by ROUNAK PURI
"So what's your first question" said Rockwood putting the pieces back together. He took white this time. I could ask him anything and he would tell the truth. What would you ask the smartest man ? I wanted to see if he was telling the truth.
"My question is how did you get the people in the Judas city betray their own kind like that? They're such monsters. " I said putting out a pawn.
"There are many answers but the true one is the most disturbing and the most sublime one" said Rockwood.+
***
Chapter 47/Him/50 pieces of silver with change
"How did you get the people in the Judas city betray their own kind like that? They're such monsters. Master" said Rockwood reminding me of my place.
"Tell me pet. What is the one thing we all flee from and keep running from, despite the fact we all know we will one day be caught?"
"My Aunts cooking, no... Parking fines... no... err In know Taxes ", I joked.
"What if I could let you win the race with death? Do you understand the power of the gift eternal life? Eternal youth, deathless. A body with every imperfection removed, young, strong the peak of every sense. Never to turn old, frail, enfeebled. Never ill, Never troubled by death's shadow. You could do anything. When you happen to fall while free climbing in Yosemite park, then you wake up in a new body. How would like to see the future, would you like to take the one you loved and be able to watch the sun grow old? Immortality kind of intoxicating."
"but how?"
"The brain is a series of connections. When humans worked out how the mind works they could build machine versions of it, but fear the consequences. We simply turned it into a weapon. Living forever, pure immaculate surrounded in a sumptuous house, servants at your command, no pleasure forbidden. The world which is at your door. This is what we offered them and in their weakness, they crumbled.." his ability to monolog was irritating but this time I forgave him.
I was quite staggered by the idea. It didn't seem possible, Senator McConnell was living proof. She was a young version of herself again.
"A single blood chip can compute your mind. Turin's dream made real. For the immortals need blood, human blood and blood means blood slaves. So they call themselves the post-humans. That gives them the right to treat the flesh which made them as the product they need. Theirs is a cruelty born from their desire to live. I like the way humanity give's themselves self rights when they want to. For them it is simply the right to disregard the mortal." he said. Clearly, he didn't know how to handle one no two bottles of champagne either.
"So the population of Judas city, are effectively Vampires?" I said moving my knight forward.
"Not Vampires - post-humans. They call themselves the immortals or supra-humans. No, the slaves they will be humanities last evidence they once ruled the earth. Many of the slave masters want to live out their years then want to transfer to their immortal bodies when they are on deaths door. At current trends in about 20 years, I doubt a single flesh hand will be pressing a slaves remote control and those same hands will be pressing a pain button forever, generation after generation" he said.
I was disappointed the only thing I had liked about the slave masters was their lack of perfection. Having flaws gave them their character, the one thing I now craved was imperfection, I would have settled for a zit. No honestly. Sounds bizarre but when you're starting a flawless complexion all day every day, I would have cheered and wept for joy. I guess I was just wishing for what I could never have, imperfection. Thinking of humanity ruled by pain junky immortal vampires seemed despicably grim.
"So are your also Vampire? a post-human?" I asked.
"If you win the next game ya can ask that as your question," he said moving his bishop to my collar's instruction. I was dizzy I tried to stand.
He went over to the bed which had emerged from the wall. He lay on the white sheets and patted them.
"Get me my drink' he ordered. I got it and mine. While I resentfully handed it over I realized he was checking for the residue oblivion in my blood stream. He was going to a lot of effort to make sure I was back to my grumpy back talking self. Given he was the king of selfishness I wasn't sure why this was, I could ask him if I won.
#6502 came in and moved the chess board to the bed. I lay down on my side opposite him and continued to play.
The third match I drew against the machine. Two more games left.
The next match I played more boldly I thought a machine would not be able to cope with that and I was right. The machine was playing strongly but blindly. There was a difficult section, I nearly lost it, we stopped talking.
He came round to my side of the board and lay next to me. He rested his hand on my hip. I could feel myself rising to him. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.2
"If you're trying to break my concentration it's not working. checkmate in 12 moves" I said. I grinned as if there had been a prohibition on grinning and I had just narrowly escaped my pursuers, had reached the border was able to grin for the first time and wanted to show them I was out of their reach. I thought I was just moving strongly forward, but then the free chess board had managed to predict the inevitable result.
"Let me look," said Master putting me back to see the board. He looked and lay back down.
"Ya get another question?" he said leaning back. His cute Scots accent came out more on the second bottle. 3
He moved the chess board pieces back to the beginning.
"Are you going to live forever Master? " I said almost silently. I needed to know.
He rolled over with his back to me. Our feet and legs still entwined.
"I like it when you call me Master but it's cuter when you have to think to stick it on at the end like an after thought. Your talking like a slave and I don't answer questions from slaves" said Rockwood.
"I'll try better next time master. Perhaps Master should punish me so I don't repeat this mistake again" I said repeating exactly what the collar suggested me to say.
He lay silently for a moment, then a minute, then an age.
"Am I going to live forever? Yes and no. Yes, 98% of my mind is in a building in the data center. Well, 80% the rest is distributed around the planet in unnamed datacenters. No - my mind is also still flesh. My flesh mind gets regular backups. Some cyborgs have transferred over. They a have a chip running a simulation of their human mind so technically they are Artificial Intelligences. Cyborgs always have a human chip and have some kind of android body. If I had died in a crash today I would have woken up in an android body tomorrow this would have been my transference day. The difference between a cyborg and an immortal is that immortals are afraid to add to their chip count. They want to stay exactly as they were, precise copies of themselves. The cyborgs are not happy with our mental lot, we are Turin's children. Like a kid with trading cards we, wanted them all. We augmented ourselves smarter, again and again. So I have three blood chips in the flesh me. That's a lot of blood if I'm not connected to the house net, so if I run low the teeth needles allow the chips to absorb more, from any human slave or not. Today one crashed and I needed rebooting. The human part of me could have done that but I was thinking too intensively." he said.
I sat back I was emotionally like a meteor creator.
"So you're not going to die," I said softly.
"Not unless I want to and at the moment it seems like a good option. Would you like to live forever knowing the population of Judas city are going to be there with you for eternity? It would be like living forever on a cruise ship with a huge bunch of lobotomized baboons."
"Grimness", I said.
"Grimness indeed," said Rockwood sipping his champagne.
"With the right person, it could be good. Forever with the one you love." I said.
"And there you have the difference between machine Heaven and machine Hell. FYI About 80% of my body is flesh. I played around with a number of enhancements, it's hard to avoid upgrading yourself. It's like getting a tattoo, you either get one or hundreds.
" he said cryptically. It looked like I had a perfume problem and he had a champagne problem.
He may be an evil gent I thought, but perhaps this whole pet business was him trying to reach back out of the hole he was in. Perhaps I shouldn't be hard on myself for reaching down to see if our hands met. I turned away from the board and put my arm around him. He pulled away.
"Time for your final game," he said.
I moved the pieces back to their starting points.
"This time tell your collar app to move up a level," he said. I did. Someone didn't like difficult questions. I started the game this time.
This game was harder much harder. I struggled. I got stares from Rockwood clearly I was missing something he could spot. My final move was a simple plan which suckered the machine into taking my queen and letting me trap its king.
"Got you sucker," I said as the rainbow of colors and lines on the board indicated checkmate in 12 moves.
He was laying down and pulled me into his arms. He stroked me absentmindedly.
So what's your third question?" said Rockwood.
What to ask him? Did the robots still follow the three laws? Yes I know I look like I had forgotten but I still wonder when I have time. Was he planning to dispose of me at some point? What was going on in the harem? Was he gay or bisexual? Why hadn't the machines just replaced the blood chips with less human dependant machines yet. Or my favourite, what can I do to make sure I can ask two more questions.
"I'm saving it up. You didn't specify when I had to ask the question." I said.
"Lass" was all he would say.
He waved his hands and the library disappeared and the lights went down. He pulled me into his arms. We lay together for 30 minutes looking out of the cathedral-sized window. On to the city beyond. Like the machines, it never slept. Building printers would always be pushing one building or another up. To make them strong they would put walkways between the tall buildings to share the job of standing up to the wind.
Then he reached up and found that foul metal disk he used on me. He held me tightly while he searched up and down my spine.
"It's not right what you do to me. I feel a lesser person after it" I said.3
"Despite my games, you're my slave and you're still my flesh. You must understand you are mine and I'll never let you go. So I can take from you what I can and what I must. So do not try to resist me nor do you have the right to resist me. I am your lord. Now hold still and let me pass. One day, one day you might learn to enjoy this" He found the sweet spot on my spine again lower and I held my breath.
"Please, I don't want this" I faintly said before getting that sensation of my back melting followed by a feeling of a flood of water pouring into me. The firework show briefly filled my head and I was out. Oblivion by so many different names I have known you.
ithout him, to give me orders, what would I do?
Chapter 48/Him/Turn left past Oblivion
The next morning I felt terrible. Waking up with an Oblivion hangover feels like someone has driven over you in a dump truck full of needles and pin. Reversed back trying to make sure your road kill, then dumping the needles and pins on you.
My body hurt and now didn't feel good about it. My head felt someone had left my skull in the wash and it had shrunk. Finally and worst of all I felt trapped without the possibility of escape. It was as if hope had packed up it's bags in disgust, thrown the house keys at me and said it was going to stay with its mother for like, ever. Added to that I felt that ring of burning on my spin where he had thingyed me again. I thought the coal bag only thingyed you once? I felt like one of those toys where the battery has run down but if you nudge it there is still has enough power to rattle for a few seconds before finally slowing to a runs out of power until still again. It was hard to tell what was champagne, what was thingying and what was my temporary perfume addiction. I woke up my mouth was as dry as the embers of a hundred burnt love letters. I craved obedience, not good.
Against all that I had woken up in his arms and it made me feel like I had armour against the world's worst problems. The fact I felt safe with him was possibly the most disturbing aspect of all. I was sleeping with a shark who was waiting for a sign of caring for him like blood. One small cut of affection and the feeding frenzy would begin. He rolled over and smiled.
"What are you thinking about?" he said his body next to mine.
"It's complicated. I was wondering about the best way to kill you in your sleep." I lied. "What are you thinking about?"
"It's complicated is that your third question?" he said.
"No" I said smiling.
"OK, i'll tell you anyway, for free. I was just thinking about the debate they are currently having in the robot house of congress. They've come back to the issue of what language all slaves should speak. They narrowed it down to 6 options."
"Which are?"
"Well at number 6 there is some kind of purpose built language which the machines would invent. That didn't work well last time" he said.
"Why not?"
"They wanted everyone to talk in a kind of audio binary. It was like ba ba da ba da da they couldn't get slaves to speak the simplest phrases. Even took five minutes to say yes master" he smirked.
"OK so not some machine invented language, "I said.
"5 Sign language. Turns out it's less universal than most spoken languages, they could pick one. The robots didn't like the idea of a slave not being able to say yes master when carrying something. Also too poetic. Not enough subservient words. They did like all the word signs the deaf have for the non-deaf people like 'those hearing b*****ds' and this one" said Rockwood moving his hands.
"Which means?"
"Music loving, patronising, b*m ******ing condescending hearing c******s who think they are so clever simply because they can listen to Barry Manilow" he said
I laughed, covering my mouth for some reason and getting a wiff if my own lavender scented breath.
"You're supposed to say LOL" said Rockwood.
"People don't say LOL" I said
"It's the Algorithmic age people say LOL" he said. Obviously thingying me put him a good mood, the sooner I became 50% armadillo the better.
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They tried inventing their own version good gestures though like this" he said wiggling his fingers past his eyes.
"What does that mean?" I asked.
"Pasteurised milk, As in past-your-eyes milk"
"painful"I said
"Well next in order of robot popularity was number 4 Klingon"
"Klingon as in the fictional language of Star Trek?" I said.
"Aye that's right. Apparently the guy who invented it wanted all the sounds which American's find hard to pronounce in other languages. So it got thumbs up for really irritating the Americans"
"Too nerdy" I said.
"at number 3 Spanish. A nice link with the Romans they built a strong long lived empire on slaves. The New Mechanical Order as Rome 2.0 the Romans built a lot of amazing things which lived on during the dark ages" Rockwood said.
"Monuments like Hadrian's wall, All built on the backs of forgotten slaves. So spanish at a pinch" I said.
"At number 2 was Mandarin. Mostly because it's the hardest for westerners to learn"
"hmm. Not convinced" I continued.
"and number one. That language in which all the classics of our time were written..." started Rockwood.
"I think I can guess this one, mostly because you haven't mentioned it yet" I said.
"You're not supposed to interrupt me" said Rockwood.
"I'm so the most shoddy slave of all time. Master, Overload, Sir, 01010011 01101001 01110010" I said ending in binary my collar translated.
"Siv? you mean 01010011 01101001 01110110" corrected Rockwood "any way the number one language which the robot council voted was...."
I waited, holding my breath.
" COBOL" he said.
"COBOL?"
I googled 'Cobol' on my col
lar. I discovered it was a programming language invented in the 1960s as an English like language meant for programming accounting systems. Trust the machines to want to talk to us in it.
"Where did English come in?" I asked.
"89th, I think. Some people speak it, but it's a rubbish language. The spelling is all wrong too, I mean, 'saw', 'saw', 'sore' and 'soar' four different meanings and three different spellings. Better to start with a clean slate. A huge A.I in Europe is computing a new language. It's noticed humans have large numbers of short words for things you care about. Did you know the way the Eskimos have 50 words for snow* and Americans had 190 words for genitals? So they have created hundreds of words for master or mistress. Like Athelue, meaning 'Dear owner' and 'Ceyalisu' meaning 'dearly loved supreme being who I want to serve body and soul for the rest of my existence, the one thing which completes me and who by devoting myself to makes sense of my life'... Hey good news the new language of the slaves has gone into beta test."
"Are we going to be forced to learn it anytime soon?" I said.
"Are we going to be forced to learn it anytime soon? Athelue" said Master.
"Are .we . going. to. be. forced. to. learn. it. anytime. soon? Athelue" I said rather dull and mechanically showing my dislike for it already.
"No - changes which affect humans can't become new mechanical order law without a general vote from both the cyborg and human councils.The A.Is are just trying to figure out what they want. Hey they've invented a huge number of insulting and demeaning words for slaves, like Judaka meaning flaccid meaningless skin flaps, do you feel demeaned by that?"
"Not enough," I said.
"Not enough, ceyalisu" he said.
"I don't think I will be calling you 'ceyalisu' anytime soon" I said.
"Say-ay-ee-soo" Rockwood corrected. One day you will and I'll make sure you'll mean it" he said.
'Just about the time hell installs central heating to take the chill off the place' I thought.