THE BLADE RUNNER AMENDMENT (6 page)

“How do you mean, Virgil?”

“So little variety. Always preparing the same kind of thing in the usual way. Perhaps I should give you more latitude.”

“You tried that, Virgil, if you remember. I served you spicy Thai, and that put a stop to it.”

Spicy Thai. How many years ago was that? His memory of it rose out of the mental mush, and vouched for her objection. Molly’s recall amounted to unimpeded access to ever present facts, happily unaccompanied by a show of triumph. He applied himself to the details of the event and they did come into greater focus. Once again he could see, smell, and taste the dish she had prepared him – “Oh try anything different!” had been his impatient command – and that he had not been able to stomach. “Local” eating had spoiled him, that had been his explanation, not that his present salmon could in any way be said to have come from within a fifty-mile perimeter and its yield of invasive species.

“Let’s have trout next time!” he hazarded, well aware that it wouldn’t be caught by someone with a rod despite the increased number of streams and rivers released from their dams.

“Yes, Virgil. You had voiced a taste preference, but it will be as you wish.”

“Thank you for your compliance, Molly.”

He wondered how she responded to the irony of his words, but he chose to keep things simple and not ask content to delude himself that his humanoid possessed a spark of humanity. She remained silent, of course. His choice of words must have suited her. The deeper irony was her existence. Man’s progress had always hinged on responding to human needs in ways that the world of nature, left to its own devices, couldn’t. In the end, it turned out that humans themselves fell short when it came to providing themselves with human companionship. Many persons felt in some measure that they themselves needed to be replaced or supplemented.

As Virgil had noted, the more human his speech with Molly the more human the response. It must be less her fault than his that dry logic tended to result in a stranglehold on communication. We can humanize literally everything, he reminded himself, looking fondly at her, and that’s how we get along in the world.

“And how was your day, Molly?”

“No complaints. Everything seems in order.”

He would have liked a little flirtatious play here, but nothing of the sort was forthcoming. Her violet eyes showed, if anything, the self-satisfied glint that could be read in the light emission of any electronic entity.

“As usual, I sat in the garden at noon and took advantage of the strong sun today. I am feeling quite energized. There were no clouds and I charged up beautifully and efficiently. I am ready for anything, within limits, as the saying goes.”

Here at last was the seductive touch, although lacking in subtlety and, of course, intention.

“I’m glad to hear that, Molly, but I won’t be needing you tonight.”

“Not at all, Virgil?”

“Nothing that will wear you down, let’s put it that way.”

“I see.”

Her response came unencumbered with tonalities of rejection, disappointment, or complaint. The manner of her delivery – a brief tune breaking free of the music sheet – was what one looked for but rarely got in a human. How expressive a humanoid could be, designed and engineered to charm!

“That was excellent, Molly. Now what’s for dessert?”

“Something simple, Virgil. You left it to me, didn’t you? Apple pie and ice cream. Is that all right?”

“Just fine, Molly. Warm the pie, if you would.”

“Of course, Virgil.”

He watched her go to the kitchen. She was wearing a flower-printed frock that rose as it showed the movement of her body. He looked away thinking that he would exercise himself with a period of discipline. Easily done in the wake of his earlier indulgence and necessary besides if he was to gather his energies whose source lay elsewhere than Molly’s sunlight. It was a luxury as well to be able to put off pleasure until the morrow and know that it would be unconditionally there. Better than legal attachments, with no one disappointed.

Married! – Why have that thought again? On command, the memory of that particular storm-fest whirled into the disposal abyss that lay beyond his mental horizon.

Although it was still early in the evening, due to some glitch or other, Molly’s loosened hair hung to her shoulders. Her smooth, silver screen arms carried the supper things. She felt her thin legs broadening at the thighs. Unconscious at this moment of anything much more than the requirement to provide Virgil with his warm apple pie and ice cream, she methodically performed the necessary tasks, leaving the supper dishes until later. She returned to find him directing her to the garden – “I’m out here, Molly” – where he had been moved to go. If he cared to explain things to her, she would have understood a great deal, with the world’s romance novels as her primary reference in matters of the heart. As it was, Virgil wanted his pie and ice cream and little more, and she registered his satisfaction at each mouthful as she stood watching him. He neglected to have her sit and, instead of wasting her energy bustling back and forth, she would wait for him to finish and proceed from there.

Virgil had not yet finished his dessert when he detected a familiar shivering possess his humanoid. He looked up to descry the hologram taking form a few feet away. There was no need to identify who it might be; he knew just one correspondent with access to the technology. This must be what it’s like to be visited by spirits from the other side.

“Humphrey! Have some pie, what can I do for you?”

Truth be told, he was a little put out with Humphrey’s habit of showing up while he was in the middle of things so that it felt to be an imposition even in the case of his working his way through dessert.

“I’m riding about on my bicycle!”

“Then what are you doing…standing like that…oh, I see.”

A mere file was mouthing Humphrey’s words while he did, in fact, if his claim were to be believed, ride about on his bicycle, and why not? Virgil could visualize him steering it, pumping at the pedals while he weaved in the traffic with haphazard space left for him in a canyon of a street more deeply darkened for the high narrow band of sky. What Humphrey was doing he couldn’t imagine, but it was all in character. No doubt he had taken effortless possession of the locale despite Virgil’s image of a wobbly visitation.

That was what he was seeing in his mind’s eye while tempted to violate Humphrey’s hologram by inserting his hand in it, but he preferred to respect the illusion. Molly’s eyes dully glowed as she continued to effect the transmission, and he didn’t wish to intrude upon an event of technological wizardry. Humphrey would need a retinue to do this in real time, although doubtless someone was somewhere tackling the problem of miniaturization in yet another instance of the imagination at work so that others would not have to imagine.

To Virgil’s Luddite thinking, the whole cost-benefit equation felt yet again to be turned inside out. The new elite were those whose imaginations flowed like the river Ganges. As for the innumerable rest, having fed and sheltered themselves, their labours were done, their industrial-sized appetites begun. One of the principal creators of the new world was pedalling about on his bike this starry evening and informing him of the fact.

“That’s wonderful, Humphrey, I didn’t know you could, bicycle I mean. What’s got into you?”

“The simple life, Virgil, it helps me think. We should bring back horses and carriages. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t. We have the means to choose whatever life we want. Some old people miss phone booths, but those we can do without. It’s not phone booths; it’s their past life that they want to get back – they want to freeze time. This is different – let’s take the best of all worlds, I say.”

It was one of those tedious conversations, pointless, that appeared to go nowhere – Humphrey celebrating yet another of his moments. Virgil counselled himself to be patient and surreptitiously spooned in a mouthful of pie and ice cream, while sensible of Humphrey’s hologram staring in his general direction. There was a pause for him to fill.

“How old is that bike of yours?”

Forty years ago, Humphrey would have been one of the wide-eyed and carefree, wending through the traffic and sucking in exhaust fumes for the cause, and here he was one of the richest men in the world pedalling about and announcing a new mission for that same bicycle. Virgil was having a difficult time seeing it through his eyes. The simple life of freedom to do what one wanted must mean a completely different experience for Humphrey from the ordinary. He was one of those who owned the world. Ten per cent of humanity – anyone with the means and taste – connected to him through a leased or purchased humanoid, and he rode through his personal fiefdom how he wished. Humphrey was exercising his freedom, not without a care, but without the possibility of a care.

Or maybe Virgil was completely mistaken and Humphrey had the means to carry the world easily about on his shoulders, set it down, and refashion it as he wanted. More than one vision might be applicable.

“I can see horses, Humphrey, but maybe ditch the carriages.”

Instead of giving a response, as though it had been offended, Humphrey’s hologram vanished. In its place appeared his friend on a bike, pedalling, looking straight ahead, with a blur about him.

“Humphrey!”

“Have I come through?”

“Yes, you have, I guess. How did you do it?”

“A lot of money, Virgil, but we should be able to get the costs down.” His friend laughed, continued to pedal. “Thought I’d test it on you first.”

“Well, it works, however you’ve done it.”

“I’ll come over, Virgil. It’s best we speak in person.”

“And I guess I’ll just watch your progress.”

The faintest ennui came over Virgil at the prospect.

“How far away are you?”

He watched Humphrey tracked. He watched him try to answer but fail to complete his sentence – “I’m in mid-…” – when the bicycle went down under him. Its rider followed and was flung to the side and swallowed by the blur. Virgil glimpsed the left fender of the vehicle that struck him. An image appeared of Humphrey lying in the street, hands and faces of a crowd stretched toward him. Apparently his monitors were still intact.

“What do you make of that?”

He turned to Molly whose eyes softly glowed as she continued to transmit, but she answered his inane question.

“It looks like a hit and run, Virgil.”

At this show of acuity, he returned to the hologram. Humphrey was not to be seen apparently being devoured by the tropical type of flesh-eating organism that would faithfully appear at the scene of an accident.

“They’re supposed to move away, aren’t they, and give him some air?”

To whom was he speaking? Molly? What was her interest? She was one of Humphrey’s earlier, sturdy models. Did she feel involved? Here he was seeking a reaction from her but she didn’t feel that she was part of things. She simply was and he was pushing her to his limits. Hers were her own and calculable.

“Unless they are trying to resuscitate that is the procedure most beneficial in this circumstance.”

He heard orders and suggestions batted around like handballs at night. The crowd finally drew back, much of it pulled into the surrounding blur, to reveal Humphrey twisted upon himself with a samaritan’s cloak over his body, the outline of his arms wrapped about himself, his bent legs exposed in the foreground, and his head in a blood pool.

Minutes hardened until the sound of a siren bulldozed the nattering of the onlookers and, for all intents and purposes, obliterated their further significance. Doors slammed, orders reverberated, and then, as arms began to raise the body, the hologram vanished. Virgil found himself looking down on the flagstones of his garden that encircled the oak tree’s thick roots – their gnarled Edenic permanence. It would take more than an axe, it would require a court order to infringe upon them. It wasn’t Life with a capital L, neither was it good and evil that they brought to mind. It had something to do with indomitable purpose.

Molly blinked once, but this he didn’t see.

“What happened?”

Apparently she knew as little as he, for she didn’t give him an answer.

He placed calls to the hospitals – a duty imposed on him as Humphrey’s communicant at the time of the event – that he would not otherwise have made.

“Humphrey Martinfield? Yes, he’s been admitted…not much point really…unresponsive…you’ll find him in the I.C.U.”

The comment wasn’t gratuitous, since Virgil had asked after all. Never mind that he wasn’t family. It was city straight talk. At least he’d spoken with a human being – thoughtful of the institution – even if it reminded him why he was content to limit the experience.

There was nothing for it, after mulling it over, he’d have to go over there. Duty had him on a string and was pulling at the end of it. He’d been the last contact instead of someone else, that was all. Still he took his time, with little point in rushing to Humphrey in a coma. He could pray where he was – that he knew was biblical.

In fact, he more fully bestirred himself the next morning after one of Molly’s pancake breakfasts with blueberries, raspberries, melted butter, maple syrup and lemon wedge drizzles, taking some poor watery delight in doing his own squeezes. Meanwhile, his humanoid hovered and fed him snippets of information to meet the day properly: the weather outlook and the present temperature. All a bit redundant if it remained as it was this morning according to the confines of his garden. The tree’s mass of green leaves teased blue skies and a comfortable city heat emanated as much from the walls as the sun. It could not possibly change!