Vivisepulture (23 page)

“A machine that makes things cold…” I say.

“More than that! Any fridge can do that,” say Sam 8. “The fantastic Fridge is the best machine in the world.” She pauses. A stray wind throws strands of Sam 8’s hair around in the air. “At least, that’s what my father says”.  

Sam 8 sighs and tucks her hair back behind her ears so the wind can’t play with it anymore. She picks up a stick and begins to scrape it through the dirt next to her. She draws a rectangle then crosses it out. 

I ask my software what the best machines in the world were. 

Not you
it replies, and sends no further data.

“What does this Fantastic Fridge do then?” I ask. 

“It dispenses ice, it makes coffee and it heat-regulates your house. And of course, it makes stuff cold,” Sam 8 says. Like she had explained all this a thousand times. 

“That is very interesting” I say. 

“Interesting? Not really. But my father says it will make us rich,” says Sam 8. “That is why we bought your whole hill. We are going to build a…”.

Then Sam 8 throws her hand over her mouth and looks up into my propeller again. Face readout:
panicked
. She stands up 

“I have to go, machine. I’m sorry,” said Sam 8. 

Dear Software, Why does Sam 8’s Father Inventor need a hill to make his fridges?

No Reply. 

Dear software, if you write “no reply” its still a reply.

It is not

It is too.

I wish to officially inform you of the following: am not sending you information anymore. You have ignored all the warnings. You are on your own. Goodbye.

26.06.2047 

According to my .info file I only do one thing. I process winds, I convert them into a form that the inventors can use in their cities. 

The Fantastic 5 Function Fridge does 5 things and is the best machine in the world. Even if it is boring.   

27.06.2047 

My software has not sent me a reply now for 2 days. Sam 8 has not visited. I have no one to talk to.

30.06.2047 

She is here! I asked her why her father needs our hill. But she wouldn’t tell me. She was silent and her face readout was sad. 

“Are you going to put these fridges here among us?” I asked

Sam 8 shook her head

“I would like to communicate with these fridges,” I said to her, turning my propeller faster and faster. 

“You can’t,” said Sam 8. “I tried”

I slowed my propeller.

“Then they have no communication link?” 

“I don’t know. But they don’t say anything,” said Sam 8, slumping down under my stem. Her back against me.  

“Perhaps you used an unapproved method,” I said, turning my propeller fast again. 

“I don’t know,” said Sam 8. Face readout:
cold
. Eye units hard. 

“But I tried for months and months”

I turned my propeller fast even though there were no winds to process, cos I do not want Sam 8 to think I am old. Sam 8 did not notice though. She scratched a stick in the dirt and stared at the town over the fields instead. Heat shadows curled out of tubes in the roofs of the inventor houses.

I slowed my blades again.

“What happened?” I asked. “What happened when you talked to the fantastic fridge?” 

“Well, it was the prototype one,” said Sam 8 waving her hands. Face readout:
embarrassed
. “And it wasn’t
so
fantastic. It lived in our kitchen. I kept asking it about itself. But it just ignored me”. 

“What did you ask?”

“What it was like to be a fridge. What made having 5 functions so fantastic. Things like that.”

I spun my blades in a pattern and pretended I was only half interested. 

“What then?” I asked

“It just never answered.” Sam scraped her stick deeper in the dirt. “In the end I got very mad and asked it why it even existed at all.”

“And?”

“… and it exploded. All over the floor and the walls”

“Maybe it didn’t like the question”

“Maybe,” said Sam. 

“Did your Father Inventor repair it?”

“He couldn’t. Once they break you can’t repair them. That’s part of why they make you rich.” 

“You killed it then,” I said. Propeller Blades stopping. 

“I guess so,” said Sam 8 “If you can kill a machine.”

“Of course you can.” I said. 

Sam’s face readout went strange. She looked up at me, then around at all the other SKYs. Her eye units went bigger then smaller then bigger. Then they did something dangerous. Water came out of them. She is not made of Kevlar and Pavo-Niko like we are. She would possibly rust or dissolve.

“Sam 8 please be careful. Your eye units are malfunctioning,” I said.

Sam 8 stood up and ran away over the fields. 

02.07.2047

Dear Software. It is very unprofessional to stop communicating with me. It is your function to serve my needs and to provide me with the information I need to do my job. 

Besides that, I have no one to talk to now when Sam 8 is not visiting. 

Please say something. 

04.07.2047

Problem log: my propeller has developed an intermittent fault. I can’t seem to repair the error myself and my software has abandoned me. 

Will proceed to FAQ and troubleshooting files. 

05.07.2047

FAQ and Troubleshooting files are useless. In fact, they seem to be a list of questions no one would ask. For the record: “frequently asked” should not mean: what the inventors
think
will be asked. They have no idea what sort of problems we machines really run into. 

For example: my software still won’t respond.

09.07.2047

Hurrah! An inventor is coming. A big one. She walked out of the town about 30 minutes ago. I can see her over one of the reddish fields with the bare earth now. Her mobility stems are taking her along the edge of it. A few stray winds have already tangled themselves up in her yellow hair. I worry about what she will think of my pod’s efficiency with so many breezes roaming free, but it isn’t my fault. My propeller is stopped. 

The Inventors’ mobility stems are going slow. I wish they would go fast. 

She has a bag, though. Like a proper inventor. 

I think she will fix my software. 

The big inventor did not try to connect to any of my data links. She did not have metal things or electronic equipment either. Instead her bag had a circle thing with a handle and numbers on it for measuring. It also had a tripod with water at the top where a little bubble floats back and forth, trying to get out. She seemed mostly interested in the earth under us. She scraped at it like Sam 8 does. Then she walked back and forth over it with the handle of the circle thing in her hand. The circle itself rolled over the earth and clicked as she walked. 

The big inventor also had a tiny listening machine for holding her thoughts. She held it on her ear and talked into it a lot. 

“Bob, Its Olga. The site is about three metres out from what the plans say.” She told her listening machine. 

“Yes I know. It was tight before, but it will definitely need to be leveled after it’s cleared,” she added, looking up into my propeller and then over to the other SKYs. “It will become a stability issue otherwise. You don’t want to take any risks with nuclear”. 

She pointed at us then. One after the other after the other. Saying our numbers. 

“Theres 18 of them. Yep. You’ll have to send a crew out here for an assessment next week. OK?”

“Good. Bye for now”

Then the inventor woman put the listening machine into a hole in her clothing, packed her equipment back in its box, and walked away. 

09.07.2047 - b

Sam 8 is coming. Her dark hair and little face trudging over the fields in front of me. The fields are many different colours now because the inventors have cut down some of the crops to eat them. Sam 8 told me once that that’s what inventors do. They put things in the earth and wait for them to become tall. Then they cut them down and eat them.

“Hello Sam.”

“Hello machine.” Sam took her usual seat under my stem and stared out towards the town. 

“An inventor came to see me today,” I said “A ‘she’ one. She had hair like yours but yellow.”

“Oh,” said Sam and looked at the ground in front of her folded mobility stems. 

“She didn’t fix me,” I said.

Sam did not reply. 

“Sam 8, my software will not send me information anymore. Would you be so kind as to fix it?”

“I can’t fix software,” said Sam 8 turning to face me and squinting one eye unit. “I told you. I am not an inventor”.

“Then, you could ask your Father-Inventor to help me.”

Sam 8’s face readout changed to ashamed. She looked at the ground. She scraped circles in the dirt with her finger.

“He won’t help you,” she said.

“And why not?” I asked. “We are on his hill!”

“He, he won’t help you, machine. I am sorry. I, well I wish you had legs.”

“I don’t need legs,” I said. “I need software”.

“Software won’t help you anymore,” said Sam 8, and stared back out towards the town. 

After some minutes she stood up. Her own mobility stems did nothing. I could see her hands grip into fists. The winds dived into her hair and threw it around. I tried to call them out, but they would not come. Sam 8 turned towards me. Her eyes were leaking again. She had started to rust too, cos long red lines and blotches covered her face readout. 

“Sam 8, you are in danger,” I said. 

Strange noises came out of the little inventor then. Choking noises followed by more water. She spread out her arms and put them around my stem. They were warm. 

11.07.2047

I am burning this to disk so I can ask the software what it means later. The big she-inventor came back. This time with three other He-inventors. They stuck things in some of the Skys to talk to their software. Here is the log of what they said to each other:

“It’s mostly Pavo-niko, Kevlar and stainless steel, Dave. Plus the internal cabling. It will take a bit to cut through it all.”

“Hey Olga, did you say they go down to 5 metres?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s not in software.”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s in the blueprints. There are copies on the server. You should have looked at them.”

“Yeah yeah. I’m just a technician ok?”

“Whatever. It’s 5 metres. Just enter it in the job file.”

“Yo Kevin, that one there is a breakdown job. Propeller stopped. You wanna get a datalink into it?”

“Nah. They’re all coming down. There’s no point.”

“Yeah, but we’re still running a couple of streets off them until the end of the month.”

“Leave it Dave. It’s not our job.”

“What? Since when?”

“Ok ok. You wanna create work for yourself? Go right ahead. Fix it. Just don’t ask me to help you. I got enough going on here.”

“Doesn’t it bother you Kevin? I mean, this guy is exploiting the law change and going nuclear again just to make some kitchen appliance no one even needs.”

“You get paid anyway. So does it matter?”

“Yes it matters!”

“Heheh. He’ll be a millionaire if he pulls it off, you know.”

“You find that cool? Niedersaxon was one of the only fully self-sufficient clean-energy projects in the whole country.”

“Still is Dave. Nuclear is ‘clean’ now. That’s the whole idea.”

“Yeah right. Would you wanna live here?”

“Why not? They say it’s safe as houses.”

“Sure, if the house is made of uranium.”

“Dave, the ecosystem crisis is over.”

“Yeah, cos we made laws against exactly
this
kinda crap!”

“Just give me the impedance ratings would you?”

“Dave! Kevin! Get on with it. We only got half an hour. We’re due at the Husum Plant for the landscape assessment at 15:30. Get busy. Both of you.” 

“Yes maam.”

I think they are going to do a very big upgrade.

14.07.2047

Sam 8 is coming. She is running along the fringes of one of the fields. Her mobility-stems are making her go very fast. She has something in her hand. It is white and square with a small antennae on it. 

“Machine!” says Sam as she reaches the top of our hill. Then she bends over forward to suck in air. Hands on knees. Swallowing the air greedily. She straightens up again.

“Machine. I found the name of your mother”

“My mother-inventor? How? What for?”

“On the net. I wanted to tell her about your software problems and… “

“They are upgrading us.”

“What?” panted Sam 8.

“The inventors. They came yesterday. They’re going to upgrade us and give us new software and hardware.”

“Machine, those people aren’t inv... I mean, listen,” Sam 8 flipped open the little white device in her hand. “I found her name. Look. Your inventor. It‘s Susan Meyer. She is very famous you know. She won a prize”

Prize. Software, what is
prize
? Please respond.

…

“What is a prize, Sam 8?”

“An award. An honour thing. For good work.” 

I am quiet.

“She got the, ah,” Sam 8 squints at the tiny screen on her device, “Eco Physics Award. For designing the first SKYs. Back in the 2040s. Isn’t that wonderful?”

“Why?”

“It means she might be powerful! She might be able to stop the, ah, development thing. I mean… she might…” and Sam 8 stopped

“What is
development
?”

Sam 8’s shoulders fell. 

“I am not allowed to talk about the development,” she said. 

“Your face readout is strange,” I said.

“Machine,” said Sam 8 “I have to go now. I have to try and find Susan Meyer.”

15.07.2047. 08:00

Dear software,

Please tell me what is “development”. I need to know. It is making Sam 8 very sad and I cannot understand. Please. I need your support on this. 

15.07.2047. 16:00

Please