In Extremis

by John Shirley

  He looked under the bed toward the door. Saw the clawed feet there. Poised.

  Sage whimpered and crawled under the bed . . .

  “Help me!” he called out to the other presence. “I’m sorry for what I’ve done! Help me! I’ll make up for it, I’ll redeem myself!”

  You are only lies . . . came a voice from the floors, the walls, the air. Only lies . . .

  “No, no! I mean it! I—”

  He felt a steel-hard, ice-cold grip on his lower limbs—on what passed for legs in a damaged ghost. Something had gripped him hard there, was pulling him back.

  “Sage . . .” It was Krick. Pulling him out from under the bed. “You didn’t play the game very well . . . nothing to do now but feast . . .”

  “It’s time,” Abnegas said.

  “And time goes on and on, for you,” Krick said, dragging him into the center of the room. They leaned over him . . .

  “Please!” Sage cried out from the very center of his being. “Give me a chance!”

  A small tornado of pitch-black was forming in the center of the room, between Abnegas and Krick. In the center of the onyx whirling appeared a point of light. The scintillation grew, and then flashed like a brilliant strobe to fill the room.

  A glowing being stood there, arms spread. Its face was an archetype of all angelic beings. It shone with infinite understanding. The two demons, Abnegas and Krick, crouched, recoiling away from it, covering their eyes in frustration and pain and fury.

  A feeling of relief rippled through Sage—it was like stepping out of a sleety winter wind into a warm, cozy room. There was hope. There was a chance . . .

  The being of light spread its arms; its’ wings—like a white butterfly’s—filled the room with a comforting perfume, which he seemed to remember. Wasn’t that his mother’s perfume—remembered from his infancy?

  “Come, then, Bret,” said the being of light; its voice was neither male nor female, just as the voice of a clarinet has no sex. It opened its arms wider, the warm light beckoned—

  Sage rose up, weak but eager to go to the angel, to be rescued, and set free . . .

  “Give me your trust and I’ll give you life,” said the white-winged angel.

  Sage flung himself headlong into it—and then realized it had been quoting him: mocking the slogan subtitling his website: Give me your trust and I’ll give you life.

  He tried to turn back but it was too late, he was falling through the portal—because that’s what it was, it wasn’t a real being, it was a mirage, a doorway into the sucking heart of the black tornado, which vacuumed him down, with high speed centrifugal intensity, so that he spun helplessly into its depths . . .

  Finally emerging in the churning darkness that he’d seen outside the window—where Abnegas and Krick were waiting, with a great many other beings, all of them ravenous.

  “Yeah,” Krick said, crushing him in its talons, “that was a little more fun at your expense. And now . . . and now . . .”

  The ripping began—their hatred was their teeth and claws, tearing him to pieces.

  But the pieces drew back together, re-forming, wailing, into the nauseating spirit body that was what remained of the man who’d called himself Sage . . .

  Which was immediately swallowed by Krick—and all the others, who were, he saw now, all one creature: many grotesque heads on one ethereal body.

  Down, Sage slipping down into darkness, into its jet-black inner world, where its hate was a digestive acid, reducing him to a shrieking pulp, the grinding pain going on and on . . . and then . . .

  . . . A glimmer in the darkness. A living, angelic light . . . .

  “Forgive me!” Sage howled, within himself.

  “Come to me, and I will forgive you!” the light replied.

  Sage rushed to the point of light, weeping, feeling hope blossom . . .

  It drew him in . . .

  “Just kidding,” it said. As it ate him again.

  Living pulverization. Unspeakable suffering that went on forever. Then a light gleamed . . . He rushed to it, trembling with relief.

  It drew him in . . .

  CALL GIRL, ECHOED

  There was no real reason Morales should be nervous. But he always was before one of them came over. It’s absurd, he told himself, as he drew on the plush hotel robe and went out to the small portable bar on the hotel balcony where he made himself a double scotch. It was all quite professional, after all; the act was nothing personal, even to the human ones, so there’s no reason to be nervous.

  But he was nervous for both kinds of call girl. He’d gone from the human kind—which were quite rare now, anyway, they had so many disadvantages—to the robotic call girl, because he thought that would ease his nervousness. Anyway, real, flesh and blood girls had always irritated him. They were suspicious of him, despite the smile, and they watched the clock. The robots were designed to be accommodating.

  Gazing down over the hotel pool, he drank off half the scotch and grimaced. The pool area was decorated in a Baja-in-New-York theme, cheerfully green and anomalous beside the gray and glassy soldiers of skyscrapers towering at attention around it; the empty pool was lit up, a candy-blue rectangle against the crystal-white artificial sand landscaping, the plastic grove of green and brown synthetic palms. Maybe it was time to blow off New York for the real Baja.

  The chime came on the hotel phone. He stepped within respond range of it and said, “Yes?”

  “You have a visitor, a young lady. From Synthetic Satisfactions.”

  He winced. The son of a bitch should’ve been more discreet than to say the name of the company aloud. “Send her up.”

  He looked down at himself. He was tanned, and reasonably fit for forty, under his white bathrobe. He retied his robe’s belt, thinking he we was a little paunchy—but not much.

  Morales clucked his tongue at himself. He was doing it again. Nervous—over a robot. Robots don’t care if you’re paunchy or not.

  He chuckled, drank off the rest of his scotch, waited the right interval, and got to the door just as she knocked. She was what he’d asked for: tall, slender, blond, pretty, busty, blue eyed. A classic. He’d asked for Maximum Realism so they’d given her a few minor blemishes, something like a faint scar on her lower lip. The tanned breasts in her tank top seemed to heave a little with her “breathing”; there was a suggestion of aging at the corners of her eyes, as if she were just turning the corner into 30. Good.

  Her voice was soft and husky as she said, “Hi. I’m Amy . . . from the agency?”

  “Come on in,” he said, smelling her perfume as she walked by. She dropped her purse on the sofa in the suite’s living room—the purse was mostly for the bar code reader she brought with her, he supposed, to record the transaction. “I’m Joey Morales.”

  “Oh, I know your name!” She stood just inside the door to the balcony looking out at the sea. “Wub, what a high-rez view,” she added, in slang that was a bit outdated by now. Her programmers needed to do a linguistic update.

  “So, uh . . .” No, there was no point in offering her a drink. She could make a show of ingesting fluids, if it was part of the fantasy—but it wasn’t. “. . . won’t you sit down?”

  They sat close but not too close on the couch. Her movements seemed natural—the robots from the agency always moved naturally. There was that telltale stiffness in the way she crossed her legs. But she was a good one, all right.

  She smiled at him and the smile said she wanted him. “It’s good to be here.”

  He was pleased—that’s exactly how she was supposed to smile and what she was supposed to say. He’d filled out the fantasy play-form very carefully. They’d programmed her for the encounter—but let’s see if they’d done it right all the way through. Last time the robot had forgot the washcloth thing.

  “Joey—I’m so curious about you. I’m hungry to know all about you. What do you do for a living?”

  “I’m a buyer for Transnational Transplants. I go out to the organ farms
, see if the vats are up to spec, do some testing, negotiate. Good, high-pay corporate job. Takes years of training.”

  “It’s almost like being a doctor!”

  He smiled urbanely. “What brings you here? We have never met—something has to have brought you to me.”

  She responded to those words exactly as he’d prescribed: “I . . . couldn’t help myself. When I saw you at the pool. I . . .” She hesitated—which was pleasingly realistic. “I had to find a way to be near you. I know it seems crazy. But I—promise me you won’t get mad—I went into the changing cabin you used, after you left. I found this . . .” She reached into her shorts and slowly drew out a washcloth. She’d had it tucked up against her crotch. She pressed the cloth to her cheek, ran it across her lips. “The cloth you used . . . on your body. I’ve been carrying it close to mine. That’s how strongly the sight of you affected me. I decided I’d do anything I had to do—to give myself to you!” His hard-on was already poking from his bathrobe and her eyes went to it. She commented as scripted: “Oh God—it’s bigger than I ever imagined . . .”

  Morales reached out and took the damp cloth—as it should, it smelled of the sea, and—damn, that was good chemistry—of woman. He kissed it, and draped it over his hard organ, throwing his robe open, and said—

  “What the fuck . . .” That wasn’t in the script. But it’s what came out of him.

  He was staring down at the cloth. There was a spot of fresh blood on it.

  “I’m bleeding!” Morales muttered, lifting the cloth away. But no—no blood on his privates. Then . . . he looked at Amy.

  That was fear in her eyes. Why would they program the appearance of fear into her? It wasn’t in his fantasy. He was no sadist.

  He sniffed at the blood spot. There was the very distinctive smell—of menstrual blood.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, trying to make her face blank. “Someone must have incompletely reprogrammed me. The last one must’ve wanted someone on her period. Or just starting it. There won’t be much blood. Let’s have sex, and ignore it. I can . . . I can wash it out. It’s just starting. I mean in the fantasy. From the last guy . . .”

  Were those tears welling?

  “Take off your pants,” he said.

  “Sure,” she said. Looking a little relieved. She pulled her shortshorts off, and her underwear. Now that was realistic: a razor burn, where she’d trimmed the edges of her pubic hair.

  He knelt between her legs, wet his finger, and pushed it into her—she winced. That wincing could be programmed, too . . .

  He grunted to himself. The inside of a robot call girl was very, very much like a human girl’s. But this . . . it was too real. Unless they’d improved the model.

  He withdrew his finger, stood up, and pressed down on her chin. “Open your mouth.”

  She swallowed, licked her lips—with an amazingly real tongue—and opened her mouth. The fillings could be window dressing. But a little piece of food—parsley—stuck back there, between two molars?

  He sat back, furious. And a little scared, too. “Who the fuck are you? Someone sent you here to—what? Get me to talk about Transnational’s new kidney line? You some kind of industrial spy?”

  Her shoulders slumped; her head drooped; her hands balled into small fists on her knees. “No. I came on my own—I just . . . I do some computer hacking. I intercepted some online orders for call girls . . . got the fantasy specs, canceled the order . . . I tried to act robotic—I even did that stiffness with my legs . . . I’ve tried to be a human call girl but no one uses human ones anymore. I just . . . please—touch me!”

  “What? I haven’t even paid you anything—unless you stole that credit transfer.”

  “No—swear I didn’t. I’m here because . . . I need to feel that kind of intimacy. Joey, men don’t use actual women for sex anymore.”

  He shrugged. “So? Why should we? Women want some action, they can order male robots. They’re cheap now. They build one another.”

  “I don’t want a male robot—they’re horrible. I mean—they’re just . . . just ‘fucking machines’.”

  “And that’s bad?”

  “It is for me. Even when they’re well programmed you know it’s not real. I don’t look it, but I’m almost forty. Since the robots came in a few years ago, I can’t interest anyone in me. They all have robot women. I need to feel a real man again—I mean, my doctor says I’m obsessive but—”

  “Oh okay, there it is. Your doctor. You’re on some kind of medication. Or you’re supposed to be.”

  “What does that matter?” she asked, sulking.

  “It means you’re crazy. And that matters.” He shook his head. “I should have realized something was off when you didn’t do the bar code thing to confirm the purchase. Now just—get out of here.”

  “Please—” She leaned toward him. Licked her lips, trying to look sexy. “I’m sorry about the period. It’s a little early. I didn’t realize. But it’s just starting. We can still—”

  “It isn’t that. I just don’t like real girls. They are either secretly contemptuous of you—if they’re a hooker—or if they’re your girlfriend they’re . . . well, they’re still secretly contemptuous of you! And even if they don’t hate you, they’re so demanding. They want attention all the time. ‘Tell me you love me.’ Or ‘Why won’t you go to the dance class with me?’ The hookers are such crummy actors—you can tell they want to be somewhere else. But not a robot. She acts like she wants exactly what you want when you want it, and she does—she’s programmed to.”

  “But I don’t want to be somewhere else. I want real sex with you.”

  “Yeah and then you’d follow me around afterward and ask me to tell you I loved you or . . . to cuddle you . . . Christ.” Her lips trembled. He softened his tone. “Hey look—you’re a good looking woman—I don’t believe you couldn’t find anyone. But—drop this act. This whole . . . this deception you tried to pull off, it’s sick—”

  She was weeping openly. That was another problem with real women, they cried, and they wouldn’t stop when you wanted them to.

  She wiped her eyes, getting makeup on her fingers. “I had three serious boyfriends—two of them talked about marriage—and they—they changed their minds. They said the robots were better and—they don’t want me. They want the robots . . .”

  “Right. So find some guy with eccentric tastes—some guy who likes real women. Or get a boy-bot. You’ve really got to go now . . . .”

  She reached behind her, picked up her purse. She opened it—and took out a folding jack knife.

  “Shit!” He jumped to his feet, backing away, looking around for the phone.

  Then he stopped, staring.

  Amy was slashing deeply into herself with the knife. To Morales it looked like she was trying to carve her vagina away.

  Blood spurted onto the couch, with a soft drumming sound. She dropped a mass of crimson tissue onto the carpet. It was like something from a gutted fish.

  Now—shaking, gagging from the pain, white-faced—she was taking something from her purse. She shoved it brutally in the gaping, blood spraying wound between her legs.

  He recognized it. A robot vagina-unit. Taken from some robot being repaired, probably. She’d forced it, just jammed it, into the wound and now, her face ghastly, sitting on the sofa, she spread her legs in a puddle of blood. She showed him the mechanical vagina forced crookedly into the ragged wound and she said, “Do you want me now? I can be a machine too. If you’ll let me. I can be a machine too . . .”

  YOU HEAR WHAT BUDDY AND RAY DID?

  What Ray does, sometimes, he runs low on money, he goes to those adult bookstores with the booths that got the sticky floors in the back room, and he hangs out in there, at the corner of the little maze of digital peeps, pretending to be reading those glossy cards on each booth with the pictures of people fucking; those cards show you what DVD channel for “Virtual Tight” or for, maybe, “Mama’s Enema Party”. Ray stands there real casual b
ut watching everyone, till he sees the kind of guy who’s maybe got a gold watch, real well fed, crocodile shirt, say Coke-bottle-glasses—some guy that doesn’t get any ass. So then Ray catches his eye, snags him into a booth, pretends he’s gonna suck the guy’s dick, but he just sort of plays with it, the dude’s pants are down and loose around his ankles and Ray’s on his knees coming out with the Hot Talk, all the time his free hand getting into the guy’s back pocket, snagging that wallet, says excuse me, I’ll be right back, you’re makin’ me so hot, don’t move! Then he cruises on with the wallet . . . some guys—straight guys, usually—are really expert at this, usually crack heads . . . Ray actually learned this because it had been done on him when he was just eighteen. Some black guy in a booth started playing with Ray’s dick, but he was really into Ray’s wallet—a big five bucks—and Ray caught on and he said, “You’re not ripping me off, motherfucker.” And he grabs the guy, but this is a big black junkie and he grabs Ray’s dick and balls, I’m tellin’ you, man! He starts twisting, saying, “You fuck with me, you lose ’em,” but Ray pries the junkie’s fingers off his parts and the junkie bolts out of the place and he yells, “You follow me, you white faggot motherfucker, I’ll knock you out!” So Ray finds himself standing there between the booths staring after this guy and he realizes his pants are down around his ankles and his dick is hanging out . . . but he thinks, That could work for me sometime. Now fast forward to . . .

  Ray’s standing on a Larkin Street corner, thinking it’s too cold out tonight, maybe he’ll try the adult bookstores again. Sometimes he scores that way; other times he maybe only gets five bucks, or nothing at all. Of course, he could let somebody suck his dick for a ten or a twenty, but he just likes it better when he rips them off. It’s not that getting his dick sucked by some geek really bothers him; it’s that ripping them off feels especially good. But you could waste hours standing around in those places. It really is getting cold outside . . .