Expiration Day

by William Campbell Powell

  The LeClerc Solution, Mister Zog? One of the darker episodes of the Troubles. While the Sabine Wars were in full swing, a rumor spread that the waters of Lourdes had cured infertility. So the whole of Western Europe, and quite a bit of North Africa, started a gigantic pilgrimage to Lourdes. Tens of millions, maybe a hundred million people. It was like a plague of locusts descending on France—nothing could hold them back, and where they passed, the land was stripped bare.

  France was about to be ruined. The President had no idea what to do. Then, through a series of errors, and an indeterminate amount of plotting, a minor General—LeClerc—found himself able to launch a single nuclear missile. At Lourdes.

  Nobody wanted to go to Lourdes after that.

  Jemyra—and her cronies—picked on me.

  Subtle things. Stealing my calculator from my bag, while my back was turned, so I didn’t have it for physics. After the lesson she handed it back but got in another dig: “I found this, but, well, robots don’t need calculators, they’re just a sort of computer themselves, really.…”

  Not so subtle things. Mostly trips and shoves in the corridors. I fell—“was pushed”—down the steps to the gym. Jemyra: “Wonky gyroscope, dear?”

  I kept alert during gym, and the teachers do watch out that everything is done safely. But they can’t watch everywhere, so I did get a thump in the chest from a medicine ball. Jemyra: “Clang!”

  I was glad to get home at the end of the day, and lucky that Siân sat with me on the bus, to protect me from the bullying.

  “They’re so mean to you, Tania. It’s not fair.”

  “What if they’re right, though? If I’m just a tin-pot robot…”

  Siân’s hand flew to her mouth, and she gave a little gasp. My heart sank—keep quiet, Mister Zog—as I realized the thought hadn’t occurred to her before. Poor Siân, I thought. Not the brightest star in the firmament, are you?

  She went very quiet for a long minute, before speaking again.

  “Tania? Is it true then? Are you a robot? I mean, I saw your foot, but I wasn’t sure.”

  I nodded.

  Another long pause. Siân frowned, thinking. My last hope, I thought. The random thoughts of—well, I’d better not say what picture went through my mind, because I’m ashamed I ever thought it, because then she spoke.

  “Well, I’ve decided it doesn’t make any difference. Human or not, you’re a better friend than anyone else I’ve ever met. They all think I’m a dumb blonde—Jemima calls me that when she thinks I can’t hear—and I know I’m not very bright…”

  Like I say, even our thoughts come back to shame us.

  “… but I do have feelings. Tania … Tania, look at me. I look like a dumb blonde and that’s how people treat me. You just look nice, and I expect people talk to you about all sorts of interesting things. Do you believe that sometimes I wish I was a robot? I do, because then I’d be smarter, and I could look however I liked. And when I grew up I could stop at whatever age I liked, and I’d never grow old or wear out or … or die.”

  “Uh, I don’t know about that, Siân. I expect robots wear out, too.”

  Do they?

  Home. In my room.

  Mum and Dad don’t know how horrible the day’s been. I’d love to pour out my heart to them, yet there’s so much on my mind. I replayed my diary from the start of last term—all those questions …

  What happens to robots when they grow up?

  Why does Mrs. Hanson have a photograph of a handsome Zulu warrior—her husband?—in the classroom?

  Why aren’t there any young teachers?

  What lies in the heart of Africa, beyond the Kimberley Corridor?

  Why hasn’t John called me?

  Well, I can cross the last one off my list, I suppose. But I had a few more to add, to make up for that one:

  Is Jemima (or Myra) a robot or human?

  For that matter, how many of the girls who’d been bullying me today were robots? And did they know it, or did they think they were human, as I’d done?

  Do robots live forever? If so, could I live forever? Did I want to live forever?

  Was Siân really human? If she’s just a robot, why am I helping her learn French?

  How many humans are there now? Are there any humans still being born?

  Gosh! Where did that come from?

  On an impulse, I decided to look it up on the TeraNet. It couldn’t be too difficult to Google what I needed. So …

  global population[GO]

  Okay. There’s a few sites there. Census.gov looks like a good bet …

  Hmm …

  Some nice graphs. Steady growth through the twentieth century. There’s the flattening out, starting in 2010, but still an almost unbelievable seven billion. Masked by the increase in longevity. There’s 2017, and it’s eerie, the sharpness of the dip. Normal death rate, but live births go to near-zero in a single year. And a huge dip in 2018—Lourdes and all the other Troubles. I couldn’t even see the line without zooming in. Since then a few wobbles up and down, but basically it’s a steady downslope from an estimated two-fifty million left after the Troubles …

  Which cuts off at 2040. Nine years ago. Just after a faint upturn.

  Hold on. That graph is created dynamically, the cut-off is an embedded parameter. I can paste the current date in there and …

  Oops!

  ERROR 8FEA8006. USER Tania Deeley NOT AUTHORIZED.

  … and a biometric prompt, for an authorized user to override. Noooo …

  [CANCEL] [CANCEL] [CANCEL] [CANCEL] [CANCEL]

  Help! I didn’t mean it!

  When my heart stopped racing …

  Look, it felt like my heart was racing. I know I don’t have a heart. I know I don’t have adrenal glands to make adrenaline, and all those other gucky chemicals. Maybe it’s just programming, but I felt panicky, honest. So just humor me, Zog, and let me write this the way I want. Okay?

  Anyway when I calmed down I squinted at that upturn on the graph. If it was an upturn, and not just a rendering glitch, or fake data, then maybe things were improving. Or maybe not, and they’d just picked the last wobble upward as a good place to stop telling people the truth.

  I guessed it was bad, though.

  I cleared the screen then, because I heard Dad’s footsteps coming up the stairs.

  “Hi, Dad.”

  “Hi, Tania. Can I come in?”

  “Sure.”

  And Dad looked straight over at my screen.

  “You’ve been using the TeraNet just now, haven’t you?”

  It wasn’t really a question. I just nodded, and waited for Dad to get to the point.

  “You were accessing restricted data, weren’t you?”

  “No. Well, maybe. I was looking at population trends. Er, for a school project.”

  “Really? The police will be interested.…”

  “Oh. No, it was my own idea. The police?”

  “They called. Just a moment ago. They’re on their way. I imagine they’ll be here in a few minutes.”

  It wasn’t even that long. I could see a blue light flashing just at the end of the street, coming nearer. At least there wasn’t a siren.

  The doorbell rang.

  It wasn’t too bad.

  No. That’s not true.

  It was awful. I mean, the police were actually fairly nice about it. But technically I’d committed a criminal act, and they had to treat it seriously. Which meant a lecture from the police officer about the dangers of the TeraNet and how we needed to stay away from sensitive subjects—this, from looking at a government website—and the government had a duty to protect its citizens from information that might upset people.

  Okay, okay.

  No, the horrible bit came after the lecture. They had to give me a caution, you see. And they had to do it officially. Which meant form-filling.

  This form had a check box for robots.

  “Does she know?” asked the police officer, in a whisper I wasn’t meant to
hear.

  Dad looked grim, but then nodded. Mum was crying, silently.

  “Tania Annette Deeley. Robot.”

  That was the awful bit.

  I don’t think Mum or Dad would have minded so much, if it had just been a caution. It was that check box. It was the official recognition that I was a robot. I didn’t care a hoot that I’d flouted the law, but I cared an awful lot what ticking that check box meant to Mum and Dad. I wasn’t their little girl anymore, not now I’d just rubbed their noses in my robot-hood.

  I found myself telling John. At least, some of it. Not about the check box, but about the population data, and …

  “Did you use a safe proxy?” he asked.

  “A what?”

  “Something that masks your origin. So the monitors don’t spot you peeking at restricted data, and send armed police around to break down your front door.”

  “They didn’t break down my front door; they just rang the bell.… Oh!”

  “You didn’t use a proxy.” His voice was flat.

  “I’ve never heard of them before, John. Oh, I wish I’d known.”

  And so, patiently, John skimmed over all the things I’d need to know to burrow into the forbidden recesses of the TeraNet, without getting caught. How to find proxies—they’re illegal of course, and have to masquerade as legal nodes, while the real nodes are down for maintenance. How to fuzz your backtrail from the proxy, and scubbie your ID (I think that’s the word he used), so you look like somebody else but information still gets back to you. I didn’t understand it, but I could learn to use it. And then he said something that sent a chill right through me.

  “Next time you get caught, it’ll be youth custody. Just be glad you’re human. Robot kids get deactivated.”

  “Deactivated?” Why was it me asking all the questions, I wondered.

  “Scrapped. Broken up. Why would you bother putting a robot in jail?”

  “But w— they’re valuable. Very expensive. You wouldn’t just destroy one, would you?”

  “One that broke the law has gone outside its programming. How could you trust it ever again? It’s not safe. That’s what they say. Oxted, I mean.”

  “Oh…”

  I changed the subject.

  “Look, John. Where did you learn about proxies and fuzzing your ID?”

  “Fuzzing your backtrail, Tania. Here and there. Some of the kids at school know some things. I listen. I learn.”

  “Well, I never heard of such things at my school. What’s your school like?”

  “Rough.”

  “How do you mean, rough?”

  “It’s just bullying. Gangs. Typical Yellow Zone stuff. It’s not good for your average kid, but I learned that hackers have special respect, so that’s what I am now. The gangs need hackers so the monitors can’t trace them. I’m teaching myself. I’m pretty good.”

  And I wasn’t.

  “John. Teach me. Teach me everything you know about the TeraNet. And when I know as much as you, we’ll go on learning together.”

  “Why, Tania? I mean, you’re already in trouble with the police. You shouldn’t go messing around on the TeraNet.”

  “The answers are out there, John. All the questions inside me, crying out for answers…”

  “What questions?”

  And so I told him. The questions I’d been keeping inside me. At least, the ones that weren’t about my fate as a robot.

  “Those are good questions, Tania. I’d like to know some of the answers, too, if you find them. I’ll help.”

  “Okay, but let’s start with the monitors. You’ve mentioned them twice, but I’ve never heard of them.”

  “There’s nothing written about them, officially, but there’s a whole surveillance infrastructure in place on the TeraNet. The monitors detect keywords that might indicate subversive, illegal, or protected traffic, and alert the police to the perp. I don’t know what the technology is, but it’s hard to fool.”

  “So they’re watching everything I send or receive? Ugh!”

  “Very ugh! The days of liberal government and a free press ended with the Troubles. Stick to safe subjects, and you’re fine. Do anything to threaten the status quo, and you’ll have cops crawling out of your a—”

  Really, John! I like you very much, but sometimes you have such a potty-mouth.

  Sunday, January 2, 2050

  John has been a really good friend these last few weeks. He taught me all about proxies and fuzzing my backtrail, and all that stuff. I’m using the words as though I know what they mean, and maybe by now I even do.

  Actually, John is becoming more than a good friend. He is definitely special. He’s interested in the same things—my list of questions—but we talk about loads of other stuff, too. Music is a favorite. We liked some of the same bands already, but he knows much more about some new acts than I do. I’m starting to realize that Mum and Dad’s A/V collection is a bit … tired.

  But the last few days, as we’ve argued the merits of his favorites over mine, we’ve realized something. There aren’t any new bands.

  Don’t be ridiculous. There have always been kids singing harmony on street corners, or practicing guitar in their bedroom. They come together by chance, and they gel, or they clash, they split and they form anew, but however they do it, they explode with new creativity.

  But John’s “new acts” are actually five or ten years old now. There aren’t any acts newer than that, unless you counted tribute bands. In which case there were hundreds and hundreds.

  It’s the same in literature. There are still plenty of new books on the shelves, but no new authors, just fiction factories turning out clones and sequels.

  You can argue that there have been slumps in the past, like the prepunk years, but not many. John and I can’t convince each other that this is just another slump.

  Art is dying. Why?

  I’m adding the question to my list.

  John is special—he’s the only one I’ve trusted with my questions—but he’s also different from me. He loves the stars. He knows their names. How far away they are. Astronomy, physics, astro-engineering. Me, I’m more interested in people. How they think, how they behave. History, sociology, psychology.

  John wants to go to university. Cambridge, he says.

  “But my parents won’t talk about it. ‘Stay home,’ they say. ‘It’s a good business your father has built, and when we’re old, it’ll be yours, and you can look after us.’”

  And what do I want? Other than to be Pinocchio?

  “Do they do psychology at Cambridge?”

  He laughs gently.

  “Of course they do. And their doors are wide open.”

  To humans. Of course, they would be. Any human would be welcome.

  But … robots?

  I have to find out. How much time do I have? And what happens after that?

  Wednesday, January 5, 2050

  In the end, it was simple enough to find out. I created an Eicon, helped by John. A kind of ghostly “second me” that lived on the TeraNet, existing on stolen cycles and spoofed addresses. It could be me if I wanted it to be, but it was usually more useful for it to be someone else.

  I skinned it to be Jeryl Banner, twenty-nine, recently remarried and childless. Jeryl had a proper TeraNet ID—there were kids who specialized in faking them up, some for profit, others just to show off—so Jeryl was able to apply to Oxted online. For a baby, a little robot baby.

  It was there in the FAQ.

  Eighteen.

  Jeryl could have her baby, on payment of one hundred and fifty thousand Basics—I whistled, it was several years’ salary for Dad—which sum included up to eight standard upgrades, at two-year intervals (there were more options if you had the money). And then, at age eighteen, back to Oxted it would go. I looked around for the contract and sure enough, it was a lease, not a purchase. Title stayed with Oxted.

  And that was me.

  Leased for a fixed term. Serviced, upgraded, and
replaced as scheduled, just like Dad’s office copier.

  You have no idea how small that made me feel, Mister Zog.

  D—.

  Swearing didn’t help, but I did it anyway. Psychology degree at Cambridge? Hah! It was all futile. Totally, utterly pointless, because at age eighteen, Oxted was going to reclaim me, and then what? Scrap me? If not, what else?

  There was nothing in the FAQ. Nothing a prospective parent would stumble upon and get upset about. But then, tucked away on the Corporate Social Responsibility pages, next to an impressively long list of supported charities, I found the Oxted Environmental Impact Statement. Naturally, Oxted is a green company, committed to minimizing waste and ecological damage. A top-class corporate citizen:

  “Oxted recognizes its responsibility to the planet and to humanity.” Blah, blah … “Less than 2 percent goes to landfill.” Blah, blah …

  So I was too valuable to just scrap, but dotted here and there were the words:

  Refurbish.

  Recycle.

  Re-use.

  Reclaim.

  I’d always thought those were good words. Such eco-friendly words … until I realized they might be applied to me. And there was one more I could think of, conspicuous by its absence:

  Reprogram.

  Yes. What else can you do with a complex, expensive robot brain? Wipe it. Reprogram it. Re-use it. As … Soames.

  Oh, no! That would be awful. Given a new, but clunky body, with glowing red eyes, to come back as a domestic robot. Had Soames once been a little boy, playing happily in a garden, going to school? At eighteen, had he climbed docilely into an Oxted van while his parents held back the tears?

  Had he wept too at the separation, or had he embraced the oblivion of reprogramming? Or …

  There was another possibility. Rebirth. To come back as a baby, for some other loving couple to raise. That made sense, too, in the same, horrible way. Starting again, endlessly. Immortality, I thought, but it was a mockery.