Denna opened her mouth again. “I can help you move your things right now …” He leapt to his feet and the loud screech of his chair legs scudding against the floor reverberated loudly throughout the restaurant. There was only one other person in the restaurant besides Denna and Marcus, the same old woman nursing another steaming cup of tea but she looked up sharply to see what the noise was about. Marcus took Denna’s wrist, lifted her from her chair, and nearly dragged her towards the door. She didn’t stop him until he had dragged her behind him to the front door of her building. “Marcus!” she said as she dislodged her hand from his. “What are you doing?”
“The right thing, I think.” He answered.
“I’m just going to go live with you and nobody’s going to ask any questions?”
Marcus thought for a moment. “There’ll be questions, but we don’t have to answer them.”
Marcus took Denna’s wrist again and she did not resist as he led her inside the building and to the front door of her apartment. They went inside and she began packing her sparse few belongings into two old gym bags that were badly worn and tattered and broken at the zippers so that neither of them would close. After she’d packed Marcus could see that those two fabulous dresses he’d seen her in were the best set of clothes she had. She stood with her two bags and looked over the living room furniture for a long time. The few pieces of furniture here were the only pieces of furniture the apartment had ever seen and would likely be the only pieces of furniture it would ever see: Denna knew that according to the rules she could take nothing from the apartment except a few pairs of clothes and she could only take that because she wasn’t a worker. The next worker and maybe his wife would be moved into the apartment probably within the next hour and they wouldn’t be able to take any of the furniture when they’re time came to leave, either, whether in eviction or death.
Outside of Denna’s apartment, Marcus took her bags and power walked with them back to his house. It was difficult for Denna to keep up but she did, until she arrived at his house winded and in desperate need of somewhere to sit down for a long moment. Marcus carried her bags into his house while she collapsed on the edge of his front porch. When he returned he sat down next to her. Neither of them spoke; Marcus sat quietly and gazed off into the distance while Denna heaved for breath beside him. As soon as she caught her breath she moved quickly to stand to her feet. Marcus laid a hand upon her shoulder before she could. “It might not be good for you to be seen sitting on your front porch alone with me like this.” Denna said.
“Are you concerned about my professional reputation?”
“Aren’t you?” Denna asked seriously.
Marcus looked back out into the distance. “I don’t think so.”
“But you could lose this house if you lost your job, couldn’t you?”
Marcus turned to look at Denna. Consternation was upon her face as she leaned in towards him. He put his hands upon her shoulders. “You don’t have to worry. I won’t lose my job or this house … and as long as you’re staying with me they won’t be able to kick you out of the campuses.”
“I didn’t mean …”
“It doesn’t matter, Denna.” Marcus answered, smiling. “The world is about to change very quickly. A lot of priorities are about to change in the coming days and right now, your having a place to stay is my top priority.”
Marcus stood and snatched up Denna’s bags and walked briskly up the steps of his front porch. She followed behind. Inside the home, he showed her to her room—it was right down the hall from his own—and watched from the room’s threshold as she lined the closet with the few articles of clothing that she had. “Unfortunately, Denna, I still have a job to report to. Believe me, I’d prefer to stay here but what’s to come is coming whether I remain here or not.”
“What’s to come?” Denna asked.
“Good, I hope.” Marcus turned and began walking quickly down the hallway that led to the front door. “Listen, my home is simple enough. Everything you need should be easy to find. I’ll return after work and we’ll get you whatever else you may need.” The next sound Denna heard was the front door closing and the self-locking mechanism bolting into place. And just like that she was alone in Mr. Willoughby’s home, which was also her new home now. She sat down carefully on Marcus’ small living room loveseat and took a deep breath. After a moment, she leaned back into the loveseat’s overstuffed pillows and sighed. She didn’t like Marcus enigmatic talk of ‘what was to come’ but there was a fact that was more important than that right now; the fact that she wouldn’t kicked out of the campuses, back into the outskirts of the city where it wasn’t likely that she would survive another year. Besides, she had neither friends nor family in the city. Her death would mean nothing to anyone that mattered. She would be just another victim of an overheated, overcrowded world that was slowly perhishing of radiation sickness.
Here, in Marcus’ home she could survive. Her domestic talents might not be worth much in the outskirts but here she thought that maybe she could cook and clean her way into a future, even if that future consisted of just surviving another day. She had tried to realize that future with Stanley but the hazards of his job had stolen him away. She’d thought that Marcus’ job was more secure and less likely to send him to an early grave, but after this morning she wasn’t so sure. Only one thing was for certain, that she had a place to stay for at least the next 24 hours and for a woman who’d learned long ago to live day to day, it was a good start.
Meanwhile, when Marcus arrived at work he found some of his students gossiping in the auditorium about something that had happened recently. He called “Attention class!” from behind his podium when the class didn’t quiet down on its own. “I haven’t been here recently and you all know, it is not like your teacher to be absent from class. Science City needs everyone’s contribution right now. Everyone’s.” There was a titter from somewhere in the class but Marcus couldn’t tell from which kid it came. He did notice David McDonald near the front row covering his mouth with his hand. “What is going on, students?” he asked. No one answered. Marcus glanced down at David and could see that he was bursting to tell what he knew. David McDonald was not one to hold onto juicy secrets for very long. The only problem was, when David told a secret it might be the wrong version. “Stand up please, Mr. McDonald.” Marcus commanded. David stood to his feet almost sheepishly but it was clear by the large smile on his face that he was enjoying this moment very much. “Now, Mr. McDonald” Marcus began “would you mind telling me and the rest of the class what all the fuss is about?”
David didn’t hesitate. “All the fuss is about you, Professor Willoughby.” He answered quickly as if he were trying to get the information out before another student beat him to it. “The rumor is there is a robot out there performing surgeries on people right in their homes and on the streets and that robot sounds just like you. A lot of people in the outskirts think it is you. They believe you’re the first human to be fully incorporated into a robot body. They think this new robot you is trying to turn everybody else into robots …” No doubt David would’ve continued on but Marcus held up a hand for silence. He shook his head as he struggled to decide what to answer his students; as he looked out over their faces he could tell that most of them didn’t know what to make of this latest rumor.
Marcus sighed loud enough for it to be heard through the microphone that was latched to his podium. “You may have a seat, David.” He said and David sat down as slowly as he had risen and glanced around the auditorium to see if he had made an impression by being one of the first to expose the rumor. The other students however, were more focused on Marcus. “Do I look like a robot to any of you?” the professor asked as he rubbed his temples. No one answered. “Does it look like slices of my brain matter have been fused with a Titedelstein body?” Still, no one answered. No one was as eager as David McDonald to have the entire auditorium’s attention directed solely at them. “Well, let me assure you …” the
professor continued “that I have not been transferred into a robot body. Not yet, anyway.” He stepped from behind the podium. “Look, students, I know that things are very confusing right now. It’s an exciting and frightening time and I’m sure you all have lots of questions but you must remember that you’re going to hear a lot of things that aren’t true. People out there are scared too and sometimes people spread information that isn’t exactly true when they’re frightened. Just remember that everything we do here we do for the future of Science City. Now, open up your Robotics textbook to page sixty-seven. Today, we’ll be continuing to study Titedelstein circulation systems …”
When Marcus finished the lesson, he found that he wasn’t as concerned with the student’s futures as he had claimed. Right now he was only concerned with right now. Or rather what had led up to right now. He needed to know if the rumors were true, if Professor Edelstein had went ahead and released that robot upon the population. There might’ve been dozens of those robots roaming the streets by now. Whatever the case, Marcus needed to find out what was happening and he needed to find it out now.
CHAPTER 12
Marcus watched the small television screen and could hardly believe his eyes. The images were from the robot’s own perspective and they were disheartening at best. The streets of the city were more crowded and filthy than Marcus remembered and the faces in those crowds showed no joy and their eyes held no hope. There were dead bodies in the street that people walked over as if they were stray pieces of trash. Marcus had watched from the robot’s perspective as a man was mowed down by a cargo truck that had been trying to avoid hitting another car. The driver stopped the truck but only long enough to check the man’s pockets for anything valuable. Then he drove away and left the man to die slowly and painfully on the curb. The crowds already lining the street and curb never thinned and no one passing by paid the dying man any mind beyond a passing glance. Death was too common for anyone to care much where it struck.
No, after the guy had bled to death on the curb one gaunt and sickly looking young man did stop to pay the victim more than a passing glance. He bent down to work the shoes carefully off the dead man’s feet and was gone as quickly as the driver as soon as he had them. A pale rainbow of refuse and human excrement clogged the hallways in the buildings the robot entered and in at least one building more dead bodies than normal were littered amongst the litter and human waste. Marcus gasped when he realized that this was one of the city’s only excuses for a hospital. There were more dead people in the hospital rooms than sick people and most of the doctors and nurses looked as if they needed to be in a hospital bed themselves. People waiting desperately for medical attention shuffled through a cloud of other people desperately in need of medical attention that had fallen asleep from exhaustion or others who would never wake up again. Some of the shuffling victims were bleeding profusely or else coddling injuries that were so terrible that broken bone and torn tendon and bloody lacerated muscle was clearly exposed through pulverized skin. It was an awful sight and certainly a more awful experience. After watching for a while Marcus thought he could almost feel the uncomfortable closeness of so many tightly crammed corpses, he thought he could almost feel the searing heat amplified by a closed building whose air conditioning system was probably not working, he could almost taste the suffocating fugue of death and putrefaction that must be permeating the air. He swallowed hard.
Then Ed the robot deftly stepped over bodies and moved around scuttling patients and staff, to check the charts inside the hospital rooms. Ed’s eyes not only functioned as high-resolution recording devices, they also fed the robot’s dual CPUs information at a staggering rate. Ed could tell a person’s temperature to within a single degree, whether or not they were breathing and how many breaths per minute, heartrate, pupil dilation, and a limited amount of disease prognosis with nearly a single glance. The robot could glance at most injuries and tell how extensive they were beneath the surface as well as what type of operation would have the best chance of repairing the injury. That was why Professor Edelstein had programed Ed to go to the hospital, to locate, diagnose, and operate on the worst patients in a fraction of the time it would’ve taken a professional team of doctors, nurses, and assistants. Ed followed Edelstein’s programing as soon as it had located the first bed-bound patient that was still breathing. The patient was a young woman somewhere in her late teens, who had suffered an open compound fracture to the thighbone of her right leg and had twisted the angle of the other foot almost completely around.
An ugly puss and blood running infection ravaged where the woman’s thigh bone broke through the skin and it looked like gangrene was rapidly spreading from the open wound, and the ankle was swollen larger than a grapefruit. The woman was unconscious but there was only an empty IV line attached to her arm. The fluid in the bag had run out long ago and no one had returned to check on it. There was no sign that she had been given anything for the awesome pain she’d must’ve endured. Even unconscious, her face looked strained—she had probably screamed herself into exhaustion until she passed out from it. But she was still alive, and so Ed went to his work. The robot took no time to prepare, to wash its shiny hands or don a surgical mask. It didn’t call for any assistance and it didn’t check to see if the patient had been properly prepped for surgery. It placed one metal hand at the crest where the woman’s thigh met her pelvis, above the gaping wound, and the other just above her knee, below the wound.
Marcus watched as Ed squeezed slowly and moved its hands closer together until the horrible wound began to pucker. Then the robot bent low, opened its mouth wider than any human would’ve been able to and remained motionless, bent over the fracture as if it were studying it. It wasn’t studying the wound; it already had all the information its CPUs needed on that front. What it was doing was vibrating its hands at a frequency that was higher than the human eye could detect, and from its opened mouth it emitted a focused ultrasound beam directly into the fracture. The vibration increased blood flow to the site and the ultrasound beam accelerated healing exponentially. Together they began to work almost instantaneously. Severe infection made the woman’s flesh all around the broken wound look purple and black and noticeably swollen. After a moment of Ed bending over the wound the purple quickly became less purple, the black less black, and the bloated flesh less swollen.
Then the robot removed its hands and leveraged its fingers into the wound and slowly, steadily realigned the broken bone. That was when the woman woke up screaming. The robot didn’t seem perturbed. It removed a hand slowly, steadily from the wound and placed it firmly upon the ridge of the front of the woman’s right hip. From there Ed held the woman’s injured leg steady and continued operating inside the wound with the remaining hand. Its specially designed robotic fingers and wrists could bend completely in either direction and had complete articulation. Just one of its hands was more effective than two human hands. The woman thrashed and yelled like she was dying and there was no doubt in Marcus’ mind as he watched on that she must’ve felt like she was being murdered. This robot was realigning an open fracture to the largest and strongest—and thus the most agonizing if broken—bone in this woman’s body without anesthesia, with no restraints, while she was conscious. It was barbaric but considering that otherwise this woman would’ve certainly remained here, unattended, until she died slowly and painfully from blood poisoning from severe infection if she didn’t die from blood loss alone, it was the best possible solution.
The woman screamed until she passed out again as Ed finished aligning the bone and inspecting the surrounding tissue. Then the robot sutured up the wound in record time and left the woman to sleep off her agony. She would need months of grueling physical rehabilitation and it was highly unlikely that she would ever receive it but Ed had not been designed for that and so it left to locate and operate on another of the countless hopeless patients that permeated the hospital. Ed performed dozens of desperately needed operations that day alone and
they were all caught on tape, so to speak, thanks to its state of the art camera system. There were hours upon hours of gruesomely graphic footage of squalor and poverty and blood and gore and broken bone and ripped tendon and Ed’s steady attempt to help fix the mess. Marcus watched two hours of the footage and wondered if the robot’s attempts were futile. There were many patients that would live when they would’ve definitely died because of what Ed had done but wasn’t it likely that they would die horrible unrelated deaths later, anyway? And besides that, for every person the robot helped there were five thousand whom it couldn’t help.
Marcus and Professor Edelstein sat in Edelstein’s office. They sat side by side watching the robot’s recorded footage on a small television screen that Edelstein had brought into his office. The office door was closed and locked and the blinds hanging across the window were drawn. After a couple hours, Marcus paused the footage. “What was the purpose of this?” he asked.
“Preparation.” Professor Edelstein answered.
“Preparation?”
Professor Edelstein removed the disk with the images he and Marcus had just watched and replaced it with another one. “Preparation for this …”
The television screen colored to life but this time it didn’t show disgusting hospital rooms or hordes of dead or dying people lining the hallway, but wherever the robot was in the city it still dived into torn and destroyed human flesh with lasers and scalpels and ultrasonic beams. But now it didn’t realign bone or suture repaired wounds. Now it didn’t correct broken femurs, it amputated the entire leg and attached a new Titedelstein leg in its place. Ed repaired everything from broken arms to skull fractures with Titedelstein. A few of the people it worked on had no injuries but it amputated limbs and out fitted the fleshy stubs with Titedelstein prostheses anyway. Later in the footage, Ed walked through the dismal streets with a few of the cyborgs it had created trailing behind it. The reaction from the other Science City citizens was predictably belligerent. Men and woman, the elderly and the children, all threw trash from off the streets at the robot and the abominations that walked behind it. People yelled, they cursed, they spit, they raged. It was as if this imposing robot walking the streets of its own accord was the outlet they desperately needed to vent off some of the ire and hopelessness that ravished them daily.
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