by Stanley Bing
“Hi, Artie,” she said. He turned off his head and felt her presence.
“Where the fuck have you been?” he said, not impolitely.
“Asleep,” said Sallie. “Like most normal people.”
She came close and sat on the bed. She was in her morning caftan, which was bright orange and very roomy. Her hair was tousled high on her head, tied into a giant exclamation point by a ribbon. Sallie appeared to be a rather youngish forty, but that could mean anything. Tall—way taller than Arthur. High cheekbones. Lovely bottom. Not a big nose for the size of her face, but not a small one, either. A little bit of a button on the end. A few freckles, if you looked close.
“I missed you, teacup,” said Arthur.
“Take your medicine?” asked Sallie.
She disappeared into the massive bathroom suite that lay beyond the bedroom.
“I want you,” he said quietly.
“We can have a very good time if you take all your meds,” came the voice from the dark beyond.
“Fuck,” said Arthur. “I hate this shit.”
Sallie came back with a tray that held a variety of bottles, tubes, and poultices, and a big glass of water. She handed him a large brown pill, scored in two. “Your Denamarin Chewable for your liver.” He took it. She presented another: this one small and light yellow. “Now your Renagel, for your phosphorus.” He took that, too. “Eat this little water cracker,” she said, offering him a pale wafer. “You’re supposed to take the Renagel with a little food and water.” He took it and munched on it for a few moments with an expression of mild disgust.
“It’s dry,” he said, with a little tang of complaint in his voice.
“I’m sorry, Snooks,” said Sallie. “Put out your palm.” He did so. From a weekly medication organizer, she removed a fistful of tablets and capsules. “Heart . . . kidneys . . . lungs . . . arthritis . . . vitamins,” she intoned as she extracted pills from the med strip, each of its compartments embossed with an initial for its name of the week. Then she placed each into his waiting hand.
“Tumil-K,” she said. “Furosemide. Vetmedin. Enacard. A half tab of spironolactone. Half tab of Rimadyl. One tab Welactin.” He took each without comment but with a little bit of water. At the end, he said, “Pathetic,” to nobody in particular.
“Put your head back,” said Sallie. He did so. From her little tray, she selected a succession of very small plastic bottles, dispensing one drop of each into Arthur’s original working eye. “Dexasporin,” she said, “one drop . . . cyclosporine, one drop . . . tacrolimus once daily . . . one, two . . . and your Opticare. There.”
She put away the bottles on the tray and placed the tray on the night table. “Okay, now, Artie. Roll over.”
“Goddamn it,” he said. “Motherfucker.”
She gently lifted Arthur’s bathrobe and pulled his silken jammies down a little bit, exposing one very elderly cheek. She kissed it. Then she removed a small pneumatic hypo from her caftan and expertly administered an infusion. “Stay still, Artie. Daily subcutaneous fluids. You know.”
“I want you to call Bob. Call this morning. I don’t want to wait anymore.”
“Artie. You can’t rush this. They say he won’t be ready for another month, maybe two.”
“Oh,” said Arthur. “Right. Right.” But he had stopped listening, because he had made a decision, and once you’ve made a decision, that’s the time you stop listening. After a while, he rolled over again and looked at her. She accepted his gaze.
“You look very juicy, Buttercup,” he said, feasting both his analog and cybernetic eye at her with tremendous appreciation. “You are so beautiful. I can’t believe how beautiful you are.”
She had put away all the paraphernalia of old age now, and she leaned over him as he lay in bed, his tiny, slightly artificial head resting lightly on the pillow. “I love you the way you are, Artie, you know that, I hope,” she said, quite serious now. “All this stuff you’re going to do to yourself, it’s for you, honey. It’s not for me.”
“That’s nice,” said Arthur, “but you’re deluded.”
“It’s the human condition, Artie. There’s something okay about just being human, you know? Going with that flow.”
“Fuck that,” said Arthur. He put his arms around her and kissed her, and she kissed him back.
“Go ahead,” he said. “Print one out.”
“Okay.”
Sallie patted the top of his mottled, shiny head. “You are one horndog,” she added, moving over to the dresser, where she addressed a small printer that rested unobtrusively next to a houseplant. She made sure the readouts were appropriate, and then she pressed a button and went into the bathroom. Turned on the shower. A bit of humming.
Arthur lay back on the bed, his hands behind his head. Profits were good. His businesses enjoyed a 78 percent market share in every single space in which they operated. That was not particularly unusual. Amazon and its subsidiaries controlled 87 percent of all online retail. The global conglomerate that was once Facebook now held a 92 percent market share of all online advertising. He listened to the sound of Sallie in the shower. Gonna get laid soon, he thought. That’s one thing that never gets old.
Sallie came in, still wearing her flowing caftan. “Ah, here we go,” she said. She gently removed the brand-new penis from the 3-D printer and placed it on the little plate of bone-white china that rested on the night table by the side of his bed. “Now I’ll leave you for a minute,” she said demurely, and once again went into the bathroom, the sound of running water coming from the sink.
On the way out, she had dimmed the lights. It was nice in the room. The shades were closed but the sunlight was streaming in; it was still early! Lots of time for all the great things you could do in a day if you weren’t dead. Arthur looked at the freshly created penis. It was a decent size, but not ridiculous. Quite attractive, actually. Much nicer than what had become of his original, when he considered it.
She came back in just a few minutes later, without the caftan. “You ready?” she said, smiling.
“Baby,” said Arthur, snapping the new appendage into place with a soft and reassuring click. “I’m always ready.”
2
Gene Wakes Up to Find His Mind Is Empty
He was sitting on the edge of the pond near the giant white tower when it all came rushing over him. “You’re here,” said a voice inside him, and he knew it was true. He was here. He liked it. Until then, he wasn’t quite sure, but the little voice announcing his arrival to himself kind of settled it for him. He was here. Now all he needed to know was where he was. And who.
Enormous building blocks were strewn in clusters around the hillside in front of him. Thin asphalt roads more suitable to golf carts than to proper automobiles snaked to and fro between these rectangular piles of white stone. Here and there, a self-driving vehicle went by at a benign rate of speed, with one or two passengers inside doing nothing obvious except consulting transmissions from their inner electronics. Across a major thoroughfare from the short, squat building units stood a tower of white concrete that appeared to be the hub of the complex. What went on in there?
People went in and went out. He watched them and wanted to be them. They were nicely dressed, and many carried what at first appeared to be briefcases but upon closer examination revealed themselves to be screens with little handles jammed with electronics and data. They all had itty-bitty antennas sticking out of the tops of their heads.
He looked at the big white obelisk for a while longer. It seemed familiar somehow. Could this be the building where he lived or worked? Did he work? If so, what was his job? Shouldn’t he know? This big, tall structure . . . was it a residence or an office? From the demeanor of the human and vehicular traffic going into and buzzing around it, it could be a residential tower, no doubt about it. On the other hand, why did people look so intent and purposeful upon entering it as well as leaving it, unless it was a business of some kind? Perhaps it was both?
; Nobody ever got in trouble for taking the time to watch things, so he did that some more. He was still quite concerned, though. There were obvious gaps in his awareness. He seemed to know a bit about some things. Language and associations didn’t fail him. He knew the names for things. But at the center of his consciousness of himself, there was something missing. Among the things that were missing was an idea of what was missing.
What time was it? The sun was relatively low in the sky, but that could mean either morning or early evening. It seemed more like morning. He decided to go with that as well.
He felt hungry. Did he have any money on him? He felt for his pockets and realized he didn’t have any currency whatsoever. This gave him some additional uneasiness. How would he pay for things? He seemed to be appropriately attired in what might have been characterized as casual business wear—slacks, collared sport shirt, tasty little canvas tennis shoes. He was clean and not starving. Did he have access to funds? He certainly hoped so. Life without money is no life at all; he knew that, at least.
“Right index finger,” said a little voice behind his mind. And yes, at the end of the longest finger on that hand was the chip. Ah, good. He was not without means, then. Who put it there?
He felt like he’d just woken up out of a deep nap; the kind that leaves you discombobulated for the rest of the day. But it was still morning! Did he have some kind of a night job? Why didn’t he know?
“Can I help you with something?”
He turned in the direction of the voice, and there he was: a man in a simple one-button gray suit and a black 3-D exo-fitted Kevlar second-skin T-shirt capable of modulating itself in accordance with external conditions, as well as the mood of its owner. He was neither tall nor short, of middling weight, neither fat nor thin. His hair, which was thick, curly, completely white, and quite disordered, was cleared neatly away just above his ear to make room for the rather stylish cerebrocortical implant that was the emblem of his class and status.
Gene could tell by the way the man was looking at him that he was known to this fellow. He now paused in his attention to him for a moment, and Gene knew the mysterious stranger was listening to an incoming message. He waited for the transmission to finish. Nobody likes being required to shuttle between the analog and the digital realms too abruptly.
“Hi, Gene,” the distinguished figure said at last. Then, when Gene failed to answer: “What’s going on in that empty noggin of yours? Anything?”
Okay, thought Gene to himself. I do know this guy. But how?
The two just looked at each other for a little while.
How old was he? Forty? Sixty? A hundred sixty? Gene couldn’t tell. If you looked very closely, there was a roughness about his skin, a touch too much sinew about his neck, and a delicate boniness about his hands that bespoke age—possibly great age. The hair was truly remarkable: a perfect, shaggy mane that would have been the pride of a teenager, except that it was completely white. There was a firmness about his midsection and upper body, though that had to have been engineered in some way. Any age, then. But healthy. Very, very healthy.
“Do I know you?” Gene asked, as politely as possible.
“Oh my,” said the man. “We did it.”
He sat down on the bench next to Gene and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. Gene peered into the dignified, friendly face. It didn’t look wholly unfamiliar to him. The sun was behind the face, creating a radiance above and around it. He couldn’t quite grasp all the details, though. They did look comforting, at least. “We’ve seen each other around a little,” said the man. “You’re Gene, of course,” he said. “I’m Bob. I work in Building Eight, over there. Remember?” He gestured to the phallic white tower.
“I do . . .,” Gene said, which was not completely true . . . although if he tried very hard . . .
“Ah, but you don’t.” Bob looked sad, but a little triumphant, too.
There was a short silence in which the two once again looked at each other, to no good effect. Then Bob leaned into him, not too close, but not too far, either.
“You need to come see me now, Gene.” It was not a request.
“Building Eight,” said Gene.
“Yep.” Bob appeared to be seized by some powerful emotion that rendered speech impossible for a moment. Then: “Yep,” he said again. “I’ll give you a couple minutes to enjoy . . . whatever.” He stood. “Take about five minutes. Then come on over. You know the way, right?” He tapped Gene on the side of the head that held his communications implant. Then he turned and moved off toward the structure he had identified as Building Eight. Every now and then, he turned as if to check something on the horizon, but Gene could tell Bob was looking at him. Eventually this began to make him nervous, and he got up, crossed the lawn, and meandered off down the path in no particular direction whatsoever.
“Top of the mornin’ to you!” said a pleasant voice with a very slight Irish lilt.
It was an extremely large security bot built into a Segway: a 3-D holographic screen mounted on a mobile platform with one comically chubby wheel. These bots had been invented fifteen or so years ago in a rush of start-up enthusiasm. Their AI had yet to be completely perfected. They had no body to speak of, although the early models—essentially a TV on a rolling stalk—had been so top-heavy that teenagers had initiated a sport of tipping them over. They would lie there, complaining in a polite, robotic tone until their battery quit. Then they would be carted off.
That was not their only deficiency. In addition to their balance issues, these initial, skeletal models were extreme residents of the uncanny valley, so creepy that a simple upper body sporting a faux uniform had to be added to second-generation iterations to calm the fears of older citizens and small children. It also rendered them greater stability. They were also issued with protopersonalities, to make them less scary. For the most part, that failed, too.
In spite of this inauspicious debut, the newly improved models caught on in the security space. There were now hundreds of them around the city in the employ of one privatized police department or another, perambulating about open public sectors on their big, fat wheelbase, transmitting video to a central databank and resolving simple interactions with a certain low-level competence. Anything remotely complex got relayed to human observers back in the command hub.
“Officer O’Brien,” said the bot. “That’s me. And I was just wonderin’ if I may be of some assistance. You look a bit lost, and I’m sure there’s someplace you need to be.” It waited, taking Gene in. A small amber light blinked on the brim of the electronic creature’s fake police cap, which was built into his head.
“Thank you, Officer,” Gene replied deferentially. “Do you happen to have the time?”
The light on the cap immediately flipped to green. This was an inquiry its intelligence was built for. “Nine-fourteen in the mornin’!” it said with pleasure. “Time to be doin’ what you’re supposed to be doin’!” Then it scanned Gene’s face, once up, once down, with a horizontal beam that came out of the brim of its cap. There was a short silence while the machine digested this data. It was weird being scanned this way, Gene thought, without his permission.
“Nice weather,” he said, just to say something.
“Likely to turn nasty later on,” Officer O’Brien replied, tipping its trapezoidal head skyward, which tilted its entire body backward at an awkward angle.
“With what probability?” Gene inquired.
“Eighty-two point six percent.”
“Well, then,” said Gene. “See ya.”
“Actually,” said the bot, “my data show that you are scheduled for a meeting with Dr. Bob in Building Eight”—it whirred a little bit—“ten a.m. sharp.” It started whirring again.
Of course, the thing knew everything about Gene, including his name. After a similar scan, it would probably know everything about anybody. There were a lot of names in the world and there wasn’t a chip available at any supermarket checkout stand that couldn’t hold
them all.
“Okay,” said Gene. “Well, thanks for the help, Officer O’Brien.” And prepared to go on his merry way.
“Dr. Bob!” said Robocop. “That’s a pretty big deal.” And the little indicator monitor on the brim of its cap suddenly mutated over to amber again and then to red. Then it leaned over and planted its hologram of a face, which was now assuming a stern expression, very close to Gene’s. “Don’t be late,” said the bot with a touch of menace. It was so close that Gene might have felt its breath, if it had any. He also noticed that the hologram of Officer O’Brien needed a shave.
Its duty done, this protector of public safety reassumed its pleasant demeanor, pivoted 180 degrees on its axis, and, with a saucy rev of the tiny Segway propulsion system, tootled down the pathway toward the next cluster of buildings.
Bob, then. Gene felt his guts tighten with a passing shadow of dread. Who was this Bob person? Why did he have to go see him? He didn’t want to! What power did this guy have over him? None! Ha! The morning was bright and blue, with flecks of white at the very top of the dome. It was pretty, and he felt like a walk anyhow. So he put one foot in front of another and headed off in the opposite direction from Building Eight. Fuck ’em, he thought. I’m a free person!
“Where ya goin’ there, champ?” Here it was again, the intrepid, artificial Irish cop. Whoever had programmed this thing had a sense of humor. The bot had circled back, then sped up to move alongside him, rolling along on its ridiculous propulsion system at precisely his speed. A small siren announced itself, very softly, from a sonic warning system embedded in the entity’s head. After a moment or two, it repeated its question with slightly less cordiality.
“Where d’ya think you are goin’, actually.”
“I really have no idea, Officer,” said Gene, and he kept moving. They’re not really dangerous, he told himself. They wouldn’t give a firearm to a machine with the IQ of an intelligent toaster, would they?
“You have . . . no idea?” said the officer, as if the words were disassociated concepts that did not fit together in the slightest.