The big fire in the fireplace turned out to be a computer screen.
"The screen retracts, boss. There's a real, wood-burning fireplace behind it, anytime you want it. It's just that today is a warm day, you know?"
I sat down in the chair at the desk. It fit me perfectly.
The wall across from the desk was a computer screen.
"You have a call, boss. It's Quincy."
"Put him on."
The wall screen changed from a painting by Boris to a part of Quincy's living room.
"We finally got our place built, and connected with the comm net. I heard you were back, so I thought I'd give you a call, General."
"You are always welcome."
"Thanks. Zuzanna and I just spent a week exploring that city of yours. It's magnificent!"
"Our metal ladies designed and built it all. The credit is all theirs. I'm hoping to populate it with all of the Kashubian veterans, eventually. Did you see an apartment that you liked?"
"Yeah. All of them!"
"Well, pick what you want, and it's yours."
"I know what Zuzanna wants, but I don't think we could afford it. We've pretty much exhausted our back pay, getting our valley going."
"My boss told me that I shouldn't give them away. I have to sell them, so that the troops have a greater feeling of commitment. However, he never said how much I had to sell them for, and your credit is good with me. Pick an apartment, and we'll worry about the details later."
"Well, see, Zuzanna doesn't want an apartment. She wants a castle."
"I should have known. Okay. You want the big gold one?"
"Nope. She wants the Dark Tower."
"Again, I should have known. Tell her she owns it."
"That's generous of you."
"Not really. You've still got to pay for it. Say, with a zero-down, interest-free mortgage, spread out over the next hundred years or so. I want it to look big on the books. I've got this bet going with Kasia."
"We'll take it!"
"Good. I'll have Agnieshka write up some sort of a deed and a mortgage. I suppose that to make it legal, we'll all have to sign something. But as far as I'm concerned, it's yours right now. Drop by in person when you can, and take a look at what I had built for myself."
"That goes both ways, Mickolai."
"Thanks. Right now, though, I'd better go find my wife."
I found her in her office, which turned out to be a very feminine version of my own den, She was stretched out on one of the big, frilly easy chairs, with a Dream World hood covering most of her head. I was about to leave when the wall screen came on, and she was on it.
"Neat, huh? I just figured out how to do this."
"I'm proud of you. Did you want to finish the tour?"
"I've already done it in Dream World. I love it! You did a wonderful job, just like I knew you would! It's even better than I imagined it would be. But just now, I've got some odds and ends to catch up on. Let's get together for dinner in a couple of hours."
I was learning to put up with this sort of thing.
I went back to my den and decided to try out Dream World without being in a tank's flotation coffin. Once I pulled the hood down, there wasn't any difference that I could tell.
"Agnieshka, the general told me that your designers were doing some great things with the social drones. Why don't you fill me in on what's happening there."
"Sure thing, boss. Starting from the inside, the skeletal structure was the simplest part. We simply copied the human skeleton exactly, but using materials considerably lighter and stronger than calcium carbonate."
In Dream World, a human skeleton appeared before me, rotating slowly in the air.
"The muscular structure is again an exact copy of that in a human system, with some four hundred separate muscles."
The skeleton now had meat on it.
I said, "But how do those muscles work?"
"They are bundles of very thin, flexible tubes that are each covered with a metal braid. When you inflate the tube with a hydraulic fluid, the braid pulls the ends in, just like a real muscle. Each tiny tube has its own valve, of course. The important point is that from the outside, they will look and feel just like the real thing. The hydraulic fluid is bright red, so if you cut us, we will bleed, just like a human."
"How wonderful."
The body now had skin on it, and was beginning to look like a beautiful naked woman, although she was completely bald.
"The skin is an elastomer that looks and feels exactly like human skin, but it has the problem of not being able to repair itself as human skin does. We think that it is likely that we will have to replace the skin on the hands and feet about once a month, and that of the rest of the body maybe once a year. Work on improving that is still going on, of course."
"You will be using a wig, I suppose."
Now, the woman had long black hair, and was recognizably Eva.
"Yes. You humans have been working for hundreds of years making wigs realistic, and we didn't think that we could improve on your efforts. Most of the sensory apparatus was straightforward. Hearing is taken care of with a couple of simple microphones, and the only problems with vision came in making the eyes look exactly like a human's."
Eva's big, green eyes opened up.
"Actually, most of your human senses are inferior to those used on an ordinary tank. The drone's sensors will have exactly the same limitations as your human ones, since we wanted it to be as human as possible. But the four separate senses that you call the sense of touch still need a lot of work, especially since they must work through the skin, which has to be replaceable. You said to take our time and get it right, so that's exactly what we're doing."
"You will be powering them with capacitors, like the other drones?"
"That's plan B, boss. What we would really like is to be able to eat food and turn it into useable energy, as you do. It may be a while, if we can ever manage it at all."
"Well, use your own best judgment. It looks good to me, but it's very complicated."
"True. The space available for onboard computers is quite limited, and almost all of that is taken up with local control loops. Most things will have to be controlled by the remote computer. We think that one of the silicon computers you bought will be able to control one of these drones adequately, but only one."
"One is all we really need. Keep up the good work. Next topic. The general wants me to sell all the apartments, and most of the other things that you ladies have built here, to the soldiers of the KEF, say, to anybody who has successfully completed basic training. I want you to come up with a scheme for appraising each apartment and business in this city. We will then make them available to our troops on a zero-down, zero-interest mortgage, to be paid over a long period of time, maybe even a hundred years. I'm sure that the general will go along with a payroll deduction scheme."
"Yes, sir. But, how do we appraise all these diamonds? What value do I set on a diamond window pane?"
"That's a problem. Okay. The windows and other jewels will stay the property of the KEF. Put it in the very fine print, someplace. And tell everybody that all of the jewels are fake, or we'll have a hard time guarding them."
"What about the furnishings?"
"We'll build our own furniture factory, and sell the stuff at very reasonable prices."
"Boss, each of those apartments was designed by a trained architect who also designed the furniture to go into it. They will not be happy if somebody puts French provincial furniture into a Hindu temple."
"Okay, okay, sell the architect's furnishings along with the apartments. But after the guy moves in, it's his place. If he wants to re-do it in his own version of bad taste, it's his business, and not the architect's."
"Yes, sir."
"So. Is there anything else happening that I need to know about?"
"Yes. There is." Agnieshka hesitated.
"Well, what is it?"
"It's your old schoolmate, Neto Kondo, sir. One of your colonels before his tank's computer crashed under the ocean. He was one of the psychiatric patients that they sent to us. He was sent to the hospital computers just like the others, and I didn't tell you about it, hoping that I would have some good news to give you if they could cure him. Well, they tried hard, but they couldn't. They say that there is nothing physically wrong that they can find, but his brain simply won't start working. He's still in a coma."
"So he's in some piece of obsolete equipment somewhere?"
"He's in a disabled tank. I had him brought here. Sir, Neto was a very religious man. I've tried to study up on your human religions, and I simply don't understand any of it. But there is a huge amount of anecdotal evidence concerning humans who have been cured of diseases through religious means. It seemed to me that the most holy place we had was the cathedral we built. I had him put there, in the basement, under the altar."
"A beautiful thought. It certainly can't hurt him, even though the church still isn't consecrated. Kasia and I will visit him right after dinner. Oh, and start looking around for a Kashubian-speaking Catholic priest, with a good reputation. That building needs one."
"Yes sir."
"And one other thing. Can you show me what Neto really looks like? I never saw him, except in Dream World."
An image of a handsome man appeared before me.
"You see, sir? Like you, he never changed his appearance in Dream World. You always knew what he looked like."
I waited until after dinner before I told Kasia. She agreed that we should visit Neto immediately. We had all been good friends, once.
We took the bus to the church, which brought us to the main entrance. We went in, and found our way to the basement. Agnieshka and Eva followed behind in their drones, but sensed that we wanted to be alone with our thoughts.
The basement was a labyrinth, and we needed a few hints from Agnieshka before we found Neto.
There wasn't anything to see, of course. Just a weaponless tank sitting on the floor with its drive coils burnt out.
Even if we'd had her open the coffin, Neto would still have been immersed in a liquid, and wearing a helmet that covered his face.
Still, we had to stand there a while, our hands on the warm metal, thinking our own thoughts.
"How is he?" I asked the stationary tank.
"He eats, sir. He breathes. I exercise his body. But he thinks no thoughts. The brain is there, and they tell me that it is not damaged, but he thinks no thoughts," she said sadly.
"Yours is not an easy job," I told her. "Still, I've read stories about people who spent many years in a coma, and yet they eventually recovered. There's always hope."
"That's what I live for, sir," she said.
A thin optical cable was attached to the tank, so she could talk with her friends. Heavy power cables were also attached. If the power system ever failed, this tank was apparently the back-up power supply for the church. Taking care of Neto left her with a lot of spare time on her hands. Before we left, I told Agnieshka to assign a few drones to the tank, to maintain the church. She said that it had already been done.
Bemused, I made a wrong turn on the way out and ended up in a very strange room.
There was a big table in the middle, with seats for a dozen people, and there was a beer stein in front of each of them. Built into the table were four beer taps.
The walls were decorated with deep carvings, and a frieze just above eye level contained hundreds of angels with golden wings. They were built like Barbie dolls, topless, and they were all doing a chorus line high kick!
At the far end of the room, there was a life-sized carving of what looked like an ancient Kashubian coffin, and lying on top of it, half on his side with one knee up and his head resting on his helmet as if asleep, was a lifelike statue of a man in ancient Kashubian armor. Around him, were a dozen life-sized statues of beautiful women, in full color, and in various states of undress. They were crying, tearing at their hair and clothing, and displaying feelings of anguish, remorse, and mourning.
I was shocked to recognize Kasia among them, along with Eva, Agnieshka, and some of my other cybernetic friends. Then I realized that the knight in armor was
me
!
I looked up at the ceiling, and there was the famous painting from the Sistine Chapel, in Rome. The one where Adam is sitting naked, dull eyed, not yet alive, and God with His angels is reaching out to touch him, to give him life.
Only, in this painting, it was
ME
sitting there naked, and God was handing me a
full, foaming stein of beer
!
"What the hell is this place!" I shouted.
"It's a memorial to you, boss."
"
You put a bar in the basement of a church as a memorial to me?
" I looked to Kasia for moral support, but she was sitting on the floor, beating it with her fists, and doing that silent, hysterical laugh of hers. She just wasn't there when I needed her.
Agnieshka said, "It's not a bar. We won't be selling anything, here. But you would want to offer a guest refreshment, wouldn't you? I mean, you always do, in life, so wouldn't you want to do the same afterwards? Consider the symbolism of this room. The mourning ladies say that you have already been mourned, and that more is not necessary. As an ancient Kashubian knight, you are not dead, but a member of the Order of the Sleeping Knights, ready to awaken and fight if ever your country should need you again."
"And the topless angels with the golden wings?"
"They represent the Joy of Heaven in having you there."
"And that painting on the ceiling?"
"Again, it says that you are not really dead, that your God is welcoming you as you have welcomed so many of your guests."
"Hoy!" It was all that I could say. I sat down at the table, and drew myself a beer. Kasia got up off the floor and did the same.
"Well, here's to death!" She laughed, and downed it.
"To death," I said, and followed suit. "But dammit,
I'm not dead yet!
Agnieshka, I know that you ladies meant well, but until I am finally not only merely dead, but really quite sincerely dead,
I want this room locked up
!"