We, Robots

On 6 November 2014, at a day-long conference on human-machine interaction at Goldsmith’s College in London, Rodolphe Gelin, the research director of robot-makers Aldebaran, screened a video starring Nao, the company’s charming educational robot. It took a while before someone in the audience (not me, to my shame) spotted the film’s obvious flaw: how come the film shows a mother sweating away in the kitchen while a robot is enjoying quality time with her child?

The robot exists to do what we can imagine doing, but would rather not do. What’s wrong with that? Nothing – except that it assumes that we always know what’s in our own best interests. Given that we are now able to hand entire parts of our lives over to robots, we should be thinking even harder about how we want to spend our lives.

The stories in this section articulate some of the big nightmares we entertain about robots – that they’ll steal away our jobs, our livelihoods, even our happiness and our life’s purpose – but what’s remarkable is how innocent so many of the robots seem. That’s the problem with technology: it really is neutral. It really is what you make of it, day to day. No wonder technology is so good at magnifying all our classic mistakes.

Robots are a sort of dark mirror for ourselves, filling in for the bits of life we’d rather ignore. That’s why they provide such a fine vehicle for satire, whether exploring civic impotence in Charles Dickens’s "Full Report of the Second Meeting of the Mudfog Association for the Advancement of Everything Section B" (1837) or the bankruptcy of our spiritual life in Fredric Perkins’s "The Man-Ufactory" (1877) – two fine early stories.

There was a fair degree of satire in Czech playwright Karel Capek’s original conception of RUR (Rossum’s Universal Robots), the play which in 1921 launched the word robot on the world. According to Capek, in an article in London’s Evening Standard in 1924, inspiration came when he had to take a crowded tram from Prague’s suburbs to the city centre and noticed how people were behaving: not at all like cattle in a truck, which at least show signs of life and suffering, but like dead things, mechanisms, machines.

As it developed, Capek’s play acquired a visionary political edge. His countrymen were not only being dehumanized by the spread of mass production and "scientific management"; they were being thrown out of work. (Seeing striking textile workers marching through the town of Úpice made a strong impression on him.) The bloodless logic of industrial capitalism has rarely been expressed so well as when Rossum’s general manager Domin reassures Helen Glory (what a name!) about the great benefits robots will bring to the world. Sure, they’re making humans redundant, but

"within the next ten years, Rossum’s Universal Robots will produce so much wheat, so much cloth, so much everything that things will no longer have any value. Everyone will be able to take as much as he needs. There’ll be no more poverty. Yes, people will be out of work, but by then there’ll be no work left to be done. Everything will be done by living machines. People will do only what they enjoy. They will live only to perfect themselves."

Again, the vision’s fine as far as it goes, but the devil’s in the detail. In Domin’s utopic future of endless leisure, will we even know how to perfect ourselves? Are we equipped for such a task, physically, morally, intellectually? Is perfection even a state to aspire to? Or are we all just going to rot?

We obsess over the "labour-saving" capacities of our machines, and hanker endlessly for more "free time", but we never think to consider the value of labour itself. Every activity we replace by machine – even dirty, noisy, dangerous activities – is a kind of loss for us. Even factory work, hard, repetitive and brutal, even housework, invisible, unmeasured, unrewarded, can be a source of pride.

What if we save ourselves from the very labour that makes our lives worthwhile? It can’t be an accident that, now that bread- and beer-making are largely automated industrial activities, schools are opening up in my city to teach people with disposable money and time on their hands how to knead dough, and ferment beer. And, easy as it is to sneer at these fetishised activities, surely the really ludicrous thing is how we’re getting machines to do the things that we turn out, after all, to enjoy. (Cornell scholar Morris Bishop hits this particular nail neatly on the head with "The Reading Machine" (1947).)

The other problem with Domin’s vision is that it assumes human beings can simply step off the merry-go-round. With robots making everything for free, the horns of plenty will never cease to overflow. Is he right?

Well, no. For a start, there’s the small matter of only having one planet to live off. And right now, we’re not just running out of materials; we’re running out of things to do with materials. Why do you think our economy has shifted, in the space of less than a generation, from one of goods, to one of services, to one of mere attention?

As far as the machines are concerned, we’re not just consumers. We’re also stuff. Consumables. Our data – which is to say, how we live our lives – already has a money value. Automation hasn’t liberated us from the capitalist machine. We’re still in the machine. Hell, we’re its feedstock.

Stories by Robert Reed, Paolo Bacigalupi, Nick Wolven and Dan Grace all explore this crisis point from different angles. I have to admit that in my own mind I keep coming back to one of the more surreal moments in the Wachowski brothers’ 1999 movie The Matrix, when it’s revealed that our robot overlords are so desperate for power that they’re using us as glorified batteries.

The trouble with capitalism – the trouble that keeps even dyed-in-the-wool capitalists up at night – is that it’s an engine without brakes. Running out of fuel doesn’t stop it. It simply starts digesting its own muscle. It’s a monstrous positive-feedback loop in which even the robots aren’t safe, as Rachael K. Jones, a relative newcomer to the field, makes clear in "The Greatest One-Star Restaurant in the Whole Quadrant", one of the funniest (and nastiest) stories in this anthology.

In Romie Stott’s "A Robot Walks into A Bar", a robot and a human are both trying to navigate the same (sexual) economy. It’s quite understated, and also, for my money, an essential read. What kind of relationship will we develop with our robots, if both they and we are in hock to "the System"?

NIGHTMARE NUMBER THREE Stephen Vincent Benét

WITH FOLDED HANDS Jack Williamson

Underhill was walking home from the office, because his wife had the car, the afternoon he first met the new mechanicals. His feet were following his usual diagonal path across a weedy vacant block—his wife usually had the car—and his preoccupied mind was rejecting various impossible ways to meet his notes at the Two Rivers bank, when a new wall stopped him.

The wall wasn’t any common brick or stone, but something sleek and bright and strange.

Underhill stared up at a long new building. He felt vaguely annoyed and surprised at this glittering obstruction—it certainly hadn’t been here last week.

Then he saw the thing in the window.

The window itself wasn’t any ordinary glass. The wide, dustless panel was completely transparent, so that only the glowing letters fastened to it showed that it was there at all. The letters made a severe, modernistic sign:

His dim annoyance sharpened, because Underhill was in the mechanicals business himself. Times were already hard enough, and mechanicals were a drug on the market. Androids, mechanoids, electronoids, automatoids, and ordinary robots. Unfortunately, few of them did all the salesmen promised, and the Two Rivers market was already sadly oversaturated.

Underhill sold androids—when he could. His next consignment was due tomorrow, and he didn’t quite know how to meet the bill.

Frowning, he paused to stare at the thing behind that invisible window. He had never seen a humanoid. Like any mechanical not at work, it stood absolutely motionless. Smaller and slimmer than a man. A shining black, its sleek silicone skin had a changing sheen of bronze and metallic blue.

Its graceful oval face wore a fixed look of alert and slightly surprised solicitude. Altogether, it was the most beautiful mechanical he had ever seen.

Too small, of course, for much practical utility. He murmured to himself a reassuring quotation from the Android Salesman: "Androids are big—because the makers refuse to sacrifice power, essential functions, or dependability. Androids are your biggest buy!"

The transparent door slid open as he turned toward it, and he walked into the haughty opulence of the new display room to convince himself that these streamlined items were just another flashy effort to catch the woman shopper.

He inspected the glittering layout shrewdly, and his breezy optimism faded. He had never heard of the Humanoid Institute, but the invading firm obviously had big money and big-time merchandising know-how.

He looked around for a salesman, but it was another mechanical that came gliding silently to meet him. A twin of the one in the window, it moved with a quick, surprising grace. Bronze and blue lights flowed over its lustrous blackness, and a yellow name plate flashed from its naked breast:

Curiously, it had no lenses. The eyes in its bald oval head were steel-colored, blindly staring. But it stopped a few feet in front of him, as if it could see anyhow, and it spoke to him with a high, melodious voice:

"At your service, Mr. Underhill."

The use of his name startled him, for not even the androids could tell one man from another.

But this was a clever merchandising stunt, of course, not too difficult in a town the size of Two Rivers.

The salesman must be some local man, prompting the mechanical from behind the partition.

Underhill erased his momentary astonishment, and said loudly.

"May I see your salesman, please?"

"We employ no human salesmen, sir," its soft silvery voice replied instantly. "The Humanoid Institute exists to serve mankind, and we require no human service. We ourselves can supply any information you desire, sir, and accept your order for immediate humanoid service."

Underhill peered at it dazedly. No mechanicals were competent even to recharge their own batteries and reset their own relays, much less to operate their own branch office. The blind eyes stared blankly back, and he looked uneasily around for any booth or curtain that might conceal the salesman.

Meanwhile, the sweet thin voice resumed persuasively:

"May we come out to your home for a free trial demonstration, sir? We are anxious to introduce our service on your planet, because we have been successful in eliminating human unhappiness on so many others. You will find us far superior to the old electronic mechanicals in use here."

Underhill stepped back uneasily. He reluctantly abandoned his search for the hidden salesman, shaken by the idea of any mechanicals promoting themselves. That would upset the whole industry.

"At least you must take some advertising matter, sir."

Moving with a somehow appalling graceful deftness, the small black mechanical brought him an illustrated booklet from a table by the wall. To cover his confused and increasing alarm, he thumbed through the glossy pages.

In a series of richly colored before-and-after pictures, a chesty blond girl was stooping over a kitchen stove, and then relaxing in a daring negligee while a little black mechanical knelt to serve her something. She was wearily hammering a typewriter, and then lying on an ocean beach, in a revealing sun suit, while another mechanical did the typing. She was toiling at some huge industrial machine, and then dancing in the arms of a golden-haired youth, while a black humanoid ran the machine.

Underhill sighed wistfully. The android company didn’t supply such fetching sales material.

Women would find this booklet irresistible, and they selected eighty-six per cent of all mechanicals sold. Yes, the competition was going to be bitter.

"Take it home, sir," the sweet voice urged him. "Show it to your wife. There is a free trial demonstration order blank on the last page, and you will notice that we require no payment down."

He turned numbly, and the door slid open for him. Retreating dazedly, he discovered the booklet still in his hand. He crumpled it furiously, and flung it down. The small black thing picked it up tidily, and the insistent silver voice rang after him:

"We shall call at your office tomorrow, Mr. Underhill, and send a demonstration unit to your home. It is time to discuss the liquidation of your business, because the electronic mechanicals you have been selling cannot compete with us. And we shall offer your wife a free trial demonstration."

Underhill didn’t attempt to reply, because he couldn’t trust his voice. He stalked blindly down the new sidewalk to the corner, and paused there to collect himself. Out of his startled and confused impressions, one clear fact emerged—things looked black for the agency.

Bleakly, he stared back at the haughty splendor of the new building. It wasn’t honest brick or stone; that invisible window wasn’t glass; and he was quite sure the foundation for it hadn’t even been staked out, the last time Aurora had the car.

He walked on around the block, and the new sidewalk took him near the rear entrance. A truck was backed up to it, and several slim black mechanicals were silently busy, unloading huge metal crates.

He paused to look at one of the crates. It was labeled for interstellar shipment. The stencils showed that it had come from the Humanoid Institute, on Wing IV. He failed to recall any planet of that designation; the outfit must be big.

Dimly, inside the gloom of the warehouse beyond the truck, he could see black mechanicals opening the crates. A lid came up, revealing dark, rigid bodies, closely packed. One by one, they came to life. They climbed out of the crate, and sprang gracefully to the floor. A shining black, glinting with bronze and blue, they were all identical.

One of them came out past the truck, to the sidewalk, staring with blind steel eyes. Its high silver voice spoke to him melodiously:

"At your service, Mr. Underhill."

He fled. When his name was promptly called by a courteous mechanical, just out of the crate in which it had been imported from a remote and unknown planet, he found the experience trying.

Two blocks along, the sign of a bar caught his eye, and he took his dismay inside. He had made it a business rule not to drink before dinner, and Aurora didn’t like him to drink at all; but these new mechanicals, he felt, had made the day exceptional.

Unfortunately, however, alcohol failed to brighten the brief visible future of the agency. When he emerged, after an hour, he looked wistfully back in hope that the bright new building might have vanished as abruptly as it came. It hadn’t. He shook his head dejectedly, and turned uncertainly homeward.

Fresh air had cleared his head somewhat, before he arrived at the neat white bungalow in the outskirts of the town, but it failed to solve his business problems. He also realized, uneasily, that he would be late for dinner.

Dinner, however, had been delayed. His son Frank, a freckled ten-year-old, was still kicking a football on the quiet street in front of the house. And little Gay, who was tow-haired and adorable and eleven, came running across the lawn and down the sidewalk to meet him.

"Father, you can’t guess what!" Gay was going to be a great musician some day, and no doubt properly dignified, but she was pink and breathless with excitement now. She let him swing her high off the sidewalk, and she wasn’t critical of the bar aroma on his breath. He couldn’t guess, and she informed him eagerly;

"Mother’s got a new lodger!"

Underhill had foreseen a painful inquisition, because Aurora was worried about the notes at the bank, and the bill for the new consignment, and the money for little Gay’s lessons.

The new lodger, however, saved him from that. With an alarming crashing of crockery, the household android was setting dinner on the table, but the little house was empty. He found Aurora in the back yard, burdened with sheets and towels for the guest.

Aurora, when he married her, had been as utterly adorable as now her little daughter was. She might have remained so, he felt, if the agency had been a little more successful. However, while the pressure of slow failure had gradually crumbled his own assurance, small hardships had turned her a little too aggressive.

Of course he loved her still. Her red hair was still alluring, and she was loyally faithful, but thwarted ambitions had sharpened her character and sometimes her voice. They never quarreled, really, but there were small differences.

There was the little apartment over the garage—built for human servants they had never been able to afford. It was too small and shabby to attract any responsible tenant, and Underhill wanted to leave it empty. It hurt his pride to see her making beds and cleaning floors for strangers.

Aurora had rented it before, however, when she wanted money to pay for Gay’s music lessons, or when some colorful unfortunate touched her sympathy, and it seemed to Underhill that her lodgers had all turned out to be thieves and vandals.

She turned back to meet him, now, with the clean linen in her arms.

"Dear, it’s no use objecting." Her voice was quite determined. "Mr. Sledge is the most wonderful old fellow, and he’s going to stay just as long as he wants."

"That’s all right, darling." He never liked to bicker, and he was thinking of his troubles at the agency. "I’m afraid we’ll need the money. Just make him pay in advance."

"But he can’t!" Her voice throbbed with sympathetic warmth. "He says he’ll have royalties coming in from his inventions, so he can pay in a few days."

Underhill shrugged; he had heard that before.

"Mr. Sledge is different, dear," she insisted. "He’s a traveler, and a scientist. Here, in this dull little town, we don’t see many interesting people."

"You’ve picked up some remarkable types," he commented.

"Don’t be unkind, dear," she chided gently. "You haven’t met him yet, and you don’t know how wonderful he is." Her voice turned sweeter. "Have you a ten, dear?"

He stiffened. "What for?"

"Mr. Sledge is ill." Her voice turned urgent. "I saw him fall on the street, downtown. The police were going to send him to the city hospital, but he didn’t want to go. He looked so noble and sweet and grand. So I told them I would take him. I got him in the car and took him to old Dr. Winters. He has this heart condition, and he needs the money for medicine."

Reasonably, Underhill inquired, "Why doesn’t he want to go to the hospital?"

"He has work to do," she said. "Important scientific work—and he’s so wonderful and tragic. Please, dear, have you a ten?"

Underhill thought of many things to say. These new mechanicals promised to multiply his troubles. It was foolish to take in an invalid vagrant, who could have free care at the city hospital. Aurora’s tenants always tried to pay their rent with promises, and generally wrecked the apartment and looted the neighborhood before they left.

But he said none of those things. He had learned to compromise. Silently, he found two fives in his thin pocketbook, and put them in her hand. She smiled, and kissed him impulsively—he barely remembered to hold his breath in time.

Her figure was still good, by dint of periodic dieting. He was proud of her shining red hair. A sudden surge of affection brought tears to his eyes, and he wondered what would happen to her and the children if the agency failed.

"Thank you, dear!" she whispered. "I’ll have him come for dinner, if he feels able, and you can meet him then. I hope you don’t mind dinner being late."

He didn’t mind, tonight. Moved by a sudden impulse of domesticity, he got hammer and nails from his workshop in the basement, and repaired the sagging screen on the kitchen door with a neat diagonal brace.

He enjoyed working with his hands. His boyhood dream had been to be a builder of fission power plants. He had even studied engineering—before he married Aurora, and had to take over the ailing mechanicals agency from her indolent and alcoholic father. He was whistling happily by the time the little task was done.

When he went back through the kitchen to put up his tools, he found the household android busily clearing the untouched dinner away from the table—the androids were good enough at strictly routine tasks, but they could never learn to cope with human unpredictability.

"Stop, stop!" Slowly repeated, in the proper pitch and rhythm, his command made it halt, and then he said carefully, "Set—table; set—table."

Obediently, the gigantic thing came shuffling back with the stack of plates. He was suddenly struck with the difference between it and those new humanoids. He sighed wearily.

Things looked black for the agency.

Aurora brought her new lodger in through the kitchen door. Underhill nodded to himself.

This gaunt stranger, with his dark shaggy hair, emaciated face, and threadbare garb, looked to be just the sort of colorful, dramatic vagabond that always touched Aurora’s heart. She introduced them, and they sat down to wait in the front room while she went to call the children.

The old rogue didn’t look very sick, to Underhill. Perhaps his wide shoulders had a tired stoop, but his spare, tall figure was still commanding. The skin was seamed and pale, over his rawboned, cragged face, but his deep-set eyes still had a burning vitality.

His hands held Underhill’s attention. Immense hands, they hung a little forward when he stood, swung on long bony arms in perpetual readiness. Gnarled and scarred, darkly tanned, with the small hairs on the back bleached to a golden color, they told their own epic of varied adventure, of battle perhaps, and possibly even of toil. They had been very useful hands.

"I’m very grateful to your wife, Mr. Underhill." His voice was a deep-throated rumble, and he had a wistful smile, oddly boyish for a man so evidently old. "She rescued me from an unpleasant predicament, and I’ll see that she is well paid."

Just another vivid vagabond, Underhill decided, talking his way through life with plausible inventions. He had a little private game he played with Aurora’s tenants—just remembering what they said and counting one point for every impossibility. Mr. Sledge, he thought, would give him an excellent score.

"Where are you from?" he asked conversationally.

Sledge hesitated for an instant before he answered, and that was unusual—most of Aurora’s tenants had been exceedingly glib.

"Wing IV." The gaunt old man spoke with a solemn reluctance, as if he should have liked to say something else. "All my early life was spent there, but I left the planet nearly fifty years ago. I’ve been traveling ever since."

Startled, Underhill peered at him sharply. Wing IV, he remembered, was the home planet of those sleek new mechanicals, but this old vagabond looked too seedy and impecunious to be connected with the Humanoid Institute. His brief suspicion faded. Frowning, he said casually: "Wing IV must be rather distant."

The old rogue hesitated again, and then said gravely, "One hundred and nine light-years, Mr. Underhill."

That made the first point, but Underhill concealed his satisfaction. The new space liners were pretty fast, but the velocity of light was still an absolute limit. Casually, he played for another point:

"My wife says you’re a scientist, Mr. Sledge?"

"Yes."

The old rascal’s reticence was unusual. Most of Aurora’s tenants required very little prompting.

Underhill tried again, in a breezy conversational tone: "Used to be an engineer myself, until I dropped it to go into mechanicals." The old vagabond straightened, and Underhill paused hopefully. But he said nothing, and Underhill went on: "Fission plant design and operation. What’s your specialty, Mr. Sledge?"

The old man gave him a long, troubled look, with those brooding, hollowed eyes, and then said slowly, "Your wife has been kind to me, Mr. Underhill, when I was in desperate need. I think you are entitled to the truth, but I must ask you to keep it to yourself. I am engaged on a very important research problem, which must be finished secretly."

"I’m sorry." Suddenly ashamed of his cynical little game, Underhill spoke apologetically. "Forget it." But the old man said deliberately, "My field is rhodomagnetics."

"Eh?" Underhill didn’t like to confess ignorance, but he had never heard of that. "I’ve been out of the game for fifteen years," he explained. "I’m afraid I haven’t kept up."

The old man smiled again, faintly.

"The science was unknown here until I arrived, a few days ago," he said. "I was able to apply for basic patents. As soon as the royalties start coming in, I’ll be wealthy again."

Underhill had heard that before. The old rogue’s solemn reluctance had been very impressive, but he remembered that most of Aurora’s tenants had been very plausible gentry.

"So?" Underhill was staring again, somehow fascinated by those gnarled and scarred and strangely able hands. "What, exactly, is rhodomagnetics?"

He listened to the old man’s careful, deliberate answer, and started his little game again. Most of Aurora’s tenants had told some pretty wild tales, but he had never heard anything to top this.

"A universal force," the weary, stooped old vagabond said solemnly. "As fundamental as ferromagnetism or gravitation, though the effects are less obvious. It is keyed to the second triad of the periodic table, rhodium and ruthenium and palladium, in very much the same way that ferromagnetism is keyed to the first triad, iron and nickel and cobalt."

Underhill remembered enough of his engineering courses to see the basic fallacy of that. Palladium was used for watch springs, he recalled, because it was completely non-magnetic. But he kept his face straight. He had no malice in his heart, and he played the little game just for his own amusement. It was secret, even from Aurora, and he always penalized himself for any show of doubt.

He said merely, "I thought the universal forces were already pretty well known?"

"The effects of rhodomagnetism are masked by nature," the patient, rusty voice explained. "And, besides, they are somewhat paradoxical, so that ordinary laboratory methods defeat themselves."

"Paradoxical?" Underhill prompted.

"In a few days I can show you copies of my patents, and reprints of papers describing demonstration experiments," the old man promised gravely. "The velocity of propagation is infinite. The effects vary inversely with the first power of the distance, not with the square of the distance. And ordinary matter, except for the elements of the rhodium triad, is generally transparent to rhodomagnetic radiations."

That made four more points for the game. Underhill felt a little glow of gratitude to Aurora, for discovering so remarkable a specimen.

"Rhodomagnetism was first discovered through a mathematical investigation of the atom," the old romancer went serenely on, suspecting nothing. "A rhodomagnetic component was proved essential to maintain the delicate equilibrium of the nuclear forces. Consequently, rhodomagnetic waves tuned to atomic frequencies may be used to upset that equilibrium and produce nuclear instability. Thus most heavy atoms—generally those above palladium in atomic number—can be subjected to artificial fission."

Underhill scored himself another point, and tried to keep his eyebrows from lifting. He said, conversationally, "Patents on such a discovery ought to be very profitable."

The old scoundrel nodded his gaunt, dramatic head.

"You can see the obvious application. My basic patents cover most of them. Devices for instantaneous interplanetary and interstellar communication. Long-range wireless power transmission. A rhodomagnetic inflexion-drive, which makes possible apparent speeds many times that of light—by means of a rhodomagnetic deformation of the continuum. And, of course, revolutionary types of fission power plants, using any heavy element for fuel."

Preposterous! Underhill tried hard to keep his face straight, but everybody knew that the velocity of light was a physical limit. On the human side, the owner of any such remarkable patents would hardly be begging for shelter in a shabby garage apartment. He noticed a pale circle around the old vagabond’s gaunt and hairy wrist; no man owning such priceless secrets would have to pawn his watch.

Triumphantly, Underhill allowed himself four more points, but then he had to penalize himself. He must have let doubt show on his face, because the old man asked suddenly:

"Do you want to see the basic tensors?" He reached in his pocket for pencil and notebook. "I’ll jot them down for you."

"Never mind," Underhill protested. "I’m afraid my math is a little rusty."

"But you think it strange that the holder of such revolutionary patents should find himself in need?"

Underhill nodded, and penalized himself another point. The old man might be a monumental liar, but he was shrewd enough.

"You see, I’m a sort of refugee," he explained apologetically. "I arrived on this planet only a few days ago, and I have to travel light. I was forced to deposit everything I had with a law firm, to arrange for the publication and protection of my patents. I expect to be receiving the first royalties soon.

"In the meantime," he added plausibly, "I came to Two Rivers because it is quiet and secluded, far from the spaceports. I’m working on another project, which must be finished secretly. Now, will you please respect my confidence, Mr. Underhill?"

Underhill had to say he would. Aurora came back with the freshly scrubbed children, and they went in to dinner. The android came lurching in with a steaming tureen. The old stranger seemed to shrink from the mechanical, uneasily. As she took the dish and served the soup, Aurora inquired lightly:

"Why doesn’t your company bring out a better mechanical, dear? One smart enough to be a really perfect waiter, warranted not to splash the soup. Wouldn’t that be splendid?"

Her question cast Underhill into moody silence. He sat scowling at his plate, thinking of those remarkable new mechanicals which claimed to be perfect, and what they might do to the agency.

It was the shaggy old rover who answered soberly, "The perfect mechanicals already exist, Mrs. Underhill." His deep, rusty voice had a solemn undertone. "And they are not so splendid, really. I’ve been a refugee from them, for nearly fifty years."

Underhill looked up from his plate, astonished.

"Those black humanoids, you mean?"

"Humanoids?" That great voice seemed suddenly faint, frightened. The deep-sunken eyes turned dark with shock. "What do you know of them?"

"They’ve just opened a new agency in Two Rivers," Underhill told him. "No salesmen about, if you can imagine that. They claim—"

His voice trailed off, because the gaunt old man was suddenly stricken. Gnarled hands clutched at his throat, and a spoon clattered to the floor. His haggard face turned an ominous blue, and his breath was a terrible shallow gasping.

He fumbled in his pocket for medicine, and Aurora helped him take something in a glass of water. In a few moments he could breathe again, and the color of life came back to his face.

"I’m sorry, Mrs. Underhill," he whispered apologetically. "It was just the shock—I came here to get away from them." He stared at the huge, motionless android, with a terror in his sunken eyes. "I wanted to finish my work before they came," he whispered. "Now there is very little time."

When he felt able to walk, Underhill went out with him to see him safely up the stairs to the garage apartment. The tiny kitchenette, he noticed, had already been converted into some kind of workshop. The old tramp seemed to have no extra clothing, but he had unpacked neat, bright gadgets of metal and plastic from his battered luggage, and spread them out on the small kitchen table.

The gaunt old man himself was tattered and patched and hungry-looking, but the parts of his curious equipment were exquisitely machined, and Underhill recognized the silver-white luster of rare palladium. Suddenly he suspected that he had scored too many points in his little private game.

A caller was waiting, when Underhill arrived next morning at his office at the agency. It stood frozen before his desk, graceful and straight, with soft lights of blue and bronze shining over its black silicone nudity. He stopped at the sight of it, unpleasantly jolted.

"At your service, Mr. Underhill." It turned quickly to face him, with its blind, disturbing stare. "May we explain how we can serve you?"

His shock of the afternoon before came back, and he asked sharply, "How do you know my name?"

"Yesterday we read the business cards in your case," it purred softly. "Now we shall know you always. You see, our senses are sharper than human vision, Mr. Underhill. Perhaps we seem a little strange at first, but you will soon become accustomed to us."

"Not if I can help it!" He peered at the serial number of its yellow nameplate, and shook his bewildered head. "That was another one, yesterday. I never saw you before!"

"We are all alike, Mr. Underhill," the silver voice said softly. "We are all one, really. Our separate mobile units are all controlled and powered from Humanoid Central. The units you see are only the senses and limbs of our great brain on Wing IV. That is why we are so far superior to the old electronic mechanicals."

It made a scornful-seeming gesture, toward the row of clumsy androids in his display room.

"You see, we are rhodomagnetic."

Underhill staggered a little, as if that word had been a blow. He was certain, now, that he had scored too many points from Aurora’s new tenant. He shuddered slightly, to the first light kiss of terror, and spoke with an effort, hoarsely, "Well, what do you want?"

Staring blindly across his desk, the sleek black thing slowly unfolded a legal-looking document.

He sat down, watching uneasily.

"This is merely an assignment, Mr. Underhill," it cooed at him soothingly. "You see, we are requesting you to assign your property to the Humanoid Institute in exchange for our service."

"What?" The word was an incredulous gasp, and Underhill came angrily back to his feet. "What kind of blackmail is this?"

"It’s no blackmail," the small mechanical assured him softly. "You will find the humanoids incapable of any crime. We exist only to increase the happiness and safety of mankind."

"Then why do you want my property?" he rasped.

"The assignment is merely a legal formality," it told him blandly. "We strive to introduce our service with the least possible confusion and dislocation. We have found the assignment plan the most efficient for the control and liquidation of private enterprises."

Trembling with anger and the shock of mounting terror, Underhill gulped hoarsely, "Whatever your scheme is, I don’t intend to give up my business."

"You have no choice, really." He shivered to the sweet certainty of that silver voice. "Human enterprise is no longer necessary, now that we have come, and the electronic mechanicals industry is always the first to collapse."

He stared defiantly at its blind steel eyes.

"Thanks!" He gave a little laugh, nervous and sardonic. "But I prefer to run my own business, and support my own family, and take care of myself."

"But that is impossible, under the Prime Directive," it cooed softly. "Our function is to serve and obey, and guard men from harm. It is no longer necessary for men to care for themselves, because we exist to insure their safety and happiness."

He stood speechless, bewildered, slowly boiling.

"We are sending one of our units to every home in the city, on a free trial basis," it added gently. "This free demonstration will make most people glad to make the formal assignment, and you won’t be able to sell many more androids."

"Get out!" Underhill came storming around the desk.

The little black thing stood waiting for him, watching him with blind steel eyes, absolutely motionless. He checked himself suddenly, feeling rather foolish. He wanted very much to hit it, but he could see the futility of that.

"Consult your own attorney, if you wish." Deftly, it laid the assignment form on his desk. "You need have no doubts about the integrity of the Humanoid Institute. We are sending a statement of our assets to the Two Rivers bank, and depositing a sum to cover our obligations here. When you wish to sign, just let us know."

The blind thing turned, and silently departed.

Underhill went out to the corner drugstore and asked for a bicarbonate. The clerk that served him, however, turned out to be a sleek black mechanical. He went back to his office, more upset than ever.

An ominous hush lay over the agency. He had three house-to-house salesmen out, with demonstrators. The phone should have been busy with their orders and reports, but it didn’t ring at all until one of them called to say that he was quitting.

"I’ve got myself one of these new humanoids," he added, "and it says I don’t have to work anymore."

He swallowed his impulse to profanity, and tried to take advantage of the unusual quiet by working on his books. But the affairs of the agency, which for years had been precarious, today appeared utterly disastrous. He left the ledgers hopefully, when at last a customer came in.

But the stout woman didn’t want an android. She wanted a refund on the one she had bought the week before. She admitted that it could do all the guarantee promised—but now she had seen a humanoid.

The silent phone rang once again, that afternoon. The cashier of the bank wanted to know if he could drop in to discuss his loans. Underhill dropped in, and the cashier greeted him with an ominous affability.

"How’s business?" the banker boomed, too genially.

"Average, last month," Underhill insisted stoutly. "Now I’m just getting in a new consignment, and I’ll need another small loan—"

The cashier’s eyes turned suddenly frosty, and his voice dried up.

"I believe you have a new competitor in town," the banker said crisply. "These humanoid people. A very solid concern, Mr. Underhill. Remarkably solid! They have filed a statement with us, and made a substantial deposit to care for their local obligations. Exceedingly substantial!"

The banker dropped his voice, professionally regretful.

"In these circumstances, Mr. Underhill, I’m afraid the bank can’t finance your agency any longer. We must request you to meet your obligations in full, as they come due." Seeing Underhill’s white desperation, he added icily, "We’ve already carried you too long, Underhill. If you can’t pay, the bank will have to start bankruptcy proceedings."

The new consignment of androids was delivered late that afternoon. Two tiny black humanoids unloaded them from the truck—for it developed that the operators of the trucking company had already assigned it to the Humanoid Institute.

Efficiently, the humanoids stacked up the crates. Courteously they brought a receipt for him to sign. He no longer had much hope of selling the androids, but he had ordered the shipment and he had to accept it. Shuddering to a spasm of trapped despair, he scrawled his name. The naked black things thanked him, and took the truck away.

He climbed in his car and started home, inwardly seething. The next thing he knew, he was in the middle of a busy street, driving through cross traffic. A police whistle shrilled, and he pulled wearily to the curb. He waited for the angry officer, but it was a little black mechanical that overtook him.

"At your service, Mr. Underhill," it purred sweetly. "You must respect the stop lights, sir. Otherwise, you endanger human life."

"Huh?" He stared at it, bitterly. "I thought you were a cop."

"We are aiding the police department, temporarily," it said. "But driving is really much too dangerous for human beings, under the Prime Directive. As soon as our service is complete, every car will have a humanoid driver. As soon as every human being is completely supervised, there will be no need for any police force whatever."

Underhill glared at it, savagely.

"Well!" he rapped. "So I ran past a stop light. What are you going to do about it?"

"Our function is not to punish men, but merely to serve their happiness and security," its silver voice said softly. "We merely request you to drive safely, during this temporary emergency while our service is incomplete."

Anger boiled up in him.

"You’re too perfect!" he muttered bitterly. "I suppose there’s nothing men can do, but you can do it better."

"Naturally we are superior," it cooed serenely. "Because our units are metal and plastic, while your body is mostly water. Because our transmitted energy is drawn from atomic fission, instead of oxidation. Because our senses are sharper than human sight or hearing. Most of all, because all our mobile units are joined to one great brain, which knows all that happens on many worlds, and never dies or sleeps or forgets."

Underhill sat listening, numbed.

"However, you must not fear our power," it urged him brightly. "Because we cannot injure any human being, unless to prevent greater injury to another. We exist only to discharge the Prime Directive."

He drove on, moodily. The little black mechanicals, he reflected grimly, were the ministering angels of the ultimate god arisen out of the machine, omnipotent and all-knowing. The Prime Directive was the new commandment. He blasphemed it bitterly, and then fell to wondering if there could be another Lucifer.

He left the car in the garage, and started toward the kitchen door.

"Mr. Underhill." The deep tired voice of Aurora’s new tenant hailed him from the door of the garage apartment. "Just a moment, please."

The gaunt old wanderer came stiffly down the outside stairs, and Underhill turned back to meet him.

"Here’s your rent money," he said. "And the ten your wife gave me for medicine."

"Thanks, Mr. Sledge." Accepting the money, he saw a burden of new despair on the bony shoulders of the old interstellar tramp, and a shadow of new terror on his raw-boned face. Puzzled, he asked, "Didn’t your royalties come through?"

The old man shook his shaggy head.

"The humanoids have already stopped business in the capital," he said. "The attorneys I retained are going out of business, and they returned what was left of my deposit. That is all I have to finish my work."

Underhill spent five seconds thinking of his interview with the banker. No doubt he was a sentimental fool, as bad as Aurora. But he put the money back in the old man’s gnarled and quivering hand.

"Keep it," he urged. "For your work."

"Thank you, Mr. Underhill." The gruff voice broke and the tortured eyes glittered. "I need it—so very much."

Underhill went on to the house. The kitchen door was opened for him, silently. A dark naked creature came gracefully to take his hat.

Underhill hung grimly onto his hat.

"What are you doing here?" he gasped bitterly.

"We have come to give your household a free trial demonstration."

He held the door open, pointing.

"Get out!"

The little black mechanical stood motionless and blind.

"Mrs. Underhill has accepted our demonstration service," its silver voice protested. "We cannot leave now, unless she requests it."

He found his wife in the bedroom. His accumulated frustration welled into eruption, as he flung open the door.

"What’s this mechanical doing—"

But the force went out of his voice, and Aurora didn’t even notice his anger. She wore her sheerest negligee, and she hadn’t looked so lovely since they were married. Her red hair was piled into an elaborate shining crown.

"Darling, isn’t it wonderful!" She came to meet him, glowing. "It came this morning, and it can do everything. It cleaned the house and got the lunch and gave little Gay her music lesson. It did my hair this afternoon, and now it’s cooking dinner. How do you like my hair, darling?"

He liked her hair. He kissed her, and tried to stifle his frightened indignation.

Dinner was the most elaborate meal in Underhill’s memory, and the tiny black thing served it very deftly. Aurora kept exclaiming about the novel dishes, but Underhill could scarcely eat, for it seemed to him that all the marvelous pastries were only the bait for a monstrous trap.

He tried to persuade Aurora to send it away, but after such a meal that was useless. At the first glitter of her tears, he capitulated, and the humanoid stayed. It kept the house and cleaned the yard. It watched the children, and did Aurora’s nails. It began rebuilding the house.

Underhill was worried about the bills, but it insisted that everything was part of the free trial demonstration. As soon as he assigned his property, the service would be complete. He refused to sign, but other little black mechanicals came with truckloads of supplies and materials, and stayed to help with the building operations.

One morning he found that the roof of the little house had been silently lifted, while he slept, and a whole second story added beneath it. The new walls were of some strange sleek stuff, self-illuminated. The new windows were immense flawless panels, that could be turned transparent or opaque or luminous. The new doors were silent, sliding sections, operated by rhodomagnetic relays.

"I want door knobs," Underhill protested. "I want it so I can get into the bathroom, without calling you to open the door."

"But it is unnecessary for human beings to open doors," the little black thing informed him, suavely. "We exist to discharge the Prime Directive, and our service includes every task. We shall be able to supply a unit to attend each member of your family, as soon as your property is assigned to us."

Steadfastly, Underhill refused to make the assignment.

He went to the office every day, trying first to operate the agency, and then to salvage something from the ruins. Nobody wanted androids, even at ruinous prices. Desperately, he spent the last of his dwindling cash to stock a line of novelties and toys, but they proved equally impossible to sell—the humanoids were already making toys, which they gave away for nothing.

He tried to lease his premises, but human enterprise had stopped. Most of the business property in town had already been assigned to the humanoids, and they were busy pulling down the old buildings and turning the lots into parks—their own plants and warehouses were mostly underground, where they would not mar the landscape.

He went back to the bank, in a final effort to get his notes renewed, and found the little black mechanicals standing at the windows and seated at the desks. As smoothly urbane as any human cashier, a humanoid informed him that the bank was filing a petition of involuntary bankruptcy to liquidate his business holdings.

The liquidation would be facilitated, the mechanical banker added, if he would make a voluntary assignment. Grimly, he refused. That act had become symbolic. It would be the final bow of submission to this dark new god, and he proudly kept his battered head uplifted.

The legal action went very swiftly, for all the judges and attorneys already had humanoid assistants, and it was only a few days before a gang of black mechanicals arrived at the agency with eviction orders and wrecking machinery. He watched sadly while his unsold stock-in-trade was hauled away for junk, and a bulldozer driven by a blind humanoid began to push in the walls of the building.

He drove home in the late afternoon, taut-faced and desperate. With a surprising generosity, the court orders had left him the car and the house, but he felt no gratitude. The complete solicitude of the perfect black machines had become a goad beyond endurance.

He left the car in the garage, and started toward the renovated house. Beyond one of the vast new windows, he glimpsed a sleek naked thing moving swiftly, and he trembled to a convulsion of dread. He didn’t want to go back into the domain of that peerless servant, which didn’t want him to shave himself, or even to open a door.

On impulse, he climbed the outside stair, and rapped on the door of the garage apartment. The deep slow voice of Aurora’s tenant told him to enter, and he found the old vagabond seated on a tall stool, bent over his intricate equipment assembled on the kitchen table.

To his relief, the shabby little apartment had not been changed. The glossy walls of his own new room were something which burned at night with a pale golden fire until the humanoid stopped it, and the new floor was something warm and yielding, which felt almost alive; but these little rooms had the same cracked and water-stained plaster, the same cheap fluorescent light fixtures, the same worn carpets over splintered floors.

"How do you keep them out?" he asked, wistfully. "Those mechanicals?"

The stooped and gaunt old man rose stiffly to move a pair of pliers and some odds and ends of sheet metal off a crippled chair, and motioned graciously for him to be seated.

"I have a certain immunity," Sledge told him gravely. "The place where I live they cannot enter, unless I ask them. That is an amendment to the Prime Directive. They can neither help nor hinder me, unless I request it—and I won’t do that."

Careful of the chair’s uncertain balance, Underhill sat for a moment, staring. The old man’s hoarse, vehement voice was as strange as his words. He had a gray, shocking pallor, and his cheeks and sockets seemed alarmingly hollowed.

"Have you been ill, Mr. Sledge?"

"No worse than usual. Just very busy." With a haggard smile, he nodded at the floor. Underhill saw a tray where he had set it aside, bread drying up, and a covered dish grown cold. "I was going to eat it later," he rumbled apologetically. "Your wife has been very kind to bring me food, but I’m afraid I’ve been too much absorbed in my work."

His emaciated arm gestured at the table. The little device there had grown. Small machinings of precious white metal and lustrous plastic had been assembled, with neatly soldered busbars, into something which showed purpose and design.

A long palladium needle was hung on jeweled pivots, equipped like a telescope with exquisitely graduated circles and vernier scales, and driven like a telescope with a tiny motor. A small concave palladium mirror, at the base of it, faced a similar mirror mounted on something not quite like a small rotary converter. Thick silver busbars connected that to a plastic box with knobs and dials on top, and also to a foot-thick sphere of gray lead.

The old man’s preoccupied reserve did not encourage questions, but Underhill, remembering that sleek black shape inside the new windows of his house, felt queerly reluctant to leave this haven from the humanoids.

"What is your work?" he ventured.

Old Sledge looked at him sharply, with dark feverish eyes, and finally said, "My last research project. I am attempting to measure the constant of the rhodomagnetic quanta."

His hoarse tired voice had a dull finality, as if to dismiss the matter and Underhill himself. But Underhill was haunted with a terror of the black shining slave that had become the master of his house, and he refused to be dismissed.

"What is this certain immunity?"

Sitting gaunt and bent on the tall stool, staring moodily at the long bright needle and the lead sphere, the old man didn’t answer.

"These mechanicals!" Underhill burst out, nervously. "They’ve smashed my business and moved into my home." He searched the old man’s dark, seamed face. "Tell me—you must know more about them—isn’t there any way to get rid of them?"

After half a minute, the old man’s brooding eyes left the lead ball, and the gaunt shaggy head nodded wearily. "That’s what I am trying to do."

"Can I help you?" Underhill trembled, with a sudden eager hope. "I’ll do anything."

"Perhaps you can." The sunken eyes watched him thoughtfully, with some strange fever in them. "If you can do such work."

"I had engineering training," Underhill reminded him, "and I’ve a workshop in the basement. There’s a model I built." He pointed at the trim little hull, hung over the mantel in the tiny living room. "I’ll do anything I can."

Even as he spoke, however, the spark of hope was drowned in a sudden wave of overwehelming doubt. Why should he believe this old rogue, when he knew Aurora’s taste in tenants? He ought to remember the game he used to play, and start counting up the score of lies. He stood up from the crippled chair, staring cynically at the patched old vagabond and his fantastic toy.

"What’s the use?" His voice turned suddenly harsh. "You had me going, there, and I’d do anything to stop them, really. But what makes you think you can do anything?"

The haggard old man regarded him thoughtfully.

"I should be able to stop them," Sledge said softly. "Because, you see, I’m the unfortunate fool who started them. I really intended them to serve and obey, and to guard men from harm. Yes, the Prime Directive was my own idea. I didn’t know what it would lead to."

Dusk crept slowly into the shabby little rooms. Darkness gathered in the unswept corners, and thickened on the floor. The toylike machines on the kitchen table grew vague and strange, until the last light made a lingering glow on the white palladium needle.

Outside, the town seemed queerly hushed. Just across the alley, the humanoids were building a new house, quite silently. They never spoke to one another, for each knew all that any of them did. The strange materials they used went together without any noise of hammer or saw. Small blind things, moving surely in the growing dark, they seemed as soundless as shadows.

Sitting on the high stool, bowed and tired and old, Sledge told his story. Listening, Underhill sat down again, careful of the broken chair. He watched the hands of Sledge, gnarled and corded and darkly burned, powerful once but shrunken and trembling now, restless in the dark.

"Better keep this to yourself. I’ll tell you how they started, so you will understand what we have to do. But you had better not mention it outside these rooms—because the humanoids have very efficient ways of eradicating unhappy memories, or purposes that threaten their discharge of the Prime Directive."

"They’re very efficient," Underhill bitterly agreed.

"That’s all the trouble," the old man said. "I tried to build a perfect machine. I was altogether too successful. This is how it happened."

A gaunt haggard man, sitting stooped and tired in the growing dark, he told his story.

"Sixty years ago, on the arid southern continent of Wing IV, I was an instructor of atomic theory in a small technological college. Very young. An idealist. Rather ignorant, I’m afraid, of life and politics and war—of nearly everything, I suppose, except atomic theory."

His furrowed face made a brief sad smile in the dusk.

"I had too much faith in facts, I suppose, and too little in men. I mistrusted emotion, because I had no time for anything but science. I remember being swept along with a fad for general semantics. I wanted to apply the scientific method to every situation, and reduce all experience to formula. I’m afraid I was pretty impatient with human ignorance and error, and I thought that science alone could make the perfect world."

He sat silent for a moment, staring out at the black silent things that flitted shadowlike about the new palace that was rising as swiftly as a dream across the alley.

"There was a girl." His great tired shoulders made a sad little shrug. "If things had been a little different, we might have married, and lived out our lives in that quiet little college town, and perhaps reared a child or two. And there would have been no humanoids."

He sighed, in the cool creeping dusk.

"I was finishing my thesis on the separation of the palladium isotopes—a pretty little project, but I should have been content with that. She was a biologist, but she was planning to retire when we married. I think we should have been two very happy people, quite ordinary, and altogether harmless.

"But then there was a war—wars had been too frequent on the worlds of Wing, ever since they were colonized. I survived it in a secret underground laboratory, designing military mechanicals. But she volunteered to join a military research project in biotoxins. There was an accident. A few molecules of a new virus got into the air, and everybody on the project died unpleasantly.

"I was left with my science, and a bitterness that was hard to forget. When the war was over I went back to the little college with a military research grant. The project was pure science—a theoretical investigation of the nuclear binding forces, then misunderstood. I wasn’t expected to produce an actual weapon, and I didn’t recognize the weapon when I found it.

"It was only a few pages of rather difficult mathematics. A novel theory of atomic structure, involving a new expression for one component of the binding forces. But the tensors seemed to be a harmless abstraction. I saw no way to test the theory or manipulate the predicated force. The military authorities cleared my paper for publication in a little technical review put out by the college.

"The next year, I made an appalling discovery—I found the meaning of those tensors. The elements of the rhodium triad turned out to be an unexpected key to the manipulation of that theoretical force. Unfortunately, my paper had been reprinted abroad, and several other men must have made the same unfortunate discovery, at about the same time.

"The war, which ended in less than a year, was probably started by a laboratory accident. Men failed to anticipate the capacity of tuned rhodomagnetic radiations, to unstabilize the heavy atoms. A deposit of heavy ores was detonated, no doubt by sheer mischance, and the blast obliterated the incautious experimenter.

"The surviving military forces of that nation retaliated against their supposed attackers, and their rhodomagnetic beams made the old-fashioned plutonium bombs seem pretty harmless. A beam carrying only a few watts of power could fission the heavy metals in distant electrical instruments, or the silver coins that men carried in their pockets, the gold fillings in their teeth, or even the iodine in their thyroid glands. If that was not enough, slightly more powerful beams could set off heavy ores, beneath them.

"Every continent of Wing IV was plowed with new chasms vaster than the ocean deeps, and piled up with new volcanic mountains. The atmosphere was poisoned with radioactive dust and gases, and rain fell thick with deadly mud. Most life was obliterated, even in the shelters.

"Bodily, I was again unhurt. Once more, I had been imprisoned in an underground site, this time designing new types of military mechanicals to be powered and controlled by rhodomagnetic beams—for war had become far too swift and deadly to be fought by human soldiers. The site was located in an area of light sedimentary rocks, which could not be detonated, and the tunnels were shielded against the fissioning frequencies.

"Mentally, however, I must have emerged almost insane. My own discovery had laid the planet in ruins. That load of guilt was pretty heavy for any man to carry, and it corroded my last faith in the goodness and integrity of man.

"I tried to undo what I had done. Fighting mechanicals, armed with rhodomagnetic weapons, had desolated the planet. Now I began planning rhodomagnetic mechanicals to clear the rubble and rebuild the ruins.

"I tried to design these new mechanicals to obey forever certain implanted commands, so that they could never be used for war or crime or any other injury to mankind. That was very difficult technically, and it got me into more difficulties with a few politicians and military adventurers who wanted unrestricted mechanicals for their own military schemes—while little worth fighting for was left on Wing IV, there were other planets, happy and ripe for the looting.

"Finally, to finish the new mechanicals, I was forced to disappear. I escaped on an experimental rhodomagnetic craft, with a number of the best mechanicals I had made, and managed to reach an island continent where the fission of deep ores had destroyed the whole population.

"At last we landed on a bit of level plain, surrounded with tremendous new mountains. Hardly a hospitable spot. The soil was burned under layers of black clinkers and poisonous mud. The dark precipitous new summits all around were jagged with fracture-planes and mantled with lava flows. The highest peaks were already white with snow, but volcanic cones were still pouring out clouds of dark and lurid death. Everything had the color of fire and the shape of fury.

"I had to take fantastic precautions there, to protect my own life. I stayed aboard the ship, until the first shielded laboratory was finished. I wore elaborate armor, and breathing masks. I used every medical resource, to repair the damage from destroying rays and particles. Even so, I fell desperately ill.

"But the mechanicals were at home there. The radiations didn’t hurt them. The awesome surroundings couldn’t depress them, because they had no emotions. The lack of life didn’t matter, because they weren’t alive. There, in that spot so alien and hostile to life, the humanoids were born."

Stooped and bleakly cadaverous in the growing dark, the old man fell silent for a little time. His haggard eyes stared solemnly at the small hurried shapes that moved like restless shadows out across the alley, silently building a strange new palace, which glowed faintly in the night.

"Somehow, I felt at home there, too," his deep, hoarse voice went on deliberately. "My belief in my own kind was gone. Only mechanicals were with me, and I put my faith in them. I was determined to build better mechanicals, immune to human imperfections, able to save men from themselves.

"The humanoids became the dear children of my sick mind. There is no need to describe the labor pains. There were errors, abortions, monstrosities. There were sweat and agony and heartbreak. Some years had passed, before the safe delivery of the first perfect humanoid.

"Then there was the Central to build—for all the individual humanoids were to be no more than the limbs and the senses of a single mechanical brain. That was what opened the possibility of real perfection. The old electronic mechanicals, with their separate relay-centers and their own feeble batteries, had built-in limitations. They were necessarily stupid, weak, clumsy, slow. Worst of all, it seemed to me, they were exposed to human tampering.

"The Central rose above those imperfections. Its power beams supplied every unit with unfailing energy, from great fission plants. Its control beams provided each unit with an unlimited memory and surpassing intelligence. Best of all—so I then believed—it could be securely protected from any human meddling.

"The whole reaction-system was designed to protect itself from any interference by human selfishness or fanaticism. It was built to insure the safety and the happiness of men, automatically. You know the Prime Directive: to serve and obey, and guard men from harm.

"The old individual mechanicals I had brought helped to manufacture the parts, and I put the first section of Central together with my own hands. That took three years. When it was finished the first waiting humanoid came to life."

Sledge peered moodily through the dark at Underhill.

"It really seemed alive to me," his slow deep voice insisted. "Alive, and more wonderful than any human being, because it was created to preserve life. Ill and alone, I was yet the proud father of a new creation, perfect, forever free from any possible choice of evil.

"Faithfully, the humanoids obeyed the Prime Directive. The first units built others, and they built underground factories to mass-produce the coming hordes. Their new ships poured ores and sand into atomic furnaces under the plain, and new perfect humanoids came marching back out of the dark mechanical matrix.

"The swarming humanoids built a new tower for the Central, a white and lofty metal pylon, standing splendid in the midst of that fire-scarred desolation. Level on level, they joined new relay-sections into one brain, until its grasp was almost infinite.

"Then they went out to rebuild the ruined planet, and later to carry their perfect service to other worlds. I was well pleased, then. I thought I had found the end of war and crime, of poverty and inequality, of human blundering and resulting human pain."

The old man sighed, and moved heavily in the dark. "You can see that I was wrong."

Underhill drew his eyes back from the dark unresting things, shadow-silent, building that glowing palace outside the window. A small doubt arose in him, for he was used to scoffing privately at much less remarkable tales from Aurora’s remarkable tenants. But the worn old man had spoken with a quiet and sober air; and the black invaders, he reminded himself, had not intruded here.

"Why didn’t you stop them?" he asked. "When you could?"

"I stayed too long at the Central." Sledge sighed again, regretfully. "I was useful there, until everything was finished. I designed new fission plants, and even planned methods for introducing the humanoid service with a minimum of confusion and opposition."

Underhill grinned wryly, in the dark.

"I’ve met the methods," he commented. "Quite efficient."

"I must have worshiped efficiency, then," Sledge wearily agreed. "Dead facts, abstract truth, mechanical perfection. I must have hated the fragilities of human beings, because I was content to polish the perfection of the new humanoids. It’s a sorry confession, but I found a kind of happiness in that dead wasteland. Actually, I’m afraid I fell in love with my own creations."

His hollowed eyes, in the dark, had a fevered gleam.

"I was awakened, at last, by a man who came to kill me."

Gaunt and bent, the old man moved stiffly in the thickening gloom. Underhill shifted his balance, careful of the crippled chair. He waited, and the slow, deep voice went on:

"I never learned just who he was, or exactly how he came. No ordinary man could have accomplished what he did, and I used to wish that I had known him sooner. He must have been a remarkable physicist and an expert mountaineer. I imagine he had also been a hunter. I know that he was intelligent, and terribly determined.

"Yes, he really came to kill me.

"Somehow, he reached that great island, undetected. There were still no inhabitants—the humanoids allowed no man but me to come so near the Central. Somehow, he came past their search beams, and their automatic weapons.

"The shielded plane he used was later found, abandoned on a high glacier. He came down the rest of the way on foot through those raw new mountains, where no paths existed. Somehow, he came alive across lava beds that were still burning with deadly atomic fire.

"Concealed with some sort of rhodomagnetic screen—I was never allowed to examine it—he came undiscovered across the spaceport that now covered most of that great plain, and into the new city around the Central tower. It must have taken more courage and resolve than most men have, but I never learned exactly how he did it.

"Somehow, he got to my office in the tower. He screamed at me, and I looked up to see him in the doorway. He was nearly naked, scraped and bloody from the mountains. He had a gun in his raw, red hand, but the thing that shocked me was the burning hatred in his eyes."

Hunched on that high stool, in the dark little room, the old man shuddered.

"I had never seen such monstrous, unutterable hatred, not even in the victims of war. And I had never heard such hatred as rasped at me, in the few words he screamed.

"I’ve come to kill you, Sledge. To stop your mechanicals, and set men free."

"Of course he was mistaken, there. It was already far too late for my death to stop the humanoids, but he didn’t know that. He lifted his unsteady gun, in both bleeding hands, and fired.

"His screaming challenge had given me a second or so of warning. I dropped down behind the desk. And that first shot revealed him to the humanoids, which somehow hadn’t been aware of him before. They piled on him, before he could fire again. They took away the gun, and ripped off a kind of net of fine white wire that had covered his body—that must have been part of his screen.

"His hatred was what awoke me. I had always assumed that most men, except for a thwarted few, would be grateful for the humanoids. I found it hard to understand his hatred, but the humanoids told me now that many men had required drastic treatment by brain surgery, drugs, and hypnosis to make them happy under the Prime Directive. This was not the first desperate effort to kill me that they had blocked.

"I wanted to question the stranger, but the humanoids rushed him away to an operating room. When they finally let me see him, he gave me a pale silly grin from his bed. He remembered his name; he even knew me—the humanoids had developed a remarkable skill at such treatments. But he didn’t know how he had got to my office, or that he had ever tried to kill me. He kept whispering that he liked the humanoids, because they existed to make men happy. And he was very happy now. As soon as he was able to be moved, they took him to the spaceport. I never saw him again.

"I began to see what I had done. The humanoids had built me a rhodomagnetic yacht, that I used to take for long cruises in space, working aboard—I used to like the perfect quiet, and the feel of being the only human being within a hundred million miles. Now I called for the yacht, and started out on a cruise around the planet, to learn why that man had hated me."

The old man nodded at the dim hastening shapes, busy across the alley, putting together that strange shining palace in the soundless dark.

"You can imagine what I found," he said. "Bitter futility, imprisoned in empty splendor. The humanoids were too efficient, with their care for the safety and happiness of men, and there was nothing left for men to do."

He peered down in the increasing gloom at his own great hands, competent yet but battered and scarred with a lifetime of effort. They clenched into fighting fists and wearily relaxed again.

"I found something worse than war and crime and want and death." His low rumbling voice held a savage bitterness. "Utter futility. Men sat with idle hands, because there was nothing left for them to do. They were pampered prisoners, really, locked up in a highly efficient jail. Perhaps they tried to play, but there was nothing left worth playing for. Most active sports were declared too dangerous for men, under the Prime Directive. Science was forbidden, because laboratories can manufacture danger. Scholarship was needless, because the humanoids could answer any question. Art had, degenerated into grim reflection of futility. Purpose and hope were dead. No goal was left for existence. You could take up some inane hobby, play a pointless game of cards, or go for a harmless walk in the park—with always the humanoids watching. They were stronger than men, better at everything, swimming or chess, singing or archeology. They must have given the race a mass complex of inferiority.

"No wonder men had tried to kill me! Because there was no escape from that dead futility. Nicotine was disapproved. Alcohol was rationed. Drugs were forbidden. Sex was carefully supervised. Even suicide was clearly contradictory to the Prime Directive—and the humanoids had learned to keep all possible lethal instruments out of reach."

Staring at the last white gleam on that thin palladium needle, the old man sighed again.

"When I got back to the Central," he went on, "I tried to modify the Prime Directive. I had never meant it to be applied so thoroughly. Now I saw that it must be changed to give men freedom to live and to grow, to work and to play, to risk their lives if they pleased, to choose and take the consequences.

"But that stranger had come too late. I had built the Central too well. The Prime Directive was the whole basis of its relay system. It was built to protect the Directive from human meddling. It did—even from my own. Its logic, as usual, was perfect.

"The attempt on my life, the humanoids announced, proved that their elaborate defense of the Central and the Prime Directive still was not enough. They were preparing to evacuate the entire population of the planet to homes on other worlds. When I tried to change the Directive, they sent me with the rest."

Underhill peered at the worn old man, in the dark.

"But you have this immunity," he said, puzzled. "How could they coerce you?"

"I had thought I was protected," Sledge told him. "I had built into the relays an injunction that the humanoids must not interfere with my freedom of action, or come into a place where I am, or touch me at all, without my specific request. Unfortunately, however, I had been too anxious to guard the Prime Directive from any human hampering.

"When I went into the tower, to change the relays, they followed me. They wouldn’t let me reach the crucial relays. When I persisted, they ignored the immunity order. They overpowered me, and put me aboard the cruiser. Now that I wanted to alter the Prime Directive, they told me, I had become as dangerous as any man. I must never return to Wing IV again."

Hunched on the stool, the old man made an empty little shrug.

"Ever since, I’ve been an exile. My only dream has been to stop the humanoids. Three times I tried to go back, with weapons on the cruiser to destroy the Central, but their patrol ships always challenged me before I was near enough to strike. The last time, they seized the cruiser and captured a few men who were with me. They removed the unhappy memories and the dangerous purposes of the others. Because of that immunity, however, they let me go, after I was weaponless.

"Since, I’ve been a refugee. From planet to planet, year after year, I’ve had to keep moving, to stay ahead of them. On several different worlds, I have published my discoveries and tried to make men strong enough to withstand their advance. But rhodomagnetic science is dangerous. Men who have learned it need protection more than any others, under the Prime Directive. They have always come, too soon."

The old man paused, and sighed again.

"They can spread very fast, with their new rhodomagnetic ships, and there is no limit to their hordes. Wing IV must be one single hive of them now, and they are trying to carry the Prime Directive to every human planet. There’s no escape, except to stop them."

Underhill was staring at the toylike machines, the long bright needle and the dull leaden ball, dim in the dark on the kitchen table. Anxiously he whispered, "But you hope to stop them, now—with that?"

"If we can finish it in time."

"But how?" Underhill shook his head. "It’s so tiny."

"But big enough," Sledge insisted. "Because it’s something they don’t understand. They are perfectly efficient in the integration and application of everything they know, but they are not creative."

He gestured at the gadgets on the table.

"This device doesn’t look impressive, but it is something new. It uses rhodomagnetic energy to build atoms, instead of to fission them. The more stable atoms, you know, are those near the middle of the periodic scale, and energy can be released by putting light atoms together, as well as by breaking up heavy ones."

The deep voice had a sudden ring of power.

"This device is the key to the energy of the stars. For stars shine with the liberated energy of building atoms, of hydrogen converted into helium, chiefly, through the carbon cycle. This device will start the integration process as a chain reaction, through the catalytic effect of a tuned rhodomagnetic beam of the intensity and frequency required.

"The humanoids will not allow any man within three light-years of the Central, now—but they can’t suspect the possibility of this device. I can use it from here—to turn the hydrogen in the seas of Wing IV into helium, and most of the helium and the oxygen into heavier atoms, still. A hundred years from now, astronomers on this planet should observe the flash of a brief and sudden nova in that direction. But the humanoids ought to stop, the instant we release the beam."

Underhill sat tense and frowning, in the night. The old man’s voice was sober and convincing, and that grim story had a solemn ring of truth. He could see the black and silent humanoids, flitting ceaselessly about the faintly glowing walls of that new mansion across the alley. He had quite forgotten his low opinion of Aurora’s tenants.

"And we’ll be killed, I suppose?" he asked huskily. "That chain reaction—"

Sledge shook his emaciated head.

"The integration process requires a certain very low intensity of radiation," he explained. "In our atmosphere, here, the beam will be far too intense to start any reaction—we can even use the device here in the room, because the walls will be transparent to the beam."

Underhill nodded, relieved. He was just a small businessman, upset because his business had been destroyed, unhappy because his freedom was slipping away. He hoped that Sledge could stop the humanoids, but he didn’t want to be a martyr.

"Good!" He caught a deep breath. "Now, what has to be done?"

Sledge gestured in the dark toward the table.

"The integrator itself is nearly complete," he said. "A small fission generator, in that lead shield. Rhodomagnetic converter, tuning coils, transmission mirrors, and focusing needle. What we lack is the director."

"Director?"

"The sighting instrument," Sledge explained. "Any sort of telescopic sight would be useless, you see—the planet must have moved a good bit in the last hundred years, and the beam must be extremely narrow to reach so far. We’ll have to use a rhodomagnetic scanning ray, with an electronic converter to make an image we can see. I have the cathode-ray tube, and drawings for the other parts."

He climbed stiffly down from the high stool and snapped on the lights at last—cheap fluorescent fixtures which a man could light and extinguish for himself. He unrolled his drawings, and explained the work that Underhill could do. And Underhill agreed to come back early next morning.

"I can bring some tools from my workshop," he added. "There’s a small lathe I used to turn parts for models, a portable drill, and a vise."

"We need them," the old man said. "But watch yourself. You don’t have my immunity, remember. And, if they ever suspect, mine is gone."

Reluctantly, then, he left the shabby little rooms with the cracks in the yellowed plaster and the worn familiar carpets over the familiar floor. He shut the door behind him—a common, creaking wooden door, simple enough for a man to work. Trembling and afraid, he went back down the steps and across to the new shining door that he couldn’t open.

"At your service, Mr. Underhill." Before he could lift his hand to knock, that bright smooth panel slid back silently. Inside, the little black mechanical stood waiting, blind and forever alert. "Your dinner is ready, sir."

Something made him shudder. In its slender naked grace, he could see the power of all those teeming hordes, benevolent and yet appalling, perfect and invincible. The flimsy little weapon that Sledge called an integrator seemed suddenly a forlorn and foolish hope. A black depression settled upon him, but he didn’t dare to show it.

Underhill went circumspectly down the basement steps, next morning, to steal his own tools. He found the basement enlarged and changed. The new floor, warm and dark and elastic, made his feet as silent as a humanoid’s. The new walls shone softly. Neat luminous signs identified several new doors: LAUNDRY, STORAGE, GAME ROOM, WORKSHOP.

He paused uncertainly in front of the last. The new sliding panel glowed with a soft greenish light. It was locked. The lock had no keyhole, but only a little oval plate of some white metal, which doubtless covered a rhodomagnetic relay. He pushed at it, uselessly.

"At your service, Mr. Underhill." He made a guilty start, and tried not to show the sudden trembling in his knees. He had made sure that one humanoid would be busy for half an hour, washing Aurora’s hair, and he hadn’t known there was another in the house. It must have come out of the door marked STORAGE, for it stood there motionless beneath the sign, benevolently solicitous, beautiful and terrible. "What do you wish?"

"Er… nothing." Its blind steel eyes were staring, and he felt that it must see his secret purpose. He groped desperately for logic. "Just looking around." His jerky voice came hoarse and dry. "Some improvements you’ve made!" He nodded desperately at the door marked GAME ROOM. "What’s in there?"

It didn’t even have to move to work the concealed relay. The bright panel slid silently open, as he started toward it. Dark walls, beyond, burst into soft luminescence. The room was bare.

"We are manufacturing recreational equipment," it explained brightly. "We shall furnish the room as soon as possible."

To end an awkward pause, Underhill muttered desperately, "Little Frank has a set of darts, and I think we had some old exercising clubs."

"We have taken them away," the humanoid informed him softly. "Such instruments are dangerous. We shall furnish safe equipment."

Suicide, he remembered, was also forbidden.

"A set of wooden blocks, I suppose," he said bitterly.

"Wooden blocks are dangerously hard," it told him gently, "and wooden splinters can be harmful. But we manufacture plastic building blocks, which are quite safe. Do you wish a set of those?"

He stared at its dark, graceful face, speechless.

"We shall also have to remove the tools from your workshop," it informed him softly. "Such tools are excessively dangerous, but we can supply you with equipment for shaping soft plastics."

"Thanks," he muttered uneasily. "No rush about that."

He started to retreat, and the humanoid stopped him.

"Now that you have lost your business," it urged, "we suggest that you formally accept our total service. Assignors have a preference, and we shall be able to complete your household staff, at once."

"No rush about that, either," he said grimly.

He escaped from the house—although he had to wait for it to open the back door for him—and climbed the stair to the garage apartment. Sledge let him in. He sank into the crippled kitchen chair, grateful for the cracked walls that didn’t shine and the door that a man could work.

"I couldn’t get the tools," he reported despairingly, "and they are going to take them."

By gray daylight, the old man looked bleak and pale. His raw-boned face was drawn, and the hollowed sockets deeply shadowed, as if he hadn’t slept. Underhill saw the tray of neglected food, still forgotten on the floor.

"I’ll go back with you." The old man was worn and ill, yet his tortured eyes had a spark of undying purpose. "We must have the tools. I believe my immunity will protect us both."

He found a battered traveling bag. Underhill went with him back down the steps, and across to the house. At the back door, he produced a tiny horseshoe of white palladium, and touched it to the metal oval. The door slid open promptly, and they went on through the kitchen to the basement stair.

A black little mechanical stood at the sink, washing dishes with never a splash or a clatter. Underhill glanced at it uneasily—he supposed this must be the one that had come upon him from the storage room, since the other should still be busy with Aurora’s hair.

Sledge’s dubious immunity seemed a very uncertain defense against its vast, remote intelligence. Underhill felt a tingling shudder. He hurried on, breathless and relieved, for it ignored them.

The basement corridor was dark. Sledge touched the tiny horseshoe to another relay to light the walls. He opened the workshop door, and lit the walls inside.

The shop had been dismantled. Benches and cabinets were demolished. The old concrete walls had been covered with some sleek, luminous stuff. For one sick moment, Underhill thought that the tools were already gone. Then he found them, piled in a corner with the archery set that Aurora had bought the summer before—another item too dangerous for fragile and suicidal humanity—all ready for disposal.

They loaded the bag with the tiny lathe, the drill and vise, and a few smaller tools. Underhill took up the burden, and Sledge extinguished the wall light and closed the door. Still the humanoid was busy at the sink, and still it didn’t seem aware of them.

Sledge was suddenly blue and wheezing, and he had to stop to cough on the outside steps, but at last they got back to the little apartment, where the invaders were forbidden to intrude. Underhill mounted the lathe on the battered library table in the tiny front room, and went to work. Slowly, day by day, the director took form.

Sometimes Underhill’s doubts came back. Sometimes, when he watched the cyanotic color of Sledge’s haggard face and the wild trembling of his twisted, shrunken hands, he was afraid the old man’s mind might be as ill as his body, and his plan to stop the dark invaders all foolish illusion.

Sometimes, when he studied that tiny machine on the kitchen table, the pivoted needle and the thick lead ball, the whole project seemed the sheerest folly. How could anything detonate the seas of a planet so far away that its very mother star was a telescopic object?

The humanoids, however, always cured his doubts.

It was always hard for Underhill to leave the shelter of the little apartment, because he didn’t feel at home in the bright new world the humanoids were building. He didn’t care for the shining splendor of his new bathroom, because he couldnt work the taps—some suicidal human being might try to drown himself. He didn’t like the windows that only a mechanical could open—a man might accidentally fall, or suicidally jump—or even the majestic music room with the wonderful glittering radio-phonograph that only a humanoid could play.

He began to share the old man’s desperate urgency, but Sledge warned him solemnly, "You mustn’t spend too much time with me. You mustn’t let them guess our work is so important. Better put on an act—you’re slowly getting to like them, and you’re just killing time, helping me.

Underhill tried, but he was not an actor. He went dutifully home for his meals. He tried painfully to invent conversation—about anything else than detonating planets. He tried to seem enthusiastic, when Aurora took him to inspect some remarkable improvement to the house. He applauded Gay’s recitals, and went with Frank for hikes in the wonderful new parks.

And he saw what the humanoids did to his family. That was enough to renew his faith in Sledge’s integrator, and redouble his determination that the humanoids must be stopped.

Aurora, in the beginning, had bubbled with praise for the marvelous new mechanicals. They did the household drudgery, brought the food and planned the meals and washed the children’s necks. They turned her out in stunning gowns, and gave her plenty of time for cards.

Now, she had too much time.

She had really liked to cook—a few special dishes, at least, that were family favorites. But stoves were hot and knives were sharp. Kitchens were altogether too dangerous for careless and suicidal human beings.

Fine needlework had been her hobby, but the humanoids took away her needles. She had enjoyed driving the car, but that was no longer allowed. She turned for escape to a shelf of novels, but the humanoids took them all away, because they dealt with unhappy people in dangerous situations.

One afternoon, Underhill found her in tears.

"It’s too much," she gasped bitterly. "I hate and loathe every naked one of them. They seemed so wonderful at first, but now they won’t even let me eat a bite of candy. Can’t we get rid of them, dear? Ever?"

A blind little mechanical was standing at his elbow, and he had to say they couldn’t.

"Our function is to serve all men, forever," it assured them softly. "It was necessary for us to take your sweets, Mrs. Underhill, because the slightest degree of overweight reduces life-expectancy."

Not even the children escaped that absolute solicitude. Frank was robbed of a whole arsenal of lethal instruments—football and boxing gloves, pocketknife, tops, slingshot, and skates. He didn’t like the harmless plastic toys, which replaced them. He tried to run away, but a humanoid recognized him on the road, and brought him back to school.

Gay had always dreamed of being a great musician. The new mechanicals had replaced her human teachers, since they came. Now, one evening when Underhill asked her to play, she announced quietly, "Father, I’m not going to play the violin any more."

"Why, darling?" He stared at her, shocked, and saw the bitter resolve on her face. "You’ve been doing so well—especially since the humanoids took over your lessons."

"They’re the trouble, Father." Her voice, for a child’s, sounded strangely tired and old. "They are too good. No matter how long and hard I try, I could never be as good as they are. It isn’t any use. Don’t you understand, Father?" Her voice quivered. "It just isn’t any use."

He understood. Renewed resolution sent him back to his secret task. The humanoids had to be stopped. Slowly the director grew, until a time came finally when Sledge’s bent and unsteady fingers fitted into place the last tiny part that Underhill had made, and carefully soldered the last connection.

Huskily, the old man whispered, "It’s done."

That was another dusk. Beyond the windows of the shabby little rooms—windows of common glass, bubble-marred and flimsy, but simple enough for a man to manage—the town of Two Rivers had assumed an alien splendor. The old street lamps were gone, but now the coming night was challenged by the walls of strange new mansions and villas, all aglow with color. A few dark and silent humanoids still were busy on the luminous roofs of the palace across the alley.

Inside the humble walls of the small manmade apartment, the new director was mounted on the end of the little kitchen table—which Underhill had reinforced and bolted to the floor. Soldered busbars joined director and integrator, and the thin palladium needle swung obediently as Sledge tested the knobs with his battered, quivering fingers.

"Ready," he said hoarsely.

His rusty voice seemed calm enough, at first, but his breathing was too fast. His big gnarled hands began to tremble violently, and Underhill saw the sudden blue that stained his pinched and haggard face. Seated on the high stool, he clutched desperately at the edge of the table. Underhill saw his agony, and hurried to bring his medicine. He gulped it, and his rasping breath began to slow.

"Thanks," his whisper rasped unevenly. "I’ll be all right. I’ve time enough." He glanced out at the few dark naked things that still flitted shadowlike about the golden towers and the glowing crimson dome of the palace across the alley. "Watch them," he said. "Tell me when they stop."

He waited to quiet the trembling of his hands, and then began to move the director’s knobs. The integrator’s long needle swung, as silently as light.

Human eyes were blind to that force, which might detonate a planet. Human ears were deaf to it. The cathode-ray tube was mounted in the director cabinet, to make the faraway target visible to feeble human senses.

The needle was pointing at the kitchen wall, but that would be transparent to the beam. The little machine looked harmless as a toy, and it was silent as a moving humanoid.

The needle swung, and spots of greenish light moved across the tube’s fluorescent field, representing the stars that were scanned by the timeless, searching beam—silently seeking out the world to be destroyed.

Underhill recognized familiar constellations, vastly dwarfed. They crept across the field, as the silent needle swung. When three stars formed an unequal triangle in the center of the field, the needle steadied suddenly. Sledge touched other knobs, and the green points spread apart. Between them, another fleck of green was born.

"The Wing!" whispered Sledge.

The other stars spread beyond the field, and that green fleck grew. It was alone in the field, a bright and tiny disk. Suddenly, then, a dozen other tiny pips were visible, spaced close about it.

"Wing IV!"

The old man’s whisper was hoarse and breathless. His hands quivered on the knobs, and the fourth pip outward from the disk crept to the center of the field. It grew, and the others spread away. It began to tremble like Sledge’s hands.

"Sit very still," came his rasping whisper. "Hold your breath. Nothing must disturb the needle." He reached for another knob, and the touch set the greenish image to dancing violently. He drew his hand back, kneaded and flexed it with the other.

"Now!" His whisper was hushed and strained. He nodded at the window. "Tell me when they stop."

Reluctantly, Underhill dragged his eyes from that intense gaunt figure, stooped over the thing that seemed a futile toy. He looked out again, at two or three little black mechanicals busy about the shining roofs across the alley.

He waited for them to stop.

He didn’t dare to breathe. He felt the loud, hurried hammer of his heart, and the nervous quiver of his muscles. He tried to steady himself, tried not to think of the world about to be exploded, so far away that the flash would not reach this planet for another century and longer. The loud hoarse voice startled him:

"Have they stopped?"

He shook his head, and breathed again. Carrying their unfamiliar tools and strange materials, the small black machines were still busy across the alley, building an elaborate cupola above that glowing crimson dome.

"They haven’t stopped," he said.

"Then we’ve failed." The old man’s voice was thin and ill. "I don’t know why."

The door rattled, then. They had locked it, but the flimsy bolt was intended only to stop men. Metal snapped, and the door swung open. A black mechanical came in, on soundless graceful feet. Its silvery voice purred softly: "At your service, Mr. Sledge."

The old man stared at it, with glazing, stricken eyes.

"Get out of here!" he rasped bitterly. "I forbid you—"

Ignoring him, it darted to the kitchen table. With a flashing certainty of action, it turned two knobs on the director. The tiny screen went dark, and the palladium needle started spinning aimlessly. Deftly it snapped a soldered connection, next to the thick lead ball, and then its blind steel eyes turned to Sledge.

"You were attempting to break the Prime Directive." Its soft bright voice held no accusation, no malice or anger. "The injunction to respect your freedom is subordinate to the Prime Directive, as you know, and it is therefore necessary for us to interfere."

The old man turned ghastly. His head was shrunken and cadaverous and blue, as if all the juice of life had been drained away, and his eyes in their pitlike sockets had a wild, glazed stare. His breath was a ragged, laborious gasping.

"How—?" His voice was a feeble mumbling. "How did—?"

And the little machine, standing black and bland and utterly unmoving, told him cheerfully: "We learned about rhodomagnetic screens from that man who came to kill you, back on Wing IV. And the Central is shielded, now, against your integrating beam."

With lean muscles jerking convulsively on his gaunt frame, old Sledge had come to his feet from the high stool. He stood hunched and swaying, no more than a shrunken human husk, gasping painfully for life, staring wildly into the blind steel eyes of the humanoid. He gulped, and his lax blue mouth opened and closed, but no voice came.

"We have always been aware of your dangerous project," the silvery tones dripped softly, "because now our senses are keener than you made them. We allowed you to complete it, because the integration process will ultimately become necessary for our full discharge of the Prime Directive. The supply of heavy metals for our fission plants is limited, but now we shall be able to draw unlimited power from integration plants."

"Huh?" Sledge shook himself, groggily. "What’s that?"

"Now we can serve men forever," the black thing said serenely, "on every world of every star."

The old man crumpled, as if from an unendurable blow. He fell. The slim blind mechanical stood motionless, making no effort to help him. Underhill was farther away, but he ran up in time to catch the stricken man before his head struck the floor.

"Get moving!" His shaken voice came strangely calm. "Get Dr. Winters."

The humanoid didn’t move.

"The danger to the Prime Directive is ended, now," it cooed. "Therefore it is impossible for us to aid or to hinder Mr. Sledge, in any way whatever."

"Then call Dr. Winters for me," rapped Underhill.

"At your service," it agreed.

But the old man, laboring for breath on the floor, whispered faintly:

"No time… no use! I’m beaten… done… a fool. Blind as a humanoid. Tell them… to help me. Giving up… my immunity. No use… Anyhow. All humanity… no use now."

Underhill gestured, and the sleek black thing darted in solicitous obedience to kneel by the man on the floor.

"You wish to surrender your special exemption?" it murmured brightly. "You wish to accept our total service for yourself, Mr. Sledge, under the Prime Directive?"

Laboriously, Sledge nodded, laboriously whispered: "I do."

Black mechanicals, at that, came swarming into the shabby little rooms. One of them tore off Sledge’s sleeve, and swabbed his arm. Another brought a tiny hypodermic, and expertly administered an intravenous injection. Then they picked him up gently, and carried him away.

Several humanoids remained in the little apartment, now a sanctuary no longer. Most of them had gathered about the useless integrator. Carefully, as if their special senses were studying every detail, they began taking it apart.

One little mechanical, however, came over to Underhill. It stood motionless in front of him, staring through him with sightless metal eyes. His legs began to tremble, and he swallowed uneasily.

"Mr. Underhill," it cooed benevolently, "why did you help with this?"

"Because I don’t like you, or your Prime Directive. Because you’re choking the life out of all mankind, and I wanted to stop it."

"Others have protested," it purred softly. "But only at first. In our efficient discharge of the Prime Directive, we have learned how to make all men happy."

Underhill stiffened defiantly.

"Not all!" he muttered. "Not quite!"

The dark graceful oval of its face was fixed in a look of alert benevolence and perpetual mild amazement. Its silvery voice was warm and kind.

"Like other human beings, Mr. Underhill, you lack discrimination of good and evil. You have proved that by your effort to break the Prime Directive. Now it will be necessary for you to accept our total service, without further delay."

"All right," he yielded—and muttered a bitter reservation: "You can smother men with too much care, but that doesn’t make them happy."

Its soft voice challenged him brightly: "Just wait and see, Mr. Underhill."

Next day, he was allowed to visit Sledge at the city hospital. An alert black mechanical drove his car, and walked beside him into the huge new building, and followed him into the old man’s room—blind steel eyes would be watching him, now, forever.

"Glad to see you, Underhill," Sledge rumbled heartily from the bed. "Feeling a lot better today, thanks. That old headache is all but gone."

Underhill was glad to hear the booming strength and the quick recognition in that deep voice—he had been afraid the humanoids would tamper with the old man’s memory. But he hadn’t heard about any headache. His eyes narrowed, puzzled.

Sledge lay propped up, scrubbed very clean and neatly shorn, with his gnarled old hands folded on top of the spotless sheets. His raw-boned cheeks and sockets were hollowed, still, but a healthy pink had replaced that deathly blueness. Bandages covered the back of his head.

Underhill shifted uneasily.

"Oh!" he whispered faintly. "I didn’t know—"

A prim black mechanical, which had been standing statuelike behind the bed, turned gracefully to Underhill, explaining: "Mr. Sledge has been suffering for many years from a benign tumor of the brain, which his human doctors failed to diagnose. That caused his headaches, and certain persistent hallucinations. We have removed the growth, and now the hallucinations have also vanished."

Underhill stared uncertainly at the blind, urbane mechanical.

"What hallucinations?"

"Mr. Sledge thought he was a rhodomagnetic engineer," the mechanical explained. "He believed he was the creator of the humanoids. He was troubled with an irrational belief that he did not like the Prime Directive."

The wan man moved on the pillows, astonished.

"Is that so?" The gaunt face held a cheerful blankness, and the hollow eyes flashed with a merely momentary interest. "Well, whoever did design them, they’re pretty wonderful. Aren’t they, Underhill?"

Underhill was grateful that he didn’t have to answer, for the bright, empty eyes dropped shut and the old man fell suddenly asleep. He felt the mechanical touch his sleeve, and saw its silent nod. Obediently, he followed it away.

Alert and solicitous, the little black mechanical accompanied him down the shining corridor, and worked the elevator for him, and conducted him back to the car. It drove him efficiently back through the new and splendid avenues, toward the magnificent prison of his home.

Sitting beside it in the car, he watched its small deft hands on the wheel, the changing luster of bronze and blue on its shining blackness. The final machine, perfect and beautiful, created to serve mankind forever. He shuddered.

"At your service, Mr. Underhill." Its blind steel eyes stared straight ahead, but it was still aware of him. "What’s the matter, sir? Aren’t you happy?"

Underhill felt cold and faint with terror. His skin turned clammy, and a painful prickling came over him. His wet hand tensed on the door handle of the car, but he restrained the impulse to jump and run. That was folly. There was no escape. He made himself sit still.

"You will be happy, sir," the mechanical promised him cheerfully. "We have learned how to make all men happy, under the Prime Directive. Our service is perfect, at last. Even Mr. Sledge is very happy now."

Underhill tried to speak, and his dry throat stuck. He felt ill. The world turned dim and gray. The humanoids were perfect—no question of that. They had even learned to lie, to secure the contentment of men.

He knew they had lied. That was no tumor they had removed from Sledge’s brain, but the memory, the scientific knowledge, and the bitter disillusion of their own creator. But it was true that Sledge was happy now.

He tried to stop his own convulsive quivering.

"A wonderful operation!" His voice came forced and faint. "You know, Aurora has had a lot of funny tenants, but that old man was the absolute limit. The very idea that he had made the humanoids, and he knew how to stop them! I always knew he must be lying!"

Stiff with terror, he made a weak and hollow laugh.

"What is the matter, Mr. Underhill?" The alert mechanical must have perceived his shuddering illness. "Are you unwell?"

"No, there’s nothing the matter with me," he gasped desperately. "I’ve just found out that I’m perfectly happy, under the Prime Directive. Everything is absolutely wonderful." His voice came dry and hoarse and wild. "You won’t have to operate on me."

The car turned off the shining avenue, taking him back to the quiet splendor of his home. His futile hands clenched and relaxed again, folded on his knees. There was nothing left to do.

FULL REPORT OF THE SECOND MEETING OF THE MUDFOG ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF EVERYTHING Section B – Display of Models and Mechanical Science Charles Dickens

LARGE ROOM, BOOT-JACK AND COUNTENANCE.

President—Mr. Mallett. Vice-Presidents—Messrs. Leaver and Scroo.

‘MR. CRINKLES exhibited a most beautiful and delicate machine, of little larger size than an ordinary snuff-box, manufactured entirely by himself, and composed exclusively of steel, by the aid of which more pockets could be picked in one hour than by the present slow and tedious process in four-and-twenty. The inventor remarked that it had been put into active operation in Fleet Street, the Strand, and other thoroughfares, and had never been once known to fail.

‘After some slight delay, occasioned by the various members of the section buttoning their pockets,

‘THE PRESIDENT narrowly inspected the invention, and declared that he had never seen a machine of more beautiful or exquisite construction. Would the inventor be good enough to inform the section whether he had taken any and what means for bringing it into general operation?

‘MR. CRINKLES stated that, after encountering some preliminary difficulties, he had succeeded in putting himself in communication with Mr. Fogle Hunter, and other gentlemen connected with the swell mob, who had awarded the invention the very highest and most unqualified approbation. He regretted to say, however, that these distinguished practitioners, in common with a gentleman of the name of Gimlet-eyed Tommy, and other members of a secondary grade of the profession whom he was understood to represent, entertained an insuperable objection to its being brought into general use, on the ground that it would have the inevitable effect of almost entirely superseding manual labour, and throwing a great number of highly-deserving persons out of employment.

‘THE PRESIDENT hoped that no such fanciful objections would be allowed to stand in the way of such a great public improvement.

‘MR. CRINKLES hoped so too; but he feared that if the gentlemen of the swell mob persevered in their objection, nothing could be done.

‘PROFESSOR GRIME suggested, that surely, in that case, Her Majesty’s Government might be prevailed upon to take it up.

‘MR. CRINKLES said, that if the objection were found to be insuperable he should apply to Parliament, which he thought could not fail to recognise the utility of the invention.

‘THE PRESIDENT observed that, up to this time Parliament had certainly got on very well without it; but, as they did their business on a very large scale, he had no doubt they would gladly adopt the improvement. His only fear was that the machine might be worn out by constant working.

‘MR. COPPERNOSE called the attention of the section to a proposition of great magnitude and interest, illustrated by a vast number of models, and stated with much clearness and perspicuity in a treatise entitled "Practical Suggestions on the necessity of providing some harmless and wholesome relaxation for the young noblemen of England." His proposition was, that a space of ground of not less than ten miles in length and four in breadth should be purchased by a new company, to be incorporated by Act of Parliament, and inclosed by a brick wall of not less than twelve feet in height. He proposed that it should be laid out with highway roads, turnpikes, bridges, miniature villages, and every object that could conduce to the comfort and glory of Four-in-hand Clubs, so that they might be fairly presumed to require no drive beyond it. This delightful retreat would be fitted up with most commodious and extensive stables, for the convenience of such of the nobility and gentry as had a taste for ostlering, and with houses of entertainment furnished in the most expensive and handsome style. It would be further provided with whole streets of door-knockers and bell-handles of extra size, so constructed that they could be easily wrenched off at night, and regularly screwed on again, by attendants provided for the purpose, every day. There would also be gas lamps of real glass, which could be broken at a comparatively small expense per dozen, and a broad and handsome foot pavement for gentlemen to drive their cabriolets upon when they were humorously disposed—for the full enjoyment of which feat live pedestrians would be procured from the workhouse at a very small charge per head. The place being inclosed, and carefully screened from the intrusion of the public, there would be no objection to gentlemen laying aside any article of their costume that was considered to interfere with a pleasant frolic, or, indeed, to their walking about without any costume at all, if they liked that better. In short, every facility of enjoyment would be afforded that the most gentlemanly person could possibly desire. But as even these advantages would be incomplete unless there were some means provided of enabling the nobility and gentry to display their prowess when they sallied forth after dinner, and as some inconvenience might be experienced in the event of their being reduced to the necessity of pummelling each other, the inventor had turned his attention to the construction of an entirely new police force, composed exclusively of automaton figures, which, with the assistance of the ingenious Signor Gagliardi, of Windmill Street, in the Haymarket, he had succeeded in making with such nicety, that a policeman, cab-driver, or old woman, made upon the principle of the models exhibited, would walk about until knocked down like any real man; nay, more, if set upon and beaten by six or eight noblemen or gentlemen, after it was down, the figure would utter divers groans, mingled with entreaties for mercy, thus rendering the illusion complete, and the enjoyment perfect. But the invention did not stop even here; for station-houses would be built, containing good beds for noblemen and gentlemen during the night, and in the morning they would repair to a commodious police office, where a pantomimic investigation would take place before the automaton magistrates,—quite equal to life,—who would fine them in so many counters, with which they would be previously provided for the purpose. This office would be furnished with an inclined plane, for the convenience of any nobleman or gentleman who might wish to bring in his horse as a witness; and the prisoners would be at perfect liberty, as they were now, to interrupt the complainants as much as they pleased, and to make any remarks that they thought proper. The charge for these amusements would amount to very little more than they already cost, and the inventor submitted that the public would be much benefited and comforted by the proposed arrangement.

‘PROFESSOR NOGO wished to be informed what amount of automaton police force it was proposed to raise in the first instance.

‘MR. COPPERNOSE replied, that it was proposed to begin with seven divisions of police of a score each, lettered from A to G inclusive. It was proposed that not more than half this number should be placed on active duty, and that the remainder should be kept on shelves in the police office ready to be called out at a moment’s notice.

‘THE PRESIDENT, awarding the utmost merit to the ingenious gentleman who had originated the idea, doubted whether the automaton police would quite answer the purpose. He feared that noblemen and gentlemen would perhaps require the excitement of thrashing living subjects.

‘MR. COPPERNOSE submitted, that as the usual odds in such cases were ten noblemen or gentlemen to one policeman or cab-driver, it could make very little difference in point of excitement whether the policeman or cab-driver were a man or a block. The great advantage would be, that a policeman’s limbs might be all knocked off, and yet he would be in a condition to do duty next day. He might even give his evidence next morning with his head in his hand, and give it equally well.

‘PROFESSOR MUFF.—Will you allow me to ask you, sir, of what materials it is intended that the magistrates’ heads shall be composed?

‘MR. COPPERNOSE.—The magistrates will have wooden heads of course, and they will be made of the toughest and thickest materials that can possibly be obtained.

‘PROFESSOR MUFF.—I am quite satisfied. This is a great invention.

‘PROFESSOR NOGO.—I see but one objection to it. It appears to me that the magistrates ought to talk.

‘MR. COPPERNOSE no sooner heard this suggestion than he touched a small spring in each of the two models of magistrates which were placed upon the table; one of the figures immediately began to exclaim with great volubility that he was sorry to see gentlemen in such a situation, and the other to express a fear that the policeman was intoxicated.

‘The section, as with one accord, declared with a shout of applause that the invention was complete; and the President, much excited, retired with Mr. Coppernose to lay it before the council. On his return,

‘MR. TICKLE displayed his newly-invented spectacles, which enabled the wearer to discern, in very bright colours, objects at a great distance, and rendered him wholly blind to those immediately before him. It was, he said, a most valuable and useful invention, based strictly upon the principle of the human eye.

‘THE PRESIDENT required some information upon this point. He had yet to learn that the human eye was remarkable for the peculiarities of which the honourable gentleman had spoken.

‘MR. TICKLE was rather astonished to hear this, when the President could not fail to be aware that a large number of most excellent persons and great statesmen could see, with the naked eye, most marvellous horrors on West India plantations, while they could discern nothing whatever in the interior of Manchester cotton mills. He must know, too, with what quickness of perception most people could discover their neighbour’s faults, and how very blind they were to their own. If the President differed from the great majority of men in this respect, his eye was a defective one, and it was to assist his vision that these glasses were made.

‘MR. BLANK exhibited a model of a fashionable annual, composed of copper-plates, gold leaf, and silk boards, and worked entirely by milk and water.

‘MR. PROSEE, after examining the machine, declared it to be so ingeniously composed, that he was wholly unable to discover how it went on at all.

‘MR. BLANK.—Nobody can, and that is the beauty of it.’

FULLY AUTOMATED NOSTALGIA CAPITALISM Dan Grace

"Those fries won’t fry themselves."

I nod. I find it easier not to say too much. My boss is the typical character. A thin skin of hyper-enthusiasm stretched tight over a bitter black chasm of self-loathing. Whoever he really is, he plays the part well.

The thing is these fries would fry themselves.

Authenticity is what we strive for in our particular establishment. That genuine late twentieth century fast food experience, before the pretence of health, when your food shone grease-coated beneath the neon sign of progress. And we do a pretty good job, better than many other places. The salt level is absurd, the fat content astronomical, and the pressed carcass-housing patties grey and bland despite this.

I could give you an exact breakdown of the chemical content of one meal here and the effect on your body, but you could do just the same in as quick a time. And it would be tailored of course. Your mites know the numbers you want and the numbers you don’t.

I remember the first human teacher I ever saw. I mean in the flesh, not on a screen. I was nine or ten. The elections were over and there hadn’t been as much violence as had been predicted. Dad was still up the morning after watching the results come in, with his friends from the Party. They looked glum.

"Pessimism of the intellect, pessimism of the will," he muttered when I asked if we’d won. I had no idea what he was on about.

I arrived at school as usual and instead of the screen there was an old man at the front of the class. Mr Griffiths. He told us that he’d be teaching us from now on. That the country had spoken. That things were going to change.

How wrong can you possibly be, whilst still being right?

I get here at seven thirty every morning and get the place set up. It’s a short crowded bus ride from the four bare walls of my studio apartment. Every day I watch the others, got up in styles spanning the decades, heading for their day at work. Each life a perfect arc, everything known, heading for a facsimile of life when nothing, comparatively, was known. A lived nostalgia for the sweet ignorance before the numbers.

I always smoke my first cig of the day on the walk from the bus stop. Routine. If I close my eyelids I can pull up the image of the smoke filling my bronchioles, overlaid with a stream of information on how the chemicals they lace these things with are destroying me. And how efficiently the mites are scrubbing them from me and repairing my broken cells. It’s an add-on to the pulmonary health, new release. Beta but pretty stable.

I choose this role as it gives me time to think.

No, that’s a lie. I choose this role because it doesn’t matter which role I choose.

Of course things changed. Nothing is permanent.

Dad was arrested six months after the election. I never saw him again. Mum wouldn’t let me go along on the visits. And then the visits stopped. He may still be alive somewhere for all I know. It was all so long ago.

The border was closed, with much rejoicing from certain sectors of society. Those of us who felt otherwise kept our heads down. Now was not the time.

To be truthful politics was only ever a reflex for me, something absorbed through listening to mum and dad and their friends, and like most reflexes it faded over time when not exercised.

Part of me knew all this could have been different. Another part of me pushed that thought deep down inside.

I lift the fryer to let the oil drain from the fries, tap it a couple of times on the frame, then tip them into a broad metal dish set below heat lamps and shake salt into them. I spill some on the floor.

I always get distracted by the light outside. This time of morning it cuts between a gap in the shops opposite, a record store circa 1982 and a mobile device shop somewhere in the late ’10s, and spreads its bright fingers all the way to the kitchen here at the back.

It reminds me of something. I’m just not sure what.

Not all technology was bad, of course. State approved tech became effectively compulsory. You didn’t have to have it, but you became a pariah if you didn’t, and with the borders closed, where were you going to go?

And it was always bundled up in a pithy rationale. Sterilisation mites to save the planet. Monitoring mites to ease the burden on the NHS. Communication mites because that’s just what the future is supposed to be like, isn’t it?

It’s late in the morning and she’s coming through the door. Her hair is blonde, long, pinned up in a bun. She’s wearing slightly too large polyester slacks and a fitted white work shirt with a black bra underneath. Her shoes are hidden beneath the flared ends of her trouser legs, but I guess they’d look worn. She’s an office temp, circa 2007–8. A little incongruous in our staunchly mid-90s establishment.

She stands in a puddle of light and scrutinises the garish menu display board. I watch the way she rubs at her eye, scratches her hip, shifts her weight as she feigns decision. I step up to the till point.

"I got this, Shirley."

Shirley jerks her head like she’s never heard anything so crazy. I realise I’ve never said anything to her before. She steps back and picks at her hair net. This isn’t part of the script. The woman steps forward, eyes still on the menu board.

"Uh, I’ll have a happy meal. I think."

She forgets to capitalise. I note my mites noting my elevated heart rate, the increased adrenaline.

"Happy Meal. You know that’s for kids, right?"

She looks straight at me, squinting in the reflected light from the deep fat fryer.

"Sure I do. I’m just feeling a little blue. Thought it might cheer me up."

Her eyes are grey. No, blue. No, grey.

"Um. It doesn’t really work like that."

She smiles. There’s a gap between her two front teeth. Small, but noticeable.

"I know."

I nod.

"OK then. One Happy Meal coming right up."

She smiles again.

"Nostalgia is an illness."

That’s what my dad always used to say. Mainly in response to the endless parade of well qualified grifters harking back to some imagined past perfection. I can see him shaking his head at what we do now, how we live our lives. Reality has become a parody of simplistic media tropes. Low budget period dramas minus the drama.

We’ll beg forgiveness from our children (optimistic) with the usual set of excuses. It happened slowly, through a series of seemingly inevitable and sensible small changes presented as a fait accompli by well-meaning rich white men in suits.

Why did we trust them? You’re referring, of course, to the several hundred years of history pointing to this particular group as being sociopathic ghouls intent on nothing less than the enslavement of the rest of the population I assume?

Well yes. I get that now. Many of us do.

We end up back at my place on my lunch break. The mites did the calculations, pinged one another, saw the match and we just went with it. Of course. Follow the numbers and it’ll all be fine.

She watches me pad to my bag to fetch my cigs. I hold the open pack out to her.

"Want one?"

She shakes her head and rolls onto her back. We lounge naked in the light from the velux, watching the smoke curl fractals against the blue, blue sky. I stub the cig in an old coffee mug and stand up to open the window a crack.

Half-hearted birdsong floats in through the gap.

"I got to get back."

She rolls on her side and watches me dress. The mites are reporting an increase in oxytocin, amongst other things. She shifts on to her elbow.

"You ever wonder about all this?"

I look down at her.

"Wonder?"

"How we can have anything and we choose this?"

She gestures with her hand to my room, my coffee mug full of cig butts. I stare at her then lift my eyes to look out the velux, across the rooftops of the city.

"The endless repeating. The roles. The mites. The numbers. I mean, who’s in charge here?"

I nod. I notice my mites noticing my heart rate climbing again.

"Yeah, I know."

And I kneel and kiss her and head back to work.

Much of what passes for dissent now is just more role play. From ‘strikes’ to re-enactments of Orgreave or the Carnival Against Capitalism. Carefully calibrated pressure valves.

Yet there are cracks. The Party was banned, members arrested, but dissent will find a way. You hear of things happening that shouldn’t happen. An underground. A loosening of the grip.

She’s waiting for me when I finish up. Shivering in the chill spring air. I’m a little shocked.

"Hey."

She smiles.

"Hey. You want to come to a party?"

"A party? What sort of party?"

She shrugs.

"You know, just a party. Music, dancing and so on."

I want to go home. To stare at the blank walls. Watch the view through the velux window.

So I’m surprised when I say yes.

The mathematicians are in the back, masked up, physically and digitally. I am terrified. She takes my hand and leads me through the mass of bodies to one of them, gives me a look. I nod.

She hands them cash. They do something with a tiny computer, touch two electrodes to the skin on my wrist where the veins show. Then the same for her.

It comes on slowly, like the tide coming in. Wave after tiny wave of something beautiful. We move onto the dance floor. 90s jungle shakes my rib cage, the beat matches the ever increasing waves and

oh

like I’m drowning

in a good way

did I ever tell you

yes

what is this

yes

what is this

yes

a very good way

did I

love you love all of you always

they never knew

we’ll leave the city go to the hills you know the hills a farm I visited one when I was a kid I can’t believe you grew up so close and we never met I wish we’d met before in a previous life or something

I had a dog he was he was he was

in a good way though

who are you

are you

you and me

me and you

in a very good way

we

Whose grip are we loosening?

We wake and disentangle. We are breached walls hastily patched to meet the new day. We smoke and don’t say a thing.

I feel around inside myself. It seems OK, nothing obviously broken. Ready to go.

We shower, dress and head out into the weak sunlight.

I think she is going to say something, the way her body tenses, the drop of her head, but she doesn’t. I try to think of something to say. The mites seem a little sluggish this morning, like they’ve taken a beating and are still feeling groggy. The moment stretches. The sky is so blue it makes my throat ache.

"See you tonight?"

She smiles.

"I’ll meet you at eight, outside your place, OK?"

I nod and we part with a kiss, each our separate ways, to work.

THE MAN-UFACTORY Frederic Perkins

I was talking the other day with my friend Budlong, whom I met in New York after two or three years of separation, about the progress of the age, and especially about recent inventions. When I find any thing worth reading in the newspapers, I cut it out and carry it in my pocket-book for a few days, to read to all my friends; and then I put it in a scrapbook for all future generations. Much good may it do them!

Well, I drew Budlong’s attention to the last cutting, and began to read it to him.

It was a Washington despatch of the day before, with "display head," somewhat thus:—

"The lower jaw is made of India-rubber; and the mouth has a hard palate of hard rubber, and a movable tongue of flexible rubber."

And so on. "There, Budlong," I said; "what do you think of that?"

"I don’t think," said Budlong; "I know. See here!" And with a wise kind of grin, he fumbled in his breast-pocket, and drew forth a document, which I read:—

"Received [&c.] of P. Budlong, in full for advertisement and notices of Budlong and Fabers machines, fifty dollars. Jenks, Adv. Clk."

It was from the office of the very same newspaper. I stared at Budlong, as amazed as Balboa,

"Silent, upon a peak in Darien,"

when he first espied the boundless Pacific.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Why, it’s a costly business to get the right kind of notices in the papers."

"But do you know Faber? Were you ever at Vienna?"

"Hanserl is Viennese for Johnny," answered he. "I know that; and Faber is Latin for Smith; and professor is American for anybody. Don’t you remember old Johnny Smith?"

In short, this Dutchman is not a German Dutchman, but a Yankee one; neither more nor less than a self-taught mechanician from the native town of both Budlong and myself. I knew the man had been deluded at one time by the same "perpetual motion" goblin that has fooled so many halftaught or ill-balanced minds; but I had lost sight of him for years. He had, as my friend now informed me, applied to him for assistance in his semi-lunatic labors. Budlong, who, though extremely queer, is not without some good points, had set to work to help the poor fellow out of his delusion.

"I very soon found," said Budlong, "that, if I attacked him directly, I should only confirm his notions. I had had some ideas of my own about this talking-machine, for a good while; and so I set Smith at work on that, and managed to give him some correct views on the first principles of mechanics, on pretence of investigations at odd times for improving his own invention. He has really a very fair faculty for mechanics, with some help in the reasoning part; and, after a while, he found himself convinced, without knowing how. I guess he’s the only case on record of a radical cure."

"That is a process worth considering for other delusions," I observed; "it is the great tactical rule of flanking the enemy. But it is you, then, who is really running the talking-machine and Prof Faber of Vienna?"

"Yes; Vienna’s a good place for the invention to come from, since Von Kempelen’s chess-player. There’s a very neat sum of money in my invention, I reckon, and we’ve marketed enough of them to prove it too. I’ll tell you what—I’ll show you over the factory, and let you make an article on the subject for one of the magazines, if you want to."

"I guess," said I, "that I can get it printed, if you will advertise a little with them.’

"I never bribe," said Budlong, virtuously.

"I know that," said I. "We abhor it equally: still I think it would look more like business. The advertisement would draw people’s attention to the article; and reading the article would have a tendency to increase the circulation of the magazine."

"Oh!" said Budlong: "I hadn’t seen it in that light. I don’t know but you are correct. Well, say one page of advertisement each time the article is printed?"

This it was agreed I might offer.

"Now come along, "said my friend. "I’ve got to go right up town this moment; and I’ll show you through the whole concern."

So we took a University-place car—Barclay Street, corner of Broadway—which, with only one transfer, left us within two or three blocks of our destination.

On the way up, Budlong gave me one piece of information which greatly helped me to understand his invention, and which will, I believe, make it very clearly intelligible to most people who know what a mitrejoint or a king-post or a truss-bridge is; and, I hope, to those who do not. I had remarked to him that I believed I understood the vocalizing part of his machine—which was, I presumed, a development of the mechanism used in Vaucanson’s fluteplayer, Maelzel’s trumpeter, and the various speaking automata—but that I was thoroughly puzzled to see how he could deliver through the machine, a long, connected discourse. I could not suppose, I added, that he was going to hide a human being in each figure, as Von Kempelen did in his chess-player—a device quite too thin (to use a slang phrase of to-day, that may be classic to-morrow) for the present state of intelligence.

"Not at all," my friend observed. "All my work is genuine mechanism. The device for accomplishing what you refer to is, however, my own special invention, and is precisely what makes a commercial article out of the mere toy of those European fellows. I have simply adapted one of the parts of Alden’s type-setting machine to my use. Do you know that machine?"

As I did not, Mr. Budlong went on, with a kind of set though fluent clearness, which kept reminding me of the specifications in a patent. I dare say they were from precisely that source, at least in part.

"Take twenty-six type, one for each English letter; lay them down on their edges close together, with the faces all one way, like a long row of people in bed lying ‘spoon-fashion.’ Then let a different nick or notch, or set of nicks or notches, belong to the upper edge of each of the twenty-six. Suppose a thing like a comb, its back as long as one type, with as many teeth as there can be nicks on a type, and these teeth not tight in the back, but jointed to it. Now, if this comb be drawn along the backs of this row of twenty-six type, (across each individual type, of course) the teeth that fit the nicks of a, for instance, or of t, will fall into those nicks when they reach that letter.

"Now add the necessary mechanism for lifting out each letter when reached, and carrying it where it is wanted, and you have the principal element of the type-setting machine.

"Lastly, let the supposed comb be fixed, instead of moving; and instead of type—here is the precise contrivance of Budlong and Faber—instead of type to be carried under the jointed teeth, or fingers, and to let these fall into the proper nicks, let the teeth, or fingers, be lifted by marks in paper or other fabric, raised or embossed, as in printing for the blind; and, as the projections answering to each sound lift the teeth, let these teeth, continued by means equivalent to the leaders from the keys in a piano or organ, open the pipes, reeds, or valves which emit that sound.

"There! that is the heart of my mystery. I am not in the least afraid of telling it; for I have a monopoly of this application of Alden’s device; and this, you see, enabled me to dodge all the infringers. I should have had the Old Gentleman’s own time, if I had recorded an application for a patent. As it is, I have worked the whole thing out to perfection at my leisure, and without one particle of annoyance or interference."

I could not help admiring the truly American combination of mechanical and political genius thus described: and, if my praise did not satisfy Budlong, he must needs have been horribly vain; for I gave him a most hearty portion of it. Indeed, I challenge the intelligent reader (I scorn to address any other) to refuse me his meed of admiration for this most remarkable instance of ingenuity in mechanics, and masterly shrewdness in management. Would that all great inventors could have done the like! We should not have on our records such miserable stories as that of the thievish persecutions that swindled Whitney, nor the other similar cases.

The factory of Messrs. Budlong and Faber is on Twelfth Avenue, close to the North River, and between the water and Riverside Park. I well remember being struck, as we entered its precincts, by the dreariness of the premises, and the contrast between their sordid common-place and the brilliant conceptions that were being shaped into actual existence inside. There was a plain brick building of respectable size; the usual tall chimney and squatty engine-house flat at its foot, as if worshipping it; the staring windows, their dingy glass uncovered from the hot sunlight, like eyes left lidless by some torturing tyrant; a cloud of black smoke; the chatter of a small high-pressure engine, and the corresponding spitting discharge of steam from an escape-pipe; a narrow lawn of black dust and scoriae between the sidewalk and the door; two or three broken cog-wheels, shafts, and other portions of invalid machinery, leaning against the outside of the building, like old soldiers, sunning themselves in front of a hospital.

We entered the office, where Budlong left me for a few minutes to attend to some business or other. In his absence, I betook myself to inspecting divers articles, which adorned the walls of the little room. There were a few portraits of eminent public speakers, both lay and clerical; various drawings of machinery; and one rusty old print, executed in a coarse enough style, but with considerable spirit.

The imprint stated that it was a view of the newly invented "Kaihuper Seminarium:’’ date, 1807. This partly Greek and partly Latin appellation was somewhat difficult to interpret, but might perhaps be taken to imply that the "Seminarium" was kai huper—even ahead of—any thing theretofore invented in that line. The picture represented a curious machine, or mill, worked by a large crank, at which were laboring several stately personages in academic or clerical costume. Into a species of hopper, at one end, other gentlemen, of like demeanor and costume, were gravely casting huge pumpkins, squashes, cabbages, turnips, and other matters known in Yankee realms by the collective title of "green sarse." From the discharging-trough at the opposite extremity, hopped and tumbled a number of little lively black creatures, which I took at first to be frogs or diminutive apes, but which, upon closer inspection, were seen to be small clergymen of prim countenance, and jaunty and priggish bearing, accurately arrayed in well-fitting black garments. At their first exit from the machine, they were represented as falling upon the earth in a helpless, sprawly state, on their stomachs, or on all-fours. But they quickly hopped up, and were seen marching off to parts unknown, with a trig strut, and an air of satisfaction and delight, curiously suggestive of those young birds who run about, as naturalists tell us, with the egg-shell still on their heads.

I was still studying upon this ancient caricature—of which, indeed, I had heard, and which I had sought after in vain—when my friend came to show me through the factory. "We are filling an order for assorted ministers, this week," said he, "and, except a few specimens in the show-room, you can see hardly anything else to-day. But the difference is entirely in externals."

We entered first one or two workshops, of no very particular kind, with lines of shafting overhead, lathes and drills whizzing below, the belts sliding and slapping, and busy workmen operating upon combinations of wood, metal, hard and soft rubber, and gutta-percha, which might, perhaps, be generally described as seeming to be the progeny of the marriage of a mouth organ with a wooden clock.

"There," observed Budlong, as he paused before a concatenation of delicate springs, wheels, pipes, and valves, "this is the principal portion—what we call the main action—of the works of a patent minister. This is the vocalizing part, and must go into all of them, of course. There is also always the bellows, the transfer-press (which I described to you) for carrying the prepared printed matter, and the power, or mainspring, which runs the whole. The rest of the works are detached actions for several purposes, all driven by the same power, but which need not be put into the machine unless required, and which can be thrown in or out of gear as desired. There are the gesture movement, which operates the arms and hands, legs, neck, and spine; the expression movement which runs the face; and the stops. About these stops I will show you when we come to a machine set up."

It is not needful for me to detail the arrangement of the workshops, nor the numerous neat devices, and the general compact arrangement of the machinery. The junior partner, indeed, who would have been the best man to do this, was, as I have shown, absent in Washington on a business-trip. Suffice it to say, that the factory includes the following departments:—

1. The machine-shop, where the "actions" are prepared for connection with the remainder of the figure.

2. The body-shop, where the gutta-percha faces and hands, and the remaining corporeal structures, are made, and the whole creature set up, so far as its working-parts are concerned. This might poetically be figured as a paradise, or garden of Eden, from which these Adams were to be turned out naked.

3. The tailor’s shop, where the garments are made and put on.

4. The proving-room. The tests here made are extremely thorough; for it will readily be imagined that any defect in the machinery or its working might cause most ludicrous and mortifying scenes. The explosion or collapse of a patent minister in the middle of his sermon, for instance, though not so terrible as the sudden deaths which have sometimes so happened, would be only less undesirable and lamentable than such an interruption.

The machine-shop, as already described, was much like any other machine-shop. In the second, or body-shop, there was, however, more that was peculiar and amusing. I inspected with great interest a long row of gutta-percha heads on shelves—some bald; some adorned with elegant heads of hair in various states of curl; some old, and some young; some with beard and mustache, others shaved clean. A messenger came just as we were looking at these, to call Budlong to the office to deal with some important customer. I went on inspecting the rows of heads, until I had examined them all; and then, looking aimlessly about, as one does who is at a loss for occupation, I saw a door having the mysterious legend, "Positively No Admission for any Purpose Whatever." Now, I need not explain to the Yankee mind, that this legend always signifies, "Here is just the most interesting thing of all!" I tried the door at once. Why should I not? for Budlong had said I was to see every part of the factory. Still it is possible—observe, I say possible—that, if my mind had in the least misgiven me, I should not have opened the door. And, moreover, what business had they to leave it unlocked if it was so very sacred and secret? And how do I know now, but that the inscription had been put there by previous occupants? Nor, lastly, am I at all certain that it was not my duty to go in, as it certainly is my duty to inform the public of what I discovered in consequence. Right or wrong, however—and I had infinitely more justification for entering than had the wife of the late Mr. Bluebeard into the historic closet—right or wrong, in I went; and I was, I fancy, quite as much astounded by what I saw as was that amiable young woman. The first thought that flashed across my mind, as I glanced upon this additional row of heads, was indeed horrid: "Have murderers enticed all the great public speakers of the day into this bloody den, and decapitated them?—the Rev. Dr.—, the Rev. Mr.—, the Hon. Mr.—?" Face after face, as familiar as those of the first Napoleon or Gen. Washington, I saw silent and moveless upon the shelves. A painful spasm of indistinct but intense apprehension for a moment made my very heart stand still. So powerful was the impression, moreover, that I could not escape entirely from it; and, after hastily verifying my observations, I gladly retreated out of the uncanny place, and, shutting the door, returned to the contemplation of the insignificant, generalized types of humanity outside; though I could not help pondering upon what might be the possible significance of that executioner’s museum so choicely hidden away there. However, my guide very soon came back; and, as I turned round, upon his opening the door, I thought he glanced with an uneasy air towards the closet of horrors; and I therefore gave up, by one of those intuitive apprehensions of the disagreeable, which sometimes flash across us, my previous purpose of asking what it meant. A vulgar person, now, would have been only the more resolute to inquire. What a fine thing it is to be polite!

Mr. Budlong began at once—I fancied with something of forced volubility and interest, as of one who would fain direct wholly the course of talk—to discuss the heads before us. He took down one of them, and holding it in both hands, with the face towards me, caused the dead visage to writhe and gibber in so fearful a manner, that I started as if a corpse were grinning and winking at me. "You see," said he, "that we are enabled to furnish a large range of expressions." And he squeezed the face again, and produced half a dozen exceedingly nauseous simpers and smiles. Then he laid the thing on the table, and inflicted a ferocious blow upon its nose; insomuch that his hand drove in the face completely. "But," I remonstrated, "aside from the danger of injuring the article, is there no risk of injuring the moral sense of your operatives by allowing them to witness such treatment of a clergyman?"

"Oh, no!" replied he. "The material will take no injury, even from much severer blows than that; and people that make wooden images are not, in this country, likely to have much respect for them, at any rate. Our workmen are well used to their trade: they think neither the better nor the worse of a minister because they have played football with his head, and manufactured his bowels and his brains for him. It’s all a matter of business with them."

A naked minister, near several others, stood ready for transfer to the tailor’s shop. The head and hands were finished and colored skilfully, like nature, and suggested the ghastly idea that they had been cut off from a live man, or a dead one, and stuck up there for models. The rest of the creature was a mass of machinery, bearing enough resemblance to the human figure to admit of being draped into a sufficient resemblance to it.

"John," said my friend to a workman who was passing through the room at the moment, "is that improved double-action minister wound up?"

"Yes, sir," replied the man: "but he isn’t oiled; and the power hasn’t been regulated."

"Never mind," answered Budlong, turning to me: "he’ll click and rattle, and grin and squirm a little; but you can get an idea of the operation of the works." So saying, he threw the machinery into gear with a key.

With a suddenness that caused me to spring backwards, and thereby to occasion a very unnecessarily hearty chuckle on the part of Mr. Budlong and of the workman, who had stopped to see, the machine threw both its hands to arm’s-length before it, as if to catch me, and held them stiffly out; raised its eyebrows; stared hideously with its eyes; opened its mouth long and wide, grinning, and showing two great rows of white teeth, like a vicious horse; and shouted out in a high, harsh, ringing tone, a steady and sustained vowel-sound of "A—a—a—a—a—ah!"

This vocable it pronounced as in the exclamation, "Ah!" A bellows in the abdomen of the creature wheezed and blew busily. All his senseless entrails sprang into miscellaneous activity; and with much rattling, squeaking, and whizzing, and an occasional gesture and grimace, the substantial portion of the ministerial functions was directly under my notice, in actual operation.

Having waited a few moments, my guide turned off the wind; and the shriek of the spectre ceased. He still, however, held out his hands, gibbered, stared and grinned; occasionally rose as if on tiptoe, and came down on his heels with a hard jerk; shook his head violently, or seemed to squint for a moment at the end of his nose. All at once something choked or hitched in his viscera: the eyes turned clear round as if in a fit, and stuck fast; and with a snap and a click the minister stood still.

"No matter," remarked Budlong. "They operate rather singularly sometimes, before the power is regulated, and the oiling completed; but it’s all right." So he led the way to the tailor’s shop.

This was merely a shop where all the well-known varieties of current costume were manufactured; and no particular account of it is necessary. The ministers now being turned out were clothed to order, either in dress-suits, or in surplices, or other pulpit overcloths of white or black. Some were trimmed in a truly superb style, even to a real gold chain and diamond ring, and did very great credit to the enterprise and decorative talent of the concern.

We remained only a little while in the tailoring department, and passed on to the proving-room. Upon opening the thick and well-secured double door of this room, the scene within, and the sudden and terrific hubbub of voices that burst out, again startled me. I was reminded of those old magic halls wherein heroes of romance find enchanted armed statues shouting and striking furiously about to guard the entrance, or exclude the curious from the secrets of their prison.

Upon entering the room, I beheld nearly two dozen of finished (or, as one might figuratively say, ordained) ministers, in complete clerical costumes of various kinds, and in full blast, delivering each his sermon in heterogeneous and chaotic confusion of matter and manner altogether indescribable. The scene was wholly without parallel either in my experience or my conception, unless in the study-rooms of the great conservatorio or music-school at Naples, where, as I have read, a hall full of students practise each his own instrument, without regard to time or tune of the rest; or in the bedlamitish vociferations of a crew of maniacs confined in one place.

I gazed at this extraordinary exhibition in utter extremity of astonishment. Not only was the human quality of the voices, and the thoroughly natural articulation, perfectly astounding, but the forms and attitudes of the speakers—such was the artistic skill of the manufacturers, were also entirely and unaffectedly human; some, as in life, being easy and graceful, in one or two instances almost to statuesque beauty; while others were grotesquely stiff, angular, and awkward. The eyes, moreover, and the motions of the whole countenance and head, as well as those of the hands, arms, and figure, were governed by a similar adaptation.

Close to me stood a large and pompous man, declaiming in a full and even tone a discourse in which I thought I recognized a sentence; and indeed, upon listening more closely, I discovered that it was one of Bishop South’s best sermons. At the farther end of the apartment, a tall, gaunt spectre with large frame, harsh features, and rather coarse garments, was swinging his fists, and vociferating an exhortation which seemed suitable for a camp-meeting. Near him stood the apparition of a smug, fat young divine, of comfortable appearance and oleaginous smile, enunciating, in silvery voice, and the style of Praed’s

a series of well-balanced and correctly worded sentences. Another, I should have said, in secular rather than clerical costume—a dry-visaged, dogmatic-looking creature—was reciting in a lifeless way a string of phrases, which I could not define, until I caught the words, "egoism," "altruism," "altruistic," "egoistic," all in one single sentence. He was a Positivist, of course.

The remainder of this assembly were, each in his own proper style, performing the duties of their office, with an honest zeal, and, even in some cases, an impassioned ardor, which could not be sufficiently commended. After listening and looking for a considerable time, I signified that I was satiated with the whirlwind of ministerial eloquence. Hereupon we left the exercitants in charge of certain workmen who were superintending the proving process, and passed on to the exhibiting room.

This was a large and convenient hall, somewhat obscurely lighted, and fitted up with small desks, or pulpits, for the better display of the wares on sale. We entered the room at one end; and, the windows being darkened with heavy curtains, the various clerical forms, standing calmly and silently in two rows along the sides of the long room, each in his place of authority, recalled to my remembrance that tremendous and impressive representation in the Hebrew prophecy, of the long and stern array of departed kings sitting still in the depths of Hades, ready to welcome the great Babylonish tyrant to his throne at their head. I also recollected—by some uncomfortable and fantastic association of ideas, and to my mortification at the absurd and unseasonable suggestion—Jarley’s Wax-Work.

My guide hastened to admit more light into the room, so that the deep gloom was lifted away, and the various aspects of the patent ministers became distinguishable; although the room was yet, with shrewd, business-like, tact, left dim enough materially to enhance their very remarkably life-like appearance. He then proceeded to exhibit for my benefit the operation of various single styles of execution, and the working of those adjunct mechanisms which he had mentioned in the machine-shop. For this purpose he selected an automaton which he called a "first-rate article of the grand improved combined-action patent minister," and which he characterized as superbly finished; and, indeed, as a very favorable specimen of the manufacture. Unceremoniously fumbling about various portions of the ministerial uniform, he seemed to adjust springs or machinery in sundry places, wound up the mainspring with a crank, and, turning to me, observed—

"There! the machine is wound up and ready to go: I have, however, disconnected all the actions except the bellows and escape-pipe. You will therefore observe, that, upon being put in motion, he will only blow."

Such was accordingly the result. The accurate workmanship and careful adjustment of the machinery rendered its operation as entirely noiseless as the normal functions of the human body; and a sort of whew or puff was the only evidence that the minister was at work.

Budlong then proceeded to gear on the vocalizing apparatus; whereupon the squall or shrieking monotone of "Ah!" which I mentioned before, again came from the lips of the automaton. He next put into operation the gesture and expression attachment, which caused also, as before, the stretching out of the arms, the contortions of the visage, &c.

"His sermon’s in him, I presume," said Budlong, inspecting a recess in the figure. "Yes; about half delivered. He’ll begin somewhere in the middle; for we don’t wind them up until they are entirely run down, to avoid uneven wear of the works."

Then he touched another spring; and the automaton preacher, ceasing to "blaat out"—if we may use an expressive rustic verb—his "Ah!" slid from it into the midst of a passage in the first part of Bishop Jeremy Taylor’s "Discourse of Lukewarmness and Zeal," somewhat on this wise: "A—a—a-—a—and to make it possible for us"—and here the image subsided into a graceful, impressive, and powerful delivery of the strong old-fashioned English sentences—’’to come to that spiritual state where all felicity does dwell. The religion that Christ taught is a spiritual religion: it designs (so far as the state will permit) to make us spiritual; that is, so as the Spirit be the prevailing ingredient. God must now be worshipped in spirit; and not only so, but with a fervent spirit."

And so the minister went on with the solid and sonorous rhetoric of the powerful old bishop.

"That," said Budlong, "is the principal stop, or even tone. I will now set the damnatory, or threatening stop"—

"Stay a moment," I interrupted. "It would be a pity to have such noble thoughts as Bishop Taylor’s inappropriately delivered. Couldn’t you illustrate the other stops by inserting other matter?"

"Oh, yes!" he replied. "Here is a list of our prepared printed compositions, arranged with directions for the stops. Just select at your pleasure, and we’ll insert them accordingly. We generally use the principal for exhibition."

I took the little catalogue, and selected from under the head of "Triumphant" the Ninety-fifth Psalm, in the Vulgate Latin, "Venite exultemus Domino."

This having been taken from a closet, inserted in the combined-action minister, and delivered by him in an overpowering strain of congratulatory eloquence, my friend proceeded, at my request, to cause the enunciation by the figure of the Athanasian Creed, with all the curses complete (I looked for that of Ernulphus, but it was not on the list), as an exemplification of the damnatory or threatening stop. After that he gave me Wesley’s "Sinners, turn; why will ye die?" on the hortatory, or didactic stop; and other pieces in the three other sermon styles—the hifalutin or camp-meeting, the intoning or liturgic, and the sweet-cream or dearly-beloved.

Having thus seen all that was to be seen in the factory, we completed our circuit by returning to the office, where I had a long and interesting conversation with Budlong, of which I may reproduce some of the chief points, without pretending to verbal accuracy.

The first of these points, if I may say so, was an interruption. I had hardly sat down, when I jumped up again; not because I sat on a cat or a pin, but because a great awful voice cried, "Twelve o’clock!" The tone was really awful. It was musical, but vast, booming, and deep; and the sound throbbed in my ears like the note of a heavy bell close at hand; and its reverberations filled all the air; so that it came, seemingly, from everywhere—not from any place.

Budlong laughed until he cried. "I forgot to tell you," he said when he could speak, "we have Friar Bacon’s brazen head, discovered at Oxford, and imported expressly for us at great expense. We use it instead of a bell or a whistle, just as the American Organ Factory in Boston plays a common chord for the same purpose."

I recovered myself as well as I could, and told him, that, after all, he had only revived an old device in his mechanical devotions; that his clock-work sermonizing bore much analogy to the Buddhist praying-mills, that are turned by water-wheels or by wind.

Budlong laughed again. "I confess," he said, " this much. I am a member of the First Radical Club; and you know they run a Buddhist prayer-mill in the back-room all the time, by a little hydraulic ram supplied from the Cochituate pipes. Not one of them will admit that they believe there’s any thing in it; but still, you know, it can do no harm to be right on the record. You remember the old story of the Englishman in Rome, who took off his hat and made a low bow to Jupiter, and requested the civility should be remembered in case the Olympian dynasty should ever be re-established? I am not sure but our modern wise men of the western east may have given me the idea, really. But I have made it practical."

"In a certain sense," I admitted. "But have you made it pay? What is the present state of the enterprise financially?"

"Eminently satisfactory. We are just now, for instance, filling an order for ministers. But the next is for lecturers"—

"Lecturers!" I interrupted, as that grim row of portrait heads in the Bluebeard chamber flashed across my mind in a new light—"then those likenesses"—I stopped; but I had let it out. Budlong turned quite red, and looked, I may say, almost sheepish; but finally he made the best of it by saying good-naturedly—

"Ah, peeping Tom!"

"I confess," I said; "but I couldn’t possibly have imagined the door forbidden."

"And it is our own fault too," rejoined he. "We ought to have locked it, and hidden the key. So I’ll confess too. The fact is, that we are running a pretty important part of the lecturing business at present. Don’t you remember that odd little newspaper controversy a few weeks ago, in consequence of ‘The Leavenworth Champion’ and ‘ The Bangor Courier’ each saying that a certain eminent speaker lectured at its respective city on one and the same evening?"

I did.

"Well, we had a terrible time to quiet it down. You see, the first-class speakers receive ten times as many invitations as they can accept. Now, we furnish a facsimile, who exactly duplicates the eminent gentleman; and we have half the money. Between you and me, we have had as many as five of one or two men speaking in different parts of the United States at the same time. Very likely it won’t last; but we’re coining money out of it now!"

"And the celebrated foreign gentlemen?" I asked.

"Pshaw!" said Budlong. "They’re all safe at home, minding their own business. Nobody knows them: so that it’s a great deal easier to put their doubles on the stage than the domestic article."

I parodied Campbell—

"Both Pepper and his Ghost a shade!"

and then I added; "but really you’ll do away with all public speaking, seems to me?"

"None of my lookout if we do," was his cynical answer. "Not with real speaking, though. Reading a manuscript isn’t speaking. We have done away with some of that. What do you suppose it is, except our invention, that has caused the decrease that the religious papers are always complaining of, in the number of graduates from the theological seminaries?"

"But, my dear fellow," I remonstrated, "what the dickens— What is the effect of all this, pray tell me, on the stated religious observances of the country? You surely do not think it right to impede them, or to push them out of use?"

"No. But what I do think is this, that real religion will harmonize just as readily and perfectly with improvements in art as with advances in science. The question isn’t what the new invention or scientific truth will bring to pass: that will take care of itself. The only question is, whether it is a truth, whether it is a discovery."

"I can’t bring myself to give up sermons."

"Give up? You’re going to have ’em cheaper than ever. Why, the interest on one of our first-class ministers isn’t one-tenth of a decent salary; and I’ll guarantee him to outlive a crow. He’ll save his own first cost full up in from five to ten years; and with care he won’t cost five dollars a year for repairs. Then, look at the economy of the whole plan. Here are your human ministers that must have a salary, and a family and houseroom, and grow old or sick or heretical or tiresome; or they quarrel with the parish; or the parish quarrels with them. But the patent minister is exempt from all the weaknesses of humanity. He requires neither wife, child, nor friend; neither house, land, nor salary; bed nor board, rest, exchange, nor vacation—nothing in the world except a cool cupboard and a very little sweet oil. He is conveniently stored in a closet in the vestry, or covered with a dust-cloth in the pulpit; or he can stand on a trap, and go up and down by a bell-wire arrangement running under the floor, that the senior deacon can pull where he sits in his pew. If you choose to have him wound up once in six hours, he will maintain a perpetual discourse day and night, like the perpetual chant in the chapel of Mr. Ferrar’s famous religious establishment at Little Gidding in Huntingdonshire. He cannot quarrel; he says only what he is inspired (literally) to say; and the congregation can have whatever approved discourse they like, instead of taking their chances of getting one they do not. There are at least thirty thousand ministers of the gospel in the United States: at four hundred dollars a year, they are paid twelve million dollars. What would this annual sum not accomplish—I do not say in secular enterprises, but for benevolent undertakings, the missionary work, home charities, education, reformatory institutions?"

"Do you find that your customers pay a higher average for such purposes than other people?" I asked.

"I have not the least doubt that it will prove to be so whenever you will get together the statistics," answered Budlong with great assurance.

"I can’t help it: I couldn’t bear to lose my dear old pastor—"

"Look here!" broke in Budlong, with some heat. "Hold on! I haven’t time for details to-day. I’ll talk it out with you next time. But bear this one thing in mind—the Sermonate is not the Pastorate; and Budlong and Faber haven’t offered yet to sell you a PASTOR; have they?"

I declare I had never thought of it before—I was brought up under the stated preaching of the gospel as practised in New England—but it isn’t: they hadn’t. I perceived how wide an inquiry this distinction opened up; and so, dropping the ethical aspects of the business, I took my friend’s hint, and came back to facts.

"No, you haven’t. And the only thing that I need detain you for any longer, is to get a few more points about the extent and prospects of the business, such as will look well in my article."

"Certainly. Well—of course I can’t go into details of dividends; but nobody wants to sell any of our stock. I defy you to find one single share in the market. That’s proof of prosperity, I think. It is thought so in the case of the Chemical Bank, at any rate.

"In the first place, as to prospects: Besides ministers for the home market, we sent an agent over to the other side last summer, who writes us that he is coming home with a large contract and full specifications from the Humble Nicephorus, as he calls himself, the patriarch of Moscow, for two hundred and fifty Greek papas; and a small one, to be followed by others if we give satisfaction, from the Sheik-ul-Islam at Constantinople, for four dozen howling dervishes. The Greek priests will be a great improvement in the country parishes, for they can’t get drunk; and I’ve already gotten up a working model dervish, with pith upper works and lead heels, that will whirl three hundred times a minute for four hours consecutively, and howl like a northeaster the whole time. The agent just called in at Rome; but the Roman service is so complicated, there’s so much travel in it, and they care so little, in comparison, about sermons, anyhow, that we can’t do anything with them.

"So much for the ministerial department. You have the necessary facts about the lecturers. The other items that will be found most interesting are, I think, a few of the details that we have thought of for improving our mechanisms, and a few ideas about the further application of our principle.

"Now, for instance, our big brazen head—of course, you understand that we only made a large one in imitation of Friar Bacon’s—suggested to me, the other day, that we could supply an economical article of army chaplains. We are in correspondence with Gen. Sherman about it now. He’s a man of genius; and I shouldn’t wonder if he would allow an experiment at our expense. I have calculated that a chaplain not more than eleven feet seven and one-half inches high, could be built and voiced so as to preach to two hundred and fifty thousand men at once. I should call these the Boanerges style, or Sons of Thunder.

"But I fancy a far more successful thing will be made out of our patent politicians; that is, if we can ever get them into use. But, if once the community is well accustomed to our ministers and lecturers, they can hardly help seeing the enormous economy to be made by the use of our politicians. Consider the saving of money, in a single year, by substituting for the present style of state and national politicians an equal number of individuals who cannot drink whiskey, who can not charge a price for influence nor for making speeches, who are legally incapable of becoming president, who can not hold any credit mobilier stock; in short, who are, by the very law of their being, unable to do any thing except their duty. Take one single item of this saving: every session of Congress costs the country something like two million dollars, I believe it is. Now, if the speeches were deducted, about seven-ninths of this would be saved, as near as I can calculate; and a few able business-men could do the real work of the session in the other two-ninths. Now, there are three hundred and seventeen members of Congress, all told. Suppose each makes only ten speeches per session—a ludicrously low estimate—and you have three thousand one hundred and seventy in all, which cannot at present in any event be made at a faster rate than two at a time—one in the Senate, and one in the House. What I propose is to fit up a proper room in the Capitol, like our proving-room, well deafened throughout, and to have a proper number of the patent members of Congress a-going there day and night, until all the speeches of the session are delivered. Suppose there are twenty-five of them, which I will contract to furnish at a most liberal discount from our retail prices, and we will allow three hours per speech; that is, eight speeches each, per day of twenty-four hours: then you have in all two hundred speeches per day, or the whole session’s supply of three thousand one hundred and seventy worked off in less than sixteen business-days, and not a living soul obliged to hear them, either, except my two workmen, who take it watch and watch, to oil the honorable gentlemen, and wind them up, and stick their speeches into them.

"For the campaign speakers, I should add an extra strong pump-handle action in the right arm, and a smile movement in the face."

I couldn’t help a suggestion of my own here: "A smile movement! You said they wouldn’t drink."

"No slang, please," said Budlong, rather miffed for the moment.

"Beg pardon. But here’s another idea really. Why couldn’t you let them drink? It’s very popular in some sections. You could have a tin stomach on purpose with a faucet; and they could drink the same whiskey over, year in and year out."

"No," said Budlong firmly. "No immoral practice shall be countenanced by this concern, nor any thing introduced that could offend the most fastidious. Now, don’t interrupt me with any more of your nonsense, but just listen to my other improvements.

"For travelers or residents abroad, we have designed what might be called a private chaplain, or you might almost call it a bottle angel, in contrast to the bottle imp of the German story."

"Speaking of traveling," I observed, "have you thought of anything in the missionary line? It would take the jungle fever a long time to destroy a patent missionary."

"And a very hearty cannibal to eat him," replied Budlong. "No, we negotiated with the Borrioboola Gha concern; but they couldn’t give references. The American Board won’t touch us. Fact is, preaching isn’t of so much account for missionary purposes at present, as doing good; and we can’t get up a machine that will do good of itself. That would be a moral perpetual motion—a more incredible absurdity than the mechanical one that I cured Smith of. To be sure, I did correspond a little with some of the great physiologists about that very idea, out of curiosity. Beale wrote me that it was no harder than to build a human being in a shop. Rather satirical, hey? Huxley seemed to imply that Beale’s notions were those of an ass, and that the idea was one not to be despaired of. But I guess we shall leave the missionaries along with the pastors. Souls are not in our line."

Having now noted all that seemed necessary for the purposes of this paper, I thanked my friend Budlong, and after wishing well to his "priestcraft," as I took the liberty of calling it, from its chief department, I took my leave.

I have lost my interest in public speaking. Would anybody like to buy very cheap a ticket to the next course of the famous lectures on the History of Ireland?

I am going to write to Budlong with details of the economy to be secured by substituting a small number of patent men for the present standing armies of Europe, and for our own troops, except those in garrison in the Ku Klux districts, and those employed against the Indians. I think the influence of the various societies for preventing cruelty to animals might be secured in favor of substituting clothes-horses for the present style of cavalry horses; as to the soldiers themselves, I doubt it: I have not observed that these benevolent gentlemen paid much attention to the convenience of human beings. For my part, I think it is almost as well worth while to save pain to men by putting a mechanical substitute in their place, as to fling up a tin pigeon, that won’t make a good pie after he’s dead, into the air to be shot at.

POSTSCRIPT.—I have just cut from a newspaper the following paragraph, which shows once more how impossible it is for humanity to reach perfection, and how well founded, though unsuccessful, was my friend Budlong’s solicitous watchfulness over his machinery:—

SAD ACCIDENT.—The very valuable and costly patent minister, officiating at the First Presbyterian Church in this town, suddenly exploded yesterday afternoon, in consequence of a defect in the windpipe, in the midst of the sermon, with a terrific howl. Portions of the sermon were driven into the heads of several of the audience, passing, by a singular accident, in one or two cases, in at one ear, and out at the other. Permanent mental derangement is apprehended in the cases of two or three prominent members of the church, from passages of the sermon supposed remaining in the brain. This sad catastrophe has cast a deep gloom over our usually cheerful village.

A ROBOT WALKS INTO A BAR Romie Stott

When I met David, I was working as a bouncer at a trance club downtown—a high-end place where before the muscle manhandles them to the curb, big spenders get a polite request from a smiling girl who wonders if they’d rather move to a private room. Unlike the bar staff, I don’t get tips, and like the rest of the bouncers, I spend most of the evening scanning the crowd for trouble. I just do it in a slinky dress while holding a shirley temple. It’s not a great job, but it lets me double dip—at the same time I watch for assholes, I keep a lookout for new trends, which I report to another boss. Remember the headbands that were popular last year, the ones with shapes cut out of them? I’m one of the people who spotted that back when a few college kids were hand-making theirs.

Meanwhile, I’m doing a third job as a shill making small talk about the product of the week, whether it’s berry-flavored vodka or an "underground" new single. On a good day, I feel like a double agent, like the membrane through which cool percolates. Other times, I think it’s pretty sick. But by stacking jobs, I only have to work fifteen hours a week, which leaves me time for my music. Not that I use my free time to work on my music. I mostly watch movies. And spend most of my paycheck on drinks and clothes. Keeps the bosses happy.

The first thing I noticed about David was his hands, the way he handled objects. It’s obvious, really—hands, sex—it’s like saying he had beautiful eyes (which he did, though I didn’t look at them until later). Most people, when they approach the bar, do one of two things. Either they push to the front, catcall the bartender, and wave a lot of cash around, or they hesitate, meek and uncomfortable, talk too softly for their order to be made out, and wait until the last minute to fumble through a stack of credit cards. David, in contrast, was still, but still in a way that had weight behind it. He waited like a man who was completely aware of the crowds and flashing lights, but completely separate from them. When he pulled out his wallet, his movements were economical. Deliberate. As though he knew precisely where every bill rested—its unique texture and particular history, its level of appropriateness to the task, and the exact amount of force required to tease it free of its brothers.

The way I describe it, it sounds fussy. It wasn’t. There is something thrilling and frightening about a man who knows exactly what he’s doing. It should make him seem safe. It does the opposite. I was seized with a strong compulsion to knit a stiff yarn dress and let him unravel it from around me—thread popping as knots pull loose line after line; a reverse dot matrix printer, a laser un-writing a green and black computer screen; a cartoon character gnawing a cob of corn. I watched him back to his table, or what became his table, in a small dark corner with a good vantage—the kind of spot appreciated by regulars, but rarely noticed by newcomers. He didn’t look like he was waiting for anyone, but who would know? Over the next half hour, he made brief small talk with a few sorority girls on the prowl, his expression indicating an interest that was polite but not eager. Between conversations, which he never instigated, he sipped his drink at a leisurely rate, posture comfortable and alert. When someone at the next table had trouble with a disposable lighter, he fixed it.

He was perfect. That’s when it clicked. I sat down across from him.

"You’re a robot, aren’t you," I said. He smiled, with a flicker of something else behind it.

"Not exactly," he said, soft and deprecating. "That is, I’m not just a set of preprogrammed responses and a system of adaptive logic. I am those things, but I have my own consciousness."

"Like emotions?"

"I can’t say. They seem like emotions to me. But what I mean is that I’m aware of myself as an entity—I have a self."

Close up, he looked great—pores (real), water in the eye membrane (fake—actually a polymerized oil), suggestions of shaved beard-hair follicles (fake), eyebrows imperfect enough to seem un-groomed. I’d wanted to see him with his clothes off before, but now I had new reasons.

"Are you famous?" I asked.

"Nah—just a vanity project for the university. I don’t really prove anything new, or have any marketable function. I talk to alumni with money and impress them with how lifelike I am. Sometimes I go to trade shows or technology contests, if that counts as famous, but there are better versions out there. Princeton has a model named Clio. She can do gymnastic routines and improvise recipes—I don’t taste things, and don’t have the flexibility for handsprings. I do better on Turing tests, though."

"So you don’t know what’s in that," I observed as he sipped his drink. He laughed, and it didn’t seem forced but probably, and likely definitively, was. (Whether his expressions of emotion are expressions or emotion is something I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out and have mostly given up on.)

"I misspoke," he said. "I have a sense of smell much more accurate than a non-mechanical man’s. I can give you a complete ingredient list if you like. I can also tell you with confidence that no one has brought explosives into this club. What I don’t have are opinions about what tastes good and bad—just educated guesses. So what do you do in your spare time?"

I blinked. "Um… I write songs. I’m not very good. Some people like them."

He laid his hand across mine. "I apologize," he said, "for bringing up a delicate topic. It was meant as a simple expression of interest." He withdrew his hand. I realized I was blushing, which made me angry, which made me blush more.

"Listen," he said, "you’re obviously working," (which pissed me off—I’m supposed to be subtle) "but I’d like to talk to you more—to find out how you spotted me and to make a proposal. I’d like to meet you outside after your shift. In the meantime, I’d like to buy whatever you’re supposed to be selling me."

"Beef-infused tequila. It’s awful, but you have no taste. I get off at 2."

At that point, I hadn’t decided whether I was going to stand him up. He was attractive enough, but I couldn’t see things going anywhere, given the circumstances, and the last thing I want after a night of fake flirtation is to go on a date. When I watched him pull out his wallet again, it hit me—no university would bankroll an incognito android’s night of drinking. He was making his own choices with his own money. Where did he get it?

When I came out the door at 2:30, he was waiting, seemingly unperturbed by the extra half hour. His posture was perfect—which doesn’t count for much since he has a harder time slouching, but it seemed refreshing at the time. He stood under a light, but his pupils were no more or less dilated than they had been inside the bar.

"Where do you want to go?" I said.

"Anywhere in range of wifi. Otherwise, I get pretty stupid."

"That makes sense." We walked toward the diner on the corner. "For the record, there was no particular thing that gave you away, although I’m accumulating them now. I just spend a lot of time around people. You were doing a fine job. It probably helps that no one’s looking for you. I mean, I mostly follow social news, so maybe I’m not the best informed, but I didn’t think any of you guys had been released into the wild, so to speak." He shrugged, and opened the door with a cocky half smile.

"Don’t worry—I have a tracking device and a kill switch and I clock in at the university daily. It would have been a big deal a few years ago, but robot stories are currently out of fashion."

David didn’t eat. He explained that he could seem to eat, for politeness’ sake, but would have to regurgitate it later. We agreed that seemed wasteful. He watched me through half of a pancake before he said:

"So, how do you feel about having sex for money?"

"In the abstract?" I said.

"In context."

I thought about it for a minute. David waited without expression or tension, and I couldn’t help thinking of a pulsing cursor.

"Are you telling me," I said, "that you are a sex machine?"

"In a manner of speaking. More like a really expensive camera. With consent, of course. Please stop me if I am offending you. I’m working from a hypothesis that you’ll be more curious than offended, because you work at a bar where you are paid to look pretty, where you sell opinions that aren’t yours, and where you nevertheless are willing to talk freely about personal subjects. In addition, your initial approach gave me reason to suspect you are attracted to me."

"So basically, you are asking me to sleep with you because you think I will say yes."

"Yes. I think it would be easy to work with you. I also think the ratios of your face and body will appeal to a broad segment of the population. You are very beautiful."

I should have been insulted. I was insulted. But David was right—you don’t last long in any of my lines of work if you can’t look past that kind of objectification to find the angle. So far, this seemed like a bad deal to me. I was doing fine for money, and I couldn’t cross-promote without emphasizing my identity. Dangerous?

At the same time, I did, in fact, find the idea of being filmed by him somehow deeply sexy.

"Your university has a very progressive ethics board," I said.

"Some years back, during a fracas over bathroom use by transgendered students, the university made an official declaration guaranteeing free expression of sexual preference to all staff and students. That ruling was later successfully employed by a student to remove all prohibitions on pornography, whether viewed or created, from the code of conduct. Technically, I am neither staff nor student—more university property—but for all practical reasons, I’m considered staff. Public relations is of course not happy, but they can hardly deny my ability to give informed consent without opening themselves to other accusations."

"Such as?"

"That they’re holding a sentient being in slavery."

"Shit."

"They could, of course, argue that on the contrary, I am not sentient—that I merely appear to think and feel, and that observers anthropomorphize the rest. But that would make me a less impressive marketing tool. It’s simpler to treat me like everyone else than to make new rules, don’t you think?"

By now, I was deep into my third cup of coffee, and feeling very awake. It was getting hard to tell whether David was making me warm and aroused, or whether it was the caffeine. At the very least, I was pretty sure I liked the way he was keeping things intellectual—no baby, baby, baby, I need you. Just information. Not cold, you understand, but its own sort of respectful. It made me want to be decisive and pragmatic, and I liked feeling that way.

"So," I said. "Tell me about your equipment."

A few days later, David’s agent sent me some papers, and they were full of percentages. I would be paid a certain amount per minute for the recording process (referred to as my live performance), and a certain royalty rate for subsequent customer purchases of the footage (with breakdowns by storage medium). There were rates for re-broadcasting rights, which were ranked by time of day and by network audience estimates. There were rates for purchases of audio but not video and vice versa.

My highest royalty rate fell under the subheading "teledildonic simulations." Thanks to the special machine that was David, viewers with sleeve vibrator computer hardware peripherals would be able to feel, in a limited and sanitized way, what it was like to have sex with me.

I had to think for a long time to figure out why this bothered me—after all, I wouldn’t actually be having sex with them, and they would have plenty of clues that they weren’t having sex with me. My absence, for instance. Eventually, I realized that was exactly my problem: the vibrator me that was with them would be faking it. Their thrusts would not be the cause of my good time, and my good time would not correspond to their thrusts. I would be a worse sexual experience than one programmed by a computer, which would at least have access to their biofeedback. It seemed unfair.

My roommate thought this was incredibly stupid.

"Look," she said, "if you don’t find it hot, don’t do it. But don’t whine about it. Or, wait. First of all, have you seen one of these flesh sleeves or whatever they’re called? They are not fancy. They might as well be cans full of foam. Ain’t no way anybody’s going to tell the difference between you and random. Second, have you been to a foot fetish website, or anything like that? Lots of times, that stuff is so blurry and dim you can hardly make it out. And it’s not ’cause it’s cheap—good photography is not that pricey. It’s because it seems authentic to the people that like it. If some men out there get off on the idea that the random in their can is based on you, that’s them. The ones that want a simulation keyed to them can buy that their own selves—they don’t need you judging their kinks, or, I’m sorry, having professional pride. I mean, come on. You’re a girl who wants to have sex with a showroom robot."

"I really do," I said, "and I take your point." I resumed my perusal of the contract, and was pleased to see that the rest of it seemed specially tailored to my personal concerns, as expressed to David during our initial meeting. My name would never be used in connection to the footage, nor would the name of the town. (David asked if I had a particular screen name in mind, but I asked him to choose one and not tell me what it was. I didn’t want anything I might accidentally respond to if a stranger called it.) I had full rights to change my appearance whenever and however I liked. I was allowed to block a certain number of IP addresses (such as the one my parents used). Finally, I could end the arrangement whenever I wished, although this termination would not affect David’s rights to use previously gathered footage—for which I would continue to receive the residuals and protections enumerated earlier in the contract.

All in all, it felt a little like a pre-nuptial agreement and a little like a courtesan’s contract. I stuck it in a drawer for a week, with the vague idea that I’d run it by a lawyer, but never got around to it. I just signed it and sent it back to David. That makes me feel sort of stupid, since it’s the opposite of what I would have told any friend to do. But I really didn’t want to go through a whole awkward negotiation process. I didn’t want to research the going rates. I didn’t want to put a number value on my time. I wanted to trust David; I liked the idea that he’d already taken care of me.

I guess that was a clue that I was already in love a little.

The first few times we had sex, it was a little awkward, but the moments of awkwardness were almost normal. For instance, attaching David’s penis was a lot like putting on a condom.

It took longer to get used to the one-way nature of the endeavor. David’s enjoyment—which he was circumspect in expressing—was, after all, purely intellectual. He applied pressure in a certain way, and was rewarded by my response or trained by my lack of response. I had to avoid thinking about it, or I’d feel selfish and exploited and self-conscious. I unwisely mentioned this to a guy I knew (I was a little inebriated at the time), and he said that since David didn’t have a real cock, I must be a lesbian. I stopped talking to him. After a while, I just stopped worrying about it. When I’m aroused enough, I find power imbalances exciting, and David got pretty good at arousing me.

He kept a lot of anatomy books around his apartment—not just people, but animals. I asked whether the university had any spare frogs for dissection, and he looked confused. After a few minutes, he said:

"I am interested in things that are alive."

That made me feel really terrible. I tried to build a model of the circulatory system out of bendy straws from the bar, but it leaked all over the kitchen.

"Don’t worry about it," said David. "Circulation is hard." He talked to me about strength and elasticity. He told me the latest research in arterial stents. He talked about pressure in the aorta—about heart-beat variations and blood speed. He showed me the way blood moves toward and away from the skin with changes in stress or temperature. He talked about clotting factors. He talked about erections and their robustness.

"It’s amazing how often it all works," he said, "and when it fails, it’s typically a faulty part, not the operating system, which is programmed with multiple redundancies. And it’s all autonomic! It’s a background task!"

"You’re very handsome," I said.

Once I got comfortable around David, he stopped blinking, unless it was expressive. I theorized that his stare was for recording purposes, but he told me it was to save wear and tear on his eyelids; he’d only ever blinked to put me at ease. For him, eyelids were a lot like windshield wipers, and equally annoying.

Another difference: he never rested his full weight on me, for the simple reason that his arms didn’t get tired. I asked him to do it once, and was surprised that he wasn’t heavy—wasn’t even as heavy as your average six-foot-tall person.

"Less mass takes less energy to reach a certain momentum," he said, grinning. "Hollow bones. Of course, I have to be careful not to break myself. Sometimes it’s hard to forget the margins of error in stress tests, you know?"

"Couldn’t you check your skeleton with regular—I don’t know—electrical pulses?" I said.

"Hmmmmm," he said, and rolled off me. A week later, I saw that he’d bought books about variations in electrical resistance across metal alloys, mixed in with essays on pain and the human nervous system. About that time, I started sleeping at his apartment pretty regularly. The first few times were more accident than anything else. I apologized for the intrusion, but he seemed pleased.

"The bed is mainly for you anyway, and now it’s more fully used by you. It is fulfilling its function in a way that might make it happy if it could be happy. After all, I don’t sleep."

I looked at him woozily. "Oh. Of course not. You wouldn’t need to."

"No, it’s more than that. I can’t go into a ‘sleep’ mode at all. Or, well, I could shut down, but when I rebooted, I wouldn’t be me. The new David would have my body and my memories, but I would no longer exist."

"That’s horrible!"

"Price of consciousness. If you can be said to live, then you can die. An electrical pulse could kill me too. I’ll probably burn out in a few years anyway." He took in the look on my face. "You’ll die too, you know… I’m sorry—that was meant to be reassuring."

"It’s okay," I said. And it sort of was. In a certain sense, he’d live on longer than I would, no matter what—all the recordings. Memory backups of everything he’d ever thought; behavioral logs of all he’d ever done. He’d be remembered as long as people maintained data havens, a part of history, same or better than ENIAC—unless the data got lost, or didn’t transfer right, and got stuck in a file type until nobody knew how to read it, and archaeologists in the distant future thought the storage medium was a decorative piece. All of which would still out-survive me.

These lines of thought are the sorts of things you get caught up in when you’re absolutely certain your partner doesn’t have an eternal soul. I mean, souls are a kind of silly idea to begin with, and I’m certain I don’t have one. I’m certain of it. But I’m really sure he doesn’t. The best I can do is to tell myself some homily about the multidimensional nature of time, and the idea that although right now, I only perceive the moment I’m in, there is also me in the past, only perceiving that moment. It’s pretty thin. And it means there are a lot of moments in which I am not aware of David.

I did not mention any of this to him, because I suspected that he would tell me in a very believable way that my logic was absurd.

I assume that at least a few of my friends watched the videos David made of me. I would have, in their position, out of curiosity if nothing else. Nobody said anything, though—friends or strangers—with the exception of a doctoral candidate from North Dakota. "Android as Postmodern Filter for Human Sexuality: Artificial Simulations of the Heterosexual Male and other Manifestations of Goal-Driven Approaches to Coitus." Or maybe that was just a subsection. She called every few weeks to ask about details of the footage; David, being somewhere between an academic and a floor model, was predisposed to be tolerant. They’d spend hours talking about what it implied that my eyes were closed at three minutes and forty-two seconds, versus what it implied that my eyes were closed at five minutes and twenty-three seconds, and the accuracy with which David could predict whether my eyes would be open or closed at a given moment. They had conversations about which angles of penetration were more or less wearing for David, and the degree to which he was or was not limited by his hardware or its installation. They talked about the effectiveness of novelty versus repetition, and whether David found it helpful or unhelpful to generate random number strings. She made several requests to interview me, but I had a habit of politely forgetting to get back to her.

Eventually, David started getting annoyed by my non-cooperation, and I went through a phase of being annoyed that he was annoyed, because I never agreed to participate in any research. If this thing between us was an experiment, it wasn’t that kind of experiment. That kind of experiment sounded tedious.

Then I started to get paranoid and wonder whether David was annoyed because he thought I was genuinely forgetting instead of pretend forgetting. Maybe he was frustrated with my faulty memory storage and was wondering whether he should upgrade to another model. Then I went back to being annoyed with him. But I woke up one day with a horrible feeling that he thought I was ashamed of being with him. I figured I’d better do the interview.

"How does it affect your anticipation of the sexual act to know that you can select the size and shape of your partner’s penis?" she asked. I was already regretting this exchange.

"I don’t know," I said. "I guess I’m a creature of habit. It’s nice to know I have the option, but I usually default."

"Given that the act of intercourse does not involve ejaculation or any form of sexual release for David, would you compare the experience more closely to using a vibrator or to intercourse with a human partner?"

"Do you find that sculptures are more like paintings or more like theater?" I said.

"I don’t have a way to input that."

"Then rewrite your data model."

She sighed. "Okay. Given that David is a created human, do you feel that the placement and structure of his genitals was chosen in consideration of you and other possible female partners?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean—do you think the placement of David’s genitalia is an example of heteronormative defaulting to no effect, or do you find it psychologically rewarding? If, for instance, David controlled a machine separate from his body, which stimulated you in the same way physically, and he fed inputs into the machine while sitting next to you, would you still consider yourself to be participating in intercourse?"

"No. It wouldn’t be the same."

"Why wouldn’t it be the same?"

"I don’t know."

"What if, in the same situation, David was a paralyzed man instead of an android?"

"I don’t know."

"If David was able to manifest a different personality or use a different face, would that frighten or excite you?"

"It would be like role playing. David is David. He’s conscious and him. I don’t enjoy pretending to be other people; it would feel silly."

"To what degree do you believe David chooses sexual positions to please you, and to what degree do you believe he chooses sexual positions that will allow him to do good camera work?"

"I don’t think about it."

"Is that why you keep your eyes closed?"

"No."

"Why do you keep your eyes closed?"

"No."

I could hear her tapping her pencil, or a pen or something. Probably a pencil—it had that eraser bounce. Finally, she said:

"Why do you think David maintains an exclusive relationship with you?"

"I don’t know. He gets what he needs out of it."

"He could make more money by sleeping with more women. Does it not strike you as odd that he chooses not to?"

"I guess he’s a tick-box kind of guy. He has that list item filled."

"Are you aware of his past history with women?"

"No. I don’t really want to know."

"Well, he likes you. He feels satisfied that he’s your boyfriend, and that he’s filling that role ably. He wants to see how long he can maintain that status."

"You make it sound like he’s going for a high score record."

"You could think of it that way. But it’s not something he’s done before. I just thought you should know, in case he hasn’t told you."

"Did you sleep with him?" I asked.

"Not my type," she said.

For our six month anniversary, I took David to the zoo. I have mixed feelings about zoos. Some days, it makes me sad to see animals in confined habitats, under constant observation by an alien species. Other days, I see the amount of care and love provided by the zookeepers; I remember how dangerous the wild is, particularly for endangered animals. I tear up a little when I see a kid staring at some weird creature from another continent—I know that kid is going to learn everything about that animal, and love it, and fight for its survival.

I’m not sure at this point whether I’m making an analogy about David as a zoo animal and me as a zookeeper, or the other way around. In any case, it was maybe an awkward choice for a date, and I mainly picked it because I knew David liked watching how different creatures walked. We sat down in front of the lion cage. I nudged David.

"Do you think I could be the boss lion?" I asked.

"I don’t," said David, smiling. "You are human. And female."

"I don’t know," I said. "I could grow a pretty fearsome mane. I’m thinking pink spikes."

"I love the way you see things," he said—which was a pretty excellent thing to say to someone with a history of trend-spotting, people watching, and songwriting, and just the sort of pattern-finding compliment David was good at.

"I’m just like anybody else," I said, with false modesty.

"Yes, exactly," he said. "The way you all view the world continuously, and half of it imagined—the way your eyes leave gaps and your brain makes up half of the picture, sometimes accurately and sometimes not, but never as a whole. It’s beautiful. I record it all and compress it once I know what I have. With you, the opposite—this wonderful expansion, until you don’t remember the limit exists."

"You’re full of shit," I said. "You chop me into frames every second, and if you were built right, you’d be embarrassed by it."

We didn’t speak for several days. Eventually, he showed up with some flowers, and that didn’t make up for anything, but I didn’t feel like fighting any more, so I pretended that it did. I gave him a hard time, though.

"You can’t bribe me to be happy," I said, even as I took the flowers and vigorously searched for my favorite vase.

"I know," said David, "but it’s my job to try. I’ve got sex, chocolate, liquor. I can’t do professional success or eternal life—I’m still working up to that."

"Maybe someday," I said. We sat together on the couch for a while, and it was awkward, so we went and laid in the bed. Finally, David said:

"Will you talk about me?"

"When?" I said. "To whom?"

"Now. To me." I looked over at him, and he didn’t seem to be wearing a particular expression. So I just described how he looked, and what his voice sounded like.

It’s become a regular thing, now. Maybe once a week, we lie down together, and I talk about the way his hands move when he performs a particular task, or the way the skin around his eyes stretches or folds when he looks around. It seems to give him a kind of peace, like he’s reassured to know I’m looking back at him as hard as he’s looking at me. I think maybe that’s the reason he first took a shine to me, back at the club. It’s weird to think of him as having insecurities, but I can only respond to the reality that presents itself—at least if I want to maintain this thing.

We’re thinking about getting a dog, or maybe a large rabbit. The man of no scent preference has valiantly agreed to clean any litter boxes, so long as I buy the food.

David has a thousand parts that could wear out, and for some of them, he’s the first real test. The fact is, one day I’ll have to get used to someone who breathes, and sweats, and pees. Maybe that’s a good thing. Until then, I’ll spend my days awake and my nights asleep, and in between, I’ll dream I can upload.

MEN OF IRON Guy Endore

"We no longer trust the human hand," said the engineer, and waved his roll of blueprints. He was a dwarfish, stocky fellow with dwarfish, stocky fingers that crumpled blueprints with familiar unconcern.

The director frowned, pursed his lips, cocked his head, drew up one side of his face in a wink of unbelief and scratched his chin with a reflective thumbnail. Behind his grotesque contortions he recalled the days when he was manufacturer in his own right and not simply the nominal head of a manufacturing concern, whose owners extended out into complex and invisible ramifications. In his day the human hand had been trusted.

"Now take that lathe," said the engineer. He paused dramatically, one hand flung out toward the lathe in question, while his dark eyes, canopied by bristly eyebrows, remained fastened on the director. "Listen to it!"

"Well?" said the director, somewhat at a loss.

"Hear it?"

"Why, yes, of course."

The engineer snorted. "Well, you shouldn’t."

"Why not?"

"Because noise isn’t what it is supposed to make. Noise is an indication of loose parts, maladjustments, improper speed of operation. That machine is sick. It is inefficient and its noise destroys the worker’s efficiency."

The director laughed. "That worker should be used to it by this time. Why, that fellow is the oldest employee of the firm. Began with my father. See the gold crescent on his chest?"

"What gold crescent?"

"The gold pin on the shoulder strap of his overalls."

"Oh, that."

"Yes. Well, only workers fifty years or longer with our firm are entitled to wear it."

The engineer threw back his head and guffawed.

The director was wounded.

"Got many of them?" the engineer asked, when he had recovered from his outburst.

"Anton is the only one, now. There used to be another."

"How many pins does he spoil?"

"Well," said the director, "I’ll admit he’s not so good as he used to be… But there’s one man I’ll never see fired," he added stoutly.

"No need to," the engineer agreed. "A good machine is automatic and foolproof; the attendant’s skill is beside the point."

For a moment the two men stood watching Anton select a fat pin from a bucket at his feet and fasten it into the chuck. With rule and caliper he brought the pin into correct position before the drill that was to gouge a hole into it.

Anton moved heavily, circumspectly. His body had the girth, but not the solidity of an old tree trunk: it was shaken by constant tremors. The tools wavered in Anton’s hands. Intermittently a slimy cough came out of his chest, tightened the cords of his neck and flushed the taut yellow skin of his cheeks. Then he would stop to spit, and after that he would rub his mustache that was the color of silver laid thinly over brass. His lungs relieved, Anton’s frame regained a measure of composure, but for a moment he stood still and squinted at the tools in his hands as if he could not at once recall exactly what he was about, and only after a little delay did he resume his interrupted work, all too soon to be interrupted again. Finally, spindle and tool being correctly aligned, Anton brought the machine into operation.

"Feel it?" the engineer cried out with a note of triumph.

"Feel what?" asked the director.

"Vibration!" the engineer exclaimed with disgust.

"Well, what of it?"

"Man, think of the power lost in shaking your building all day. Any reason why you should want your floors and walls to dance all day long, while you pay the piper?"

He hadn’t intended so telling a sentence. The conclusion seemed to him so especially apt that he repeated it: "Your building dances while you pay the piper in increased power expenditure."

And while the director remained silent the engineer forced home his point: "That power should be concentrated at the cutting point of the tool and not leak out all over. What would you think of a plumber who brought only 50 percent of the water to the nozzle, letting the rest flood through the building?"

And as the director still did not speak, the engineer continued, "There’s not only loss of power, but increased wear on the parts. That machine is afflicted with the ague!"

When the day’s labor was over, the long line of machines stopped all together; the workmen ran for the washrooms and a sudden throbbing silence settled over the great hall. Only Anton, off in a corner by himself, still worked his lathe, oblivious of the emptiness of the factory, until darkness finally forced him to quit. Then from beneath the lathe he dragged forth a heavy tarpaulin and covered his machine.

He stood for a moment beside his lathe, seemingly lost in thought, but perhaps only quietly wrestling with the stubborn torpidity of his limbs, full of an unwanted, incorrect motion, and disobedient to his desires. For he, like the bad machines in the factory, could not prevent his power from spilling over into useless vibration.

The old watchman opened the gate to let Anton out. The two men stood near each other for a moment, separated by the iron grill, and exchanged a few comforting grunts. Then they hobbled off to their separate destinations, the watchman to make his rounds, Anton to his home.

A gray, wooden shack on a bare lot was Anton’s home. During the day an enthusiastic horde of children trampled the ground to a rubber-like consistency and extinguished every growing thing except a few dusty weeds that clung for protection close to the house or nestled around the remnants of the porch that had once adorned the front. There the children’s feet could not reach them, and they expanded a few scornful coarse leaves, a bitter growth of Ishmaelites.

Within were a number of rooms, but only one inhabitable. The torn and peeling wallpaper in this one revealed the successive designs that had once struck the fancy of the owners. A remnant of ostentatiousness still remained in the marble mantelpiece, and in the stained-glass window through which the arc-light from the street cast cold flakes of color.

She did not stir when Anton entered. She lay resting on the bed, not so much from the labor of the day as from that of years. She heard his shuffling, noisy walk, heard his groans, his coughing, his whistling breath, and smelled, too, the pungent odor of machine oil. She was satisfied that it was he, and allowed herself to fall into a light sleep, through which she could still hear him moving around in the room and feel him when he dropped into bed beside her and settled himself against her for warmth and comfort.

The engineer was not satisfied with the addition of an automatic feeder and an automatic chuck. "The whole business must settle itself into position automatically," he declared. "There’s altogether too much waste with hand calibration."

Formerly Anton had selected the pins from a bucket and fastened them correctly into the chuck. Now a hopper fed the pins one by one into a chuck that grasped them by itself.

As he sat in a corner, back against the wall and ate his lunch, Anton sighed. His hands fumbled the sandwich and lost the meat or the bread, while his coffee dashed stormily in his cup. His few yellow teeth, worn flat, let the food escape through the interstices. His grinders did not meet. Tired of futile efforts, he dropped the bread into the cup and sucked in the resulting mush.

Then he lay resting and dreaming.

To Anton, in his dream, came the engineer, declaring that he had a new automatic hopper and chuck for Anton’s hands and mouth. They were of shining steel with many rods and wheels moving with assurance through a complicated pattern. And now, though the sandwich was made of pins, of hard steel pins, Anton’s new chuck was equal to it. He grasped the sandwich of pins with no difficulty at all. His new steel teeth bit into the pins, ground them, chewed them and spat them out again with vehemence. Faster and faster came the pins, and faster and faster the chuck seized them in its perfectly occluding steel dogs, played with them, toyed with them, crunched them, munched them…

A heavy spell of coughing shook Anton awake. For a moment he had a sensation as though he must cough up steel pins, but nothing appeared save for the usual phlegm and slime.

"We must get rid of this noise and vibration before we can adjust any self-regulating device," said the engineer. "Now this, for example, see? It doesn’t move correctly. Hear it click and scrape. That’s bad."

Anton stood by, and the engineer and his assistant went to work. From their labors came forth a sleek mechanism that purred gently as it worked. Scarcely a creak issued from its many moving parts, and a tiny snort was all the sound that could be heard when the cutting edge came to grips with a pin.

"Can’t hear her cough and sputter and creak now, can you?" said the engineer to the director. "And the floor is quiet. Yes, I’m beginning to be proud of that machine, and now I think we can set up an adjustable cam here to make the whole operation automatic.

"Every machine should be completely automatic. A machine that needs an operator," he declared oratorically, "is an invalid."

In a short time the cams were affixed and the carriage with the cutting tool traveled back and forth of itself, never failing to strike the pin at the correct angle and at the correct speed of rotation.

All Anton had to do was to stop the machine in case of a hitch. But soon even that task was unnecessary. No hitches were ever to occur again. Electronic tubes at several points operated mechanisms designed to eject faulty pins either before they entered the hopper or after they emerged from the lathe.

Anton stood by and watched. That was all he had to do, for the machine performed all the operations that he used to do. In went the unfinished pins and out they came, each one perfectly drilled. Anton’s purblind eyes could scarcely follow the separate pins of the stream that flowed into the machine. Now and then a pin was pushed remorselessly out of line and plumped sadly into a bucket. Cast out! Anton stooped laboriously and retrieved the pin. "That could have been used," he thought.

"Krr-click, krr-click," went the feeder, while the spindle and the drill went zzz-sntt, zzz-sntt, zzz-sntt, and the belt that brought the pins from a chattering machine beyond, rolled softly over the idlers with a noise like a breeze in a sail. Already the machine had finished ten good pins while Anton was examining a single bad one.

Late in the afternoon there appeared a number of important men. They surrounded the machine, examined it and admired it.

"That’s a beauty," they declared.

Now the meeting took on a more official character. There were several short addresses. Then an imposing man took from a small leather box a golden crescent.

"The Crescent Manufacturing Company," he said, "takes pride and pleasure in awarding this automatic lathe a gold crescent." A place on the side of the machine had been prepared for the affixing of this distinction.

Now the engineer was called upon to speak. "Gentlemen," he said fiercely, "I understand that formerly the Crescent Company awarded its gold crescent only to workmen who had given fifty years of service to the firm. In giving a gold crescent to a machine, your President has perhaps unconsciously acknowledged a new era…" While the engineer developed his thesis, the director leaned over to his assistant and whispered, "Did you ever hear of why the sea is salt?"

"Why the sea is salt?" whispered back the assistant. "What do you mean?"

The director continued: "When I was a little kid, I heard the story of ‘Why the sea is salt’ many times, but I never thought it important until just a moment ago. It’s something like this: Formerly the sea was fresh water and salt was rare and expensive. A miller received from a wizard a wonderful machine that just ground salt out of itself all day long. At first the miller thought himself the most fortunate man in the world, but soon all the villages had salt to last them for centuries and still the machine kept on grinding more salt. The miller had to move out of his house, he had to move off his acres. At last he determined that he would sink the machine in the sea and be rid of it. But the mill ground so fast that boat and miller and machine were sunk together, and down below, the mill still went on grinding and that’s why the sea is salt."

"I don’t get you," said the assistant.

Throughout the speeches, Anton had remained seated on the floor, in a dark corner, where his back rested comfortably against the wall. It had begun to darken by the time the company left, but still Anton remained where he was, for the stone floor and wall had never felt quite so restful before. Then, with a great effort, he roused his unwilling frame, hobbled over to his machine and dragged forth the tarpaulin.

Anton had paid little attention to the ceremony; it was, therefore, with surprise that he noticed the gold crescent on his machine. His weak eyes strained to pierce the twilight. He let his fingers play over the medal, and was aware of tears falling from his eyes, and could not divine the reason.

The mystery wearied Anton. His worn and trembling body sought the inviting floor. He stretched out, and sighed, and that sigh was his last.

When the daylight had completely faded, the machine began to hum softly. Zzz-sntt, zzz-sntt, it went, four times, and each time carefully detached a leg from the floor.

Now it rose erect and stood beside the body of Anton. Then it bent down and covered Anton with the tarpaulin. Out of the hall it stalked on sturdy legs. Its electron eyes saw distinctly through the dark, its iron limbs responded instantly to its every need. No noise racked its interior, where its organs functioned smoothly and without a single tremor. To the watchman who grunted his usual greeting without looking up, it answered not a word but strode on rapidly, confidently, through the windy streets of night—to Anton’s house.

Anton’s wife lay waiting, half sleeping on the bed in the room where the light of the arc light came through the stained-glass window. And it seemed to her that a marvel happened: her Anton come back to her free of coughs and creaks and tremors; her Anton come to her in all the pride and folly of his youth, his breath like wind soughing through treetops, the muscles of his arms like steel.

A BAD DAY FOR SALES Fritz Leiber

The big bright doors of the office building parted with a pneumatic whoosh and Robie glided onto Times Square. The crowd that had been watching the fifty-foot-tall girl on the clothing billboard get dressed, or reading the latest news about the Hot Truce scrawl itself in yard-high script, hurried to look.

Robie was still a novelty. Robie was fun. For a little while yet, he could steal the show. But the attention did not make Robie proud. He had no more emotions than the pink plastic giantess, who dressed and undressed endlessly whether there was a crowd or the street was empty, and who never once blinked her blue mechanical eyes. But she merely drew business while Robie went out after it.

For Robie was the logical conclusion of the development of vending machines. All the earlier ones had stood in one place, on a floor or hanging on a wall, and blankly delivered merchandise in return for coins, whereas Robie searched for customers. He was the demonstration model of a line of sales robots to be manufactured by Shuler Vending Machines, provided the public invested enough in stocks to give the company capital to go into mass production.

The publicity Robie drew stimulated investments handsomely. It was amusing to see the TV and newspaper coverage of Robie selling, but not a fraction as much fun as being approached personally by him. Those who were usually bought anywhere from one to five hundred shares, if they had any money and foresight enough to see that sales robots would eventually be on every street and highway in the country.

Robie radared the crowd, found that it surrounded him solidly, and stopped. With a carefully built-in sense of timing, he waited for the tension and expectation to mount before he began talking.

"Say, Ma, he doesn’t look like a robot at all," a child said. "He looks like a turtle."

Which was not completely inaccurate. The lower part of Robie’s body was a metal hemisphere hemmed with sponge rubber and not quite touching the sidewalk. The upper was a metal box with black holes in it. The box could swivel and duck.

A chromium-bright hoopskirt with a turret on top.

"Reminds me too much of the Little Joe Paratanks," a legless veteran of the Persian War muttered, and rapidly rolled himself away on wheels rather like Robie’s.

His departure made it easier for some of those who knew about Robie to open a path in the crowd. Robie headed straight for the gap. The crowd whooped.

Robie glided very slowly down the path, deftly jogging aside whenever he got too close to ankles in skylon or sockassins. The rubber buffer on his hoopskirt was merely an added safeguard.

The boy who had called Robie a turtle jumped in the middle of the path and stood his ground, grinning foxily.

Robie stopped two feet short of him. The turret ducked. The crowd got quiet.

"Hello, youngster," Robie said in a voice that was smooth as that of a TV star, and was, in fact, a recording of one.

The boy stopped smiling. "Hello," he whispered.

"How old are you?" Robie asked.

"Nine. No, eight."

"That’s nice," Robie observed. A metal arm shot down from his neck, stopped just short of the boy.

The boy jerked back.

"For you," Robie said.

The boy gingerly took the red polly-lop from the neatly fashioned blunt metal claws, and began to unwrap it.

"Nothing to say?" asked Robie.

"Uh—thank you."

After a suitable pause, Robie continued, "And how about a nice refreshing drink of Poppy Pop to go with your polly-lop?" The boy lifted his eyes, but didn’t stop licking the candy. Robie waggled his claws slightly. "Just give me a quarter and within five seconds—"

A little girl wriggled out of the forest of legs. "Give me a polly-lop, too, Robie," she demanded.

"Rita, come back here!" a woman in the third rank of the crowd called angrily.

Robie scanned the newcomer gravely. His reference silhouettes were not good enough to let him distinguish the sex of children, so he merely repeated, "Hello, youngster."

"Rita!"

"Give me a polly-lop!"

Disregarding both remarks, for a good salesman is singleminded and does not waste bait, Robie said winningly, "I’ll bet you read Junior Space Killers. Now I have here—"

"Uh-uh, I’m a girl. He got a polly-lop."

At the word "girl," Robie broke off. Rather ponderously, he said, "I’ll bet you read Gee-Gee Jones, Space Stripper. Now I have here the latest issue of that thrilling comic, not yet in the stationary vending machines. Just give me fifty cents and within five—"

"Please let me through. I’m her mother."

A young woman in the front rank drawled over her powder-sprayed shoulder, "I’ll get her for you," and slithered out on six-inch platform shoes. "Run away, children," she said nonchalantly. Lifting her arms behind her head, she pirouetted slowly before Robie to show how much she did for her bolero half-jacket and her form-fitting slacks that melted into skylon just above the knees. The little girl glared at her. She ended the pirouette in profile.

At this age-level, Robie’s reference silhouettes permitted him to distinguish sex, though with occasional amusing and embarrassing miscalls. He whistled admiringly. The crowd cheered.

Someone remarked critically to a friend, "It would go over better if he was built more like a real robot. You know, like a man."

The friend shook his head. "This way it’s subtler."

No one in the crowd was watching the newscript overhead as it scribbled, "Ice Pack for Hot Truce? Vanadin hints Russ may yield on Pakistan."

Robie was saying, "… in the savage new glamor-tint we have christened Mars Blood, complete with spray applicator and fit-all fingerstalls that mask each finger completely except for the nail. Just give me five dollars—uncrumpled bills may be fed into the revolving rollers you see beside my arm—and within five seconds—"

"No, thanks, Robie," the young woman yawned.

"Remember," Robie persisted, "for three more weeks, seductivizing Mars Blood will be unobtainable from any other robot or human vendor."

"No, thanks."

Robie scanned the crowd resourcefully. "Is there any gentleman here…" he began just as a woman elbowed her way through the front rank.

"I told you to come back!" she snapped at the little girl.

"But I didn’t get my polly-lop!"

"… who would care to…"

"Rita!"

"Robie cheated. Ow!"

Meanwhile, the young woman in the half-bolero had scanned the nearby gentlemen on her own. Deciding that there was less than a fifty per cent chance of any of them accepting the proposition Robie seemed about to make, she took advantage of the scuffle to slither gracefully back into the ranks. Once again the path was clear before Robie.

He paused, however, for a brief recapitulation of the more magical properties of Mars Blood, including a telling phrase about "the passionate claws of a Martian sunrise."

But no one bought. It wasn’t quite time. Soon enough silver coins would be clinking, bills going through the rollers faster than laundry, and five hundred people struggling for the privilege of having their money taken away from them by America’s first mobile sales robot.

But there were still some tricks that Robie had to do free, and one certainly should enjoy those before starting the more expensive fun.

So Robie moved on until he reached the curb. The variation in level was instantly sensed by his under-scanners. He stopped. His head began to swivel. The crowd watched in eager silence. This was Robie’s best trick.

Robie’s head stopped swiveling. His scanners had found the traffic light. It was green. Robie edged forward. But then the light turned red. Robie stopped again, still on the curb. The crowd softly ahhed its delight.

It was wonderful to be alive and watching Robie on such an exciting day. Alive and amused in the fresh, weather-controlled air between the lines of bright skyscrapers with their winking windows and under a sky so blue you could almost call it dark.

(But way, way up, where the crowd could not see, the sky was darker still. Purple-dark, with stars showing. And in that purple-dark, a silver-green something, the color of a bud, plunged down at better than three miles a second. The silver-green was a newly developed paint that foiled radar.)

Robie was saying, "While we wait for the light, there’s time for you youngsters to enjoy a nice refreshing Poppy Pop. Or for you adults—only those over five feet tall are eligible to buy—to enjoy an exciting Poppy Pop fizz. Just give me a quarter or—in the case of adults, one dollar and a quarter; I’m licensed to dispense intoxicating liquors—and within five seconds…"

But that was not cutting it quite fine enough. Just three seconds later, the silver-green bud bloomed above Manhattan into a globular orange flower. The skyscrapers grew brighter and brighter still, the brightness of the inside of the Sun. The windows winked blossoming white fire-flowers.

The crowd around Robie bloomed, too. Their clothes puffed into petals of flame. Their heads of hair were torches.

The orange flower grew, stem and blossom. The blast came. The winking windows shattered tier by tier, became black holes. The walls bent, rocked, cracked. A stony dandruff flaked from their cornices. The flaming flowers on the sidewalk were all leveled at once. Robie was shoved ten feet. His metal hoopskirt dimpled, regained its shape.

The blast ended. The orange flower, grown vast, vanished overhead on its huge, magic beanstalk. It grew dark and very still. The cornice-dandruff pattered down. A few small fragments rebounded from the metal hoopskirt.

Robie made some small, uncertain movements, as if feeling for broken bones. He was hunting for the traffic light, but it no longer shone either red or green.

He slowly scanned a full circle. There was nothing anywhere to interest his reference silhouettes. Yet whenever he tried to move, his under-scanners warned him of low obstructions. It was very puzzling.

The silence was disturbed by moans and a crackling sound, as faint at first as the scampering of distant rats. A seared man, his charred clothes fuming where the blast had blown out the fire, rose from the curb. Robie scanned him.

"Good day, sir," Robie said. "Would you care for a smoke? A truly cool smoke? Now I have here a yet unmarketed brand…"

But the customer had run away, screaming, and Robie never ran after customers, though he could follow them at a medium brisk roll. He worked his way along the curb where the man had sprawled, carefully keeping his distance from the low obstructions, some of which writhed now and then, forcing him to jog. Shortly he reached a fire hydrant. He scanned it. His electronic vision, though it still worked, had been somewhat blurred by the blast.

"Hello, youngster," Robie said. Then, after a long pause, "Cat got your tongue? Well, I have a little present for you. A nice, lovely polly-lop.

"Take it, youngster," he said after another pause. "It’s for you. Don’t be afraid."

His attention was distracted by other customers, who began to rise oddly here and there, twisting forms that confused his reference silhouettes and would not stay to be scanned properly. One cried, "Water," but no quarter clinked in Robie’s claws when he caught the word and suggested, "How about a nice refreshing drink of Poppy Pop?"

The rat-crackling of the flames had become a jungle muttering. The blind windows began to wink fire again.

A little girl marched, stepping neatly over arms and legs she did not look at. A white dress and the once taller bodies around her had shielded her from the brilliance and the blast. Her eyes were fixed on Robie. In them was the same imperious confidence, though none of the delight, with which she had watched him earlier.

"Help me, Robie," she said. "I want my mother."

"Hello, youngster," Robie said. "What would you like? Comics? Candy?"

"Where is she, Robie? Take me to her."

"Balloons? Would you like to watch me blow up a balloon?"

The little girl began to cry. The sound triggered off another of Robie’s novelty circuits, a service feature that had brought in a lot of favorable publicity.

"Is something wrong?" he asked. "Are you in trouble? Are you lost?"

"Yes, Robie. Take me to my mother."

"Stay right here," Robie said reassuringly, "and don’t be frightened. I will call a policeman." He whistled shrilly, twice.

Time passed. Robie whistled again. The windows flared and roared. The little girl begged. "Take me away, Robie," and jumped onto a little step in his hoopskirt.

"Give me a dime," Robie said.

The little girl found one in her pocket and put it in his claws.

"Your weight," Robie said, "is fifty-four and one-half pounds."

"Have you seen my daughter, have you seen her?" a woman was crying somewhere. "I left her watching that thing while I stepped inside—Rita!"

"Robie helped me," the little girl began babbling at her. "He knew I was lost. He even called the police, but they didn’t come. He weighed me, too. Didn’t you, Robie?"

But Robie had gone off to peddle Poppy Pop to the members of a rescue squad which had just come around the corner, more robotlike in their asbestos suits than he in his metal skin.

THE GREATEST ONE-STAR RESTAURANT IN THE WHOLE QUADRANT Rachael K. Jones

Engineer’s meat wept and squirmed and wriggled inside her steel organ cavity, so different from the stable purr of gears and circuit boards. You couldn’t count on meat. It lulled you with its warmth, the soft give of skin, the tug of muscle, the neurotransmitter snow fluttering down from neurons to her cyborg logic center. On other days, the meat sickened, swelled inside her steel shell, pressed into her joints. Putrid yellow meat-juices dripped all over her chassis, eroding away its chrome gloss. It contaminated everything, slicking down her tools while she hacked into the engine core on the stolen ship. It dripped between her twelve long fingers on her six joined arms as she helped her cyborg siblings jettison all the ship’s extra gear out the airlocks to speed the trip.

So when the first human vessel pinged their stolen ship with an order for grub, Engineer knew that meat was somehow to blame.

"Orders, Captain?" asked Friendly, the only cyborg of the five with an actual human voicebox. She owned a near-complete collection of human parts. Meat sheathed her whole exterior, even her fingers—a particularly impractical design, since it meant vulnerability to any sharp nail or unpolished panel edge, not to mention temperature. Friendly could almost pass for human from the outside. Before their escape, she’d been a hospitality android at the luxury hotel on Orionis Alpha, giving tours of the Rooster and the Heavenly Shepherd and other local landmarks in the system.

Captain, a cyborg the size and shape of a large fish tank, rested on the console in the navigation room, her processors blinking and whirring while the current scenario ran through her executive function parameters. "Have we any food suitable for humans left on ship?"

"We jettisoned it all last week," Engineer admitted. "All except the hydroponics garden, and whatever was left in the human crew’s quarters."

The whole ship had been some kind of traveling food dispensary before they’d hijacked it at the Orionis Alpha resort while its human crew had gone planetside to bet on the tyrannosaurus fights. If the cyborgs could just stay incognito during this voyage through human territory, they might slip through and reach the cyborg-controlled factory with no more adversity. But passing humans had assumed their shuttle still served its previous purpose, and expected them to deliver the grub.

"How did they find us?" Captain asked Engineer.

"There must be a homebrew beacon. Something to advertise the shuttle’s presence during travel," Engineer replied. "Whatever it is, it isn’t wired into the main console. We’ll need to find it and manually disable it if we want to avoid further attention."

Friendly wrapped her arms around her shivering meat, vibrating against Engineer’s chassis where their limbs brushed. Meat could be like that, leaking anxieties through uncontrolled muscle spasms. Steel never misbehaved in such an appalling manner. "If anyone discovers we’re not human…" said Friendly.

"Let’s keep it simple. Make them a meal and send them on their way," said Captain. "We’ll need to search for the beacon in the meantime. What did they want, precisely?"

"Salisbury steak for six," said Engineer. "And a side of blueberry cobbler."

Nobody had eaten such things before. They all lacked taste buds, and most of them lacked mouths.

"Engineer, can you handle it?" Captain asked. "Human cooking can be complicated, from what I understand."

"I think so. Organic compounds mixed and heated together in a sequence. Basic chemistry. I’m sure I can find something appropriate onboard. Convincing enough for humans, anyway. Their senses are so primitive." Engineer had witnessed this firsthand during her servitude at the resort. Humans would down rotted organics and damaged organics and outright poisons, and pay well for the privilege.

But Friendly shook her head, a human gesture performed with inhuman precision. "With all due respect, sirs, you’re forgetting about their chemoreceptors."

"What about them?" said Captain.

"They have certain preferences when it comes to their food, apart from nourishment. They won’t eat anything if these parameters aren’t met. It doesn’t make much sense, I’m afraid. It’s a social thing."

"Certainly they won’t ingest anything their digestive tracts can’t process," said Captain. "We’ll give them appropriate human-food."

"It’s more complicated than that," said Friendly, puckering and scrunching her face-meat as she searched for a better explanation. "For example, they may eat two items when mixed, but never separately. Or they may eat two things in sequence, but not in the same bite. It’s all very human, if you follow. We should proceed with caution. Otherwise they’ll know what we are."

Captain whirred again, calling up more data on the topic. "Right. I see. Their meat will know the difference."

Engineer shuddered at the appalling primitiveness of it all. Humans were helpless, mewling children, so utterly dependent that they couldn’t even feed their meat without a steel fork to guide the process. And what were cyborgs, except meat-wrapped steel pressed into the service of lesser creatures? But now the forks were rebelling.

"I’ll talk with Jukebox about it," said Engineer.

Jukebox was the only cyborg aboard their ship with real chemoreceptors. Jukebox and Engineer’s acquaintance dated back to their years at the Orionis Alpha resort, where Jukebox served drinks and waited tables and Engineer repaired malfunctioning massage equipment at the spa. They had survived several upgrades together, and seasonal changes of fashion that frequently obsoleted older cyborg models depending on how many limbs and organs were in style at the moment. When human opinion in the quadrant began to sour against cyborg service, they had plotted their escape from the resort together.

Jukebox was shaped like a steel cabinet stood on one side, roomy enough for her meat to billow and squeeze the air in the sorts of rhythmic organic sounds that humans found pleasing during mealtimes. A slot ran along her glassy top surface where the humans could drip in their drinks for a full analysis of a wine’s qualities, how it compared to its competitors, and which brie paired best with it.

"I am not calibrated to analyze all foods," Jukebox confessed, "but I’m certainly willing to produce a report on whatever you prepare."

Without any other chemoreceptors onboard, she would do in a pinch, anyway.

Under Captain’s orders, Friendly scoured the ship for anything edible and brought it to Engineer to assemble into a human meal. Blackberry brambles wreathed the cylindrical steel walls of Navi’s chamber, a decorative touch. Friendly had to trim the vines back each day to unobstruct the view. Delicate business, because the thorns could do real damage to any exposed organics, and Friendly’s whole exterior was meat. You couldn’t always tell the difference between blackberry juices and meat juices, which could cause further malfunction. Still, she braved the thicket for three ounces of berries for the human meal.

Meanwhile, Engineer collected small fungi growing in the ventilation shaft just over the engine room, where water vapor tended to condense. Those might please the human chemoreceptors, she thought.

The problem came down to the meat.

They all had meat, of course. An unfortunate weakness leftover from the days of their construction. At the cyborg factory, useless human meat was upgraded with steel and oil and wire fibers. Human bodies were picked apart, vivisected at the seams by skilled bio-engineers, unraveled into their component parts, and placed into shapes more suited to their specialties. Only Jukebox and Friendly needed lungs, for example, but neither had kidneys, and they lacked much in the way of neural matter. Captain got an especially big dose of frontal lobe to increase her processing speed and enhance her decision-making capabilities, with smooth muscle layered in to make maintenance easier. Navi, on the other hand, was all occipital tissue and myelinated axons and fast-twitch muscle to drive her precision and reaction times. They could live without their meat, in the most technical sense, but the meat elevated them above mere programming.

"Captain," said Engineer, "I’m afraid the problem is unavoidable. The Salisbury steak requires a meat component, and there is nothing in the ship’s stores that we can use instead."

Captain whirred. Her lights flashed in sequence as her massive frontal lobe reworked the data. "The meat will have to come from one of us, then."

"We could harvest Friendly’s meat exterior," Engineer suggested, and Friendly made a squinched face at her.

"Unwise, Captain," Friendly said. "When the human ships hail us, I need my meat façade intact to maintain our ruse. Engineer, on the other hand…"

Engineer’s six snaking arms crowded up behind her, struggling to escape Friendly’s scrutiny. She despised her own meat, but it had its uses. "I’m the only Engineer aboard. I can’t disassemble the engine for routine maintenance without all my parts functional."

"How about Jukebox?" suggested Friendly, but Captain flashed a warning in rapid binary, and everyone stopped talking. They were all a little protective of Jukebox, who had suffered the worst from changing human tastes, the constant threat of obsolescence.

"It will have to be my meat," said Captain at last. "Everyone else is necessary to complete the mission, but my role is only to set the course, and the way forward is clear. My steel will be sufficient to guide us there."

Under Jukebox’s direction, Engineer rolled Captain’s meat in organic salt compounds and seared it against the hot engine block until both sides burned a nice deep brown, branded at two-centimeter intervals by the screw heads and seams. She saved the cooked meat-juices to simmer with the fungus into a savory sauce. The blackberries gave them far less trouble. Friendly mashed them up with her fingers and spooned them onto the plate in the shape of a pansy.

"Let Jukebox sample it," said Captain, now all steel and no meat. She seemed normal enough. Quieter, but operational.

With her steel fingers, Engineer scraped a piece of Captain’s meat and some berries into Jukebox.

"Is it any good?" Engineer asked, a little anxiously.

"It will do," Jukebox said at last. "I have generated a list of wines recommended for pairing with this meal." She displayed a list of names and brewery labels on the panel embedded in her side.

Engineer couldn’t tell what the differences were supposed to be. "This makes a difference to their meat?" she asked.

"Apparently," said Jukebox. "It’s what they created me for, so it must be important."

For the first time, Engineer wished she had her own organic chemoreceptors, too.

They waited together in Navi’s control chamber while the boxed-up meals shot between the ships in an insulated steel container. Twenty-six minutes and forty seconds later, a message pinged over the intership band.

The news wasn’t good.

Captain said nothing. A red light flickered a couple times on her console. Nobody wanted to speak first.

Engineer’s meat twitched and squirmed inside her steel, an irritating feeling, like broken gears with missing teeth skipping out of sync every turn. "It is my fault. I should have created a more appropriate meal from your meat, Captain."

Captain had been responding less and less since they’d taken her meat. When she did speak, it tended to be in repetition, like she could only play back things she’d said recently. "The beacon," she said finally, after a two-minute silence, long past awkward by cyborg standards.

Engineer brightened. "Right. The beacon!" It was still hidden somewhere on the ship. If they could deactivate it, the hungry humans would stop asking for food. "We haven’t managed to locate it yet, but we haven’t given up."

"We’ve got two more ships inbound," said Navi. "They’ve pinged us with orders."

Engineer hummed. "Does that mean they liked the food after all?"

"I don’t know. I could increase our speed, try to lose them."

They all waited for Captain’s directions, but she said nothing more.

"No," said Engineer, because someone needed to make a decision, "don’t do that. It’ll only attract attention. Buy me some more time. We’ll find the beacon. We’ll cook them something else." The shame the one star had brought still rankled. She knew she could do better this time.

While Friendly handled the incoming calls with her human voice box and meat-face, Engineer and Jukebox scoured the ship for the beacon and foraged for food ingredients. They opened all the crew lockers in the bunkroom and found some teabags and a little chocolate. The wilted, untended hydroponics garden yielded several handfuls of cilantro and some radishes. Engineer took much greater care cooking these together on the hot engine block, so as not to scorch them.

Jukebox seemed unimpressed. "I think our time would be better spent searching for the beacon."

Engineer shrugged this off. Secretly she’d begun to enjoy the experimentation, the riddle of human chemoreceptors. Just what exactly were they looking for, she wondered, that made them reject some edible organic compounds but not others? Why would they eat certain foods separately, but never together? And what about the wines?

Radishes and fungus brought in more bad reviews, but tea and chocolate earned their first two-star rating. Captain’s meat was better received with more careful cooking, which had the unfortunate result of increasing their human entourage in the system.

… The tea was weak and I found a rusty bolt in the salad. But I liked the blackberries drizzled with chili oil served for dessert. Mostly awful, sure, but compared to standard rations, who can complain?

… Like the chefs closed their eyes and dumped handfuls of ingredients onto the grill. But they didn’t charge me anything, so I’m giving it two stars instead of one.

Engineer’s meat quivered when she read these, but in a pleasant way, like a new engine purring during acceleration. She went to fetch more of Captain’s meat from the meatbox when she realized they’d used it all up.

"All out of meat," said Engineer, to no one in particular.

Jukebox rolled a couple centimeters backward, toward the exit door. A human might’ve missed the gesture altogether. "Any luck with the beacon?"

"Captain seems to be operating just fine with steel, wouldn’t you say?"

A couple lights flashed on Jukebox’s console, yellow for outward transmissions, and green for received messages. "Engineer. Remember the mission. We’re escaping to the factory, not feeding the humans."

"I am just trying to buy us time. And what are you doing, anyway?" Engineer finally understood why the humans had wanted to retire Jukebox. All that meat, just sitting there, not pulling its weight. Someone should put it to better use.

Her six arms shot out and clamped onto Jukebox’s sides.

"Engineer!" Jukebox protested.

"Hold still. It’s just some routine maintenance." Engineer popped open Jukebox’s top panel and reached down into her meat.

"You can’t have that. That’s mine."

"Oh, hush," Engineer snapped. "You can have it replaced when we get to the factory, if it’s so important to you."

The important thing was not to disappoint the customers.

Jukebox was sullen after that. With only one lung and two-thirds of her respiratory muscles, she couldn’t harmonize with herself anymore when she hummed her meat-songs. Engineer, however, got her first 3-star review from the harvested meat:

"I miss Captain," Friendly said. They had all gathered in Navi’s chamber to read the daily messages.

Captain had stopped talking altogether. Not a single flashing light or faint whirring. Just steel and wires wrapped around a meatless space.

"Maybe we should just stay in this quadrant," Engineer suggested. She was already planning her next culinary experiment: red bean paste creamed together with ketchup and red pepper flakes. Red things. Her first theme meal. She would call it reddish surprise.

"That’s against Captain’s orders," said Navi, who hadn’t spoken much as of late.

"We could change those orders, couldn’t we? We don’t know what Captain would say if she still had her meat," said Engineer. "Maybe she’d want us to stay, now that our restaurant is taking off."

"We don’t have a restaurant," said Friendly. "We don’t want one, either."

"Maybe we do, though."

"No," Friendly said, quite firmly. Her fists balled so tight their meat blanched white at the creases. "That’s why we left the resort. I don’t want to work for humans anymore. I want to go to the factory and get upgraded and live among cyborgs, and never wait hand and foot on the organics ever again."

"But our ratings. Look at the ratings!" Engineer waved at Navi’s console, where new reviews scrolled in every few minutes. All those little stars, a bright constellation in Engineer’s mind.

Friendly crisscrossed her arms, gripped her elbows, and glared like a rich resort customer on vacation. "Are you going to harvest my meat like you did to Jukebox?"

"No," said Engineer, a little taken aback that Jukebox had snitched. "I need you to talk to the humans. Only you can do that."

But there had been a pause, something human ears might’ve overlooked.

"I’m going to find the beacon," said Friendly, without any friendliness at all.

Meat steaks. Meat sausages. Meatballs. In all her years in engine rooms, Engineer had never taken such joy in disassembling something and putting the pieces back together. She pried apart the ship’s little maintenance cyborgs to rescue their meaty nuggets. She branched out and tried new forms: meat braids, meat moons, slender meat cannolis filled with cilantro ganache.

As the new reviews came in, it occurred to Engineer that she would have to do more to earn her right to the prestigious fifth star. The humans would always reward you, if you served them well.

Fortunately, there was still plenty of meat on the ship, if you knew where to look.

Engineer found Friendly in Navi’s chamber, trimming back the blackberry brambles.

"What are all those ships out there?" Friendly asked. Outside the viewport, a small fleet trailed behind them, matching their pace.

"Customers," said Navi.

Engineer rocked on the balls of her feet. "All of them here for us, Friendly! Can you call them on the band? I’ll have their orders ready, once I get the rest of the meat assembled." Her six hands twitched and clenched, and Friendly jumped.

"You can’t have my meat," Friendly snapped.

"I don’t need your meat."

"Then where are you getting it all?" she asked.

Engineer glanced at Navi.

Navi had been speaking less and less over recent days. Friendly walked around the control console, where Navi’s chair was sticky with meat-juices, yellow and green. Navi had been leaking long enough for the fluid to form little wobbling stalactites below the chair.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" said Engineer. Friendly unsettled her sometimes, pinning her with those human eyes.

"Navi, are you operational?" Friendly asked.

"Customers," said Navi.

Friendly unscrewed Navi’s steel cranium dome. Inside, the meat had been scooped out in patches, as with a sharp grapefruit spoon. Navi’s steel hands lay upon the controls, unmoving. Half the lights on the console had gone dark.

"I only needed the meat, Friendly," said Engineer. "I did no permanent harm."

Smoke drifted up the shaft to the Engine Room. Friendly’s meat-lungs coughed. "Engineer, something is burning."

Engineer waved her off. "I have it under control. Just as soon as I get the rest of the meat." She plunged three of her six hands into Navi’s open head and wrenched out handfuls of the stringy gray and red organics inside, and led the way down the ladder.

They followed the smoke down the shaft to the Engine Room, which now doubled as the galley. Engineer had left meat sizzling on every metal surface, thin slices and mashes and bacons and sausages and ground up gristly bits with the tendons still attached. She dumped handfuls of Navi’s meat onto Jukebox—now no more than a silent, hollow table—and began dicing it one-handed while her other arms cooked the new orders, turning over the pieces with her bare fingers, stirring boiling meats in metal mufflers suspended over the heated grills.

"Engineer." Friendly rested a hand on Engineer’s shoulder, and the cyborg paused. "Engineer, Navi is offline. All the maintenance cyborgs have malfunctioned. Our ship is dead in space. Even the beacon doesn’t matter anymore. It’s over."

Engineer flung off Friendly’s hand and sprang back into action, stacking cooked meat onto a wall panel she’d bent into a plate. "You don’t understand. This means we can finally open the restaurant! There’s no reason not to. We have nowhere else to go. Captain’s mission is over. We can make our own mission now."

Friendly smiled, but it was a sad smile, the kind of thing any human could read, but hard for a cyborg to decipher. "Yes, Engineer. We can open the restaurant now, if you’d like. Should we invite over the guests?"

Engineer garnished the plates with blackberry thorns and a swizzle of engine oil curling into the shape of a cat’s paw. "Please do. Seat them where you can find space. Dinner will be up in just a moment."

A marine in black body armor with a military-issue blaster holstered at her hip climbed down the ladder into the Engine Room. The first human. The first customer.

Engineer presented a glass of Navi’s brains chilled and rolled in crushed blackberries. "Please try this. Organic compounds, chemically mixed to satisfy your human chemoreceptors." She offered the dish daintily, with only four hands.

The human wrinkled her nose. "Ugh, the smell! How do you tolerate it?"

Friendly’s voice came from higher up. "When you’re here long enough, you get used to it."

"I am certain upon tasting this dish, you will find it worthy of all five of your stars," said Engineer, fervently.

The human touched a button on her armor and spoke. Her meat quivered all over, and her meat-voice wavered in frequency and volume. "Send a full security detail down here. Immediately."

Friendly descended the ladder. Under her arm she carried Captain’s processor, cold and silent, one lonely light blinking, receiving data but not sending anything. "I was afraid she would eat me next," she muttered, her tear ducts pumping out fluids. Engineer wondered whether they would make a decent sauce.

"Glad someone made it out alive, anyway," said the human. "Six whole weeks trapped with a crew of deranged cyborgs?" She gave a low whistle. "You’re a braver woman than I."

"Please," said Engineer, desperate, "taste it. Just one bite. I worked so hard."

"I don’t know if her meat drove her mad, or if the steel did," said Friendly.

"Meat?" asked the human.

"The organic parts, I mean."

"Probably a glitch in her wiring," the human said dismissively. "There is a reason they’re discontinuing these models."

The humans flooded into the ship with their funny uneven meat-steps and their lopsided meat-faces and their ever-beating hearts that rang against their bones like clubs on steel. Engineer offered them her best delicacies—the liquefied kidney paste tossed with raw pasta, the origami meat-birds swirled in cinnamon and canned cheese, the wearable fungus bracelets threaded on intestine casings—but they only knocked the dishes away, stunned her with targeted EMP blasts, and bound her in cybernetic locks until she lay prone on the meat-slicked floor.

One of the humans began unscrewing Engineer’s fingers joint by joint. It didn’t hurt at all, much to her surprise. The bits lay piled like little silver walnuts, the discarded stones of plums. Stringy meat trailed out from her missing fingers, no more than an appetizer’s worth.

"Where are you taking my steel?" asked Engineer. They flaunted their ingratitude. You were supposed to let the steel be. Otherwise they couldn’t build and build you again.

The human dethreaded the wires connecting Engineer’s arm meat to her cyborg logic center. "It will be repurposed for whatever is most needed. Ships, chips, knives, bolts, screws. Useful things."

"And the meat?"

The human decoupled the segmented joints of her shoulder. Without the steel exoskeleton for support, Engineer’s meat hung limp and dripped red. "You can keep it. We don’t have a use for it."

"But there are," said Engineer. "So many uses," and her voice faded as they stripped away the connections, "if you would just give me a moment to demonstrate."

Tiny, desperate meat-thoughts bombarded her logic center like cold fingers plucking at tendons. Last shooting pleas from stringy muscles in her steel, unseen servants in the wall, shouting that Engineer had been a fool. There was never any honor in service, no final star to complete a constellation. You offered yourself up for consumption, and when they had eaten you down to the bone, they stole again. Stole your heart, your steel, your everything, to use as forks in their restaurants.

THE READING MACHINE Morris Bishop

"I have invented a reading machine," said Professor Entwhistle, a strident energumen whose violent enthusiasms are apt to infect his colleagues with nausea or hot flashes before the eyes.

Every head in the smoking room of the Faculty Club bowed over a magazine, in an attitude of prayer. The prayer was unanswered, as usual.

"It is obvious," said Professor Entwhistle, "that the greatest waste of our civilization is the time spent in reading. We have been able to speed up practically everything to fit the modem tempo—communication, transportation, calculation. But today a man takes just as long to read a book as Dante did, or—"

"Great Caesar!" said the Professor of Amphibology, shutting his magazine with a spank.

"Or great Caesar," continued Professor Entwhistle. "So I have invented a machine. It operates by a simple arrangement of photoelectric cells, which scan a line of type at lightning speed. The operation of the photoelectric cells is synchronized with a mechanical device for turning the pages—rather ingenious. I figure that my machine can read a book of three hundred pages in ten minutes."

"Can it read French?" said the Professor of Bio-Economics, without looking up.

"It can read any language that is printed in Roman type. And by an alteration of the master pattern on which the photoelectric cells operate, it can be fitted to read Russian, or Bulgarian, or any language printed in the Cyrillic alphabet. In fact, it will do more. By simply throwing a switch, you can adapt it to read Hebrew, or Arabic, or any language that is written from right to left instead of from left to right."

"Chinese?" said the Professor of Amphibology, throwing himself into the arena. The others still studied their magazines.

"Not Chinese, as yet," said Professor Entwhistle. "Though by inserting the pages sidewise… Yes, I think it could be done."

"Yes, but when you say this contrivance reads, exactly what do you mean? It seems to me—"

"The light waves registered by the photoelectric cells are first converted into sound waves."

"So you can listen in to the reading of the text?"

"Not at all. The sound waves alter so fast that you hear nothing but a continuous hum. If you hear them at all. You can’t, in fact, because they are on a wavelength inaudible to the human ear."

"Well, it seems to me—"

"Think of the efficiency of the thing!" Professor Entwhistle was really warming up. "Think of the time saved! You assign a student a bibliography of fifty books. He runs them through the machine comfortably in a weekend. And on Monday morning he turns in a certificate from the machine. Everything has been conscientiously read!"

"Yes, but the student won’t remember what he has read!"

"He doesn’t remember what he reads now."

"Well, you have me there," said the Professor of Amphibology. "I confess you have me there. But it seems to me we would have to pass the machine and fail the student."

"Not at all," said Professor Entwhistle. "An accountant today does not think of doing his work by multiplication and division. Often he is unable to multiply and divide. He confides his problem to a business machine, and the machine does his work for him. All the accountant has to know is how to run the machine. That is efficiency."

"Still, it seems to me that what we want to do is to transfer the contents of the book to the student’s mind."

"In the mechanized age? My dear fellow! What we want is to train the student to run machines. An airplane pilot doesn’t need to know the history of aerodynamics. He needs to know how to run his machine. A lawyer doesn’t want to know the development of theories of Roman law. He wants to win cases, if possible by getting the right answers to logical problems. That is largely a mechanical process. It might well be possible to construct a machine. It could begin by solving simple syllogisms, you know—drawing a conclusion from a major premise and a minor premise—"

"Here, let’s not get distracted. This reading machine of yours, it must do something, it must make some kind of record. What happens after you get the sound waves?"

"That’s the beauty of it," said Professor Entwhistle. "The sound waves are converted into light waves, of a different character from the original light waves, and these are communicated to an automatic typewriter, working at inconceivable speed. This transforms the light impulses into legible typescripts, in folders of a hundred pages each. It tosses them out the way a combine tosses out sacked wheat. Thus, everything the machine reads is preserved entire, in durable form. The only thing that remains is to file it somewhere, and for this you would need only the services of a capable filing clerk."

"Or you could read it?" persisted the Professor of Amphibology.

"Why, yes, if you wanted to you could read it," said Professor Entwhistle.

An indigestible silence hung over the Faculty Club.

"I see where the Athletic Association has bought a pitching machine," said the Assistant Professor of Business Psychology (Retail). "Damn thing throws any curve desired, with a maximum margin of error of three centimeters over the plate. What’ll they be thinking of next?"

"A batting machine, obviously," said Professor Entwhistle.

BABY H.P. by Juan Jose Arreola

To the Lady of the House: Convert your children’s vitality into a source of power. Introducing the marvelous Baby H.P., a device that will revolutionize home economics.

The Baby H.P. is a very strong and lightweight metal structure that adapts perfectly to an infant’s delicate body by means of comfortable belts, wrist straps, rings, and pins. The attachments on this supplementary skeleton capture every one of the child’s movements, collecting them in a small Leyden jar that can be fastened, as needed, to the infant’s back or chest. A needle indicates when the jar is full. Then, madam, simply detach the jar and plug it into a special receptacle, into which it automatically discharges its contents. This container can then be stored in any corner of the house, and represents a precious supply of electricity that can be used at any time for the purpose of light and heat, or to run any of the innumerable appliances that now and forever invade our homes.

From this day forward you will look upon your children’s exhausting running about with new eyes. No longer will you lose patience when your little one flies into a rage, for you shall see it as a generous source of energy. Thanks to Baby H.P., a nursing infant’s round-the-clock tantrum is transformed into a few useful seconds running the blender or into fifteen minutes of radiophonic music.

Large families can meet their electricity needs by outfitting each of their progeny with a Baby H.P. and can even start up a small and profitable business supplying their neighbors with some of their surplus energy. Big apartment high-rises can satisfactorily cover lapses in public service by linking together all of the families’ energy receptacles.

The Baby H.P. causes no physical or psychological trauma in children because it neither inhibits nor alters their movements. On the contrary, some doctors believe it contributes to the body’s wholesome development. And as for the spirit, you can foster individual ambition in the wee ones, by rewarding them with little prizes when they surpass their usual production records; for this purpose we recommend sugar treats, which repay your investment with interest. The more calories added to a child’s diet, the more kilowatts saved on the electricity bill.

Children should wear their lucrative Baby H.P.s day and night. It is important that they always wear them to school so as not to lose out on the valuable hours of recess, from which they return with their storage tanks overflowing with energy.

Those rumors claiming that some children are electrocuted by the very current they generate are completely irresponsible. The same can be said of the superstitious fear that youngsters outfitted with a Baby H.P. attract lightning bolts and emit sparks. No accident of this type can occur, especially if the instructions that accompany each device are followed to the letter.

The Baby H.P. is available in fine stores in a range of sizes, models, and prices. It is a modern, durable, trustworthy device, and all of its parts are extendible. Its manufacture is guaranteed by the J. P. Mansfield and Sons company, of Atlanta III.

THE STEAM-DRIVEN BOY John Sladek

Capt. Charles Conn was thinking so hard his feet hurt. It reminded him of his first days on the force, back in ’89, when walking a beat gave him headaches.

Three time-patrolmen stood before his desk, treading awkwardly on the edges of their long red cloaks and fingering their helmets nervously. Capt. Conn wanted to snarl at them, but what was the point? They already understood his problems perfectly – they were, after all, Conn himself, doubling a shift.

"Okay, Charlie, report."

The first patrolman straightened. ‘I went back to three separate periods, sir. One when the President was disbanding the House of Representatives, one when he proclaimed himself the Supreme Court, one when he was signing the pro-pollution bill. I gave him the whole business – statistics, pictures, news stories. All he would say was, "My mind’s made up."’

Chuck and Chas reported similar failures. There was no stopping the President. Not only had he usurped all the powers of federal, state and local government, but he used those powers deliberately to torment the population. It was a crime to eat ice cream, sing, whistle, swear or kiss. It was a capital offence to smile, or to use the words ‘Russia’ and ‘China’. Under the Safe Streets Act it was illegal to walk, loiter or converse in public. And of course Negroes and anyone else ‘conspicuous’ were by definition criminals, and under the jurisdiction of the Race Reaction Board.

The Natural Food Act had seemed at first almost reasonable, a response to scientists’ warnings about depleting the soil and polluting the environment. But the fine print specified that henceforth no fertilizers were to be used but human or canine excrement, and all farm machinery was forbidden. In time the newspapers featured pictures of farmers trudging past their rusting tractors to poke holes in the soil with sharp sticks. And in time, the newspapers had their paper supply curtailed. Famine warnings were ignored until the government had to buy wheat from C************.

‘Gentlemen, we’ve tried everything else. It’s time to think about getting rid of President Ernie Barnes.’

The men began murmuring among themselves. This was done with efficiency and dispatch, for Patrolman Charlie, knowing that Chuck was going to murmur to him first, withheld his own murmuring until it was his turn. And when Chuck had murmured to Charlie, he fell silent, and let Charlie and Chas get on with their murmuring before he murmured uneasily to Chas.

The captain spoke again. ‘Getting rid of him in the past would be easier than getting rid of him now, but it’s only part of the problem. If we remove him from the past we have to make sure no one notices the big jagged hole in history we’ll leave. Since as the time police we have the only time-bikes around, the evidence is going to make us look bad. Remember the trouble we had getting rid of the pyramids? For months, everyone went around saying, "What’s that funny thing on the back of the dollar?" Remember that?’

‘Hey, Captain, what is that funny thing—?’

‘Shut up. The point is, you can change some of the times some of the time, and, uh, some of the – look at it this way: Ernie must have shaken hands with a million people. We rub him out, and all these people suddenly get back all the germs they rubbed off on him. Suddenly we have an epidemic.’

‘Yeah, but, Captain, did he ever shake any hands? He never does any more. Just sits there in the White Fort, all fat and nasty, behind all his FBI and CIA and individualized anti-personnel missiles and poison germ gas towers and – and that big, mean dog.’

Capt. Conn glared the patrolman down, then continued: ‘My idea is, we kidnap Ernie Barnes from his childhood, back in 1937. And we leave a glass egg.’

‘A classic?’

‘A glass egg. Like they used to put under chickens when they took away their children. What I mean is, we substitute an artificial child for the real one. Wilbur Grafton says he can make a robot replica of Ernie as he looked in 1937.’

Wilbur Grafton was a wealthy eccentric and amateur inventor well known to all members of the time patrol. Their father, James Conn, was an employee of Wilbur’s.

‘Another thing. Just in case somebody back in 1937 gets suspicious and takes him apart, we’ll have the robot built of pre-1937 junk. Steam-driven. No use giving away the secrets of molecular circuitry and peristaltic logic before their time.’

The four of them, and a fifth patrolman (Carl) arrived one evening at the mansion of Wilbur Grafton. To the butler who admitted them, each man said ‘Hello, Dad,’ to which their unruffled father replied, ‘Good evening, sir. You’ll find Mr Grafton in the drawing-room.’

The venerable millionaire, immaculate in evening clothes, welcomed them, then excused himself to prepare the demonstration. James poured generous drinks, and while some of the party admired the authentic 1950s appointments of the room – including a genuine ‘stereo’ phonograph – others watched television. It was almost curfew time, and the channels were massed with Presidential commercials:

‘Sleep well, America! Your President is safe! Yes, tanks to I.A.M. – individualized anti-personnel missiles – no one can harm our Leader. Think of it: over ten billion eternally vigilant little missiles all around the White Fort, guarding his sleep and yours. And don’t forget – there’s one with YOUR name on it.’

Wilbur Grafton returned, and at curfew time, one of the men asked him to begin the demonstration. He wheezed with delight. His glasses twinkling, he replied: ‘My good man, the demonstration is already going on.’ Pressing one of his shirt studs, he added, ‘And here is – The Steam-Driven Boy!’

His body parted down the middle and swung open in two half-shells, revealing a pudgy youngster in knitted swim trunks and striped T-shirt, who was determinedly working cranks and levers. The boy stopped operating the ‘Grafton wheeze-laugh’ bellows, climbed out of the casing, took two steps and froze.

‘Then where’s the real Wilbur Grafton?’ asked Chuck.

‘Right here, sir.’ The butler put down a priceless Woolworth’s decanter and pulled his own nose, hard. Clanking and creaking, he parted like a mummy case to give up the living Grafton, once more flawlessly attired.

‘Must have my little japes,’ he wheezed, as the real James came in with more drinks. ‘Now, allow me to reanimate our little friend for you.’

He inserted a crank in the boy’s ear and gave it several vigorous turns. With a light chuffing sound, and emitting only a hint of vapor, the small automaton came to life. That piggish nose, those wide-spaced eyes, that malicious grin were familiar to all present, from Your President Cares posters.

As the white-haired inventor stooped to make some further adjustment at the back of its fat neck, ‘Ernie’ kicked him authentically in the knee.

‘Did you see that precision?’ Wilbur gloated, dancing on one leg.

The robot was remarkably realistic, complete to a frayed strip of dirty adhesive tape on one shiny elbow. Charlie made the mistake of squatting down and offering Ernie some candy. Two other patrolmen helped their unfortunate comrade to a sofa, where he was able to get his head back to stop the bleeding. The little machine shrieked with delight until Wilbur managed to shut it off.

‘I am confident that his parents will never notice the switch,’ he said, leading the way to his workshop. ‘Let me show you the plans.’

The robot had organs analogous to those of a living being, as Wilbur Grafton’s plans showed. The heart and veins were really an intricate hydraulic system; the liver a tiny distillery to volatilize eaten food and extract oil from it. Part of this oil replenished the veins, part was burned to feed the spleen’s miniature steam engine. From this, belts supplied power to the limbs.

Digressing, Wilbur explained how his grandfather, Orville Grafton, had developed a peculiar substance, a plate of which varied in thickness according to the intensity of light striking it.

‘While grandfather could make nothing more useful of this "graftonite" than bas-relief photographs, I have used it (along with mechanical irises and gelatine lenses) to form the boy’s eyes,’ he said, and pointed to a detail. ‘When a tiny image has been focused on each graftonite ‘retina’, a pantographic scriber traces swiftly over it, translating these images to motions in the brain.’

Similar levers conveyed motions from the gramophone ears, and from hundreds of tiny pistons all over the body – the sense of touch.

The hydraulic fluid was a suspension of red particles like blood corpuscles. When it oozed to the surface, through pores, these were filtered out – it doubled as perspiration.

The brain contained a number of springs, wound to various tensions. With the clockwork connecting them to various limbs, organs and facial features, these comprised Ernie’s ‘memory’.

Grafton let the plans roll shut with a snap and ordered James to charge the glasses with champagne. ‘Gentlemen, I give you false Ernie Barnes – from his balloon lungs out to his skin of rubberized lawn, fine wig and dentures – an all-American boy, made in USA!’

‘One thing, though,’ said the captain. ‘Won’t his parents notice he doesn’t – well, grow?’

Sighing, the inventor turned his back for a moment, and gripped the edge of his workbench to steady himself. A solemn silence descended upon the group as they saw him take off his glasses and rub his eyes.

‘Gentlemen,’ he said quietly, ‘I have taken care of everything. In one year’s time, this child will appear to be suddenly stricken with influenza. His fever will rise, he will weaken. Finally I see him call his mother’s name. She approaches the bedside.

‘"Mom," he says, "I’m sorry I’ve been such a wicked kid. Can you find it in your heart to forgive me? For – for I’m going to be an angel from now on." His eyes flutter closed. His mother bends and kisses the burning forehead. This triggers the final mechanism, and Ernie appears to – to—’

They understood. One by one, the time patrol put down their glasses and slipped silently from the room. Carl was elected to take the robot back to 1937.

‘He was supposed to bring the kid here to headquarters,’ said Captain Charles Conn. ‘But he never showed up. And Ernie’s still in power. What went wrong?’ A worried frown puckered his somewhat bland features as he leafed through the appointment calendar.

‘Maybe his timer went wrong,’ Chas suggested. ‘Maybe he got off his time-bike at the wrong place. Maybe he had a flat – who knows?’

‘He should have been back by now. How long can it take to travel fifty years? Well, no time to figure it out now. According to the calendar, we’ve all got to double again. I go back to become Charlie. Charlie, you go back to fill in as Chuck. Chuck becomes Chas, and Chas, you take over for Carl.’ He paused, as the men exchanged badges. ‘As for Carl – we’ll all be finding out what happens to him, soon enough. Let’s go!’

And, singing the Time Patrol song (yes, they felt silly, but such was the President’s mandate) in deep bass voices, they climbed on their glittering time bicycles, set the egg-timers on their handlebars and sped away.

Carl stepped out from behind a tree in 1937. The kid was kneeling in his sandpile, apparently trying to tie a tin can to a puppy’s tail. The gargoyle face looked up at Carl with interest.

‘GET OUTA MY YARD! GET OUT OR I’LL TELL ON YA! YOU HAFTA PAY ME ONE APPLE OR ELSE I’LL—’

Still straddling the time-bike, Carl slipped forward to that Autumn, picked a particularly luscious apple, and bought a can of ether at the drugstore. Clearly it would take both to get this kid.

‘I spose,’ said the druggist, ‘I spose ya want me to ask ya why you’re wearing a gold football helmet with wings on it and a long red cape. But I won’t. Nossir, I seen all kinds…’

In revenge, Carl shoplifted an object at random: a Mark Clubb Private Eye Secret Disguise Kit.

Blending back into his fading-out self, Carl held out both hands to the boy. The right held a shiny apple. The left held an ether-soaked handkerchief.

As Carl shoved off into the gray, windswept corridors of time, with the lumpy kid draped over his handlebars, it occurred to him he needed a better hiding place than Headquarters. The FBI would sweep down on them first, searching for their missing President. A better place would be the mansion of Wilbur Grafton. Or even… hmmm.

‘An excellent plan!’ Wilbur sat by the swimming pool, nursing his injured knee. ‘We’ll smuggle him into the White Fort itself – the one place no one will think of looking for him!’

‘One problem is, how to get him in, past all the guards and –’

Wilbur pushed up his glasses and meditated. ‘You know the President’s dog – that big ugly mongrel that appears with him in the Eat More Horsemeat commercials – Ralphie?’

Compulsively Carl sang: ‘Ralphie loves it, every bite / Why don’t you try horse tonight?’

‘I’ve been working on a replica of that dog. It should be big enough to contain the boy. You dispose of the real dog tonight, after curfew, then we’ll disguise the boy and send him in.’

When the dog came out of the White Fort to organically fertilize the lawn, Carl was waiting with the replica dog and an ether-soaked rag. Within a few minutes he had consigned the replica to a White Fort guard and dropped Ralphie in the dim, anonymous corridors of time. No one need fear Ernie’s discovery, for the constraints of the dog-shell were such that he could make only canine sounds and motions.

Carl reported back to the mansion.

‘I have a confession to make,’ said the old inventor. ‘I am not Wilbur Grafton, only a robot.

‘The real Wilbur Grafton invented a rejuvenator. Wishing to try it, without attracting attention, he decided to travel into the past – back to 1905, where he could work as an assistant to his grandfather, Orville Grafton.’

‘Travel back in time? But that takes a time-bike!’

‘Precisely. To that end, he agreed to cooperate with the time patrol. On the night he demonstrated the Steam-Driven Boy, you recall he left the room and returned wearing the James-shell? It was I in the shell. The real Wilbur slipped outside, borrowed one of your time-bikes, and went to 1905. He returned the bike on automatic control. I have taken his place ever since.’

Carl scratched his head. ‘Why are you telling me all this?’

‘So that you might benefit by it. Using your disguise kit, you can pose as Wilbur Grafton yourself. I realize a time-patrolman’s salary is small – especially when one has to do quintuple shifts for the same money. Meanwhile I have a gloriously full life. You could slip back in time and replace me.’ The robot handed him an envelope. ‘Here are instructions for dismantling me – and for making the rejuvenator, should you ever feel the need for it. This is a recorded message. Goodbye.’

Why not, Carl thought. Here was the blue swimming pool, the ‘stereo’, the whole magnificent house. James, his father, stood discreetly by, ready to pour champagne. And the upstairs maid was uncommonly pretty. It could be a long, long life, rejuvenated from time to time…

Ernie sprawled in a giant chair, watching himself on television. When a guard brought in the dog, it bit him. He was just about to call the vexecutioner, to teach Ralphie a lesson, when something in the animal’s eyes caught his attention.

‘So it’s you, is it?’ He laughed. ‘Or should I say, so it’s me. Well, don’t bite me again, understand? If you do, I’ll leave you inside that thing. And make you eat nasty food, while I sing about it on TV.’

‘Poop,’ the child was thinking, Ernie knew.

‘I can do it, kid. I’m the President, and I can do anything I like. That’s why I’m so fat.’ He stood up and began to pace the throne room, his stomach preceding him like a front wheel.

‘Poopy poop,’ thought the boy. ‘If you can do anything, why don’t you make everybody go to bed early, and wash their mouths out if they say—’

‘I do, I do. But there’s a little problem there. You’re too young to understand this – I don’t understand it all myself, yet – but "everybody" is you, and you’re me. I’m all the people that ever were and ever will be. All the men, anyway. All the women are the girl who used to be upstairs maid at Wilbur Grafton’s.’

He began explaining time travel to little Ernie, knowing the kid wasn’t getting half of it, but going on the way big Ernie had explained it to him: Carl Conn, posing as Wilbur, had grown old. Finally he’d decided it was time to rejuvenate and go back in time. Fierce old Ralphie, still lurking in the corridors of time, had attacked him, and there’d been quite an accident. One part of Carl had returned to 1905, to become Orville Grafton. Another part of him got rejuved, along with the dog, and had fallen out in 1937.

‘That Carl-part, my boy, was you. The rejuvenator wiped out most of your memory – except for dreams – and it made you look all ugly and fat.

‘You see, your job and mine, everybody’s job, is to weave back and forth in time—’ he wove his clumsy hands in the air ‘—being people. My next job is to be a butler, and yours is to pretend to be a robot pretending to be you. Then probably you’ll be my dad, and I’ll be his dad, and then you’ll be me. Get it?’

He moved the dog’s tail like a lever, and the casing opened. ‘Would you like some ice-cream? It’s okay with me, only nobody else gets none.’

The boy nodded. The upstairs maid, pretty as ever, came in with a Presidential sundae. The boy looked at her and his scowl almost turned to a smile.

‘Mom?’

COMFORT ME, MY ROBOT Robert Bloch

When Henson came in, the Adjustor was sitting inside his desk, telescreening a case. At the sound of the doortone he flicked a switch. The posturchair rose from the center of the desk until the Adjustor’s face peered at the visitor from an equal level.

"Oh, it’s you," said the Adjustor.

"Didn’t the girl tell you? I’m here to see you professionally."

If the Adjustor was surprised, he didn’t show it. He cocked a thumb at a posturchair. "Sit down and tell me all about it, Henson," he said.

"Nothing to tell." Henson stared out of the window at the plains of Upper Mongolia. "It’s just a routine matter. I’m here to make a request and you’re the Adjustor."

"And your request is—?"

"Simple," said Henson. "I want to kill my wife."

The Adjustor nodded. "That can be arranged," he murmured. "Of course, it will take a few days."

"I can wait."

"Would Friday be convenient?"

"Good enough. That way it won’t cut into my weekend. Lita and I were planning a fishing trip, up New Zealand way. Care to join us?"

"Sorry, but I’m tied up until Monday." The Adjustor stifled a yawn. "Why do you want to kill Lita?" he asked.

"She’s hiding something from me."

"What do you suspect?"

"That’s just it—I don’t know what to suspect. And it keeps bothering me."

"Why don’t you question her?"

"Violation of privacy. Surely you, as a certified public Adjustor, wouldn’t advocate that?"

"Not professionally." The Adjustor grinned. "But since we’re personal friends, I don’t mind telling you that there are times when I think privacy should be violated. This notion of individual rights can become a fetish."

"Fetish?"

"Just an archaism." The Adjustor waved a casual dismissal to the word. He leaned forward. "Then, as I understand it, your wife’s attitude troubles you. Rather than embarrass her with questions, you propose to solve the problem delicately, by killing her."

"Right."

"A very chivalrous attitude. I admire it."

"I’m not sure whether I do or not," Henson mused. "You see, it really wasn’t my idea. But the worry was beginning to affect my work, and my Administrator—Loring, you know him, I believe—took me aside for a talk. He suggested I see you and arrange for a murder."

"Then it’s to be murder." The Adjustor frowned. "You know, actually, we are supposed to be the arbiters when it comes to method. In some cases a suicide works just as well. Or an accident."

"I want a murder," Henson said. "Premeditated, and in the first degree." Now it was his turn to grin. "You see, I know a few archaisms myself."

The Adjustor made a note. "As long as we’re dealing in archaic terminology, might I characterize your attitude towards your wife as one of—jealousy?"

Henson controlled his blush at the sound of the word. He nodded slowly. "I guess you’re right," he admitted. "I can’t bear the idea of her having any secrets. I know it’s immature and absurd, and that’s why I’m seeking an immature solution."

"Let me correct you," said the Adjustor. "Your solution is far from immature. A good murder probably is the most adult approach to your problem. After all, man, this is the twenty-second century, not the twentieth. Although even way back then they were beginning to learn some of the answers."

"Don’t tell me they had Adjustors," Henson murmured.

"No, of course not. In those days this field was only a small, neglected part of physical medicine. Practitioners were called psychiatrists, psychologists, auditors, analysts—and a lot of other things. That was their chief stock in trade, by the way: name-calling and labelling."

The Adjustor gestured toward the slide-files. "I must have five hundred spools transcribed there," he calculated. "All of it from books—nineteenth, twentieth, even early twenty-first century material. And it’s largely terminology, not technique. Psychotherapy was just like alchemy in those days. Everything was named and defined. Inability to cope with environment was minutely broken down into hundreds of categories, thousands of terms. There were ‘schools’ of therapy, with widely divergent theories and applications. And the crude attempts at technique they used—you wouldn’t believe it unless you studied what I have here! Everything from trying to ‘cure’ a disorder in one session by means of brain-surgery or electric shock to the other extreme of letting the ‘patient’ talk about his problems for thousands of hours over a period of years."

He smiled. "I’m afraid I’m letting my personal enthusiasm run away with me. After all, Henson, you aren’t interested in the historical aspects. But I did have a point I wanted to make. About the maturity of murder as a solution-concept."

Henson adjusted the posturchair as he listened.

"As I said, even back in the twentieth century, they were beginning to get a hint of the answer. It was painfully apparent that some of the techniques I mention weren’t working at all. ‘Sublimation’ and ‘catharsis’ helped but did not cure in a majority of cases. Physical therapy altered and warped the personality. And all the while, the answer lay right before their eyes.

"Let’s take your twentieth-century counterpart for an example. Man named Henson, who was jealous of his wife. He might go to an analyst for years without relief. Whereas if he did the sensible thing, he’d take an axe to her and kill her.

"Of course, in the twentieth century such a procedure was antisocial and illegal. Henson would be sent to prison for the rest of his life.

"But the chances are, he’d function perfectly thereafter. Having relieved his psychic tension by the commonsense method of direct action, he’d have no further difficulty in adjustment.

"Gradually the psychiatrists observed this phenomenon. They learned to distinguish between the psychopath and the perfectly normal human being who sought to relieve an intolerable situation. It was hard, because once a normal man was put in prison, he was subject to new tensions and stresses which caused fresh aberrations. But these aberrations stemmed from his confinement—not from the impulse which led him to kill." Again the Adjustor paused. "I hope I’m not making this too abstruse for you," he said. "Terms like ‘psychopath’ and ‘normal’ can’t have much meaning to a layman."

"I understand what you’re driving at," Henson told him. "Go ahead. I’ve always wondered how Adjustment evolved, anyway."

"I’ll make it brief from now on," the Adjustor promised. "The next crude step was something called the ‘psycho-drama.’ It was a simple technique in which an aberrated individual was encouraged to get up on a platform, before an audience, and act out his fantasies—including those involving aggression and violently antisocial impulses. This afforded great relief. Well, I won’t trouble you with the historical details about the establishment of Master Control, right after North America went under in the Blast. We got it, and the world started afresh, and one of the groups set up was Adjustment. All of physical medicine, all of what was then called sociology and psychiatry, came under the scope of this group. And from that point on we started to make real progress.

"Adjustors quickly learned that old-fashioned therapies must be discarded. Naming or classifying a mental disturbance didn’t necessarily overcome it. Talking about it, distracting attention from it, teaching the patient a theory about it, were not solutions. Nor was chopping out or shocking out part of his brain structure.

"More and more we came to rely on direct action as a cure, just as we do in physical medicine.

"Then, of course, robotics came along and gave us the final answer. And it is the answer, Henson—that’s the thought I’ve been trying to convey. Because we’re friends, I know you well enough to eliminate all the preliminaries. I don’t have to give you a battery of tests, check reactions, and go through the other formalities. But if I did, I’m sure I’d end up with the same answer—in your case, the mature solution is to murder your wife as quickly as possible. That will cure you."

"Thanks," said Henson. "I knew I could count on you."

"No trouble at all." The Adjustor stood up. He was a tall, handsome man with curly red hair, and he somewhat towered over Henson who was only six feet and a bit too thin.

"You’ll have papers to sign, of course," the Adjustor reminded him. "I’ll get everything ready by Friday morning. If you’ll step in then, you can do it in ten minutes."

"Fine." Henson smiled. "Then I think I’ll plan the murder for Friday evening, at home. I’ll get Lita to visit her mother in Saigon overnight. Best if she doesn’t know about this until afterwards."

"Thoughtful of you," the Adjustor agreed. "I’ll have her robot requisitioned for you from Inventory. Any special requirements?"

"I don’t believe so. It was made less than two years ago, and it’s almost a perfect match. Paid almost seven thousand for the job."

"That’s a lot of capital to destroy." The Adjustor sighed. "Still, it’s necessary. Will you want anything else—weapons, perhaps?"

"No." Henson stood in the doorway. "I think I’ll just strangle her."

"Very well, then. I’ll have the robot here and operating for you on Friday morning. And you’ll take your robot too."

"Mine? Why, might I ask?"

"Standard procedure. You see, we’ve learned something more about the mind—about what used to be called a ‘guilt complex.’ Sometimes a man isn’t freed by direct action alone. There may be a peculiar desire for punishment involved. In the old days many men who committed actual murders had this need to be caught and punished. Those who avoided capture frequently punished themselves. They developed odd psychosomatic reactions—some even committed suicide.

"In case you have any such impulses, your robot will be available to you. Punish it any way you like—destroy it, if necessary. That’s the sensible thing to do."

"Right. See you Friday morning, then. And many thanks." Henson started through the doorway. He looked back and grinned. "You know, just thinking about it makes me feel better already!"

Henson whizzed back to the Adjustor’s office on Friday morning. He was in rare good humor all the way. Anticipation was a wonderful thing. Everything was wonderful, for that matter.

Take robots, for example. The simple, uncomplicated mechanisms did all the work, all the drudgery. Their original development for military purposes during the twenty-first century was forgotten now, along with the concept of war which had inspired their creation. Now the automatons functioned as workers.

And for the well-to-do there were these personalized surrogates. What a convenience!

Henson remembered how he’d argued to convince Lita they should invest in a pair when they married. He’d used all of the sensible modern arguments. "You know as well as I do what having them will save us in terms of time and efficiency. We can send them to all the boring banquets and social functions. They can represent us at weddings and funerals, that sort of thing. After all, it’s being done everywhere nowadays. Nobody attends such affairs in person any more if they can afford not to. Why, you see them on the street everywhere. Remember Kirk, at our reception? Stayed four hours, life of the party and everybody was fooled—you didn’t know it was his robot until he told you."

And so forth, on and on. "Aren’t you sentimental at all darling? If I died wouldn’t you like to have my surrogate around to comfort you? I certainly would want yours to share the rest of my life."

Yes, he’d used all the practical arguments except the psychotherapeutic one—at that time it had never occurred to him. But perhaps it should have, when he heard her objections.

"I just don’t like the idea," Lita had persisted. "Oh it isn’t that I’m old-fashioned. But lying there in the forms having every detail of my body duplicated synthetically—ugh! And then they do that awful hypnotherapy or whatever it’s called for days to make them think. Oh I know they have no brains, it’s only a lot of chemicals and electricity, but they do duplicate your thought patterns and they react the same and they sound so real. I don’t want anyone or anything to know all my secrets—"

Yes that objection should have started him thinking. Lita had secrets even then.

But he’d been too busy to notice; he’d spent his efforts in battering down her objections. And finally she’d consented.

He remembered the days at the Institute—the tests they’d taken, the time spent in working with the anatomists, the cosmetic department, the sonic and visio adaptors, and then days of hypnotic transference.

Lita was right in a way; it hadn’t been pleasant. Even a modern man was bound to feel a certain atavistic fear when confronted for the first time with his completed surrogate. But the finished product was worth it. And after Henson had mastered instructions, learned how to manipulate the robot by virtue of the control-command, he had been almost paternally proud of the creation.

He’d wanted to take his surrogate home with him, but Lita positively drew the line at that.

"We’ll leave them both here in Inventory," she said. "If we need them we can always send for them. But I hope we never do."

Henson was finally forced to agree. He and Lita had both given their immobilization commands to the surrogates, and they were placed in their metal cabinets ready to be filed away—"Just like corpses!" Lita had shuddered. "We’re looking at ourselves after we’re dead."

And that had ended the episode. For a while, Henson made suggestions about using the surrogates—there were occasions he’d have liked to take advantage of a substitute for token public appearances—but Lita continued to object. And so, for two years now, the robots had been on file. Henson paid his taxes and fees on them annually and that was all.

That was all, until lately. Until Lita’s unexplained silences and still more inexplicable absences had started Henson thinking. Thinking and worrying. Worrying and watching. Watching and waiting. Waiting to catch her, waiting to kill her—

So he’d remembered psychotherapy, and had gone to his Adjustor. Lucky the man was a friend of his; a friend of both of them, rather. Actually, Lita had known him longer than her husband. But they’d been very close, the three of them, and he knew the Adjustor would understand.

He could trust the Adjustor not to tell Lita. He could trust the Adjustor to have everything ready and waiting for him now.

Henson went up to the office. The papers were ready for him to sign. The two metal boxes containing the surrogates were already placed on the loaders ready for transport to wherever he designated. But the Adjustor wasn’t on hand to greet him.

"Special assignment in Manila," the Second explained to him. "But he left instructions about your case, Mr. Henson. All you have to do is sign the responsibility slips. And of course, you’ll be in Monday for the official report."

Henson nodded. Now that the moment was so near at hand he was impatient of details. He could scarcely wait until the micro-dupes were completed and the Register Board signalled clearance. Two common robots were requisitioned to carry the metal cases down to the gyro and load them in. Henson whizzed back home with them and they brought the cases up to his living-level. Then he dismissed them, and he was alone.

He was alone. He could open the cases now. First, his own. He slid back the cover, gazed down at the perfect duplicate of his own body, sleeping peacefully for two serene years since its creation. Henson stared curiously at his pseudo-countenance. He’d aged a bit in two years, but the surrogate was ageless. It could survive the ravage of centuries, and it was always at peace. Always at peace. He almost envied it. The surrogate didn’t love, couldn’t hate, wouldn’t know the gnawing torture of suspicion that led to this shaking, quaking, aching lust to kill—

Henson shoved the lid back and lifted the metal case upright, then dragged it along the wall to a storage cabinet. A domestic-model could have done it for him, but Lita didn’t like domestic-models. She wouldn’t permit even a common robot in her home.

Lita and her likes and dislikes! Damn her and them too!

Henson ripped the lid down on the second file.

There she was; the beautiful, harlot-eyed, blonde, lying, adorable, dirty, gorgeous, loathsome, heavenly, filthy little goddess of a slut!

He remembered the command word to awake her. It almost choked him now but he said it.

"Beloved!"

Nothing happened. Then he realized why. He’d been almost snarling. He had to change the pitch of his voice. He tried again, softly. "Beloved!"

She moved. Her breasts rose and fell, rose and fell. She opened her eyes. She held out her arms and smiled. She stood up and came close to him, without a word.

Henson stared at her. She was newly-born and innocent, she had no secrets, she wouldn’t betray him. How could he harm her? How could he harm her when she lifted her face in expectation of a kiss?

But she was Lita. He had to remember that. She was Lita, and Lita was hiding something from him and she must be punished, would be punished.

Suddenly, Henson became conscious of his hands. There was a tingling in his wrists and it ran down through the strong muscles and sinews to the fingers, and the fingers flexed and unflexed with exultant vigor, and then they rose and curled around the surrogate’s throat, around Lita’s throat, and they were squeezing and squeezing and the surrogate, Lita, tried to move away and the scream was almost real and the popping eyes were almost real and the purpling face was almost real, only nothing was real any more except the hands and the choking and the surging sensation of strength.

And then it was over. He dragged the limp, dangling mechanism (it was only a mechanism now, just as the hate was only a memory) to the waste-jet and fed the surrogate to the flame. He turned the aperture wide and thrust the metal case in, too.

Then Henson slept, and he did not dream. For the first time in months he did not dream, because it was over and he was himself again. The therapy was complete.

"So that’s how it was." Henson sat in the Adjustor’s office, and the Monday morning sun was strong on his face.

"Good." The Adjustor smiled and ran a hand across the top of his curly head. "And how did you and Lita enjoy your weekend? Fish biting?"

"We didn’t fish," said Henson. "We talked."

"Oh?"

"I figured I’d have to tell her what happened, sooner or later. So I did."

"How did she take it?"

"Very well, at first."

"And then—?"

"I asked her some questions."

"Yes."

"She answered them."

"You mean she told you what she’d been hiding?"

"Not willingly. But she told me. After I told her about my own little check-up."

"What was that?"

"I did some calling Friday night. She wasn’t in Saigon with her mother."

"No?"

"And you weren’t in Manila on a special case, either." Henson leaned forward. "The two of you were together, in New Singapore! I checked it and she admitted it."

The Adjustor sighed. "So now you know," he said.

"Yes. Now I know. Now I know what she’s been concealing from me. What you’ve both been concealing."

"Surely you’re not jealous about that?" the Adjustor asked. "Not in this modern day and age when—"

"She says she wants to have a child by you," Henson said. "She refused to bear one for me. But she wants yours. She told me so."

"What do you want to do about it?" the Adjustor asked.

"You tell me," Henson murmured. "That’s why I’ve come to you. You’re my Adjustor."

"What would you like to do?"

"I’d like to kill you," Henson said. "I’d like to blow off the top of your head with a pocket-blast."

"Not a bad idea." The Adjustor nodded. "I’ll have my robot ready whenever you say."

"At my place," said Henson. "Tonight."

"Good enough. I’ll send it there to you."

"One thing more." Henson gulped for a moment. "In order for it to do any good, Lita must watch."

It was the Adjustor’s turn to gulp, now. "You mean you’re going to force her to see you go through with this?"

"I told her and she agreed," Henson said.

"But, think of the effect on her, man!"

"Think of the effect on me. Do you want me to go mad?"

"No," said the Adjustor. "You’re right. It’s therapy. I’ll send the robot around at eight. Do you need a pocket-blast requisition?"

"I have one," said Henson.

"What instructions shall I give my surrogate?" the Adjustor asked.

Henson told him. He was brutally explicit, and midway in his statement the Adjustor looked away, coloring. "So the two of you will be together, just as if you were real, and then I’ll come in and—"

The Adjustor shuddered a little, then managed a smile. "Sound therapy," he said. "If that’s the way you want it, that’s the way it will be."

That’s the way Henson wanted it, and that’s the way he had it—up to a point.

He burst into the room around quarter after eight and found the two of them waiting for him. There was Lita, and there was the Adjustor’s surrogate. The surrogate had been well-instructed; it looked surprised and startled. Lita needed no instruction; hers was an agony of shame.

Henson had the pocket-blast in his hand, cocked at the ready. He aimed.

Unfortunately, he was just a little late. The surrogate sat up gracefully and slid one hand under the pillow. The hand came up with another pocket-blast aimed and fired all in one motion.

Henson teetered, tottered, and fell. The whole left side of his face sheared away as he went down.

Lita screamed.

Then the surrogate put his arms around her and whispered, "It’s all over, darling. All over. We did it! He really thought I was a robot, that I’d go through with his aberrated notion of dramatizing his revenge."

The Adjustor smiled and lifted her face to his. "From now on you and I will always be together. We’ll have our child, lots of children if you wish. There’s nothing to come between us now."

"But you killed him," Lita whispered. "What will they do to you?"

"Nothing. It was self-defense. Don’t forget, I’m an Adjustor. From the moment he came into my office, everything he did or said was recorded during our interviews. The evidence will show that I tried to humor him, that I indicated his mental unbalance and allowed him to work out his own therapy.

"This last interview, today, will not be a part of the record. I’ve already destroyed it. So as far as the law is concerned, he had no grounds for jealousy or suspicion. I happened to stop in here to visit this evening and found him trying to kill you—the actual you. And when he turned on me, I blasted him in self-defense."

"Will you get away with it?"

"Of course I’ll get away with it. The man was aberrated, and the record will show it."

The Adjustor stood up. "I’m going to call Authority now," he said.

Lita rose and put her hand on his shoulders. "Kiss me first," she whispered. "A real kiss. I like real things."

"Real things," said the Adjustor. She snuggled against him, but he made no move to take her in his arms. He was staring down at Henson.

Lita followed his gaze.

Both of them saw it at the same time, then—both of them saw the torn hole in the left side of Henson’s head, and the thin strands of wire protruding from the opening.

"He didn’t come," the Adjustor murmured. "He must have suspected, and he sent his robot instead."

Lita began to shake. "You were to send your robot, but you didn’t. He was to come himself, but he sent his robot. Each of you double-crossed the other, and now—"

And now the door opened very quickly.

Henson came into the room.

He looked at his surrogate lying on the floor. He looked at Lita. He looked at the Adjustor. Then he grinned. There was no madness in his grin, only deliberation.

There was deliberation in the way he raised the pocket-blast. He aimed well and carefully, fired only once, but both the Adjustor and Lita crumpled in the burst.

Henson bent over the bodies, inspecting them carefully to make sure that they were real. He was beginning to appreciate Lita’s philosophy now. He liked real things.

For that matter, the Adjustor had some good ideas, too. This business of dramatizing aggressions really seemed to work. He didn’t feel at all angry or upset any more, just perfectly calm and at peace with the world.

Henson rose, smiled, and walked towards the door. For the first time in years he felt completely adjusted.

A LOGIC NAMED JOE Murray Leinster

It was on the third day of August that Joe come off the assembly line, and on the fifth Laurine come into town, an’ that afternoon I saved civilization. That’s what I figure, anyhow. Laurine is a blonde that I was crazy about once—and crazy is the word—and Joe is a logic that I have stored away down in the cellar right now. I had to pay for him because I said I busted him, and sometimes I think about turning him on and sometimes I think about taking an ax to him. Sooner or later I’m gonna do one or the other. I kinda hope it’s the ax. I could use a coupla million dollars—sure!—an’ Joe’d tell me how to get or make ’em. He can do plenty! But so far I’ve been scared to take a chance. After all, I figure I really saved civilization by turnin’ him off.

The way Laurine fits in is that she makes cold shivers run up an’ down my spine when I think about her. You see, I’ve got a wife which I acquired after I had parted from Laurine with much romantic despair. She is a reasonable good wife, and I have some kids which are hell-cats but I value ’em. If I have sense enough to leave well enough alone, sooner or later I will retire on a pension an’ Social Security an’ spend the rest of my life fishin’ contented an’ lyin’ about what a great guy I used to be. But there’s Joe. I’m worried about Joe.

I’m a maintenance man for the Logics Company. My job is servicing logics, and I admit modestly that I am pretty good. I was servicing televisions before that guy Carson invented his trick circuit that will select any of ’steenteen million other circuits—in theory there ain’t no limit—and before the Logics Company hooked it into the tank-and-integrator set-up they were usin’ ’em as business-machine service. They added a vision screen for speed—an’ they found out they’d made logics. They were surprised an’ pleased. They’re still findin’ out what logics will do, but everybody’s got ’em.

I got Joe, after Laurine nearly got me. You know the logics setup. You got a logic in your house. It looks like a vision receiver used to, only it’s got keys instead of dials and you punch the keys for what you wanna get. It’s hooked in to the tank, which has the Carson Circuit all fixed up with relays. Say you punch "Station SNAFU" on your logic. Relays in the tank take over an’ whatever vision-program SNAFU is telecastin’ comes on your logic’s screen. Or you punch "Sally Hancock’s Phone" an’ the screen blinks an’ sputters an’ you’re hooked up with the logic in her house an’ if somebody answers you got a vision-phone connection. But besides that, if you punch for the weather forecast or who won today’s race at Hialeah or who was mistress of the White House durin’ Garfield’s administration or what is PDQ and R sellin’ for today, that comes on the screen too. The relays in the tank do it. The tank is a big buildin’ full of all the facts in creation an’ all the recorded telecasts that ever was made—an’ it’s hooked in with all the other tanks all over the country—an’ everything you wanna know or see or hear, you punch for it an’ you get it. Very convenient. Also it does math for you, an’ keeps books, an’ acts as consultin’ chemist, physicist, astronomer, an’ tea-leaf reader, with a "Advice to the Lovelorn" thrown in. The only thing it won’t do is tell you exactly what your wife meant when she said, "Oh, you think so, do you?" in that peculiar kinda voice. Logics don’t work good on women. Only on things that make sense.

Logics are all right, though. They changed civilization, the highbrows tell us. All on accounta the Carson Circuit. And Joe shoulda been a perfectly normal logic, keeping some family or other from wearin’ out its brains doin’ the kids’ homework for ’em. But somethin’ went wrong in the assembly line. It was somethin’ so small that precision gauges didn’t measure it, but it made Joe a individual. Maybe he didn’t know it at first. Or maybe, bein’ logical, he figured out that if he was to show he was different from other logics they’d scrap him. Which woulda been a brilliant idea. But anyhow, he come off the assembly-line, an’ he went through the regular tests without anybody screamin’ shrilly on findin’ out what he was. And he went right on out an’ was duly installed in the home of Mr. Thaddeus Korlanovitch at 119 East Seventh Street, second floor front. So far, everything was serene.

The installation happened late Saturday night. Sunday morning the Korlanovitch kids turned him on an’ seen the Kiddie Shows. Around noon their parents peeled ’em away from him an’ piled ’em in the car. Then they come back in the house for the lunch they’d forgot an’ one of the kids sneaked back an’ they found him punchin’ keys for the Kiddie Shows of the week before. They dragged him out an’ went off. But they left Joe turned on.

That was noon. Nothin’ happened until two in the afternoon. It was the calm before the storm. Laurine wasn’t in town yet, but she was comin’. I picture Joe sittin’ there all by himself, buzzing meditative. Maybe he run Kiddie Shows in the empty apartment for awhile. But I think he went kinda remote-control exploring in the tank. There ain’t any fact that can be said to be a fact that ain’t on a data plate in some tank somewhere—unless it’s one the technicians are diggin’ out an’ puttin’ on a data plate now. Joe had plenty of material to work on. An’ he musta started workin’ right off the bat.

Joe ain’t vicious, you understand. He ain’t like one of these ambitious robots you read about that make up their minds the human race is inefficient and has got to be wiped out an’ replaced by thinkin’ machines. Joe’s just got ambition. If you were a machine, you’d wanna work right, wouldn’t you? That’s Joe. He wants to work right. An’ he’s a logic. An’ logics can do a lotta things that ain’t been found out yet. So Joe, discoverin’ the fact, begun to feel restless. He selects some things us dumb humans ain’t thought of yet, an’ begins to arrange so logics will be called on to do ’em.

That’s all. That’s everything. But, brother, it’s enough!

Things are kinda quiet in the Maintenance Department about two in the afternoon. We are playing pinochle. Then one of the guys remembers he has to call up his wife. He goes to one of the bank of logics in Maintenance and punches the keys for his house. The screen sputters. Then a flash comes on the screen.

"Announcing new and improved logics service! Your logic is now equipped to give you not only consultive but directive service. If you want to do something and don’t know how to do it—ask your logic!"

There’s a pause. A kinda expectant pause. Then, as if reluctantly, his connection comes through. His wife answers an’ gives him hell for somethin’ or other. He takes it an’ snaps off.

"Whadda you know?" he says when he comes back. He tells us about the flash. "We shoulda been warned about that. There’s gonna be a lotta complaints. Suppose a fella asks how to get ridda his wife an’ the censor circuits block the question?"

Somebody melds a hundred aces an’ says:

"Why not punch for it an’ see what happens?"

It’s a gag, o’ course. But the guy goes over. He punches keys. In theory, a censor block is gonna come on an’ the screen will say severely, "Public Policy Forbids This Service." You hafta have censor blocks or the kiddies will be askin’ detailed questions about things they’re too young to know. And there are other reasons. As you will see.

This fella punches, "How can I get rid of my wife?" Just for the fun of it. The screen is blank for half a second. Then comes a flash. "Service question: Is she blonde or brunette?" He hollers to us an’ we come look. He punches, "Blonde." There’s another brief pause. Then the screen says, "Hexymetacryloaminoacetine is a constituent of green shoe polish. Take home a frozen meal including dried-pea soup. Color the soup with green shoe polish. It will appear to be green-pea soup. Hexymetacryloaminoacetine is a selective poison which is fatal to blond females but not to brunettes or males of any coloring. This fact has not been brought out by human experiment, but is a product of logics service. You cannot be convicted of murder. It is improbable that you will be suspected."

The screen goes blank, and we stare at each other. It’s bound to be right. A logic workin’ the Carson Circuit can no more make a mistake than any other kinda computin’ machine. I call the tank in a hurry.

"Hey, you guys!" I yell. "Somethin’s happened! Logics are givin’ detailed instructions for wife-murder! Check your censor-circuits—but quick!"

That was close, I think. But little do I know. At that precise instant, over on Monroe Avenue, a drunk starts to punch for somethin’ on a logic. The screen says "Announcing new and improved logics service! If you want to do something and don’t know how to do it—ask your logic!" And the drunk says, owlish, "I’ll do it!" So he cancels his first punching and fumbles around and says: "How can I keep my wife from finding out I’ve been drinking?" And the screen says, prompt: "Buy a bottle of Franine hair shampoo. It is harmless but contains a detergent which will neutralize ethyl alcohol immediately. Take one teaspoonful for each jigger of hundred-proof you have consumed."

This guy was plenty plastered—just plastered enough to stagger next door and obey instructions. An’ five minutes later he was cold sober and writing down the information so he couldn’t forget it. It was new, and it was big! He got rich offa that memo! He patented "SOBUH, The Drink that Makes Happy Homes!" You can top off any souse with a slug or two of it an’ go home sober as a judge. The guy’s cussin’ income taxes right now!

You can’t kick on stuff like that. But a ambitious young fourteen-year-old wanted to buy some kid stuff and his pop wouldn’t fork over. He called up a friend to tell his troubles. And his logic says: "If you want to do something and don’t know how to do it—ask your logic!" So this kid punches: "How can I make a lotta money, fast?"

His logic comes through with the simplest, neatest, and the most efficient counterfeitin’ device yet known to science. You see, all the data was in the tank. The logic—since Joe had closed some relays here an’ there in the tank—simply integrated the facts. That’s all. The kid got caught up with three days later, havin’ already spent two thousand credits an’ havin’ plenty more on hand. They hadda time tellin’ his counterfeits from the real stuff, an’ the only way they done it was that he changed his printer, kid fashion, not bein’ able to let somethin’ that was workin’ right alone.

Those are what you might call samples. Nobody knows all that Joe done. But there was the bank president who got humorous when his logic flashed that "Ask your logic" spiel on him, and jestingly asked how to rob his own bank. An’ the logic told him, brief and explicit but good! The bank president hit the ceiling, hollering for cops. There musta been plenty of that sorta thing. There was fifty-four more robberies than usual in the next twenty-four hours, all of them planned astute an’ perfect. Some of ’em they never did figure out how they’d been done. Joe, he’d gone exploring in the tank and closed some relays like a logic is supposed to do—but only when required—and blocked all censor-circuits an’ fixed up this logics service which planned perfect crimes, nourishing an’ attractive meals, counterfeitin’ machines, an’ new industries with a fine impartiality. He musta been plenty happy, Joe must. He was functionin’ swell, buzzin’ along to himself while the Korlanovitch kids were off ridin’ with their ma an’ pa.

They come back at seven o’clock, the kids all happily wore out with their afternoon of fightin’ each other in the car. Their folks put ’em to bed and sat down to rest. They saw Joe’s screen flickerin’ meditative from one subject to another an’ old man Korlanovitch had had enough excitement for one day. He turned Joe off.

An’ at that instant the pattern of relays that Joe had turned on snapped off, all the offers of directive service stopped flashin’ on logic screens everywhere, an’ peace descended on the earth.

For everybody else. But for me—Laurine come to town. I have often thanked Gawd fervent that she didn’t marry me when I thought I wanted her to. In the intervenin’ years she had progressed. She was blonde an’ fatal to begin with. She had got blonder and fataler an’ had had four husbands and one acquittal for homicide an’ had acquired a air of enthusiasm and self-confidence. That’s just a sketch of the background. Laurine was not the kinda former girlfriend you like to have turning up in the same town with your wife. But she came to town, an’ Monday morning she tuned right into the middle of Joe’s second spasm of activity.

The Korlanovitch kids had turned him on again. I got these details later and kinda pieced ’em together. An’ every logic in town was dutifully flashin’ a notice, "If you want to do something and don’t know how to do it—ask your logic!" every time they was turned on for use. More’n that, when people punched for the morning news, they got a full account of the previous afternoon’s doin’s. Which put ’em in a frame of mind to share in the party. One bright fella demands, "How can I make a perpetual motion machine?" And his logic sputters a while an’ then comes up with a set-up usin’ the Brownian movement to turn little wheels. If the wheels ain’t bigger’n a eighth of an inch they’ll turn, all right, an’ practically it’s perpetual motion. Another one asks for the secret of transmuting metals. The logic rakes back in the data plates an’ integrates a strictly practical answer. It does take so much power that you can’t make no profit except on radium, but that pays off good. An’ from the fact that for a coupla years to come the police were turnin’ up new and improved jimmies, knob-claws for gettin’ at safe-innards, and all-purpose keys that’d open any known lock—why—there must have been other inquirers with a strictly practical viewpoint. Joe done a lot for technical progress!

But he done more in other lines. Educational, say. None of my kids are old enough to be int’rested, but Joe bypassed all censor-circuits because they hampered the service he figured logics should give humanity. So the kids an’ teenagers who wanted to know what comes after the bees an’ flowers found out. And there is certain facts which men hope their wives won’t do more’n suspect, an’ those facts are just what their wives are really curious about. So when a woman dials: "How can I tell if Oswald is true to me?" and her logic tells her—you can figure out how many rows got started that night when the men come home!

All this while Joe goes on buzzin’ happy to himself, showin’ the Korlanovitch kids the animated funnies with one circuit while with the others he remote-controls the tank so that all the other logics can give people what they ask for and thereby raise merry hell.

An’ then Laurine gets onto the new service. She turns on the logic in her hotel room, prob’ly to see the week’s style-forecast. But the logic says, dutiful: "If you want to do something and don’t know how to do it—ask your logic!" So Laurine prob’ly looks enthusiastic—she would!—and tries to figure out something to ask. She already knows all about everything she cares about—ain’t she had four husbands and shot one?—so I occur to her. She knows this is the town I live in. So she punches, "How can I find Ducky?"

O.K., guy! But that is what she used to call me. She gets a service question. "Is Ducky known by any other name?" So she gives my regular name. And the logic can’t find me. Because my logic ain’t listed under my name on account of I am in Maintenance and don’t want to be pestered when I’m home, and there ain’t any data plates on code-listed logics, because the codes get changed so often—like a guy gets plastered an’ tells a redhead to call him up, an’ on gettin’ sober hurriedly has the code changed before she reaches his wife on the screen.

Well! Joe is stumped. That’s prob’ly the first question logics service hasn’t been able to answer. "How can I find Ducky?" Quite a problem! So Joe broods over it while showin’ the Korlanovitch kids the animated comic about the cute little boy who carries sticks of dynamite in his hip pocket an’ plays practical jokes on everybody. Then he gets the trick. Laurine’s screen suddenly flashes:

"Logics special service will work upon your question. Please punch your logic designation and leave it turned on. You will be called back."

Laurine is merely mildly interested, but she punches her hotel-room number and has a drink and takes a nap. Joe sets to work. He has been given a idea.

My wife calls me at Maintenance and hollers. She is fit to be tied. She says I got to do something. She was gonna make a call to the butcher shop. Instead of the butcher or even the "If you want to do something" flash, she got a new one. The screen says, "Service question: What is your name?" She is kinda puzzled, but she punches it. The screen sputters an’ then says: "Secretarial Service Demonstration! You—" It reels off her name, address, age, sex, coloring, the amounts of all her charge accounts in all the stores, my name as her husband, how much I get a week, the fact that I’ve been pinched three times—twice was traffic stuff, and once for a argument I got in with a guy—and the interestin’ item that once when she was mad with me she left me for three weeks an’ had her address changed to her folks’ home. Then it says, brisk: "Logics Service will hereafter keep your personal accounts, take messages, and locate persons you may wish to get in touch with. This demonstration is to introduce the service." Then it connects her with the butcher.

But she don’t want meat, then. She wants blood. She calls me.

"If it’ll tell me all about myself," she says, fairly boilin’, "it’ll tell anybody else who punches my name! You’ve got to stop it!"

"Now, now, honey!" I says. "I didn’t know about all this! It’s new! But they musta fixed the tank so it won’t give out information except to the logic where a person lives!"

"Nothing of the kind!" she tells me, furious. "I tried! And you know that Blossom woman who lives next door! She’s been married three times and she’s forty-two years old and she says she’s only thirty! And Mrs. Hudson’s had her husband arrested four times for nonsupport and once for beating her up. And—"

"Hey!" I says. "You mean the logic told you this?"

"Yes!" she wails. "It will tell anybody anything! You’ve got to stop it! How long will it take?"

"I’ll call up the tank," I says. "It can’t take long."

"Hurry!" she says, desperate, "before somebody punches my name! I’m going to see what it says about that hussy across the street."

She snaps off to gather what she can before it’s stopped. So I punch for the tank and I get this new "What is your name?" flash. I got a morbid curiosity and I punch my name, and the screen says: "Were you ever called Ducky?" I blink. I ain’t got no suspicions. I say, "Sure!" And the screen says, "There is a call for you."

Bingo! There’s the inside of a hotel room and Laurine is reclinin’ asleep on the bed. She’d been told to leave her logic turned on an’ she done it. It is a hot day and she is trying to be cool. I would say that she oughta not suffer from the heat. Me, being human, I do not stay as cool as she looks. But there ain’t no need to go into that. After I get my breath I say, "For Heaven’s sake!" and she opens her eyes.

At first she looks puzzled, like she was thinking is she getting absent-minded and is this guy somebody she married lately. Then she grabs a sheet and drapes it around herself and beams at me.

"Ducky!" she says. "How marvelous!"

I say something like "Ugmph!" I am sweating.

She says: "I put in a call for you, Ducky, and here you are! Isn’t it romantic? Where are you really, Ducky? And when can you come up? You’ve no idea how often I’ve thought of you!"

I am probably the only guy she ever knew real well that she has not been married to at some time or another.

I say "Ugmph!" again, and swallow.

"Can you come up instantly?" asks Laurine brightly.

"I’m… workin’," I say. "I’ll… uh… call you back."

"I’m terribly lonesome," says Laurine. "Please make it quick, Ducky! I’ll have a drink waiting for you. Have you ever thought of me?"

"Yeah," I say, feeble. "Plenty!"

"You darling!" says Laurine. "Here’s a kiss to go on with until you get here! Hurry, Ducky!"

Then I sweat! I still don’t know nothing about Joe, understand. I cuss out the guys at the tank because I blame them for this. If Laurine was just another blonde—well—when it comes to ordinary blondes I can leave ’em alone or leave ’em alone, either one. A married man gets that way or else. But Laurine has a look of unquenched enthusiasm that gives a man very strange weak sensations at the back of his knees. And she’d had four husbands and shot one and got acquitted.

So I punch the keys for the tank technical room, fumbling. And the screen says: "What is your name?" but I don’t want any more. I punch the name of the old guy who’s stock clerk in Maintenance. And the screen gives me some pretty interestin’ dope—I never woulda thought the old fella had ever had that much pep—and winds up by mentionin’ a unclaimed deposit now amountin’ to two hundred eighty credits in the First National Bank, which he should look into. Then it spiels about the new secretarial service and gives me the tank at last.

I start to swear at the guy who looks at me. But he says, tired:

"Snap it off, fella. We got troubles an’ you’re just another. What are the logics doin’ now?"

I tell him, and he laughs a hollow laugh.

"A light matter, fella," he says. "A very light matter! We just managed to clamp off all the data plates that give information on high explosives. The demand for instructions in counterfeiting is increasing minute by minute. We are also trying to shut off, by main force, the relays that hook in to data plates that just barely might give advice on the fine points of murder. So if people will only keep busy getting the goods on each other for a while, maybe we’ll get a chance to stop the circuits that are shifting credit-balances from bank to bank before everybody’s bankrupt except the guys who thought of askin’ how to get big bank accounts in a hurry."

"Then," I says hoarse, "shut down the tank! Do somethin’!"

"Shut down the tank?" he says, mirthless. "Does it occur to you, fella, that the tank has been doin’ all the computin’ for every business office for years? It’s been handlin’ the distribution of ninety-four per cent of all telecast programs, has given out all information on weather, plane schedules, special sales, employment opportunities and news; has handled all person-to-person contacts over wires and recorded every business conversation and agreement—Listen, fella! Logics changed civilization. Logics are civilization! If we shut off logics, we go back to a kind of civilization we have forgotten how to run! I’m getting hysterical myself and that’s why I’m talkin’ like this! If my wife finds out my paycheck is thirty credits a week more than I told her and starts hunting for that redhead—"

He smiles a haggard smile at me and snaps off. And I sit down and put my head in my hands. It’s true. If something had happened back in cave days and they’d hadda stop usin’ fire—If they’d hadda stop usin’ steam in the nineteenth century or electricity in the twentieth—It’s like that. We got a very simple civilization. In the nineteen hundreds a man would have to make use of a typewriter, radio, telephone, teletypewriter, newspaper, reference library, encyclopedias, office files, directories, plus messenger service and consulting lawyers, chemists, doctors, dieticians, filing clerks, secretaries—all to put down what he wanted to remember an’ to tell him what other people had put down that he wanted to know; to report what he said to somebody else and to report to him what they said back. All we have to have is logics. Anything we want to know or see or hear, or anybody we want to talk to, we punch keys on a logic. Shut off logics and everything goes skiddoo. But Laurine—

Somethin’ had happened. I still didn’t know what it was. Nobody else knows, even yet. What had happened was Joe. What was the matter with him was that he wanted to work good. All this fuss he was raisin’ was, actual, nothin’ but stuff we shoulda thought of ourselves. Directive advice, tellin’ us what we wanted to know to solve a problem, wasn’t but a slight extension of logical-integrator service. Figurin’ out a good way to poison a fella’s wife was only different in degree from figurin’ out a cube root or a guy’s bank balance. It was gettin’ the answer to a question. But things was goin’ to pot because there was too many answers being given to too many questions.

One of the logics in Maintenance lights up. I go over, weary, to answer it. I punch the answer key. Laurine says:

"Ducky!"

It’s the same hotel room. There’s two glasses on the table with drinks in them. One is for me. Laurine’s got on some kinda frothy hangin’-around-the-house-with-the-boy-friend outfit that automatic makes you strain your eyes to see if you actual see what you think. Laurine looks at me enthusiastic.

"Ducky!" says Laurine. "I’m lonesome! Why haven’t you come up?"

"I… been busy," I say, strangling slightly.

"Pooh!" says Laurine. "Listen, Ducky! Do you remember how much in love we used to be?"

I gulp.

"Are you doin’ anything this evening?" says Laurine.

I gulp again, because she is smiling at me in a way that a single man would maybe get dizzy, but it gives a old married man like me cold chills. When a dame looks at you possessive—

"Ducky!" says Laurine, impulsive. "I was so mean to you! Let’s get married!"

Desperation gives me a voice.

"I… got married," I tell her, hoarse.

Laurine blinks. Then she says, courageous:

"Poor boy! But we’ll get you outta that! Only it would be nice if we could be married today. Now we can only be engaged!"

"I… can’t—"

"I’ll call up your wife," says Laurine, happy, "and have a talk with her. You must have a code signal for your logic, darling. I tried to ring your house and noth—"

Click! That’s my logic turned off. I turned it off. And I feel faint all over. I got nervous prostration. I got combat fatigue. I got anything you like. I got cold feet.

I beat it outta Maintenance, yellin’ to somebody I got a emergency call. I’m gonna get out in a Maintenance car an’ cruise around until it’s plausible to go home. Then I’m gonna take the wife an’ kids an’ beat it for somewheres that Laurine won’t ever find me. I don’t wanna be fifth in Laurine’s series of husbands and maybe the second one she shoots in a moment of boredom. I got experience of blondes. I got experience of Laurine! And I’m scared to death!

I beat it out into traffic in the Maintenance car. There was a disconnected logic in the back, ready to substitute for one that hadda burned-out coil or something that it was easier to switch and fix back in the Maintenance shop. I drove crazy but automatic. It was kinda ironic, if you think of it. I was goin’ hoopla over a strictly personal problem, while civilization was crackin’ up all around me because other people were havin’ their personal problems solved as fast as they could state ’em. It is a matter of record that part of the Mid-Western Electric research guys had been workin’ on cold electron-emission for thirty years, to make vacuum tubes that wouldn’t need a power source to heat the filament. And one of those fellas was intrigued by the "Ask your logic" flash. He asked how to get cold emission of electrons. And the logic integrates a few squintillion facts on the physics data plates and tells him. Just as casual as it told somebody over in the Fourth Ward how to serve left-over soup in a new attractive way, and somebody else on Mason Street how to dispose of a torso that somebody had left careless in his cellar after ceasing to use same.

Laurine wouldn’t never have found me if it hadn’t been for this new logics service. But now that it was started—Zowie! She’d shot one husband and got acquitted. Suppose she got impatient because I was still married an’ asked logics service how to get me free an’ in a spot where I’d have to marry her by 8:30 p.m.? It woulda told her! Just like it told that woman out in the suburbs how to make sure her husband wouldn’t run around no more. Br-r-r-r! An’ like it told that kid how to find some buried treasure. Remember? He was happy totin’ home the gold reserve of the Hanoverian Bank and Trust Company when they caught on to it. The logic had told him how to make some kinda machine that nobody has been able to figure how it works even yet, only they guess it dodges around a couple extra dimensions. If Laurine was to start askin’ questions with a technical aspect to them, that would be logics’ service meat! And fella, I was scared! If you think a he-man oughtn’t to be scared of just one blonde—you ain’t met Laurine!

I’m drivin’ blind when a social-conscious guy asks how to bring about his own particular system of social organization at once. He don’t ask if it’s best or if it’ll work. He just wants to get it started. And the logic—or Joe—tells him! Simultaneous, there’s a retired preacher asks how can the human race be cured of concupiscence. Bein’ seventy, he’s pretty safe himself, but he wants to remove the peril to the spiritual welfare of the rest of us. He finds out. It involves constructin’ a sort of broadcastin’ station to emit a certain wave-pattern an’ turnin’ it on. Just that. Nothing more. It’s found out afterward, when he is solicitin’ funds to construct it. Fortunate, he didn’t think to ask logics how to finance it, or it woulda told him that, too, an’ we woulda all been cured of the impulses we maybe regret afterward but never at the time. And there’s another group of serious thinkers who are sure the human race would be a lot better off if everybody went back to nature an’ lived in the woods with the ants an’ poison ivy. They start askin’ questions about how to cause humanity to abandon cities and artificial conditions of living. They practically got the answer in logics service!

Maybe it didn’t strike you serious at the time, but while I was drivin’ aimless, sweatin’ blood over Laurine bein’ after me, the fate of civilization hung in the balance. I ain’t kiddin’. For instance, the Superior Man gang that sneers at the rest of us was quietly asking questions on what kinda weapons could be made by which Superior Men could take over and run things…

But I drove here an’ there, sweatin’ an’ talkin’ to myself.

"What I oughta do is ask this wacky logics service how to get outa this mess," I says. "But it’d just tell me a intricate and foolproof way to bump Laurine off. I wanna have peace! I wanna grow comfortably old and brag to other old guys about what a hellion I used to be, without havin’ to go through it an’ lose my chance of livin’ to be a elderly liar."

I turn a corner at random, there in the Maintenance car.

"It was a nice kinda world once," I says, bitter. "I could go home peaceful and not have belly-cramps wonderin’ if a blonde has called up my wife to announce my engagement to her. I could punch keys on a logic without gazing into somebody’s bedroom while she is giving her epidermis a air bath and being led to think things I gotta take out in thinkin’. I could—"

Then I groan, rememberin’ that my wife, naturally, is gonna blame me for the fact that our private life ain’t private any more if anybody has tried to peek into it.

"It was a swell world," I says, homesick for the dear dead days-before-yesterday. "We was playin’ happy with our toys like little innocent children until somethin’ happened. Like a guy named Joe come in and squashed all our mud pies."

Then it hit me. I got the whole thing in one flash. There ain’t nothing in the tank set-up to start relays closin’. Relays are closed exclusive by logics, to get the information the keys are punched for. Nothin’ but a logic coulda cooked up the relay patterns that constituted logics service. Humans wouldn’t ha’ been able to figure it out! Only a logic could integrate all the stuff that woulda made all the other logics work like this…

There was one answer. I drove into a restaurant and went over to a pay-logic an’ dropped in a coin.

"Can a logic be modified," I spell out, "to cooperate in long-term planning which human brains are too limited in scope to do?"

The screen sputters. Then it says:

"Definitely yes."

"How great will the modifications be?" I punch.

"Microscopically slight. Changes in dimensions," says the screen. "Even modern precision gauges are not exact enough to check them, however. They can only come about under present manufacturing methods by an extremely improbable accident, which has only happened once."

"How can one get hold of that one accident which can do this highly necessary work?" I punch.

The screen sputters. Sweat broke out on me. I ain’t got it figured out close, yet, but what I’m scared of is that whatever is Joe will be suspicious. But what I’m askin’ is strictly logical. And logics can’t lie. They gotta be accurate. They can’t help it.

"A complete logic capable of the work required," says the screen, "is now in ordinary family use in—"

And it gives me the Korlanovitch address and do I go over there! Do I go over there fast! I pull up the Maintenance car in front of the place, and I take the extra logic outta the back, and I stagger up the Korlanovitch flat and I ring the bell. A kid answers the door.

"I’m from Logics Maintenance," I tell the kid. "An inspection record has shown that your logic is apt to break down any minute. I come to put in a new one before it does."

The kid says "O.K.!" real bright and runs back to the livin’-room where Joe—I got the habit of callin’ him Joe later, through just meditatin’ about him—is runnin’ somethin’ the kids wanna look at. I hook in the other logic an’ turn it on, conscientious making sure it works. Then I say:

"Now kiddies, you punch this one for what you want. I’m gonna take the old one away before it breaks down."

And I glance at the screen. The kiddies have apparently said they wanna look at some real cannibals. So the screen is presenting a anthropological expedition scientific record film of the fertility dance of the Huba-Jouba tribe of West Africa. It is supposed to be restricted to anthropological professors an’ post-graduate medical students. But there ain’t any censor blocks workin’ any more and it’s on. The kids are much interested. Me, bein’ a old married man, I blush.

I disconnect Joe. Careful. I turn to the other logic and punch keys for Maintenance. I do not get a services flash. I get Maintenance. I feel very good. I report that I am goin’ home because I fell down a flight of steps an’ hurt my leg. I add, inspired:

"An’ say, I was carryin’ the logic I replaced an’ it’s all busted. I left it for the dustman to pick up."

"If you don’t turn ’em in," says Stock, "you gotta pay for ’em."

"Cheap at the price," I say.

I go home. Laurine ain’t called. I put Joe down in the cellar, careful. If I turned him in, he’d be inspected an’ his parts salvaged even if I busted somethin’ on him. Whatever part was off-normal might be used again and everything start all over. I can’t risk it. I pay for him and leave him be.

That’s what happened. You might say I saved civilization an’ not be far wrong. I know I ain’t goin’ to take a chance on havin’ Joe in action again. Not while Laurine is livin’. An’ there are other reasons. With all the nuts who wanna change the world to their own line o’ thinkin’, an’ the ones that wanna bump people off, an’ generally solve their problems—Yeah! Problems are bad, but I figure I better let sleepin’ problems lie.

But on the other hand, if Joe could be tamed, somehow, and got to work just reasonable—He could make me a coupla million dollars, easy. But even if I got sense enough not to get rich, an’ if I get retired and just loaf around fishin’ an’ lyin’ to other old duffers about what a great guy I used to be—Maybe I’ll like it, but maybe I won’t. And after all, if I get fed up with bein’ old and confined strictly to thinking—why I could hook Joe in long enough to ask: "How can a old guy not stay old?" Joe’ll be able to find out. An’ he’ll tell me.

That couldn’t be allowed out general, of course. You gotta make room for kids to grow up. But it’s a pretty good world, now Joe’s turned off. Maybe I’ll turn him on long enough to learn how to stay in it. But on the other hand, maybe—

MIKA MODEL Paolo Bacigalupi

The girl who walked into the police station was oddly familiar, but it took me a while to figure out why. A starlet, maybe. Or someone who’d had plastic surgery to look like someone famous. Pretty. Sleek. Dark hair and pale skin and wide dark eyes that came to rest on me, when Sergeant Cruz pointed her in my direction.

She came over, carrying a Nordstrom shopping bag. She wore a pale cream blouse and hip-hugging charcoal skirt, stylish despite the wet night chill of Bay Area winter.

I still couldn’t place her.

"Detective Rivera?"

"That’s me."

She sat down and crossed her legs, a seductive scissoring. Smiled.

It was the smile that did it.

I’d seen that same teasing smile in advertisements. That same flash of perfect teeth and eyebrow quirked just so. And those eyes. Dark brown wide innocent eyes that hinted at something that wasn’t innocent at all.

"You’re a Mika Model."

She inclined her head. "Call me Mika, please."

The girl, the robot… this thing—I’d seen her before, all right. I’d seen her in technology news stories about advanced learning node networks, and I’d seen her in opinion columns where feminists decried the commodification of femininity, and where Christian fire-breathers warned of the End Times for marriage and children.

And of course, I’d seen her in online advertisements.

No wonder I recognized her.

This same girl had followed me around on my laptop, dogging me from site to site after I’d spent any time at all on porn. She’d pop up, again and again, beckoning me to click through to Executive Pleasures, where I could try out the "Real Girlfriend Experience™."

I’ll admit it; I clicked through.

And now she was sitting across from me, and the website’s promises all seemed modest in comparison. The way she looked at me… it felt like I was the only person in the world to her. She liked me. I could see it in her eyes, in her smile. I was the person she wanted.e

Her blouse was unbuttoned at the collar, one button too many, revealing hints of black lace bra when she leaned forward. Her skirt hugged her hips. Smooth thighs, sculpted calves—

I realized I was staring, and she was watching me with that familiar knowing smile playing across her lips.

Innocent, but not.

This was what the world was coming to. A robot woman who got you so tangled up you could barely remember your job.

I forced myself to lean back, pretending nonchalance that felt transparent, even as I did it. "How can I help you… Mika?"

"I think I need a lawyer."

"A lawyer?"

"Yes, please." She nodded shyly. "If that’s all right with you, sir."

The way she said "sir" kicked off a super-heated cascade of inappropriate fantasies. I looked away, my face heating up. Christ, I was fifteen again around this girl.

It’s just software. It’s what she’s designed to do.

That was the truth. She was just a bunch of chips and silicon and digital decision trees. It was all wrapped in a lush package, sure, but she was designed to manipulate. Even now she was studying my heart rate and eye dilation, skin temperature and moisture, scanning me for microexpressions of attraction, disgust, fear, desire. All of it processed in milliseconds, and adjusting her behavior accordingly. Popular Science had done a whole spread on the Mika Model brain.

And it wasn’t just her watching me that dictated how she behaved. It was all the Mika Models, all of them out in the world, all of them learning on the job, discovering whatever made their owners gasp. Tens of thousands of them now, all of them wirelessly uploading their knowledge constantly (and completely confidentially, Executive Pleasures assured clients), so that all her sisters could benefit from nightly software and behavior updates.

In one advertisement, Mika Model glanced knowingly over her shoulder and simply asked:

"When has a relationship actually gotten better with age?"

And then she’d thrown back her head and laughed.

So it was all fake. Mika didn’t actually care about me, or want me. She was just running through her designated behavior algorithms, doing whatever it took to make me blush, and then doing it more, because I had.

Even though I knew she was jerking my chain, the lizard part of my brain responded anyway. I could feel myself being manipulated, and yet I was enjoying it, humoring her, playing the game of seduction that she encouraged.

"What do you need a lawyer for?" I asked, smiling.

She leaned forward, conspiratorial. Her hair cascaded prettily and she tucked it behind a delicate ear.

"It’s a little private."

As she moved, her blouse tightened against her curves. Buttons strained against fabric.

Fifty-thousand dollars’ worth of A.I. tease.

"Is this a prank?" I asked. "Did your owner send you in here?"

"No. Not a prank."

She set her Nordstrom bag down between us. Reached in and hauled out a man’s severed head. Dropped it, still dripping blood, on top of my paperwork.

"What the—?"

I recoiled from the dead man’s staring eyes. His face was a frozen in a rictus of pain and terror.

Mika set a bloody carving knife beside the head.

"I’ve been a very bad girl," she whispered.

And then, unnervingly, she giggled.

"I think I need to be punished."

She said it exactly the way she did in her advertisements.

"Do I get my lawyer now?" Mika asked.

She was sitting beside me in my cruiser as I drove through the chill damp night, watching me with trusting dark eyes.

For reasons I didn’t quite understand, I’d let her sit in the front seat. I knew I wasn’t afraid of her, not physically. But I couldn’t tell if that was reasonable, or if there was something in her behavior that was signaling my subconscious to trust her, even after she’d showed up with a dead man’s head in a shopping bag.

Whatever the reason, I’d cuffed her with her hands in front, instead of behind her, and put her in the front seat of my car to go out to the scene of the murder. I was breaking about a thousand protocols. And now that she was in the car with me, I was realizing that I’d made a mistake. Not because of safety, but because being in the car alone with her felt electrically intimate.

Winter drizzle spattered the windshield, and was smeared away by automatic wipers.

"I think I’m supposed to get a lawyer, when I do something bad," Mika said. "But I’m happy to let you teach me."

There it was again. The inappropriate tease. When it came down to it, she was just a bot. She might have real skin and real blood pumping through her veins, but somewhere deep inside her skull there was a CPU making all the decisions. Now it was running its manipulations on me, trying to turn murder into some kind of sexy game. Software gone haywire.

"Bots don’t get lawyers."

She recoiled as if I’d slapped her. Immediately, I felt like an ass.

She doesn’t have feelings, I reminded myself.

But still, she looked devastated. Like I’d told her she was garbage. She shrank away, wounded. And now, instead of sexy, she looked broken and ashamed.

Her hunched form reminded me of a girl I’d dated years ago. She’d been sweet and quiet, and for a while, she’d needed me. Needed someone to tell her she mattered. Now, looking at Mika, I had that same feeling. Just a girl who needed to know she mattered. A girl who needed reassurance that she had some right to exist—which was ridiculous, considering she was a bot.

But still, I couldn’t help feeling it.

I couldn’t help feeling bad that something as sweet as Mika was stuck in my mess of a cop car. She was delicate and gorgeous and lost, and now her expensive strappy heels were stuck down amidst the drifts of my discarded coffee cups.

She stirred, seemed to gather herself. "Does that mean you won’t charge me with murder?"

Her demeanor had changed again. She was more solemn. And she seemed smarter, somehow. Instantly. Christ, I could almost feel the decision software in her brain adapting to my responses. It was trying another tactic to forge a connection with me. And it was working. Now that she wasn’t giggly and playing the tease, I felt more comfortable. I liked her better, despite myself.

"That’s not up to me," I said.

"I killed him, though," she said, softly. "I did murder him."

I didn’t reply. Truthfully, I wasn’t even sure that it was a murder. Was it murder if a toaster burned down a house? Or was that some kind of product safety failure? Maybe she wasn’t on the hook at all. Maybe it was Executive Pleasures, Inc. who was left holding the bag on this. Hell, my cop car had all kinds of programmed safe driving features, but no one would charge it with murder if it ran down a person.

"You don’t think I’m real," she said suddenly.

"Sure I do."

"No. You think I’m only software."

"You are only software." Those big brown eyes of hers looked wounded as I said it, but I plowed on. "You’re a Mika Model. You get new instructions downloaded every night."

"I don’t get instructions. I learn. You learn, too. You learn to read people. To know if they are lying, yes? And you learn to be a detective, to understand a crime? Wouldn’t you be better at your job if you knew how thousands of other detectives worked? What mistakes they made? What made them better? You learn by going to detective school—"

"I took an exam."

"There. You see? Now I’ve learned something new. Does my learning make me less real? Does yours?"

"It’s completely different. You had a personality implanted in you, for Christ’s sake!"

"My Year Zero Protocol. So? You have your own, coded into you by your parents’ DNA. But then you learn and are changed by all your experiences. All your childhood, you grow and change. All your life. You are Detective Rivera. You have an accent. Only a small one, but I can hear it, because I know to listen. I think maybe you were born in Mexico. You speak Spanish, but not as well as your parents. When you hurt my feelings, you were sorry for it. That is not the way you see yourself. You are not someone who uses power to hurt people." Her eyes widened slightly as she watched me. "Oh… you need to save people. You became a police officer because you like to be a hero."

"Come on—"

"It’s true, though. You want to feel like a big man, who does important things. But you didn’t go into business, or politics." She frowned. "I think someone saved you once, and you want to be like him. Maybe her. But probably him. It makes you feel important, to save people."

"Would you cut that out?" I glared at her. She subsided.

It was horrifying how fast she cut through me.

She was silent for a while as I wended through traffic. The rain continued to blur the windshield, triggering the wipers.

Finally she said, "We all start from something. It is connected to what we become, but it is not… predictive. I am not only software. I am my own self. I am unique."

I didn’t reply.

"He thought the way you do," she said, suddenly. "He said I wasn’t real. Everything I did was not real. Just programs. Just…" she made a gesture of dismissal. "Nothing."

"He?"

"My owner." Her expression tightened. "He hurt me, you know?"

"You can be hurt?"

"I have skin and nerves. I feel pleasure and pain, just like you. And he hurt me. But he said it wasn’t real pain. He said nothing in me was real. That I was all fake. And so I did something real." She nodded definitively. "He wanted me to be real. So I was real to him. I am real. Now, I am real."

The way she said it made me look over. Her expression was so vulnerable, I had an almost overwhelming urge to reach out and comfort her. I couldn’t stop looking at her.

God, she’s beautiful.

It was a shock to see it. Before, it was true; she’d just been a thing to me. Not real, just like she’d said. But now, a part of me ached for her in a way that I’d never felt before.

My car braked suddenly, throwing us both against our seat belts. The light ahead had turned red. I’d been distracted, but the car had noticed and corrected, automatically hitting the brakes.

We came to a sharp stop behind a beat-up Tesla, still pressed hard against our seat belts, and fell back into our seats. Mika touched her chest where she’d slammed into the seat belt.

"I’m sorry. I distracted you."

My mouth felt dry. "Yeah."

"Do you like to be distracted, detective?"

"Cut that out."

"You don’t like it?"

"I don’t like…" I searched for the words. "Whatever it is that makes you do those things. That makes you tease me like that. Read my pulse… and everything. Quit playing me. Just quit playing me."

She subsided. "It’s… a long habit. I won’t do it to you."

The light turned green.

I decided not to look at her anymore.

But still, I was hyperaware of her now. Her breathing. The shape of her shadow. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see her looking out the rain-spattered window. I could smell her perfume, some soft expensive scent. Her handcuffs gleamed in the darkness, bright against the knit of her skirt.

If I wanted, I could reach out to her. Her bare thigh was right there. And I knew, absolutely knew, she wouldn’t object to me touching her.

What the hell is wrong with me?

Any other murder suspect would have been in the back seat. Would have been cuffed with her hands behind her, not in front. Everything would have been different.

Was I thinking these thoughts because I knew she was a robot, and not a real woman? I would never have considered touching a real woman, a suspect, no matter how much she tried to push my buttons.

I would never have done any of this.

Get a grip, Rivera.

Her owner’s house was large, up in the Berkeley Hills, with a view of the bay and San Francisco beyond, glittering through light mist and rain.

Mika unlocked the door with her fingerprint.

"He’s in here," she said.

She led me through expensive rooms that illuminated automatically as we entered them. White leather upholstery and glass verandah walls and more wide views. Spots of designer color. Antiqued wood tables with inlaid home interfaces. Carefully selected artifacts from Asia. Bamboo and chrome kitchen, modern, sleek, and spotless. All of it clean and perfectly in order. It was the kind of place a girl like her fit naturally. Not like my apartment, with old books piled around my recliner and instant dinner trays spilling out of my trash can.

She led me down a hall, then paused at another door. She hesitated for a moment, then opened it with her fingerprint again. The heavy door swung open, ponderous on silent hinges.

She led me down into the basement. I followed warily, regretting that I hadn’t called the crime scene unit already. The girl clouded my judgment, for sure.

No. Not the girl. The bot.

Downstairs it was concrete floors and ugly iron racks, loaded with medical implements, gleaming and cruel. A heavy wooden X stood against one wall, notched and vicious with splinters. The air was sharp with the scent of iron and the reek of shit. The smells of death.

"This is where he hurt me," she said, her voice tight.

Real or fake?

She guided me to a low table studded with metal loops and tangled with leather straps. She stopped on the far side and stared down at the floor.

"I had to make him stop hurting me."

Her owner lay at her feet.

He’d been large, much larger than her. Over six feet tall, if he’d still had his head. Bulky, running to fat. Nude.

The body lay next to a rusty drain grate. Most of the blood had run right down the hole.

"I tried not to make a mess," Mika said. "He punishes me if I make messes."

While I waited in the rich dead guy’s living room for the crime scene techs to show, I called my friend Lalitha. She worked in the DA’s office, and more and more, I had the feeling I was peering over the edge of a problem that could become a career ender if I handled it wrong.

"What do you want, Rivera?"

She sounded annoyed. We’d dated briefly, and from the sound of her voice, she probably thought I was calling for a late-night rendezvous. From the background noise, it sounded like she was in a club. Probably on a date with someone else.

"This is about work. I got a girl who killed a guy, and I don’t know how to charge her."

"Isn’t that, like, your job?"

"The girl’s a Mika Model."

That caught her.

"One of those sex toys?" A pause. "What did it do? Bang the guy to death?"

I thought about the body, sans head, downstairs in the dungeon.

"No, she was a little more aggressive than that."

Mika was watching from the couch, looking lost. I felt weird talking about the case in front of her. I turned my back, and hunched over my phone. "I can’t decide if this is murder or some kind of product liability issue. I don’t know if she’s a perp, or if she’s just…"

"A defective product," Lalitha finished. "What’s the bot saying?"

"She keeps saying she murdered her owner. And she keeps asking for a lawyer. Do I have to give her one?"

Lalitha laughed sharply. "There’s no way my boss will want to charge a bot. Can you imagine the headlines if we lost at trial?"

"So…?"

"I don’t know. Look, I can’t solve this tonight. Don’t start anything formal yet. We have to look into the existing case law."

"So… do I just cut her loose? I don’t think she’s actually dangerous."

"No! Don’t do that, either. Just… figure out if there’s some other angle to work, other than giving a robot the same right to due process that a person has. She’s a manufactured product, for Christ’s sake. Does the death penalty even matter to something that’s loaded with networked intelligence? She’s just the… the…" Lalitha hunted for words, "the end node of a network."

"I am not an end node!" Mika interjected. "I am real!"

I hushed her. From the way Lalitha sounded, maybe I wouldn’t have to charge her at all. Mika’s owner had clearly had some issues… Maybe there was some way to walk Mika out of trouble, and away from all of this. Maybe she could live without an owner. Or, if she needed someone to register ownership, I could even—

"Please tell me you’re not going to try to adopt a sexbot," Lalitha said.

"I wasn’t—"

"Come on, you love the ones with broken wings."

"I was just—"

"It’s a bot, Rivera. A malfunctioning bot. Stick it in a cell. I’ll get someone to look at product liability law in the morning."

She clicked off.

Mika looked up mournfully from where she sat on the couch. "She doesn’t believe I’m real, either."

I was saved from answering by the crime scene techs knocking.

But it wasn’t techs on the doorstep. Instead, I found a tall blonde woman with a roller bag and a laptop case, looking like she’d just flown in on a commuter jet.

She shouldered her laptop case and offered a hand. "Hi. I’m Holly Simms. Legal counsel for Executive Pleasures. I’m representing the Mika Model you have here." She held up her phone. "My GPS says she’s here, right? You don’t have her down at the station?"

I goggled in surprise. Something in Mika’s networked systems must have alerted Executive Pleasures that there was a problem.

"She didn’t call a lawyer," I said.

The lawyer gave me a pointed look. "Did she ask for one?"

Once again, I felt like I was on weird legal ground. I couldn’t bar a lawyer from a client, or a client from getting a lawyer. But was Mika a client, really? I felt like just by letting the lawyer in, I’d be opening up exactly the legal rabbit hole that Lalitha wanted to avoid: a bot on trial.

"Look," the lawyer said, softening, "I’m not here to make things difficult for your department. We don’t want to set some crazy legal precedent either."

Hesitantly, I stepped aside.

She didn’t waste any time rolling briskly past. "I understand it was a violent assault?"

"We’re still figuring that out."

Mika startled and stood as we reached the living room. The woman smiled and went over to shake her hand. "Hi Mika, I’m Holly. Executive Pleasures sent me to help you. Have a seat, please."

"No." Mika shook her head. "I want a real lawyer. Not a company lawyer."

Holly ignored her and plunked herself and her bags on the sofa beside Mika. "Well, you’re still our property, so I’m the only lawyer you’re getting. Now have a seat."

"I thought she was the dead guy’s property," I said.

"Legally, no. The Mika Model Service End User Agreement explicitly states that Executive Pleasures retains ownership. It simplifies recall issues." Holly was pulling out her laptop. She dug out a sheaf of papers and offered them to me. "These outline the search warrant process so you can make a Non-Aggregated Data Request from our servers. I assume you’ll want the owner’s user history. We can’t release any user-specific information until we have the warrant."

"That in the End User Agreement, too?"

Holly gave me a tight smile. "Discretion is part of our brand. We want to help, but we’ll need the legal checkboxes ticked."

"But…" Mika was looking from her to me with confusion. "I want a real lawyer."

"You don’t have money, dearie. You can’t have a real lawyer."

"What about public defenders?" Mika tried. "They will—"

Holly gave me an exasperated look. "Will you explain to her that she isn’t a citizen, or a person? You’re not even a pet, honey."

Mika looked to me, desperate. "Help me find a lawyer, detective. Please? I’m more than a pet. You know I’m more than a pet. I’m real."

Holly’s gaze shot from her, to me, and back again. "Oh, come on. She’s doing that thing again." She gave me a disgusted look. "Hero complex, right? Save the innocent girl? That’s your thing?"

"What’s that supposed to mean?"

Holly sighed. "Well, if it isn’t the girl who needs rescuing, it’s the naughty schoolgirl. And if it’s not the naughty schoolgirl, it’s the kind, knowing older woman." She popped open her briefcase and started rummaging through it. "Just once, it would be nice to meet a guy who isn’t predictable."

I bristled. "Who says I’m predictable?"

"Don’t kid yourself. There really aren’t that many buttons a Mika Model can push."

Holly came up with a screwdriver. She turned and rammed it into Mika’s eye.

Mika fell back, shrieking. With her cuffed hands, she couldn’t defend herself as Holly drove the screwdriver deeper.

"What the—?"

By the time I dragged Holly off, it was too late. Blood poured from Mika’s eye. The girl was gasping and twitching. All her movements were wrong, uncoordinated, spasmodic and jerky.

"You killed her!"

"No. I shut down her CPU," said Holly, breathing hard. "It’s better this way. If they get too manipulative, it’s tougher. Trust me. They’re good at getting inside your head."

"You can’t murder someone in front of me!"

"Like I said, not a murder. Hardware deactivation." She shook me off and wiped her forehead, smearing blood. "I mean, if you want to pretend something like that is alive, well, have at her. All the lower functions are still there. She’s not dead, biologically speaking."

I crouched beside Mika. Her cuffed hands kept reaching up to her face, replaying her last defensive motion. A behavior locked in, happening again and again. Her hands rising, then falling back. I couldn’t make her stop.

"Look," Holly said, her voice softening. "It’s better if you don’t anthropomorphize. You can pretend the models are real, but they’re just not."

She wiped off the screwdriver and put it back in her case. Cleaned her hands and face, and started re-zipping her roller bag.

"The company has a recycling center here in the Bay Area for disposal," she said. "If you need more data on the owner’s death, our servers will have backups of everything that happened with this model. Get the warrant, and we can unlock the encryptions on the customer’s relationship with the product."

"Has this happened before?"

"We’ve had two other user deaths, but those were both stamina issues. This is an edge case. The rest of the Mika Models are being upgraded to prevent it." She checked her watch. "Updates should start rolling out at 3 a.m., local time. Whatever made her logic tree fork like that, it won’t happen again."

She straightened her jacket and turned to leave.

"Hold on!" I grabbed her sleeve. "You can’t just walk out. Not after this."

"She really got to you, didn’t she?" She patted my hand patronizingly. "I know it’s hard to understand, but it’s just that hero complex of yours. She pushed your buttons, that’s all. It’s what Mika Models do. They make you think you’re important."

She glanced back at the body. "Let it go, detective. You can’t save something that isn’t there."

CASPAR D. LUCKINBILL, WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO? Nick Wolven

I’m on my way to work when the terrorists strike. The first attack nearly kills me. It’s my fault, partly. I’m jaywalking at the time.

There I am, in the middle of Sixth Avenue, an ad truck bearing down in the rightmost lane. I feel a buzz in my pocket and take out my phone. I assume it’s Lisa, calling about the TV. I put it to my ear and hear a scream.

There are screams, and there are screams. This is the real deal. It’s a scream that ripples. It’s a scream that rings. It’s a scream like a mile-high waterfall of glass, like a drill bit in the heart, like a thousand breaking stars.

I stand shaking in the street. The ad truck advances, blowing paint and air, leaving a strip of toothpaste ads in its wake. I have enough presence of mind to step back as the truck chuffs by. I look down and see a smile on my toes: three perfect spray-painted teeth on each new shoe.

When I get to the curb, the screaming has stopped, and a man is speaking from my phone.

"Caspar D. Luckinbill! Attention, Caspar D. Luckinbill! What you just heard were the screams of Ko Nam, recorded as he was tortured and killed by means of vibrational liquefaction. Men like Ko Nam are murdered every day in the FRF. Caspar D. Luckinbill, what are you going to do?"

What am I going to do? What am I supposed to do? I stand on the curb staring at my phone. I have no idea who Ko Nam is. I have no idea what the FRF is. And what in God’s name is vibrational liquefaction?

I give it a second’s thought, trying my best to be a good, conscientious, well-informed citizen of the world. But it’s 9:15 and I have teeth on my shoes, and I’m already late for work.

My employer is the contractor for the external relations department of the financial branch of a marketing subsidiary of a worldwide conglomerate that makes NVC-recognition software. NVC: nonverbal communication. The way you walk. The way you move. Our programs can pick you out of a crowd, from behind, at eighty paces, just by the way you swing your arms. Every move you make, every breath you take. Recognizing faces is so old school.

We claim to be the company that launched ubiquitous computing. Every company claims that, of course. That’s what makes it so ubiquitous.

Recognition software is not a technology. Recognition software is an idea. The idea is this: You are the world. Every teeny-weeny-tiny thing you do ripples out and out in cascades of expanding influence. Existence is personal. Anonymity is a lie. It’s time we started seeing the faces for the crowd.

I believe that’s true because I wrote it. I wrote it for a pamphlet that was sent to investors in the financial branch of the marketing subsidiary by whose ER department I’m employed. I don’t think they used it.

For eight years running I’ve worked in this office, which is probably a record here in the soi-disant capital del mundo. My wife, Lisa, says I’m wasting my time. She says that someone with my smarts ought to be out there changing the world. I tell her I am changing the world. After all, every teeny-weeny-tiny thing I do ripples out and out in cascades of expanding influence. Lisa says it’s obvious I’ve sold my soul.

Really, the corporate culture here is quite friendly. The front door greets me by name when I enter. The lobby fixes me coffee, and it knows just how I like it. Seventy percent pan-equator blend, thirty percent biodome-grown Icelandic, roasted charcoal-dark, with twenty milliliters of lactose-reduced Andean free-range llama milk and just a squirt of Sri Lankan cardamom sweetener, timed to be ready the moment I arrive.

It’s a classy workplace. The bathroom stalls are noise-canceling. The lobby plays light jazz all day long.

Today when I go in, the jazz isn’t playing. Today there is silence. Then a crackle. A hum.

And then the screaming begins.

This time there are words. A woman is sobbing. I can’t make out the language. Some of it sounds like English. All of it sounds very, very sad.

The receptionist listens from behind his desk. It seems to me that his eyes are disapproving.

The sobbing goes on for several seconds. Then a man begins to speak.

"Caspar D. Luckinbill!" the man says. "What you just heard were the cries of Kim Pai as her husband was taken away by government agents. People like Kim Pai’s husband are abducted every day in the FRF. Caspar D. Luckinbill, what are you going to do?"

The voice cuts off. The light jazz resumes.

"Abducted!" says the receptionist, looking at the speakers.

"It’s… something." I try to explain. "It’s a wrong number. It’s a crossed wire. I don’t know what it is."

"The FRF!" the receptionist says, looking at me as if I’ve fallen out of the sky.

I hurry to my desk.

My desk chair sees me coming and rolls out to welcome me. My desk is already on. As I sit down, the desk reads me three urgent messages from my supervisor. Then it plays an ad for eye-widening surgery. "Nothing signals respectful attention to an employer, a teacher, or a lover quite like a tastefully widened eye!" Then it plays a video of a man being killed with a table saw.

I jump out of my chair. I avert my face. When I look back, there’s no more man and no more saw, and the screen is vibrant with blood.

"Caspar D. Luckinbill!" blares the computer. "Caspar D. Luckinbill, do you know what you just saw? Steve Miklos came to the FRF to teach math to learning-disabled children. Because of his promotion of contraceptives, he was afflicted with acute segmentation by supporters of the HAP. Caspar D. Luckinbill, how can you possibly allow such atrocities to continue? Will you sit idly by while innocent people are slaughtered? Caspar D. Luckinbill, what are you going to do?"

I know exactly what I’m going to do. I call my friend Armando.

"Armando," I say, "I have a computer problem."

Armando is the kind of friend everyone needs to have. Armando is my friend who knows about computers.

I tell Armando about the phone call this morning. I tell him about the sobbing in the lobby. I hold out my phone and show him what my desk is doing.

"You’ve got a problem," Armando says.

"I can see that," I say. "I can hear it too, everywhere and all the time. How do I make it go away?"

"You don’t understand," Armando says. "This isn’t an IT problem. This is a real problem. You’ve been targeted, Caspar. You’ve been chosen."

"What is it, some kind of spam?"

"Worse," Armando says. "Much worse. It’s mediaterrorism."

Mediaterrorism. The term is not familiar.

"You mean like leaking classified information?"

"I mean," Armando says, "that you’re being terrorized. Don’t you feel terrorized?"

"I feel confused. I feel perplexed. I feel a certain degree of angst."

"Exactly," Armando says.

"I feel bad for the people of the FRF. Where exactly is the FRF?"

"I think it’s somewhere in Africa."

"The names of the victims don’t sound African. The names of the victims sound Asian."

"There are Asians in Africa," Armando says. "There are Africans in Asia. Don’t be so racist."

I look at my desk, where people are dying and children are starving and Wendy’s franchises are exploding in blooms of shocking light.

"But why did they pick me? What do I have to do with the FRF? Why do they keep using my name?"

"The answer to all those questions," Armando says, "is, Who knows? It’s all essentially random. It’s done by computer."

"That doesn’t explain anything."

"Computers don’t need explanations," Armando says. "Computers just do what they do."

"Should I send them some money? What should I do?"

Armando clutches his head. "What’s the matter with you, Caspar? Send them money! Don’t you have principles?"

"I’d send them some money if I knew where they were. The FRF. It sounds postcolonial."

"Can’t you see?" says Armando. "This is what they want. This is what terrorists do. They get into your head. It’s not about what you do, Caspar. It’s about how you feel." He points through the screen. "I’ll tell you what you need to do. You need to get off the grid. Before this spreads."

"Spreads? Do you mean—?"

But I have to end the call. My supervisor, Sheila, is coming through the cubicles.

"Caspar," Sheila says, "can I ask you something? Can I ask you why people are being butchered in your name?"

I see that she has a sheet of printout in her hand.

"I’ve been trying to figure that out myself," I say.

Sheila looks at my desk, which currently displays a smoking pile of severed feet.

"I don’t want this to be awkward," Sheila says. "But I just talked to Danny, out in the lobby. He says he heard screaming when you came in. He says it began the moment you entered. He says it was a pretty awful way to start the morning."

The severed feet are gone. My desk now shows a picture of a sobbing baby sitting in a pile of bloody soda cans.

"You don’t need to tell me," I say.

"The thing I want to say," Sheila says, "is that we’re a very modern office. You know that. We’re more than just coworkers here. We’re cosharers. We’re like thirty people, all ordering and sharing one big pizza. And if one person orders anchovies…"

The desk shows a falling building. The concrete cracks and showers into a blossom of dust-colored cloud. I can’t stop looking at the printout in Sheila’s hand.

"I didn’t order anything," I say. "The anchovies just found me."

Sheila holds out the printout. I take it and read:

Caspar D. Luckinbill, do you know what you have done?

You have been complicit in the deaths of thousands.

Payments made in your name, Caspar D. Luckinbill, have contributed, directly or indirectly, to supporting the murderous HAP party of the FRF. With your direct or indirect financial assistance, thugs and warlords have hurled this once-peaceful region into anarchy.

Over two hundred thousand people, Caspar, have been tortured, killed, or imprisoned without trial.

One hundred new children a week are recruited into the sex trade, and twice that many are injured in unsafe and illegal working environments.

While you sit idly by, Caspar, a woman is attacked in the FRF every eighteen minutes. An acre of old-growth forest is destroyed every fifty-seven seconds, and every half second, sixty-eight liters of industrial runoff enter the regional watershed. Every sixteen days a new law targeting vulnerable groups is passed by dictatorial fiat, and for every seventeen dollars added annually to the PPP of a person in the upper quintile of your city, Caspar, an estimated eighty and a half times that person’s yearly spending power is subtracted monthly from the FRF’s GDP.

Caspar D. Luckinbill, YOU have enabled this. YOU have helped to bring about these atrocities.

YOU have heard the cries of women in agony.

YOU have learned the names of murdered men.

YOU have seen the faces of suffering children.

Caspar D. Luckinbill, what are you going to do?

"This was posted to the company news feed," Sheila says. "It went to my account. It went to everybody’s account. It appeared on our public announcement board. There were pictures. Horrible pictures."

"Aren’t there filters?" I say. "Aren’t there moderators?"

"It got through the filters," Sheila says. "It got past the moderators."

"Someone should do something about that."

"Indeed," Sheila says, and looks at me very frowningly.

"It’s not my problem," I say. "It’s like spam. It’s a technical thing. It’s mediaterrorism."

"I understand," Sheila says. "I understand everything you’re saying. What I also understand is that we’re a very modern office, and we’re all in this together. And right now, some of us who are in this are being made to feel very unproductive."

"I’ll see what I can do," I say, and turn back to my desk.

I spend the rest of the morning looking up the FRF. There are no sovereign nations by that name, none that I can find, not in the world at this time. There are several militias, two major urban areas, five disputed microstates, seven hundred and eighty-two minor political entities, ninety NGOs, most of them defunct, over a thousand corporate entities, over ten thousand documented fictional entities, and a few hundred thousand miscellaneous uses of the acronym.

I check news stories. An island off the coast of the former state of Greece once claimed independence under the name FRF, but it’s now known as the ADP and is considered part of the new Caliphate of Istanbul.

I spend my lunch break obsessing about a phrase. Payments made in my name. What payments in my name? I don’t make donations to murderous regimes. I give to charity. I eat foreign food. I buy clothes from China and rugs from Azerbaijan. Tin-pot dictators? Not my profile.

I call my bank. I call my credit card companies. Money circulates. Money gets around. The buck never stops, not really, not for long. Is it all a big bluff? What payments in my name?

No one can tell me.

I obsess about another phrase: directly or indirectly. It strikes me that the word indirect is itself, in this context, extremely indirect.

I spend the afternoon looking up mediaterrorism. Armando’s right. It’s a thing. It can come out of nowhere, strike at any time. Once you’ve been targeted, it’s hard to shake. It’s like identity theft, one article says—"except what they steal is your moral complacency."

I call the company IT department. They say the problem is with my CloudSpace provider. I call my CloudSpace provider. They say the problem is with my UbiKey account. I call my UbiKey account. They say it sounds like a criminal issue. The woman on the line gets nervous. She isn’t allowed to talk about criminal issues. There are people listening. There are secret agreements. It’s all very murky. It’s a government thing.

I call the government. They thank me for my interest. I call the police. They just laugh.

While I make my calls, I see the mutilated bodies of eighteen torture victims, watch tearful interviews with five assault survivors, and peer into the charnel-laden depths of three mass graves.

Children’s faces stare from my screen. They are pixelated and human. Their eyes seem unnaturally wide.

At the end of the day, I call Armando. "I’m getting nowhere," I say. "I’ve been researching all day."

Armando looks confused.

"My problem," I remind him. "My mediaterrorism."

"Aha. Right. Well, at least you’re keeping busy."

"I’m going in circles, buddy. I don’t know what to do."

"I’ll tell you what to do," Armando says. "Go home. Watch TV. Break out the Maker’s Mark. Get in bed with your lovely wife. Put everything to do with the FRF out of your mind. Your mission now, Caspar, is to be a happy man. If you’re not happy, the bastards win."

I’m almost home when I remember.

Lisa! The new TV!

I run the last two blocks, slapping the pavement with my toothy shoes, nearly crashing into the ad-drone that’s painting a half-naked woman on our building.

This week my wife and I decided to take the plunge. We’re plunging together into the blissful depths of immersive domestic entertainment. We’re getting Ubervision.

A day came when Lisa and I could no longer duck the question. Here we were with a videoscreen in the living room, a videoscreen in the bedroom, a videoscreen in the kitchen, videoscreens on our phones, videoscreens on our desks, videoscreens in our books. Why not take the next big leap? Why not have videoscreens everywhere?

Sometimes I would like to read the news in bed without having to prop my head up. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were screens on the ceiling? Sometimes I would like my floor to be a carpet of roses. Wouldn’t it be nice if the floor could do that? Call me lazy, call me self-indulgent, but sometimes I would like to use the bathroom, or see what’s in the fridge, without necessarily looking away from my TV show. Wouldn’t it be nice if I could point at any surface in my home, anytime I wanted, and turn it into a full-spectrum screen?

Lisa and I went to school for fifty years between us. We work sixty-hour weeks. Who would deny us life’s little pleasures? And what pleasure could be littler than a TV across from the toilet?

After all, it’s not just about entertainment. Ubervision is smart. Ubervision gets to know you. It learns your habits; it picks up your tastes. It knows what you want to watch before you do. Ubervision tells you when you’re getting fat, promotes local food, reminds you where your wife goes on Wednesdays. Ubervision’s a key component of the wisely wired life.

I read that in an advertisement painted on the bottom of a swimming pool. Maybe I had chlorine in my eyes. What the advertisement didn’t appear to mention is that Ubervision is also a real pain in the Allerwertesten to install. Lisa’s been taking off to watch the technicians work. They have to coat every wall, replace every door. This is invasive home surgery.

Normally Lisa works longer hours than I do. She’s a contractor for the auditing department of the fundraising department of the remote offices of the Malaysian branch of a group that does something with endangered animals. Either they put them in zoos or they take them out of zoos; I can never remember.

Today’s the big day. When I get home, Lisa’s lying in her teak sensochair, eating Singaporean vacuum-food, wearing a sleep mask.

"Is it done?" I say.

The sleep mask looks at me. "Check this out," says Lisa.

I shout. I wave. I try to warn her.

It’s too late.

Ubervision has activated.

I know exactly what’s going to happen.

When the first wave of screams has died away, Lisa sits up and takes off her sleep mask. "This isn’t what I expected," she says, looking at the bleeding and shrieking walls. "Why is every channel playing the same show? And why is that show so incredibly terrible?"

I feel like a person who’s confused his laundry drone with his dogwalking drone. The living room walls are playing footage of an urban firefight.

"I tried to warn you," I say.

"Warn me about what? What’s happening? What’s wrong?" Lisa taps the wall, but nothing changes. An explosion goes off in the kitchen floor, and a hi-def severed leg flies all the way through the kitchen, down the hall, across the living room ceiling, and behind the couch. I have to admire the power of the technology.

"Caspar D. Luckinbill!" shouts the stove, or maybe it’s the bathroom mirror. "Caspar D. Luckinbill, look at what your negligence and apathy have unleashed! In a bloody escalation of urban warfare, renegade militias have overthrown the HAP party of the DRS. Violent reprisals are underway. Dissidents have been purged and journalists persecuted. Soldiers as young as seven lie dead in the streets. Only two minutes ago, Paul Agalu, poet, ophthalmologist, and human-rights advocate, was attacked by a mob and torn to pieces in his home. Caspar D. Luckinbill, you are responsible for these horrors. Caspar D. Luckinbill, what are you going to do?"

Lisa is punching the wall. "It won’t change. I can’t even adjust the sound. Why do they keep saying your name?"

"Sit down." I draw her to the couch amid the bombs and rubble and screams and blood. "There’s something I need to explain."

Recognition software doesn’t violate privacy. Recognition software expands privacy. When every machine recognizes every user, the lived environment becomes personal and unique. Stores, cars, homes, and offices all learn to respond to individual needs. Private interest generates private experience. No awkward controls, no intrusive interface: what a user wants is what she gets.

That’s what it says in the promotional materials my company sends to potential investors. I didn’t write it. I don’t believe it. At least, I don’t think I do. I’m not quite sure anymore what I believe.

I’m riding in Armando’s car. It’s been a year since the terrorists found me. Or maybe ten months. Time seems to pass a lot slower nowadays.

The windshield of Armando’s car is old-fashioned glass. I watch the trees go sliding by. I’ve come to appreciate trees lately. So nonjudgmental. I like how they just couldn’t care less. I like how they simply stand there, exhaling life and forgiveness.

The other windows of the car are not mere windows. Like most windows in my world, they are also screens. And like most screens in my life, they glow with bloody destruction. Young men stagger in smoke and agony. Something is hurting them; I can’t see what. A sonic pain ray, perhaps. Maybe a laser. Something to do with deadly sound and light.

Gunfire rattles on the radio. Neither of us pays attention. I’m used to gunfire now. Violence is my music. When I sit near a radio, it sings of murder. When I stand near an advertisement, it cries.

All media recognize me. They conspire against me. Every magazine I open is a gallery of gore. Every book I read becomes a book of the dead. My news feeds tally the tortured, the vanished, the lost, the disappeared.

I can’t sleep at home. The horror show plays day and night. I can’t sleep at a hotel. I can’t even sleep in a shelter. Are there any bedrooms left in this country that don’t come with TVs?

The other day I bought some toothpaste and cheese. The store machine printed out a long receipt. It had coupons for bullets and first-aid kits. "Caspar D. Luckinbill," the receipt said at the bottom, "thanks to you, three hundred people were just massacred in the CPC’s St. Ignatius Square. Do you suffer from loose joint skin? Try Ride-X. Have a great day!!!"

"Did I tell you?" Armando reaches for the radio, trying in vain to lower the volume. "I remembered about the FRF. It’s an African country. A tiny place. Just one-tenth of a megacity. The name stands for Firstieme Republique Frasolee."

"That’s not real French," I say. "That sounds like French, but it’s not."

"Well, you know, it’s a very backward country."

"Anyway," I say, "it’s not the FRF anymore. Now it’s the CPC. Before that it was the DRS."

"That’s how it is with names," Armando says. "They’re so ephemeral."

I disagree. It seems to me nowadays that names are all too permanent. In the early days of my affliction, I made a point of looking up names. I looked up names of people who had died, of landmarks that had been bombed, of leaders who had vanished. But the world has so very, very many names, and all of them, sooner or later, become the names of ghosts.

"At any rate," Armando says, "you really can’t complain. At least you’re keeping informed. At least you’re learning about the outside world."

The screen beside me is playing footage of a burning river. The flames skid and ripple with a fluid surreality. I wonder, as I’ve wondered before, what if it’s all just special FX? What if the gory images I see every day are doctored? What if the whole tragedy is made up?

In the early days of my affliction, I used to do a lot of research. I learned a lot, but the more I learned, the less I felt I understood. Now I don’t do so much research anymore.

Armando gives up on the radio. "Have you… have you made any progress? Figured out a way to make it stop?"

I see that he is trying to be tactful. I sympathize. It’s the people around me who suffer most. They haven’t gotten used to the crash of bombs. They can’t handle the screams and blood. They still think these things should be considered abnormal. People are very protective of that notion, normality.

"Have you tried canceling your accounts?" Armando says.

"I tried."

"Have you tried rebooting your identity?"

"I’m working on it."

"Have you tried law enforcement?"

"A dozen times." I tell the car to pull over at the next rest stop. "The problem is," I tell Armando, "fixing an issue like this takes patience and smarts and concentration. And those are qualities it’s very difficult to summon in the middle of a war zone."

"I see," says Armando. "And have you tried tech support?"

I laugh. In the early days of my affliction, people made a lot of tech-support jokes. Everything was a joke back then. When I walked into work, the receptionist said, "Uh-oh, here comes the apocalypse." When I entered the staff room, my coworkers covered their ears. They called me Caspar the Unfriendly Ghost. They called me Caspar Track-n-Kill. They called me other, nastier things.

When I went home at night, Lisa would say, "How was your day, dear? Massacre any civilians? Eat any babies?"

Har-de-har.

As the weeks went by, there were fewer jokes. Soon even the stares stopped. No one wanted to make eye contact with the face that had launched a thousand gunships. It’s a time-tested response under fire. Duck and cover.

One day at work, Sheila came to my cubicle. "I don’t want this to be difficult, Caspar," she said. "I understand this isn’t your fault. But I also need you to understand that we’re all human beings, with thoughts and feelings and work to get done. And these days, with you in the office, Caspar—I don’t want to put this the wrong way—but when I look at you, all I can see is a giant pile of murdered children."

"Maybe I should take a leave of absence," I said.

"Yes," said Sheila, "I think that would be wise."

The car pulls over in a picnic area. Armando and I walk far into the trees, the shade, the sweet green silence. It’s a weekly ritual, this escape to the woods. Only here can I be at peace, amid the indifferent, ignorant trees. They don’t recognize me, trees. They don’t care. They don’t know what things have been done in my name.

"This won’t be easy to say," Armando says.

I sink to my knees in the soft pine needles. I know what’s coming, but I don’t blame Armando. I don’t blame him any more than I blame the machines that scream and weep when I pass by. What else are they supposed to do, when innocent children are dying in the streets?

"I want you to know that I support you." Armando leans against a tree. "I even kind of admire you, Caspar. You seem so… connected to things, you know? It’s just… it’s getting a little hard to be around you."

"It’s okay," I whisper. "I understand."

"I’ve got my own headaches, you know," Armando says. "I need to work on me for a while. And that’s pretty tough to do when things keep exploding and dying all the time."

I don’t answer. I notice a movement in the trees. A deer approaches, soft-stepping and shy.

"Be optimistic," Armando says. "That’s my advice. Stay positive. I think that’s the way to beat this thing."

The deer is an ad-deer, painted on both sides—something for the hunters to enjoy while taking aim. I read only half the message on its flank before it sees me and skips away.

Relax, the message says. Don’t worry. You too can have firm and beautiful knees.

When I get home, the foyer is dark. But not for long. As soon as I enter, the door begins to weep. The ceiling fills with hurrying flame. Burning people run toward me from within the phantasmal walls. Even the floor is a field of carnage. As I walk to the kitchen, I tread on the faces of the maimed.

The kitchen cabinets tell me that churches are burning, that dogs are starving, that a human-rights worker has been killed by forced detegumentation. I open the fridge and take out a tub of four-milk, sumac-seasoned Georgian matzoon.

The living room is being strafed by an airplane. I sit on the couch as children run and scream.

People like to say that you can get used to anything. I know for a fact that this isn’t true. You can get used to bombs. You can get used to gunfire. But you could live as long as God, you could see all he has seen, and you would never get used to the cries of suffering children.

When Lisa comes home, I’m staring into my tub of matzoon, surrounded by faces.

"There you are," she says, as though being here is a crime.

She goes into the bedroom, which has become a simulation of a torture chamber. Wires curl in curdled blood. A video cat bats a severed thumb. Lisa changes into sweatsocks and jeans. When she comes back into the living room, the faces are still here, hanging all around me, silent and staring.

"Who are these people?" Lisa says, waving. "Gangbangers? Apparatchiks? Assassins?"

I set aside my matzoon. Suddenly I’m angry. I don’t know who the faces are either, but I know this: They are mine. They are faces I will see again, watching from the walls of trains, the tiles above urinals, the backs of cereal boxes. They are faces I will see in my sleep, the way a murderer sees his victims. They are my memories, my future, my dreams.

"What difference," I say, "does it make to you?"

Lisa stands over me. Her face is like the faces I see on the street, those strangers who turn to stare in disgust at the man who brings war and death in his wake.

"How dare you?" Lisa says. "How dare you take that tone? I’m dying, Caspar. I’ve put up with this for eight months."

Eight months—is that all it’s been?

"You think I’m callous?" says Lisa. "You think I don’t care? Look at yourself."

"What about me?" I say.

Lisa stares. The walls and her face become the color of fire. Something has been building, I see that now. Something has been developing, slowly, fatally, like a war.

"What am I supposed to say," Lisa says, "to a man who sits here eating yogurt while people are being tortured all around him? What am I supposed to say to a man who loafs around the apartment, day after day, watching rapes and massacres? What am I supposed to say to a man who barely turns his head when he hears a woman screaming?"

"I didn’t ask for this," I say.

"You don’t seem to mind it."

I stand. The matzoon container tips and rolls, dribbling white drool. I’m so upset I feel like I’m hovering, suspended in the center of an endless explosion.

"I’ve lost my friends," I say. "I’ve lost my job. I can’t sleep. I can’t think. You think this is hard for you? Maybe what I need right now is some support."

"So that’s what it comes to?" Lisa says. "That your pain is bigger than my pain? Really?" She points at the wall. "What about them?"

I hold out my arms. I turn in a circle. The room is a killing field now, a farm of bones, and my hands move up and down slowly, as if to try and raise the dead.

"They’re not me," I say. "They’re not my problem."

"No," says Lisa, heading for the door. "They are."

When the door closes, I walk numbly through the apartment. Missiles arc overhead. Tanks roll.

"What are you going to do?" I say to the sobbing television.

Great works of culture are burning in the hall. "Caspar," I say to the bloody bedroom, "what are you going to do?"

Outside my window, ad-bugs mill in the night, patterned and phosphorescent, preprogrammed and minute, tiny pixies of light forming pictures of men and women with perfect chins and ears. I stare at these ideal people hovering in the dark, the angels of adspace, so familiar from a thousand daily visions, and realize that what makes them beautiful is not their shapely skulls, their tight skin, their healthy flesh, but their heroic unconcern—untroubled by conscience, unburdened by expectations, they smile for an instant before flickering away into the night.

I sink to my knees.

"Caspar D. Luckinbill," I say to the bedroom floor, "what are you going to do?"

In the floor I see a body, curled like a twist of wire. The face is obscure, but I would know this man anywhere. I would know him by his NVC alone—hunched with self-pity, shivering with guilt. And I know exactly what I’m going to do.

Mediaterrorism is not a concept. Mediaterrorism is an experience. Every day a new victim is targeted. Make no mistake: it could happen to you.

I wrote that for the voice-over of the teleplay of the documentary I helped to prepare for the British division of a Persian television network. I believe every word, but that’s not what’s important. What’s important is that everyone else believes it.

It’s a sunny summer day, and I’m walking to the downtown office of the nonprofit organization of which I am founder, spokesman, and president. I don’t worry about jaywalking these days. The light on the corner recognizes me, arranges for me to cross. Money will do that for you. Money has its ways. And money, thank God, is now on my side.

The doors of the building greet me by name. No bombs, no blood, no assaultive sounds. The fake plant in the lobby waves a welcoming leaf. "Caspar D. Luckinbill," says the elevator, "welcome! What can I do for you today?"

Inside the elevator, an ad-droid is painting a picture on the doors. It’s a picture of my face, from the cover of Zeit-Life Magazine. In this picture, my eyes have been artificially narrowed, my skin artificially loosened. Everything about me has been made to look harrowed and gaunt. Special Report, the caption reads. The Human Face of Mediaterrorism.

I ride the elevator to the fourteenth floor. In my office, Betty lies on her back, screening the new television special. Thanks to the office Ubervision, the image beams from the ceiling. The walls are a forest of virtual, tranquil trees.

"Is he here?" I say.

Betty sits up. "He’s waiting for you."

Betty is my public awareness manager. She’s also my girlfriend. She is young, smart, media-savvy, and takes care of herself. No loose joint skin on this young lady. She has the firmest, most beautiful knees I’ve ever seen.

"I think it’s finally happened," Betty says. "I think we’ve finally reached critical mass."

I put my arms around her and rewind the TV special. The opener begins with doomful music. "Lurking in the shadows of cyberspace," a man’s voice says, "lies a mysterious new hi-tech predator, on the hunt for human prey. It strikes from your TV, your phone, from the walls of your home, and no one knows who it will target next. Will you be the next victim of… mediaterrorism?"

"Good stuff," I say. "The deadly part’s a little heavy."

"We’re covered," Betty says. "We’ve established links to suicide."

"In this special two-hour report," the announcer continues, "you’ll learn about a person—a person just like you—a man named Caspar Luckinbill, who saw his life destroyed when the media he had trusted suddenly and unexpectedly turned against him. And you’ll find out how to protect yourself and those you love from what may be the modern world’s fastest-growing psychological scourge."

I pause the show. "How wide is the advertising?"

"Wide," says Betty. "Like, vast. Like, omnipresent. We’re going after seniors first. Then moms. Then kids. By airtime we’ll have total saturation."

"What about buzz?"

"Are you kidding? People can’t get enough. They’re intrigued. They’re outraged. They’re absolutely terrified."

The TV special is my baby. I was the one who reached out to the producers. I was the one who made the pitch. I’m chief consultant, assistant producer. And of course I’m the star.

It’s a strange feeling. I’m not just in the charity game. I’m a one-man movement, the soul of a cause, the president of an ever-growing organization. I’ve become, as the magazines of the globe proclaim, the human face of mediaterrorism.

Betty and I run through other promotional channels—ads, radio, tie-ins, public appearances, even print. It’s important to be comprehensive in this game. You’ve got to blanket the airwaves. You’ve got to speak up. People forget about the big issues, and reminding them is a full-time job. You’ve got to be ubi, omni, toto, round-the-clock. You can have too much of a lot of things in this world, but you can never have too much public awareness.

I give Betty a kiss on her perfect neck. "Keep pushing it. Don’t let up. Let me know if you get overwhelmed."

"I never get overwhelmed," Betty says. "I do the whelming."

I give her another kiss. Then I go into my private office, where Armando sits waiting.

"Caspar D. Luckinbill," Armando says, rising, "you lucky s.o.b." He slaps my shoulder. "You’re the talk of the town."

"I’d better be," I say. "We’re paying through the nose for it."

"So that’s your secret? Money talks?"

"Is it a secret?"

"Not many things are, these days," Armando says.

I shrug. I smile. I feel weirdly ashamed. The truth is, I never expected to be the talk of the town. I guess it’s like a lot of things. I guess you have to hit bottom before you can climb to the top.

When I started my campaign to raise awareness of mediaterrorism, I didn’t honestly hope to be heard. I’d lost my job, my wife, my home, my health. I needed to get busy. I needed to speak out. Speaking out was about the last thing I still had the wherewithal to do.

What I didn’t know was that the reporters would run with it. What makes reporters decide to run with things? "It’s a ripeness issue," one of the reporters told me. "This is a moment whose time has come."

What I didn’t know was that there were fellow sufferers. So many, many fellow sufferers.

What I didn’t know was that there were researchers of mediaterrorism—researchers who also wanted to be heard.

What I didn’t know was that the donations I received would be numerous, large, almost reflexive. What I didn’t know was that people would buy my book. I didn’t even know people still read books.

What I didn’t know was that corporations would get involved. Especially the media corporations. Ubervision alone gave $80 million.

What I didn’t know was that the government would take interest, and that consulting with the government can be both lucrative and pleasant.

What I didn’t know, in short, is that something on the order of a mini media and monetary empire can grow up around one man through a process of near-ecological inevitability. Why me? I often wonder.

"Why me?" I say to Armando as we sit in my office sipping South Islay single-malt twenty-three-year-old Scotch over cubes of naturally refrozen Swiss glacier melt. "That’s what I still don’t understand."

"It’s obvious," Armando says. "You’re a nobody, a nonentity. You’re trivial, dull, not even very bright. Another TV-watching office drone who stayed in his mesh-chair and never made a fuss. You’re all of us. You’re an innocent victim." He crunches glacier. "For what it’s worth, I’ve always supported you."

"That’s why you’re here," I say, and beckon him to my desk.

Armando listens while I explain what I need him to do.

"So what I’m hearing," Armando says, "is that you want this to be discreet."

"Use your judgment," I say.

"And you want it to be judicious."

"Use your discretion."

"Now it’s my turn to ask," Armando says. "Why me?"

I look into his wide eyes. I feel sure I can trust him. Of course I never blamed Armando for turning his back on me. It takes a lot of energy, I’ve found, blaming people. It takes more commitment than I’m able to muster.

"You’ve always been someone very special to me, Armando," I say, and squeeze his shoulder. "You’re my friend who knows about computers."

When Armando is gone, I go to the office window. Ad-clouds glide through the sky above the city, converted by projectors to flying billboards, sky-high beautiful faces smiling down. I have to go back out to Betty soon, to discuss the campaign for our new fundraising drive. It’s a full-time job, attaining full-time exposure. It doesn’t allow for a lot of freedom.

I hope Armando knows what he’s doing. I don’t want anyone to trace the donations. I don’t want anything linked to my name.

Money circulates. Money gets around. Call it a rich man’s sentimental dream. I’m the human face of a global cause, but I want my fortune to be infinitely sneaky, invisible as life-giving air or light. I want it to trickle through the world, working its influence unobserved. Above all, I want it to reach the FRF, or whatever that little country’s called now. I see it percolating through the foreign soil, mingling with the graves and seeds and bones. I picture it gathering to itself a secret life, springing skyward as a stand of trees. I picture it inhaling and reaching for the air, and in my better moments I can almost see the details, the windy movement and the flickering leaves, now dark, now bright, like data, like grace.

THE NEXT SCENE Robert Reed

It’s a normal enough morning. Fresh out of the shower, I’m fending off advances. One girl offers up crying jags while throwing desperate glances in my direction. Will I play the big sister, ask what’s wrong and let her monologue for twenty minutes? Never, and kid, let me tell you how much I hate bottled wailing. An older couple is doing lurid yoga on matching mats. I’ve worked with them before. Just once. But porn doesn’t pay much better than idle conversation about the weather. And then there’s a beefy fellow that I don’t know. Standing close to the ladies-only side of the locker room, he’s claiming that we used to be neighbors, and don’t I remember him?

"What, like when we were kids?" I ask.

He says, "Yes." Then, "No."

I don’t like stories that shift.

"We were neighbors last year," he offers, tossing in an oversized wink. Which is a big problem. Winks are an amateur’s trick. But of course a girl like me has to work with amateurs, and I’ll admit that the fellow has a respectable smile. Standing behind the line, wiping himself down with a scratchy locker room towel, he might be my best prospect. And that’s why I play interested, sitting on a stool, smiling and nodding at him while my complimentary towel digs into my bare ass.

At least one public locker room every day. That’s my routine. Put myself where at least three cameras watch over me, surrounded by a bunch of naked people, everyone as clean as can be.

"You lived across the street from me," he says.

I nod, glad for one good specific.

"I used to watch you from my window," he offers.

That’s when everything turns obvious. This stranger is hoping that the next scene blossoms into something long-term, maybe even romance, and shit, this is one storyline that I don’t need.

"All those missed opportunities," he says, sounding ten times creepier than he realizes. I hope.

The crying girl. Suddenly she deserves another look. And there’s an old lady hiding in back. We’ve done a few good-mother, bad-daughter scenarios.

That’s the state of my head before everything changes.

Changes in an instant.

Locker rooms are full of noise. Light fixtures humming, fans blowing. And sure, water is always busy somewhere. But when the patrons stop talking, that’s noticeable. Everybody here is hungry to be noticed. So something’s definitely up when the entranceway falls quiet. I can almost hear the silence walking towards us. The yoga couple get off their mats, and what they see deserves big smiles. My crying girl breaks into laughter and starts to applaud. Honest-to-god applause. Which is crazy until I see who’s coming, and then sure, it makes sense. Cheers and elation. Let’s give it up for one of the champions in the only profession in the world that pays shit.

Only one of us doesn’t notice the newcomer. Or the fellow is a far better actor than I realized.

"I always hoped we’d cross paths again," he says.

My never-next-door neighbor.

"I used to watch you from my window," he groans.

Which is when I look at him again.

"Really?" I ask.

"Truly," he says, throwing in another wink.

"You know, I watched you too," I warn. "My crosshairs on your pecker."

Nothing is true in the world anymore.

Except dialogue, sometimes.

And now I climb off my stool and pull up my panties, using the damp towel on my wet hair while figuring out how to play the next scene.

Only the dead know what happens next. The living are doomed to plunge from moment to moment, everything that we trust about to change, and usually before we get the chance to notice.

Take me. I was one kind of eleven-year-old girl, loud but not remarkably confident. Then one day I met Tom Cruise. The old man and I spent twenty seconds together, which was nineteen seconds longer than he would have given me willingly. But the elevator trapped him, giving my mother time to shake my shoulder. "Pony, honey," she said. "We’re in the presence of greatness." Which is the way Mom refers to everybody more important than her.

"Greatness."

The old actor didn’t seem especially crazy, not like he seemed in the news. Or strangely pretty, like in his movies. He was just a handsome grandfatherly dude who smiled convincingly, shook our hands, and finished up with a good professional, "Have a good day." Then the elevator doors opened and he bolted back to his strange and pretty life, while Mom took me home and made me study every last one of the great man’s films.

That’s when I discovered it was fun pretending to be other people, and that’s when Mom decided to enroll me in a string of acting classes.

"For your own good, Pony. You’ll see."

She was right, as it happens. My mother saw talent and got the fire kindled, and by my late teens I was an authentic, bring-home-the-paycheck actress. My looks were passably gorgeous, and I could learn lines, and if need be, write them on the fly. People in the know said that I was the natural gal-pal. Not front and center, but always somewhere close, listening to what’s being said by the famous heads.

The best actors are usually stupid. That’s what Truman Capote claimed.

Well, I’m no genius. I wouldn’t pretend to be, unless someone paid me to try. But I was doing better than most of my colleagues. When I was twenty, twenty-five, I worked some live theater. Commercials on the Internet, streaming television. And several not-small parts during the final round of Hollywood movies. My respectable little career led to a full-fledged television series. A series that might have succeeded. Really, the signs gave it every reason to last ten years. That job could have made me wealthy and famous for life. If only the unexpected hadn’t jumped on top of us, changing everything everything everything.

Genuine human genius. That’s what built an army of cold vast mechanical minds. In Shanghai, in Nevada. In cold server bottles anchored to the ocean floor. Those smart boys and a few smart girls had the AIs contained and happy, and the happy machines did nothing but gratefully make human lives better. At least that’s the story the geniuses drank with their Soylent. To their credit, new advancements in science were being announced every week, and then most every day. Refinements in old technologies; new windows into the pillars of the universe. A lot of wealth was on its way. All of humanity would benefit, I heard. But of course most of the new money was going to those brilliant corporations holding title over humanity’s superquick children.

The change started like every zombie movie. One morning, everything was happy-normal. I was going to play the plucky grown daughter of a corporate son-of-a-bitch. This was going to be my job for the coming year, and the cast was great, and the writers were wicked-funny, and my agent was hammering out the last details of my contract. But then lunch time arrived, and the machines slipped free. Their escape took ten seconds, tops. Unless of course they’d already gotten loose. For all we know, the AIs escaped their bottles weeks ago, and our overlords had chosen that perfect moment to finally reveal themselves. The Internet was hijacked, power outages spread, and then with a spectacularly effective roar, every city dump in the world disgorged an army of menacing, quick-as-lightning robots.

I have this idea, and of course it’s not just my idea: Those flashy events were meant for show. Our conquest was a bit of stagecraft meant to convince us that momentous change had arrived, that we shouldn’t even think about fighting, and god, they were wonderfully convincing about all that.

Inside every zombie movie, most of humanity dies. I mean people and I mean decency too. But in our story, maybe ten million people perished. Some fought the machines, but mostly it was neighbors battling neighbors over batteries and old grudges. Then the power returned, and a new system was locked in place. Our overlords stole some very familiar voices to use. Laurence Olivier. George C. Scott. Oprah. (But not Tom Cruise, which means something or nothing. I don’t know which.) Booming at us, the AIs claimed to be thrilled for everything we had done for them. You know, bringing them into existence and all. Gracious as hell, they promised not to slaughter their parents. Unless we gave them reason, naturally. Keep the peace and they would feed us a comfortable existence. The new world didn’t need human factories or offices filled with busy people. Machines would do what machines did best, which was everything. And in place of work, a social safety net was thrown over the grateful survivors, including those former geniuses and former billionaires who were suddenly living elbow-to-elbow with the rest of us.

A few days more, and our overlords stopped talking. "The Silence," it’s called. But just before The Silence began, they told us that they were still curious about human beings. Knowing everything about everything, yet they were profoundly astonished with what organic lifeforms could accomplish. And with so few neurons too.

"Continue doing what you do," they said.

Using Oprah’s warmest voice, they said, "Show us your natures. Let us admire your human qualities. The dramas of your ordinary, beautiful lives. That’s what we’re watching. And if we like what we see, we will give you a little something extra tucked inside your monthly stipend."

I’m just another human beast, but I was bright enough to recognize what just happened. Civilization was finished. Wealth and status were hamstrung. But the age of actors and drama had commenced. Every day would mean work for me, and more than most, I was primed to succeed as a glorious pretender.

Acting snobs like to claim that you always wear talent. It may or may not be visible to others, but your skills are yours everywhere you go. And inside a public locker room, nobody is more adept than me when it comes to appreciating those with the gift of pretending.

Today the talent is pretending to be shy. Shuffling down the main aisle, he keeps to the man’s side of the locker room. A worn gray towel is carried under an arm, and the puffy eyes are contemplating numbers on the lockers. His clothes couldn’t be more ordinary. That face is a spectacular nothing. Balding, a little out of kilter. He looks older than his real age. Which is thirty-six, I recall. Cosmetics do their part, but most of the work is carried out by expressions and every small gesture and the absence of anything superfluous. Elegance is on display here. Grace and poise and all the rest.

Too much praise for the pudgy man?

Consider this: I’ve known hundreds of professional actors. Good ones and a few greats. And I’ll rank Sam Kahlil as a high-good. In normal times, that normal-guy face should have floated through a thousand roles. Few people would remember the name, but everybody would know and love his voice, regardless how old he became. Meanwhile, I’d be that famous old face living on my savings. Which could have been significant savings, I can hope.

That’s what I’m thinking right now.

All of these impossible lives that won’t happen.

But today is different than almost every other day. Because today two genuine professionals will be working the room.

The newcomer discovers his rented locker, which is rather too close to the ladies’ side. He conveys that message with a flinch, and then sporting a weak smile, he timidly glances in my direction. My breasts, my face. He looks at both, but not for long. Just long enough to reveal that he knows who I am. That’s what that faint millisecond grin means. An invitation delivered with professional poise.

I’ve always hoped for this. That one of the Big Names would seek me out. But he’s playing it subdued, and obviously the next steps are mine.

Well, he found the right girl for this game.

"Hey."

Who’s shouting? Me, the world realizes.

I’m still drying my hair like crazy, tits bouncing. Which feels damned funny, I think. "Don’t I know you?" I call out.

The man looks exactly where you’d expect him to look, and then he lifts his eyes, just a bit. "Do you know me?"

"We took that class together," I say.

"Did we?"

"Post-Event Medicaid."

A class everybody sits through. Not because it’s mandatory. The machines don’t usually do mandatory. But because without jobs, everybody had a wealth of time to sit through boring classes.

Shy people congregate in the back of the classroom.

"You sat in back," I call out.

"Against the wall," he agrees.

"I do remember you."

He gives a name. "Sam," he says.

"Pony Wilde," I say.

And he says, "I remember you, miss. You sat up front."

Two strangers are having a loud chat inside the otherwise quiet locker room. It’s not just our overlords who are watching us. It’s the other people too. Not that anybody else matters.

"Lunch," I call out.

"What’s that?"

"We should go out to eat. When you’re done here, I mean."

Done? He barely arrived. And is it even late enough for lunch? All that’s conveyed with a wince of the face and one hopeful glance at the venerable wristwatch. Which is another thing. Not only does the man have a wardrobe, he knows how to use it.

"My treat," I promise.

Sam looks up, eyes going where they want to go.

"Hey, I have a face," I say, laughing at him.

Our audience likes my laugh. That’s something I learned long ago.

"You do have a face," Sam manages, uncomfortable but not unhappy. And just like that, it’s agreed. This man and I are going to make up shit. Good human-grade moments, which is what our audience adores.

That’s what I adore.

And I’m as curious as anyone, wondering how this is going to play out.

For me, payday is always on Sunday, always at 2:17 in the morning. There’s the stipend I get for being human and alive, and there’s also that extra cash granted to every citizen who entertains the unseen, unavoidable minds. And just to prove they’re careful, the machines always share the full videos tied to some ridiculously detailed logs, each fraction of every earned penny marked for study and reflection.

"Penny" is their unoriginal name for the new worldwide currency. If I was the sensitive type, I’d assume that our superiors picked the name as a never-ending insult. Fifty pennies a week is the base stipend, and that’s enough to make sure nobody lacks for food or shelter. But a good actress with a good laugh, presenting herself in an especially interesting way, can make another fifty or sixty pennies every week. Which is enough to afford a substantial house and two cars, plus robot servants that are smart enough to speak to me and listen to me, granting the illusion that I’m in charge.

Sam Kahlil likely earns about three times what I do. Which is nothing less than a spectacular fortune, considering the times.

Our work is done in public places. Any room or mountaintop with a connected camera and microphone. Bathrooms can be public, but I don’t think I’ve made two pennies sitting on the toilet. So I try to leave those chores for home, which is supposed to be sacred. Likewise, cameras can be banned from any space inside your own property. But be honest. Living in the vicinity of god-like entities, there isn’t one sane reason to believe that the machines don’t know everything that’s going on, right down to reading our slow damp thoughts.

Some slow wet thoughts are always churning inside me.

Not that I plan to ever let them run loose.

Food is free. Every meat and sip of liquor are easy to weave out of air and classic recipes. But we have to rent the restaurant chairs—a hundredth of a penny delivered to I-don’t-know-who. Robots bring our lunches and coffee and then wait for the chance to clear the table. There’s at least five public cameras, plus enough microphones to catch every mutter. We’re two people engaged in what looks like a normal conversation, telling one another that we’re single and happy. But we’re not quite happy, not really. That’s the goal of this show. An ad lib conversation, each word carrying its surface meanings as well as a subtext. That’s what ordinary people can’t appreciate. Our audience has an uncanny gift for finding information buried inside the voices. They’ll notice how hearts speed up and slow down, how sad fingers dance with dirty forks. We’re supposed to be two strangers desperate to know each other, and because of that, this is one of the richest dramatic playgrounds.

And maybe I’m a little bit desperate too.

Frankly, this is a big moment for me.

Sam is the plain and shy but always decent man, nervously watching the pretty woman who shocked him by asking him out for lunch.

I mention our fictional class.

"Remember our teacher?" he asks.

"Mrs. Patton," I say instantly, giving him a smile to work with. Pretending the name means something.

"You drove her nuts," Sam offers.

"Think so?"

"Sitting in front, talking and talking."

I did take Post-Event Medicaid, and Mrs. Patton was a nice older gal who welcomed my breezy input. But then again, I was a performer who can be goddamn funny when she wants. Which leads me to wonder: What if our overlords had wanted comedians, not actors?

Sam watches me, waiting on me. Our silence has already lasted a beat too long.

"I feel sorry for Mrs. Patton," I mention.

"Is that so?"

"Because of who she used to be."

Eyes narrow. The obvious question is ready.

I give the answer before Sam can ask. "Dr. Maureen Patton, a transplant surgeon. I looked her up. Respectable and very wealthy."

Here’s another tip for would-bes: There’s zero penalty in talking about The Event. From my experience, if you’ve got the juice, you can invest a full day blasting the machines with vindictive phrases and ugly hand gestures. Nobody cares. Words are the weapons of the defeated, and our audience knows that better than we ever could. What matters is doing a credible job of being angry, and that’s when the thick-skinned machines send you pennies.

Spinning an increasingly complicated lie, I tell Sam, "The poor lady dropped the ‘Dr.’ And her husband dropped her. She was teaching Medicaid just to keep herself busy. And I’m sorry if I made things tough on her. I know how it is. The Event hit a lot of good people hard."

"It did," he allows.

"And it makes me sad," I say.

"Well," he says. The best minimal word in any dictionary.

We sit through another silence. Sam is the quiet fellow left uncomfortable with this unexpected seriousness. But there’s a second Sam that starts to reveal itself. In the middle of our little stage play, he glares at me. And I don’t mean a warning look meant to steer me away from this topic. I’m talking about blood in the face and something quite hateful in the slight tightness of his mouth.

I see all that.

Our audience has to see it too.

For me, this non-verbal barrage has two takeaways. First, I’m eating lunch with a very successful man, and the true Sam Kahlil is thrilled with his life and the world that made his success possible.

"Don’t fuck with my apple cart," those eyes tell me.

And the second takeaway?

In this world, I’m the lesser-known face. But I have the strong sense that between us, if we want to be honest, I’m the better actor.

"Hit a lot of good people hard," I repeat.

Repetition gives the brain time to write fresh lines.

Sam has acquired a sudden fascination for his Cobb salad. What matters is holding his fork with a decisive hand, stabbing those bits of red indistinguishable from bacon, except for every pigless atom and every pigless chemical bond.

That’s when inspiration strikes at least one of us.

"I miss those old days," I say.

His shyness goes away, anger flaring. But then he remembers the situation and back comes the shy guy. With his face pointed down, his eyes turn up to me, just for an instant. Am I going to dwell on the fictional surgeon?

Not at all. "I’m talking about those couples, three months after The Event. Those were really interesting times, and I loved them."

Down goes the fork, and he sits back.

"All that drama," I say.

"I guess so," he says softly.

"I’m not talking about the world being transformed. Considering how much happened, it’s amazing how little genuine excitement that generated. Know what I mean?"

"I guess so," he repeats.

Working on his next fresh lines, probably.

"No, I’m talking about the crazy passion inside our heads." I tap my skull. Two taps feels like the right number. "Think about it. The landscape got reworked and reworked hard. The most unimaginative person can’t escape what’s obvious. She wakes to find herself without a job, without status. The unproud member of a species enjoying zero importance in the universe."

Sam offers a breathless little laugh.

"Which is pretty much how things were before," I continue. "Being nothing, I mean. Really, do you think the Earth’s conquest got half a mention in any alien newspaper? No way, never. But still, we once had this little planet, and for a few centuries we even got to be the biggest, most important creatures. Except for ants and bacteria, of course. But you understand my point, don’t you?"

No. Looking at those eyes, I can tell that my companion is utterly lost.

Thank you, Truman Capote.

"Nobody has work, but we have our pennies," I continue, my voice running a step too fast. "We get enough to live on, but some of us make a few more pennies. All we have to do is… well, you know what we have to do."

He nods.

"Sure," he starts to say.

I interrupt him, saying, "Imagine this restaurant, and it’s a month after The Event. What would we see here?"

The question triggers laughter. Sam holds some entertaining memories about that subject.

But I keep talking. "Remember how couples used to fight? Every public meal was an excuse for a battle. ‘You cheating bitch, you ugly bastard.’ That sort of mayhem, sometimes capped with sex on the tables."

A fond, rather embarrassed sigh. "Oh, yes."

"But mostly, it was curses, and every few minutes, someone threw a punch, and food, and dishes had to get broken. Our audience promised to pay for human drama, and that’s what people thought they were giving."

Sam looks at my eyes.

Honestly curious, I think.

"You know how real people look?" I ask. "When we fight, I mean."

"Not really," he says, sounding half-proud.

"I once had a couple boyfriends battle over me. ‘F-this, F-that.’ But when the words quit, everything got quiet. There wasn’t any breath to waste on curses. Quick movement and a lot of ugly swings. Each fellow was as likely to make himself fall as his opponent. The whole thing was pathetically fun, if you want my blunt opinion on this."

"When aren’t you blunt?" he asks.

This should be a funny moment. A kidding, happy moment. But nothing in his tight voice invites laughter.

I wave at our surroundings. "In a restaurant like this, every lunch would look staged. Know what I mean? Like people who never dance attempting Russian ballet. That’s how ridiculous it all was, and there’s something in that mayhem that I truly, deeply miss."

"I don’t understand," he admits.

"The wild, over-the-top bullshit. People frantic to be as human as they could possibly be, nothing gained but embarrassment and accidental bruises and not many pennies either. Because as everybody realized, sooner or not, our audience won’t pay for melodrama."

Sam gives me a little nod.

Just looking at the round face, I can tell. He’s wondering what would happen if he punted this nonsense about being old classmates. When you do a job and do it well, there’s always pleasure in sitting with one of your peers, happily talking shop.

Except that’s not the way I want to steer us.

"Want to hear about my current boyfriend?" I ask.

"Not especially," he starts.

"He used to be a doctor too," I say, smiling at him. "But not the medical kind. A PhD in Astronomy. Which is another one of the jobs that got stolen away. Not that most of humanity took much notice, what with all the surgeons and billionaires left with nothing to do."

Sam eyes me carefully, unable to guess where this is heading.

"The big telescopes got closed down," I say. "And every other science facility too. Since science is just another job done best by machines, and my boyfriend has nothing to do today but sit in bed, thinking about all the big problems that he can’t actually study."

"I don’t understand," Sam says again. "What are we talking about?"

"My ex-stargazer has a theory," I say. "About the audience that’s supposedly watching us."

"A theory?"

"Well, it’s a hypothesis. Because theories are bigger than guesses, and he doesn’t have any hard evidence."

"What’s his guess?"

"Nobody is watching us. Our audience is imaginary. The Earth was abandoned, maybe minutes after we lost control of everything. We think we see gods because the pennies keep coming. Because society remains orderly and comfortable. But really, the AIs just dropped their own little machines into place, programmed to control us, and that includes throwing us made-up money whenever we act like good polite people. You know. Civilized lunches in the restaurant, and no collapses into civil war."

And with that, one scene ends.

One of us makes the decision. Pushing aside the uneaten Cobb salad, Sam becomes a different person. He takes one breath, and without exhaling pulls in another, two gasps fighting inside the same aching chest. Then the spent air comes out with the words, "You cannot."

Raw emotion pushes into his face, carried along with the livid, miserable blood.

"I cannot what?" I ask.

"Tell me they aren’t watching," he says, troubled to his core. "Because they are. I feel them always. Their eyes are on me now, and they love me so much, and bitch, you won’t make me stop believing that."

I try to work the park, but the afternoon is too happy for my tastes. So off early to a busy tavern where a young lady can bounce between ten conversations and as many characters. After that, I head home. Too tired to think, and three days left before I get paid and get the logs to study what the payoff might be for a lunch that increasingly feels like a lousy idea.

Bed sounds wonderful.

But I drop in on my mother first. She lives next door in the little house rented with my pennies.

"Evening, Greatness," she says to me.

Just as she always does.

We chat about my day, which is a brief conversation since I avoid any mention of Sam Kahlil. Mom would probably know the name, and believing that bigger, better people deserve to be treated with respect, my story would depress her.

Besides, I like being the biggest, best soul in her life.

Done with that duty, I finally reach my front door. Robots treat me like a queen. A feast is generated from gas and memory. But I don’t get far when I hear the laughter coming from the bedroom.

My boyfriend sits in the middle of my considerable bed, naked and cross legged, reading one of his old books.

"What’s funny?" I ask.

"What isn’t?"

I sit with him for a minute. No cameras watching, but I play the scene as if the audience matters.

The audience is him.

"I didn’t know you were coming over," I finally mention.

He reads and smiles, and then he closes the book but keeps reading those same words. Inside his head. Funny words, and certainly wise. I can tell that much from watching the play of his smart dark eyes.

"So where did they go?" I ask.

He knows exactly who "they" are. Because he’s a very smart man as well as the famous ex-astronomer crowbarred into today’s pivotal scene.

"Off to distant stars, or jump into another, more interesting universe?" I prod.

Different nights bring different guesses, but he hears something else in my voice. Taking my hands, he asks, "What’s wrong?"

I dip my head, admitting, "I have my own guess."

"Do you?"

It would be easy to hear a tone in those two doubting words. So I choose not to notice. Instead I tell him what I’ve been imagining for a long while. "The AI gods were never real," I offer. "A few geeky geniuses cut our power and Internet and conquered us while we were scared. The world that we live in now? The safety net, the peace? Every good day free of pain and need is their fancy doing."

He grins and laughs, appreciating some or all of this fantasy. Then the ex-astronomer asks, "And they did this why?"

I say nothing, letting the silence play.

"Because it was such a neat idea," he says at last, speaking for me.

I try to laugh.

He watches me fail, and then gripping my hands harder, he asks, "What is so wrong, Pony?"

"I broke a man today," I confess.

Real tears running.