It is clear to me now that the one thing Abiha and her people do not desire, under any circumstances, is for someone to build a machine that replicates what they alone can do. Giving such a machine to the masses would open up whole worlds to exploration and exploitation, robbing them of the advantage that they are careful to maintain.
I said that I had made a mistake that night, by resisting her. Had I meekly abandoned my theories, Margaret would not have died, and I would not be as I am now, the center of scandal, my work in disrepute, all that is dear to me in this world dead and demolished—entirely by her hand.
So much for the “light of the intellect”!
What has also become clear to me is the possibility that Abiha too made a mistake. When I grasped her and was pulled into the ether, I did not return unscathed. The ether altered me, as it must alter everyone who touches it. I recognize it now. I feel it when it is near, and I have concluded that I could enter it again, under my own volition, if only given the opportunity.
But how to navigate such formless spaces? How to avoid being lost forever in the void between worlds?
“We all of us have places of significance,” Abiha told me. Hers are laboratories like mine, where great men dream of traveling the universe. What if some places resemble the poles of a magnet, except that like attracts like, tuned to an individual’s vital experiences? This explains why she came alone to me, not with an army of fiends at her back. Such a navigational mnemonic would enable her to cross the gulf between worlds as easily as stepping from room to room, unfettered by mere matter!
And I could do likewise, if I could manage the trick of it.
Far from egoless acceptance of guilt, dear Doctor Michaels, the dissociation I felt in my cell offers me both the means to escape and an opportunity to gain revenge upon the woman who killed my Margaret. I feel it even more strongly now, here in this place of mourning and loss. The ether presses hard upon the reality of this world—this world I now suspect to be paper-thin and as easy to puncture as water. For the ether is none other than my river of life, the universal fluid we ride like swans, not realizing we can take flight at any time.
In a moment, I will make the attempt. If I succeed, I will follow this fateful catacomb to one in another world—hers, perhaps, if the congress has not ended, or another nearby—leaving you a mystery, this apology, and a further exhortation to read the authors I named during our brief discourse. Don’t let the silence subsume their voices, for each is a victim of those who would condemn our world to isolation and ignorance. Take up their dream of the ultimate transportation, and follow, if you can.
And when you think of me, remember their words, not mine:
“I touched the state when only truth remains.
“I swept away pleasures and pains.
“The Highest which is beyond the reach
“Of the four ancient Vedas
“came
“here
“to me!”
[Author’s note: Every reasonable effort has been made to trace the copyright holders of “I left the world” and “The Eightfold Yoga” by Pattinattar, English translation by Kamil V. Zvelebi, and to obtain their permission for the use of this copyright material. The author apologizes for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints of this story.]
Freebot
written by
R. M. Graves
illustrated by
Dino HadŽiavdiĆ
* * *
about the author
R. M. Graves is a born-and-bred Londoner. Due to his mother reading only Asimov during her pregnancy, something she had not done before nor since, he is genetically preconfigured for speculative fiction. He started by reading Andre Norton, followed by his mother’s Asimov, and moved on to Orwell and Huxley because they were banned by his Catholic school.
He finished writing his first book before he’d finished reading his first book and secretly wrote all through his schooling. Later he secretly wrote all through his architectural studies and still secretly writes despite having a family and his own illustration company.
In 2012 he joined the Online Writing Workshop to learn how to write stories that people would want to read. Now his fiction appears in Interzone and Escape Pod, among other places. His art book Postcards from the Future is available on Amazon UK.
He lives in pre-apocalyptic Camden Town with his wife and two children.
about the illustrator
Dino Hadžiavdić was born in 1986 in Bosnia and Herzegovina. His artistic tendencies became apparent quite early. Art was a personal refuge during the time of war, when no other distraction was available. With his father being a history teacher, historic books became his main source of inspiration.
Later his focus changed to costume and character design, being heavily influenced by sci-fi and historic genres, mostly by works from Ian McCaig and Colleen Atwood. Determined to pursue a career in that field, he continued to study fashion design and illustration with a local art teacher, Gordana Mehmedović.
After graduating from high school, despite his wishes to attend the Academy of Fine Arts, he went on to study architecture, obtaining a Masters Degree. Skills obtained during those years continue to change his style, and expand the artistic medium toward CGI, digital art and animation.
He is currently attending the Academy of Fine Arts at the University of Sarajevo, studying Industrial design. His goal is to become a costume designer in the sci-fi genre.
Freebot
Danny charged down the high street toward the hospital, dodging freebots all hell-bent on being useful. He could still make this, he could still get to Sally in time.
“Danny Clark, a dad? Congratulations!” A chromed, headless horse skittered toward him and dropped to its knees. Danny stumbled to a halt, thumping his thighs in frustration, his chest fit to burst.
The horse waggled its saddle. “You need a ride! Sorry you lost your benefits, big guy. Hard times. Can my sponsor help you out over the next few months? Hop on, they’ll sort out the details on the way.”
It was only then his hoodie buzzed. The hospital. He propped his wheezing body against a lamppost.
“Mr. Clark?” The nurse’s voice was tiny against the blare of the street. He wedged the hood hard to his ears. “If you are interested,” she said, “you’re wife just had a baby girl.”
Danny doubled up and spat on the pavement. His hands were blackened and raw from the dawn shift, his arms still trembling. He screwed his eyes shut. He should not have taken that job. He should have stayed with Sally.
“Right,” he said, his voice coming out in a strangled falsetto. He cleared his throat. “Sally? Is she—”
The nurse gasped. “Frankly, sir, whatever you’re doing that is so important right now? I’d keep doing that for a while.”
More freebots peeled off the throng and barreled toward him. Danny had stood still too long. He creaked upright, blurting apologies into his hood but the nurse had already gone.
“Down to your last ten quid, eh?” A job-cart trundled toward him, feathered in leaflets for jobs that needed brains, not brawn. He balled his fists, and pictured smashing freebot casing, reaching through the Internet and crushing the parasite sponsors in their holes.
Instead, he forced himself to walk away, striking off in a random direction. He didn’t stop until he hit a pub, then he didn’t think until he was inside.
The “King’s Shilling” was dark, wooden and rammed. The only space at the bar was beside a loitering freebot. Either that or next to the Wipe-Clean Lady; plain scary from her broken, droopy eye down to her dusty stilettos.
“I kept a seat for you, fella,” said a white plastic flea the size of a football. “Just 20p a month. Free pint, too!” White fleas occupied all the pub’s chairs, untouched pints in front of the
m. Danny shook his head and headed to the bar.
A real bar girl met him with a taut smile. “I can offer you the ad-free experience, sir, if you’d like to join the member’s club?”
“Pint of Black,” Danny said, before the guilt could step in. That’s when the loitering freebot piped up.
“Ah, death,” it said, spinning binoculars at him, its voice crackling and old.
“Mate, check the credit,” Danny said. “Can’t afford your life insurance.”
“Ha, ha, ha.” It clattered on its wheels. Danny frowned at the ugly machine, just a tripod bolted into the arms and back of a motorized wheelchair. “Daft bugger, no,” it said. “Guinness. Your drink. Death is like Guinness. Thick, black. Warm as blood.” It spun at the bar girl and boomed, “Not. Cold!” She frowned and plonked Danny’s pint down, leaving finger prints in its bloom of frost.
Danny swigged and closed his eyes at the deep, bitter rush. That was it. All gone. No more money. He heaved a sigh from his boots and pulled his hood over. He should have done the right thing, should have saved the wages. No job. No benefits. That meant no flat. What would he tell Sally?
Dino HadŽiavdiĆ
He kicked at a tangle of shoe-worms, before they could re-tie his laces in patented knots and bill him for undoing them. There would be more crap from the freebots now that he couldn’t afford protection. Streetlight subscription would lapse, too, probably have to walk home in the dark. While they had a home. It didn’t bear thinking about, moving his family out to the slums, or face living on the street. Poor Sally, and poor little baby girl. They deserved better. He was no husband, no father. No man. Just a dumb lump, dragging them under.
He stared into the sinking cream of his pint and tried not to recall the terrible morning, but did. Hefting junk out of an old house and competing with yabbering freebots for the pleasure. Worse, under the foremanship of another freebot, sponsored—as it turned out—by social services. Danny was done, on the spot, for benefit fraud; signing-on while “employed.” As if a morning’s casual labor counted as employment. That sarcastic freebot laugh, as it printed out ten quid’s worth of voucher codes. “Ha, ha, ha.”
Danny drank the way he’d learned as a kid, small sip, big swallow. Trick your body. Make it last. Then the ugly machine burst into song next to him, “Oh Danny boy . . . the pipes, the pipes are ca-alling. . . .” Suddenly that empty seat next to the freebot hooker didn’t look so unappealing.
Something prodded his shoulder, a black mannequin in a yellow suit. “Danny,” it said, “let me get your next drink, pay me when you can.”
“Can’t,” Danny said.
“No problem. We can lend you something, you know, against your daughter’s future earnings.”
Danny blinked. “Seriously? She’s less than an hour old.”
The mannequin shuffled on its feet. “You haven’t signed her up yet? With a model agency?” It spun, right round at the waist. “Yo Stella! This one needs an agent!”
A candelabrum shuddered over, squeaking.
“Clothes! Clothes!” another shrieked.
“This one is with me.” The ugly freebot reared up over their heads, its distorted roar rattling glasses. The freebots scarpered, and Danny considered necking the pint and going too, but the contraption bellowed over at the bar girl, “Sweetheart, put this sad bugger on my member’s tab will you?” Then it sang again, to the tune of “The Red Flag”: “The working class can kiss my arse! I’ve got the foreman’s job at last!”
“Keep it down, John”—the bar girl frowned at Danny’s bloodless knuckles—“or you’re out.”
Danny glared into the machine’s cold, binocular lenses. He was sick of the world knowing his business. “You taking the piss, freebot?” he said, quietly.
The lenses didn’t move. “Name’s John. Loser,” it said.
Danny could hear Sally, his better half. She would say: Dan, there’s no sense letting the machines get to you. But his face prickled, and his lips twitched.
“What’s this?” The freebot, John, whirred its lenses closer to Danny’s face. “Think you can break me, big fella? That’s the answer is it? That’s going to put a roof over your family’s heads?”
Danny wrenched his gaze away, downed the rage with his pint and went to the toilet, John shouting, “Ha, ha, ha,” behind him.
Danny lodged his forehead on the cool tile above the urinal. He hadn’t eaten since the night before and the gulped pint had his skin tingling numbly. He even felt a little dizzy already.
At least being on John’s membership tab meant the piss was free, and the hawking freebots all ignored him, even now, at his most vulnerable. He eked out the primal bliss of unhassled privacy, savoring the old-school moment. It was as if the Internet had never escaped.
When he came back out, another pint waited. The bar girl nodded at the freebot and shrugged. Danny went to walk by, but the machine rolled into his path.
“It’s a warm one. The way it should be,” it said. “I’m sorry, son.”
Danny stared at the pint, at John. There was a horrible ghostliness to that empty wheelchair, moving about on its own. But at least its binoculars seemed apologetic. Danny should go. He needed to look for work. Beg the council. He needed to see Sally and his baby.
He took the offered drink. There was time. After this one.
“Wife in hospital with the baby?” John said, its goggles tracing the arc of the pint back and forth from bar to mouth. Danny wiped his hand across his top lip and nodded.
“So they’re safe and warm,” it continued. “God bless the National Health, eh? What’s left of it. I remember my first. Like a bomb going off, it was.” It rolled a nudge at Danny’s foot. “You need to get your head together, Danny Boy. Plan your next move.”
Danny slumped. He hoped the machine didn’t see the tear he thumbed from his eye.
“Oh Christ,” it said. “That’s bloody disgusting. Don’t make me change my mind, Mate, getting you that pint.”
“Mate?” Danny snarled through clenched teeth. “You don’t know me.”
“You make a lot of assumptions, son.” The freebot swiveled on its wheels to face Danny square on. “Would you talk that way if you knew I was flesh and blood? A man?” It rolled so hard at Danny’s shin it nearly knocked him over. “A blind, deaf, mute and paralyzed man? That these machines are my only way to connect with the world? That I also have a family and it still depends on me?”
Danny’s ears grew hot, “You’re disabled?”
“Ah, now son, we don’t say that.” It nodded at his pint. “But spare your blushes, go on, steady your nerves.”
Danny glugged and the freebot—or whatever it was—filled him in. “Tower-crane operator, I was. Went to grease the hook-gear one day—pissing with rain—didn’t fasten the safety properly. Dropped.”
Danny gawped. “And you survived? Lucky sod— No. I mean—”
“Ha, ha, ha,” John said, “your face. The rain, you see? Muddy. ‘A soft day’ my Da’ would have called it. Helped break the fall, that and I twisted, you know, so I could land on my feet.”
Danny imagined the bones of his legs crunching their way up through his body. He winced.
“Didn’t feel a thing.” John shook his lenses. “Doc said I hit the ground fast as a bloody skydiver. So fast, there wasn’t time for the pain to hit my brain before I was killed. Ten minutes dead, they say. You’ll have another in there?” John flicked his lenses at the empty glass, and before Danny could react, the bar girl had swapped it.
Danny waved at John’s ugly rig and haunted seat. “How’d you get that?”
John hummed, “Oh, this old thing. Kids made it for me. Not bad, eh?” It buzzed a pirouette. “Got me on a program. Research, like. All these probes in my head.”
“Like mind control?”
“Ha. Yep, suppose so. Sounds fan
cier than it is, though. Moving this fly-shit tiny dot around. You know by concentrating: ‘up-up-up, left-left-left.’ Bastard slow. At first, anyway.”
An ambulance, rolling up outside the pub, distracted them. Its lights pulsed the bar blue.
“Now, I got all kinds of gizmos. Sound, pictures. And different rigs, for different jobs. Speech, too, obviously. Got my singing voice today.” John drifted, staring at the vehicle outside. “Don’t need the keyboard now. God that was shite. Like trying to text on a phone at the end of a long tunnel, by lobbing a football at it.”
Danny’s chest heaved.
“Ah, a smile,” John said, “That’s more like it.”
“So where are you?” Danny said, “I mean, really?”
John’s binoculars fixed him, “Now that’s a question ain’t it, sunshine? Where am I really? In my body? Or here with your sorry ass?” the lenses minutely tracked Danny’s eyes.
Danny averted his gaze, feeling foolish.
“Oh Danny boy . . .” John started singing again. Danny watched a real paramedic—not a freebot—climb out of the ambulance and hang about. He wondered if the bloke might just saunter in for a pint, he looked so relaxed. Why the lights, then? The medic clocked Danny, and looked at his watch.
“Switzerland,” John said, “My body is in a comfy drawer in Switzerland, somewhere. To answer your question. Oh.” He twitched at a clock above the bar. “I gotta go. Afternoon shift. So Danny Boy, what are you going to do, eh?”
Danny’s stomach lurched at the thought of John going. He shrugged.
John looked around, as if checking for earwiggers. “I’ll let you into a little secret. No. Two. You know, it was me. Earlier. Your foreman who turned telltale?”
Danny went rigid.
“No wait. Listen. Another secret.” John rolled closer. “We’re hiring. The company I work for.”
Danny stammered, questions tumbling over each other. His brain crunched and stalled. John’s goggles locked to him, nodding slowly.
Writers of the Future 32 Science Fiction & Fantasy Anthology Page 32
