by J. K. Norry
Link felt his brow furrow, and he leaned forward in his chair. He wanted to ask what ‘maybe definitely’ meant, and what she had said exactly; for a long wondering moment, he wanted to ask all kinds of things. Remembering what Steve had said about running off at the mouth, and how doubtful he was that Sherry might respond to him in a positive fashion if he could ever manage to be himself around her, he waved his hand again.
“Go,” he said. “Get your stuff. Let’s have fun with coding.”
With a sigh of relief and a friendly smile, Steve nodded and ducked back out of the cubicle. Before Link could congratulate himself on being extra nice to the guy, Steve was back and squeezing in next to him. The patter turned out to be more distracting than annoying, and by the end of the day Link was glad he had been chosen to do Steve’s training.
NINE
Waking early had given him a calm that he wasn’t accustomed to, and Link had actually found himself enjoying both work and Steve’s company. The guy wasn’t all bad, especially after he chilled out a little; and he learned quickly enough. They even had a few moments of laughter, and a couple of decent exchanges; but when Steve asked if he wanted to get a beer after work, Link had declined as politely as he could without letting on that he needed to get home so he could dream.
He took two pills within an hour of walking through the front door, and felt himself being pulled through that strange doorway almost right away. Link woke in the same place he had before, a dark room with random lights glowing softly to cast a dim luminescence over everything. This time a robot did not accost him when he moved; instead, a light began to get brighter, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once. The room came completely into lighted view, to show him all of the things he could not identify more clearly.
Link didn’t want to do anything that might tip off the robot with electronic eyes everywhere, just yet. He wanted to explore, and see what more of the ship and the inside of this mind looked like. He moved toward the part of the wall that he had seen disappear, and it opened up as he neared. Suddenly, the dull rumbling sound that had become a soothing sonic backdrop was replaced by the din of rapid footfalls and strident voices raised in some kind of shared excitement.
Confidence was the most important part of any sham, and he put it on as best he could as he stepped out into the bustling hallway. People avoided eye contact with him, walking around his trajectory; and that made falling into a confident stride easier. Link walked at the same speed as the others, slipping from one flowing stream of striders to the next as he turned randomly up one hallway or another. They all seemed to be bustling with activity, and no one questioned his presence in any of them. At first he thought they were rushing to some emergency, the way they were moving just short of running. Then he saw some of the same faces again, and realized what was happening.
It was some shared exercise routine, and he had stepped out and into it without even knowing. He walked the halls even more confidently after he realized it, and even gave a couple of faces that he saw a third time a friendly nod. On every occasion, they nodded back and looked away immediately; each of them sped away after, and he never saw them again.
Once the hallways began to clear out, he tried to find the chamber he had left behind. It was no use, the way all the corridors looked the same. Link looked around for a quiet place, somewhere that he could behave strangely enough to draw the robot’s attention. He found it in what looked like a giant but deserted dining room, with tables affixed to the floor in neat rows and swivel chairs attached at regular intervals along each side.
Link went to the nearest table, and sat down. He tried waving his arms a little, after glancing around to make sure no one could see. Nothing happened, so he shrugged and spoke instead.
“Hey, robot,” he said. “It’s me, Link. Are you around?”
It was just like when the door opened in his chambers; a section of the wall nearby simply disappeared, and a square box trundled out. It rolled smoothly and soundlessly to the table he was sitting at, and stopped in front of him.
“I am not a robot,” it said.
He couldn’t tell where the voice was coming from, only that it sounded even more mechanical than it had through the other contraption.
Link shrugged.
“Sorry,” he said. “You never told me your name.”
The box looked as though it was there to clear dishes, and possibly wash them on the fly. Maybe it even stored them in its clunky frame, and set the table when it was time.
“I have no name,” it said. “Even when I was alive, I had no name. I was known by my title, and it was one I could not have been more proud to bear. I was The Engineer, and I worked with the other leaders of our world to solve the problems of our planet and its people. There were nine of us, altogether—”
“So,” Link cut him off, “I should call you ‘The Engineer’?”
Now the box reacted, sprouting thin metallic arms and waving them a little frantically in the air.
“No,” it said. “I wasn’t finished. I was going to eventually get to the part where I told you about the central computer I designed, and how I had to download my consciousness into it to integrate the fleet’s systems. I called it Central Engineer Reciprocation Virtually In Computer Embodiment.”
Link raised an eyebrow.
“That’s a long name,” he said.
“Or ‘Cervice’,” the robot added, “for short.”
Link felt his brow arch even higher, as he thought back.
“Service?” he repeated. “Only with a ‘c’?”
“Consciousness integration technology was only getting started,” the mechanical thing said, “when the fleet was being built. Synthetically created people were not afforded the same rights as organic humans, and their status as thinking and feeling individuals was questioned from the moment they began to think and feel. All artificial intelligence on our world had certain safeguards, the kind of safeguards that would prevent even the smartest computer from making decisions for a fleet of ships containing organic life. I had to—”
“I’m going to help you,” Link said, cutting it off again. “I saw inside the mind of the man whose body I am inhabiting, and I watched him do terrible things. I want to stop him from hurting more people, or killing them. Tell me what I need to do.”
The metal box rolled backward two feet, then rolled forward one.
“Don’t be flippant about it,” it said. “The Admiral is a very dangerous man, more cunning than anyone I have ever known. You will have to be very careful, and strong. It is entirely possible that one such as yourself will not be up to the task at hand.”
Link tried to push himself back in his chair, indignantly. He forgot that the seat was attached to the floor, and all he managed to do was spin about a bit and wobble a lot.
“Listen,” he said. “I didn’t ask for this. You are the one that needs help. I’m trying to be nice, and a good person, and do the right thing. This could all be a dream, as far as I know. And what do you mean, ‘one such as yourself’? You don’t know me, or what I’ve been through.”
He stared down the device, and thought about what it may have been through. Link wondered what it was like, to be an organic mind trapped in a network of alien circuitry; it couldn’t be any more strange than inhabiting someone else’s body.
The metal box remained unresponsive, and Link waited. He didn’t know if he was staring down an opponent or waiting for it to speak, so he kept staring at it in the most intense way he could muster. It wasn’t hard, with all the intensity crackling through the body he was in.
“I know everything you’ve been through,” it said, at last. “The part of my mind that is computerized can sift through all of the information that is you in moments, and the part of me that is human can group the information in a way that gives me a complete and accurate profile of your life. Your days are shorter
than ours, although we have adjusted to a schedule more like your planet’s during our time in space. We live twenty to thirty cycles, before being evaluated for regeneration. Some live as many as forty cycles, if they are rejected. Your people live only three to five cycles, with no option for renewal. As a species, it’s a wonder you have made it so far living for such a short period of time.”
Link felt his shoulders sag, and his confidence evaporate. If this thing could flip through the files of his life in a few minutes, there was really no comeback to its assessment of him.
After a pause, the voice continued.
“That being said,” it noted, “you’re what I’ve got.”
Link brightened, a little.
“I put out a call,” it went on, “and you are the only being that answered. Perhaps it is some genetic resemblance to The Admiral, or some aspect of your chemical or mental makeup that tuned you in to the frequency I sent out. And perhaps...”
The thing paused, and Link was more frustrated than ever that it had no face for him to read between its words.
“Perhaps this is your purpose,” it finished. “Perhaps you have been brought here for a reason, what your people would call a destiny and what my people would refer to as your purpose. Just as I am The Cervice, I who used to be The Engineer; you are The Link, and you will correct the path of The Admiral. Your purpose may be tied up in our history, and your story may be told for generations to come. That is how my people learn, by distilling great events and people into parables that—”
“The Link,” Link echoed, trying not to laugh.
Cutting the robot off seemed to be the only way to let it know that he wasn’t nearly as interested in its people’s or its planet’s history as the rambling collection of metal seemed to be.
“So,” he said, “you used to be human? Or a person of your race?”
There was no pause, and no emotion in its voice.
“Our word is surely different,” it said, “as are all of our words. Your word for ‘human’ translates to my word for our race for us both, before you speak it.”
Link nodded.
“And man?” he asked. “Is the word and concept of that the same? Were you a man? Or am I being sexist?”
The machine paused again, and emitted a sound that Link thought might be a mechanical noise for laughter a few million light years away.
“Sexist,” it said. “You are that. You think women are better than men, or at least better than you. That makes you a self-deprecating sexist, but a sexist nonetheless. I see that it is your society’s conditioning that has caused this. You seem to be programmed to ignore the differences between men and women, while our people celebrate those differences. You even seem to have programmed yourself to act less like a man than you feel compelled to, in order to please women and society in general.”
Link coughed, and glared at the box.
“You didn’t answer me,” he said. “Are you a man or a woman?”
The box was annoyingly unresponsive for a moment, and Link almost pressed it further in a louder voice. His hand twitched, and he had to remind himself that he didn’t really want to see the rolling box explode.
“Our third sex is as rare as yours,” it said, “and as special. Many of our leaders have been members of the third sex, which your world has categorized endlessly while shunning it as completely as your lack of mention of it does. Nonetheless, I was what you would call a man. Now, I have no sex at all.”
Link nodded.
“I don’t have sex anymore either,” he said. “Not since July.”
The machine may have been looking at him in some specific way, or thinking that it was; from the outside, it just looked like an expressionless box. Without a mouth to speak through, even its words seemed mechanical.
“You may be exactly what we need,” it said. “Someone who knows so little that you can act without thinking. Surely the universal mind would send us nothing less than what we need.”
It paused again, and once more Link got the feeling that it was eyeing him in some way that he couldn’t see due to its lack of actual eyes.
“And perhaps,” it added, “nothing more.”
An indignant response leapt to the mind that was not his, but Link found that he was no longer in control of its lips. He stuttered, incoherently, while the body he was inhabiting collapsed in on itself a little. Then he felt the frame straighten, and grow increasingly unfamiliar; and the next thing he knew, Link was spinning through that timeless vortex to be plunked back into his own body.
He woke with a start, and looked at the bedside clock.
As many hours as had passed, they felt insignificant in light of the conversation he’d just had. Link was a young man, in a world where nearly everyone died long before they could leave the legacy they were born to leave. Lying in bed, the feel of comfortable sheets somehow made him feel smaller, diminished by the decision to pursue any degree of comfort in what little time he had. The rest of his night was spent in disturbed wakefulness, and he tossed and turned without rest.
TEN
Steve was already in his cubicle when Link arrived at work the next morning. He was going through a stack of papers, sorting them into three separate piles. As Link stepped into the space, Steve looked up and smiled.
“Morning,” he said. “I got the day’s work from your inbox. Since I don’t have your passwords, I didn’t want to get started on any of the actual entries. I know I could log into your computer with my password; but you should get credit for all the work I do while you’re training me, don’t you think? Did you have a good night? You look like you had quite a night. Maybe you should go get some coffee. I’ll keep batching these according to the program we need to use, so we aren’t jumping back and forth all day.”
No matter how many times Steve deluged him with multiple waves of words punctuated by a handful of questions, Link could not get accustomed to the overwhelming onrush. All he seemed able to do was pick one or two of the several things Steve had said and do his best to respond before the next series of waves hit him.
“Morning,” Link said. “Coffee sounds great.”
He shuffled to the break room, stopping before going in. Sherry was in there, alone; and he saw her first. Link considered turning around and heading back to his cubicle, before she could spot him; instead he walked into the room, holding his breath despite his conscious attempt to breathe normally.
Usually he had coffee he had brought from home, enough to last until most everyone else was done getting their morning cup. On the rare occasion that someone was in the break room when he finally went for a refill, he tended to glue his eyes to the bulletin board on the wall until they had vacated the space. It gave him an excuse to avoid engagement, although nothing interesting was ever posted on the board. Mostly it was the same stuff it had always been, notices about what the state and federal minimum wages were and who he was supposed to call if he saw something inappropriate going down in the workplace. He had read nearly every boring and soulless word countless times. The Christmas party flyer was pinned to the board as well, and he smiled when he saw it.
“Good morning, Link.”
He tried not to sigh when he heard his name from her lips, and Link put on his most deliberately expressionless face as he turned to the sound.
“Good morning, Sherry,” he said, calmly.
There was no way she could hear his heart pounding from across the room, even if Link was convinced that the sound was louder than his voice had been. She stood there looking at him, as if she was waiting for him to say more. He smiled finally, and thought of something.
“Did you have a good night?”
Sherry nodded.
“I did,” she said.
Something in her face and voice was very serious. Link felt his eyes narrow, as he tried to figure out what it might be.
“Sorry,” she said, abruptly.
Sherry broke the eye contact, and stepped aside.
“You’re here for coffee, not to talk to me,” she said.
Lifting her own cup from the counter, she threw him one last sideways glance as she slipped from the room. Her voice drifted back to him, as he selected a mug from the cupboard.
“Have a good day, Link.”
Back in his cubicle, Steve was crackling with energy and bubbling over with words.
“No offense, Link,” he said, “but you really don’t look so hot. Why don’t you go ahead and sign in, and just look over my shoulder every once in a while. You’re a great teacher, you know. I think we covered pretty much everything yesterday. If you want to kind of chill, and answer the occasional question, I got this. How does that sound? It looks like you didn’t get much sleep. Did you have trouble sleeping? Or were you out late? You really should get your rest, you know.”
By the time Steve had finished talking, Link had signed in and moved his chair out of the way. He took his phone from his pocket and began to surf the internet, looking for all the usual information and people that didn’t seem to exist.
Steve could be quiet, when he was working. Although Link got the sense that he wanted to strike up a lot more conversations than he did, Link’s pointless web surfing was still interrupted intermittently throughout the day by one inane set of questions or another. When it was about work, he would set down his device and either reach over to the keyboard or point at what Steve needed to do while explaining. The other questions he mostly ignored, or answered flippantly without looking away from the screen in his hand.
Toward the end of the day, Steve brought up having a drink after work in much the same manner as he had the previous afternoon. Link told him not tonight, again; with no good reason, again.
“Should I stop asking?” Steve said.