by J. K. Norry
No hand was proffered, and Cervice did not embrace him in gratitude or camaraderie. He simply turned his back to Link, went back to his desk and removed the log from its housing once more. For a moment Link just stood there. He stared at the robot’s back, wondering whether he should say something or walk away.
Finally he sighed, and left the way he had come.
TWENTY
Somehow, after three days and nights of doing little more than sleeping, Link felt more exhausted than ever. He was not surprised when Steve made a comment, as soon as he walked into the cubicle.
“Whoa, buddy,” he said. “I missed you at the party. Looks like maybe the party didn’t miss you, though.”
Link gave him a humorless chuckle, a single harsh note, and sat.
“I know,” he said. “I couldn’t make it. I had an awful weekend. Worst Christmas ever.”
Steve’s eyebrows shot up, and he frowned.
“Yeah?” he said. “What happened?”
The thought that Steve might ask a follow-up question had not occurred to Link, when he was waxing dramatic. Now he shrugged, and avoided making eye contact.
“Oh, you know,” he mumbled. “Just not feeling well.”
Steve was nodding dramatically.
“So I can see,” he said. “You might want to see about taking some more time off. How many sick days have you used?”
Link laughed, and waved his hand.
“We don’t get sick days here,” he said.
Still nodding, Steve frowned again.
“Sure we do,” he said. “I just got hired, remember? They went over all that stuff with me. Everyone accrues one sick day every quarter, even new hires like me.”
Link was already standing. He looked down at Steve.
“How do I look?” he said.
“Honestly?” Steve winced. “A little awful.”
Link grinned.
“Perfect,” he said.
Without so much as a goodbye, he swept out of the cubicle and across the sectioned space. Marching directly into the payroll office may have been more to the point, but that meant walking by Sherry’s office. Link took the circuitous route instead, and got there eventually. He tapped gently on the door before entering, although he knew it was another office filled with cubicles. A lone counter stood on the other side of the door, the only piece of furniture he could see that wasn’t a flimsy wall. Behind it was a woman, with a cheery smile.
“Hi,” she said. “Can I help you?”
Link’s eyes roamed the floor, the walls and finally the top of the counter. He kept his gaze averted as he spoke, as if looking at her wrong might put a curse on all his future paychecks.
“Uh, yeah,” he said. “My name is Lincoln Nash. I was wondering...do I have any sick days?”
Of all the things he considered she might do, Link was not prepared for what happened. He thought she might laugh at him, or stick her nose in the air and tell him sick days were only for important people, or announce that if he didn’t want to work then he didn’t need to have a job. Instead her smile widened, her fingers clicked quietly on her keyboard, and she nodded with her eyes still locked on the screen between them.
“Actually,” she said, “you have four unused sick days.”
Her eyes shifted from the screen, and she met his gaze.
“You know,” she said, leaning forward a little, “if you don’t use them, you lose them. You’ll carry one of those days over to next quarter, but the others drop off at the end of the year.”
Link frowned, his eyes still on hers. He looked around the office, to see if anyone else was listening in. Every other person in the room was either completely absorbed in their own work, or hidden behind cubicle walls. He coughed, unconvincingly, as his gaze fell once more on the woman that had been helping him. He coughed, again.
“I’m not feeling so well,” he mused.
Her smile never faltered. It was still there when she nodded along with his words, and responded.
“I thought you might say that,” she said. “You better get on home then, Mister Nash.”
“My friends call me Link,” he said, automatically.
Her smile faded, as she looked back at her screen.
“I’m sure they do,” she said, flatly.
Link had been dismissed. He didn’t mind; it was the sort of dismissal he had been hoping for.
“I’ll probably need the rest of the week,” he added.
Without looking over, the woman nodded.
“I kind of got that impression,” she said.
Making sure to keep his shoulders drooping and his countenance downcast, Link exited the office and moped his way to the exit. Once in his car, he slumped behind the wheel and plastered a grimace on his face. He didn’t let himself relax and smile until he was well on the way home; even then, he kept checking the rearview like he was afraid someone would chase him down and drag him back to his drab office space.
Finally home, Link calmed himself by changing the sheets and pacing the living room. He eyed the bottle of pills every time it was in view, as if he was afraid it would leap across the room and somehow force him to take one. As much as he felt like it was the right thing to do, Link hated the thought that it was something he must do. His life had always been defined by his ability to do as little as possible; having any kind of calling was too much pressure for someone who expected so little of himself.
After he had done everything he could think of to do, Link found himself staring down the bottle as if he was challenging it to a duel. He though of all the reasons why he should just chill for the rest of the year, and let the aliens and the robots both at work and in space deal with whatever came their way. Link even considered tossing the bottle in the trash, or flushing the pills down the toilet in a more defined gesture of finality.
In the end, Link gave in to his fate. He donned his pajamas with the slow awkward movements of a poorly programmed machine, put one of the pills in his mouth, and chased it down with a swig of water. Crawling between the sheets, he let himself hope that he wouldn’t be jumping into any gruesome torture sessions or intense sex scenes.
And then Link was gone, spinning and shifting through space in that twisting way that he could never get accustomed to.
TWENTY ONE
His luck could not have been better.
The Admiral was attending another meeting, and Link recognized many of the faces surrounding him when the other man turned his head to look around. Of course Cervice wasn’t there, embodied. He was the present topic of conversation, however. One man was speaking, and Link felt The Admiral’s answer formulating long before he had finished.
“We need Cervice,” the man said. “I believe our efforts should be focused on finding out what happened to him, and trying to restore him. The fleet cannot function as it was designed to without Cervice.”
The Admiral interjected, before anyone else could respond.
“There is a way,” he said. “A way for us to continue mining and resume our voyage when it is time. Cervice spoke to me, about what we must do if he was ever compromised.”
Several others made a motion, as if to speak; The Admiral went on, paying them no mind.
“Cervice gave his life for the fleet once,” he said. “Perhaps he did so again, in his own way. We all know he was looking into the problems with the EMF. Am I the only one that has noticed those issues disappeared when he did? I would contend that Cervice found a way to fix the problem, and the answer meant his electronic demise. Let’s not waste everyone’s life trying to get inside a mind none of us can understand. Maybe he became the electromagnetic field, and is with us in a way we can’t grasp. Whatever he did, it stopped the memory problems; perhaps that was his ultimate service.”
Link couldn’t believe how eagerly some of the men and women present began to nod
their heads. He noticed most of them had only one chemical control band, and that the few artificials present were exchanging suspicious glances. None of them were nodding, or smiling like the others.
“It sounds like just the sort of thing Cervice would do,” one woman offered, tentatively.
The nodding heads bent more deeply, and a quiet murmur of assent found its way from one end of the room to the other. Nodding with them, The Admiral continued.
“We must act fast,” he said, “or his sacrifice may be for naught. We are drifting in space, unable to continue onward or mine for resources. Cervice performed the vital function of bridging the gap between human and artificial consciousness, and was able to give sentient machinery the ability to act even when lives are at stake. Without someone serving that unique purpose, the fleet cannot proceed as it was designed to.”
One of the artificials in particular was glaring openly at The Admiral. Since he made it a point to notice it, Link did the same. Neither of them was surprised when the woman leaned forward, and spoke.
“And what is your solution, Admiral?” she said. “Would you download yourself into the central computer, and dictate every move the fleet makes?”
The Admiral shook his head, keeping a calm and composed expression locked on his face. Spreading his hands, he spoke soothingly.
“Kera,” he said, “your teacher always suspected me of nefarious intent. Just think, if we had listened to her we would be on a dead planet, burnt to ash and gone forever. I’m afraid she poisoned you against me. I have no such plan, or intent. Cervice designed the interface specifically for his consciousness, according to him. Anyone that tried to duplicate his results could be killed. I have no reason to doubt his assertion. I certainly have no desire to give up my humanity.”
The woman had been slowly slinking back into her chair as he spoke; when he said that, she flinched visibly.
“Then what do you propose we do?”
The voice came from one of the men who had been nodding with much enthusiasm moments earlier. Link could feel The Admiral waiting for the exact right moment to respond, watching some heads already beginning to bob in advance support of whatever he said next.
“We must separate the fleet,” The Admiral announced. “The mining and scout ships will hold all artificials, while all naturals will inhabit this main vessel or their smaller community crafts. In this way, the vessels that can be piloted by humans will be operated manually. All crafts that require sentient artificial life to operate them will house only artificials.”
Another robot spoke, rising from his chair as he did.
“We are to take all the risks?” he demanded. “We are supposed to keep mining, and scouting? And somehow, we’re all supposed to fit in those cramped ships? You know they aren’t made for comfort, or even for adequate housing.”
“Of course,” The Admiral cut in, “it would only be a temporary measure. We would be depending on you to come up with a new interface, and to select the candidates to take over this vital role. Any comfort we can extend you would be given freely, even if you choose to stop all mining operations due to your situation. Scouting would of course be suspended, as we all work together on this problem.”
The artificial was still standing, and it seemed he did not want to sit down without adding something more.
“We work together,” he said. “From separate ships. This is segregation. We have come so far; do we really wish to leap backward?”
He cast his electric gaze around the room, and found very few friendly eyes. Shaking his head, he took his seat once more.
“When Cervice was The Engineer,” The Admiral said, “he and I stood on opposite sides of that very issue. I feared that we would be putting our fate into the hands of uncaring machines when he proposed the fleet initially, and I resisted his efforts to make it something that could be run entirely by an artificial intelligence. When he became that artificial intelligence, all of my fears and concerns and prejudices fell away. I deeply respected him when he was alive, but I never respected him more than when he became Cervice.”
The Admiral took a step toward where the artificials were clustered. Link felt the other man’s inner delight when the two that had spoken moved back visibly in their seats. On the surface, he smiled at the entire assemblage. The smile was disarming, the way he meant it to be.
“We need you,” The Admiral went on. “More than you need us. Don’t think I don’t know that. I know you can tolerate difficult living conditions better than we can. I know the least among you makes the best of us look weak and frail by comparison. I know you will keep mining because you know what is best, and you always do what is right. If anything happens, I want you to be able to leave us behind. Navigating manually will surely be inevitably lethal for the rest of us, if we have to attempt it. I am trying to make sure we are not all lost, if our solution is not rapidly forthcoming. You will need the mining ships in that event, more than comfort.”
Now all the heads were nodding, and the only voice in the room that was raised in dissent was Link’s silent cry. Even The Admiral was unaware of him, and the anguish he was feeling within the other man’s triumph.
“Do we need to vote?” The Admiral asked.
The tide turned, and all the heads began moving in negation. A few voices erupted, charged with excitement.
“We’ll fix this,” one person cried.
“Together!” another responded.
The Admiral grinned, and began chanting it loudly.
“We’ll fix this!” he said. “Together! We’ll fix this!”
Nearly every voice in the room was raised to join him in the next word, and The Admiral went on chanting until they had all jumped up from their seats. He moved across the space, walked through the sudden opening in the wall, and left the hooting assemblage behind.
Link felt his grip on the other man’s reality begin to slip, and he held on tight to the vision as The Admiral stepped into the corridor. The last thing he saw was the woman who had helped him shut down Cervice openly waiting for him. She fell into step beside him, and began to speak in a fierce whisper.
“Did it work?” she said. “Are we separating?”
The Admiral resisted both smiling and nodding, for a moment. Even when he gave in, it was only to the nod.
“It worked,” he said. “Humans and artificials will be directed to the appropriate ships, and we will have our opportunity.”
She glanced over at him. The Admiral continued walking, staring straight ahead. Within his mind, Link redoubled his efforts to hold on another minute.
“What about families?” she said. “Many people have married them, or become similarly entangled; are they going to separate?”
The Admiral shrugged, continued his steady pace.
“They will,” he said, “if they know what’s good for them.”
Link spiraled away from him, from the exchange and from the fleet somewhere deep in space. He landed in his body, sat up in bed, checked the time, and shook his head.
He took another pill.
TWENTY TWO
The mundane nature of his daily life had always bored Link. Knowing that everyone had to go through some kind of ritual just to stay alive had bothered him for as long as he could remember. No level of success existed that took away the need to move around at least a little, and feed yourself; the thought of someone else bathing him and brushing his teeth for him made Link more uncomfortable than the thought of doing it himself. Nonetheless, there was a level of discomfort that inherently went with life; through Link’s eyes, the mundane was inextricably linked with that discomfort.
Watching helplessly from behind another man’s eyes while he went through a routine meal and scrolled through what looked like some daily fleet newspaper on his log book screen, Link knew he should have been able to remain fascinated with even these small meaningless ritual
s. Subtle differences existed that had his mind reeling at first sight, and sighing with boredom in the next moment. The other man’s mundane life was even more uninteresting than his own, and it was special torture in itself for Link to bear silent witness to it.
When The Admiral headed into a room that was smaller than any of the tiny spaces he had already seen, Link was immediately certain of the other man’s intent. No matter the differences, alien technology seemed to resemble Earth’s so far as the plumbing went. Link spent the next several minutes scratching at the edges of the consciousness he was inhabiting and wishing he had not taken another pill so soon. Even the thoughts in the other man’s head were nothing but a garbled mess. As much as he had admired The Admiral for his ordered mind before, Link felt more at home in the nonsensical snippets he was hearing now.
The pill kept him locked in until The Admiral had finished his business, and washed his hands. Link wasn’t sure if his efforts to vacate had jostled his consciousness loose, or if the pills were not working as well as they once had. It would certainly explain his inability to read the other man’s thoughts as clearly as before. Waking up in his own skin was almost a perfunctory event at this point, and he began his wondering thought in one body and ended it in another. He sat up and sighed, mindlessly. With as little attention as he had put towards coming awake and sitting up, Link grasped the bottle of pills from the nightstand.
His only hesitation was that they were not working as well as before; Link considered taking two, thought better of it, and took a single pill. At this point he didn’t need to wash it down; taking the pills had become second nature, and he’d had enough of mundane motions for the day. He lay down again, hoping against hope that there wasn’t something even more disgusting coming. Longing for an actual torture session was not the right thing to do, so Link was careful not to do it.