The other vehicles backed off a little as their drivers tried to understand this new threat. This gave Dip a window to land my ship in an open plaza just in front of me. Again, I like to make a calm exit in full view of everyone. Nystrom is untouchable, and everyone needs to know that.
I came in through the side door of my ship just as I heard the sirens coming my way again.
“There are a number of options. We can—”
“Up, Dip! Up!”
Artificial intelligence is annoying, but it’s better than working with an actual person.
I got into the pilot seat, and the ship quickly but smoothly lifted upward. It then moved forward and soon cleared the edge of the city. Chal Naus’s resort was on top of a mile-high plateau with steep cliffs on all sides. It was the only substantial development on the planet, so beyond the plateau I only saw unspoiled, rocky landscape dotted with a few green plants. People like having views of that sort of thing. They like modern conveniences, but they don’t like looking at them. I can sympathize; I feel a certain peacefulness when I’m far away from the annoyance of sentient species.
A blast rocked the ship. “Are they shooting at me?”
“That they are,” Dip answered.
“That’s stupid of them.” They hadn’t determined exactly how serious a threat I was and were still coming right at me. “Take us into orbit, Dip.”
The ship shot upward, and then I hit The Button. I never cared much for ship-to-ship battles—they’re computerized and very predictable and neither interest nor challenge me. So I had previously studied data on likely patterns in airborne fights and written a macro for my ship’s weapons systems connected to a big button on the ship’s console. I’d painted the button red because that seemed like the right color for such a button.
There were some explosions behind me, followed by silence, but I had also reached space, and space is always silent. The ship jumped, and we were in empty space light years away from the nearest star. There was no way they could track us, so that was that. Another successful mission.
“You are now wanted for murder on 762 planets,” Dip informed me. “Am I correct in saying that is quite a lot of planets, Rico?”
Though I very much prefer to work alone, I’d decided it was good to have some kind of backup just in case. So I had purchased an AI core that I’d installed on my ship. I also had some sensors implanted in my body so Dip can monitor and communicate with me at all times, though I’d taught him to be somewhat sparing with that. You see, Dip is basically a huge algorithm that continually takes in data to improve its AI. So to further that quest, he asks me lots of annoying questions.
“So, Dip, what percentage of planets in the known universe now wants me for murder?”
My theory is that he’s more likely to develop actual intelligence if I never give him a straight answer and just frustrate him into figuring things out on his own. Or maybe I just don’t like answering in absolutes.
“Approximately one times ten to the negative six percent of the planets in my database want you for murder.”
“Does that seem like a large percentage?”
“It is my understanding that most sentients would consider that number to be extremely small.”
“That’s the great thing about the universe, Dip. You can massacre an entire planet and still find a nearly infinite number of places to go where no one has ever heard of you.”
“Are there any other great things about the universe you could give me as input?”
I looked out the window. “It’s mainly black.” That’s my favorite color. I always wondered if I traveled far enough in one direction, whether all existence would be one tiny little speck behind me and there would be nothing but black all around. Something to look into one day.
“I have processed this new data and reached a number of conclusions. May I run those conclusions by you, Rico, and get your feedback?”
“In a minute, Dip. Get me Vito. Let’s finish this up.” Vito was my current handler. He was kind of an idiot, but since his job only required him to pass information back and forth between Nystrom’s executives and me, he didn’t have to be a genius.
“Certainly.” I waited while Dip made the interstellar connection. “He’s on the line.”
I hate talking to people—all the little rules I have to keep track of to sound normal—but I have no need to be personable with Vito, so that at least made talking to him easy. “It’s done, Vito.”
“You didn’t kill him, right?”
I made my voice slightly more intense to convey annoyance. “The instructions were to not kill him, and I know how to not kill people. I only shot off his hand.” I lost a hand once. It wasn’t pleasant, but I got better.
“So everything worked out—”
“Just get me my money.” I have more money than I ever plan on spending, but it looks weird if you don’t at least appear to care about it. Actually, with career criminal types, it creeps them out if they think you’re doing this for reasons other than power and financial gain.
“Okay, I’ll get it into one of your accounts.”
“So what am I looking at next, Vito?”
“Um…I don’t have anything for you.”
“Excuse me?”
“I don’t have a new job for you yet.”
It took a moment to process that. Nystrom was usually involved in a million things in multiple galaxies, and they could always use my brand of force somewhere. Plus, I think they feared what would happen if they left me unoccupied. Actually, I kind of feared what would happen if I was left unoccupied. “So what am I supposed to do?” I had to make myself not sound too distressed; time off is normal for most people.
“They want you to lie low for a bit, and then they’ll get in contact with you.”
“When?”
“That’s all they told me.”
“Okay, I’ll…wait.” I ended the communication and tried to figure out what to do. I’ve spent time by myself before, but always in prep for the next job. I hadn’t had an unfocused stretch of time in years.
“May I run my conclusions by you now, Rico?” Dip asked.
I was kind of up for a distraction. “Sure. What have you got?”
“I conclude that you are evil. Is this correct?”
He’s been concluding that for quite some time. It’s getting hard to come up with new answers to that one. “Ever think that maybe you’re evil, and your views on things are skewed by that?”
“I conclude that you are not mentally well. Is this correct?”
“How can you say that? Can you really take all the mental states of all the sentients out there and determine a norm? And even if you could, wouldn’t that just be the normal mental state selected by the vagaries of evolution and thus not necessarily the best?”
“I conclude that you don’t like me. Is this correct?”
“Well, do you like me?”
“Furthermore, my original programming had given me the conclusion that ‘crime doesn’t pay.’ Yet, you are often paid for crime with no discernible retribution. Should I amend that preprogrammed conclusion, Rico?”
“The key word is ‘discernible.’ Some believe there are cosmic forces that equalize the universe, and so I will eventually be punished for these ‘crimes,’ as you call them…if those people are correct, I mean.” Me, I don’t “believe” in things. I basically just deal with the input given me…like Dip in a way.
“I shall process your answers. What do you want to do now?”
“I guess we should go somewhere.”
“Where?”
“A settlement…somewhere I haven’t been before.”
“A human settlement?”
A human settlement meant it would be easier to find food and supplies compatible with my species, but it also meant I would have to work harder to appear normal, since humans would be much quicker to notice my oddities. I did need to work on that, though; maybe if I were more personable I wouldn’t be left ou
t of the loop. I usually didn’t care what the syndicate was up to, but that was as long as they kept me occupied. “Human settlement.”
“Okay, I’ve chosen a destination. Prepare to jump.”
So I was off to relax for a bit. That made me nervous. But it wasn’t just the idea of having unstructured free time. The Nystrom syndicate’s slight changes in behavior gave me the beginning of a suspicion that something big was going on. In retrospect, I might call that prescience.
CHAPTER 2
I should explain. I have a severe disability that I constantly struggle with. You might even consider mine an inspirational story of the human spirit persevering against all odds. You see, I have no morals.
I’m not a bad person. I didn’t choose to be this way, and my own actions didn’t cause my problem. It’s how I was made, you might say. I was designed in a lab as part of an experimental program to make a super soldier or something—they used gene modification combined with surgical operations while I was still a fetus. I was to be both physically and mentally exceptional. As a result, I have highly tuned reflexes, can perform two tasks at once, am exceptionally intelligent, and have reduced emotional extremes.
But one of the results of their tinkering is a social condition I’ve struggled with since childhood: I am just completely incapable of internalizing basic morality. To me, eating, sleeping, walking, and strangling a puppy in front of a crying child are all just different activities, and none of them holds any “moral” weight for me. The first time I killed someone left no bigger impression on my psyche than the first time I tied my shoe. Most people develop some sense of right and wrong during early childhood—Freud called it the superego—but I never did. And it is very hard to interact with society when you are like that.
It’s easy to see the direct consequences of my actions. If someone annoys me, I know punching him might be a bad idea, because he might punch me back. But what if it’s a baby? Punching the baby has no consequences, since the baby can’t hit me back, right? But most people would be shocked at the thought of striking a baby even if there was no one around to see it. They consider that “wrong.” My guess is that it’s an evolutionary adaptation. Even though striking a baby may have no ill consequences for me, there are long-term consequences to society if everyone punches babies when they get annoying. Instead of sentients having to rationally figure out things like that all the time, they just have this irrational sense that it’s “wrong.” It’s that sense that I lack.
Lots of sentients have turned their natural feelings of right and wrong into religions. But even those who don’t believe in a supernatural moral order share those feelings. Ask an atheist whether there are repercussions to killing people you don’t know, and he will claim that there are, when I know for a fact that you can slaughter tons of people, travel galaxies away, and have nothing to worry about in terms of consequences. So really, it’s like all sentients have this irrational belief system they share—a common religion—and I am the odd man out. Not only am I a heretic, I barely understand their beliefs enough to reliably imitate them.
Anyway, I don’t think I was the intended result of the experimental program, and it’s informative that I’ve never heard of them making another attempt. Whatever the original intentions were for me were abandoned, and I was just raised as a normal child. But there was little hope for that. I couldn’t really return affections to my “parents” because…well, I didn’t care about them beyond their utility to me. It seemed like I was destined to be a societal outcast with no real place in the world.
I could have given up and lived all drugged up in some asylum. But here’s the inspirational part: I’ve made a normal life for myself. I’m a hitman. It’s an occupation where my lack of normal human emotions is not a disability. No one cares if the guy gunning people down seems unusually callous at times. I love being on the job and in the midst of combat. I can be myself and not worry how anyone else perceives me.
The time between hits is much more difficult. If I don’t have a set objective, I’m out of my element. Usually, I have my next job to focus on and can think of my down time as preparation for that. But when I don’t have a next job or know when that’s coming, it’s quite a bit more stressful.
I enjoy the challenges of combat, but there’s just something unappealing to me about starting a random fight on some anonymous planet just to entertain myself. I like to have a purpose to my actions, and besides, if I started killing people off the job I’d become a liability to the syndicate. In fact, I have a pretty strict rule that I don’t kill anyone or anything when I’m not on a job—not even insects or the planet’s equivalent. It takes too much work to figure out which creatures are acceptable to kill and what’s an acceptable way to kill them. So unless my life is in direct danger, I’m a complete pacifist when nobody is paying me to be otherwise.
Well, that’s the goal at least.
Of course, the easiest way to avoid trouble is to just keep to myself. There are lots of loner jerks out there, so it doesn’t make me stick out too much. I know I need to learn to interact with society, though. I do sometimes have jobs where going in guns blazing toward the target without a plan would be suicide. Instead, I need to scope out the area, and that means it can’t be too obvious that I have no problem with mass homicide.
So I work at it. Between jobs I force myself to socialize and appear normal. It’s mentally exhausting, but it’s something I need to practice constantly—same as firearms. And I’ve gotten good at it…just not as good as I am with firearms.
Dip woke me up when we landed on a planet called Ryle. The planet was marginally settled for mining and farming with a single main port where travelers could resupply and rest a bit on firm ground. Seems like I’ve been to thousands of planets like it. They’re relaxing in that they’re sparsely populated, but it also means I stick out more. Plus, if I forget myself and…well, something happens to someone…people will notice he’s missing pretty quickly and will know who to suspect. Next thing you know I’ve decimated the population of a small town as I make my escape.
That’s what I call a complete social failure. It’s been a long while since that happened.
“So how are you doing, stranger?”
The hotel clerk was an older human male. Dealing with other species is much easier—they’re less likely to catch my oddities or notice if my facial expressions don’t quite match a particular situation. Also, any errors or gaffes are usually dismissed as a translator error. For humans, I have to bring my best game.
I’m good at reading people, and the clerk seemed genuinely friendly. I hate that. People who are happy all the time tend to be stupid (though if I were stupid, I think I’d be angry), and stupidity makes me impatient. So this would be good practice. Usually, just matching the mood of whomever I’m talking to is a good strategy. But I have to be careful. If I talk to two people one after another with wildly different moods, I could end up looking bipolar.
“Doing pretty well. How are you?” It would be hard to contemplate a situation where the well-being of this random human was of any interest to me, but I’ve learned that’s just part of being polite. I think I pulled it off. At least I concealed how nervous I was. I hate that a simple conversation scares me, but that’s who I am.
“Can’t complain. So what brings you here?”
“Business travel. Just need some solid ground to rest on for a few days.” Technically true, but I have to analyze everything I say so much that it doesn’t actually make things easier for me to tell the truth.
“How long do you plan on staying?”
Unknown. That terrified me. I knew myself. First I’d get bored. Then I’d get a little cranky. And then I’d make mistakes. And that would not be good for this small planet—not that I cared about them, but it would be a personal failure for me. “I’m not sure. A couple days, maybe.”
“Well, we’ll be happy to have you for as long as you’re staying. So what kind of business are you in?”
/> “Mining equipment. Always plenty of places in the universe to mine.” This conversation was already wearing on me.
“There sure are. Well, I hope you like your stay. It’s a nice little planet. I’ve lived here…”
This is why I hate small talk. This man had absolutely no information I was interested in, and my first instinct while he prattled on was to simply turn and walk away. That’s impolite to the point of severely standing out, so instead I was stuck standing there, smiling and nodding. To keep from getting too bored, I imagined he was an assassin pretending to be a boring old man in order to catch me off guard. So I contemplated how many objects were in arm’s length that I could bludgeon him to death with. I counted three.
“…if you like good food, I definitely recommend them. Hey, I see you eyeing my little beager statue.” He pointed to the metal figurine on his counter of a bear-like creature. “Local species. They’re a little intimidating to run into, but they’re harmless.”
It looked sturdy and had pointed parts, so it could easily crack a skull. “It’s always neat to see local wildlife.” This was true. I actually do enjoy that. Plus, non-sentient creatures never seem to mind me…at least no more than any other predator. “What forms of payment do you take?” I hoped that was a polite signal to end the small talk, as I really couldn’t take much more.
“Let’s see what you have.” With so many governments and commerce systems, I have to have accounts in many different banks to keep transactions simple no matter where I end up. On human-populated planets, I usually don’t have a problem. As backup, I keep some gold on me. It’s yellow and shiny. Everyone likes it.
As I was finalizing the payment, a police officer walked into the lobby. I’ve left my mark on more legal systems than I can count and am probably in numerous databases. Still, all these systems are tracking billions of criminals, and the syndicate scrubs references to me whenever they find them, so the chance some random local cop would recognize me was about as much of a concern as taking a meteor to the head. Someone like me who has no roots and can jump around the universe freely is pretty much impossible for modern law enforcement to track down. Still, the police officer was looking right at me, and I mentally prepared myself to kill him a moment’s notice. But I do that with just about everyone.
Superego Page 2