Capacity

by Tony Ballantyne

  “You never wanted to know.”

  “I never did.” He looked around his apartment, studiously avoiding Helen. He looked at the pictures and sculptures that decorated his room. “All of this, art and comfort, I wrapped myself up in it. I never allowed myself to see what suffering was like. I retreated from the real world—”

  And, for the first time that day, Judy really lost her temper. It was genuine, Helen was convinced. She could feel that anger, focused by the effect of the pill. Judy’s voice was so cold and disparaging that Helen cringed.

  “The real world? You…you wanker. You’ve always lived in the real world, whether in the atomic world or in this processing space. Don’t try to dignify or excuse or explain what you helped create by saying that it is the real world!”

  “That’s not what I meant—”

  “Isn’t it? Do you really know that? Or has the great lie infiltrated you and you don’t know it yet?”

  “What?”

  “Okay, Peter. Break’s over. Let’s feel what it was like at the end.”

  Judy stood up, turned to face Helen. “You’ll probably want to step into the next room for this part,” she said. Helen felt a wash of emotion from Judy that filled her with a mixture of horror and delight. She was going to take it all the way. Helen wasn’t so sure if that was part of Judy’s original plan; she was taking Peter’s comments personally. Helen walked from the room as Judy stared down at Peter, her black eyes glittering.

  Peter’s bedroom was dominated by a huge picture window that looked out to sea. The Shawl hung high up in the blue sky, the sun lighting up one side in a harlequin pattern. How far up into the sky did it reach?

  From next door she could hear low voices, she could feel the edge of a wave of emotion. She didn’t want to think about it. Instead, she thought about the Shawl. Judy had said that someday you would be able to walk along the Shawl all the way to the moon, to Mars, to Jupiter. Was that possible?

  A message flashed up on her console. It was time to return to the lounge.

  Peter was slumped on the sofa. Judy was examining one of the erotic sculptures that stood on a wall shelf: a woman sitting in the lap of a man, her legs wrapped around his back.

  “Do you like this sort of thing, Helen?” she asked. Helen barely glanced at the sculpture, too busy staring at the man on the sofa.

  “Will he be all right?” she asked.

  “Oh, yes.”

  Pity, thought Helen. Too late she remembered the red pill of MTPH, still in her system. Judy gave her a thoughtful look before directing her attention back towards him.

  “So, Peter, we’ve almost finished. I’ve just got one more question. We know how the processing space was put into operation. What I want to know now is how the interface with the clients of the Private Network was to be made.”

  His voice was a dull monotone. “Some of the clients had themselves loaded in there before the processing space was even launched. They were planning on taking a long holiday. The other ones would interface via secure directed pipes. The long-timers would leave that way too when they were finished.”

  “That’s what we thought, ” Judy said, glancing at Helen. “So that will be our lead to Kevin. Social Care will be performing a forensic on the impression made of the processing space before it totally collapsed. There will be some clues left as to who has been in there; VRep patterns are pretty good at retaining their integrity. One of them should give us a lead to the people who set that place up.”

  Helen nodded. “Good, ” she said.

  Judy replaced the erotic sculpture on the shelf and moved calmly to the middle of the room. The violent emotion she had displayed earlier had completely evaporated.

  “Well, Peter, I think we have finished here.”

  The man looked up, a hopeful expression on his face.

  “Is my punishment over?”

  “That was not about punishment, Peter,” Judy said. “It was about empathy. And I don’t simply mean understanding Helen’s pain; that is something a five-year-old could have done. I’m talking about really trying to put yourself in another’s place. Once I’ve gone there will be no more little red pills. You will have to live the rest of your life without me to help you. What you need to learn about is the right way to think of your fellow human beings: as fellow human beings, not commodities. This was the first stage of that process.”

  Peter gave a tired nod. “I see.”

  Judy gazed at him for a moment. Then she spoke.

  “Your punishment will begin tomorrow. Someone will call just after 9 A.M. I suggest you don’t eat anything for breakfast. Just stick to a glass of orange juice.”

  The Atomic Judy 2: 2240

  “Really, Judy,” Frances said, “did it ever occur to you that the time you devote to your manner of dress is just a displacement activity?”

  The atomic Judy laughed as she pulled on a deep blue-green robe.

  “All the time, Frances.” She smoothed the overlap across her front, hiding the robe’s white lining.

  “All these robes”—the robot waved her golden arms to indicate the delicate garments that floated like well-dressed ghosts around Judy’s low bed—“are they really necessary?”

  Judy played dumb. “Are clothes necessary at all, Frances? In the artificial climate of the Shawl there’s no reason why we can’t all go naked.”

  She pulled on the next robe in the sequence of waka shobu: pale blue-green with a white lining. Petroleum colors shimmered across the material as it moved against the light.

  “No reason at all,” Frances agreed. “Although there are always the erotic possibilities involved in the removal of clothing….”

  Judy laughed again. “I have a robot lecturing me about sexual desire?”

  Frances folded her arms. “You’re a virgin who appears to consider dressing in the mode of the young sweet-flag iris a satisfactory replacement for sexual stimulation.”

  Judy gave a sweet smile. “Why Frances, I didn’t know you followed wafuku.”

  “I’m a robot. I know everything about humans, from the mundane to the exotic. I know about eroticism and sexual power. Are you aware that those robes were once an instrument of female repression? A Heian noblewoman wearing the traditional garments would barely be able to move for the thickness of their materials. She would not have had the benefit of molecular fabrics.”

  “Well, I do, and I think they look pretty.” Judy pulled on the third pale blue-green robe and twirled around. She smiled in delight at the pattern of colors, at the slowly building effect of her outfit. Frances watched her, her body language signaling mild frustration.

  “You’re a virgin, Judy. You’ve never experienced the building anticipation and joy of divesting an awakening body of its wrapping.”

  “You’re a robot, Frances. You get off by someone entering Mersenne primes on your push buttons.”

  Frances looked down at the little array of buttons that twinkled obscenely between her legs, then slowly raised her head to gaze back at Judy. The painted blue eyes and smile on her golden face did not alter their expression, and yet somehow the motion of her body was deeply suggestive.

  “You know the combination, Judy,” she said in a low voice. “You’re more than welcome to try it.”

  Judy paused in the act of reaching for the next robe. She looked at Frances and moved closer to her, one white hand sliding out from the layered sleeves of her robes, their patterns forming a pleasing effect. She touched Frances’ smooth golden arm, held the moment, then whispered, ever so softly, “Can’t we just be friends?”

  The robot gave a delighted laugh. Judy grinned as she took the fourth robe from the air and handed it to Frances. She then turned and held out her arms as the robot helped her into the fourth, white, plum-pink–lined robe.

  “Anyway,” Judy continued more seriously, “I may not have had an actual physical encounter, but I have had more than my fair share of experience through my work.”

  She pulled on the fift
h and final robe, white with a pale plum-pink lining. She widened the reverse viewing field just in front of herself and twirled around again, admiring the effect. Hints of white and plum pink fluttered into view as the robes flapped open and closed.

  “Your hair is all wrong,” Frances complained. “That tied-back arrangement is early twentieth century.”

  Judy gave her reflection a nod of approval. “You can take things too seriously, Frances. Now, get me my chemise. It’s in the wooden chest.”

  “Get me my chemise, please,” Frances said equably as she moved to the side of the room and opened the black lid of the lacquered chest. “This is beautiful wood,” she said. “Are you going to save it?”

  “I don’t know yet.” Judy looked around her room and gave a regretful sigh. “I know we’re supposed to look forward, not back, but everything in this room is so beautiful. And then there’s the view.”

  She crossed to the wide expanse of the window and looked down on the Earth spread out below her. France could be seen down there, partially obscured by cloud. The real Earth, she thought, just a little guiltily. What would her digital sisters think if they could listen in to her thoughts? She dressed differently, but that was their choice. Would she understand the need to wear black if she was a PC in the digital world, and not the atomic Judy?

  “Will you still live in the Shawl?” Frances asked, interrupting her thoughts.

  “I don’t know. I don’t fancy starting all over again at the top. I’ve been wondering about leaving Earth altogether. Heading out into the galaxy…I don’t want to spend my life just repeating the same old cycle.”

  Frances was kneeling by the trunk, searching for the chemise among Judy’s collection of wafuku, her golden hands slipping easily through the materials of the precious garments.

  “You don’t fancy living on Earth?” she asked.

  “Definitely not,” Judy said, arms folded as she looked down at the blue-white swirl below. “I find it all rather vulgar: constant gravity, unrecycled air. The dirt…”

  “I rather like it, myself,” the robot murmured. She finally located the chemise and gently removed it. “Hey!” she called, rubbing her fingers on the material. “This is raw silk. The genuine article. Very nice.”

  “I know,” Judy said, slipping it on. Real silk, not some digital construct. She gave herself a final check in the viewing field, pleased with the effect. Black hair, white face, and what seemed on first appearance a plain white outfit; but as she moved, tantalizing glimpses of color would briefly show.

  “Okay,” she said. “Time for us to make our presence felt.”

  She slid open the bedroom door and stepped through into the lounge.

  “How are we going to get down there?” asked Frances.

  “Shuttle. We’re in a hurry.”

  They looked at each other, not wanting to mention what Judy 11 had said. There was no sense in drawing the Watcher’s attention to themselves. They were to follow the path that would lead them to someone who had been to the edge of another galaxy. There they would find out more about why the Watcher had murdered Justinian Sibelius—if indeed it had. The idea almost defied belief. The idea that the Watcher was dedicated to protecting and nurturing life was as much a part of their society as the belief that illness should be treated and that children should be educated. But then, there was that little worm of doubt. Her sisters might not agree, but Judy believed in the story of Eva Rye. Judy 3 laughed at the idea. Physical people need physical proof, she had said. But the atomic Judy believed Eva Rye had actually, physically, met the Watcher all those years ago. So maybe it was possible. If the Watcher had committed murder, it was vital that it did not suspect they knew.

  Frances maintained the pretense that all was normal. “Oh, not the shuttle,” she complained. “You said we could use the gliders.”

  “Next time.” Judy gave a last look around her lounge. Low tables and tatami mats stood in the center, extending the Japanese theme she had adopted wholesale since moving here to the Shawl. “Now, should I wear shoes?” she wondered, looking at the white split-toed tabi on her feet. “We are going Earth-side, after all.”

  Frances was fiddling with an ornament: a metal horse’s head that stood on a nearby chest.

  “You can get some down there if you need them,” she said.

  “I suppose so. Come on, let’s go.”

  A black bundle tied up with ribbon lay by the wood-and-paper door, a yellow card and a red carnation tucked into the band. Judy picked them out and beamed.

  “From the EA. Only five more days…Enjoy!” she read from the card. She touched the carnation to her lips, breathing in its scent. She wondered what awaited her outside this morning. Judy slid the flower into her hair, just beside the black rod of her console. Frances adjusted it for her as she untied the bundle and shook out the loose black cape it contained. She hung that around her shoulders.

  “This should be good,” Judy said, then slid aside the door and looked out into her section of the Shawl. There was a fluttering as a robin came into the room, but Judy ignored it. She was too taken by what she could see outside, looking out into the space of the World Tree.

  A great swirl of color and sound came bubbling up from below. She was gazing into a well of light and life, of paper banners hanging from the grey branches of the tree that filled the central space. The World Tree: a genetically modified beech that ran the 1.616-kilometer length of the section. In this place gravity had been set to run towards the roots of the tree, so that for Judy, living as she did towards the apparent top of this section, stepping from her apartment was like stepping out over a kilometer-deep drop. A white ramp led from Judy’s door to join the tangle of other white ramps that threaded their way through the silver-grey branches, and the section’s other inhabitants walked and rode those ramps, or flew between them on gliders and spider lines.

  And this morning they had all chosen to dress in black and white, and they all wore a red carnation.

  The laugh that had been building inside Judy bubbled out and she turned to Frances.

  “Come on,” she shouted. “Join in!” But Frances was already changing the golden skin of her body to banded patterns of black and white. The buttons between her legs blossomed red like a flower.

  The last days of a Shawl section were always a celebration. Today the EA had set people walking about their business at regular intervals, great loops of people moving along the ramps at a steady pace, forming zebra patterns as Judy looked down through the paper-hung branches of the World Tree. Pale blue light shone down from above as they skipped down the ramp to join one of the main loops that led to the intrasection paths. A gap opened up in the black-and-white lines of people as they approached.

  “Hey, Judy!” called a man, waving. He wore a black one-piece suit and a white hat, a carnation tucked in the band. “Coming to the party at the treetop?”

  “No time,” Judy called, waving back with both hands. “Why aren’t you wearing a kimono, Glenn?”

  “Didn’t have one in a suitable color,” he called back, and then the crowd spun him down a different ramp.

  There were calls from behind: “Wave! Wave!”

  Judy and Frances turned to see people jumping in the air, arms outstretched, a wave of people heading their way; fluttering down through the air beside the human movement came a formation of paper streamers spelling out words in black and white:

  FIVE MORE DAYS…

  FROM THE ASHES…

  CELEBRATE LIFE!

  WE’RE GOING DOWN IN STYLE

  Judy turned to Frances, a beaming black smile across her white face.

  “I love this place,” she said, sighing.

  Judy lived in Section 49 of the twenty-sixth level of the Shawl. The last remaining sections of the twenty-fifth level had been released to their fiery ends in Earth’s atmosphere a few months before. The first few sections out of the twenty-sixth level were due to start falling in the next couple of days, and despite her upbri
nging, despite the constant reinforcement of the need for change proclaimed by Social Care, this thought filled Judy with sudden sadness.

  Frances spoke: “What’s the matter with you?”

  The robot was leaning against the transparent wall of the bubble that the section airlock had blown to transport them up to the forty-second level and the shuttle station. Her body, now turned back to smooth gold, was visible as a faint reflection, deep in the plastic of the bubble. Judy studied the ghost of her own reflection, half seen against the blackness of space beyond.

  “I know I shouldn’t think this,” said Judy petulantly, “but I don’t want the section to fall.”

  Frances reached out and took her hand. “No one ever said you shouldn’t feel regret, Judy. You know that.”

  “I know,” Judy said. “I was assigned to a group of people just last week who were trying to form a protest group. They wanted to save the World Tree. And I thought: they have a point, don’t they? It’s a shame for it to die.”

  “It is,” Frances agreed.

  “Oh, I know,” Judy said quickly, “all things must pass. The circle of life, all that sort of thing. I understand that we can’t just keep taking from the Earth and not allowing anything to return. I agree with the Transition. We couldn’t have gone on as we were. Even so, when you come up against it, it all seems so harsh and cold-blooded.”

  “It is, but so is life. On Earth, on the Shawl, in the processing spaces. After the Transition, the EA removed that illusion. Do you want people to go on hoarding goods to no end, establishing ideas founded on a permanence that is not feasible?”

  “Of course not.” Judy looked down at the Earth beneath her feet. “Of course not. But every time I step out of my door and see the World Tree now, I imagine it falling towards the Earth, a cloud of VNMs expanding around it. It makes me feel regretful.”

  “But Judy, that’s the way the Shawl works. New sections will grow at the top and begin their slow progress downwards. You know that.”

  And then I dream about the tree burning through the night sky, branches shriveling in the heat, bark peeling away and flashing to nothing, and me riding the trunk, my body blackened and dead, my mind still living and screaming in pain as all that carbon goes down to rejoin mother Earth.