Too, Too Solid Flesh

by Nick O'Donohoe

  Horatio was startled. “You mean the gravedigger—”

  “May yet employ himself? Probably. We’re not well made.” He smiled sadly. “I think the Teks underachieved when they made us, and we pay for their failure. The Laertes before this one was moody, one day. He rehearsed alone for hours—and forgot his lines anyway.” Hamlet’s face showed how unthinkable that was. “The next day he vomited, and sores appeared.

  “The Teks said they could do nothing. He lay dying for two days while I watched.” Hamlet stared into space hungrily, seeming to see the sick man now.

  Horatio was disturbed at the look on Hamlet’s face. “It was good that you cared for him, I guess.”

  Hamlet frowned at him. “Did I say I cared? I watched, from his first cough to his last sigh. It was important to me that I see it all. I wish I knew why.”

  Horatio shivered. “It’s your nature; you’re a hero.”

  “Perhaps.” He added diffidently, “The others stood in a circle around the body and stayed until he stopped breathing. Is Polonius a hero, or Osric?”

  Horatio had a sudden image of himself dying on stage, and a ring of faces watching as they prevented him from Accessing a medical alert. “Can we drop it?”

  “Surely.” Hamlet seated himself on the stairs to the throne. “What did you learn last night?”

  Horatio said quietly, “I asked Theater Access to tell me about androids, simula, and thinkware. I did it without the password, then with. Then I used outside Access and info-based. I learned how you think, at least”

  Hamlet sat up. “Is it different from human thought?”

  “Nobody said. Eighty years ago, two mathematicians wrote a lengthy proof to show that all systems—they called them ‘programs’—think alike. They all use only three processes: sequence, selection, iteration. You’re built of complex blocks of the three.”

  Hamlet said slowly, “Give them again, slowly”

  “Sequence—”

  “Planning. Rehearsing. Performing. Bowing. Yes, that’s so.”

  “Selection—”

  “‘To be or not to be, that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind—’ Go on.”

  “And iteration.”

  “The simplest and deadliest. ‘To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow.’” He blinked and turned to Horatio. “And you, how do you think? Sequence, selection, iteration?”

  Horatio hadn’t expected the question. “Well, I never repeat operations exactly—”

  “So they’re sequential.”

  “I can change the order of things I do at random, if I want to—”

  “Choosing selectively.” Hamlet smiled. “And all our brooding, and murdering, and loving, and betraying, it’s nothing more than these three things?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why, then? What suffering is there to three such tiny things? Surely murder, or pain, or three o’clock in the morning and no sleep don’t matter. But your mathematicians are wrong. There is more, and there should be more, and you should have known it. How do you feel?”

  “Annoyed. You talk too much like the play lately.”

  “True. Is that sequence, selection, or iteration? It’s mood. Mood is unpredictable, unsequenced—”

  “And repeated,” Horatio said triumphantly.

  Hamlet stared into space. “Yes. It is the same broken heart, the first time or the last, and one tear is too like the next. Will this help us at all?”

  Horatio scuffed at the stage. “Not unless the murderer followed a pattern.”

  “There was only one action, so there’s no pattern. But this place is made of actions; we’ll find patterns.” Hamlet gestured toward stage right. “Shall we get on with our morning?”

  On a tray at the stage’s edge were two chalices of orange juice. Hamlet looked at it. “Someone worries for our health.” He raised a glass. “My mother, I imagine.”

  The goblets, pseudocastings in cheap materials of precious metals and stones, shone in the dim flylights. The orange juice looked delicious.

  They raised and clinked their cups. Hamlet touched Horatio’s with the signet ring.

  Horatio said, “You know, in a Jacobean tragedy, you would have poisoned me with the ring.”

  Horatio tipped the cup up, flinching as Hamlet’s free hand swung past his face and slapped the cup across the stage. Horatio stared, fully frightened.

  Hamlet, as frightened, said back, “In a Jacobean tragedy, the orange juice would already be poisoned.”

  They stared at the streak of juice spilled across the stage. Hamlet said, “Wait.” He dashed to the lobby, returning quickly with his hands cupped. He half-opened his hands at the edge of the spilled juice and Horatio gaped. Hamlet, barehanded, had caught a hummingbird from where it hovered in the live plants in the lobby and was dipping its beak in the spilled juice. He let the bird go.

  The bird soared upward, then spun erratically and dropped near the edge of the stage. It flipped backward and forward, its wings twitching spastically. Finally it lay nearly still, beak opening and shutting, its body quivering with random nerve impulses. Its death was rapid, but seemed long to Horatio.

  Horatio said shakily, “Dematrix solution. All body control taken away. It quit moving, then it quit breathing. You’d know how you were going to die and how slowly.”

  “The Curse of Consciousness isolated,” Hamlet said. He knelt and stroked the dead bird’s throat feathers. “We have our second murder, though it failed. Sequence: first the victim, then his investigators. Selection: the two of us. And iteration: the same poison as before.”

  “The same poison Billy had.” Horatio was deeply upset. “It couldn’t be—”

  “It could, but Mulvaney and Goode also have it.”

  “Why would they kill me? They barely know me.”

  “Not knowing you makes it easier. We’re not human to him. Men prick us to make us bleed. Lear said in the dark, ‘As flies to wanton boys are we to gods, they kill us for their sport.’ Now men in lab coats sit in well-lit rooms and pull the wings off angels.” He reached out blindly for Horatio’s hand. “I almost lost you.”

  Horatio was moved, but only said, “Obviously, someone knows we’re searching for Capek’s murderer.”

  “Moreover, since we aren’t dead, he knows we’re suspicious. He’ll become subtle. In God’s name, walk on tiptoe.”

  “I will.” Horatio added awkwardly. “You be careful, too.”

  “Pah.” But Hamlet’s eyes shone. “What’s my life? Like a switch, to throw on and off.”

  Doctor Goode met them at the hallway door. “I was told you were here,” he said.

  “Really?” Hamlet said blandly. “By whom?”

  Nice, Horatio thought. Goode isn’t sure whether or not we know that we can be traced.

  Goode only said, “I thought you’d like to see a new simula given a visual body.” He added, “Later we’ll imprint him with a character you currently need.”

  That made no sense to Horatio.

  Hamlet, however, grabbed at Doctor Goode’s lab coat. “Who? Not Gertrude. Not Claudius. Not Ophelia, please.”

  Goode pulled back and said firmly, “Let go of me.”

  After a long moment, Hamlet did. His throat was tight, his pulse rapid. “Please. Who was it?”

  Horatio said blankly, “Who was what?”

  Goode adjusted his sleeve. “It was the gravedigger” he said. “He died of circulatory failure a few moments ago.”

  15

  Hamlet said stiffly, “I must see to my people.”

  Goode seemed oddly pleased. “Do they need you?”

  Hamlet ignored him. He and Horatio sprinted the hall to the breakfast room, where the others had gathered.

  Horatio was not so disturbed by their despondency as by their fascination: How did he die? Did it hurt? They were like children around a dead animal.

  Osric coughed. Ros and Guil stared at him, and he said sharply, “I’m fine, thank you, and nowhere near death.”


  Claudius remarked, “If dying is no vice, staying alive is no virtue, particularly in the vicious.”

  Osric sniffed. “That’s an unjustified cut from an incestuous murdering usurper with bad posture.”

  Gertrude snapped, “Claudius has lovely posture. Just because he doesn’t sway when he walks—”

  The ghost, near tears, said, “It isn’t as though being dead is so bad,” and vanished.

  * * * * *

  Horatio and Hamlet left and descended in the elevator at the hall’s end. Hamlet, as ill-tempered as the rest of the company, said, “This is a foolish place for an elevator. The biochem labs are at the other end of the hall.”

  The solidsign on the lab door showed a shadowless body dancing on a screen. The dance at least promised life.

  The same shrew earrings huddled on the live-ornament tray outside. When the door opened, Hamlet said without looking, “Good morning, Claire.”

  Doctor Mulvaney blinked. “How did you know—”

  Hamlet only said, “A little mammal told me.”

  The new lab looked uncomfortably like a theater. It had no wall screens, and had a round platform at the center of concentric circles of chairs. Instead of omnilights, fly lights and jetscreens hovered low over the platform.

  Doctor Chandra took a reading under the fly lights, and Horatio realized where he had seen this setting before: in simulas of twentieth century operating theaters.

  Doctor Goode said, “You may watch, if no one objects.”

  “I might,” Doctor Mulvaney said. She was having difficulty controlling himself. “These laboratories are isolated for a reason.”

  “Still,” Goode said smoothly, “We all appreciate the quest for broader knowledge in others.” He added, looking at Chandra’s stomach, “Not to do so would be narrow.”

  Chandra glanced down; he was anything but narrow. He said loudly, “But there is such a thing as security.”

  “Exactly,” Mulvaney said. “Androids don’t belong here. I trust Doctor Goode’s judgment, but the precedent set—”

  “Requires my permission.” Goode smiled coldly.

  Hamlet said to Horatio, “What shall we do when doctors disagree?”

  Chandra laughed involuntarily. Mulvaney bit her lip, said, “Very well,” and said to her ring, “Commence geria simula Joe.”

  Two small almond shapes appeared in the center of the room. They compressed to irregular lines, then expanded again.

  The pupils inside them appeared. The eyes blinked again. This time Horatio recognized the motion.

  Eyelashes grew, and nostrils appeared and dilated. Eyebrows grew, taking color and texture from the lashes. Hair grew, imitating the curl and bushiness of the eyebrows. Ears showed under the hair. Before they were done, the neck was expanding downward rapidly into shoulders. The torso expanded as the arms stretched to the elbow. The legs were done almost to the feet before the last finger was in place.

  A shadow appeared under the body, and it was whole, standing spread-legged, naked and unself-conscious.

  Goode said, “The face suits the personality.”

  To Horatio, the face didn’t have much personality at all.

  Goode added to Hamlet, “We wanted to build a body for Joe anyway. It’s good that we can justify the expense. Tell me, Hamlet: do you believe there’s something more than coincidence here?”

  Hamlet shrugged. “I’ve picked numbers between one and ten, called heads or tails, and named that tune. Coincidence is the magic we have no science for.” He added casually, “Will the over-character of the Access system be helping today?”

  Mulvaney said, “We don’t need him at the medical stage. The exec simula is primarily for—”

  Goode cut in swiftly, “Because we didn’t use it at the first stage, we’ll have to suppress it at this stage as well.” He looked at the simula below. “And we are nearly ready to begin.”

  Now the changes were tiny, as pores and individual hairs were added.

  Horatio squinted, looking for minuscule alterations. Mulvaney saw him and said, “Don’t waste your time. When the last addition is done, you’ll know.”

  Hamlet whispered to Horatio, “Now you’ll see how your people perfect us.”

  A voice from nowhere said, “Vertical ribs on fingernails complete.”

  The naked man below them smiled without any happiness, testing lips, running his tongue over his teeth, swallowing. His Adam’s apple bounced. He looked up and said, “Hello.” The voice was rasping. The features, though normal, seemed alien.

  Doctor Mulvaney said, “Try again.”

  “Hello.”

  “Much better.” She turned to Hamlet. “Do you need a baritone in your company?”

  Hamlet was daunted, but trying not to show it. “Ask him what he wants to be.”

  “I’d be wasting my time.” But she said into her ring, “Joe?”

  “Yes” the man said flatly.

  “What do you want?”

  “I want nothing” he said flatly.

  “Is there something you dislike?”

  “I dislike nothing.”

  “What are you feeling?”

  “My pulse. The floor on the soles of my feet. A small breeze from the ventilators—”

  “What emotions are you feeling?”

  “None.”

  Mulvaney said to Hamlet, “Preference is emotional.”

  “Or judicious.”

  Chandra said, “We have never found it so.”

  Mulvaney cut him off. “Right, wrong, like, dislike—all emotional.” She snorted. “Try saying that in a philosophy class, but it’s so. At least in this lab.”

  She addressed the simula. “Are you cold?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it uncomfortable?”

  “Yes.” The figure might as well have been speaking of a news item from a foreign country. “It is chilly. Portions of my flesh are shaking.”

  Mulvaney spoke into her Access ring. A sweater and a pair of trousers appeared on Joe. “Is that better?”

  “I don’t know. It is warmer.”

  Chandra said, “He can surmise what we are actually asking, but he cannot surmise his own preferences.”

  Hamlet said, “He knows want, but not his own wants.”

  Chandra chuckled. “Not how I would put it.” He said to the simula, “Joe? I’m Doctor Chandra.”

  “Hello, Doctor.”

  “We’re going to run a subroutine on you, Joe. Do you know what that means?”

  “You’re going to do something to me.”

  “Close enough. Do you mind?”

  “Of course not.”

  Horatio stared, trying to read the figure’s face. Joe had the numb look of someone who has been awake too long, someone in shock or in great grief.

  Chandra asked, “What do you see in his face?”

  Horatio said, “Loneliness,” at the same time that Hamlet said, “Impotent anger.”

  Chandra smiled at them both. “His face is without context. What you’ve seen is your own mood.”

  Hamlet said evasively, “He’s no mirror I could shave by.” Horatio wondered where his own loneliness had come from and thought, for no reason, of Paulette.

  Chandra went on. “Joe, the subroutine will take your body from infancy to death. In the process, it will reshape your features. Living does that. Do you understand?”

  Horatio looked from face to face in the room, wondering if the others could tell, from looking at Horatio, what his childhood had been like.

  “Do you understand?” Chandra repeated.

  “Yes,” Joe said, and Hamlet realized why Joe’s face seemed alien. It had no marks of age, memory, or experience.

  “Very well.” Chandra added, “Be ready. I am told that the experience is painful.” He said to his ring, “Begin.”

  The figure shrank and fell to the bottom of the screen. In seconds there was nothing but a pile of clothes.

  A head poked out of the sweater: a baby. The face was a
s smooth as before; it stared without crying. The baby’s head seemed to swell and distend as the overlapped growth plates expanded. The hair grew until it suddenly stopped. Teeth appeared.

  The baby stood, his eyes turning hazel. Teeth fell out and grew back. Irregular growth spurts elongated the legs, filled out the torso, expanded and contracted the belly.

  Joe was being pulled like taffy into adulthood in the space of a minute.

  The shoulders and chest filled out; well-toned muscles appeared. A beard grew. Freckles from the sun came and went, and the skin lost the sheen of childhood as acne and blemishes erupted and vanished almost too quickly to see. The first laugh lines appeared around the eyes.

  The hair grayed slightly, then silvered. A bald spot appeared and grew.

  What happened next fascinated Hamlet and terrified Horatio. The figure’s chest caved in and the spine curved; the muscles turned ropy; the eyes squinted and developed bags. Wrinkles creased across jowled cheeks. One by one the teeth dropped out, not growing back, and a film of cataracts spread across the eyes. Knuckles swelled arthritically as the fingers curled up, little finger first and then the rest.

  Finally Joe dropped to the floor, unable to stand. His hair was long gone, his skin a mass of liver spots and folds. He raised his head once, tightening for a moment the dewlap at his throat, and collapsed.

  Mulvaney said, “Corpus age ninety-five years plus or minus one hundred and fifty days.”

  Chandra said, “That tallies with persona age.”

  Mulvaney said to her ring, “Return to median.”

  Joe stood and now he was Joe: the body’s experiences etched into his forty-five years, the anticipation of old age lurking in his eyes and expression. Hamlet felt a horrified kinship with him.

  Mulvaney said, “How did it feel, Joe?”

  “It hurt.”

  “A little or a lot?”

  “A great deal.”

  “Do you remember much of it?”

  “I remember losing teeth, leg bones aching, and cancer. I remember backaches, and migraines, and—”

  “That’s enough. Do you want to go through it again?”

  “I don’t know.”