by Judyth Baker
“Only for your Perfect Wife. Not for you.”
To Henry’s puzzled look, Landry placed a thin, freckled hand on the fat man’s shoulder. “My friend,” he said, “some people didn’t want to have anything to do with Cyborgs. There are some in World Government who aren’t pleased with our new population control methods using Cyborgs. Instead, they want us to expand our current population control program, which is the involuntary sterilizations of criminals and misfits.”
“What do you mean, new population control methods using Cyborgs?” Henry inquired. “And why didn’t I hear about this before now? I happen to be involved with population control at BioTest Laboratories.”
“I know that,” Landry said. “I am also aware that you’ve had a divorce, and that because you’re now overweight, you can be fired.”
“Not if I can get a pancreas implant,” Henry said. “I know my rights!”
“You were kept out of the loop because you could have been fired with another kilo of weight gain,” Landry told him, “But we’ve saved you, son. Marriages and divorces are rather uncommon these days, you know.”
“Helen was old-fashioned about things like that,” Henry said. “And I loved her enough to agree to marry.”
“But it turned out that you refused to have children, working as you did at BioTest Labs,” Landry said gently. “And yet, that had been part of your original pre-nup agreement.”
“It was. But who can afford a child, these days? Some young fart came along who promised her not one, but two kids,” he said bitterly. “Then, when I got my sperm count checked, I realized I couldn’t compete. She had the legal right to divorce me and take penalty money. She almost bankrupted me.”
“You were foolish not to get your sperm count checked before you married her,” Landry said. “It’s a concern that you could be so thoughtless, considering who you work for.”
“I didn’t worry about it because I started taking extra testosterone,” Henry said. “But a side effect was that it made me more aggressive. We started fighting…” Henry’s voice trailed off. “We were fighting over almost everything. That was when all the big problems started.”
“What if I told you that PerfectWife may have the solution to all those problems?”
Henry thought about this carefully. He was an intelligent man, though he had been in intellectual limbo for some time. He had stopped playing chess, stopped collecting old books and reading them, stopped expanding his coin collection, stopped debating about the future of the world, as the breach between him and Helen had grown wider.
“There’s got to be a catch to this experiment,” he finally said. “Because you’re not acting like a salesman, giving me a pitch. I get plenty of that. This isn’t a real office – I don’t see any desks or screens. I got escorted in here by two expensive robots–
“They’re Cyborgs,” Landry corrected him.
“You must be some kind of CEO for this company.”
“That’s true. I’m also on the Board for BioTest Labs. I’m one of your bosses.”
Landry’s steel-gray eyes never blinked. Henry decided it had to be true, but just in case, he–
Before Henry could think the next word, into his head flickered an impressive list of Lee Landry’s accomplishments and positions. Landry was using the same high-class program that had once been approved for use by political candidates. Henry recognized the style and the expense of it. Henry himself represented a million voters. He was required to vote in their behalf after The Blitz. That mega-advertising event exposed the world’s adult population to a thirty-day barrage of almost endless political advertisements. Individual citizens never voted anymore: they merely participated in daily opinion polls that were sent to their particular representative. Henry was one such representative. At the end of The Blitz, a final opinion poll was collected by each representative. The representative delivered the final poll’s winner as a vote. The almost constant flow of political ads, from which Henry was blissfully kept insulated as a representative, had brought masses of voters to the brink of suicide in order to arrive at the winner. Meanwhile, the world’s production of goods and services nearly came to a halt the last few days of the Presidential campaign.
The most sophisticated ads were the most expensive and produced the best results. But the old fear that government positions could be purchased outright (as had occurred with the election of the American President in 2036) changed the voting system forever. By 2048, only Representatives for each one million people and the CEOs of the 1000 most important corporations were allowed to vote. Their votes were tallied in rooms where mind-bending ads were prohibited. Naturally, the biggest companies had the most votes.
Things had been just dandy ever since.
“My corporation is treating me too well,” Henry finally said, as he looked over contracts to be signed. “And why is my position as Representative so important in these contracts?”
“We want you to try out a particular Perfect Wife,” Landry told him. “If it works as intended, we’ll have the solution we’ve been looking for. By the way, you racked up a few gambling debts these past few weeks, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, I was depressed. Thought maybe I’d make a lot of money and get myself a pancreas transplant and some masculine enhancements. But, what’s this about a ‘solution’? And why me?”
“You probably never saw that old film from 2010 or so, called Idiocracy,8 did you?”
Henry had not. Who watched old movies, anyway? They had no smells, no sensations, no way to tickle your brain with entorhinal stimuli to link what you were seeing with your most important life experiences.9 You couldn’t step into the movie itself and see it from all kinds of angles. You couldn’t get virtually killed in an old-fashioned movie. Only intellectuals watched old movies.
“You’re our experiment, much as was Pvt. Joe Bauers in that particular movie. After all our studies, there you were, right under our noses. You’re the totally average man, when it comes to what you expect in a wife. It’s a 30-day experiment. We pay off all your bills. You have nothing to lose. Any questions?”
“You seem to know what you’re doing. I guess I have no questions,” Henry replied. As he finished speaking, Lucy Sexx Dines appeared once more before his inner eye, smiling at him with her fresh, luscious red lips. She pointed to the most important contract and winked. Henry tried to read it, but his mind kept wandering. He had to concentrate, or the contract would not be accepted: his lack of focus would be analyzed. It told him he was fully informed, gave informed consent, and that he agreed to do no harm to the Perfect Wife, who, for her part, would be guaranteed to obey his every desire and to satisfy him in every possible way that her anatomy and intelligence would permit. All his prior debts would be paid, and he would have the option to keep his Perfect Wife after a trial of thirty days. If he returned his Perfect Wife before thirty days elapsed, that portion of his debt would revert back to him. It was hard to concentrate with Lucy’s smoky, feminine scent surrounding him like that, but at last, he gathered enough of his wits to comprehend the whole thing, including the fine print, and he nodded agreement. The signature was coded at once and added to Henry’s permanent civil profile.
“Bring LSD in, Marcy,” Lee Landry commanded the brunette Cyborg.
“Yes, sir.”
Lucy Sexx Dines came in, shyly, for she was utterly naked. She covered herself as best she could, but at Landry’s order, she lowered her hands.
“Look her over,” Landry said. “Inspect her genitals, the firmness of her breasts, her teeth – whatever you wish. If the product pleases you, tell her to get dressed.”
“The product?”
“Don’t you get it? She’s 100% Cyborg. But if you can detect anything that’s non-human about her, we’d like to know. Touch her. Kiss her. Check out her various exits and entrances.”
As Landry spoke, LSD blushed, and trembled. “She knows she has to please you, or she’ll be terminated,” Landry said, as easily as he
sipped his drink.
Henry looked into her eyes and saw terror, but also, he detected that something was missing. He couldn’t tell exactly what, but as for the rest of her, she was clearly distressed, embarrassed, and miserable. “Lucy,” he told her, as kindly as he knew how. “Get dressed. I’m taking you home.”
***
From the night Henry brought Lucy home, everyone who knew him began commenting about his metamorphosis. The old, distraught, over-eating Henry was gone. In his place was a confident, beaming, friendly co-worker whose mind had suddenly come alive: he was making important comments, bringing forth new ideas, and pleasing his bosses (including the hidden ones such as Landry). Gone were his fears, his taciturnity, his aimless blunders. He even volunteered to inspect the Tanzanian Population Control Project, based on new fossil finds by paleoanthropologists.
BioTest Labs, he said, should add the newly discovered fossil DNA fragments that had been found to the reproductive cells of the survivors of the Olduvai Gorge Population Control Project. He successfully argued that babies born to Tanzanians, who had previously been slated for removal (by one means or another) would be so primitive and fascinating that the Olduvai Gorge region would finally qualify as a profitable Global Heritage Site that would pay for itself for years to come.
“Imagine!” he told his superiors, “These Tanzanian hybrids will have smaller brains, fur on their bodies, and will scarcely be able to communicate, but they will walk on two legs, and their parents will be assured of an income to support them for the rest of their lives. The world’s first Cave Man Zoo! We can add some attraction, such as saber-toothed tigers to hunt them. We can sell the shows worldwide as real-life drama: that will bring even more revenues. Sub-humans against the tigers! It will be a stunning Pliocene experience, for all paying customers.”
It was perfect for BioTest Labs, because the project would continue to reduce the unwanted human population in Tanzania. They were in the way of Tanzanite Mines, Global Inc., currently involved in uprooting the entire region of 365,700 square miles in its quest for natural Tanzanite, as well as for gold, uranium, diamonds, nickel and copper.10 The stripping of the land could be accomplished without having to resort to starting another war there, if a mere 700 square miles were reserved to breed sub-humans for exhibition. Wars were exciting to watch, but they could get so messy, and while they were in progress, such activities as mining were sometimes difficult to pursue.
It was Henry’s soul-mate, Lucy, who had suggested the idea. She had been looking up famous persons with the name “Lucy” and had found information, almost forgotten, about a 3.2 million year old hominid. An even older specimen had been found in Tanzania, which region was part of Henry’s population control project. When Lucy discovered that traces of DNA had been found in some of these bones, she alerted Henry. Two weeks later, after Henry gave his thrilling speech at a luncheon held in his honor, he was moved into a corner office with a view.
Henry knew that every iota of his success had come from his association with LSD. He had been losing weight, was working out, and was contemplating marrying Lucy as Day 30 rolled around. He wanted to keep her forever! As Evening 29 approached, Henry purchased a wedding ring surmounted with a large Tanzanite gem. He even stopped at a florist’s and bought a dozen red roses. Tonight, he was going to ask Lucy to be his wife. Not that she was perfect, for in fact, she wasn’t.
If anything had ever irritated him about her, it was Lucy’s obedience. No matter what he asked of her, if it was possible to do it and it wasn’t illegal, she complied. Happily. Sometimes, that grated on him.
“What would you like for dinner tonight?” she’d ask him, for he contacted her at lunch every day to plan his evenings with her, most of them centered around sex and feely movies. “Surprise me!” he would tell her. “What would you like for dinner?” she would ask again. “Pick out something you would like, for a change,” he would tell her. “I can’t,” she would tell him. “I’m not programmed to prefer things for myself. It could conflict with your desires.”
He knew he did not have the best taste, and that he was not picking out the best clothing for her: his choices made her look like a barmaid robot, showing too much butt and boobs. After enduring too many stares when they went out to eat, he began dressing Lucy in sailor suits, gowns and sports team uniforms, but that didn’t quite suit her, either. Finally, he contacted PerfectWife, and they introduced a program into Lucy’s head so that she was able to choose her own clothes. Sometimes her tastes were expensive, but soon, Henry would be debt-free. By the 29th night, Henry’s debt was so close to zero that he felt like a rich man.
Now, as he entered their apartment, which she kept spotless, Henry was shocked to find Lucy seated on the couch, crying.
“Honey, what’s the matter?” he asked her.
“They’re going to terminate me tomorrow!” she told him.
Henry dropped the flowers, horrified. “What the hell?” he said. “They can’t do that! I want to keep you! They told me I had a 30 day trial, and then I could decide whether or not to keep you. And I want to do more than keep you. I want you to be my wife!”
”You – you do?”
“Yes, sweet LSD, yes! You’ve made me the happiest man in the world.”
He got on his knees before her and wiped a tear from her eye. Removing the ring with its lovely violet gem from his pocket, Henry offered it to her on his open palm, as he asked her, clearly and forcefully, “Will you marry me?”
She looked at him without replying. Frustrated, Henry blurted out, “If I marry you, they can’t terminate you. I read the contract!”
”Did you read the small print?”
“Of course I read the small print!”
All she said then was, “You’ve made me very happy. I don’t think they realized that a Cyborg could become happy.”
***
They had to restrain him when he came staggering into the building on 5th Avenue, carrying her. She was limp, unresponsive, her open eyes staring without blinking, glazing over with a white film, and her skin had turned to a soft, pliable substance that was no longer human to the touch. It was the 30th day, and Henry was weeping. He was also furious.
Seeing her condition, they forced him to relinquish Lucy into their care: she was hustled off somewhere, with reassurances that he would certainly be able to see her again, no matter what happened. “After all,” he was told, “She’s your property. You do have rights.” The two Cyborgs he’d met at the elevator in the beginning did their best to calm Henry down as he demanded to see Lee Landry. “He’s coming, but not yet,” they kept telling him. Henry had to wait an anxious hour and a half before Landry finally appeared. He couldn’t help but notice that Landry was tense, and perspiring.
“Son,” he told Henry, “let’s talk.”
Henry leaned toward the older man. He could not hide his clenched hands gripping his knees, his face suffused with anger and sorrow. Tears glittered in his eyes.
“Sorry, Henry,” Landry finally said. “Remember how we told you that we wanted you to try out a particular Perfect Wife?”
“Of course,” Henry replied. “And she was just that. Almost perfect.”
“Remember how we told you, that if she worked as intended, we’d have the solution to a problem we’d been looking into?”
Henry nodded. “I knew it was an experiment. But you said that after thirty days, I could keep her, if I wished. You didn’t tell me she’d be dead!”
“You remember my mention of the film Idiocracy? And that we chose you specifically because you were a typical, intelligent, straight male, handy for us because you worked at BioTest Labs?”
Henry remembered. “What’s that got to do with Lucy?” he snapped.
“Of all people, son, you should understand how we’ve been paring back the population, removing the unfit, the dissidents, and the redundants. But our solutions were sometimes violent.”
“Let’s say that creating wars for decades has kept us
in power,” Henry said. “As Lucy taught me, from her reading, A.J.P. Taylor said, ‘No matter what political reasons are given for war, the underlying reason is always economic.’”Unruffled, Landry smiled. “I don’t think you realize that we’re moving into a Golden Age, where we won’t be allowing murders anymore. For any reason. I have influence, and I’m not alone. Most Cyborg Intelligences agree with me.”
“I don’t trust Cyborgs,” Henry muttered.
“LSD – she’s Cyborg,” Landy told him.
“She’s not a walking, talking humanoid computer!”
“As you wish,” Landry said. “We’ll deal with that little idea of yours in a minute. But before we do, I want to tell you about my favorite childhood movie.”
“Movies aren’t real,” Henry declared.
“They portray possibilities, if only in the imagination. If you imagine killing somebody, or turning your best friend into a pizza by waving a magic wand, you’re still creating something that could influence reality. That’s what this movie did for me. We’re thinking about putting criminals into deep freeze, just as in the movie Demolition Man. We now have the technology to do that. Without killing them. Without having to feed them and house them. We could even deep freeze leaders who get in the way. Or scientists who have the wrong ideas.”
“What does this have to do with Lucy?”
Landry made a slight gesture and the brunette Cyborg poured him a glass of red liquid. “Try it,” he urged Henry. “It’s cranberry juice. From my own plantation.”
As Henry took a sip, though he had no desire to taste a drop, Landry continued his story, animated and excited at what he was trying to describe. ”There was Sylvester Stallone,” he said. “You wouldn’t remember him, but he wrote his own movies and then starred in them. Don’t know if he wrote this one, but he played a violent police officer named John Spartan. He was known as the “Demolition Man” because he solved society’s violent problems through violence. Eventually, he got frozen in a cryo-chamber for that. While he was frozen, Wesley Snipes, in the super-villain role, got unfrozen, and then unfroze his entire evil gang. They planned to take over the world, and only John Spartan could defeat him, because nobody knew how to stop criminals anymore. Everyone had become passive and gentle. So they unfroze John Spartan, to deal with the problem. Sandra Bullock, who played a policewoman interested in collecting violent relics from the past, was the only one who could even interact with John Spartan to help him bring the super-criminals to justice.”