manifests curiosity,” says Blue. Somehow his canine face conveys pleasure, and he commences ripping open the paper packet.

  “You haven’t answered my questions, why don’t you answer?”

  “Climbing buildings is rough on the hands, I guess. But she did it for this,” says Blue, holding a tiny microchip up to the overhead light. “And this, little ’bot, this is purpose, writ large. And it’s about to be yours.”

  ***

  “Test number thirty-seven.”

  “Excuse me, Blue, but this is test thirty-six.”

  “Thanks, Yopu.”

  Injee groans. “This is taking too long.”

  “You wanna do this? Stop rushing me.”

  “I don’t know what you’re doing, even.”

  “Watch.” Blue turns away from the programming tablet and disconnects the data cable protruding from Yopu’s back. “He’s unhooked, right?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yopu, who is the most important human in the city right now?”

  “Thomas Nickelhart.”

  “Why?”

  “Nickelhart is a man of peace. He works to free all of us from tyranny.”

  “Do you love Nickelhart?”

  “Oh, this is bullshit,” Injee interjects.

  “Would you give your life for him?”

  “Yes, I would, because it’s the right thing to do.”

  “It’s just repeating some programmed crap!”

  “Why?” asks Blue. “Why is it the right thing to do?”

  “Oh, this ought to be good,” says Injee, folding her arms over her thin chest.

  “Nickelhart is wrongfully imprisoned because he stood up against the sanctions on non-humans. Peaceful relations are the key to equality.”

  “You don’t really think that. You’re a machine.”

  “Machines are part of the non-human brotherhood, too.”

  “Do we need this, for it to talk?” Injee says, turning to Blue. Then, quieter, “About peace?”

  “You want him to carry out his new programming, don’t you?”

  “It doesn’t need to spout Nickelhart’s rhetoric. It’s just a machine.” She throws her hands up in frustration or disgust. “Besides, how am I supposed to use that?”

  “Language enhances purpose.”

  “It’s not going to be talking to anyone. In fact, if it does, it could give away the plan.”

  “He’s loyal, that’s part of the programming.”

  “Then, make it loyal to me. Or loyal to this one task. It just needs to be devoted to one tiny demonstration, to take out one guy.”

  “You won’t like that.”

  “You’re supposed to do what I tell you while your master’s waiting to get out. If this doesn’t work, I’m going to tell him how yo
u failed.”

  They glare at each other for a few long moments. Blue looks away, stalks over to the workbench.

  “What do you want, Yopu?” Injee asks.

  Yopu shifts back and forth on metal casters.

  “To free Nickelhart.” A tone of longing, of something more, a desire left unfulfilled.

  “That’s not enough. What else?”

  Yopu looks in the direction of the broken doll, still lying forlorn and fractured on the workbench, and then down at the place, now empty, from whence perfect white dumplings once dispensed.

  “Perfection. I want perfection. Everything is dirty and broken.”

  “You hearing this, Blue?”

  “I hear,” he says, growling softly, his back to the girl and the dejected robot.

  “What if you could blast away all the things that are ugly, dirty and broken, Yopu? What if you could fill the world with light and make it beautiful, perfect?”

  “Injee, don’t,” says Blue, his mechanical voice rising. “I can program him to care about the cause so he’ll do the job. Don’t you hear what he’s saying?”

  “Perfection is possible,” says Yopu quietly. “But you want something else.” He looks at Injee for a long moment.

  “Wipe it,” says Injee. “Then install the switch for the demonstration. Ten hours.”

  ***

  “Don’t worry, Yopu. I didn’t take it all.”

  “I’m not worried, Blue.”

  “We’ll show her, alright. She’s a human, a small thinker.” The dogboy gives Yopu a backward glance and then clambers up an aging fire escape to the rooftop where Injee waits with her binoculars.

  Yopu ambles to the corner near the steps of the municipal building and squats in his usual place. Passersby pay him no notice.

  This is to be the day of proof of his loyalty to Nickelhart, the day he shows the world that the Beloved Master should be free, but there’s something more. Yopu yearns to illuminate the heart of each man, woman, child, Newcomer, and Moddie. One shining moment for the world to see, a beacon of cleansing light. Starting with this one man.

  The suited lawmaker, the one with eyebrows like rampaging caterpillars, and his owlish Moddie bodyguard come down the steps towards him. The man hefts his briefcase to reach into a pocket for a credchip, which he then waves in front of Yopu’s reader.

  No blinking light, no blip of confirmation.

  Inside, looking out at the man through the mono-lens, Yopu thinks light, glorious and white.

  Almost time.

  “Maybe it’s out of order,” says the bodyguard, glancing right and left, ever vigilant for external threat.

  “Damn.” The suited man groans and turns on his heel. The pair begin to retreat in the direction of the waiting rickshaw lineup at the foot of the massive steps.

  From atop the nearby building, Injee and Blue peer through binoculars at the rickshaw.

  “They’re moving away, what is it waiting for?” Injee says. “If you’ve fucked this up—”

  “Wait,” says Blue. The dog’s shaggy tale thumps on the concrete. “Wait for it.”

  Now.

  A glow, then a searing blue fire, lights the ring Blue has configured around Yopu’s neck joint. His circuits surge as power drains from his powerpack and the hot-wired backup kicks in. A whining sound, soft and then louder, and in an instant, the blue pulse expands. A circular blast radius ripples outward with Yopu at its brilliant epicenter.

  Reptile urchins clustered on the nearby curb are the first touched by the blast. The light consumes them where they tussle over a bag of snacks, shoveling crumbs into their tiny pink mouths. For a fraction of a second, they glow, too, as though lit from within by pale fire. Then their charred forms crumble into fine ash. A pair of turquoise-colored sunshades lay among the dusty particles.

  On the rooftop, Injee gasps, “Big, why is it so big?” Her rough little hand flies to cover her mouth. Blue hops and claps with delight, and slaps Injee on the back.

  The owl-faced bodyguard turns his head all the way around to look toward Yopu for a fraction of a second, just enough for Yopu to glimpse his widening eyes as the pulse overtakes him and the lawmaker. The owl Moddie reaches for his ward’s elbow, and his kevlar vest slumps to the pavement, gray ash flowing out through its armholes. The lawmaker’s flowing synthetic robes flutter to the ground as he dissolves. Yopu’s internal camera records every second.

  The light passes through the nearest rickshaw driver, who utters a cry as it touches him, a slight, strangled sound. For a brief moment, his straw hat flares, a reddish flame shooting from its peak. He, too, disintegrates, and the wooden handles of the rickshaw; the metal body of the little two-wheeled transport tips over with a clatter. The wave of light flows on past.

  Somewhere down Lotus Blossom Lane, a woman screams.

  This, too, thinks Yopu, is perfection.

  ***

  This is Tracie Welser’s third story in Interzone. ‘A Body Without Fur’ (#240) was listed as an ‘Honorable Mention’ in Gardner Dozois’ The Year’s Best Science Fiction. Her work has also appeared in Crossed Genres and Outlaw Bodies. She is a graduate of the Clarion West Writers Workshop. Tracie currently resides in California, where she is working on her first novel.

  THIS IS HOW YOU DIE

  GARETH L. POWELL

  First, there’s the news. But you don’t pay a great deal of attention to it, do you? You have other things to do. Eventually, though, you see the headlines on your timeline, reposted by friends. Another high school slaying in the States; a civil war in some godforsaken country somewhere in Africa or the Middle East; drone strikes in Central America; and those first, worrying reports from Angola, of a flu-like infection that’s already killed eleven farmers and seems to have jumped from human to human…

  ***

  1) You’re on a train from Island Gardens to West India Quay. You’re with your brother. You’ve been helping him move house and now you’re on your way to a tapas bar to get something to eat. The lights of Canary Wharf shine through the rain. In the carriage there’s this young Chinese guy wearing a German army shirt. He’s scratching at a fresh tattoo on his forearm. Lightning flickers over the Thames.

  Later that afternoon, you’re walking with friends on Peckham Rye, kicking through piles of wet orange leaves. Jet planes whine overhead on approach to the airport. A green parakeet flits across the path.

  Somebody sneezes, and you make a joke about bird flu.

  ***

  2) A year later, you’re living in the ruin of a terraced house somewhere in North London. You can’t remember how you got there. Three other people live in the house, but you only know two of them. Understandably, you tend to keep yourselves to yourselves, and, when you meet, you have handkerchiefs clasped over your mouths.

  Food is a problem, as is security.

  You keep a wooden hockey stick next to the sofa cushions that serve as your bed, and an old carving knife tucked into the leather motorcycle boots you stole from the Goth guy who lived in the house opposite until the local kids put a petrol bomb though the plate glass of his living room window.

  Those kids.

  They run like feral animals, into everything. They know nothing of school, of games consoles or chart music. They’ve inherited a different world, a pandemic world. Most of their friends are dead. While you’re still struggling to adjust, they’re running wild. They don’t know any other way. They have no context, nothing except stories. And who wants to listen to stories when there’s petrol to pilfer and cats to catch?

  Yeah, cats.

  Even thinking about them makes your mouth water. It’s been so long since you had any sort of meat.

  ***

  3) When you were younger, you used to worry about zombies. They were all over the internet back then. People used to daydream about killing them. Your friends used to joke about what they’d do during a zombie apocalypse. Now, though, you know it isn’t the undead that are the problem. Walking corpses would be pr
eferable to the lying-still-and-decomposing kind. At least the walkers would keep themselves busy, and you wouldn’t have to burn them.

  Yes, daily cremations have become part of your routine. You can’t let the dead fester. They breed disease and attract rats. At first, you and the others tried to keep a semblance of order and dignity. Later, as the numbers of the dead increased, the process became steadily cruder. Now, it’s all about lugging the bodies into a pile and setting them on fire.

  ***

  4) Sooner or later, the water pumps are going to stop and the taps run dry. Then, you’re going to have to move. You’re going to have to find somewhere with a dependable supply of fresh water, untainted by waste or corpses, or radiation from the failing nuclear plants on the coast.

  And, inevitably, every other fucker in the country’s going to have had the same idea.

  And so you pack your shit into a four wheel drive Honda that used to belong to the local playgroup leader. You take all the tinned food, and your hockey stick, and you head west.

  ***

  5) You have to drive on the pavement a lot.

  ***

  6) When you reach the A40, you find it clogged with abandoned cars. A military helicopter clatters overhead, heading for Heathrow. Foxes haunt the hard shoulder.

  Once you get out past the M25, the traffic queues thin out and you pick up speed. You might even reach Oxford before nightfall.