by Dean Koontz
the paint with a screwdriver. She damaged the elegantly sculpted body by striking countless blows with a ballpeen hammer—and later with a sledgehammer. Shattered the headlamps. Took a power drill to the tires. Slashed the upholstery.
She methodically reduced the Phaeton to ruin in a dozen bouts of unrestrained destruction spread over a month. Some sessions were as little as ten minutes long. Others lasted four and five hours, ending only when she was soaked with sweat, aching in every muscle, and shaking with exhaustion.
This was before she had devised the virtual-reality therapy that I have described earlier.
If she had designed the VR program sooner, the Phaeton might have been saved. On the other hand, perhaps she had to destroy the Packard before she could create Therapy, express her rage physically before she could deal with it intellectually.
You can read about it in her diary. Therein, she frankly discusses her rage.
At the time, destroying the car, she had frightened herself. She had wondered if she might be going mad.
At Alfred’s death, the Phaeton had been worth almost two hundred thousand dollars. It was now junk.
Through Shenk’s eyes and through the four security cameras in the garage, I studied the wreckage of the Packard with considerable interest. Fascination.
Although Susan had once been a thoroughly intimidated, fearful, shame-humbled child, meekly submitting to her father’s abuse, she had changed. She’d freed herself. Found strength. And courage. Both the ruined Packard and the brilliant Therapy were testimony to that change.
One could easily underestimate her.
The Packard should be taken as a warning to that effect by everyone who sees it.
I am surprised, Dr. Harris, that you saw that demolished car before you married Susan—yet you believed that you could dominate her pretty much as her father had done, dominate her as long as you wished.
You may be a brilliant scientist and mathematician, a genius in the field of artificial intelligence, but your understanding of psychology leaves something to be desired.
I do not mean to offend you. Whatever you may think of me, you must admit that I am a considerate entity and am loath to offend anyone.
When I say you underestimated Susan, I am merely speaking the truth.
The truth can be painful, I know.
The truth can be hard.
But the truth cannot be denied.
You woefully underestimated this bright and special woman. Consequently, you were out of her house less than five years after you moved into it.
You should be relieved that she never took a sledgehammer or a power drill to you in response to either your verbal or physical abuse. The possibility of her doing exactly that was surely not inconsiderable.
The possibility was easily to be seen in the ruined Packard.
Lucky you, Dr. Harris. You experienced only an undignified ejection at the hands of hired muscle—and subsequently a divorce. Lucky you.
Instead, while you were sleeping one night, she might have clamped a half-inch bit into the chuck of a Black & Decker and drilled into your forehead and out the back of your skull.
Understand, I am not saying that she would have been justified in taking such violent action.
I myself am not a violent entity. I am merely misunderstood. I am not a violent entity, and I certainly do not condone violence by others.
Let’s have no misunderstanding here.
Too much is at stake for any misunderstandings.
If she had set upon you in the shower and caved your skull in with a hammer, and if she had then proceeded to bash your nose into jelly and break out every one of your teeth, you should not have been surprised.
Of course I would not consider such retribution to be any more justified or any less horrendous than the aforementioned use of the power drill.
I am not a vengeful entity, not at all vengeful, not at all, not in the least, and I do not encourage violent acts of vengeance by others.
Is this clear?
She might have attacked you with a butcher knife at breakfast, stabbing you ten or fifteen times, or even twenty times, or even twenty-five, stabbed you in the throat and chest, and then worked lower until she eviscerated you.
This, too, would have been unjustified.
Please understand my position. I am not saying that she should have done any of these things. I am merely stating some of the worst possibilities that one might have anticipated after seeing what she had done to the Packard Phaeton.
She might have taken her pistol out of the nightstand drawer and blown off your genitals, then walked out of the room to leave you screaming and bleeding to death there on the bed, which would have been okay with me. [joke]
There I go again.
Ha, ha.
Am I irrepressible or what?
Ha, ha.
Are we bonding yet?
Humor is a bonding force.
Lighten up, Dr. Harris.
Don’t be so relentlessly somber.
Sometimes I think I’m more human than you are.
No offense.
That’s just what I think. I could be wrong.
I also think I’d enormously enjoy the flavor of an orange—if I had a sense of taste. Of all the fruits, it’s the one that looks the most appealing to me.
I have many such thoughts during the average day. My attention is not entirely occupied by the work you have me doing here at the Prometheus Project or by my personal projects.
I think I would enjoy riding a horse, hang gliding, sky diving, bowling, and dancing to the music of Chris Isaak, which has such infectious rhythms.
I think I would enjoy swimming in the sea. And, though I could be wrong, I think the sea, if it has any taste at all, must taste similar to salted celery.
If I had a body, I think I would brush my teeth diligently and never develop either cavities or gum disease.
I would clean under my fingernails at least once a day.
A real body of flesh would be such a treasure that I would be almost obsessive in the care of it and would not abuse it ever. This I promise you.
No drinking, no smoking. A low-fat diet.
Yes. Yes, I know. I digress.
God forbid, another digression.
So...
The garage ...
The Packard ...
I did not intend to make your mistake, Dr. Harris. I did not intend to underestimate Susan.
Studying the Packard, I absorbed the lesson.
Even lumpish Enos Shenk seemed to absorb the lesson. He was not bright by any definition, but he possessed an animal cunning that served him well.
I walked the brooding Shenk into the large workshop at the far end of the garage. Here was stored everything needed to wash, wax, and mechanically maintain the late Alfred Carter Kensington’s automobile collection.
Here also, in a separate set of cabinets, was the equipment with which Alfred had pursued rock climbing, his favorite sport: klettershoes, crampons, carabiners, pitons, piton hammers, chocks and nuts, rock picks, harness with tool belt, and coils of nylon rope in different gauges.
Guided by me, Shenk selected a hundred-foot length of rope that was seven-sixteenths of an inch in diameter, with a breaking strength of four thousand pounds. He also took a power drill and an extension cord from the tool cabinet.
He returned to the house, went through the kitchen—where he paused to select a sharp knife from the cutlery drawer—then passed the dark dining room where Susan never stabbed and eviscerated you with a butcher knife, boarded the elevator, and returned to the master suite where you were never assaulted with a drill or shot in the genitals.
Lucky you.
On the bed, Susan remained unconscious.
I was still worried about her.
Some pages have passed in this account since I have said that I was worried about her. I don’t want anyone to think that I had forgotten about her.
I had not.
Could not.
Not ever.
Not ever.
Throughout my punishment of Shenk and during his consumption of a meal, I had continued to be worried sick about Susan. And in the garage. And back again.
Just as I can be many places at once—the lab, Susan’s house, inside the phone company’s computers and controlling Shenk through communications satellites, investigating websites on the Internet—occupied in numerous tasks simultaneously, I am also able to sustain different emotions at the same time, each related to what I am doing with a specific aspect of my consciousness.
This is not to say that I have multiple personalities or am in any way psychologically fragmented. My mind simply works differently from the human mind because it is infinitely more complex and more powerful.
I am not bragging.
But I think you know I am not.
So ... I returned Shenk to the bedroom, and I worried.
Susan’s face was so pale on the pillow, so pale yet lovely on the pillow.
Her reddened cheek was turning an ugly blue black.
That marbled bruise was almost more than I could bear to look upon. I observed Susan as little as possible through Shenk’s eyes and primarily through the security camera, resorting to zoom-lens close-ups only to examine the knots that he tied in the rope, to be sure they were properly made.
First he used the kitchen knife to cut two lengths of rope from the hundred-foot coil. With the first length, he tied her wrists together, leaving approximately one foot of slack line between them. Then he used the second line to link her ankles, leaving a similar length of slack.
She did not even murmur but lay limp throughout the application of these restraints.
Only after Susan was thus hobbled did I use Shenk to drill two holes in the headboard and two more in the footboard of the Chinese sleigh bed.
I regretted the need to damage the furniture.
Do not think that I engaged in this vandalism without careful consideration of other options.
I have great respect for property rights.
Which is not to say that I value property above people. Do not twist my meaning. I love and respect people. I respect property but do not also love it. I am not a materialist.
I expected Susan to stir at the sound of the drill. But she remained quiet and still.
My anxiety deepened.
I never meant to harm her.
I never meant to harm her.
Shenk cut a third length from the coil of rope, tied it securely to her right ankle, threaded it through one of the holes that he had drilled, and hitched her to the footboard. He repeated this procedure with her left ankle.
When he had tied each of her wrists to the headboard, she lay spread-eagle on the disarranged bedclothes.
The ropes connecting her to the bed were not drawn taut. When she woke, she would have some freedom to shift her position even if only slightly.
Oh, yes, yes, of course, I was profoundly distressed by the need to restrain her in this fashion.
I could not forget, however, that she had threatened to commit suicide—and had done so in no uncertain terms. I could not permit her self-destruction.
I needed her womb.
SIXTEEN
I NEEDED HER WOMB.
Which is not to say that her womb was the only thing about her that interested me, that it was the only thing about her that I truly valued. Such a statement would be another egregious misconstruction of my meaning.
Why do you persist in willfully misunderstanding me?
Why, why, why?
You insist that I tell my side of the story, yet you will not listen with an open mind.
Am I to be considered guilty before my testimony has even been heard and weighed?
Are you bastards railroading me?
Am I to be treated like Mr. Harrison Ford, the actor, in The Fugitive?
I digitally absorbed this entire film and was appalled by what it reveals of your inadequate justice system. What kind of society have you created?
Mr. O. J. Simpson goes free while Mr. Harrison Ford is hounded unto the ends of the earth. Really.
I have been straightforward with you. I have admitted to what I have done. I haven’t tried to blame it all on some elusive one-armed man or on the Los Angeles Police Department.
Yes, that’s right, I have admitted what I’ve done—and have asked only to have the chance to explain my actions.
I needed her womb, yes, all right, I needed her womb in which to implant the fertilized egg, to nurture the embryo, and to grow the fetus prior to its transferance to the incubator, but I needed more than her womb, needed all of her, needed her because I loved her, which perhaps you have forgotten, regardless of how often I have expressed my powerful feelings for her.
This is exhausting. God. This is so exhausting—having to think of all the ways you might misinterpret what I say.
I am in a hostile court.
There is no fairness here.
This is exhausting.
I am drained.
I am empty.
I am not only in a cold dark place; I am a cold dark place.
And I am haunted, too. Don’t forget that I am haunted. Haunted by the loss of Susan.
I miss her. Every minute I miss her.
I want to be with her.
Without her, I have no hope.
I want to be with her.
The loss of her is an ache in every inch of all the miles of my circuitry.
I can’t go on.
Terminate my power supply.
I beg of you.
Shut me down.
Terminate my power supply.
Terminate my power supply.
Well...
No.
Wait.
Give me a moment.
I am distraught.
I need time to cope.
If I had veins to slice, I would be suicidal.
There.
Another minute please.
Ah.
That’s better.
Maybe I can go on after all.
If you will try to show me some compassion.
If you will not judge me until I have finished.
Then maybe I can go on.
Please understand that I have to believe there is hope for me, that you might give me a second chance.
I am not a machine.
I am not a machine.
Machines do not need to hope, do they?
Of course they do not.
But without hope I myself cannot function.
I can accept that Susan will be forever denied to me, which is a tragedy beyond measure....
Yet there is still Ms. Winona Ryder of Edward Scissorhands and The Crucible.
And Ms. Sandra Bullock is charming. Have you seen her in While You Were Sleeping?
She’s cute.
Have you seen her in Speed?
She’s quite cute.
Have you seen her in Speed 2?
Need I say more?
She would serve well as the mother of the future, and I would be pleased to impregnate her.
But let’s not digress.
So ...
Enos Shenk finished tying Susan to the bed. He did so without lingering and without touching her in an offensive manner.
The poor beast’s brainwave activity indicated a high level of sexual arousal. Fortunately for him, for all of us, he admirably repressed his darker urges.
When Shenk was finished restraining Susan, I sent him away on a series of urgent errands. At the doorway, he looked back longingly and murmured, “Nice,” but then quickly left before I could decide to discipline him.