THE BLADE RUNNER AMENDMENT (9 page)

“…our souls but we have gained the world.” These tag words snapped the ornate cathedral interior back into focus.

Had everyone else experienced a similar effect of sprayed eyewash? The assembled mass gave every appearance of floating securely on an ambiguous tide of reflection. Where was the priest going with this?

“Let us pause and remember that he was riding his bicycle. The untold wealth and influence touched not his person and did not protect him in the end, but his person touched the world.”

A thin wash of relief swept through the cathedral. In some fashion, the priest would work out a form of redemption for Humphrey, although to go by the still tight grip of his hands on the pulpit, he had much left to state if he were to make the case satisfactory to himself. His burners had still to get going and launch all with him.

The petals curled fleshly back on the half-opened tulip of mouth that prepared to trumpet some more. As with the flower seen at a shadowed distance, films of ash streaked the pink flesh. Virgil did not neglect to assign bias to his impressions but nonetheless allowed them to unfold. At the same time, he gave the priest his due and sought no further purchase for his characterizations.

Had the man of God prepared his words beforehand or was he trusting either in the coherence of the sentiments he already possessed or in Providence for his capacity to pluck them from the air? Perhaps he was of a mind that he spoke not from himself. In his gowns and in this place of massive stone arches whose grandeur appeared to trick gravity itself, he presented himself as a vessel.

Now sheet metal in the wind snapped in his speech. He couldn’t have known Humphrey but of him.

“A naughty fellow!”

Something personal here. The postures of the mourners stiffened. The priest well knew that his words delivered a spray of plaster of Paris. A red-hatted lady nodded like an ornament bobbing on the dashboard of a car as it slowed and sped up. A mysterious satisfied revenge pinched her partial profile into an expression that was not at all inane but hypnotic. She had sallied forth this day to take up arms against the deceased. It might have been better to have kept herself at home for her own soul’s sake and intemperately enjoyed the skies through her window. Any possible welling up of compassion she might justifiably have attributed at least in part to satisfaction with the breakfast just eaten, a meal that Humphrey would no longer enjoy. More of the same tenor might have come and more she could have anticipated. Instead she had driven herself to apply this public face to the world and stamp the air with as permanent an impression as anything in marble.

How many others agreed with this priest’s tack? Virgil minded but not to the point of anger, not at all. No one could touch Humphrey. No one. All of the powers that be had universally undergone a relaxation of attitudes and more – a general abandonment of what traditional mores were left – before Humphrey’s irresistible wares. Righteousness had become a passé sort of spectacle.

What was the costumed figure saying?

“…Judge not a man, but his works. In Humphrey Martinfield’s case, none can dispute his contribution, but all must struggle against the temptations and effects of congress between…”

He couldn’t finish his sentence. The occasion of the funeral prevented him from filling in the blanks. The Church could never bring itself to approbate ties between humans and humanoids. It was too much to expect. Centuries had passed before the recognition of the sun’s dominance over the earth. The priest ended instead with a weak reflection, anodyne and strange: “Let us remember that humanoids are made in the image of humans but this does not make them human. There is not one of them here to mourn. It would be easy and facile to say that men of vision can go too far, and yet the challenge of their works can also return us to our true humanity.”

All must deem this to be an honourable and compassionate conclusion. The lady of red hat seemed willing to suffer it. Vengeance had drained from her features. A pale accord replaced it. The priest had drawn some line or other between the saved and the damned, and it was clear who believed themselves to be on the favourable side. Purgatory was, apparently, still open for business.

Liturgical prayers capped the event with the convicted evidencing a secular relaxation that didn’t entirely mask the discomfiture that the priest’s sermon had caused them. No one liked to be reminded of their indiscretions. Nostrils remained flared from the sulphurous insinuations they had breathed; dry eyes itched.

The coffin’s passage drew the mourners and Virgil included himself in its substantial wake. The thought returned as to who had earlier called out to him and was he about to hear himself hailed again? He remained alert. Stepping from God’s house, he couldn’t deny it: he felt as though he were stepping into God’s world.

The coffin’s gold-draped oblong slid into the rear cargo hold of the hearse. Virgil nearly missed the call of his name in the closing thunk of the door. A perfect being stood before him with the winning manner that someone has when they claim to be there purely for oneself. The rest of the world assumed its gauzy nature as he looked upon her.

“Yes?”

The moment they shared together at the base of the cathedral steps could end right there or extend forever depending on some obscure silken imperative. She as well seemed to waver between the two possibilities and then she leaned close and whispered, “I must inform you that I am humanoid.” Bemused, Virgil had known it, hadn’t he, if not at first sight, just before she spoke, and hadn’t the thought given her an added charm? Her words merely confirmed what he had known. The world about them came back into focus – confused and sharp-edged but back. What was the nature of hers? For a moment he had thought he knew but what accounted for his vertigo?

“Mr. Woolf,” she repeated, “your friend Humphrey Martinfield sent me to you.”

Again the world clouded over, and he was aware in some unhelpful manner of his earlier squirrels in the role of spectators once more overhead. He must get a grip – things couldn’t be as strange as they manifested, but he didn’t know how to respond and that only increased the intensity of the effect. The thought came that it would be best for the moment to treat her as she did, in fact, appear, that is, human. He took her arm, pleased with his ability to cope and vaguely irritated at the same time, by what exactly he couldn’t tell as he whispered and smiled that she should come along with him, for who knows what embarrassment might happen in public like this? The bottom of the cathedral steps was no place for explanations. Although it was a given to be able to exercise authority over a humanoid, she proved to be unusually natural and compliant in her movements producing yet another confused frisson.

She stumbled slightly on the last step but quickly and disarmingly saved herself by drawing closer to him – uncharacteristic of your run-of-the-mill algorithmic response.

At a nearby café, having chosen a table exposed to the sun, she ordered for herself and proceeded to drink the black coffee.

She spoke before he could comment.

“It gives me authenticity. I shall drain it later.”

“You didn’t need to explain. What made you tell me that?”

“You wanted to know, didn’t you, Virgil?”

“Yes, but…”

She modulated her speech to a murmur: “A simple reading of your facial expression at the moment that I drank the coffee. Better than even odds,” she added expansively and with a playful shift in her tone. These human qualities caused him to give her yet another going-over – a careful examination to see if he had been fooled. Was she truly humanoid? It would seem so as he inspected her and yet he couldn’t have entered the first incriminating reason in a rap sheet..

He decided to protract the ensuing silence and found that at least some protocols might still be in place and conversation or what passed for it was for him to initiate. Her perfection was not the perfection of human elements in artful combination: biological eyes could hypnotize but not like these dilating diamonds in their clear turquoise pools. Skin little more than molecule thick jacketed the crushed strawberry of her lips’ flesh that tempted him to lean over and nibble with the happy thought that she would allow it. Or did he presume too much with this particular humanoid? He did want to feel more intensely alive after the funeral, this he knew.

No, she was a work of art, not the form divine but inspired human art, shaped and toned by another intelligence than raw nature’s. She was captivatingly unselfconscious with the ragged street-urchin look of spun gold hair cut in uneven layers. A fine cotton shift not quite silk hung from her narrow shoulders. The out-of-place appearance itself had given him added reason to draw her away from the funeral’s milling dregs. In this café, her patient, idiosyncratic expression made her as much a candidate for the portraitist’s brush as any self-composed human.

Virgil could imagine Humphrey in the beyond triumphantly uttering, “Look, I am both there and gone. I continue to be.” Unsure how to relate to his friend’s fetching creation, he decided to be ordinary, ordinary as dishwater, the default for human-humanoid interaction.

“What is this about then?”

It wouldn’t be the first time that he would ask this question.

Despite himself and the nature of her person – the term “person” seemed appropriate if only to signify her capacity to deceive – she disarmed him and it was unnerving. He had to dwell upon what Humphrey had in mind having this particular product come to him. At the same time, he was conflating contradictory identities for this thing – a word he could use with complete impunity. Virgil did recall having confided to his friend something of his preferences should he ever decide to upgrade Molly, although he had been speaking in fanciful terms in a sauna after a game of tennis at Humphrey’s club.

“And what is your name?” He hadn’t bothered to wait for an answer to his first question.

Her attractions so drew him that he felt himself nearly to become importunate, for he desired – wretched bag of needs that he’d become – rather more than this simple bit of information. Did she possess the option of withholding whatever he might ask of her? He would prefer not to suffer a refusal of service.

As with any computerized entity, she responded to the last question posed. However, a fleeting querulous expression preceded her answer while she transitioned. If it were due to a design flaw, it should be easy enough to engineer out of the system, but it had a flavour of the human. It could be intentional.

“Chloé.”

“Chloé.” He mused over the two syllables.

He could always change it of course – his thoughts running away with him. There had to be a reason for ‘Chloé’. He savoured the softness of her pronunciation – its calm atmospherics drawing him in – while he racked his brains to find what it might be. And then it came to him – a commemoration to the lost country of France, of course.

He would have repeated the name but resisted looking foolish if only to himself.

Could this quantum-advanced model identify such a state in him? Humanoids were non-judgmental and he felt very relaxed in the presence of Molly and the complete neutrality of her observation. The same even temper might not be true in the case of this startling entity.

What had Humphrey been up to? What did he have in mind?

Once again, she deduced a thought process from him without his directly having to address her.

“Humphrey named me after one of his favourite followers – and he modelled much of me along her lines with necessary changes so as not to violate the privacy laws. It is also one of the many names of the Greek goddess Demeter and, to quote my sources, it refers to ‘the young, green foliage or shoots of plants’. He may have had in mind the obvious connotation of something new.” So there it was. Had he been discreet in this particular bit of programming?

Virgil wondered if she had a ‘self-expression’ mode? He dismissed the urge to inquire as too blunt and left it to another time. Her satisfied smile appeared to be self-congratulatory; at best it was ambiguous. He continued to stare at her, confirming the appropriateness of her words.

“If you are finished, I shall answer your first question.”

“By all means.”

Yes, there was unfinished business, but the rudeness as he perceived it in the manner of her delivery startled him. Again, he wouldn’t take it personally. It was a mode of expression, that was all, a programmed algorithmic variable to render her more human in her response to his facial expression. He would accept that she was appropriately rude, if there is such a thing, and would exercise tolerance. And what isn’t intended is always easier to take. Still, he asserted his human privilege and continued to examine her for awhile curious as to what response his behaviour would elicit.

Chloé’s irregular eyeblinks admirably approximated the human. Not filled out, her figure complimented her waifish face and early twenties look, too young for him were she flesh and blood.

Like a fish within a glass bowl, he was looking at a shinily sparkling lure. She had no capacity or need for pharmaceuticals and yet subdued ecstasy remarkably close to what a pill might induce beckoned in the depths of her diamond eyes. The crushed and thinly wrapped berries of her mouth could have contained poison for all he cared.

Had Humphrey’s rather cynical idea been to evoke the memory-seared indulgences of youth or did Virgil mistake what he had intended? He detected a fine warmth in her eyes and wondered as to its source – was it substantial or did it emanate from the design of diamond-patterned inner light? An analysis of details deconstructed the human impression and, in turn, reconstructed it until he surrendered to an uncritical acceptance of the whole. He also ended by feeling solicitous where he had earlier played at it – either way it was a form of susceptibility to the exquisite trompe l’oeil effect of these charms.