Too, Too Solid Flesh

by Nick O'Donohoe

  “We’re going to do it again. Possibly three times, adding detail to the body processes. It will hurt more each time.” When there was no reply she added, “Do you understand?”

  “I do.”

  “Very well.” She said to her ring, “Begin”

  The hair silvered and fell out. The skin tightened and wrinkled as the body bent. Once Joe shrieked, grabbing his abdomen. His cry was as passionless as a sea bird’s.

  “Return to median. Was it more painful, Joe?”

  “A great deal more painful.”

  Mulvaney nodded. “Do you remember why you grabbed your body and screamed?”

  “A pain moved through me, front to back, as something in me swelled. I think that was the cancer.”

  “But you’re not sure?”

  “No, Doctor.”

  Chandra spoke softly to his ring, then said, “Joe, we’ll intensify the signal a little so that you’ll receive more from the cancer.”

  “How much more?”

  “A factor of ten. If that is what’s causing the pain, we’ll know. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Doctor.”

  This time Joe threw himself to the floor, doubled over, and banged his head against the floor repeatedly, shrieking. “Again. Just to make sure.”

  The same.

  “Again.”

  The same. The lab was made to absorb sound, but all the same, Hamlet thought that the cries echoed. Horatio was sweating, his knuckles white on his chair arms.

  “That’s all. Return to median. Stand up, Joe.”

  Joe stood easily and faced the doctor. His face was imprinted in a way that Hamlet had never known humans were: as a receptacle for pain and in anticipation of suffering.

  Mulvaney said, “It was the cancer, Joe. Do you want to go through it again?”

  “I want nothing, Doctor.”

  Hamlet asked suddenly, “Which do you want more: something or nothing?” Hamlet, his hands made into fists, ignored the doctors’ glares.

  “I do not understand what you mean,” Joe said.

  Hamlet was angry. “My questions mean, and the doctor’s plans are mean, and you have returned to a mean, and it all means little. If you could choose, would you choose to live or not to live?”

  Chandra said softly, “To be or not to be?”

  Mulvaney shushed him. Hamlet’s question was not one Mulvaney would have asked, but she was anxious to hear the answer.

  It came slowly. “I have no desires. The choices seem equal to me. But I have lived, and I have died, and I surmise this: if I had desires, the choices would still seem equal. Does that answer your question?”

  Hamlet said, “It is never the answer I would prefer. It is, I think, the right answer.” To Mulvaney he said, “Perhaps right and wrong and like and dislike are merely feelings. That does not make them the same. If you don’t know that, tell me: how are you better than Joe?”

  Mulvaney glared. “I never said I was better than Joe.”

  Hamlet said softly, “Perhaps that explains why I, all things being equal, can prefer him to you.” He bowed to Goode, shook hands with Chandra, and took Doctor Mulvaney’s hand, saying, “You’re feeling better these days.”

  Mulvaney said in surprise, “Yes, thank you. I was a little depressed when you first met me, but I’m fine now.”

  “I’m glad.” Hamlet bowed over her hand as if to kiss it and said into her ring, “Access Capek.”

  The figure on the platform flickered out and was replaced by Doctor Capek. He was bent and pained, his hair silver. His eyes were tired, and he no longer smiled.

  Horatio closed his eyes. Nothing else Hamlet could have done would have upset the Teks more than proving that he could use their nominally secure thinkware.

  Capek looked up at the seats and suddenly smiled, looking like the younger Capek. “Why, Hamlet ,” he said. “You have a body already. How wonderful you look! Come down here.” He held out his arms.

  Hamlet ran to him.

  The embrace was a failure, and Capek laughed. “Of course, silly Pinocchio. And silly Gepetto. I’m a simula, not the man you knew at all. All the same—” He stroked Hamlet’s hair without touching it. “I’m glad to see you.”

  “And I you,” Hamlet said happily. “I’ve missed you.”

  “Why?” Capek blinked several times and stared around the room. “Has something happened? A moment—”

  He stood straight and his eyes went unfocused. Capek’s eyes went wide open. “Am I really dead?”

  Hamlet, blind with tears, nodded.

  Capek attempted to stroke the head he could never touch. “There now. I knew it could happen, so the man who died knew it as well. Lab work has its dangers. Especially here.” He looked at Goode, who looked away.

  Hamlet said, “I have a question for you.”

  Chandra gaped. Mulvaney stayed rigid, trying not to cry. Goode hunched like a vulture over his own Access ring, waiting for Capek’s next words.

  Capek said, “Ask.” A sigh went through the lab.

  Hamlet took a deep breath, let it out shakily, and said, “I have seen the painful ways in which we are made. It hurts, but at least a great deal of care goes into it. Tell me, what are we made for?”

  Capek looked suddenly old, incalculably aged, like Odin or Jehovah. “You were made—,” he began.

  Goode spoke two words to his ring. Capek disappeared.

  Hamlet looked at the empty air, then at Goode. “You.”

  “Please leave.”

  Hamlet did not move.

  Goode repeated, “Please leave.”

  Unwillingly, Hamlet left. Horatio followed. A second sigh went through the room as Hamlet obeyed.

  * * * * *

  In the hall Horatio said, “Great job. We’re dead men.”

  Hamlet looked at him. “Is that what matters most?”

  “It matters some.”

  Hamlet swung a fist into the plastic wall, which sprang back where he hit it. “What about right and wrong? What about good and bad? What about your—” he hesitated, realizing the corridor was even less secure than the theater to speak in, “—your job?”

  “My big job is to stay alive,” Horatio said. “You’ve made that harder, and for what?”

  Hamlet said, “For a great deal.” He paced the corridor, forcing Horatio to hurry to keep up with him. “There is a secret about the androids, and Goode doesn’t want us to know it.” Hamlet licked his lips and said, slowly and painfully, “And we know another suspect now.”

  “Who?” Horatio tried to imagine bland, disinterested Chandra committing a murder. “You don’t mean—”

  Hamlet nodded. “Well done, Horatio. I do. The only one there who needed a borrowed physical body to commit a murder: the simula of Capek.”

  As Horatio stared at Hamlet open-mouthed, he went on, “Any of the Teks could use him, then erase his knowledge of the death. Or he could do as much himself, to avoid getting caught. Think about my new suspect, think of the suffering the simulas are put to, and see if you can find a motive.”

  Hamlet walked away from the human being who was, after all, only pretending to be an android. For the moment Hamlet wanted nothing to do with humans.

  16

  “Blast their hopes” Polonius thundered, “Blight their lives—” He was performing Meronick’s version of Twain’s The War Prayer, the scathing anti-war play from the twenties and the Pan-American Conflict.

  The other roles—the congregation, its preacher (Osric), the young lover (Ophelia)—were small. Hamlet hoped being the angel, castigating humans, would inspire Polonius.

  It seemed it had. Polonius, gaunt and angry, mocked his listeners’ prayers for victory. He showed that their hope was cruelty, their enthusiasm and patriotism bigotry and viciousness. The bite of Twain’s short story sharpened in the play; the angel annihilated the people’s war fever.

  Ophelia stood timidly. “That’s not what I prayed for.”

  This was where Meronick, more impartial
than Twain, showed the fear behind prayers for victory.

  She went on, “Two loves of mine go to war. I prayed only to shield Michael and Rachel from the things you named. If I suffer, if I hurt, if I die for them, I don’t care.”

  The angel softened. It was hardly acting; Polonius adored Ophelia. “Child, such as you don’t start wars.”

  She looked blankly at him, tears in her eyes. Tears came up in Hamlet’s own. He brushed them aside quickly.

  Polonius went on, “Love makes no widows. Charity explodes no weapons. Self-sacrifice makes no holocausts of nations.” He took her hand. “You would sacrifice yourself, asking nothing of others. I wish you led these people.”

  Horatio looked at Claudius, who was watching Ophelia and crying freely, and at Hamlet, ready to applaud. Horatio himself was a child again, transfixed in the dark of the Martin Beck theater, watching a real angel.

  Polonius, breaking character, looked down at Hamlet and said, “Do I have to say the rest of this?”

  “Please don’t stop.” Hamlet actually held his clasped hands up. “Meronick’s angel is, in all things, more than man. Can’t you, for once, be more than yourself?”

  “The words aren’t right.”

  Hamlet moved his lips, but nothing came out. Meronick’s play, coming at the time of the First Pan-American Conflict, had earned the author a Pulitzer, a Nobel, a Martin Luther King, and an harassment-imposed exile in Sweden.

  Horatio spoke first. “What would you rather say?”

  Polonius stepped forward eagerly. “Something to show these people what war is all about.”

  He stretched his arms beneficently to the waiting company. “I know you’re scared, folks. We’re all scared. Heck, I’ve woken up to see the fireballs, the towers of smoke, the Unforgettable Fire, and I’ve wondered what I’m doing here. This war is for simple things.”

  They stared at him, rapt.

  “It’s for Democracy and the right to choose. It’s for home, and family, and peace, and safety for the little ones. Remember, Left can never be right while Right is still left. If you die for your country, you live forever.”

  Gertrude began to cry. Osric followed.

  Polonius warmed to his topic. “We didn’t start this fight, but we can finish it. We’ve done it before; we can do it again, turning into men and fighting for our girl back home. Greater love hath no man, that he lay down his life for his friend. It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country. War is hell, but when the trumpet sounds every man must do his duty. Wouldn’t you feel ashamed, sitting safe at home while our boys were risking their lives for your security?”

  Laertes and Fortinbras thundered, “Yes!” Rosencrantz and Guildenstern echoed them.

  Polonius stood at attention. “This is the big one, the war to end all wars, the war to save civilization, our last chance to stop the oncoming hordes, block the dominoes, be the shield against the Shaver Theory. We must stop the godless hordes from overrunning all that we hold dear.” He finished passionately, “There are no atheists in foxholes. God is on our side!”

  The applause onstage was thunderous. Ophelia hugged her father proudly. Horatio turned toward Hamlet; he was gone.

  Horatio caught up with him in the lobby. “Don’t take it so hard. Isn’t that to be expected of them?”

  “No.” He had his eyes shut. “It’s to be expected of your people. That’s how you always are, aren’t you? You cheer and aim guns, but you won’t sit and listen.”

  He stared bleakly at the plants in the lobby. “It’s not working. We aren’t your angels, but bloody gods. You made us in your image, and we turned into Mars and Kali.”

  Horatio put a hand on his shoulder. Eventually Hamlet shrugged and patted the hand. “Thank you.” He was breathing hard. “It’s been another long day.”

  Horatio said, “It has. You wouldn’t be so upset with the others if you didn’t also think that Capek’s own simula killed Capek.” He added, “Why do you think so, my lord?”

  Hamlet spoke calmly and tiredly. “The simula knows the theater, the labs, and Capek’s own schedule—being a part of Capek. Each Capek simula is a different part of him. This last one is recent enough to have done the murder. And he could have Accessed his own earlier simula in the Cloisters and given orders, the day that we were almost killed.”

  Hamlet grabbed Horatio’s hand and squeezed it. “This is what we were ignoring when we examined method; who would need a human body and could create a biochip to control it with? A simula can’t kill unaided unless it’s an android.”

  Horatio felt a sudden chill. “Then why not suspect androids? Claudius was made to be a murderer.”

  “No.” There was a world of denial in Hamlet’s voice. “We could never. Not even Claudius.” He added dubiously, “Surely not Claudius—no. Never.” He shook his head violently. “He has no motive, but Capek’s simula does—the countless episodes of torture and suffering like the one we saw today.” Hamlet sounded like Meronick’s angel: “Day after day, scream after scream, he saw us suffer.” Hamlet said flatly, “And if he is from the Capek I knew, he would grow to hate our tormenters.”

  Horatio hated saying it, but had to. “Isn’t tormenting simulas what the real Capek did for a living? The government paid him to build you all.”

  Hamlet looked him straight in the face, and his eyes looked empty and haunted. “I can’t believe that.”

  Horatio spread his hands, dislodging a zebra swallowtail from the lobby flowers. “All right. If he has a motive, what about the other simulas on Theater Access?”

  Hamlet looked suddenly thoughtful. “It’s something to consider. Let’s go in.”

  * * * * *

  Since Hamlet, sulking, refused to speak to any of them until the evening’s performance (which was quite good), the cast concluded that their rehearsal had been a success. Polonius beamed all night.

  17

  Gertrude, smiling, left the theater with a young man. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern left with a man and a woman. Osric left with a sharp-faced man his own age. Horatio, who had come out of hiding too soon and nearly been snatched up by an older woman with implanted, non-poisonous Medusa hair, left with Paulette, though Billy waved to him timidly.

  Billy stayed long enough to frown at Eric, who had his arm through Mary’s and was applying pressure to it. The large woman who had once taken Rosencrantz and Guildenstern left this time with a wicked smile and four courtiers.

  The theater emptied quickly. A storm was sweeping in from the south. Newzak and EZnews simcasters warned that if it stalled off the East Coast for any length of time, the rain and storm surge might swamp the Greenhouse Pools.

  Hamlet sat alone on stage with Claudius, watching the audience drift out. Claudius asked, “And how do you feel?”

  “Fairly well, for having died. And you, Majesty?”

  “The same.” He looked at the empty door. “I wish, someday, one of them would come merely to see the play.”

  Hamlet chuckled. “Just one?”

  Claudius smiled back. “Just one audience.”

  Hamlet stretched on the floor where, minutes before, he had sunk to his death. “You never go with any of them.”

  “They never ask.” Claudius looked down at himself. “I have an old man’s body, Hamlet. They would only want my crown—and those who want that, want real crowns.”

  “Do you ever wish they’d ask?”

  Claudius looked at Hamlet in surprise. The king said carefully, “Love is no ruling desire of mine.”

  Hamlet thought. “Perhaps you love and desire ruling.”

  “No ‘perhaps.’ I do.” He touched his crown, a narrow circle of metal that could project its own jewels and ermine trim. “Even off-stage I wear it. I’ve killed for it and lied for it night after night; there’s nothing I would not do for it. Do you feel that at all?”

  Hamlet thought. “In the play, I kill for my father, not for the crown alone. No. I’ve never felt that.”

  Claudius looked very
far away. “Then you will never understand. I wish, for your safety, that you could.”

  He shook his head and turned back to Hamlet. “Don’t think I’m indifferent to women, Hamlet. I’m very fond of your mother. Though at times she can be—”

  “Can’t she?” Hamlet agreed.

  They sat in amiable silence. Hamlet said diffidently, “Does it bother you that she sleeps with Goode, with Capek before him, and with others?”

  “Of course not. I’m not even sure how much choice she has—how much choice any of us have. We seem to follow our natures.” He said amusedly, “Does it bother you—”

  “Of course not,” Hamlet said sharply.

  “—That Ophelia, who is young and pretty—”

  “Oh.” Hamlet blushed at how easily he had been trapped. “Not much. Hardly at all. She is pretty, isn’t she?”

  Claudius closed his eyes. “Yes,” he said quietly. “Yes, she is. And so young.”

  Claudius straightened up. “To bed. If no one else ever appreciates the play again, there will always be you and I.”

  “And one other.” Hamlet smiled, thinking of Horatio. “The one appreciative onlooker you hope for.”

  “Don’t wait up for him. Or her.” Claudius left.

  Hamlet watched him leave, thinking fondly how much like a father Claudius was. He thought of Capek and crossed backstage.

  He typed into the silent terminal,

  “I HAVE AN ERRAND FOR YOU.”

  “COULDN’T YOU AT LEAST SAY HELLO?”

  “HELLO. I NEED YOUR HELP.”

  “HELLO. I’LL DO WHAT YOU NEED. YOU KNEW I WOULD WHEN YOU ASKED ME TO ACCESS YOU LATER. WAS I GOOD TONIGHT?”

  “YOU’RE ABOUT TO BE EVEN BETTER.”

  “THAT’S NO ANSWER.”

  “YOU WERE FINE.”

  Hamlet looked quickly around himself and gestured. The theater lights dimmed still further, and he blocked the screen with his body.

  “I WANT YOU TO LOOK AT SOMETHING FOR ME. I CAN’T GO MYSELF; I’M BEING WATCHED. HERE’S WHAT I NEED—”

  Ophelia typed back,

  “WILL I SEE YOU TONIGHT?”

  “PROBABLY NOT.”

  “THEN WRITE IT FOR ME.”