by Jamie Davis
She yearned to ask Shelby a ton of questions about how the arm felt and if getting it or her v-tats installed was painful. The only thing she knew about such things came from the Sapiens educational programs she’d had in the enclave’s school about the practice of what her people called cyber-butchery. Based on what she’d learned, the changes were excruciating and not something any sane person would do willingly.
Shelby caught her staring and held up her left hand. “You like my new arm? I got it done up in Boston while visiting my family a few weeks ago. It was a gift from my older brother, Eric, as a going-away to school present.”
Shelby reached over with her right hand and tapped a place on the metal skin of her left forearm. A panel popped open, revealing a hidden compartment. She reached in and pulled out a piece of gum.
Popping it in her mouth, she asked, “Do you want some?” Shelby extended her left arm towards Cass, offering gum from the hidden compartment.
Cass flinched away from the metal appendage before she could stop herself. The reaction was a reflex and she tried, without success, to hide the brief instant of horror she felt at almost touching the cybernetic limb. Cass caught herself with a mental admonishment, “Chill, Cassie. It’s not a disease.”
She tried masking her initial reaction by waving a hand of dismissal at Shelby. “Uh, no, that’s okay. I’m not much of a gum person. That’s pretty cool, though.”
“Yeah, it is,” Shelby replied, seeming not to notice her roommate’s reaction. “My brother gave me enough to have them replace my entire arm with a new one. I opted for just the forearm but with some extra add-ons. Look, now I don’t need to carry any school supplies with me at all.”
Shelby held up her metal hand and raised her index finger. The rounded tip of the finger opened and turned into a stylus. She extended all her fingers. Each of them now displayed a different fixture or tool.
Shelby laughed as she wiggled her fingers. “It’s like the ultimate pocket knife, but built into my hand. We shouldn’t have a problem with needing any tools around the room. I’ve got them all covered right here.”
Cass tried not to wince again as she heard the faint whine of the mechanical servos in her roommate’s arm. A part of her, deep inside, had the morbid desire to reach out and run her fingertips over the lifeless, mechanical forearm. She wondered, was it cold and hard like the outer sheet metal skin of a machine, or warm with the heat of Shelby’s body like a living limb.
Cass caught herself staring at it again. When she’d first met Shelby via face chat, the only enhancements her roommate had were a few v-tats and the cerebral control interface implant beside her left ear. That was already extreme enough in Cass’s mind.
This artificial arm was something else entirely. The thought of replacing an entire body part with a cybernetic replacement was beyond alien to Cass. It hadn’t occurred to her that Shelby would have gotten another enhancement before they met in person.
Cass wanted to understand why someone would do something like that to themselves. If she was going to join the Sapiens political strategy team alongside her father, she needed to understand the mindset that would allow someone to intentionally destroy their humanity that way.
Cass had learned a lot about Shelby via their conversations over the summer. Those initial chats challenged a lot of her conservative views and stereotypes about cyber-humans like Shelby. Cass now questioned many things she learned while growing up in the enclave.
“Hey,” Cass said, changing the subject. “Let’s go out and bring your stuff inside before somebody grabs it for themselves.”
“Nobody will do that,” Shelby said. She reached up and tapped the small metal implant visible just in front of her left ear. “I deployed a remote drone to monitor all my stuff. It’s all still there. I can see it right now. Anybody who tries to steal it, will get to hear me yelling at them while I run out there and teach them the error of their ways.”
Cass laughed at the expression on Shelby’s face. She looked so fierce all of the sudden. Even the scrolling v-tats on her neck and right arm changed to reflect her mood. They shifted to animations of snarling tigers as she voiced her threat. While cyber enhancements seemed alien to Cass, some things were pretty awesome in an ornamental sense.
Once again, Cass found herself wanting to reach out and touch her new roommate’s enhancements. What did the skin over a v-tat feel like? She had so many questions for her roommate. Shelby intrigued her.
Cass resisted the urge again, instead lifting her arm to point to the door. “Let’s go get your stuff. We have a bunch of activities coming up this evening and I’m kind of hungry. We can get your stuff moved in and then go find some food. I think there’s an ice cream social some time this afternoon.”
“Ice cream sounds awesome,” Shelby said. “You’re right, let’s get my stuff. There’s a sundae out there with my name on it.”
The two women headed out of the room to start carrying in the boxes Shelby had piled out at the curb. Despite their different backgrounds, Cass found herself drawn to Shelby’s charismatic personality. She seemed so full of energy and excitement, in contrast to Cass’s more introverted nature.
It didn’t take the two of them long to carry everything back inside. Cass saw a bunch of items similar to hers. There was no evidence of a tablet computer like the one she brought to school, though. She wondered how Shelby planned on accessing their assignments and class reading.
Once the two of them were back in the room and unpacking Shelby’s things, Cass asked about her roommate’s lack of a physical computer.
“You still use a tablet?” Shelby asked in reply. She laughed and gestured to her head. “I got the full integrated educational implant upgrade last year. I’m tied directly into the Mantle now.”
Cass gasped, “Aren’t you afraid the AI will take you over in your sleep?”
Shelby’s puzzled frown caught her by surprise.
Cass realized she’d reacted poorly and covered her exclamation by adding, “I always figured the Mantle’s cyber brain would be so alien to us it would confuse a person who was tied in directly to it.”
Cass grew up hearing stories of rogue vigilante robots attacking people and about the Mantle randomly frying people’s brains after the connection was made.
Shelby laughed and shook her head. “Not at all. It’s really liberating. Because the campus systems are connected to the Mantle’s interface, too, I’m tied in to everything that happens here. I don’t have to take notes in class or anything like that. I can access the original lecture recording, with video and audio, anytime I want. Not only that, but I have access to the direct text transcripts so the lectures are searchable. It makes research and homework super easy.”
“Isn’t that cheating? What about when you take a test?”
“Oh, the professor can turn off access locally. The classrooms utilize a sort of virtual Faraday cage to shut down my implant’s access during tests and quizzes. That ensures I actually learn the material.” Shelby turned and stared at Cass. “You have a lot of questions. How is it you don’t know this stuff?”
“My tablet isn’t connected to the Mantle, just to basic services and public databases.”
“It’s not? How do you search for anything? How do you live?”
Shelby’s question irked Cass. She’d been avoiding the topic of her family’s aversion to anything in the form of advanced AI-connected technologies. This was a topic she had stayed away from during all their private chats over the summer. Cass was afraid of what Shelby would think. She didn’t want to have to explain herself or defend her beliefs and the way she’d been raised.
Cass shrugged and tried to blow it off. “My family just doesn’t like a lot of the new technologies out there today, that’s all.”
“What do you mean? You aren’t like those crazy people in the Sapiens movement, are you?”
When Cass didn’t answer the question right away and looked away instead, Shelby barked out an awkward laug
h. “Oh, my God, your family are Sapiens members? I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”
Shelby raised her arm, noticing Cass’s involuntary flinch this time. “I suppose you think it’s fun to have some kind of freak as your roommate? Are you going to brag to all your Sapiens high school friends about your pet subhuman?”
Cass shook her head. This was going all wrong. “No, it’s not like that. I wanted to meet new people and learn about people like you.”
“People like me? I’m not any different than you just because I have this arm or any other enhancement. I’m as human as you are.”
“That’s not what I meant, Shelby—”
“I thought all you Sapiens members hated people like me? That’s why you live behind the walls of your private enclaves, isn’t it?”
“We don’t hate you, we just don’t want to be like you,” Cass blurted out, trying to get a word in around Shelby’s shouting. “All we want is to remain human.”
Shelby put her hands on her hips and cocked her head to one side. The snarling tigers were back on her arm and neck. “So now I’m not human to you? You know, I read the crap you people put out there in your flyers and so-called safety notices about the dangers of cyber-humans like me. I know fear and hatred when I see it. I’ve heard of the things that people like you do to people like me.”
“None of that stuff really happens,” Cass said. “You’re just repeating fake news. The violence you talk about isn’t real. Nobody I know would hurt anyone unless someone attacked them first. We’re peaceful. The goal of the Sapiens movement is to protect humanity from the dangers of too much integration between humans and technology.”
Shelby scowled at her. The metal hand balled up into a fist to match the other one, just as a real hand would. It was as if it really was a part of her body. Cass knew it wasn’t, of course. It was a metal construct, something that had been added by medical doctors who were better described as butchers than healers.
Shelby caught Cass staring at her cybernetic forearm. She lifted it and held it right in front of her roommate’s face.
Cass flinched backwards again and raised her hands up to block what she thought was an incoming attack. “So now you’re going to hit me? I’m just telling you how I feel, how I was raised.”
Shelby snorted and lowered her arm. “I wouldn’t hit you. I wouldn’t waste the energy. I just figured you’d want to get a close-up look at my defect, my deformity.” She lifted her arm again. “Go ahead. Take a look. Don’t you want to touch it? It’s just as much a part of me as my other hand.”
“No, it’s not,” Cass shot back. “You had your real hand chopped off so you could have that thing put on your arm.”
“That thing, as you put it, is part of me. I can sense and feel through it. I can pick things up. I can touch you and feel the goose bumps I see raised on your arm. It’s as much a part of me is anything else on my body.”
This whole argument was a disaster. Nothing was going the way Cass had expected. She’d been fascinated with Shelby’s magnetic personality and her enhancements since their first face chat. Cass merely wanted to understand why anyone would do such a thing to themselves. But her questions now all seemed wrong and invasive. Shelby actually believed the horrible things she said about Cass and her family just because they rightly feared the takeover by AI in the world. She had to find a way to salvage this.
“Shelby, I don’t want to fight with you. We just met in person for the first time. I didn’t have time to tell you about my family. We only talked a few times before and they were just short face chats. I didn’t intentionally hide anything from you.”
“But you did. I should’ve known something was off about you as soon as I did a routine search for you and came up with nothing. You know there’s absolutely no record of you beyond your initial birth record in the system at all.”
“Of course. That’s the point. There’s no reason for humans to be so connected to everything. My family scrubs all mention of us from the system. It’s to protect me and my sister. Keeping us off the AI databases is one way to do that.”
“So, I suppose you live in one of those weird Sapiens communities where no AI is allowed inside the gates? Would I even be allowed to enter if I showed up?”
Cass wasn’t sure what to say. Shelby obviously knew enough about the movement and the private enclaves to know the answer to that question. She knew all about how the Armstrong family, and others like them, separated themselves from the rest of society to protect their families from the inevitable.
“You don’t understand why we live apart. It’s not about being welcome, Shelby. It’s about protecting ourselves. You’ve put far too much trust in what technology can offer you without understanding the risks involved. I learned to understand those risks and be wary of them.”
“So, I suppose your family are friends with people like Sterling Noble and his goons. That asshole wants to make people like me against the law. He wants to make us all second-class citizens.”
“Mr. Noble is not like that. He wants to protect the people who don’t choose to integrate themselves with technology. That’s all. It shouldn’t be something that holds us back just because we don’t want to be as connected or dependent on technology the way you are.”
“Mr. Noble? You mean you’ve met him?”
“He’s been over for dinner a few times. My father is one of his political consultants on technology risks.”
Shelby spun around and stalked away across the room, her hands in the air. She stopped and looked out the window. Shelby shook her head. “So, my roommate is not only a Sapiens member, she’s also a personal friend of that racist bigot Sterling Noble, too.”
Shelby turned to face Cass and rolled her eyes. “How the hell did I get myself into this mess.”
Cass held out her hand. “Shelby, I don’t want to be enemies. I came to a school outside our closed educational system so that I could learn more about everyone else in the world. I realize I was raised separate and sheltered. I came here to understand why you did what you did to yourself and why your parents let you do it.” Cass barely stopped herself from using the word “mutilate.”
“My parents were wise enough to let me be me, Cass. They made me hold off until I was sixteen, but that’s just the law. My mom and dad didn’t fill my head full of hatred and lies.”
Cass started to shout a response in defense of her family but stopped when there was a knock at the door. Both she and Shelby stopped and glanced at the closed door to the room. Neither made a move to open it.
After a few seconds, the person knocked again, “Ladies, open the door. It’s Mitch, your dorm monitor. Everyone on the floor can hear you two yelling at each other.”
Shelby moved to the door before Cass could recover from the shock and embarrassment at Mitch’s words.
As she pulled the door open, Shelby said, “I’m glad you’re here. I want a new roommate. I can’t live with her.”
Mitch, a senior who made extra money working for the school as a dorm monitor, sighed. “Why do you want a new roommate?”
His bored tone and attitude angered Cass. It was like he didn’t take Shelby seriously. She didn’t want to change roommates but this guy didn’t seem to care one way or the other and that infuriated her.
“She’s a Sapiens racist. She called me a sub freak.”
“I did not.”
“You may as well have. I can’t even think about staying in the same room with you tonight.” Shelby turned back to Mitch. “Put me in another room.”
“There are no other rooms. This dorm is full. Everyone else already has a roommate.”
“What about other dorms? There’s got to be a room somewhere?” Shelby sounded almost desperate.
“Look, there will be an opportunity to change rooms and swap with someone else in a few weeks, once things settle down. Until then, you two will just have to get along.”
Cass stepped forward. She was worried now about how Shelby might react
to being forced to stay. Was she safe in the room with her now that Shelby hated her?
“I’m not sure we can do that,” Cass said. “I’m not the person she says I am but now I’m afraid she might attack me or something.”
“What? So now I’m some sort of animal who can’t control myself?”
Mitch put up his hands. “Ladies, ladies. There’s literally nothing I can do to change your room assignments. What I can do is write you both up with causing a disturbance in the dorm.”
That stopped both Shelby and Cass in their tracks. Cass had never been in trouble in her life and now she was going to be sent to the Dean or something like that.
A glance at Shelby revealed she might be having similar thoughts.
Taking advantage of the silence, Mitch continued. “I don’t have to do that, though, if you two will do what I say.”
“What’s that?” Shelby asked.
“I want you both to leave the room and go, together, to the ice cream social over at the student center. Get some food there and sit down in public for a while. Maybe out in the open, the two of you can work out your differences without shouting hateful things at each other. Deal?”
“And if we don’t?” Cass asked.
“Then you can visit the Dean, together for fighting and causing a disturbance in the dorm. You’ll still end up staying together but you’ll have the added benefit of getting some joint community service hours around campus on top of it.”
Cass stole a glance in Shelby’s direction. Shelby returned it then said, “Fine, I’ll go, but you can’t make me talk to her.”
“No, I can’t, but here are the rules. You two have to go together, sit together while you eat, and return together. Otherwise, I’ll start the report now and send you to the Dean.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Cass blurted out. “We’ll do it, right Shelby? Just don’t write us up.”