Too, Too Solid Flesh

by Nick O'Donohoe

  They passed quickly into the hall. Hamlet said, “One last lab. My former self never made it this far.” His smile faded. “Is something bothering you?”

  Horatio was close to tears. “My lord, you are so like my only friend—so very like—your features are his own, and half your heart a mirror of his grace and sharpened wit—”

  An arm fell across his shoulder. Hamlet said dryly, “I’ve warned you about speaking in verse when you’re upset.”

  Horatio fell against Hamlet’s chest and wept. The prince held him for some time.

  35

  Hamlet said, “Dry your eyes. I’d offer my heart, but my cloak is easier. It was worth death, just to hear you call me ‘friend.’ I thought you never would.”

  Horatio said, “I haven’t had many friends.” He swallowed. “How did you get away from security?”

  Hamlet gestured that they should walk. “Goode couldn’t let LowTek security watch my death, for fear I knew secrets.”

  “What about Freddy?”

  “Freddy he could trust,” Hamlet said bitterly. “If you want to find men’s hearts full, fill them with coins.”

  “No. I mean, what will Freddy say to Goode?”

  Hamlet said, smiling, “Nothing.”

  He went on, “He never put Goode’s crown on me; I was obedient. At the door, as he stepped, I snatched the band from him and slapped it on his head.”

  Horatio felt sick. “Goode explained how it worked—”

  “And I listened,” Hamlet said lightly. “I walked Freddy straight into the vat prepared for me. Even his clothes were living. They went, too.”

  Hamlet finished, “I kept the crown. Does that make me a usurper?” He pulled the deactivated band from under his tunic and set it jauntily on his own head, a twisted smile barely masking the pain in his face.

  Horatio stared at the android he had been so glad to see a moment before. “‘Why, what a king is this.’”

  Hamlet burst out, almost straight from the play, “Why man, he did make love to this employment.”

  “You were willing to kill him.”

  “Not willing.” Hamlet flung the crown from his head, let it skitter down the hall. “Forced.”

  Horatio watched the crown vibrate into place like a wedding ring thrown on a table. “Have you read Paradise Lost? Satan excuses himself with ‘necessity, the tyrant’s plea.’”

  “After all we’ve done together, you still judge me?”

  Horatio said simply, “As Freddy judged himself. As I judge myself. Even Goode judges himself. That’s the real Curse of Consciousness.”

  Hamlet silently tucked the headband under his cloak, moved to a section of wall, and touched the exit arrow nearest Horatio’s quarters. A door opened. “Freddy used this elevator last night.” They stepped in. “It’s also how he disposed of Paulette’s body for Goode.”

  “You can’t know that.”

  “I asked him. He told me.” They rode down in silence.

  In front of the final lab door, Horatio said, “You’re quiet.”

  Hamlet gestured at the featureless solidsign on the dematrix lab. “Tragedy is no longer made of great words and witnessed murders. It’s made of silence and denial, and the final silence is the most tragic of all.”

  Hamlet opened the lab door and they looked in. The room was nearly empty. The vat, shut down, was lidded; a note on the side said simply,

  “EXERCISE CAUTION.”

  Hamlet said, staring at it, “Then comes the final denial, and there is nothing—no tragedy, no victims, not even witnesses. If only that void were tragic! That would at least be something.”

  Horatio stepped forward. The solidsign was the reverse of the dematrix lab: a body rising from the waters. But the body was still featureless, and the lettering on the door only said,

  “CORPIFYING.”

  Horatio said, “My lord, we don’t need to go in”

  The door opened.

  * * * * *

  The room was brighter, but shoddier: the walls were scratched from steel chair backs and the floors were dirty. The scrollscreens on the table were half-rolled, or upside-down, or held flat with weights, including a pair of deadleather shoes.

  A squat man, with unkempt hair ringing a bald spot, left his feet on the table as they came in. “Need something?”

  “Please.” Hamlet moved forward. “I’m Hamlet—”

  He nodded. “Thought I recognized ya.” He took a ragged bite of the sandwich. “Want some?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “’Snot like I got germs or anything. I’m the cleanest bastard anybody ever knew.” He scratched. “Disinfected inside and out. Antibiotics, ultraviolets, micromatrices, you name it.” He belched. “Not that it matters.”

  Horatio looked at the LowTek’s wrinkled white coat with a mustard smear across it. “What happens here?”

  He shrugged. “Not a whole hell of a lot. Other people’s butts work harder than my hands. There are worse jobs. A woman on Three spends her whole day checking hair samples. Rare earth trace minerals or some garbage. I told her if she got bored to come sample mine” He snorted. “She said I didn’t have enough to spare. I told her I was saving it in my pants for her. Know what she said?” He poked the sandwich at them. “She said, ‘Thanks for hiding it. Now stuff your head in your pants.’” He laughed loudly, showing his teeth. Evidently he couldn’t afford hairplants or regrowth molars.

  Hamlet said to the squat man. “You supervise the body-making?”

  He laughed again. “Yeah, I supervise.”

  “Where’s your staff?”

  “In front of ya.” He pointed to the table.

  Hamlet said, “But what about your data, your schedules, the materials you work with—”

  “Those?” He made a short noise that would have been a laugh if he hadn’t belched. He pointed to a faucet array inside the tank side. “Materials.” He pointed to a monitor-box on the tank. “Data.”

  Lastly he gestured to a pair of datasheets lying in the middle of the scrollscreen piles. “And my schedules. Fifteen words or less, and not a one of them ‘thank you.’”

  He picked up the first datasheet. “This one came in last night.” He glanced at the other, then crumpled the first and threw it on the table. “So this morning an ‘urgent’ comes in. ‘Urgent’ means move your dirty ass on this one, so that everyone else pisses and moans.” He plodded over to the tank, trying to look pitiful. He also looked drunk.

  Horatio said, “God, life’s tough.”

  The man glared at him. “How’s your room? Clean sheets every night? And the meals—on clean plates, are they? And good for you? Coded for personal needs, gene-diets maybe?”

  “We’re looked after well,” Hamlet said diffidently.

  The man smiled, showing how his gums had pulled away from his teeth. “Well, I’m not.” He said to the monitor-box, “Execute, you little bastard.”

  “Executing,” the box said indifferently.

  He hit it hard enough to graze his knuckles. “Swear back. Turn me in or kill me, but God damn it, do something.”

  He put his filthy hand in his filthy mouth. Horatio and Hamlet watched in silence as the wall tank extruded an osteoplastic skeleton into the bottom of the tank.

  Wire tendons crawled around the bones and bonded, and a quick spray of chemicals left pink deposits on them which gradually took the shape of muscle and organs.

  Horatio turned away. “Polonius, I’ll bet.”

  Hamlet said, “What else do you do?”

  He sniffed. “If a warning light flashes, I tell it to reset.” He added defensively, “That‘s my whole God damn job.”

  “What if you want to improve something?”

  “If I could do that, you’d sleep in this hole and I’d work in your room. No, my lord, I don’t change nothing. I need the work, you see.”

  Horatio looked at the tank where the organs were taking shape and looked away. The extruded chemical hose was like a cake-icer, dripping
precisely what was needed on each patch of tissue. He asked, “How long does this part take?”

  “The long work was upstairs.” He glanced at his wrist, where his employer had planted a time chip. “Ten minutes.”

  Hamlet watched as a completed lung joined itself via bronchial tubes to the trachea. “All those plans, and programs, and experiments. Ten dirty minutes.”

  The man jerked his head up. “Thanks for reminding me.” He spat into the body. “A personal touch. I do that to all of them.” He grinned nastily at Hamlet. “You, too, my lord. What the hell. It’s the artist in me.”

  Hamlet nodded, showing neither disgust nor surprise. Horatio said, “So you pick something that can’t fight back.”

  “Of course. And my boss rags me, and her boss rags her. It’s the way.” He prepared to spit again, saw Hamlet watching him with quiet dignity, and swallowed. “I don’t do much wrong.”

  “You do what you have to,” Hamlet said. “Do you know, a man once spat on the Buddha? The Buddha smiled on him and said, ‘a man may spit at heaven, but heaven remains pure. The spit falls back on the man.’ The mocker fled, but the story says, ‘later he returned and took refuge in the Buddha.’” Hamlet smiled. “Refuge. Such a wonderful word to men and women who are born from darkness and go into darkness.” He said feelingly, “And I’d trade an eternity of darkness for this first bright ten minutes.”

  He shook himself and called to the man, “You.”

  The man said, “Who?” and grinned. “You never once asked my name, my lord, You’re no different.”

  Hamlet bowed his head. “I’m sorry. What is your name?”

  “Joey.”

  “Joey, did you see the Greenhouse Poolsiders last night?”

  “Those slimy bastards? Let them all float out to sea.”

  Horatio peered into the tank. “He’s making a woman.”

  “I am?” Joey looked into the tank. “At this stage she’s just ugly meat.”

  Hamlet gripped the sides of the tank. “Who is she?”

  “You don’t know? Say, you look after your own—”

  Hamlet’s hand flashed forward, grabbing Joey by the throat. “Who is she?”

  His puffy eyes looked suddenly alert and frightened. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything—”

  “Who in this tawdry second-rate hell is she?”

  “Ophelia.”

  Hamlet let the man go. Joey backed toward the wallscreen. “The silly bitch skipped right off the stage during the blackout. Twisted too many wires. It’s cheaper to redo her.” He said hoarsely, “Theater Access on.”

  Horatio stepped forward quickly. “Access off.” He said to Joey, “Tell anyone about this and we’ll turn you in for spitting in the tanks. ’You’ll never find another job. You’ll eat out of Poolsider snares, trapping and begging. You’ll starve.”

  Joey hugged his body, as though keeping fat on. “Not starve.” He backed away from the wallscreen.

  Horatio walked back to the tank. “My lord?”

  “How could she die of a fall?” he whispered. Tears were running freely down his cheeks. “She had so little left to go. She’d fallen so much already.”

  The lab door shot open as Laertes stormed through. “Get away from her.”

  Horatio stared. “How did you come here?”

  Laertes bellowed, “Let me see her.”

  Hamlet didn’t look up. Laertes stared into the tank, his face twisted with grief. “O, treble woe fall ten times treble on that cursed head whose wicked deed thy most ingenious sense deprived thee of!”

  Hamlet jerked around at that line, gaping. Until now he hadn’t recognized how Ophelia’s downfall paralleled the play itself.

  Laertes ranted on, “Hold off the earth awhile till I have caught her once more in mine arms.”

  Hamlet caught him at the edge of the tank. “No.” Below them, Ophelia lay recognizable, nearly completed. “If you step in now,” Hamlet panted, “you will destroy even this poor shadow of her. Stop and think!”

  They wrestled at the tank’s edge. Joey cowered at the far end of the lab; Horatio watched, afraid that any interference would topple them both into the tank.

  Finally Hamlet caught Laertes on his hip, throwing him to the floor. “Who told you to come here?”

  “Who do you think?” Laertes sneered.

  “Alan Goode.”

  Laertes said sullenly, “You should call him ‘Doctor.’”

  “No.” Hamlet turned Laertes’s face until they were staring eye to eye. “You should call him devil or nothing. Why did he send you? Why would he direct you to a place where he knew you would destroy your own sister? Think.”

  Ophelia said suddenly, “How now, my lord?” and rose naked from the tank. Her full figure contrasted sharply with her innocent, barely adult speech.

  Hamlet draped his cloak around her. “I humbly thank you: well, well, well.”

  Laertes scowled at Hamlet and fled.

  Joey came up cautiously. “I have her clothes.”

  “Thank you, Joey.” Hamlet added, “We’ll go now. We have a rehearsal in a short while.”

  Hamlet said to Ophelia, “I did love you once.”

  “Indeed, my lord,” she said meekly, “you made me believe so.”

  “You should not have believed me,” Hamlet said, and Horatio held his breath.

  But Hamlet kissed her and said, “Truth is truth, with or without belief. I did love you once, and I do now.”

  Ophelia was still smiling when they left her in her quarters.

  36

  In Hamlet’s quarters, Horatio stared. The books had changed.

  There were Frankenstein and three versions of The Golem. There were God and Golem, Inc., The Soul of a New Machine, Asimov’s robot stories, and the Tales of Hoffman. There was an infobase-printed story anthology.

  Hamlet picked the anthology up and flipped through it, commenting. “‘Maelzel’s Chess Player.’ Poe. The chess player is a fraud. ‘Moxon’s Master.’ Bierce. The master defeats the chess machine, so it kills him. ‘With Folded Hands.’ Williamson. Robots created as caretakers take control instead. ‘Farewell to the Master.’ A man assumes that the robot is the servant of an alien, but the robot is master.” He tapped the book lovingly.

  “How did you get these?”

  “Freddy helped me,” Hamlet said simply. He added less easily, “We were friends, once.”

  Horatio glanced at an illustration: Victor Frankenstein struggling with his monster. “Learn anything from these?”

  “That humans fear the similarities between themselves and their creations, but deny the differences. That most humans believe a nearly human creation will attack humanity, but they don’t suggest why.”

  Horatio looked at a picture of a robot mourning a dead bird. “What do you think?”

  “Either humans create us to punish their evil, or they’re trying to embody evil. Which do you think?”

  Horatio looked at an illustration: Moxon murdering his master. He shut the book hastily. “Beats me. Let’s go.”

  * * * * *

  The rehearsal before Goode arrived was quick and frighteningly easy.

  Hamlet said to Horatio, “Watch.” The cast stiffly portrayed early twentieth century bourgeoisie. The men snapped imaginary suspenders and lit cigars; the women looked slender and ornamental.

  Horatio watched a rebellion of the robots, led by an angry Laertes. He whispered to Hamlet, “What is this?”

  “R.U.R.,” Hamlet whispered back. “It named us. ‘Robota’ is Czech for ‘servant.’ I mentioned it once. Capek—not my Capek, but the first Capek—invented it.” Hamlet bent forward, watching the stage intently.

  Claudius, playing the senior industrialist, strutted forward. “No, no. You wish for the worst thing possible. Make stones human and they would stone us.”

  He froze, along with the others, as Hamlet clapped, on and on, loudly and steadily.

  Marcellus said, “You mean it?”

  “I do, a
nd indeed it was well done. You’re actors. I’m proud to have worked with you.” Tears glistened in Hamlet’s eyes. “And we have acted together, haven’t we? Plays, scenes, and comedies, fit for any audience. Our revels now are ended.” He wiped his eyes. “Go and rest before we rehearse our own play.”

  They left, pleased but disturbed by Hamlet’s praise. Hamlet walked about the stage, reviewing the night’s blocking. Horatio watched. “What’s the ending?”

  “You’ll know soon.”

  “I meant of R.U.R.”

  Hamlet blew his nose. “Two robots offer to sacrifice themselves for each other. A man pronounces them human.” Hamlet added, “I don’t believe in the ending.” He breathed out slowly. “And I’ve learned all I needed to: ‘Make a stone human and it would stone you.’”

  He patted Horatio’s shoulder. “Remember tonight that I love you, or you’ll think me a human stone.”

  Horatio knew that he should warn Goode. He would have, if Paulette were alive and if Goode had not tried to kill Hamlet and Horatio both.

  Hamlet said, “I have more for you to think about. I spent the night in conference—”

  “My lord,” Horatio said, “I don’t need to know any more.” He added, ashamed, “I’m not really a cop.”

  Hamlet smiled, and his smile had the gentle innocence of the old Hamlet. “I knew.” The smile faded. “Your punishment, though, is to come learn something which will give you the will to see things through to the end. And will to boot—I know a secret.”

  “And what is it?”

  “I know why we were made. I have the final password.”

  37

  Hamlet gripped the terminal keyboard. “What was the first password?”

  ‘GLOBE.’ Five letters and a picture of the world.”

  “And lights flashed across the globe. The next level?”

  “‘FORTINBRAS.’ Ten letters and battle scene.”

  “And the third was fifteen: ‘SLEDDED POLACKS.’”

  “Fourteen letters, a space, a picture of a Russian—” Hamlet rippled his fingers, daring himself to type. “Being destroyed by explosions. The final password?”