Too, Too Solid Flesh

by Nick O'Donohoe

  Horatio rose. “Tell him yourself. I’m going to bed.” And he did. He lay awake in bed a long time without sleeping, telling himself that his heart was broken.

  Hamlet said, “Breakfast room lights out,” and crooned to Ophelia until she fell asleep. He held her until morning.

  28

  Hamlet was late for breakfast; the others failed to notice, during the current crisis. Gertrude had found her slippers huddled against each other—furless, covered with small lesions, and dead. Tearful and hysterical, she accused Claudius of poisoning them.

  Claudius protested. “I had no poison and no interest; they had no appetites and no mouths.”

  She whirled on Osric. “You wore them, didn’t you? And afterward you took them to your room and you—and you—” She waved her arms. “Well, you did something awful with them.”

  During Osric’s flustered response, two things became clear: 1) He had known that the slippers were unwell, and 2) He had been borrowing and wearing Gertrude’s clothing.

  Guil suggested that Osric had given the footwear a venereal disease. Osric snapped that he was well now, and that androids couldn’t carry transmissible diseases anyway.

  Gertrude told Ros and Guil they were unfeeling; Osric said they were hateful. The queen and the courtier sniffled together for the dead slippers.

  Gertrude, grief-stricken, actually dragged Goode into the breakfast room. “Alan, look—” The others watched, stunned. The Teks never came in during breakfast.

  Goode seemed more distressed over her owning the slippers than over their death. He snapped, “You have no business owning liveware. You’re a fool to snivel about them. Never own liveclothing, don’t be an idiot, and don’t waste my time.” He strode out.

  Gertrude collapsed. Ostic hugged her and told her that Goode was jealous because the slippers were a gift.

  Hamlet ignored it all until Ophelia, frightened by Goode’s entrance, began crying. Hamlet comforted her, then surrendered her to Gertrude and went back to his thoughts.

  No one had seen Horatio. His quarters were neat, but his cloak was gone. Hamlet checked his own quarters, the breakfast room, the hall, the theater, even the labs.

  He told himself that it was inevitable. Horatio wasn’t really a policeman, and he wasn’t obliged to stay.

  Surely Horatio hadn’t left because of Hamlet’s rudeness, egotism, unwarranted anger, or indifference.

  Gertrude, reading to Ophelia after breakfast, asked, “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” Hamlet said, and for once he was a bad liar.

  “Come talk.” She added sadly, “Ophelia won’t mind.”

  “Thanks anyway. I’d better go; there’s work to do.”

  “Always work.” She raised her arms in mock indignation. “You’re as bad as Alan—” She caught herself. “As the others. Can’t spend more time with friends?”

  He smiled sadly. “I have more than spent time with a friend, Mother. I have squandered it.”

  He walked back to the empty stage.

  Horatio leaned on the throne steps, one hand hidden. Hamlet said, more sharply than was needful, “What are you holding?”

  “Medicine.” He kept it hidden. “For both of us.”

  Hamlet stepped closer. “What do you want me to take?”

  Horatio brought his hand out with a flourish. He was holding two bottles of white wine by the necks. “A break.”

  * * * * *

  They lay in the livethatch roof of the Globe, smelling the grass gone to seed. Hamlet said, “This feels wonderful. I needed it.”

  Horatio nearly dropped the half-empty bottle. “Me, too.”

  Hamlet said softly, “Something last night hurt you.”

  “I don’t care,” Horatio said firmly, passing the bottle.

  Hamlet swallowed, then pointed across at the yellow and blue flowers dotting the Manhattan skyscrapers. “Who planted those?”

  “Eco-terrorists, years ago. They believed in vitalism, that life has a force of its own—not predestined; something—got it. Self-determining. More than chemical.”

  “We are more than ourselves,” Hamlet said.

  Horatio burped. “They spread every species they could. I know it sounds silly, but it’s better than politics now.” Horatio snorted. “Polynuclear strategies, pre-engagement military and police tactics, Leftie watching—we were better off with the walking catfish and wildflowers.”

  “I agree. We’re a lot alike,” Hamlet said.

  “You’d like neuroputty and you to be more different, wouldn’t you?”

  Hamlet said, “Osric says, once, a doctor with a handsome husband cored him out, brain and spine, and filled him with neuroputty. Not only is he more obedient, he’s a library.”

  Horatio said, “I’ve heard that a man cored out his wife’s brain and spine, trading it for neuroputty of the Book of Common Prayer.”

  “Did she heal anybody?”

  “Not even herself. She was ordained, though.” He didn’t want to talk more about it. “What about your arms and legs; how do they work?”

  “You’ve seen the wires when I was scratched. I’m built of osteoplastics, wire tendons, minihydraulics. When I’m resurrected, I can take my arms apart to build my harp.”

  “That’s morbid.”

  “Isn’t it?” Hamlet said happily.

  Finally Horatio said, “What will you do when you find him?”

  Hamlet knew he meant the murderer. “In the play, I’m murdered before I can do anything. I take bloody revenge, then. But given a choice—?” He raised an arm oratorically, dropped it. “No, it’s not there. Sorry. I don’t know.”

  “Maybe you won’t do anything.”

  Hamlet, blue-eyed and impassive, stared at him. “You think you’ve got all the free will there ever was? All right. You discover a murderer; what do you do?”

  “Why, I—”

  Hamlet sprang up. “He escapes, taking a hostage.”

  “I’d try to—”

  “Out of nowhere—” He swept his cloak in a huge billow. “An elephant drops out of the sky on you.”

  Horatio said blankly, “Where’d the elephant come from?”

  “Where elephants come from: chance, randomness, entropy. He’s the Elephant Entropy, with his friends, the Lion Luck and the Anteater Accident. And—” Hamlet poked Horatio’s chest. “When things keep happening, is free will enough?”

  “It should be. Maybe I’ll be lucky.”

  “Don’t count on the Lion Luck.” Hamlet said quietly,

  “There is a dog, named Death. A friendly beast,

  Noisy and common, following your feet.

  He rolls and paddles with unechoed love,

  And swears he’ll stay.”

  Hamlet finished gloomily, “One day we’ll all play dead, and he will fetch.”

  “You’re in a bad mood. You’re talking verse again.”

  “Sorry.” And he was. “Sometimes I can’t help it.”

  Horatio said, “Sounds like faulty design.” He hiccuped.

  “I prefer inefficiency.” Hamlet liked the wine. “Not long ago, an intelligent man—”

  “Clearly a rumor.”

  “Wanted to be efficient. He tried datachips, and built-in scanners, a compiler, and finally an optimizer, behind his ear.”

  “An optimizer.” Horatio felt his stomach swimming in place. “Systems use them to eliminate wasted commands.”

  Hamlet nodded. “And it did. He’s ninety, now, and looks twenty. He may live to be a thousand. He breathes, his heart beats, and he monitors himself consciously. Apparently,” Hamlet said, grinning, “the Curse of Consciousness is inefficient.”

  Horatio said, “I wish I hadn’t heard that drunk.”

  “I hope you realize that we’re both in a Free Zone.”

  Horatio looked around anxiously. “Are we in danger?”

  Hamlet’s words slurred. “In danger of losing consciousness. The Free Zone isn’t what you’re free in, it’s what you’re free f
rom: awareness, choice, foreboding. Either there’s only one thing left to do, or nothing. You don’t have to think about anything.”

  “I thought you liked thinking.”

  “No.” Hamlet sounded sober. “Thinking is safer than acting, and I need to do both. Someday I’ll be free of them. I want that sometimes.”

  Horatio blew a dandelion stem. “Sounds like death.”

  “Doesn’t it? By the way, I found out what Thanatos is.” Hamlet tried to look solemn, but only looked owlish. “Theater Access wouldn’t tell me, so I sneaked outside and asked real Access. ‘Thanatos’ is the ancient Greek word for death.”

  “So if we find a dead Greek Tek, we’re getting warm.”

  “And he’s getting cold.”

  “My lord, you’re fun when you’re drunk. You always seemed too stiff to me anyway.” Horatio stretched out on the grass to stop the world from spinning. “All those play speeches about drinking and sex, all that ‘more honored in the breach than the observance’ stuff. Why say them?”

  “Somebody should, man. Why, look at this world!” Hamlet swung an angry arm over Horatio’s head without noticing. “People nearly living underwater down that way, and money-mad grown babies in three-womb apartments up that way, and my mother the queen living with her brother’s murderer—”

  Horatio considered. “No, that’s just in the play.”

  “So what? Oh. Right. Sorry. I confuse reality with the play sometimes.”

  “Just so you don’t confuse life and death.”

  Hamlet stared at the flower-strewn skyscrapers, then closed his eyes. “I could, and that may be the real secret of Thanatos: a love of death as strong as love of life.”

  If Horatio had been sober, he would have realized the importance of what Hamlet had just said. But the wine was strong, the Curse of Consciousness nearly gone. He took Hamlet’s words as lightly as he did the floating dandelion seeds around them.

  * * * * *

  At end of that night’s show, Horatio peered anxiously out but didn’t see Paulette. Mary, looking disheveled and disoriented, saw Horatio staring. She ran out, pushing through the crowd effortlessly.

  Horatio ran after her, trying not to brush people. A slow-walking woman blocked the theater exit. Horatio followed her out, then swung back and forth, staring.

  The lobby was nearly empty.

  He ran onto the front steps. Madame Dernier, David, and Mary stared at him. Osric, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern looked at him in surprise. There was no one else.

  He ran back inside. A fat man with an amused smile nodded to Horatio. “I thought it was better last week.”

  Horatio said, “So did I,” and put a hand through him.

  The fat man frowned. “Rude, isn’t that?”

  “Sorry.” Horatio dashed up the aisle, through a red-headed woman in a butterfly cloak that lifted agitatedly as he passed through it. She crossed the lobby without acknowledging him and vanished. He sagged against a liveoak wall. A warbler flew away from him.

  The fat man walked over with careful grace. The grass carpet did not bend under him. He said, “So now you know.”

  Horatio nodded. “Are many of you real?”

  The fat man pursed his full lips, thinking. “About ten. Maybe more. The ones that come down front every night.”

  “They’re blocking, so that we don’t find out that you’re all simulas.”

  The fat man winked. “They come down for fun, too.”

  The warblers were flying back and forth, and the tree frogs were peeping, but it was hard to tell whether much of it was real. “Are the real ones Globe employees?”

  He pursed his lips again. “The blonde woman who comes and goes with the bald man, I wouldn’t call her an employee. No, sir,” he said judiciously, “I wouldn’t. And there’s a darkhaired young lady sometimes—I think you know her.” He winked again.

  He was enjoying himself tremendously.

  Horatio’s mouth felt dry. “So nobody comes for the play?”

  The fat man looked disapproving. “Is it advertised?”

  Horatio was silent.

  The fat man grinned at him, his cheeks growing rounder and redder. “Time for me to go. Don’t tell the others.” Horatio shook his head. “Good, good. Otherwise there’s no point in my coming every night.” He winked again. “And I do love to get out.

  Good night, sir.”

  He glided, catlike, to the exit and disappeared. Horatio walked slowly back to the stage.

  He wasn’t the last actor on earth, after all. There were no audiences.

  Light flashed; someone had opened the lobby door. Horatio peered out, seeing no one in the dark after the door shut. A moment later, Paulette said, “Let’s talk.”

  Horatio said, “I’d like to talk.”

  “Jesus, darling, go ahead. You have the willpower.”

  Horatio sat. “I’m sorry you’re angry.”

  “Shouldn’t I be?” She was striking her tough pose, but failing at it. “You found out every last secret of mine.”

  “I didn’t do it intentionally.”

  She laughed raggedly. “It felt like intent.”

  “I couldn’t tell you without jeopardizing my role—”

  “How did you get it?” Even in her embarrassment, she was desperate to know. “I mean, Jesus, you got a job with a bunch of toys and nobody caught on. No offense,” she said to Hamlet, who had just stepped on-stage from the hall.

  “Why would I be offended?” He bowed to her. To Horatio he said, “Call when you’re ready to finish.” He walked away stiffly, jealous of Paulette’s intimacy with Horatio, perhaps of any intimacy between humans.

  Horatio said when he was gone, “I can’t tell you how much I wanted to see you.”

  “I do that to people.” But she sounded pleased.

  “I’ve never met someone I had this much in common with.” He gestured at the stage. “’You and I are the only ones.”

  She leaned forward. “Could you get me in?”

  He bit his lip. Should he tell her that being in the cast meant nothing? No, for the same reason that he would never tell Hamlet. Should he lie and say something encouraging? “I got in when an android got ill.”

  “you mean broke down.”

  “I mean got ill. They’re awfully human.”

  Her eyes flicked anxiously over the empty seats, her only audience. “Is that why I was easy to fool?”

  “I’ve never worked harder at anything in my life.”

  She smiled. “You never quit, do you?”

  “I won’t quit. If I didn’t love you, I’d have gone on pretending—it’s safer that way—but I couldn’t any longer. You didn’t tell anyone I was—”

  “Of course not.”

  “I knew I could trust you. I always knew.”

  She silenced him with a finger. “Are there any rooms off here where we can talk in private?”

  “Not privately—wait.” With Eric dead, Horatio didn’t think that anyone else would monitor conversations. “We can use my quarters, as long as you’re discreet about what you say.”

  He whispered, “I could get thrown out.”

  She considered only a moment. “I’ll watch what I say.” She’d have done the same for any actor.

  “Thanks.” He pointed right and helped her onstage. She faced the seats, looking direct and weary—naked to an audience, a seasoned actress with nothing left but training. “Which room?”

  “Down the hall, first on the right. I’ll follow you.” He watched her leave and said quietly, “Hamlet.”

  Hamlet said from behind the throne platform, “You knew.”

  Horatio said without rancor, “You come from a world of spies and betrayals.”

  Hamlet stepped out. “Don’t you?”

  “If I do, I fit in well there. I’d like to talk to her.”

  “So would I. Why isn’t she still a murder suspect?”

  “Because Doctor Capek was her only chance to get in here, since he was arranging
with her father—” Horatio stopped suddenly. He had let too much slip.

  Hamlet said stiffly, “I won’t ask how you know that. Just tell me why she can go anywhere she pleases.”

  “When you’re rich, they invent places for you to go.”

  “That’s lucky for her. She can’t invent for herself.”

  Horatio said, “You’re jealous, aren’t you?”

  “Jealous of that prattling half-role, of that foolish stick on stage? Why would I envy her?”

  “Because she’s human, and because I love her.”

  “You’re right,” Hamlet said with sudden calm. “She is the sun, and I the envious moon, a pale reflection of your shining ways—” He scuffed at the deadwood of the stage. “Life. Everywhere but here, every time but now, everyone’s but mine.” He waved an arm to Horatio. “Go to her.”

  There was nothing to say. Horatio half-ran off-stage.

  * * * * *

  The hall lights were on, the autodoor to Horatio’s room open. Fingers trailed against the frame at floor level.

  She was still breathing. Horatio knelt, shouting, “Medical emergency!” The system did not respond.

  He said again, “Medical emergency,” then said abruptly, “Theater Access. Are you listening, dammit?”

  The answer came softly in the flat voice. “Yes.”

  “Medical emergency.” He had never seen pupils so large: dark and luminous holes, the cat-effect canceled out.

  Theater Access didn’t respond.

  Horatio leaped away from her and ran down the deserted corridor. Every so often he shouted, “Medical emergency.” Theater Access, in defiance of regulations, never answered.

  He stumbled off the stage past the astonished Hamlet, and gasped from the seats, “Medical emergency.”

  The theater said, “Describe emergency.” Hamlet leaped to his feet and sprinted into the corridor.

  Horatio said, “It’s a woman—early twenties, unconscious, barely breathing. Possibly poisoned—”

  “Linking to outside Access. Describe location.”

  “Location—location, damn it—right. Cubicle four, Horatio, Globe Hamlet Troupe.”

  The flat voice said, “Access denied. Notification request denied. Medical assistance denied.”