The Holy Machine

46

Lucy turned a page. Every two and a half minutes Lucy turned a page. In between times, the night was silent except for the sound of trickling water, and Lucy’s silhouette was motionless against the moonlit sky. But in the moonlight her eyes were scanning back and forth rapidly across a text that human eyes could not have made out at all.

What was I going to do? It was clear now that I couldn’t pass her off as human. If she wasn’t to be found out we’d always have to keep on the move.

But then how was I ever going to find work when the money ran out? I had assumed I would be able to earn a living in due course as an interpreter, but who would employ an interpreter who moved constantly from place to place?

The ASPU turned another page.

‘For God’s sake give it a rest, Lucy!’ I muttered, ‘On and on, night after night, the same stupid noise! How do you expect me to sleep with you making that racket?’

The silhouette by the window half-turned its head.

‘Racket?’ Lucy asked.

‘Come over here,’ I snapped at her, sitting up abruptly and switching on the flickery electric light. ‘What is that stuff you’re reading anyway?’

Lucy got up obediently and brought the book over to me. She watched my face, reading the anger. All the while, I suppose, she was broadcasting warning messages back to House Control.

I snatched the book from her, glancing angrily at the archaic words:

‘…And if thy hand offend thee cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched…’

‘What utter crap,’ I said, tossing it to the floor. ‘Get into bed Lucy. I need a fuck.’

Obediently she lay down beside me.

‘You do realize it was that same book which nearly did for my parents?’ I snarled.

Of course this meant nothing to her. It didn’t mean much to me either. I pulled her under me and thrust into her angrily and violently and without a pause until I reached my climax, which was so powerful that I cried out loud.

‘Have you finished now?’ said Lucy politely, after a moment.

‘Have I finished?’ I sneered. ‘Have I finished? That’s all it is to you, isn’t it? All those moans and gasps don’t mean anything at all. Nothing, nothing, nothing.’

Of course even as I spoke I realized that what I was saying was not only obvious, but also something which I must have always known. Lucy had been built to give pleasure, not to experience it. She hadn’t been designed to experience anything at all.

‘I am a machine,’ said Lucy.

But her eyes shed real tears because it was one of a number of standard responses to hostile situations of type HS-75.

‘I am a syntec,’ she said. ‘I am an Advanced Sensual Pleasure Unit.’

She had stood up and was standing naked beside the bed.

‘I am a machine,’ she repeated. Her voice was gentle, submissive. She had no capacity for anger in her design, nor any programmed repertoire with which to express it. And this left me completely unprepared for the terrifying proto-rage which was about to erupt.

‘Yes a machine,’ I shouted at her, ‘a stupid dumb machine that doesn’t know anything, that doesn’t feel anything or understand anything or care about anything at all. The outlanders say you’re monsters and abominations, but you’re not even that interesting. You’re boring, boring, boring. You’re more boring than the dullest human being alive.’

‘You said,’ began Lucy, hesitantly (it was the first time she had ever tried to present an argument of her own), ‘you said you were made of flesh and blood and I…’

‘I was talking crap.’

I had no idea what was about to happen. I didn’t understand that, though Lucy had no capacity for anger built or programmed into her, she did possess the drive towards self-preservation which is the root of anger. And this imperative, which once had extended only to her body (‘the equipment’, as they called it in the ASPU house), now stretched out beyond just her physical self. She had a need to preserve her awakeness, to defend her sense of herself.

‘I am a machine,’ she repeated yet again.

And then, quite suddenly, she took hold of the flesh of her belly and began tearing at it with all her strength.

‘Lucy! For God’s sake what are you doing?’

Lucy ignored me. Blood appeared under her nails – and then a long, red strip of flesh came away in her hand, leaving a gaping hole. I could see a manufacturer’s code printed on the grey surface beneath.

‘M2/88’ said the printed code. Plastic tubes oozed something that resembled lymph.

Shock and disbelief froze me. I watched helplessly as she tore off a second strip, up to the edge of her left breast.

‘No, Lucy…’ I whimpered. ‘Please. I’m sorry…’

She was beautiful. Why should it matter to me what she really was?

Then she took hold of the breast itself.

‘No!’

The soft breast came away easily from its plastic base. Lucy dropped it and took hold of the other one.

‘I am a robot,’ she repeated, pulling it away, ‘I am a machine.’

‘But they hate robots here,’ I whispered, watching helplessly while she pulled away another bloody strip which ended in her furry pubic mound. ‘Please Lucy! They’ll smash you, they’ll nail you up, they’ll…’

The furry flesh came away. Then Lucy paused, considering what I had said. Her face, her arms, her legs and shoulders were still human, but her whole abdomen was now an ugly contoured shell of plastic. No more breasts, no more soft warm cleft to welcome me. The torn edges of her remaining flesh glistened. Dangling tubes dripped synthetic blood and yellowish fluids…

Lucy seemed to reach a decision in her mind. She picked her Bible up off the floor, sat down by the window and calmly continued to read.

‘And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes…’

After a short time she turned the page. There was no other sound except the trickling outside.