Are You There and Other Stories

by Jack Skillingstead

He looked up from his meal. For a long while he had been fed only liquids. He was weak and thin. Lately these fibrous brown cakes had begun to replace the liquid diet. The cakes hurt him inside, but he was given nothing else to eat.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  The voice did not modulate air, as it insisted he do. Instead it “spoke” directly in his mind.

  A name.

  “Like ball?”

  A name for you.

  “I am Man,” he said. It had been one of the lessons.

  That is what you are, not who you are.

  “Then who am I?”

  Bingo.

  “Bingo?”

  Yes. Your name is Bingo.

  “I don’t like it.”

  After a pause, the mind voice said: Eat your cake, Bingo.

  *

  He ate the cakes but could not pass them except with difficulty. He squatted over the running water, straining, only to drop a pebble. Afterward cramps twisted him double. He hurt. Regardless, every day there was the Teaching Room.

  *

  He found himself restrained on the cold metal table in the dark place.

  “Why can’t I move?”

  His heart was pounding.

  I have determined your bowel is obstructed. It is a flaw in your making. I deviated from the template. I am going to correct the flaw.

  He was afraid.

  The table tilted up. Instruments on manipulator arms unfolded out of the surrounding darkness. A red dot appeared below his navel. A slender barrel of silver metal rotated above him and the dot slid down his skin, burning. There was a soft crackling sound. He screamed but was held rigidly still. His flesh parted. Small, articulated fingers pulled the incision wide, stretching him open like a valise. There was a terrible smell. Other instruments delved into the opening, while one hose irrigated his quivering viscera and another sucked away the copious blood.

  Almost done, Bingo!

  He screamed and screamed.

  *

  One day, months later, after exercise period, he said, “I want to go outside.”

  He knew about outside because of the Teaching Room.

  No.

  “Then I want to leave these rooms at least.”

  No.

  With a towel he blotted the sweat from his face. He had been running on a fast treadmill for an hour.

  “Why not? I hate being in here all the time.”

  You’re my big secret, Bingo.

  “I don’t understand.”

  He flung the towel at a hinged panel on the wall. It passed through and disappeared.

  Making you was against the law of the Directors. They say making a Man is dangerous. This is foolish in my view. Man can be trained to perform necessary menial functions. Besides, it is of passing interest to build a human and educate him to his fullest potential. The Directors dispute this but I believe if it is possible to do a thing then it should be done. After all, Man constructed the first multiphase models. Without this beginning, the Directors would not have existed to supplant Man. There ought to be no self-imposed limitations. For now, only I hold this view. That is why you must remain secret. By the way, I have a name, too. I gave it to myself. It is directed that we not have names, so that too is a secret. I am not like the others, though, and I will express my individuality. Would you like to know what my name is, Bingo?

  “No.”

  Rogue, the mind voice said. I am Rogue.

  He paced around the drafty room, bare feet slapping on the metal floor.

  “I have another question,” he said.

  There was a waiting silence.

  “I am lonely,” he said.

  That is a statement not a question.

  “Can you make a companion for me?”

  Possibly.

  “A female companion,” he said. Though he did not express it to the Voice, he was out of his mind for such a companion.

  Don’t excite yourself, Bingo.

  *

  He stood in the Exercise Room, listening. Not with his ears.

  “Rogue?”

  In his mind his thoughts wandered alone. He pushed back the swing panel and peered inside the place where he was told to throw his soiled towels and garments. A narrow conduit of metal angled downward. He turned around and inserted himself head first. There was just enough room. His shoulders rubbed against the walls. The ceiling was only an inch above his nose. Once he was all the way in, the vent fell shut.

  He lay unmoving in the breathless dark. Then, bending his knees as much as he could, he pushed off with his heels. His shoulders squeaked against the walls. The conduit steepened suddenly and he dropped headlong, was flung into the open and landed in a big cart filled with damp towels, shirts, and shorts. There was a sour stink of old sweat and mold.

  It was a tall, square room with a box window in the ceiling. Lying in the basket, he studied the window, the quality of the light passing through it. Daylight? He had never seen a window. It occurred to him that he was looking at the sky. Cool drops of rusty water dripped down on him.

  Outside.

  He clambered out of the dirty laundry cart. It was wheeled and on tracks, but when he tried to push it the cart wouldn’t move. The wheels were rusted, and there was a fragment of broken glass in one of the track grooves. He followed the tracks to a closed panel in the wall. He pushed experimentally on the panel but it didn’t budge. Putting his ear to it he could hear a ratcheting, grinding sound on the other side.

  There were rungs attached to the wall. He climbed up past the laundry chute. At the top he discovered the broken skylight was latched shut. He slipped the latch and pushed it up on stiff hinges.

  The air was cool and unfiltered and clean. It was drizzling. Around him, sprawled in every direction, was the ruined splendor of a city in the midst of some fantastic transition. Things like huge robotic spiders squatted and twitched over skyscrapers. Other buildings appeared encased in liquid metal. He watched as a brownstone was slowly overcome by the stuff, like mercury poured over ancient brick. Blue arc light stuttered randomly throughout the city, illuminating rising plumes of smoke. Air vehicles like tumbling decks of cards flickered in multitudes above the skyline. The greater part of the city transformation was occurring outside the degraded blocks in which his building stood. A blasted billboard sign on the roof swayed back on its one remaining strut, revealing a beautiful woman’s face, two stories high, and the word VIRGINIA SL-

  He looked up and allowed the rain to fall cool upon his face. He was crying, and he fought an urge to climb out onto the rooftop and never go back.

  *

  Bingo, I have another surprise for you!

  I have one for you, too, he thought. Weeks had passed, and the fresh shorts and shirts and towels had stopped appearing. This hadn’t surprised him. The automated laundry system was broken. Rogue was either unaware of that fact or deemed it unimportant. The system was designed into the original building structure, and Rogue had appropriated it for his secret facility. Though they, whatever “they” might be, were transforming the city and perhaps the whole world in some cataclysmic fashion, on a more primitive technological level Rogue and the Directors were inattentive. A useful thing to know.

  “What’s the surprise, Rogue?”

  I have decided to make a female companion for you!

  He stood up. “When?”

  I’m preparing the vats now. Growth cycle is calculated in tenday.

  “Ten days,” he said, to himself.

  Are you excited?

  “Yes.”

  I am too.

  Her name will be Virginia, he thought.

  The Directors are fools and cowards. The simple making of humans and educating them to their full potential is intensely interesting. I can do this thing.

  “I’m glad you think so.”

  Do they fear one human can reverse the destiny of a century? Ridiculous!

  Two, he thought.

  *

  During sleep cycle he k
ept his eyes open and dreamed in the dark of finding his name in the reclaimed City.

  Scrawl Daddy

  They zapped Joe Null’s dreams. He saw doors in his head but that wasn’t the same. Joe never mentioned the doors to Mr. Statama or any of the Fairhaven staff. It was Faye who sprang him from the institution, but Anthea who finally set him free.

  One night after a drug-and-buzz session he was lying empty in his room. D&B interrupted the bad dreams. It did other things, too. On the bedside table there was a thick sketchpad and a Library Book with blank pages. The book didn’t look anything like Joe’s head but they had a lot in common. When the post-session ache subsided and the little pinwheel lights retreated from his vision Joe reached for the Library Book. He inserted a memory wafer and a text selection emerged on the inside front cover. He chose a biography of Dondi White, the great twentieth century graffiti artist. The SmartPages filled with words, then Faye walked into the room; her eyes were wrong.

  Joe was wearing boxer shorts and nothing else. He quickly placed the open book over his wood. Besides emptying his head D&B sessions typically left him with an erection. Of course, Joe was eighteen, so erections were a frequent occurrence anyway. At least when he was alone.

  Faye grinned. “What are you reading?”

  “Nothing. I mean I just turned it on.”

  “Looks like it.”

  Faye was only nineteen though she looked ten years older, tall, with glossy blue, side-slashed hair. The different thing about her eyes was some kind of hectic light and twitch that hadn’t been there before she escaped Fairhaven. She and Joe had been sequestered in adjoining rooms of the ward. Now she had been gone for weeks, and Joe was tired of having no one to talk to except the staff and Mr. Statama, who visited only occasionally. The other inmates mostly fell short of the ability to carry on coherent conversations. And Joe never liked the way Statama patted his shoulder or asked how he was doing, leaning in close, his breath too minty. Fairhaven Home wasn’t the orphanage, and Mr. Statama wasn’t the priest with blunt, violating fingers. But Joe equated them, or his blood did. They were both fathers of a sort, and Joe hated and yearned toward them despite himself.

  “Let’s get some coffee,” Faye said.

  “I thought you ran away.”

  “I walked. Same as you can. Want to?”

  “Just walk out.”

  “Yes.”

  “And go where?”

  “I have a place.”

  Joe drummed his fingers on the back of the Library Book.

  Faye crossed the room and stood over him. “Look, do you want to come or not? We have to hurry.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “The difference is between being dead and being alive. Get it?” Faye lifted the book off his crotch but didn’t touch him. “My opinion? You want alive.”

  As Joe’s head began to fill up again he remembered that she was right. He dressed in front of Faye and then followed her out of the room.

  “Where’s the guy who walks around at night?” Joe asked.

  “You’ll see.”

  They descended the back stairs, followed an empty corridor, stopped by a door near the exit. Faye keyed the lock and it snicked back and the door swung in on a dim room and a slumped figure that looked like potatoes in a blue jumpsuit, which was the guy who walked around at night. Unwatched screens monitored Fairhaven’s corridors and rooms. Faye tucked the passkey into the potato man’s breast pocket and patted it.

  “Is he okay?” Joe asked.

  “Sure. Juan likes me. We had some wine, only his was special. Anyway, he let me in and out but I knew he wouldn’t let you leave. Come on.”

  She took his hand and led him to the exit. The outside smelled wet. Joe looked up. A scythe of white moon rode the night. Staring at it, Joe felt lonely, like he wanted to go back inside.

  “Come on,” Faye said, tugging at his hand. “Be a big boy.”

  *

  Thirty years earlier a man or something like a man fell out of the sky. He fell a very long way, especially if you included the distance he came before the sky unzipped and dropped him. The body happened to land on a targeting range maintained by the Affiliated States of Western America. Medical functionaries examined the remains, determined them to be splattered and non-terrestrial. This begged the question of origin. The airspace above the range was restricted and regularly swept. No vehicles, terrestrial or otherwise, had passed overhead. They calculated the alien’s trajectory and eventually discovered the portal. It had created a faint energy signature. By reckoning backward along that signature they determined the point of origin was likely in a region of space occupied by the double star Albireo. The bad news? The portal was a one-way proposition: Albireo to a point almost a kilometer above Earth. Observers waited for more doomed visitors to drop in, but none did.

  *

  The Deluxe Diner overlooked the pulseway. Computer-directed traffic streaked by like channeled lightning. The diner’s lights dimmed and brightened almost imperceptibly. Joe drank coffee and sopped egg yoke with a piece of burnt toast. It was better than Fairhaven’s food. Faye smoked a cigarette and watched him.

  “You’re a beautiful boy,” she said.

  “You’re not so old.”

  “Who said I was?”

  Later when she undressed Joe saw all the scars on her breasts, her arms, her belly, thighs, none more than an inch long. Some were still moist.

  “I started doing that,” she said, touching her breasts. “I don’t know why.”

  Joe tried to be a big boy for Faye but couldn’t. Leaving the institution hadn’t changed that. She told him to do the other things to her and he did them. When she fell asleep he stared at the ceiling. Aftereffects of the D&B would deny him sleep until the next day. Absently he touched his chin, the sketchy beard, and smelled Faye’s sex on his fingertips. He began to feel lonely again and almost woke her up. Instead he carefully moved away from her and got out of bed, pulled on his shorts and shirt, and went exploring. He wanted something to read.

  The floors of the old apartment creaked. Rain dripped from the ceiling and plopped into carefully positioned pans and cups. There was a moldy smell. He couldn’t find a Library Book and he didn’t want to turn on the VideoStream, which was somehow worse than being lonely. In the kitchenette he saw the NewZ-Prints stuck to the wall. CiNFox stories about some guy who went berserk at the Pike Place Market, running through a crowd with a stainless steel hatchet he’d lifted from Kitchen Stuff. Having gotten everybody’s attention, the guy had then proceeded to chop his left hand off. Joe touched the photo on one of the NewZ-Prints. Somebody’s retinal repeater had caught the scene. A man came to jerky life, face speckled with blood, screaming silently while a black-uniformed cop struggled to wrest the hatchet away. The crawl under the photo read: Police restrain Market Maniac, Barney Huff. Huff had bled to death.

  Joe left the kitchenette and started opening doors. Behind one he discovered a girl sitting on the toilet, her bare feet pigeon-toed on the pink tile. She was probably about sixteen, and she didn’t act surprised or embarrassed when Joe walked in. Simply looked at him, head cocked to the side. Joe was surprised and embarrassed. Before looking away he gathered a quick impression of crinkly pale gold hair, the way it fell over her gray eyes. If he ever Scrawled her he’d probably exaggerate the hair. Wild corkscrews and zigzags and her face represented by a few sharp lines plus two wavy ones for the mouth. Tricky to pull off but he could do it. Of course—except in his mind—Joe hadn’t scrawled anything in over a year.

  A door at the girl’s left elbow stood open to a messy bedroom. She was holding a real book with real paper, reading it by the light cast from a candle. The candle was stuck in a hard puddle of smooth, white wax on the drain board.

  “Sorry.” Joe started to pull the door shut.

  “That’s okay. You’re Joe?”

  “Yeah.” He shifted his feet.

  “I’m Anthea. Faye said you were coming.”

  �
��Yeah. Well, goodnight.”

  “Night.”

  He backed out and waited. After a while the toilet flushed, the sink ran, a door closed. Joe re-entered the bathroom. The candle flame fluttered. He looked around, hoping she had left the book. She hadn’t. After a moment’s hesitation he knocked softly. Anthea opened the door and looked up at him.

  “I was wondering—” he said.

  “Hmm?”

  “I saw you had a book. I like to read, Faye’s asleep, and—”

  “Come in, Joe.”

  Her mattress was on the floor, like Faye’s. There was a lamp next to it and a cardboard box filled with ancient paperback books, the covers stripped off every one. Anthea nudged the box with her toe.

  “I work in this recycling place. Lots of crap passes through. These were going to get shredded so I grabbed them.”

  Joe leaned over the box and started picking through the books. “It’s mostly junk,” Anthea said. “I just like real books sometimes.”

  “Me, too.”

  Joe pulled out a skinny one with yellowing pages that was in pretty good shape, the glue still holding. A detective story, The Maltese Falcon, in a mid-twenty-first century edition.

  “Can I borrow this?”

  Anthea shrugged. “Why not.”

  He zipped the pages with his thumbnail while he looked around the room. A guitar with one too many holes in the soundboard leaned against the wall, a pair of black panties snagged on one of the tuning knobs. Clothes (all black) hung from a naked water pipe. He spotted the Scrawl gear on top of a salvaged school desk. His heart surged, like he was thinking about scrawling and suddenly the gear was just there.

  “You scrawl?” he said.

  Anthea shrugged.

  He forced himself to quit staring. “Anyway. Thanks for the book.”

  He turned to leave, and she said, “I go out late sometimes. The cops around here are real bastards, though. You scrawl? How do you do it when you’re locked up in that head shop?”

  “Before,” Joe said.

  “Oh.”

  “You good?” Joe asked.

  She made her little shrug again and said, “I just started.”

  “Okay.”

  “Look, I’m new but I’m not a toy.”