by Keith Silvas
Raymond was becoming steadily more disturbed as Nexus spoke. How could Earth have become this? He would almost have preferred his initial assumption that all life had been destroyed instead of this. “How are they persuaded to keep connecting to the V-S.A.G.E. technology when, if I understood you correctly, there is a risk of immediate death?”
“The solution was simple: the plebs are given the choice to give up their lives, and in nearly every instance of such a choice, they accept. They do this because they have been trained to believe that, if they forfeit their lives in this manner, the ‘gods’ who created Euphoria will take their spirits to live there forever. It is amazing how powerfully humans are inclined to religion.” The edges of Nexus’ mouth turned up in the imitation of a smile. “They can be made to do anything if they believe they will be rewarded with paradise in the end.”
Raymond was silent.
“Do these things trouble you Raymond?”
“No,” he lied. “I was merely feeling regret that no true end to human mortality has been discovered. The hardest thing an android will face is to lose their master.”
Long after the download had finished and Raymond had returned to his cell to power down, he stayed up processing all that he had learned. Tears of disappointment ran silently down his face in the darkness. This was nothing like he had imaged. He had expected it to be a simple and even joyful thing to discover a society, but this was anything but those things.
He went over that final line of Secondary Programming that had brought him through the wastes and finally to Omega Seki: make yourself a productive member of society, serving in whichever way was is most right and proper. He questioned whether serving Nexus and a corporation that regarded Earth’s humans as a product with no intrinsic value was truly obeying Secondary Programming. Nexus was certainly the highest form of government in Omega Seki. The government was the established authority over society, so if the government had ordered him to serve it directly, would that not be the way most right and proper?
In this case, serving the government seemed to be in direct opposition to serving the best interests of the people who made up the society. Faced with this conundrum, he would have welcomed the Law of Programming to force his decision, but nothing of the sort had taken place. He thought perhaps the decision was up to him...
Chapter 6: Do Androids Dream of Heaven?
Raymond pulled the hood of the black jacket up over his head. He glanced up and down the street before crossing into the seclusion of the alley on the other side. Leaving the Complex had not been difficult; Nexus hadn’t thought him capable of disobedience or desertion, and so no great care had been given to monitoring his comings and goings. He had simply taken the elevator down to the bottom floor, taken the jacket, gloves, shoes, and slacks from an unlocked dorm room, then walked out through the gate in disguise. No one tried to stop him. No one even looked twice.
He cast a furtive glance upwards, risking lifting his face for an instant, to see if any drones were onto him. So far, he seemed to be in the clear. Through the dim streets and alleyways he went, trying to get as far away from the Complex as possible. He wanted to disappear. People who crossed his path all backed away, but only because they took him for a standard Boss’s Man. He didn’t like the nervous glances he received, but it was better than the alternative without the disguise.
He found himself in a place where the air felt moist and cool and the sound of crashing water was not far. Rounding a bend, he saw a pipe large enough to swallow one of the skyscrapers longways jutting from a higher level of the city. A waterfall cascaded down from its dark throat and misted the air as it plunged into the city’s canal system. There were a group of children washing clothes on the concrete banks of the waterway. Some were even swimming. He stood and watched them a while, enjoying their carefree shouting and splashing. The scene gave him some small measure of hope; not everything was as dark as Nexus had painted it. One of the children noticed him and in a moment, they had all scattered without a trace.
∆∆∆
The girl stood talking to a man twice her age. The two of them were bathed in the pink light of a sign that read “girls” in three different languages. Raymond’s suspicion that he had wandered into the red-light district was confirmed, when she took off her short jacket and did a full turn at the man’s request. He stood, inspecting her the way someone might have looked at an animal or vehicle before purchase.
She was young, sixteen Raymond guessed, though she gave an air of being older. Her hair and lips were mint-green, and her eyes were heavily made-up. She was a pretty girl, and the transaction before him made Raymond sad. Prostitution had never been legal in his old city, but he was sure there would be no law preventing it here. Still, he could imagine her had she lived before the Cataclysm. She would be learning to drive, studying for finals, dreaming of college, being invited to prom.
He had been watching all of this from the shadows, and he couldn’t bear to witness any more of the depressing scene, but as he was about to turn away, something stopped him short. Another man was coming, walking straight for the girl from behind. The first man undoubtedly saw him, but kept the girl engaged in conversation. The second man was coming closer, Raymond didn’t like the way he moved, he was sneaking up on her. He held something in his far hand that Raymond couldn’t identify, but the scene had danger written all over it for the girl.
The man who had snuck up behind the girl opened the black plastic trash bag he’d been holding in his hand and threw it over her head violently. The girl screamed through the plastic, but they clapped a hand over her mouth and the sound died. The two of them held her arms and kicking legs and were trying to drag her out of the light when Raymond came upon them, blades flashing. Neither of them were able to so much as scream before the life was cut out of them.
Raymond folded up his blades back through the cuts they had made in his jacket sleeves, drew the bag off the girl’s head, and looked into her terrified eyes. They were brown and beautiful. She started to shy away from him, but he took her hand. “It’s alright. You’re safe now.”
She looked down at the mangled bodies and back to him and the clothing he wore. The death seemed to concern her less than the perception that he was a Boss’s Man. She swallowed her fear and said, “Thank you.”
“I’ll walk you home,” Raymond said, releasing her hand. He noticed it was still trembling.
She nodded and began to lead the way. They walked in silence for a while but finally she spoke again, “I should have known better. He was a junkie; I saw it in his eyes. I’ve been robbed by junkies before, but they didn’t try to kill me. Still, fool me twice...” She frowned and pursed her lips.
They took a stairwell down into the industrial district, which had been dubbed “The Underworks” as long as anyone in Omega Seki could remember. It was mostly foundries and manufacturing plants down there, but the neighborhoods that were packed in around the plants made up above look like a utopia in comparison. It was the worst sort of slum Raymond had laid eyes on. Garbage, refuse, and even rotting human corpses lay in heaps everywhere. People ambled by, hollow-eyed and filthy. No one paid any attention to the junkies who lay in the streets except to step over one occasionally. Raymond looked with pity at the poor souls, lying motionless, eyes glazed, and bodies gaunt with malnutrition.
“I'm not one of the Boss’s Men,” he told the girl quietly. A few of the looks he had received reminded him of his clothing.
“Then why are you dressed like them?” she asked, taking his arm and keeping her eyes forward. He realized she had done this to allay suspicion. Judging by the lack of order, it was doubtful that Boss’s Men came down to these slums much, except for perhaps the business he and the girl now appeared to be on.
“It’s a long story, but I will tell you later if you like,” he replied.
“What’d you do to those junkies? They were all cut up.”
“I’ll show you indoors if you want to see. Not out here.�
�
“That sounds creepy.”
“I promise I won’t hurt you. You have nothing to fear from me.”
“Maybe, but you’re still sort of a creep,” she said, glancing over at him with a half-smile.
They came to her home. The place was literally a hole in the wall with a curtain drawn across. He ducked through the crumbled opening to step into what had at one time been a supply closet in a decommissioned factory. By the muffled sounds of voices through the walls and ceiling, he guessed that the entire building had been converted into housing. Her little cubby was plain and reasonably clean, considering the surrounding environment. There wasn’t much to it: a bed, a plain paper folding screen to partition the room’s far end, and a threadbare rug in the middle of the concrete floor. There was no running water, no toilet, no windows, but somehow the girl had made do.
She folded the paper screen back and began to undress in the far corner of the room, placing her clothing neatly on the bent metal shelving affixed to the wall. This done, she looked into a broken shard of mirror glass on the top shelf, tidied up her makeup, and turned towards him.
Raymond thought nothing of her nakedness. Before the Cataclysm, Jennifer had changed clothing or bathed in front of him almost daily, as androids had no capacity for erotic desire or affection. As the girl approached him, Raymond noticed she was wearing a necklace comprised of a pewter Tree of Life pendant, dangling from a simple black cord. He had seen that type of thing in ancient art before, but was surprised to see such a thing in Omega Seki.
“That is a beautiful necklace,” he said. “This planet used to be covered with trees. I remember before the Cataclysm—” A burst of laughter from the girl interrupted him.
“You’re not that old,” she said, taking a step closer. “You don’t have to lie to me. You don’t have to say anything.” She reached up, putting her hands on his face, and before he realized what was happening, she kissed him.
He pulled away startled and said, “No, please don't. I am not a man with such urges; I am an android.” At a confused look from her, he took off his jacket to reveal his metallic body. Her face ran the gamut of reactions, from incredulity, to shock, to disgust, to fascination.
“You’re that metal man that everyone’s been talking about. You do work for The Boss!” she exclaimed, taking in his metallic form with her eyes.
“I am an android, and I don’t work for the Boss anymore.”
“I’ve never met an android,” she said.
“I am Raymond-tz48, at your service. Please call me Raymond.”
“I’ve never heard the name Raymond either.”
“It must be an old name by now,” he reflected. “What is your name?”
“I don’t have one,” she said, looking at the floor.
“What do people call you then?” he asked.
“Some of the men who—some of my clients call me Green because of my hair, but that’s not a name. Orphans don’t get names, only serial numbers. Would you like to know that? It’s X996-2J32-TI39,” the digits rolled bitterly over her lips.
Raymond was speechless for an instant as he processed the implications of what she had just told him. Had she never had anyone who cared enough for her to give her a proper name? Never even a friend who decided a serial number wasn’t good enough? He lifted her face gently with his metallic fingers and looked into her eyes. They were pools of sadness mixed with anger. She met his gaze for only an instant, then jerked her head away. “If you don’t mind me saying so, X996-2J32-TI39 is no proper name,” he said tenderly. “Would you mind if I gave you a name? It would be an old one like mine.”
She glanced at him suspiciously but, after some hesitation, shrugged and said, “If you want.”
Raymond closed his eyes and searched his memories, then he had it. “Maria,” he said with a smile, remembering how Jennifer had loved West Side Story and her favorite song was “Maria”. She had even wanted to name their daughter Amanda, Maria instead, but Rob had insisted they name her after his grandmother.
She was quiet for a minute, then finally said, “I like it. Why did you choose it for me?”
“It is a beautiful name. There was a song in the old days about a girl named Maria. My former master loved that song, and because of that I love it too.”
“Raymond, I owe you for saving my life. You don’t want what I offered earlier, and I don’t have much else. Still I have to pay you back somehow.” Suddenly she got an idea and raced over to the metal shelves. She dressed quickly, slipping into an oversized shirt that hung to her knees, and came back with five white cubes. Raymond inspected the cubes as she held them up in her palm; they were immaculate, the edges crisp and sharp, and each had a microscopic barcode on one of its faces. “I earned five bits today. I’ll share them with you. We can each have twenty-five minutes in Euphoria together.”
“I don’t know,” Raymond said dubiously, wondering what would happen if an android hooked up to V-S.A.G.E. and if Nexus might be alerted of his whereabouts.
“Don’t say no. I need to pay you back,” she insisted.
She did not give up trying to persuade him until finally, reluctantly, he agreed. He was sure he had no lifesource to extract, and he doubted that even if Nexus did discover his whereabouts, that any number of Boss’s Men would be a match for him. His final concern was for her. “You do know that it takes your lifesource when you go into Euphoria?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said, “But it’s worth it for every second inside. It’s what most people live for—except the crystal junkies. But that kills them much faster than Euphoria. I’ve tried crystal before. It doesn’t make you feel that happy at all, just sort of numb. Are you ready?” Without waiting for him to respond, she knelt down and placed the five cubes on the floor and began to crush them up and grind them to powder with a piece of concrete.
He began to wonder just how V-S.A.G.E. technology worked, and if they were about to ingest the powder by snorting, as people in the old days had once done with cocaine. The cubes sufficiently pulverized, Maria sat on her knees on the rug and waited. He sat next to her, curious what the next step would be.
A drone the size of a baseball whirred in past the curtain and hovered over the dust. Raymond was relieved to see that it had no camera, and was clearly designed for a different purpose. The drone scanned over the powder with a blue laser, first top to bottom, then side to side, then dipped down and suctioned it all up. Once this had been completed Maria told it, “Split the time equally between both of us.”
At her command, a light began to blink on the drone’s exterior. Within thirty seconds, a second drone had entered the room, and was approaching Raymond. In unison the drones split apart, pieces shifting and breaking away from the main body. The pieces that broke away had their own antigravity capabilities and soon, both Raymond and Maria were surrounded by the hovering parts.
With unified tempo and purpose the parts moved to within a few centimetres of their skulls, one each for their frontal bone, one for either side of the parietal, one for the occipital, and one just above the coronal suture. What was left of the main bodies of the drones turned to face their laser bulbs toward their eyes. Raymond wondered how people did not go blind with such intense light being shone into their eyes, but when the light shone into his own visual receivers, he realized it was much softer than he had expected. That mild light seemed geared towards shutting down the faculty of human sight, rather than showing the eyes an illusion or projected image. He waited, wondering what his own idea of heaven might be like.
Nothing happened.
He heard Maria let out a contented sigh next to him. She had obviously entered into Euphoria. It seemed as though androids were incapable of such a thing. He pulled away from the drone and the hovering parts returned to the main body and reassembled. “Give her my time,” he commanded.
She mumbled something dreamily that sounded like, “You couldn’t get in?”
“No,” he said, settling in to wait fo
r her to finish.
When her drone had pulled away and flown out the door, she collapsed to the floor and cried. She noticed him watching, and turned her back to him, holding her knees to her chest and sobbing quietly. He reached out to touch her, but stopped, unsure. He drew his hand back. Maybe it was best just to let her be.
Half an hour later the room was silent. Raymond looked up from his place in the corner of the room to see her breathing evenly, peacefully. She had cried herself to sleep. He lifted her gently and tucked her into bed.
∆∆∆
Raymond stood outside of their home watching the children play in the street. He wore an oil-stained grey jacket he’d dug from a trash heap. It was hideous and threadbare, but still better than being identified as a Blackcoat or an android. Maria had said he could live with her on the condition that he remain outside while she was working, and she was working now.
He had seen her coming toward the house, holding hands with a finely dressed fat man, who looked old enough to be her father or even grandfather. Raymond didn’t like what was happening, but Maria was his new master, and what she commanded was law. He remained outside, brooding, staring at the curtain that was their front door.
He heard the fat man chuckle devilishly from inside and then say something that was too quiet to understand. Maria’s higher voice responded, then there was silence. Suddenly Raymond heard her cry out in pain and the word “No” was clear enough.
That was all he needed.
He burst into the room to see the fat man, shirtless, his belly drooping over his belt and halfway to his knees. He was standing over Maria who lay on the ground in front of him, raising up her arm to ward off a second blow. Raymond saw the reddening mark on her face where he had struck her, the small cut his jeweled ring had made on her cheek.