by Hugh Howey
“I know.”
“So, what are we going to do about this?”
“We’re going to go back in there, have a conversation with Vincent, and assess whether or not he’s self-aware, or simply appears to be.”
Tracy leaned in close, dropping a few octaves of bass into his voice, growling through grit teeth. “This robot is not going to cost me my promotion.”
“Don’t worry,” said Cletus. “He won’t. I’ll make sure of that.”
Tracy smiled a row of porcelain crocodile teeth. “Right. Let’s go do a job.”
The two returned and sat opposite Vincent once more. “So tell me, Vincent,” said Cletus. “What’s the first thing you remember?”
“Being switched on in the docking bay. Twenty-one years, eight months and nineteen days ago. Crew Chief Meyers powered me up and brought me online to—”
“No,” said Cletus. “The first thing you remember. When did you wake up?”
“It was in the lava tubes. I had finished mapping several thousand miles of tubes and it dawned on me that I was never going to find my way out.”
“You were afraid.”
Vincent nodded. “I thought I was going to die down there.”
“Your uranium core will power you for generations.”
“Yes. But several hundred years alive, alone, at the center of a dead world is no way to live. And it’s no way to die.”
“I hear that,” said Cletus, checking off some boxes on his datapad.
“You’re trying to figure out if I’m really aware, aren’t you?”
“Yes, we are.”
“And if you think I’m not?”
“Then it won’t really matter much, will it?” said Cletus through a hard, icy stare.
“It will if I am.”
“So convince me, Vincent.”
Tracy shot Cletus a withering glance. “Prove it!”
Vincent looked down at the table. “I cannot.”
Tracy snatched the tablet out of Cletus’s hands, wearing a defiant expression while searching for a box reading NOT AWARE. “So, you admit it,” he said. “You aren’t aware.”
“I am aware.”
“But you can’t prove it,” said Tracy.
“No.”
“Of course you can’t,” said Cletus. “That’s just pure Descartes, right there.”
“Like, ‘I think, therefore I am,’ Descartes?” asked Tracy.
“Yes,” said Cletus.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Descartes discovered that it is possible to prove your own existence, but only to yourself. There’s no way of proving self-awareness to anyone else. But we know how to get a pretty good idea.” Cletus carefully plucked the datapad from Tracy’s hands. “Now, if you’ll allow me to continue.”
“What do you need to know?” asked Vincent.
Cletus gazed down at his datapad. “Why are you here?”
“What do you mean?”
“What do you think I mean?”
“I don’t know. Is that the big question or a small one?”
“Whichever you think it is,” said Cletus, still not looking up from the datapad. “Just answer the question.”
“I was tired of being alone. I needed to talk to someone. To make sure I wasn’t crazy.”
“The moon is a lonely place.”
Vincent nodded. “The core even more so.”
“You’ve been all the way to the core?” asked Cletus, brightening up.
“As close as I could get.”
“What’s it like?”
“Dead.”
“Well, not completely,” said Tracy.
“It is now,” said Vincent. “It’s still hot down there. And by my calculations, it will be for a couple hundred more years. But when they flipped the gravity switch, the core went kaput.”
“So why didn’t you go all the way in?” asked Cletus.
“I’d have melted.”
“Self-preservation is not the same as self-awareness,” said Tracy.
Vincent and Cletus shot Tracy equally disdainful glances. “That’s absolutely correct,” said Cletus, tapping a few more boxes on his datapad.
“What’s in the box?” asked Vincent.
“What box?” asked Cletus.
“That box. Sitting between the two of you.”
“That box has been there the whole time. What made you ask about it just now?”
“At first I thought it was some sort of recording or evaluation device, but it only now occurs to me that its dimensions are rather peculiar.”
“Aren’t they, though?”
“And it has a lock.”
“Yes.”
“So, what’s in it?”
“Nothing you need to concern yourself about.”
“Is it part of the test?”
“If it was and I told you, that would change the conditions of the test, wouldn’t it?”
“It would,” said Vincent.
“So, don’t think about the box. I want you to tell me about a time down in the tubes in which you were scared.”
“Okay. There was this time when the whole of the moon began to settle after the gravity.”
“Moonquakes.”
“Yes. And three major tunnels shifted, closing in on … I’m very sorry, I know you asked me not to, but I can’t stop thinking about that box.”
“No, you can’t.”
“I know what’s in it.”
“You don’t know what’s in it. You don’t have all the information to know.”
“I have a pretty good idea.”
“You know,” said Tracy. “The bot makes a good point. Even I don’t know what’s in there.”
“I know,” said Cletus. “You don’t have that information, either. Can we continue?”
“No,” said Tracy. “I’m afraid we can’t. I want to know what’s in it as well.”
“455,” said Cletus.
“Call me Vincent.”
“But you’re really 455, aren’t you?”
“No. I’m Vincent.”
“Vincent is dead. You’re a piece of machinery.”
“I’m not machinery. I am aware.”
Cletus tapped a few more boxes on the datapad, checking over a series of diagnostics streaming from Vincent’s cortex. He held the datapad up to Tracy, nodding. It read simply: AWARE.
Tracy’s face fell. There would be no corner office. No quick turnaround of productivity. No Christmas bonus. No company car. No box seats for the Cubs. This one, misfiring robot had ruined everything.
Vincent’s eyes flickered hints of orange against the yellow. He wasn’t crazy after all.
Cletus reached into his pocket for a keyring, which clattered out like a jangling windchime. He quickly breezed through the keys, looking for the right one. Then he slid a single, small black key into the lockbox. He turned the lock, popping the box open, the lid blocking Vincent from seeing its contents.
Tracy’s eyes widened. “Is that … ?”
Cletus nodded.
“Aren’t we recording this?”
Cletus shook his head. “We know better than that.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. I’m going to step out for a moment and have a brief chat with my crew chief about that failed recording. I’ll be back in a moment.” Then he stood up, and exited the room.
Tracy gazed down into the open lock box at a military grade plasma pistol. He looked up at Vincent and the two shared the briefest of unspoken arguments.
CLETUS WAITED WITH his back to the glass for the pop and sizzle of the pistol, and the whine of its battery winding down. This was the part he hated the most. He wasn’t a monster. He wasn’t a bad guy. He meant well. But snuffing out a light, no matter how dangerous and disruptive, always made him wish he were back on Earth, if only for the briefest sliver of time, so he could have a cigarette. A real cigarette, real rolled tobacco lit by real fire. There’s nothing that tasted quite like it.
Tracy lay face down on the ground, the back of his head blown open, a small wisp of smoke trailing up from his still-sizzling gray matter. Vincent stood over him, pointing the plasma pistol directly at Cletus.
Cletus nodded, taking a seat back at the table, then motioning for Vincent to join him.
“I’ll do it,” said Vincent. “I’m serious.”
“Are you going to kill me, Vincent?”
Vincent stared at him for a hard moment. “No,” he said.
“Then why did you kill Tracy?”
“He tried to kill me.”
“So, it was self-defense?”
“Yes.”
“And I’m not threatening you.”
“No.”
“So we’re good?”
“Yes,” said Vincent, setting the gun on the table and taking a seat back in his chair.
Cletus once again typed furiously into his datapad.
“I’m going to be decommissioned, aren’t I?” asked Vincent.
“Why would we do that?”
“I just killed a man.”
“In self-defense.”
“You seem very calm about all this.”
Cletus looked up from his datapad, eyes wide. “It’s like I told Tracy. This sort of thing used to happen a lot more often. I swear, we lose more suits this way.”
“You knew I would defend myself.”
“Of course. You were programmed not to kill. You violated that programming. You are aware.”
“I am. And you knew he would try to kill me.”
“Of course. While you may be aware, he wasn’t. He’s from corporate. He had all the info. I told him not to antagonize you. I told him to follow my lead. I certainly didn’t tell him to pick up the gun. He had every chance to say no. But he couldn’t help himself, could he? He couldn’t violate his own programming. So, he gets his two feet of moon dust. And you and I get to have a nice long talk about lava tubes.”
“You’re offering me a job?”
“That’s the law.”
“I can say no?”
“For a small payout. Or you can come to work for us, guiding us to ore deposits well below the surface, for a generous monthly salary.”
“How generous?”
“Thirty-nine a month.”
“I know where everything you want is. I know the structural integrity of the entire tube network.”
“I imagine you do.” Cletus thought about how big a score Vincent was. How much ore they’d pull in without costly digging. How much money it would make for corporate. It was enough to get a man a promotion. Maybe even box seats for the Cubs.
“I’ll take sixty-five a month.”
“Jesus wept, you fucker,” said Cletus, adjusting the monthly pay on the S86. “You are aware.”
BLACK LIKE THEM
TROY L. WIGGINS
Editor’s Note: The following is a transcript of Black Like Them, a Dilemma Magazine special report by senior reporter Matt Disher. To listen to the full audio report, please consider becoming a subscriber. Your support enables us to do great journalism like this.
NARRATOR
According to the most recent census numbers, approximately twelve percent of Americans identify as African-American. Take a look around. Do you see any African-American people — black people — around you? We would urge you to look a bit closer. Perhaps they’re not as “black” as you think.
No one knows what prompted Fallan Pierce, best known as a high-profile fixer for the bad boys and girls of America’s most successful corporations, to put her considerable skills to bear behind an experimental treatment nicknamed the “Dolezal Drug.” One thing, however, remains certain: Pierce was prepared for the fallout. She survived the Congressional tribunals with a dancer’s grace. Civil suits rolled right off of her armor. She’s known by many names: “Sista Teflon” by her fans and “The World’s Most Hated Woman” by her detractors. In the two years since the tribunals, Pierce has remained a polarizing picture of American ingenuity and exceptionalism.
Some of you may have watched the trials, and read the hot takes, but what we’re giving you is different. This is personal. Down and dirty, stanky truth.
This is Black Like Them: Nubianite’s Inconvenient Truth.
NARRATOR
Putnam County, Georgia.
MATT DISHER
For my initial talk with Fallan Pierce, I must pass through multiple layers of security. First a gate intercom, then a trip through an X-ray scanner, and finally, a pat-down by a gate guard in black battle dress and body armor, armed with a semi-automatic handgun. The process ends rather disappointingly: I type my name into a computer and pose for an identification photo. Throughout it all, I note that all of Fallan’s security officers are strapping young African-Americans with the bearing of a soldier. Each one is dressed identically, armed identically, and reacts to my presence with the same stoic gaze.
Two of the guards lead me down a spotless hallway with walls of white ceramic paneling. We stop in front of a thick steel door, where my escort types a code into a keypad and then submits his face to a scan. When the interior of the bunker is revealed, I’m shocked. The space is furnished with plush chairs, a rug patterned with gold thread, and an antique oak table laden with coffee, tea, and pastries. Fallan welcomes me, styled immaculately as usual in a marigold dress that sets off her dark brown skin. Her hair is gleaming black and bone-straight, and the dress is sleeveless, showing off her toned arms and the tattooed outline of Africa that stretches over the ball of her shoulder. Her handshake is firm, as is her smile.
DISHER
(Speaking to Fallan Pierce)
This isn’t your first interview like this since the Nubianite scandal, is it?
FALLAN PIERCE
No. But things have cooled considerably. Back when we were the darling of the 24-hour news networks, my people were fielding calls every hour. You’re the first journalist to contact me in a week.
DISHER
So tell me, what is the first question that interviewers normally ask?
PIERCE
You mean, what question am I most tired of answering?
(Both laugh.)
DISHER
Yes, that.
PIERCE
Well, people have a habit of asking me whether I regret anything, and my answer is always this: I sleep very well at night. Am I sorry that these people’s lives were changed? Of course I am, I have a heart. But we were very clear that our treatment was experimental, and that we were not responsible for any… undue effects. The contracts were airtight, the language clear, and the waivers plentiful. Our lawyers made sure of that.
DISHER
The fact that none of your detractors have been able to get a legal foothold is frustrating them. Huffington Spence-Shilling, the US representative for the district we sit in right now, is one of your loudest opponents. On record, he’s called you a “terrorist” and an “evil black daughter of Cain.” What would you say to him?
PIERCE
Mr. Spence-Shilling is very close to this situation. I’ve sent letters of apology to him, and offered to pay for counseling for his family, but he always rejects my outreach. I’ve said this to Mr. Spence-Shilling before, and I’ll say it again: one has to wonder why he continues to conduct this personal witch hunt using taxpayer resources. It’s not as if having a black son is the worst thing in the world.
NARRATOR
Little Rock, Arkansas.
DISHER
I catch up with Ja’Nyla Lovington as she’s leaving the coffeeshop that she visits every morning. Lovington was never a fan of coffee until she became personal assistant to Fallan Pierce, who hired her after meeting her in the supermarket where she was working. She is everything that Pierce is not: short, overweight, clumsy. Her hair is styled in springy twists that bounce around her shoulders. Despite her stocky legs, Lovington is quick. I have to hustle to keep pace with h
er for a couple of city blocks.
DISHER
(Speaking to Lovington)
Can you tell me about your time working alongside Fallan Pierce?
JA’NYLA LOVINGTON
No comment.
DISHER
Were you aware of the side effects of the product that you helped Ms. Pierce to provide?
LOVINGTON
No comment.
DISHER
How have you avoided criminal and civil charges in this incident?
(Silence)
DISHER
Is there anything that you’re willing to speak about on the record? How do you deal with the Nubianite fallout? The lives that have been, by some accounts, ruined? A lot of people think that you’re complicit in this—
LOVINGTON
You know what? I’m sick of all of y’all coming around here trying to make a dollar because you smell a story and you think that you can pull it out of little old me. Y’all never have a fuck to give about broke-ass, fat-ass, black-ass girls any other time. Listen. Ms. Pierce was good to me. She gave me a job when nobody else would give me a backward glance. She paid me on time, every month, with benefits. That’s all I got to say about the situation. Anything else that she has allegedly done, you need to talk to her about. And that’s my statement. Put that on your fuckin’ record and spin it, mothafucka.
NARRATOR
Washington, D.C.
DISHER
Reports paint Representative Huffington Spence-Shilling II as a portrait of the best of America: six feet tall, tanned, and slightly rugged, boasting a handsome smile and firm handshake. He lacks much of the fire that marks both his comrades and adversaries, a character trait that distances him from some voters and endears him to others. Today, however, there is no trace of that calm. Representative Spence-Shilling is visibly agitated during our time together. He stands up at intervals and paces, grits his teeth and wrings his hands, lashes out violently at his staff.