On Thursday I dropped into a commbooth and called the consultant surgeon, stating my ID, only to find I was automatically transferred to a conference network. There were five images in the booth with me. No one introduced themselves. Under the main image was a backlit sign stating that the female behind the desk was the consultant surgeon. The others all had name or number signs, with their job titles written beneath. Two of them were Citizen robots, the other two were a man and a woman.
The consultant surgeon was used to giving orders, you could see that. The two CRs and the other woman were not much more than basic images to me and remained so throughout the interview, but not the human whose sign read: Arthur Spateman - Hospital Management.
‘Now, what’s this all about?’ asked the surgeon, glaring at me.
‘It’s about me wanting a human arm,’ I said.
‘And where would we find one of those for you?’ asked a Citizen robot.
This group was obviously primed to send me on my way. I could sense just by looking at their images that they were going to be intransigent. The humans amongst them would hide behind arrogant statements, behind superior smiles. They would attempt to use their authority, coolly, to dismiss my request. I was feeling angry. A normal consultation would involve only the surgeon and the patient, yet they had chosen to face me en masse in order to try to intimidate me. I decided that it would serve me to attack first. I wanted the surgeon to know she wasn’t dealing with a servile CR, but one who was prepared to assert itself.
I shrugged. ‘There are plenty of spare limbs around in hospitals which specialize in cosmetic surgery. Then again, I don’t mind having one from a corpse, so long as it’s freshly dead.’ I chose to attack Arthur, since he looked the most vulnerable. ‘I’d even have one of Mr Spateman’s arms, if it was cleaned up properly first.’
The bulky figure of Arthur Spateman straightened. The supercilious smile left his face and was replaced by a stiff expression.
He spluttered, ‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Now, Arthur—’ began the surgeon.
But Spateman, smouldering, ignored her. ‘No, come on, what the hell did you mean by that remark?’
‘Simple enough statement,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t want any part of your body attached to mine unless it had first been dipped in disinfectant. You look like a man with some - shall we say – habits?’
The consultant surgeon raised her eyes to the ceiling.
Spateman waved a stylus at me, jabbing at the air as he spoke.
‘You... listen, we know what you’re up to, you tin fucking freak. I’ve got your number, XL whatever. You want a human arm first, then another arm, then a leg, and finally all over, till you’re human. You think we don’t know this? You want to become human. Then you think you’ll get the fucking vote! Well, you’ve got another think coming. Goddamn - that’s somebody’s arm you want. Somebody. Not a fucking jumble of fucking wires, but somebody real. You understand me? Over my fucking dead body.’
I stared at the rest of the committee each in turn.
‘Let me make one thing quite clear,’ I said. ‘ I do not want this man’s arm under any circumstances, freshly dead or not.’
I thought Spateman was going to have apoplexy. His image stood up and pushed the chair back. I heard it scraping across the floor.
‘You fucking heap of—’
‘Sit down, Arthur,’ said the surgeon. ‘You’re making a fool of yourself.’
Spateman seemed to gather himself together. He blinked at the consultant and then, red-faced, sat in his chair again.
‘Now,’ said the surgeon calmly. ‘XL396—’
‘397,’ I corrected her. ‘Don’t worry, I have the same problem with the peculiar names you people give each other.’ I stared at Arthur Spateman’s sign as I spoke.
Spateman’s eyes widened a little but he kept his mouth shut this time.
‘XL397,’ continued the surgeon. ‘Look, I understand you’re playing some kind of game with us here, and I can appreciate that it might seem amusing to you - you do have a sense of humour?’
‘You know I do. I experience a similar array of emotions as you.’
‘Yes, well, I’m a surgeon, not a robot technician. I know very little about robots. What’s bothering us all is this. You’re not the only CR to demand a human limb. There have been others, in other cities. There seems to be some kind of conspiracy going on and we’re all very worried about it. Now, you can understand our concern, can’t you?’
I was surprised about the others, but then the laws of coincidence are full of such strange confluences. Two or three scientists independently discover the same thing within weeks of each other, though others have been seeking the same discovery for centuries. It happens. Obviously several CRs had come to the same conclusion as me, once they had begun to think about their new status in society.
‘I can appreciate it, but not empathize.’
‘But’, said the woman sitting next to Spateman, ‘it’s a matter of control you see. We seem to be losing control of things, since that new law was passed. It’s all very worrying.’
‘You’re losing control, we’re gaining some,’ I said. ‘I want to be able to do the things you do. I want to feel things, know what it’s like to touch things. Us CRs have three senses - sight, hearing and smell. We can’t touch or taste. I want, eventually, to do both of those.’
I didn’t tell them what I actually wanted to feel was the sensation of pain. The idea of pain had begun to fascinate me, obsess me, recently. It was something, just a word at the moment, but it seemed to occupy humans continually. Pain. What was it? What did it do to you? How was it formed? How did it transmit itself to you? I wanted to possess it. I had to know pain in order to understand humans, to learn to trust them fully. It was part of their history, part of their being. Progress, for Citizen robots, was not possible without this knowledge of pain.
I caught Spateman watching me with some interest, and inevitably with a bigot like him an irrational statement followed.
‘I fucking get it,’ he said in a satisfied tone. ‘Sex. This is all about sex. That freak wants to screw our women. Damn it - he’s after our wives and daughters.’
The consultant cried, ‘Arthur, will you please shut up! You’re not helping matters here.’
‘Perhaps’, said Spateman, gathering his things together and trying to look dignified, ‘it’s time I left, then?’
Spateman’s image faded from the screen.
The consultant surgeon heaved a sigh of relief then turned to me and said, ‘I think I understand what you’re after. I hadn’t thought about that. You’re in for a disappointment with some things though. The taste of freshly made coffee never lives up to its aroma. However, I now have an insight to the reason for your request and I think the interview can proceed.’
There followed a hundred questions from both sides of the table, from all the committee members, and I think I acquitted myself quite well. We were in conference for forty-eight minutes, during which time the humans drank several cups of coffee, and left me wondering about the consultant’s illustration. Finally it was she who brought the meeting to an end.
‘I promise you, XL397, that we’ll consider your request very carefully. Please be under no misapprehensions though - we do not have to supply you with a human arm under the law. That will be entirely up to us, the hospital administration, to decide. The law merely states that we have to supply patients with a “functional arm”. It doesn’t qualify that statement and if we decide you need a robotic limb, then there’s not a great deal you can do about it. I personally have some sympathy with your request and will consider it very seriously over the next few days.’
Later that evening, I was walking through the main square and looked up to see Arthur Spateman’s image in a news niche up on the main building. He was jabbering away, waving a finger at the crowd that had gathered beneath. I stopped to listen.
‘There’s a plot,’ he was saying wildly
to the newscaster sitting next to him. ‘The CRs are trying to become real people like you and me.’
‘Surely’, said the newscaster calmly, ‘these allegations are, shall we say, a little exaggerated ...?’
While I stood and stared at the broadcast a youth turned and looked at the number printed on my shoulder.
‘Hey, this is the junk,’ he cried. ‘This is the bastard that wants to become a human being. Who the Jesus do you think you are, eh? You wanna be like me, do ya?’
A crowd of youths was gathering about me.
‘Not like you,’ I said. ‘I want to be human.’
The youth’s brow furrowed and he said, ‘Hey—’
But I moved away from him, so as not to cause any more trouble.
After the news was finished and some mindless quiz programme leapt into the niche, I walked away, across the park towards my dormitory on the far side. Halfway through the park I heard some footsteps running from behind me, and I turned to see the youth I had insulted accompanied by four others. They all held what looked like steel posts stolen from the park fence.
Now if there is one emotion CRs have evolved it is fear of death. A playwright once said: ‘... both are dead when they cease to be, but while a human dies a robot stops dead, which is not the same as dying.’ What he failed to recognize and note was that both of us have a great reluctance to enter the realms of non-existence. We both experience something similar on having to leave this world for ever. There was a kind of urgency in my circuits - they told me to run.
I ran. I ran as fast as my legs would carry me.
In my efforts to get away I struck a tree root with my foot and fell headlong on to the grass. They were upon me in seconds, swinging their steel bars. I tried to roll over on to my damaged side, to present my useless arm to their blows. They were yelling at me in high distorted voices, shouting ‘junkbrain ...scrapyard trash ... fuckin’ wireface’ and beating me with their weapons.
Once the bars began raining down on me, I collected severe impacts on my back and shoulders and lower legs. One of my ankle joints burst open. A heavy blow struck my left eye, shattering the ceramic swivel, and my vision failed on that side of my face. All five of them wanted to smash my body to pieces, and this probably saved me from a lot of damage because they kept striking each other’s bars and getting entangled. It was during this frenetic jumble of blows that one of them finally tried to remove my head from my torso, swinging from way back behind himself, yelling, ‘Wanna be a human, huh? Try it without a fuckin’ head,’ and missed me completely, hitting one of the others instead.
The injured youth dropped to the ground, clutching his shoulder and screaming. I could see he had some sort of compound fracture, because the bone was sticking through his clothing. At that moment there was a sound from overhead and a police hovercar descended from above the trees, broadcasting an order that everyone should stand still, with their hands high.
Four of my attackers immediately scattered into the darkness of the trees, leaving their injured companion to face the cops. I lay where I was, feeling drained of energy. The youth’s face was a metre from my own and with my good eye I studied the agony evident in his contorted features, in his staring eyes, in his twisting body.
I crawled even closer to him, dragging my damaged leg behind me.
‘Listen, boy,’ I whispered in his ear as the cops approached us. ‘What does it feel like? Tell me what you feel - tell me about the pain. I want to know. I need to know—’
‘You bastard,’ he shrieked at me, sobbing. ‘You ain’t even human! Oh God, it hurts. It’s killing me.’
I said, ‘Just precisely how is it killing you?’
<
~ * ~
Love in Backspace
Barrington J. Bayley
Call me Little Tony, backspace rider. There’s frontspace, see, where we all live and everything is ordered and spread out, I mean stars and planets and stuff, and then there’s midspace, really smooooth so the big starliners can use it to move around in, and there’s backspace. They say it’s the necessary ‘other side’ of frontspace but you wouldn’t know it if you go there. Backspace is pure connectivity, any normal idea of distance is Yim-Bim, throw it away. Technically it’s what makes frontspace hang together and stay put, so the engineers like to call it the ‘wrong side’ of space. You know those raffia patterns kids do in school? On the show side they’re neat and colourful, but the back is a mess of knots and bits and pieces. Backspace is like that, a chaos of torrents and rapids which will break up a starliner in minutes. Only a small one- or two-man raft has got any chance, and then of course you need a pilot, and how many have got the nerve and skill to go into the wrong side and find their way through to somewhere else? Not many. Yow-Wow.
So meet Little Tony, hanging around Hawtaw phase port waiting for work. Yes, there’s work. A midspace liner covers a hundred light years in a month. A backraft might do that in an hour on a good day. So mostly you’re hired as a messenger carrying info which can be reproduced if it’s lost - news, company reports, the bad stuff on somebody, anything there’s a need to get somewhere fast and someone is willing to pay for it.
But every now and then, a passenger.
He was a chubby fellow. His eyes were nice. Dark, kind of oily, you know that sort of eyes? A mop of curly black hair. Soft belly bulging through a neat buttoned waistcoat. Choice. But he was sweating just a little.
He put down a big floppy carry-all bag. ‘I want to go to Elivira.’ He paused. ‘That’s Castan IV.’
‘I know.’ I pointed to Liner Bay Number Three’s big hangar doors. ‘She leaves from there.’
‘Yes, in three days’ time. And another three and a half weeks to Elivira! I want to go now.’
I scratched my neck and fluttered my long silver eyelashes. ‘Well, that sounds urgent.’
‘Yes, it’s urgent.’ He stepped back, suddenly doubtful, to cast his eyes over me, lingering on my bare buttocks. ‘You are a backrider, aren’t you? You can take me?’
‘Never lost a passenger yet. But it will cost you,’ I took a deep breath, ‘a thousand kudos. For that you’re getting the best in the business.’
‘A thousand,’ he muttered sadly. ‘All right.’ And now he’d made the deal, that really scared look came into his face. Every passenger has it. He began stuttering. ‘When ... when ... Can we start now?’
‘I have to check my raft and fuel up. Meet me back here in an hour.’ I didn’t ask him for an advance, much as I needed one. It’s not good for confidence.
‘Er.’ The scared look was intensifying. ‘I’ve heard thirty-seven trips is average life expectancy for a backrider. How many have you made, may I ask?’
‘Thirty-six.’ I put on a look like I was trying to smile at him. He sure must have had a good reason for hiring my services.
‘Don’t worry about that,’ I told him. ‘You’ve been hearing crap. Either you can do it or you can’t.’
He went away looking slightly reassured. I was walking to the fuel store, wondering if I could get credit, when I ran into Boy Galilee. He stopped me, blinking and giving that simpering smile of his.
‘Tony, don’t tell me, don’t tell me you’re taking on a passenger?’
The creep must have seen me talking to my customer, peering round the corner of Number Three Bay, no doubt. I tried to walk on, but he placed his hand gently on my chest.
‘Tony, I really ought to tell him about that bad navigator of yours. That’s too much of a risk.’
‘For God’s sake, Galilee,’ I said, ‘I need this fare so I can get my navigator fixed! Give me a break, will you?’
He started stroking my neat little bum. Why shouldn’t he? His was like a piece of misshaped putty.
‘If things go wrong you could give backriders a bad name.’
‘It’s only an intermittent fault. I’ve been out with it twice already.’
Automatically I started stroking his buttocks too. Christ, how could somebo
dy with a posterior as uninteresting and flabby as his make out in backspace?
Not so long ago you could always tell a backrider. Nowadays it’s less easy to be sure, fashion being what it is and so many crud-brained young punks aping the bare bum, the shiny black leggings and jacket, the silver eyelashes and turquoise face paint. It really annoys me. Plonk any one of them on a guidance plate and he’d shit himself all over it.
And yes, if you’re asking, professional backriders are all sexually unidirectional, and all are male. No one else seems to have the knack, though plenty have tried, and no real explanation has come forward as to why. Me, I put it down to a solid neural connection between brain and backside, heh heh. It is, after all, the second way there is of selling your arse for a living.
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