by M. Suddain
Gladys. I never know how to write these. Why be coy? You are a fascinating specimen. But so much more! You won’t let me in, but I am a patient man. I know I can convince you I’m not evil, and so as proof, here are my childhood journals. You got so angry when I told you I’d read your journals, so this will make us even. They will show you that we come from the same place, and have shared many of the same experiences. Also, that we’re all the same deep down. We all have allergies. I know that you’ve had a difficult life, too, but that you’re secretly a sensitive soul. I know that you have complicated feelings for someone, and I know I can help you work through those constructively. It’s what I do. I heal. It’s OK to have feelings. But you must also know we can’t trust him. I want to share so much with you, but I can’t until you let me in. Here is a poem which expresses my feelings.
I can’t bring myself to copy down this poem. It’s the saddest, most awful little thing I think I’ve ever read.
Went back into the main room. Beast had fallen asleep in his chair. Madness. What I need is to take back control. Certainly can’t trust Doctor Rubin any more. What’s the saying? ‘Drug me once …’ It’s clear they only want what’s in G’s head, and once they get it they’ll probably dispose of all of us. What I need is a plan. I need a plan to get Gladys out of this place before it’s too late. Because right now, at this point in my life, I actually care whether a person lives or dies. There’ve only ever been a couple of those. And she’s the only one left.
Afraid to sleep, for obvious reasons. Retrieved Doctor Rubin’s old journals from the den. Thought they might have useful intel, or at least be an amusing diversion. But just like our Feast Day notes, and the letter from Hunter, there was nothing amusing about them.
‘… The mind is a strange and strangely delicate thing. But it’s also very powerful. I think our ideas of what the universe is are constructed entirely from within our minds, just like our ideas of what the universe was, or will be.’30
30 From the secret journals of Doctor Rubin Difflaydermaus.
‘… I think my life is good, mostly. Mostly I’m happy. Every morning my mother brings me my bowl of milk, and pinches my cheek, and tells me I grew bigger overnight. This is erroneous. I like to watch my parents work in the clinic, and I’ve learned a lot. I do my homework and at night I read. My favourite book currently is Lordhammer, which is set in a fictional age of dragons. The dragons can breathe fire, and the heroes who fight them have not discovered flameproof materials. I have also been reading a lot about life in the real world outside this hub. There are places called “schools”, where young people like me go to learn about things like mathematics and rhetoric. There are no schools here, but my maths is excellent, and my rhetoric is fairly good. Not as good as my maths. Today I learned about anadiplosis, which means starting a phrase with the last word of previous phrase. “I am Sam; Sam I am.” (Actually, I am Rubin, but Rubin doesn’t sound as good.) I have written code for a machine character called Anna Diplosis who speaks only in rhetorical devices. But I need to build a computing machine to make her real. So far she’s only in my head. Which I suppose is a kind of computing machine. I have salvaged some old parts from a disused storeroom. I can already imagine Anna’s voice. I would probably say it was “silky”.’
‘… I have been busy so have not written in here. I have built a networked game called MACHINEFABRIK, which has become smally famous. Players have to design their own machines which then can enjoin and interact with others’ machines. The machines can be big as a planet, or small as a grain of dust. I managed to route into the Ethernet, and shared my game with other children – for free! I see how people enjoy it and how quickly it has spread and I say, “Rubin, could this be the beginning?” Then I answer, “Yes!” Then Father usually comes in and says, “Rubin, who are you speaking to, it’s time to sleep, yes?” I sneak out of bed again later. My mind is filled with so many thoughts. I wonder how many children live in Fire River.’
‘… A hubtech came today to see why abandoned DX1 servers had been reactivated and routed to the bedroom of a twelve-year-old boy. She seemed very nice, and she was curious and amazed at how I did some difficult things. I didn’t say much, because I found it strange to have a stranger talk to me, and because she had large “breasts”. Later I tried to find her but she’d gone.’
‘… Our cluster of hubs is owned by Bell Interstellar Telephony, which is a Western company, but it’s in an independent district, but also technically it’s in the Industrial Processing Districts, which belong to the East. It’s complicated. I heard my father tell my mother that if the Great Butcher wants to take our hubs and the rest of Fire River no one could do anything, and then the West would be screwed. I don’t know who the Great Butcher is, or what he means by “screwed”.’
‘… With advances in computing we could one day build much smaller hubs which are powerfuller and also symbiotic with their habitat. My own design is for a compact hub coated in a self-propagating material – maybe slime mould – that would interact with the surrounding ocean and use it as a computing material. The sea could also act as a coolant, and an energy source – you could use electrolysis to convert water to liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. But we’re still decades away from useful organic computing. I like to dream.’
‘… The paper I wrote on machine intelligence has caused a stir. I’ve gotten many messages from important scientists. When they realise how young I am most of them don’t write again. Some adults from T-anxia City came to see me. They said they were with SIS, the Security and Intelligence Service. They asked me a lot of questions, and gave me an intelligence test. I don’t mean an intelligence test. I mean a test of my intelligence. They asked if I would ever sell any of the things I’ve designed to people outside Fire River. I said no. They asked my parents if we would consider moving closer to T-anxia, for our security. They said no, they couldn’t leave their patients.’
‘… When I see some of my parents’ patients and the damage living inside these giant computers can do to the fragile human structures, I think, “Rubin, there must be a better way.” It isn’t hard to imagine a theoretical system in which artificial workers replace real ones. But I think mine is a particularly elegant solution for the two main problems with “virtual” or cloned workers:
1. How to build a flexible, intelligent “V-obot” or “Clo-bot” who is adaptive and self-repairing.
2. How to look after the human workers this V-obot has replaced.
Imagine if you could pay each human worker a one-time royalty – enough to live out their remaining years in comfort – in return for using them as a template for an engineered worker. The initial costs would be offset against future savings, since these clones could be endlessly reproduced when they wore out. It would solve a lot of problems. I have sketched out a technical model for my system, though a lot of the technology I’d need doesn’t even exist yet.’
‘… The Butcher has taken our hubs. Yesterday we were all taken from where we lived to processing centres. Even the patients from the clinic, and this was sad because most of them didn’t know what was happening. It was chaos. The soldiers separated us youngsters from our parents. My parents were very upset, but I was not because I’ve always wanted to see the world. Then a boy told me we might be taken to the work camps. I don’t know what they are, but I like to work, and I was more alarmed that I was speaking to a real human child. He said we might never see our parents again. If I knew that when they were taken away I might have been more upset. Who will bring me my milk each morning and pinch my cheeks?’
‘… My mother gave me a bottle of green pills and told me that if my ordeal became too much – for example, if they started to hurt us or force us to do unpleasant things – I should take one of these pills, and distribute the rest to the other children. I had never seen her lacrimate before. The brother and sister nearby had matching red scarves wrapped around their mouths, and were too scared to even lacrimate. They held one another tight
ly, and I wondered if I should give them each a pill. And then a fat boy offered me a dark green sweet from a grubby jar and I wondered if he was trying to poison me.’
‘… I have not been able to write in here for many months because we were all taken to a factory. It was such a big place. We were put in tiny cages and made to put toys together. We slept in hammocks in the cages. We were only allowed to sleep for two hours a day. It was hard work, and there wasn’t much food, but I was able to use the tools I had to refit my workstation for a 43 per cent efficiency increase. A supervisor came to see how I could make so many toys, and why some of the children around me had stopped functioning. The girl in the next cage had been lacrimating constantly, so I’d given her a special pill, and then she stopped. Then of course some of the other children wanted sweets too!’
‘… The soldier who shouted my name all the way across the floor of a factory had an oily, angry face. All the other children watched as I opened the pink envelope. The letter addressed me by name and told me everything was going to be fine, that I should follow the soldier to the docks.’
‘… He said I was being sent away, and this filled me with joy. But when I pressed him he said I was being sent to another factory. This did not fill me with joy.’
‘… At the docks the soldier handed me another pink envelope and said, “You have no idea how lucky you are, tiny pig.” Inside was cash (I had never seen cash money, and I had to ask another passing soldier what it was. He took it.) There were papers under another boy’s name, tickets and special visas.’
‘… It was such a long trip this time. I nearly starved because I had no money to buy food. I lost most of the fat on me. But my beard has not stopped growing.’
‘… I was woken by the sound of the docking phases, and I knew we’d reached port. I staggered out of the ship. My legs did a funny dance on the solid ground. There was someone waiting on the docks.’
‘… She took me to a beaten-up, three-wheel vehicle. An ambulance. She drove like a maniac … I was in a vast factory district. It was a network of giant barges strung together by half-mile-thick steel cables … We went like a bullet through dark tunnels, then through a massive gateway with an iron sign. I said, “Wait. Did that sign say MACHINEFABRIK?” She said nothing … We approached a building which even I could tell was a hospital. It had a broken sign: “HROZPITAL” … And walls black with oily fungus…. “Hrozpital?” I said. The woman, who had a kind of nurse’s uniform on underneath her coat, said, “No! Factory!”’
‘… I waited by the ambulance for almost an hour … choking in the smog … the doors to the annexe swung open with a piercing squeal …’
‘… an orderly dressed in a uniform which was either grey or had been washed so often it had become grey.’
‘… led me through the empty hospital … gurneys and wheelchairs overturned … dust on every surface. “Hrozpital?” The orderly shook his head. “Fakto! Machinwerk!”’
‘… We climbed eighteen flights. The large man had to stop frequently to hack and spit. His spit was bloody. I think he needed a hrozpital.’
‘… down narrow corridors … doors with tiny glass windows … marked with signs I couldn’t read…. “REKORDZ” … I felt faint with fatigue and hunger … Finally, we reached a bare wooden door stamped “MACHINFABRIK”. The paint was still wet … I found myself stepping into my old room. I have to write this down so I can believe it. It was MY room. Nine paces by nine paces … my bunk, my desk, my machinconsole, my steel storage cupboards, my model 9-Class Cruiser. All the things I’d collected through my life. I thought I had stepped all the way back across the seas and into a dream. I turned to exclaim about this to the orderly, but he had vanished.’
‘… It is very strange … There is a door on the far side of my apartment which opens to a narrow balcony overlooking a factory floor. It is much bigger than the factory I came from…. I have not been able to take an exact count, but I would estimate that there are more than 100,000 souls here … all children … they are all hard at work making what I think are alkaline battery-powered torches.’
‘… and in the morning a boy will bring me a hearty soup, at the end of the day the same boy will bring me a document telling me how many instruments we made, and how many manufacturing units we lost, and every day I’ll tell him I’m not in charge here, and I’m not the one he should be bringing these things to. Except for the soup, of course.’
‘… I don’t know what I should do. For weeks I’ve done nothing but stay in my room, working on some problems. I have an allergy to this place. There is something unhappy about them being out there. It gnaws. It is much worse than when I worked alongside them. I will sometimes go out on the balcony to look at them … the majority are younger than me … I watch them collect the simple pieces of those strange black cylinders together, placing them in pink boxes, and those into a larger box beside their station … an alarm will sound, the children will clip their hammocks across their cage and climb in … the cycle repeats … day after day after day. Their snores are deafening, but not as deafening as the alarm which wakes them. I’ve decided my discomfort at this scene is another allergy. I am allergic to seeing this every day.’
‘… I try to sleep, but can’t. I try to work, but I’m paralysed. Perhaps there’s a medicine.’
‘… I walk a lap through the corridors around my apartment each day. The route is several miles long. I never find an unlocked door. Today I returned to find a woman sitting alone on the floor outside my apartment, her hands folded neatly in her lap … “What are you doing here?”
“I’m here for my interview.”
“For which job?”
“For the job as your supervisor. I’m here to supervise you.”
“Why are you sitting on the floor?”
“Because there’s no chair.”
“Are you the only applicant?”
“Yes, Rubin.”
“You know my name.”
“Yes, Rubin.”
“Will any more come?”
“No, Rubin.”
“Will you hug me?”
“If you like.”
“Maybe later then.”’
‘… She is a strange young woman. At least ten years older than me. Maybe more. She has tanned skin and piercing black eyes. She dresses very properly. Her hair is funny. She is called Murial.
“What job have you been sent to do?”
“Whatever job you need. You should eat more. I’ll see you get more food.”
“Is this a factory or a hospital?”
“It’s your clinic, Rubin.”
“If it’s my clinic can I make all those children go away?”
“You can. You can make them go away by helping them.”
“What exactly are they making down there?”
“It’s a toy.”
“A toy for children?”
“No. No it’s not a toy for children.”’
‘… Time passes. My allergies are less severe. My new labs are fine. I can have anything I want by asking for it. And there are new people arriving to assist me every day. They call me sir. Even the ones who know more about this equipment than I do call me sir. Murial does not call me sir. But she calls me many other names. She calls me Little Bear. She likes to rub her fingers through the hairs on my chest and call me Little Bear. She’s very protective. She doesn’t like it when they laugh at me. Sometimes she goes too far.’
‘… It was hard at first. The children would ask what was going to happen to them, and I couldn’t bear to tell them. But because of what we learned from the earlier subjects we have been able to move to non-destructive scanning methods … We can create stable scans, and even edit them now … We can scan a whole brain now in just a few weeks. That’s a long time to keep a subject unconscious. We feed them food through a tube and happy dreams through needles in their skulls … Can you imagine how strange it would be to go to sleep, then wake up in another body? I cannot. But I can make it ha
ppen. All my dreams are coming to reality.’
‘… Today Murial gave me a pink envelope. Inside was an invitation to exhibit at the International Exhibition of Science and Industry … “MACHINEFABRIK. Stand 14681, Plaza of Weapons, Munitions and Strategic Devices”. Not the World of Medicine. Not the Domain of the Mind … Some mistake … No mistake. Murial seemed worried, but she wouldn’t talk about it, and she wouldn’t say goodbye.’
‘… I had never been on a ship like this, never slept in a bed this big, never eaten in a restaurant. The waiter in the dining compartment had to instruct me on the rudiments of restaurant etiquette, such as using a knife and fork, and chewing and eating unprocessed food, and employing a napkin, and drinking wine from a glass, and throwing up into the ice bucket. I suppose I am allergic to wine as well!’
‘… I knew, from reading, that things called cinemas existed. But nothing can prepare you for the experience. It is fantastical. A presentation is “projected” at the wall in two dimensions. The production is most often a dramatic or comedic story, similar to ones you find in books, yet told in visual language, with no regard for contiguity of time and place. A scene of a man kidnapping a woman might cut intermittently to a man driving a train, and only after several minutes are you given an idea of how the two scenes are related. It is very confusing. But wonderful! Imagine if you could build a cine-movie in three dimensions. It isn’t impossible.’
‘… The light in the exhibition centre was very bright. I’m allergic to bright light. I had to wear my dark glasses … a little desk for me to stand behind, leaflets which said inane things about nothing: “MACHINEFABRIK: Engineering the Future Human”. The leaflets advertised treatments such as memory erasures and mood implants. Simpleton stuff … a man called Stanley arrived wearing a MACHINEFABRIK pin and said he was my assistant … I just wanted to be back in my factory. I miss Murial. I miss her “secret cuddles”. I asked Stanley if he’d ever had such a cuddle, and he looked at me strangely. He’s much older. At least forty. He said a temp agency sent him … Sometime after lunch I got bored, so I took a nap. Stanley woke me, “It’s nearly time for your two o’clock.”