Letters to the Cyborgs

by Judyth Baker

  Terrorists are easily identified because they have had illegal operations to remove the F-implants. Today, I know that all the original Terrorists were Leaders. Before they were banished or executed, they seduced other Leaders and Freemen to choose the path of lust, evil, love, selfishness and ego. They became the source of all our problems. Hence, it is our duty to ferret them out and destroy them.

  I suppose this is what hurt the most. After all these years, Mickey, who knew how loyal I was, had turned against me. Though I had subjected Mickey to a perfectly legal test, which was my duty, he had not only tuned on my F-implant, which was illegal, but he Punished me when I resisted it. Mickey’s reaction frightened and humiliated me. What would he do next? Instigate an anti-Terrorist Algorithm against me? What if he thought I was thinking Terrorist thought? Luckily for me, I had reacted appropriately to seeing my face forming on his, and said the right words. It saved me. Mickey turned it off, but not before giving me a harsh, painful jolt of electrical Punishment.

  As I rode the Pod, I thought briefly of Antares. Soon, I’d have to let her go again, or I would be accused of having affection. I knew that the phenomenon – that she could talk – was affecting my better judgment. My big, impossible dream was that she could accompany me on my upcoming Vacation.

  Every five years, Engineers were allowed a one-month Vacation to a different part of the Planet. It had been determined that this induced Engineers – especially those who were Linguists such as myself – to want to stay alive longer. It was expensive to replace us, but melancholy and depression seemed to be a chronic issue for us, as well as for Inventors, Artists and Musicians. Had it not been for Stars, who were always, so to speak, on Vacation, many more replacements would have been necessary, at great cost to the System. All of this had been ironed out in the past hundred years.

  My ride to the Algorithm Center was going along smoothly, and I was dreaming of my imminent Vacation, when suddenly, the Pod stopped, toppling over some of the weaker Ordinals (they were always tired, after all). Then the Ordinals began screaming as the Pod’s sleek gray walls shivered from an unknown force.

  As I tried to calm the Ordinal nearest to me, which was my duty, the Pod’s great gray exit door popped open, and I, too, started to scream. I had to in order to cover up my superior brain and my identity, lest I be gunned down by a Terrorist! I tried to control my sweat glands under my arms: the pheromones could give me away: Ordinals couldn’t afford such luxuries, and some Terrorists had Dogs, an animal I have seen only in System Reports, known to have dripping fangs and high-pitched yelps. Dogs can smell out non-Ordinals.

  A harsh order to fall on our faces reverberated in our brains, and we all collapsed, all one hundred of us, in the Pod. There it stood: a Terrorist! It wore an F-mask, which it then pulled up, revealing its ugly Face. It had a hairy chin. Male. The Terrorist stared into the Pod from the open doorway, as if seeking a certain face. It was the first time I had seen a Live Terrorist. I had only seen executed Terrorists previously, their faces burnt to skullbone from lasers. Now I saw a Terrorist’s face in the flesh – and fleshy it was. Or was it an ‘it’, I wondered, or was it a He, like me? It was heavier than the legal weight. It had (the thought was sickening) accumulated several kilos of excess flesh and fat, which was not only forbidden, it was the epitome of evil, selfishness and a reckless waste of our precious resources!

  Some of the waste was muscle, rippling along its hairy arms, almost like the rigging of muscles I’d seen in a photo of a Viking warrior, in an old book. This one had some kind of armor on, under the usual colorful, flowing garments. Suddenly, it held up a kind of energy shield as a Security Bot flew toward it from the back of the Pod: there was a flash of fire from the shield, and the Bot, smoking, made a birdlike screech and crashed. It landed on an unfortunate Ordinal, who cried out in pain as the dying Security Bot’s needles injected and killed the wrong target. Then the Terrorist grimaced. Maybe it was reacting to the Ordinal’s unfortunate disposal. What a face! I could see what the Ordinals around me could not: a hard, wrinkled forehead that hadn’t seen plastic surgery for months, a harsh, tight mouth. It was filled with glistening, white teeth – yes, full-sized teeth, dangerous, and no doubt viciously used when necessary. As it surveyed us, we who were flat on our faces, afraid to move, held our breaths … I saw it pause in its slow scope when it looked upon me … I could not have seen its face at all, except my head was atop someone else’s trembling rump. I cursed my bad luck: I wasn’t wearing a nose ID ring: would it realize what I was?

  Suddenly, the Terrorist heaved a round, shiny object toward the light fixture and jumped back, just as the Pod door slammed shut. The Pod’s emergency programming had finally re-sealed the door, but even as the Pod lurched into motion, the shiny object exploded.

  A shower of hot, plastic confetti rained down upon us, igniting the clothing of several screaming Ordinals: it was a drone bomb! There were more screams as dozens of mini-drones spread tiny wings and, sputtering with sparks, crashed into the overhead light. The light exploded, showering debris over us; we were plunged into darkness, but not before I was able to read, on a streamer that a drone brought safely to my arm, two words written in gold: She Talks.

  Where was I?

  The last I could remember was a suffocating smoke filling my lungs before I passed out. I blinked, tried to get up, and was immediately restrained by Bot arms that gently eased me back into the Repair Unit. Suddenly, a bodiless, humanoid face hovered over me, gently whispering into my brain that all was well. I relaxed. I was going to be OK, it intoned, but to reassure me, I’d soon have a real human to talk to. A few seconds later, a hologram started to talk to me: it was a real Doctor, Grade Two.

  “Feeling better?” it asked.

  “Yes,” I told it. You always said you were better. You had to, or expensive things could happen. Unpleasant probes, that could cost days and days of vacation.

  “Did I lose Vacation days?” I asked. It was a reasonable question, since all Engineers needed the break every five years.

  “You only lost two days,” the Doctor assured me. “You sustained some damage to your right lung from the incendiary device.” The doctor was using its superior English on me, apparently unaware that I was an English Language Engineer. Others would have been blown away by its big words: they weren’t used much, of course, by even we, who were the Elite, but concerning medical matters, English speech was used because of its precision. Besides, the Doctor was obviously enjoying showing off its literacy.

  “Can I leave?” I asked, knowing that every hour I spent in Repair removed that hour from my Vacation ration.

  “Not until the Psychiatrist talks to you.”

  The hologram vanished, and a second hologram took its place. To present itself as all the more authoritative, I presume, the Psychiatrist had an Athlete’s body. It was the current fashion. I had to turn my thoughts as blank as possible to disguise my dislike of Psychiatrists. They so enjoyed doing a Probe. And I had two secrets, after all: I liked a Star, and I had invented a word without being able to claim a real event that made the word necessary. Sure enough, within moments, the Psychiatrist picked up that thought, and focused on it.

  “So… you invented the word “lunarline” without a precipitating event to account for it?” As I tried to formulate a denial in my brain, it hurled a punishing bolt of pain into my cerebral cortex.

  “You don’t do that to somebody like me!” it snapped.

  I writhed with pain: tears stung my eyes. Slowly, the world came back into focus…

  “It’s gone now,” it assured me, after I began breathing normally.

  “What’s gone?” I asked.

  “The illegal word. You’re clean now. According to your records, it’s the third time you’ve done that since you were certified,” it said, flexing its artificial muscles. “I checked.”

  “But I’ve been forgiven,” I said defensively. “I have to work with the most advanced Algorithms involved with the English
language, and to test The Word Monitor Algorithm, I had to come up with unusual linguistic challenges.” Tears began rolling down my cheeks. “It’s not fair.”

  The Psychiatrist raised a fuzzy, caveman-style eyebrow. It was intrigued.

  “What does ‘not fair’ mean?” it asked.

  I paused… the Psychiatrist hadn’t learned any such pair of words.

  “Not fair means an Algorithm has malfunctioned,” I said, warily. “It punished the Engineer before the Engineer made the error.”

  Half strangling my thoughts, which roiled with anger at what the Algorithm had done to me – I didn’t want the Psychiatrist to change its mind – I whispered, “Go check my Incident Reports. The Supplementary Section.”

  “I’ll check them,” it said. In an instant, it vanished. In another instant, it appeared. “You’re correct,” it admitted. “One of the Algorithms you’re responsible for played a dirty trick on you. Its ID is Anthrax 7. Yes, you had the responsibility to invent the three words, to test that particular Algorithm." The Psychiatrist smiled. “How fascinating! It punished you before you tested it! As if trying to stop you from conducting a legal Probe. Sorry. Sometimes, there are glitches in the System.” He winked. “I didn’t say that. Instead, I’m going to wave my magic wand… “The hologram shivered, as heat shivers the air, then steadied.

  “ – and then you’ll see the words,” said the Psychiatrist, “as if written on a wall. Close your eyes.”

  Into my head the three banned words I’d invented to test Mickey over the years suddenly appeared, one after the other, with their definitions:

  Lunarline: To emit an opalescent, mother-of-pearl glow, reminiscent of moonlight. Luffit: To be very light, so that it can fly away on a slight wind. Plittable: Something pliable that can be split into two or more layers. Such as a ‘birthday cake’ (archaic) is plittable.

  “Because you were unjustly punished,” the Psychiatrist said, “You are hereby awarded damages. You can access any available Real foods, without charge, while on your Vacation, and you will have access to a Star of your choice during your stay at a Grade One Hotel.”

  Wow! I cheered up at once. Real food on the Vacation level was a luxury usually reserved only for Leaders and other outstanding Cogs in the System.

  To have a Star for two weeks, paid for! And a Grade One Hotel! It would be my chance to meet new Elites who might want my services when trying to interpret Political Contracts. That could make me famous.

  “If I were you,” the Psychiatrist said, “I’d go confront the Algorithm that did that to you. Test it on the three words, to make sure the System has fixed the glitch.” The Psychiatrist laughed. “Fixed the glitch! That’s a rhyme, isn’t it?”

  Before I could reply, it vanished, leaving its final words in my head: “Make sure you visit Anthrax 7 to make sure it’s been fixed, before you go on your vacation.”

  I did not go alone. With me were two Junior Engineers working on their Dissertations. They would be my witnesses. As we approached the Pod that would transport us to the Algorithm Center, a Grade Four Psychiatrist Bot flicked down from the ceiling and groomed my brain with a quick injection of short-term tranquilizers. My memory of the Terror attack at once became fuzzy and indistinct. The System was so good to me. My sense of calm was brief, however, because one of the two young Engineers, without any regard for my injection, was inquisitive.

  “So this is where you were attacked?” it asked.

  “Yes.”

  The somewhat older Engineer looked at its companion and said, coldly, “Now it’ll think about it again.”

  “I don’t care,” the other said. “And don’t discriminate. It’s a ‘he’ – not an ‘it.’ That makes him interesting.”

  Well, that shut up the older Engineer quite properly. I was rather pleased that its companion had recognized that I was a Natural Male. As such, I was a bit of a rarity and curiosity. So…what did I think about the attack on me?

  The younger Engineer had even dared to say it was interested. Wow. These hermaphrodites, who mostly populated my world, were always a little curious about Males and Stars: the younger Engineer was no exception. It had even used a word that was almost blasphemous: interesting was on the very cusp of being dangerous. It was too close to affection. It was a word that could lead to illegal thoughts, but our young Engineers, especially, are prone to think recklessly. It’s because they are so new at the job, of course.

  As the Ordinals efficiently filled the Pod, their beautiful robes turning the Pod into a rainbow of sheer delight to the eye, the blasphemous younger Engineer added, “Did you know they disposed of forty Ordinals in this Pod after the attack? Didn’t try to resuscitate. Did they tell you, in Repair?”

  “That caused a problem among the Ordinals,” the older one said. “A riot.”

  “What degree?” I asked, off-handedly. I did not dare act interested.

  “Second degree. Some went underground. I have it from a reliable Reporter that some went to an underground surgeon who turned off their F-implants.”

  That was a dangerous level of insurrection. If they turned off their F-implants (just as we do, unless we’re to be Punished), they could identify each other.

  “During the riot, there were over a thousand suicides, right inside this Pod,” said its companion. It pointed to a mass of dark stains on the floor. “That’s blood.”

  An inexplicable emotion arose in me. What a waste. How sad and hopeless…

  “Now they have to bring in replacements from Breeding. Before their time.”

  “That’s dangerous,” I commented. “Juveniles don’t last as long, you know.”

  “Did you know that 32% of Ordinals are now Juveniles?”

  I didn’t know, and I was stunned. The percentage used to be just one or two per hundred, such as after a Terror attack on a Pod or Real Food Center. What was going on?

  “Just a neutral observation,” the younger Engineer said, “so please don’t report me, but what if we’re losing our Ordinals because they are not happy?”

  The outrageous speech of young Engineers! What if a Thought Bot had picked it up? But we were in a very crowded Pod, where the Thought Bots were busy calming the Ordinals with Emotion Repression waves. Some Ordinals had been afraid to enter the Pod, because of the bloodstains, and when the Door closed, a few of them screamed.

  Of course, Ordinals screamed all the time. They screamed with pain and received injections so they could keep working. They screamed in fear as some of them were marched into Recycling, being past reasonable efficiency. They received injections to make them happy to die. They screamed whenever they remembered something dreadful in their lives, and got injections to make them forget.

  But there were so damned many of them, and sometimes, one or two evaded the injections, as if they were, somehow, aware that injections were not the answer to their truly miserable lives. With little rest, with little chance of being Selected for Preservation as Leader or an Elder, Ordinals labored, rested, labored, rested, and then, after twenty years (it used to be thirty) they were Recycled.

  I could hear some of the propaganda being shouted into the brains of the Ordinals: You pretty! You good! You happy! No work? No food! Equality Forever!

  Not many ‘words’ were used in telepathy, but these words had been manufactured long ago. They had always worked. They would always work. These words were instilled in the Ordinals from the time the Breeders were first introduced to simple Tasks. These were the words that ran their lives. There weren’t many others: most telepathy involved feelings and simple commands. Sit. Start. Stop. Eat. Defecate. Urinate. Important commands were in two words. They were the Law, and could never be disobeyed. Start work. Stop work. Pay fine. Give blood. Start sex. Stop sex. Go die.

  The Pod rumbled along, and I noticed that the ride was again rather bumpy. Sometimes we swayed, and a few times, an exhausted Ordinal collapsed. I had noticed that all Pod lines – even the ones to Central – were getting bumpier. Occasionally,
there was a crash. This was always blamed on Terrorists, but I was beginning to wonder if an Algorithm for Maintenance was, somewhere along the line, failing. As I considered that, and the cost of Maintenance. the thought What if …? slithered into my brain.

  Immediately, a nearby Conditioning Module replied, Corruption doesn’t exist in our perfect System! The correction came galloping into my mind. I was not supposed to think in that direction, unless I wanted a Thought Bot sitting on my face. I shut down and concentrated on thinking and feeling nothing.

  The Pod stopped, the Door opened, and politely, the Ordinals stepped aside to allow us – the Elites – to exit first, after the All Clear sounded. “All Clear” was a new module in the Pod system, installed only fifty or so years ago. Terrorists would not be waiting for us with stun guns and drone bombs if the All Clear sounded. Or so we were told.

  We stepped onto a High Priority Magic Carpet that was waiting for us. It whisked us inside the Algorithm Center in less than a minute, past Guardians without a pause. On the outside, the Center looked like an enormous, shiny black box, devoid of windows, but glistening with little balls of blue electricity that scurried across the black surface like water-drops sizzling on a hot griddle.

  The misty blue light inside was the only color visible to humans, besides black and white. There was an odor of melting plastic in the air, which I briefly sensed before our oxygen masks were fitted. As I stood on a metal platform with the two young Engineers, overlooking Sector English, we looked down on a throbbing complex of machines, mag-computers and tangled rivers of wires, among which were white, humanoid blobs: these were the Algorithms, moving like efficient termites. In fact, among ourselves, we English Engineers actually called them “Termites.”