The Cyber Chronicles VII - Sabre (25 page)

“
You miss it?”

Sabre
shrugged. “I guess so, in a way. I’m used to it. It’s like half of
me is gone, now.”

“
I thought you’d be glad to be rid of it.”

“
I am, but… I don’t really feel complete without it. It’s part
of who I am.”

Tassin shook
her head. “It’s part of who you were. Without it, you’re entirely
human. Isn’t that what you want to be?”

“
I haven’t stopped being a cyborg just because I’ve switched
off the control unit. Sure, I feel less like one, but it just makes
me a crippled cyborg.”

She hesitated,
looking doubtful. “I really don’t want you to be… Maybe you just
need to get used to being without it.”

He took her
hand, frowning at it. “You don’t understand.”

“
Explain it to me, then. Why would you want to keep something
you hate?”

“
It provides useful information… and it guides me.”

“
How can you learn to be human when you’re being guided by a
machine? Let’s ask Tarl.”

He nodded. “I
will.”

“
So call him.”

He looked up
at her in alarm. “No, not now.”

“
Why not?”

“
You… I can’t tell him… with you here. You won’t like
it.”

“
You don’t know that. I might not mind it.”

He shook his
head. “No, you definitely won’t like it.”

“
I want to know.”

“
I’m sure you do.”

“
How can I help you if I don’t know what the problem
is?”

Sabre realised
that she was not going to give up. Tassin never did, and he could
not lie to her. Neither could he tell her the whole truth, as that
would certainly upset her, but he could tell her part of it. He
just hoped she would not find even that too upsetting.

“
You can’t help.” He sighed. "It gave me a proximity warning,
okay? A red light. It used to be just an amber alert."

"What does
that mean?"

"It reacted as
if you’re a stranger."

"So, what, now
it doesn’t like me?"

"No, it
doesn’t have likes or dislikes, but something’s changed."

"You’re right,
I don’t like it,” she said. “I really don’t want you to have
warning lights flashing in your brain every time I come close to
you. I thought that stopped after you got control of the brow
band?"

"It did. It
won’t do it again. I’ve stopped it now."

"Oh. Okay,
good." She stood up. “I must go; I have a lot of work to do."

Tassin left,
and Sabre bowed his head, pondering this new and unwelcome turn of
events. Although he was able to stop the warning light, the urge to
lash out at her was far more alarming. A minute later Tarl came in,
his brows rising at Sabre’s despondent pose.

"What’s wrong,
bud?" Sabre explained, and the cyber tech looked thoughtful. "If
the spacer who loaned you to her told Myon Two that you had a
relationship with a woman, perhaps they added something to the
cyber's programming to prevent it from happening again, in the
unlikely event that she succeeded in tracking you down and freeing
you again."

"She swore she
would, and, knowing Tassin, she would have told Manutim that, too,
in no uncertain terms. Could it be another software patch?"

"It's
possible.”

Sabre looked
down at his hand, clenching it. "Could you find it?"

Tarl shook his
head. "Bud, there are over five hundred terabytes of information
and programming in the control unit. Searching through it would
take years. There's no operating system as such, except the cyber
itself. Why don't you just order it to find out?"

Sabre switched
the control unit on and closed his eyes, concentrating on the
streams of scrolling data that appeared in his mind at his command.
He opened them again a second later.

"Nothing's
been added, but something has been deleted."

"What?"

"Subroutine
X783."

"Can you
recover it?"

Sabre shook
his head.

"Okay, lie
down; let's see what I can do."

The cyber
stretched out on the exam couch, and Tarl plugged the access cable
into the edge of the brow band again. He tapped the keys on his
console and studied the information that scrolled up his
screen.

"I don't see
it. How do you know it's been deleted?"

"There's an
index marker in the DAT, but no data."

Tarl typed a
command on the keypad. "The entire X series of subroutines is
dedicated to biological functions and human interactions, but what
harm could deleting one do?"

"How would I
know? I'm just the tool."

"Okay, I've
found the marker; let's see if I can restore the data." Tarl typed
on the keyboard for several minutes, his brow furrowed in
concentration, then nodded. "There, got it." He read the words that
scrolled up the screen. "Oh, shit."

"What?"

"It's a
passive response subroutine." He scowled. "Those bastards!"

"What?"

Tarl turned
his stool to face Sabre. "There are tens of thousands of
subroutines in the control unit, some for the most insignificant
matters, and a few of them are vital."

"I don't need
a lecture; just tell me what they did."

"X783 is a
minor subroutine that deals with contact, and what contact
constitutes a threat and what doesn't. While cybers will only allow
their owners to touch them, this is a safety feature for rare
occasions when a stranger might get the urge to kiss a cyber, or
hug him. It tells the cyber that in such a situation, if no threat
is sensed, he shouldn't react with damaging force, but just a
defensive measure, like pushing the person away. By deleting it,
Cybercorp intended that you would be capable of doing serious harm
to someone who gave you a kiss or hug. The lack of this information
made the defensive subroutines, which your brain still uses as
reference data, that much more... intrusive, I suppose. Without the
passive response to contact, all you had were the active response
subroutines."

“
This must be why I had a proximity alert light every time
Tassin was close to me, even when she owned the cyber or had
command privilege.”

Tarl nodded.
“Yeah, this would do it.”

“
You've restored it now, though, right?"

"Yeah. They
couldn't erase it without formatting the storage medium, and you
can't format a brain. All they did was delete the path to it from
the DAT in the control unit, which hid it from you,
apparently."

“
Why didn’t I know what they did?” Sabre asked.

“
It was a minor programming change, not something that would be
included in the cyber’s interface with the brain, although you
found the missing link pretty easily when you looked for
it.”

"How many
passive response subroutines are there?"

"Over a five
thousand, dealing with word phrases, hand gestures, eye movements,
and all the different kinds of unintelligible noises people
sometimes make. It has to deal with every aspect of human
interaction, and it must know how to respond to every single
one."

"So what
should the cyber's response have been, to a kiss?"

Tarl shrugged.
"From his owner, nothing, from a stranger, a push away."

Sabre sat up.
"That's it."

"What?"

"After Tassin
freed me, she owned the cyber, so all I had was a proximity alert.
Even after the cyber was registered to Fairen, she had command
privilege, now she doesn’t even have that. I deleted all the
registration data after the battle, remember? That’s why the cyber
gave me a proximity warning instead of an alert, which I switched
off, but then when she kissed me I had a strong urge to lash out at
her. It was scary."

Tarl nodded.
"Sure, if she had command privilege, or was the cyber's owner, her
proximity wouldn't have triggered your stranger response
subroutine. When Grundel reregistered the cyber with Myon Two, he
must have overlooked her command privilege, so you were okay until
you purged the data. Also, the more intimate the contact, the more
powerful the response would be, so, while you only had a warning
light for hugs, you had a far more violent reaction to a kiss."

"How does it
work?"

"Well, it's
like conditioning. When you perceive something, you automatically
look for an appropriate response to it. Normal people learn this
stuff while they're growing up, or as they go along, but yours is
all programmed into your reference data. Like if I do this..." Tarl
raised his middle finger. "What would your response be?"

Sabre lifted
his hand and raised the same finger. "What does it mean?"

"That's a bit
of programmer humour. But that's how it works. You just know how to
respond, don't you?"

"Yeah."

"Reference
data. You’ll just have to register her as the cyber’s owner again,
and, now that I’ve restored that subroutine, you won’t’ have any
more urges to clobber her."

“
That’s a relief.” Sabre accessed the control unit’s
registration information and wrote Tassin’s name in the ‘owner’
field and saved it. He only wanted one person to own any part of
him, and that was the girl who already owned his heart, and would
never hurt or betray him.

“
Yeah, that must have been pretty shitty,” Tarl said. “Good
thing you have none of those reactions to me, because of my tattoo.
I doubt you’d have made such an effort to hold back, in my case.”
He unplugged the data cable, coiled it and hung it on the machine.
"I know why Fairen finds you so pleasant to be around, as an
empath. Your mind is uncluttered, unemotional. A purely functional
data storage facility, devoid of all the usual baggage people
acquire while they're growing up. To him, it must be like a nice
cool shower." He hesitated. "Would you mind if I ran some
tests?"

"What
kind?"

"To see how
you react to certain things. I want to see how human you’re
becoming."

Sabre nodded.
"Okay."

"I'll have to
ask some personal questions."

"Okay."

"Lie down."
Tarl patted the table. "And close your eyes."

"You want to
do it now?"

"Why not? You
have something better to do?”

Sabre lay back
and closed his eyes. "I guess not."

"Good. Okay,
so… I know Tassin means a lot to you, but how do you know you love
her? Describe your feelings."

"I enjoy being
with her -"

"Define
enjoy."

"It makes me
happy."

"Define
happy."

Sabre sighed.
"Warm, here." He tapped his chest. "Relaxed, untroubled. I smile a
lot."

"Okay. How
would you feel if another man kissed her, and she liked it?"

Sabre's brow
furrowed. "I don't know. Nothing."

"You wouldn't
be angry?"

"Not if she
liked it."

"You wouldn't
be sad?" Tarl asked.

"No."

"Not even a
little?"

"No." Sabre
opened his eyes. "That's not normal, is it?"

"Not for a
human. For a cyber, it is."

"Why should it
make me sad?"

"Because it
would mean that she liked another man, maybe more than you. It
should actually make you jealous."

"Define
jealous."

Tarl gazed
down at Sabre. "You know what, bud? This is a shitty idea. Let's
just forget it."

"Why?"

"Because I
feel like I'm questioning a bloody machine, and I don't like it."
He jumped up and walked away, rubbing his neck.

Sabre sat up.
"Why does that bother you?"

"Because
you're my friend!" Tarl swung around, scowling. "You saved my life.
I want you to be human."

"I am."

"No, you're
not. You still don't think like a human. You don't have the right
emotional responses."

"So you think
I'm not human?"

Tarl walked
back, shaking his head. "I look at you, I see a man. I talk to you,
I hear a machine. I don't know what the hell you are. Your
responses seem normal. You even make jokes, but it's... You're...
Damn it! Why did you give Tassin all your air when you were in the
pod?"

"I love her. I
wanted to save her."

"Oh, god. Now
I understand."

"What?"

"It's your
conditioning. Access subroutine W473. Read what it says."

Sabre frowned.
"The cyber-bio unit is expendable. Primary function: owner
preservation. Secondary function: preservation of persons with
command privilege or those designated by owner or persons with
command privilege. Cyber unit preservation allowed only if owner
and persons with command privilege or those designated -"

"Okay, okay,
it goes on and on. Basically what it says is that all those people
are more important than you, and you can't put your life above
theirs, or avoid injury if you have to stick your hand in a meat
grinder to save them. That's why you wouldn't feel sad or jealous
if Tassin liked another man. Your conditioning tells you that
you're not important enough. You would just accept it. Why are you
so bitter about being treated like equipment?"

"Because I
still remember what it was like to be equipment, made to stand
guard for hours without moving, unable to say what I wanted, cut up
and tortured, packed into a casket when I wasn’t needed… Sometimes
when you do stuff to me, or carp about my bio-status, it makes feel
like I’m still equipment, and that makes me angry. I know I’ll
never be a real man, but..."

"Okay, okay."
Tarl returned to Sabre’s side and plugged the cable into the brow
band again, reading the monitor. "Your heart rate is up to one
forty. You're experiencing an emotional reaction. Maybe the only
other one you have, apart from your feelings for Tassin. But it's
something."