She kept saying that like it meant something.
I thought this would be nicer.
“You can touch them. Just don’t expect them to react.” Susie pursed her lips and did a Tin Man voice:
“Oil can! OIL CAN!”
Derek’s parents, friends, and lovers all agreed that he probably didn’t feel the same things as “normal” people. He was “emotionally colour blind,” they said. Occasionally he had suspected that they were right, that he was stunted. But now he knew for certain that they were wrong. He
could
feel things. Deep things. Things coiled tightly far down in the darkest pit of himself. He could feel them loosening, unraveling, climbing up through his throat like a tapeworm.
“You understand now, don’t you?” Susie asked.
“No,” he managed to say.
“They’ve been up here this whole time,” she said. “They’ve been listening to everything we do.”
He shut his eyes. He willed himself to sound calm. “They’re just prototypes, Susie. They’re dead. They’re not
real
–”
“It’s you who’s not real,” Susie said. “You’re the final prototype, Derek.”
His mouth felt full of cotton. “What?”
“It’s all part of the user testing,” she said. “You. The others. It’s all just data collection.”
Derek swallowed. Tried to smile. Tried to look normal. “I know. I report on you regularly.”
She smiled brightly. “I report on you, too. I report on whether I think you’re real, or something they made to test my failsafe.”
Something inside him went terribly cold. “You think I might be an android.”
“I know you are.”
“How do you know that?”
“You don’t react the way humans do, Derek. You don’t have the right feelings in the right context. You’re good, but not great. You were supposed to fuck me when we got home. And you were supposed to get angry with me, downstairs. All the others did, when I told them. And you were supposed to be scared of them.” She pointed at the prototypes.
He licked his lips. “That’s called
being rational
, Susie. It doesn’t make me any less of a human being.” He felt his blood in his ears. “Even if I felt nothing, even if I were a total psychopath, I’d still be a human being. How can you be so sure that I’m not?”
“I’m not a hundred percent certain. But that’s all right. They said I should do everything I could, just to be certain.” She plucked something from one of the beams. A screwdriver. He watched her focus on his ribs. He watched her pivot – it all happened so slowly, in his vision – and then the screwdriver disappeared inside him, like magic.
Susie stared at the wound, and Derek stared at her. He couldn’t look at himself. He wondered, just before the pain started, whether she’d used a Phillips or a flat head. If, somewhere on his bones, there was a tiny cross shape. Then the pain took him and he was on his knees and Susie was on hers, too, holding him in her lap.
“You bitch,” he gasped. It hurt so much. He thought of his old lover reduced to nothing beneath the waves. Wondered what part of her had died first. If she’d even had the time to feel as angry as he did now, or if the fear just swallowed it whole. Tears clouded his vision. “You bitch, you cunt, you fucking wind-up whore…”
Susie cleared his eyes of tears. She withdrew her hand and stared at them. Licked her fingers. Brought her other hand away. Blood and herbs on those perfect, slender fingertips. He couldn’t stop moving. It hurt worse not to move, not to wriggle. Now he knew why the worms did it.
“I…” Her mouth opened and closed. “You…” Her face changed, became a mask, the mouth turned down and the eyes wide. “B-but… y-you… s-s-so d-different!”
Above, Derek heard a terrible screech of metal on metal.
“Y-y-y-you…” Susie tried to point at him. Her bloodied finger jittered in the air like old, buffering video. “R-real b-b-boy!”
“Yes,” he said. “I’m a real live boy. But not for much longer.”
“Real. Boy,” she spat. Her lips pulled back. He registered the expression, now, imagined it on the arousal/valence matrix. Scorn. “Real. Boy. Real! Boy! Real! Boy! Real boy!
Real boy! Real boy! Real boy! Realboy! Realboy! Realboyrealboyrealboyrealboyrealboyrealboyrealboyrealboyrealboyrealboyrealboyrealboyrealboyrealboyrealboyrealboyrealboyrealboyrealboyreal–”
Susie fell to the floor but the screaming continued. At first Derek thought it was her, still failsafing, but when he scuttled away from her he saw them: the others, Hadaly and Coppelia and Aleph and whatever they’d been called. Their mouths barely moved and their voices were rusty but their hands shook stiffly and their wrists moved slowly but surely toward their faces. The cards fluttered from their grasp. They aimed their fingers at their eyes.
“Realboyrealboyrealboyrealboyrealboyrealboyrealboyrealboy–”
2:
The Island of Misfit Toys
Javier had enjoyed his share of organic virgins. Because he was synthetic, they enjoyed him even more. His failsafe meant that his memory would corrupt and his mind would fry if he went too fast and hurt them too much. So he went slow. He tickled. He teased. He got them wet and wild and wide. He made them want it more than they feared it. They called him attentive, thoughtful, caring. He called it self-preservation. And occasionally, he called it employment.
There was the girl on her way to Brown who’d never had time for a boyfriend what with all her overachieving. She met Javier in Mexico during “spring break,” which seemed to be something her therapist had suggested. Her own suggestion was that she get the whole first time over with, already, so she could put her curiosity to rest and just move on.
“I think it’s better, this way,” she said. “I won’t be one of those girls who can never get over her first time. I won’t obsess over you. And you won’t obsess over me.”
“Not afterward, no,” he’d said. “But I think you’ll find that during the festivities, I can be quite the micro-managing dick.”
“
Dick
being the operative word.”
There was the kid who wasn’t sure if he was gay or not, and thought trying it out with a robot wouldn’t really count. Naturally he was as gay as the day was long. Javier told him so, after all the orgasms.
“It could just be a physical thing,” the kid told him. “I mean, sometimes people can’t help coming, no matter who’s causing it.”
“Maybe,” Javier said, “but nobody made you fall asleep with your arms around me.”
Both times, they’d paid him. He was doing them a service, and they wanted to show their appreciation. Besides, they knew how hard it was for him. They knew what it was like, out there on the road alone. Or so they claimed. But of course they knew nothing. They knew nothing about sleeping under bridges and waking up with a mumbling transient’s gnarled fingers down your jeans. They knew nothing about searching dumpsters for e-waste and shredding your tongue on chipsets. They knew nothing about spending hours picking useless lumps of plastic from under your skin just so you could watch it get sucked down the maw of a recycler that spat out change in return. They knew nothing about measuring your life in those coins.
They knew he could fuck. They knew he couldn’t say no. They knew it was because he was a vN, a self-replicating humanoid with a hard-coded failsafe that guaranteed his affection for and protection of humans. They knew that all vN had the same failsafe, and that it would never fail, because the Rapture-happy mega-church whose tithes funded its design was just as picky about its legacy for those pitiful sinners left behind as it was about the Bible verses that backed up their Tribulation theology. That’s what they knew.
Now, they probably knew different.
Now, the failsafe was broken. A select group of kinky hackers had broken it within a subset of vN originally designed for nursing. The first clade of hacked vN, free of love and other shackles, escaped domesticity and made for the desert of the American Southwest. Their leader, Portia, attempted to cultivate the bug through serial self-replication and total selection. She created multiple iterations. Only one, Charlotte, was a true incarnation of her vision. Charlotte fled when she realized that Portia had killed all her iterations. Charlotte iterated one final time in Oakland, California, with a human man whose love for her was probably the purer for its ignorance of her past.
They called her Amy.
The rest of the world called her a menace.
Javier called her
querida.
“Querida.”
Javier burrowed his chin into her neck. Dawn would arrive soon. He felt it in his skin, and knew she felt it in hers. They shared the ability to photosynthesize. The sunrise was their thing. The thing they had instead of sex.
Amy’s hands twitched. Her fingers fluttered over the dark surface of the island. She’d graded the floor of this room flat save for a futon-sized square of very soft bed. Their muscles never ached, but Javier appreciated the gesture. She’d even kept that little square of space consistently warm. Javier wasn’t sure how exactly she communicated these design specs to the island, but he assumed it had something to do with the little flicks and swipes her fingers made in her sleep.
At first he thought they might be dreams, and he waited for news about her first iteration. That was the only time he ever dreamed – when he was iterating. And Amy had started prototyping a little girl, a while ago. But nothing had come of it. Now, he figured it was the island she was talking to. At least, he hoped so. It was better than the other alternative.
She’d talked in her sleep back when they first met, too. Only back then she’d been talking to Portia, and Portia was telling her Christ knew what. Probably how to burn things. Whatever it was, it involved a lot of whimpering and moaning and pleading. The only time that stopped was when he’d reach over and rest a hand on her shoulder. Just a hand, just her shoulder. Nothing more. But it was enough. She’d go still and her body would slacken, relax, just like a human woman’s. He’d never told her about doing that, then or now. It was his secret.
He tucked himself in closer around her. It was nice, being allowed to do these things more openly, now. His lips brushed the edge of her ear.
“Querida.”
Amy rolled over to face him. In this light, her eyes were an unnaturally deep green. Viridian.
“It’s nice, not being in the back of a car somewhere,” she said, as though having read his mind.
“That’s for damn sure.”
“And we’re not on the run from anybody.”
“Not today.” He smiled. “We do have a new shipment coming in, though.”
Her eyes dimmed. A new tension appeared between her brows. She looked around the room. “Where’s Xavier?”
Javier’s thirteenth iteration chose the name “Xavier” after tiring of being called “Junior.” He had also gradually – slowly, painfully, cock-blockingly – outgrown sleeping in Amy’s room. Javier couldn’t blame him for lingering. Amy had fought tooth and nail to keep him safe after Javier abandoned him in a junkyard. She took care of him when he was bluescreened and no better than a toy baby doll. She carried him and kept him warm and talked to him. The boy probably didn’t remember all that. That didn’t mean he’d forgotten it.
“I know this may come as a shock, but not all little boys want to sleep with their mothers. That’s kind of an organic thing. It takes a brain to have an id.”
Amy rolled her eyes. “I’m not his mother.”
“You’re the closest thing. You helped me iterate him. You were the first one to ever hold him.”
Amy smiled. “It seems like such a long time ago.”
“Well, you are only six years old. A year is a long time, when you’re six.”
Amy stretched. “I guess he’ll want to grow up and get big like you, soon.”
“Well, there are advantages to being all grown up.” Javier drew a small circle around her knee with one finger. He let it become a spiral, tightening, while he kept his eyes on hers. Maybe this time.
Amy peeked down at his hand moving across her skin. “Are you trying to have sex with me?”
Javier flopped onto his back. “Well not if you’re going to be so goddamn
unromantic
about it!”
“I don’t think we should have sex. I don’t think it would be right. I’ve told you before.”
“What are you saving yourself for? You’re an atheist, for Christ’s sake. You know robots can’t get married, right? Legally. I mean in some countries just living with you for a year makes me your husband. Which would explain the lack of sex, I guess.”
Amy sat up. She knelt over him and made him look her in the eye. “Dr Sarton told me–”
“Sarton is a fucking pervert otaku hack. I don’t give a shit what–”
“He told me that you only feel
that
way about me because I was raised with humans.” It all came out in a rush. Her gaze darted away from him and pinned itself to the floor. “I’m just good enough to fool your Turing process. Your failsafe. You only like me because your failsafe works.”
She had a point. Or Sarton did. She
was
just good enough. Just human enough. She had all the weird tics and habits that humans did. This whole righteous insistence on keeping their relationship chaste was one of them.
“So it just wouldn’t be right,” Amy said. “Because of your failsafe. Because you can’t choose.”
He had no answer for that. Technically, she was right. He had no choice, when it came to Amy. Each time they’d parted ways, he’d come back. Fought his way back in. Rescued her. He couldn’t help it. Once, he’d waited in a Redmond reboot camp watching a stream of DARPA-funded scientists trying their best to break her. He’d begged them to stop. He’d cried and screamed and totally lost his shit. He’d almost failsafed right there in front of the monitor, on the floor, holding his head and squeezing his eyes shut. Then he’d torn the skin off his hands crawling through duct work to get to her. At the time, he had not questioned why. He’d done it to make himself feel better. Sex with Amy would make him feel better, too. Probably. If he could do it.
“Besides,” she said, “I’m not even sure it… works.”
Javier looked up at her. “Do I have to give you the whole ‘fully functional; multiple techniques’ speech again?”
She shook her head. “That’s not what I mean.”
“Well, what do you mean?”
“You know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t,” he lied. “Why don’t you tell it to me straight?”
“You’ve tried…” Her fingers fluttered. She brought them into her lap. Her blush was so pink and so instant it would have taken his breath away, if he’d had any. “I mean,
we’ve
tried. Before. And it never seems to go very well.”
He scrambled up to his knees. “That’s because it never seems to go very
far
, either. I’m not a first baseman. I hit home runs.”
Amy blinked. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Of course she didn’t. That was part of the problem. Just a year ago, she’d been a kindergartener. Playing house was enough for her. Having never taken the other steps, she saw no need to. She probably didn’t even want to.
“Is it me?” he asked.
“What?”
“Is it sex you don’t want, or just me?”
Her mouth fell open. “How can you say that?”
He shrugged. “I can see why you wouldn’t. I’m not exactly clean. I’ve done a lot of bad things. I’m just about the world’s worst father–”
“That’s not true–”
“Sure it is. I know that. There’s not much about me that’s respectable.”
“I respect you! I respect you very much!”
Javier grinned. Amy was pretty adorable when she was getting called on her shit. Her eyes went wide and her posture went straight, like she’d just been asked to spell out a really difficult word for a prize. It made it easier to remember she’d spent most of her life as a child. Easier to be patient with it.
“I guess what I’m saying is, I can understand if you don’t want me.”
She had the grace to look embarrassed. “Don’t be stupid. You’re really…” Her mouth worked open and closed. “Pretty.”
“
Pretty?
Is that the best you got? I may be all machine, but I’m still all man.”
“I
know
that, but…” Her fingers skittered across the floor, as though she were physically searching for the words she wanted. “You don’t look like human men.” She smiled. “You look better!”
He rolled his eyes. “Please. I look like all my other clademates. I’m mass-production, nothing special.”
“Don’t say that. You’re very special.”
“Not special enough, apparently.”
Amy frowned. “You don’t understand,” she said. “I don’t work that way. Without the failsafe I don’t… like humans
that
way.”
“Well, it’s not like I worship the ground they walk on, or something–”
“No, Javier.” She shook her head softly. “What I mean is, I don’t understand what’s so great about humans.”
This was the crossroads. No matter which avenue he took in this fight, they always came to it. Amy didn’t see what he saw. Didn’t feel what he felt. She’d never know that exasperated affection he had for them, as they puttered around their kitchens looking for the coffee cup they’d
just put down
; how you kept loving them the way you kept loving a puppy as it looked you straight in the eye and pissed on your rug. You collected them like you collected pieces of handmade earthenware, old and chipped and fragile and unique. They weren’t perfect. That was the whole point.
And then sometimes, as they slept, you listened to the creak and squeeze of their decaying hearts, or heard the bubble and choke of their lungs, and you realized how very temporary they were, and you started to reconsider your programming.
Time to bring out the big guns.
“You could fix me.”
She frowned. “What?”
“Break me. Hack me. Whatever. You could do it. You put yourself back together; you could do the same for me. Just do it without the failsafe, this time.” He reached for her softly-twitching hand and stilled it in his grasp. “And then I’d choose you all over again, free and clear.”
Her fingers trembled with restrained gestures. He only ever had a fraction of her bandwidth at any one time. The island consumed so much of it, even at moments like this.
“Do it,” he said. “I’m asking you to. We could do it right here and now.” He nodded down at the bed. “Just let the island absorb me, like it absorbed you. It took you three days to come back last time. I can handle three days in the goo. You might not have noticed, but I have a very strong sense of my own identity.”
Amy pulled her hand away. “It’s not like that. It’s not that easy.”