Last Human

by Doug Naylor

  The Cat sat down at the flatbed scanner and poured himself a glass of milk. 'Kryten, bud, is that you?'

  'Isn't it wonderful?'

  'What the hell happened, guy?'

  'I went back to the DNA modifier and made myself human.'

  'You chose that face?'

  'I think it's rather a nice face.'

  The Cat studied it carefully. 'You sure it's not inside out?'

  'So how's the new human?' Kochanski trotted down the spiral staircase in a long T-shirt.

  'Most excellent, Kriss. Although I must confess I have a number of questions about my new physique. I made a little list, if you'll indulge me.' He took a piece of paper from his dressing-gown pocket and scanned its contents. 'First, my optical system doesn't appear to have a zoom function.'

  'Human eyes don't have a zoom function,' said Rimmer, peering up from his inventory.

  A tiny fold of skin cleavaged together on Kryten's forehead. 'Then how do you bring a small object into sharp focus?'

  Kochanski grimaced before she was able to reply. 'Well, you... uh, you just move your head closer to the object.'

  He eyed her, as if she were a dubious secondhand car dealer who'd just made some patently absurd claim. 'You move your head closer to the object?'

  'Yeah.'

  He held his list out in front of him and moved his head back and forth, testing the human zoom function. 'What about other optical effects, like split-screen, slow-motion, quantel, flips, strobing?'

  Kochanski buttered some toast. 'We don't have them.'

  'You don't have them. Just the zoom feature.' He zoomed in to his list again and tried to appear enthusiastic. 'Great. Well, that's... great. That's really great. What a tricksy piece of software.' He consulted his list again. 'Next, oh yes - my nipples don't work.'

  'In what way "don't work"?' asked Rimmer.

  'Well, when I was a mechanoid, twisting the right nipple nut was the way we regulated body temperature, while the left nipple was mainly used to pick up shortwave radio transmissions. What I'm saying is, no matter how hard I twiddle them, I still can't seem to pick up Jazz FM.'

  'Human nipples don't do that.'

  'What do they do?'

  'They're just there for decoration.'

  'They don't perform any snazzy functions at all?'

  'Sorry.'

  Kryten tried to remain cheerful. 'Recharging,' he said, and picked up a brutal-looking electrical lead. '1 presume when humans want to recharge they do it in much the same way as mechanoids. Indeed, I've located what I presume to be the recharging socket, but for some strange reason it doesn't appear to have a standard three-pin connection. Do I have to use some kind of special adapter, because no matter what I seem to do, the lead keeps falling out?'

  'We sleep, bud. That's our way of recharging.'

  Kryten crumpled his list and began to roll it around in his hands, as if to relieve some form of embarrassment. 'Now, uh, something, well, something.' He cleared his throat. 'Something I wanted to talk to you about... something about... something I know we humans get a little embarrassed about. I understand it's a little taboo. Not something you generally sit around and chat about in polite conversation.'

  Kochanski slipped the thick rubber band from Rimmer's supply log over her wrist and played with it distractedly. 'Get to it, Kryten.'

  'Well, I wanted to talk to you about my penis.'

  Kochanski couldn't help herself. A tiny tic of amusement crinkled across her face.

  'I knew it! You've gone straight into snigger mode. Aren't we human adults? Can't we discuss our reproductive systems in a mature adult fashion without degenerating into adolescent snickering?'

  Kochanski censored her expression. 'Yes. Of course we can.'

  'Thank you.'

  Kryten reached into his pyjama pocket, pulled out a Polaroid and handed it to her. Slowly, reluctantly, Kochanski took it and looked at it.

  'Well?'

  'Well what?'

  'What do you think?'

  'I'm not quite with you, Kryten. I mean - what am I supposed to say?'

  'I want to know, is that normal?'

  'Taking photographs of it and showing your friends -it's not, no.'

  'No. I mean - is it supposed to look like that?'

  She nodded. 'Yep.'

  'But it's hideous! Is that the best design they could come up with? Are you seriously telling me there were choices, and someone said, "There - that's it - that's the shape we're looking for! The last chicken in the shop look!"? Shakespeare had one? Einstein? Perry Como sang "Memories are Made of This" with one of those stashed in his slacks?'

  Kochanski hid her tears of laughter in a mug of tea.

  Kryten shook his head. 'I think I understand now why humans don't have a zoom mode.' He handed her another Polaroid. 'Take a look at this.'

  She blew her nose to compose herself and then peered at the new image, completely baffled.

  Kryten handed her a third Polaroid. 'And this.'

  She put the two snaps together, one above the other. Her mouth dropped open so wide it could have garaged a Buick.

  'Now, why do you suppose that happened?'

  'What were you thinking about at the time?'

  'Nothing special. I was just idly flicking through an electrical-appliance catalogue. I came to this section on super-deluxe vacuum cleaners and suddenly my under-pant elastic was catapulting across my quarters.'

  'You see? You're neither one thing nor the other. You're human on the outside, but you're still a mechanoid on the inside. You shouldn't be getting a double Polaroid about electrical equipment.'

  'But it was a triple sac, easy-glide vac with turbo suction and a self-emptying dustbag!'

  'I don't care what model it was. Don't you see, it just means you're not truly human. You're still a mechanoid, whether you like it or not.'

  'I think you should change back,' said Rimmer, completing his inventory.

  'What? Become one of those poor, sappy, sad-act mechanoids again? But this is my dream.'

  Kochanski got up from the scanner table and started putting on her diving suit. 'Sometimes having your dreams come true can be the worst thing that can ever happen to you.'

  'What do you mean?'

  'I read an article once about people who were blind from childhood who'd had their sight restored. All their lives they'd dreamt about being able to see, but after they'd had the operation you know what a lot of them did?'

  'What?'

  'They committed suicide.'

  'Oh, nice story. Walt Disney could have used a story like that.'

  'The point I'm making, Kryten, is that restoring their sight wasn't the panacea for all their problems. And becoming human isn't going to solve all yours. You're still the same person, with the same hang-ups. Inside nothing has changed.'

  'But I don't have any hang-ups. Not now.'

  The anxiety melted from her face and she hugged him. 'I hope you're right. I really do.'

  She walked to the hatchway and picked up two oxy-tanks. 'We better get back to the Mayflower and pick up the rest of the salvage.'

  Rimmer nodded. 'We want to be out of here in eight hours.'

  * * *

  Kryten's three Spareheads sat on the shelf in Starbug's pump room alongside his two spare arms, and his three spare hands. The door opened and all three flicked online. They'd expected to see Kryten, who usually came to visit at least once a day, duties permitting, but it wasn't Kryten at all. It was someone they'd never seen before - a human. He started to explain what had happened.

  'What's it like?'

  'It's indescribable, Sparehead One. True, I'm having a few problems coping with the human emotions, and there's no zoom, the nipples don't work and I could show you a couple of Polaroids that would make your eyes spin like fruit machines, but that aside I've never been happier.'

  'This is all well and good,' said Sparehead Two, 'but what about me? It was my turn to be Main Head next month.'

  'Well, sadly, th
at's no longer possible.'

  'So what do I do now?'

  'Well, you'll just have to retire from the Sparehead business. Find some other line of work.'

  'What about Sparehead Three? You can't just abandon him - he's got droid rot.'

  Sparehead Three chipped in with his malfunctioning voice-unit, which for reasons no one could now recall had a broad Lancastrian accent. 'I don't need no bugger to look after me. I may be 'alf-raddled with silicon rickets, me voice units may be shot to buggery, but I don't need no sympathy from the likes of'im.'

  Kryten held out his hands in pacification. 'Just because I'm a superior life form now doesn't mean I'll forget you. I'll still come and visit, I swear.'

  'He won't be back, you mark my words. He'll be too busy swanking around with his new central nervous system, and his poncy new eight-valve heart, lah-de-dah-ing it with his fancy new humanoid friends...'

  'Oh, Sparehead Three, you're so out of touch. You don't understand me or my world. All you know about is this shelf. And I don't want to stay here and end up a sad, embittered old substitute cranium like you.'

  Sparehead Three gurned back at him. 'I may be half raddled, and me circuit boards may have gone bandy, but I'll tell you this for nowt: you came into this world as a mechanoid, and a mechanoid you'll always be.'

  Kryten's lip reared like a bucking horse. 'In my idiotic way, I actually thought you might be pleased for me. I should have known better.' He strode across to the pump-room door and slammed closed the hatchway. 'Mechanoids - they're so absurd.'

  CHAPTER 13

  For most of their existence, Homo sapiens had lived on the fifth smallest of nine planets which revolved around a tiny dwarf star, in a solar system, which they called 'the' solar system, in a disk-shaped galaxy, which they called 'the' galaxy, which was one hundred light years long and one thousand light years deep. They called their solar system 'the' solar system and referred to their galaxy as 'the' galaxy because, although they were aware that there were trillions of other solar systems and billions of other galaxies, they felt that their solar system and their galaxy were the only ones that really counted, because they contained the most important creation in the entire Universe - them.

  Homo sapiens didn't get to the top of the evolutionary tree by being modest — they got there by killing other life forms better than anyone else. Or so it seemed to Kryten. It also seemed to Kryten that for most of their existence Homo sapiens had been in a quite astonishingly bad mood. A feeling he was beginning to experience first hand.

  The reason for his poor humour was largely due to something called Death.

  Humans didn't like death. And now Kryten was human he wasn't mad about it either. In fact, there were a whole bunch of things Kryten had suddenly taken a dislike to: he didn't like people who left sales leaflets under car windscreens advertising dodgy plumbing companies, he didn't like having to empty Starbug's dishwasher after it had completed its wash programme and return all the plates to the galley cupboards. This task used to delight him; now he was human he thought it was dull and tiresome and something to be avoided along with all the other domestic chores. In fact, the more Kryten thought about it, a lot of things made him angry now he was one of them'. But nothing made him more angry than death.

  Someone should have told him. He had had no idea he was going to feel this way. When he was a mechanoid the fact that he had a termination date had never bothered him. He was created to serve and it was only logical that he had an expiry date to allow models that were technically superior to him to take over his tasks. But now it was different. Now he was human and he possessed a human's arrogance. He deserved to live for ever. Why? Because he just deserved to, that's why.

  What was death? How did it happen? Kryten became consumed with the subject. It seemed to him death happened something like this: someone — say a man — would be having breakfast with some other Homo sapi-eney colleagues. He would be absently buttering a piece of toast, perhaps, and musing about the day ahead. He might be wondering whether to re-tile his bathroom, and if so what kind of tile would best suit. A plain white tile maybe, or perhaps a rather risque and slightly more unusual champagne motif? He might also be ruminating as to whether he needed another bucket of tile adhesive or could he make do with the tile adhesive he had from the time he'd done the kitchen, three years previously. The one he kept under the stairs. He might be thinking all these things when, all of a sudden, without any warning whatsoever, he would be removed from existence. He would cease to belong to that particular plane of reality. No advance notice, no opportunity to make any preparations, the man was no longer the owner of living molecules. His ability to inhale oxygen had been confiscated. He would never have another thought. His bucket of tile adhesive would remain untouched and he would never grout again.

  This made Kryten furious.

  Could it be that this man had just been totally erased, that he had been totally oblivionized? What had he done to deserve that? All he wanted to do was tile his damn bathroom, for God's sake. Where had he gone? No one knew. No wonder Homo sapiens were largely very grumpy. Here they were, the smartest species that nature had ever created; they had gone to all the trouble of obeying Darwin's theory of evolution, and out-evolving everything in sight, and for what? So they could be removed from existence at the whim of some invisible force called fate.

  It was a sick joke. He felt betrayed. He wanted to complain to the management.

  Being human was hard.

  * * *

  The afternoon began quietly enough. It started with a blazing row, which turned into a fight to the death. Then things got very much worse.

  Kochanski, Cat, Rimmer and Kryten staggered down the thin metal staircase carrying the ten-foot-long oxygen tank like a roll of carpet. An hour remained before the mulch would be ready for penetration, and already they'd successfully completed four salvage missions.

  As they rounded a tight bend in the stairwell the Cat suddenly felt his grip on the smooth black cylinder begin to loosen. 'I'm going to drop it!' Kryten started to lower his end to the floor as Kochanski and Rimmer, supporting the middle, helped him steer it groundwards. The Cat changed his mind. 'No, it's OK, I've got it again, everything's cool.'

  Kochanski leaned against the stairs' metal rail. 'Are you sure?'

  'Sure I'm...' The tank slithered from the Cat's grip and the momentum took it clean through Rimmer and Kochanski's arms. Kryten found himself falling backwards down the staircase pursued by a four-hundred-pound lead tank packed with compressed air.

  Once, twice, three times the back of his head smacked against the metal railings, once, twice, three times his right elbow clunked against the sharp edging on the corner of the steps as he somersaulted boot over shoulders down the staircase. Finally he landed in a forlorn heap on the landing and began experiencing a series of human emotions he'd never felt before: pain, fury, frustration and loss of pride were among the first four. Then something else happened. Something rather unfortunate. The oxygen tank tobogganed down the final flight of steps and hit him straight in the solar plexus at a speed of just under four miles an hour. It felt to Kryten as if every molecule of oxygen had been ripped from his body. He lurched forward, breathless, and the impact forced his teeth to snap closed on his tongue. He howled plaintively. Then, still groaning, he rolled to his right and caught his testicles on the nozzle end of the tank. He pulled his body into a tight ball and sobbed softly to himself, rolling over and over on the stairwell landing. Suddenly he was in mid-air. He'd rolled under the rail at the halfway landing and was now making the final part of the journey to the bottom of the stairs in the most direct way possible. He hit the top of the packing cases with a soft thud and waited for the next terrible thing to happen to him.

  Nothing did.

  For almost four seconds.

  Then the loose piece of railing the tank had dislodged from the stairwell slithered free of its support post and clipped him across the back of the head with an echoey clank.
/>   His introduction to physical pain was complete.

  Groggily he sat up and looked around to see the others clambering down the staircase. He gazed down at his leg, happily pumping blood from an ugly grin in his thigh. He glowered at the Cat. 'Look what you've done to my new body. I've not even had it one day, and it's a write-off.'

  'Sorry, bud, I just lost my grip.'

  'My whole left leg is completely ruined. It'll need stitches.'

  Kochanski stepped in. 'Kryte, calm down, you'll be OK. You're suffering from "new car owner" syndrome.'

  'But it was perfect, and now because of that idiot feline I'm going to have a scar the width of the Ursa major constellation!'

  Kryten scrambled off the packing case and swung a right upper cut which took the Cat unawares and planted him on his back in the middle of some freeze-dried food supplies.

  Kochanski and Rimmer stood bewildered, watching as the Cat somersaulted upright, and rained a series of lightning blows to Kryten's face and stomach.

  Kryten staggered around doubled in two from the Cat's savaging. 'Now look what you've done, you've made me go purple.'

  'You started it, First Time on the Clay-Wheel Head — you crinkled my suit.'

  Kochanski bear-hugged Kryten from behind and dragged him to one side. 'OK, you and me are going to take a little walk.' She pushed him through the hatchway and they started down the corridor. She pressed a door release and a second hatchway squished open. A series of dim blue lights illuminated the room in sombre lines as they made their way to the far wall and found a pump housing to sit on.

  Kochanski took out a handkerchief and handed it to Kryten to mop the blood from his mouth while she dressed his leg with bandages ripped from her blouse.

  Finally, Kryten spoke. 'You don't think I should stay human, do you? You think I can't cope.'

  Kochanski shrugged. 'Only you know that.'

  'I'm not going to change back. I'm not. Not ever.'

  She nodded and said nothing. She was looking at the nest of three stasis pods that lined the far wall.