Humanoid Central

by Tom Lichtenberg

Twelve

  Merry wasn't used to seeking out the human kids. She was uncertain how to go about it. Usually, she kept to herself or her own kind. In class she could seek out seating surrounded as much as possible by those she was pretty sure were androids like herself. During breaks and at lunch she kept to herself. She was not a gregarious or sociable person. On the contrary, she thought it more proper to be as introverted as possible, speaking up only when required, and interacting minimally with others. She had always been this way. She didn't feel a lack for not having any friends. Those were not strictly necessary. Generally, one had tasks to perform, and one would perform them best when one was left to oneself. Cycles involving others were cycles more or less wasted. She had seen the proof of this maxim many times.

  The team-building exercises were a prime example. Teams were said to be useful for some purposes, such as sporting activities which were inherently organized around the concept of teams. One couldn't very well play baseball by oneself, or football. Wars were another arena where groups were required. But in most other circumstances, collections of individuals tended to diminish, rather than enhance, the prospects of success, as far as Merry could tell. There was little she had accomplished in her own life that hadn't been done better alone, such as homework, reading, learning pretty much anything, watching videos, observing lifeforms and patterns, and generally figuring things out.

  Yet Haversham had assigned her a project that had to be done with Bysshe Vega, so it was a matter of duty that brought Merry over to where Bysshe was sitting with Aidan Alexa at lunch in the school cafeteria.

  "Bysshe. I would like to speak with you, when you have a little time," she said very formally, standing next to the table. Bysshe looked up, surprised that the girl was talking to her. Merry's aloofness was legend.

  "Sure, have a seat," Bysshe offered, her mouth full of tuna fish sandwich.

  "Not at this moment," Merry said, directing a sharp glance at Aidan Alexa, trying to make it clear that the other wasn't invited. Bysshe looked over at Aidan as well, who looked up at Merry, then at Bysshe.

  "I was just leaving," Aidan offered, and though Bysshe held out her hand to stop her from going, Aidan stood up, and picked up her tray and walked off. Merry immediately sat down across from Bysshe.

  "I've been instructed to work on a project with you," she said. "Haversham told me I had to."

  "I know," Bysshe replied. "He told me about it too. Sorry about that. It's my fault for messing up the Minefield thing."

  "We did nothing wrong," Merry said. She was trying to be as calm and professional as possible. It didn't occur to her that Bysshe might have an idea of her own, so she went right ahead as if they'd already agreed that she was in charge.

  "I know how to tell who's a Sheet," she declared. This got Bysshe to stop chewing. She squinted at Merry and wrinkled her nose, forming an expression that Merry couldn't read, except to reinforce her view that Bysshe was retarded.

  "No one's supposed to be able to do that," Bysshe said.

  "I can," Merry simply replied. "That's our project. I'll pick them out, and you put them down."

  "Put them down?"

  "Extinguish," Merry said, as if snuffing out a life form were the most natural thing in the world. "Well, isn't it?" she said to herself. "It's what humanity did to the rest of the planet already."

  "But why?" Bysshe asked. She was definitely intrigued. She wanted, more than anything, to be able to know who was who and who was what, but why 'put them out', as Merry would have it? It would be good enough just to know.

  "For the proof," Merry told her. "It will be like a science experiment. We write down our hypothesis. Well, mine, really, but we have to do it together. We list the things we think are “Sheet indicators”. Then we put down the steps we'll take for the proof. Then we do it, and write up our conclusions. Conclusion one? We were right. And the evidence? The Sheet is extinguished."

  "But what if we're wrong?" Bysshe asked, already subsuming herself in the 'we'.

  "If we're wrong, then that's our conclusion. We were wrong. That's the beauty of science," Merry said. "Nobody cares if you're wrong, as long as you took the right steps. And if we're wrong, then no one's put out, no harm done, so to speak."

  "No harm done," Bysshe considered. That was true, she was thinking. True if we're wrong. But what if we're right? If we're right, no, if she's right, then I'm in on the trick! I'll finally know. This is great!

  "Deal," Bysshe reached out her hand. Merry was slow to respond, but eventually calculated what Bysshe was up to, and held out her own hand as well, and they shook.

  "When do we start?" Bysshe asked next.

  "Since it's my theory," Merry said, "you can do the first work-up, put the paper together, the format, you know."

  "Like in Chemistry class?" Bysshe replied.

  "Right, just like that. Then we'll work on filling it in. In the library. Tomorrow at four?"

  "Tomorrow at four. I'll be there," Bysshe said, and Merry stood up.

  "Very well." she said, and walked off as un-dramatically as she could, although inside she was quivering with excitement.

  Thirteen

  As she sat in the back of her fifth period Humanities class, Merry was enjoying a feeling of immense satisfaction. Her antics at the Minefield had resulted in Haversham providing her with a wonderful opportunity. She wasn't the least bit interested in whether the project was "successful" in the sense of producing some expected outcome. In this case, failure was not only an option, it was practically guaranteed. Of course she had no idea whatever as to how to identify a Sheet. As Bysshe had accurately pointed out, no one was able to do that. Someone might happen to get lucky and that was the most they could hope for. It didn't matter to her if the person she singled out was actually a hologram or not. It would be enough to formulate a hypothesis, annotate the forms with the proper scientific terminology, and then make Bysshe do something really, really embarrassing to make it all the more fun. Her major problem now was figuring out exactly what and who and how.

  From her vantage point in the back row, where she could comfortably ignore the teacher's lecture about the use of imagery and symbolism in Joseph Conrad's ancient seafaring story 'Typhoon', Merry ran down the list of potential targets. She had already ruled out half the class, the half that were female. If she were to pull a prank on a girl like Bysshe it would have to be all about a guy. After all, they were fifteen and this chance was too perfect to waste. She was wishing she knew who Bysshe secretly liked, if indeed Bysshe secretly liked anyone. Now was the time where a friend might have been useful to have, someone to ferret out secrets, to gossip and betray. Too bad. She'd have to make a best guess.

  She began with the two in their group from the Minefield, Blair and Gar. Had Bysshe showed them any particular attention? No, she didn't think so. Besides, she had other reasons for ruling them out. Gar was too gangly and clumsy, and Blair had a sister and wasn't too shy around girls. Merry was going for maximum impact. To her left sat Dave Stark, and she considered him closely. He was smart, but then all of them were smart in this school. He was pretty good-looking, not that Merry found him attractive, but other girls might. Oh yes, other girls did, she remembered. He had a girlfriend, sort of, at school, that Sylvan Shepherd with the silver bangles that clanked and chimed wherever she went, and wherever Dave went, there was Sylvan, tagging along, like the faithful dog whose name she bore. Dave was out.

  Nate Rambler was a possible target. He wasn't too tall or otherwise notable. He kept to himself pretty much, and seemed a nice guy. That was his only disqualification. Merry was sort of keeping him in a kind of reserve for herself, though she'd never admit it. Her reasoning now was that Nate was probably too nice, and would handle the situation with grace. This was not her desire. She wanted someone more crude, much more awkward, someone already uncomfortable and, yes, there he was, right in front of her, not only perfectly awful but actually already a fit. Hadn't she seen them together already? She reflected. Yes, an
d it wasn't pretty. Bysshe had seemed to recoil in his presence, if Merry remembered correctly. He was ugly and scrawny and there was something else really repulsive about him - his odor. Well, then, why not? She sat back and smiled. This was going to be good.

  Fourteen

  By the appointed time, Merry had completed her entire thought process. Her plan was perfect in so many ways that she could hardly contain her excitement. On the other hand, it would be unseemly to display any such emotion, so she tried her best to appear outwardly calm and impassive. All afternoon she had avoided any engagements whatever. She participated as perfunctorily as possible in that day's team-building exercise, a futile pursuit called "Passing the Stone", which was so excruciating and took so long to complete that she was even beyond calling it "Passing the Kidney Stone." In this ritual, teams had to compete in deception and folly by passing, or pretending to pass, a stone down the line, and guessing where it ended up. When it was her turn to lead her strategy was "just pass the damn stone and the last person in the line will have it in the end." Remarkably, this tactic had not been tried by any other group, and had resulted in the deciding victory for her team. No one was terribly enthused, however. They even by-passed the traditional three cheers of 'yaaaay, team!'

  She entered the deserted library and hunted down the most secluded table, occupying the chair facing the door so she could spot Bysshe immediately upon the latter's entry, which occurred precisely on time, to Merry's surprise. She had already pegged Bysshe for a world class idiot and expected nothing but the least from her in every respect. Every point Bysshe scored in her own favor was, however, for naught, because Merry wasn't adding them up. In her estimation, Bysshe started out at zero on every new encounter. For her part, Bysshe was rather nervous. She found Merry to be extremely intimidating, a feeling compounded by the certainty of Merry's literally built-in superiority. Bysshe was well aware of the rumor, of course, that the current generation of androids had been diminished in their capacities, but she believed they were far above humans in most ways that mattered anyway. Merry was imperious, bold, contemptuous and proud, and Bysshe was all too susceptible to appearances. She was not yet aware that 'faking it' was the secret ingredient of the most powerful individuals' success in this world.

  She took the seat Merry indicated, and brought a neat, orange-covered binder out of her backpack. This she passed over to Merry, who, without even admiring the cover art Bysshe had put some effort into, opened it up and scanned the two pages it contained. The pages consisted of a very neat scientific experiment outline with all the appropriate headings, each followed by several blank lines: Question, Hypothesis, Variables, Procedure, Results and Conclusions. Merry nodded and wrinkled her nose to indicate satisfaction. Bysshe was uncertain how to interpret the gesture, and said nothing.

  "Very well," Merry said, turning the binder around and pushing it back across the table to her partner. "I shall narrate, and you shall write it down. Agreed?"

  "Okay," Bysshe answered quickly, and brought out a well-sharpened pencil.

  "Question," Merry began, and paused for a moment to re-consider the wording. She wanted to get everything right the first time, so there would be no opportunity for Bysshe to question or correct her words. She was considering between the options "How can a Hologram be detected?" and "How can a Hologram be extinguished?" but on reviewing the matter, the first question was far more likely to be acceptable to Mister Haversham, so she spoke that one aloud, and Bysshe wrote it down verbatim.

  "Hypothesis," Merry continued. "The contemporary hologram is said to be undetectable, which begs the question, why are its creators so confident? The contemporary hologram, unlike its predecessors, has material substance, yet it is still a projection, rather than a thing in itself. Previous generations were said to 'flicker' on occasion, but now even this flaw is said to have been corrected. The light source also can no longer be traced by special viewing or tracking equipment, having been disguised in some fashion, reputedly a matter of dark energy. We, being Bysshe Vega and Merry Freyjah, have neither advanced equipment nor the scientific background to pursue such sophisticated mechanisms of detection. Our hypothesis, on the contrary, is far more mundane."

  Here she paused for breath. She had rehearsed this part extensively and felt she was expressing it nicely. Bysshe was rather in shock at the elegance of Merry's expressiveness. Merry continued.

  "We believe the designers of this current generation had their own theories of detection avoidance that were rather more social than technical. They have decided to hide their creations, as it were, in plain sight. Our hypothesis is that the holograms are detectable precisely because of their commonness. They are constructed so as not to draw attention to themselves. They would be the most ordinary. the most normal, the most innocent and unsuspected individuals. Plus, each one would have a certain X factor, if you will, something different about them which one would never suspect of a hologram. This X factor will vary between individuals, but in every case it will be an attribute unassociated by anyone with an apparition of this sort."

  She spoke slowly to let Bysshe keep up, but it wasn't necessary. Bysshe, being a fast person generally, was a fast writer as well, and was barely a word behind Merry's narration. After Merry had concluded this section, Bysshe looked up expectantly.

  "Variables?" she asked.

  "Precisely," Merry replied. "The variables are the special qualities possessed by the individual holograms. These are a varied lot, pun intended. For this experiment, we will consider one male subject. A female subject has also been identified, but will not be included in this round. The male subject is a student at this school."

  Bysshe looked up from her paper again, full of questions, and Merry did her best to pause long enough to drive Bysshe a little crazy. She was enjoying her position, and wanted to wring out the most satisfaction possible from it. She knew she had Bysshe right where she wanted her.

  "The male subject is ordinary in many respects. He is of average height and weight, has no notable talents or abilities, is plain-looking and plain-speaking, in every respect an individual who would attract no attention. His X factor, however, is his peculiar body odor. This is something no one would ever suspect of a hologram. Vonny Ramone..." and here she paused again for full effect. Bysshe grimaced, her natural response to the merest mention of that boy. She found him almost completely repulsive, save for the fact of his apparent humanness. Now here was Merry claiming that Vonny was a hologram! Could it be? Did it make any sense? Did anything Merry had just said make any sense at all? Bysshe looked over the sections she'd already written down and tried hard to think deeply and seriously about the words, but she was still in the role of secretary and in thrall to the power of Merry Freyjah. She found it impossible to think for herself. She was in the mode of hearing and obeying.

  "Procedure," Merry continued, not wanting to give Bysshe any time at all to think of respond.

  "One of us, being you, by the way," she interjected, "will proceed to carry out the steps involved in this experiment. First of all, no one must know of our activities. No one. That includes your friend Aidan Alexa, by the way. and don't put that in the report. Agreed?"

  "Okay," Bysshe said a bit hesitantly.

  "No one can know," Merry insisted, and this time Bysshe nodded rapidly and agreed again.

  "Here is what you will do," Merry told her. "You will follow him, without his knowing, until he is alone somewhere. Then you will quietly come up behind him. You will grab his left thumb with your right hand, and pull on it as hard as you can."

  "What?" Bysshe was writing it down but the words suddenly sounded like gibberish. Sneak up behind him and pull on his thumb? What did that have to do with anything?

  "It's an old android trick," Merry explained, who was making it all up. This part was her favorite of the entire project. "You know about RV's, I assume."

  "Sure," Bysshe replied. "Required vulnerabilities."

  "Right," Merry said, "in the past it's al
ways been something like that. Press on the earlobe, tug on the thumb, tickle behind the knee, it's always a physical place and always requires some contact. There's no reason to assume that holograms are not programmed the same way as androids in this respect. People do what they do. So I'm going with the thumb thing, I mean we are, because it's traditionally a mark of early generation constructs. It's a pretty good bet. If that doesn't work, we'll move on to another attempt."

  "If that doesn't work?" Bysshe echoed, and completed the thought in her mind that if that didn't work, she was going to look like the biggest fool of all time. What could she possibly say to Vonny Ramone to explain such an act? That she tripped and fell and it was an accident? Maybe. That could work. All of a sudden she was feeling kind of nauseous.

  "Right," Merry continued. "Results and Conclusions. We believe that the hologram will reveal itself upon the conclusion of this procedure, either by emitting a tell-tale flicker, or some other sign of revelation."

  "And there you have it," she finished up. "So, are we good? Good, because I have to be going now."

  And without giving Bysshe even a moment to reply, Merry got up and strode rapidly out of the room. Bysshe has left staring at the paper and, after a moment or two, repeatedly striking herself on the forehead with the palm of the very hand she was now supposed to use to subject herself to a complete and utter humiliation.

  Fifteen

  Maybe the worst part was that she couldn't even tell Aidan Alexa. This was the first time there had been any secret she'd had to keep from her friend, and it was hard, very hard to do it. For one thing, Aidan was already waiting for Bysshe outside of the school. Bysshe had already told her about having to do a project with Merry, so of course Aidan wanted to know all about it. What could Bysshe say? She didn't want to lie, so she sucked it up and told her best friend the truth, that for some reason she wasn't allowed to tell her. Aidan Alexa was all right with that.

  "Cool," she said, "secrets are cool."

  "I really want to tell you," said Bysshe as they started to walk home.

  "No, it's all right. I don't even want to know. I promise not to even ask you, okay?"

  f

  "Okay," Bysshe said, feeling miserable. She also was sick of saying "Okay".

  "What am I?" she said to herself, "some kind of agreeable robot? Because I'm saying Okay all the time but I'm sure as hell not thinking Okay. I'm thinking No, Not Okay, so why am I saying Okay?"

  Aidan Alexa wanted to talk about Passing the Stone. She'd thought it was an interesting game. She especially liked how Merry had won by not doing anything clever at all. Everyone else was trying too hard. Sometimes the path of least resistance is not only the easiest but also the best. Bysshe thought she was probably right about that, but she was having a hard time listening to what Aidan Alexa was saying. All she could think of was how was she going to get through this? She was thinking of simply not doing it. What if Merry wasn't there at the time? She could lie, and say that she'd pulled on his thumb, and nothing had happened. Failure is always an option, right?

  She repeated these lines in her head, not only all the way home, but all night as well, through dinner, through homework, through reading assignments of which she later remembered nothing, and all night as she lay in her bed. But what again if Merry was there? What if Merry followed her all day and wouldn't let her out of her sight? What if Merry forced her to do it? What if there was no way out? Would Merry even leave her alone? Of course not. This seemed obvious. She was not going to escape from the actual physical contact. That reality was going to occur, and from that moment on her life would degrade. She would be the girl who went around oddly touching foul-smelling boys. Everyone would find out and laugh at her forever. The ridicule would essentially be infinite.

  She was right about Merry. That one was not going to leave anything to chance. She had already figured it out, a fact she told Bysshe the first thing the next morning.

  "I know his routine," she informed her. "And our opportunity will present itself shortly, I promise. You won't have to wait too much longer."

  She was already concerned that Bysshe would back out of the plan and had arranged the whole matter so it could occur fairly promptly.

  "He has a regular appointment with Miss Landers, theTranscendental Group teacher, at ten every Wednesday," she said, this being Wednesday, and already nine. Bysshe took a deep breath and decided to turn off her brain. She would just let herself be Merry's automaton for now, come what may. As long as the thing would be over.

  Homeroom seemed to last forever. Bysshe sat directly behind Vonny and stared at the back of his neck the whole class. A few times her gaze dropped to view his left hand, and the thumb that was properly attached in its place. It looked like an ordinary digit. There was nothing the least hologrammatical about it. Every time she looked at it she scolded herself. As if it was suddenly not going to be there if she didn't look! From across the room, Merry occasionally studied Bysshe's expression with great satisfaction. She wasn't sure if she had ever felt so happy before in her life. She was thinking that maybe she truly was a Future Leader of Today after all. She had what it took. Maybe her parents wouldn't be proud of the particulars of this escapade, but no one could deny it was an act of raw power.

  When the bell rang, she went straight to Bysshe's side, and escorted her into the hall, where they followed Vonny around a corner, down a long corridor, through another door, and then toward the office of the Transcendental Group leader. Here again, Merry had planned well ahead, and had taken the initiative to invite that individual to a meeting with Mister Haversham, a meeting of sudden urgency that wasn't actually scheduled or needed. It would take a few minutes for the teacher and the supervisor to straighten it out. In the meantime, there was Vonny, alone in the hall, in front of the door, peering hopelessly into its frosted glass window.

  Merry practically shoved Bysshe toward him. Bysshe nearly tumbled and fell, but kept her balance and, saying a prayer of some sort, rushed up to him just as fast as she could, grabbed hold of his left thumb with her entire right hand, and tugged as hard as she could. Taking a sharp breath, she let go, turned around and ran back. Merry grabbed her arm and pulled her around the corner, but stuck her own head back out into the hall to see what had happened, if anything. She expected to see Vonny Ramone staring at her with his stupid cow's eyes, maybe clutching his sore left hand in the other. Either that, or he would be cursing, or laughing, or shaking his head. What she actually saw, though, was something quite different.

  Vonny Ramone had come to a complete and dead stop. He froze in his tracks and then, like a top-heavy machine that had run out of batteries, he crashed in a heap to the floor.

  Sixteen

  "What is it? What happened?" Bysshe whispered from behind the wall.

  "We've got to get out of here," Merry said, pulling her head back.

  "Why? What happened?" Bysshe repeated, not daring to take a glance around the corner herself, just in case Vonny was standing right there.

  "I don't know," Merry said, "but he's down. He just fell right down. We've got to go. Someone's coming!"

  She thought she could hear footsteps approaching from the other end of the hall. Bysshe didn't hear anything, but she wasn't going to take any chances, and as Merry dashed past her, she quickly followed. They were already late to their next class anyway which, as luck would have it, was Chemistry.

  Unfortunately for the two girls class was a lecture that day, not a lab, so when they entered the room the teacher had to stop talking and everyone watched as they sheepishly went to their seats.

  "Anyone else?" the teacher, Mister Mumford, asked. "Miss Vega? You didn't happen to see Mister Ramone on your way from wherever it was you were, did you?"

  "No, sir," Bysshe said, as politely as possible while sitting down and pulling out her notebook.

  "I suppose you have no good excuse," he continued, but waved his hands as Bysshe and Merry both shook their heads. "Never mind then," he said, "we w
ere talking about metallic diffusion."

  And he kept on talking about metallic diffusion, operating temperatures, self-passivation and other properties of physical metallurgy, just as if it were possible that anyone in the class had any idea what any of it meant. Mumford was legendary for not noticing or even caring whether his students were paying the slightest attention to him. He had his lectures all prepared, had his lab assignments lined up, and the students would perform the labs and learn the material or not, pass the tests or fail as may be, and it was all the same to him. He was, in other words, a classical educator.

  Bysshe usually struggled to keep up with the lecture, furiously consulting textbooks and notes as her teacher meandered through the subject matter, but this time she found she couldn't do it. How she wished she'd had the nerve to glance around that corner! It would have only taken a moment, just a fraction of a second, and then she'd know for sure if Merry has been telling the truth or playing mind games with her. It was entirely possible Merry was lying. Bysshe couldn't think of why Merry would do that, but then again she never did figure out that whole thing about the thumb and what it could possibly have to do with anything.

  Did Vonny really just fall down like she said, and if so, why? Did he faint, which would mean he was human? Switch off, like an android? Was he extinguished, like a hologram? It was maddening that she didn't know and maybe never would! What if they got caught? Had anybody seen them? What if he was hurt, and they just ran away without telling anyone, or even making an anonymous phone call to emergency? Was that a crime itself? What if she had killed him? All of these thoughts were rushing through her brain, making it impossible to concentrate or even be aware of her surroundings. If Mumford had called on her at any time she probably would have burst out crying.

  Her accomplice, on the other hand, was peacefully content. Her first reaction had been sheer joy. She knew she'd only gotten lucky. The thumb thing was a joke, of course, but then it had actually had some effect. Human, android, hologram, whatever. It did annoy her slightly that the result was inconclusive, but she felt certain that the answer would be forthcoming. Whatever happened to Vonny Ramone was bound to become public knowledge and fairly soon. She had, however, no idea how soon that worm would turn.

  They had come into class ten minutes late. Twenty minutes later, the door opened again, and in walked the very same Vonny Ramone, looking perfectly fine and healthy as if nothing had happened.

  "Sorry I'm late, sir," Vonny said to Mister Mumford. "I sort of lost track of the time."

  "I suppose that's better than time losing track of you," Mumford sarcastically replied, waving Vonny into the room, and resuming his deadly dry lecture. Merry and Bysshe couldn't help but exchange glances of shock and confusion. Bysshe was relieved that Vonny was even alive, whereas Merry was dismayed by the fact. The one reaction the two had in common was to wonder what Vonny knew about what happened, and who else might he have shared that knowledge with.