Machina Viva (6 page)

The Gens Vapori eventually established themselves in the developing vapor community as masters of, among other things, information technology. In their own habitat in the thickest areas of the vapor, they communicated among themselves using a sort of hive mind. They also possessed the most advanced computing technology that anyone had ever seen. A Gens Vapori computer consisted of a three-dimensional matrix of vaporous reagents. A simple chemical protocol governed the ways in which adjacent reagent cells interacted with each other, and by manipulating the initial state of the matrix, they could represent any computer function they needed. Anybody with the need for a highly sophisticated computer system and the means to support it had a Scintilla system at their disposal, along with one or two Gens Vapori, or Merfolk after the initial reports, on the payroll as technicians.

As renowned as the Merfolk were as computer scientists, they were almost equally renowned as performance artists. Their natural motion patterns and visually engaging language struck a chord with Fullerton’s theater-going crowd. The Merfolk themselves didn’t quite understand what was so special about it all, but it was a perfectly good medium of exchange for them, so they stuck with it. For Eve’s part, though, she understood perfectly what drew audiences to the theaters to fill house after house.

The theater was laid out in an arena style, with seats in a bowl surrounding the stage at the center. For this performance, a clear membrane had been raised around the stage and the space within it filled with dense vapor to give the performers more freedom of movement in their own element. As the house lights came down, the vapor began to glow, and dozens of Gens Vapori teemed onto the stage.

The story began with a colony of Gens Vapori going about their everyday business. They had all they needed, and life was good. Like most Merfolk, they were colored and named in shades of blue, like Teal, Aquamarine, and Cerulean. Then came the main protagonist of the story, Rose, a solitary figure in bright pink. Rose drifted around the stage, trying to go about business as normal, but most of the others were uncomfortable with Rose’s presence. Rose got along with the daily routine, and at the end of the day, went off to the outskirts of the settlement looking for some solitude, as apparently was normal on days like this. There, Rose bumped into a sort of wise old hermit character, an elderly Gens Vapori named Indigo.

At this point in the production, the translation started taking a few liberties with the script. The Scintilla language primarily conveys general intentions and emotions, things on a personal level, thus ill suiting it for discussions about things like fate, meaning, and anything else bigger than the universe. Human dramaturges had made careers out of attempting to translate Rose’s story into the human lingua franca, and the end product is a variety of interpretations ranging from a heroic redemption story to a tragic tale of loss of innocence, with one idiosyncratic production revolving somehow around sugar cookies.

Eve couldn’t tell exactly what the theme of this particular translation was meant to be. She was too busy recalling everything she had experienced in her entire existence, and seeing it played out in front of her on the stage. Words like “destiny,” “special,” and “chosen” lodged in her mind as they floated out at her from the earpiece.

As the story progressed, Rose left the colony and began what the translation described as a self-fulfilling quest. Rose traveled far and wide to search for wisdom and truth. Merfolk of all different colors swam on and off the stage as Rose continued to journey in search of meaning.

At the climax of the play, Rose came to the end of the journey. Merfolk from previously in the story came out and swirled around in the pillar of vapor. The experience became one more of pure artistic expression than simple storytelling. Suddenly, the membrane containing the vapor fell to the floor of the theater, releasing the vapor in a dizzying wash of color and light. The actors drifted out over the heads of the audience and swam among them, parading down the aisles and making the observers part of the event. Rose flew out through the crowd in a euphoric rush as the earpiece conveyed the sense of glorious inspirational enlightenment. As Rose approached Eve’s seat, there seemed to be a pause in the glory. Eve thought she could see Rose turning slightly toward her, as though trying to get across a sort of personal contact.

That’s when Eve was struck with glorious inspirational enlightenment.

She thought back to the behavior of those sales clerks at the clothing store. Robots were supposed to be accustomed to the behavior of those that were recently produced, especially in the service industry. Robots in that line of work saw all sorts of people; they were trained not to be judgmental. If they were giving her looks like that, and none of the humans were, then it meant that there must be something about her under the skin that made her different.

She thought back to that incident with the baby on the transit platform, the way she had moved to protect it from the falling glass. Why didn’t she simply try to catch the boxes? It wouldn’t have been all that hard.

She thought back to what had happened to her at the beach. She had swallowed a bellyful of sand with no apparent ill effects. Until then, she hadn’t known that she even had a belly to fill. And the only reason she had done it was that it smelled good.

She was different. Profoundly different. And she had to find out why.

The actors left the stage, and the spilled vapor was vented from the house as the audience stood to applaud. Eve, though, simply rose from her seat and walked to the door.

She clearly hadn’t been made on the same production line as all the other robots, but her card looked just like any other. That ruled out any independent engineers, though she knew of none in the first place. Everyone knew that only Robot Production had access to the social training protocols that made robots able to function in the world. So, clearly someone at Robot Production knew where she had come from.

Out in the lobby, a voice on the theater’s paging system said, “There is a message at the service desk for Eve. Eve, your message is waiting for you.”

Eve ran to the service desk. Could this be the clue she needed to find out what she wanted to know? Was this whole production for her benefit? She gave her name at the desk, and the attendant gave her a small card and showed her to a private booth to view her message. She swiped the card across the terminal, and the screen showed three words. No audio or picture, just the three words, “Check Your Burn.”

Eve lifted her sleeve. The burn mark on her arm from earlier that day was completely gone.

12

On the other side of town, a ticketing agent for the transit system was sitting in his booth, waiting for the next car to come through. People were already queuing for position. As he saw the car coming down the track, he noticed that it wasn’t slowing down. He checked the scheduling system, and this train was due to stop here on its regular route, but not for several minutes yet. He hadn’t seen any notice that his station was supposed to be closed that day, or else he wouldn’t have shown up.

As the train breezed through the station, he could see that not only was it not conforming to the schedule (a hitherto unimaginable occurrence in the world of the Transportation department), but also that it was empty. So it clearly hadn’t stopped for anyone else, either.

What was an unoccupied train doing whipping its way through the city?

Eve wandered out of the theater in a daze. Her burn was gone. She already had an appointment with a repair service to get it fixed. What could she tell them? “I’m sorry, but it turns out that I wasn’t actually burned by hot grease, I must have imagined the whole thing, sorry for the trouble.” She’d get carted off to the Pyrio Ward for sure.

She hadn’t imagined the initial burn; that was certain. She remembered the commotion in the kitchen in too much detail. She still had the card for the repair service that the other waitress had given her. And of course there was no way that someone could have repaired her while she wasn’t paying attention. Nobody could be that unaware.

The only answer was that her body had somehow repaired the damage itself. She had heard of some engineers who had designed rudimentary auto-repair systems for robots, but that was only for really catastrophic damage like power supply failures and the like, and it only really served to keep the robot aware until it could be gotten on support. It was really just an emergency backup. What kind of emergency system could repair burn damage?

She followed the crowd out to the transit hub across the plaza to catch a train home. As she stood on the platform, she felt a vibration coming from the waistband of her skirt. She looked down and saw the card that the service desk attendant had given her. She must have slipped it there when she was examining her arm. A small circle was flashing on one side of the card, about the size of her fingertip. She touched the circle, and a message appeared on the card saying “You are not like the others, Eve.”

She almost dropped the card. Who was this mysterious person sending her anonymous messages?

The message changed to “You are looking for answers.” She looked around the crowd on the platform, looking for anyone who seemed to be paying her extra attention, who may have been sending some kind of signals to the card.

Now the card said “I have the answers, Eve.”

She gripped the card in both hands and waited for the card to continue.

“Cross the tracks to the next platform and wait for my sign.”

She stepped off the platform and headed for the tracks on the other side. She never even heard the approach of the train as it sped through the station, slamming into her and sending her flying, as everyone on the platform stood and watched.

When she finally opened her eyes, she was lying against the side of a building. Her feet were pointing in directions that they had no business pointing, namely in different directions from her legs, and every time she tried to move, a hundred different parts of her protested. She was able to see clearly and pivot her head a little, so her neck seemed to be fine somehow, but she was feeling woozy, which meant that her power supply had been damaged. She would need to get home and recharge herself, and at this time of night, there would be no random passersby to call for emergency services.

She felt a buzzing from her hand, and when she turned her eyes to look, she saw the card. It had conformed itself to the curve of her palm and was now stuck fast. If it hadn’t, she would have surely lost it in the crash.

A new message appeared on the card, reading “See what lies beneath.”

She looked down at herself. With her damaged power supply, she had to struggle to be able to see subdermally, but she just managed. She saw a strangely glistening fluid spreading throughout the damaged parts of herself. It was gathering on the broken surfaces of the bones in her legs and coating most of her power supply.

The card buzzed again. “You must reshape yourself.”

She reached slowly down to her legs and pulled the bones back into position. As the broken surfaces met, she could see the shiny substance working its way into the bones. The torn muscles began to knit themselves back together. As she sat and watched, the fluid slowly soaked into her leg bones until it was all gone, and then her legs were whole. She looked at the rest of her body, and in the space of fifteen minutes, she was completely undamaged.

She tried to get to her feet, but she was still woozy from power loss. As she caught herself on the pavement, the card buzzed again.

“You are not like the others, Eve.”

“You are different.”

“You must be studied.”

“You will be collected.”

As the light on the card went dark and it unstuck from her hand, Eve detected a faint smell of ozone. Cryptic messages from mysterious beings notwithstanding, she still needed power. She managed to stumble into a public recharging station before falling completely unconscious. She sat at a booth and swiped her contract card across the terminal to activate it, and as she charged herself up, she happened to glance at her contract information on the screen. The amount remaining on her contract was normal, at least for her, but the Employment heading gave only the single word: “Terminated.”

She was terminated? When did the restaurant let her go?

You will be collected.

They had gotten her released from the restaurant. They had gotten her released so she would be unburdened. When they came to collect her.

She looked at the top of the screen. It listed her name, production date, and current address. It also showed her picture.

She put her hand on the recharging line. She would have to get used to this, since she obviously wouldn’t be going back home anytime soon. Now, more than ever, she wanted to know where she had come from and why she was so different, and she wouldn’t be able to do that while strange people were “studying” her.

An icon flashed at the bottom of the screen, indicating a special citywide announcement for all citizens. She touched the icon, and the announcement expanded to fill the screen. It was a bulletin that a transit train had malfunctioned and sped through several stations in defiance of its scheduling, colliding with an individual outside of the city theater. A spokesperson for Transportation said that they were looking into the problem and would notify the public with their findings, and that they wanted to reassure the public of the complete safety of the city transit system. The bulletin ended with the statement that city officials were interested in speaking with the solitary victim, identified from station surveillance as a robot designated Eve. Health and Public Welfare had been called to the scene of the incident, but no trace of Eve had been found. The bulletin urged any citizen who came in contact with Eve to notify their nearest repair facility as soon as possible.