Burning Violin

Hydane left a few minutes later after they had exchanged all sorts of bits of internal information that an employee of Crow's ranking at International Robotics was privy to. Passwords, IP addresses, firewall settings. International Robotics had grown up so quickly that Crow remembered each iteration of development of their infrastructure, cobbling one bit on top of the previous with newer and better hardware, but without a master concept to make it tie smoothly together. The result was something that stayed up as a function of luck more than design. Backups were the Achilles heel of the entire operation, relying on manual and undocumented processes that only Crow and a few select administrators knew in their entirety.

"What are the chances that they are changing passwords to make it impossible for this to happen?" Hydane had asked.

"Just about zero." Crow said. "You've got to understand, most of those passwords haven't changed in a decade, despite a couple ugly firings along the way. It's badly run that way."

Hydane looked puzzled. "I thought you were the one in charge of these things."

"Well yeah." Crow said. "I knew stuff wasn't up to par, but I had too much else to do to care too much about it. When you're riding the tidal wave of exponential growth, you tend to let the infrastructure stuff slide."

International Robotics maintained servers at two colocation facilities, both within the immediate area. Backups were made over a dedicated bundle of dark fiber straight from the server cabinets to the corporate headquarters. The basement housed all of the goodies. Other than those three locations, the only off-premises backup was an array of tape drives in the Sunnyvale basement of the Director of Operations.

"Why him?" Hydane had asked.

Crow laughed. "Because when we originally set up that whole process, he was the only one who had trunk big enough to fit the array. About once per month he brings that in and then takes home an identical unit with updated data."

Hydane hesitated about some of the details but downright disbelieved this final bit about the Director's basement. "I cannot believe that such a company exists."

"Ever been a consultant?" Crow asked. "You work hourly for absurd wages to fix problems of people that don't understand technology at all. It's a comedy of the absurd at some of these places, it'd probably make you cry." He nodded down to the dug out. "Some of those sentis could run technology better than most of the businesses I've been in, but then so could most of those five-year olds." Crow shook his head. "Something happens when most people become adults. They forget how to think. If something isn't part of their same old rut, they just let it go to hell because it's too much work to learn something new."

Hydane shook Crow's hand and assured him that he would arrange for the operation to go down tonight.

"That soon?" Crow asked.

"Action should closely follow any decision." Hydane said. "Otherwise circumstances seem to change to color both the decision and the chance of the action's success."

Crow nodded and turned back to the game. Alexander was coming up to bat again. Hydane tapped his shoulder.

"One more thing." Hydane said. "Have an alibi for tonight. One that places you away from any computers."

Some might say that sunshine follows thunder
Go and tell it to the man who cannot shine

With Tiller's murder, the various Fox News pundits who reviled him for years as a baby killing death mill Nazi ripped into a higher gear of spin. They did not apologize for a word that they had said, but reiterated that sickening excuse of modern journalism: we didn't incite violence, we merely reported that some people did.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, a moment of clarity occurred when Fox News descended upon an Obama husband/wife fist bump as a "terrorist fist jab". It was so beyond absurd, such patent partisan hackery, one wondered how it could even be uttered with a straight face. Of course, it didn't matter that it was a fist bump, the copy was ready to go for the jihadist high five, communist handshake, and pedophile pat on the shoulder. The beauty of it though, the true triumph of applying Orwellian newspeak to broadcast journalism was in the semantic dance around the accusation. No Fox talking head ever said that Obama was a terrorist because he bumped fists with his wife, they insisted that some people were saying that to be true.

Oh the beauty of that simple innovation. What utter freedom a lack of responsibility and ethics can bestow upon you. Take the vilest, most insulting, most obviously untrue statement imaginable, but preface it with "some people are saying" and you are no longer a shit slinging extension of an interest group's organization but a responsible journalist dedicated to the truth. "Obama is a communist racist conspiring to destroy America" is name calling. "Some people say that Obama is a communist racist conspiring to destroy America" is responsible journalism. It reeks of junior high, when that one malicious brat feigns innocence after making a girl cry, "it's not my fault, I didn't call her a fat whore, I just told her that some people were calling her a fat whore." Remember that smug smile on that kid's face? The way all three of his neurons agreed that he was the smartest and most clever kid in the school for thinking of that loophole? Don't you just see Bill O'Reilly's face superimposed on that kid's smirk now?

Realizing that an entire news organization can espouse whatever political agenda it desires so long as it prefaces everything with "some people are saying" leads inevitably to the next step, the wholesale engineering of truth. If a journalist isn't responsible for reporting facts, but on reporting what people say the facts are, then our intrepid journalist cannot be held responsible if there is no factual basis for what people say. After all, they're just reporting on the fact that someone is saying something, not on the factual accuracy of the words coming out of that person's mouth. "Obama is not an American citizen" is a lie. "Some people say that Obama is not an American citizen" is an honest reporting of fact. It's like reading Soviet era newspapers. "The government says that harvests are at record highs this year" even while children starve all around and breadlines form a week in advance. It's not a lie, the government is saying those words.

And that leads to the final stage of the "some people say" rationalization, the one made so bloodily apparent by Dr. George Tiller's murder. "George Tiller should be killed" is an incitement to violence. "Some people say George Tiller should be killed" is just an honest reporting of the facts.

Some might say there's a better way.

Some might say they don't believe in heaven
Go and tell it to the man who lives in hell

Hydane shook his head. "No bullshit." He winked. "At your heart, we believe you are a Naturalist. Those interests are parallel to our own. We have assembled a variety of skilled individuals with the goal of eliminating sentis from our society and ensuring that they do not threaten humanity itself."

"That would be a fair summary of my own beliefs I think." Crow said.

"Then we would like you to join our cause, do some work for us. It would be very lucrative, but I do not think that matters so much to you, does it?" Hydane asked. "No. More importantly, it will give you something worth fighting for, which is all any man can really ask for is it not?"

Crow scrunched his mouth and nodded with his shoulders as much as his head. "I used to have a simple clarity of purpose. I wanted to make a mind that could think, and now that we have attained that, I don't have anything to do, anything to care about." Crow paused. "What's worse is that I think I was doing the wrong thing all that time, and it eats at me." He poked his head down at the field. "Look at that, every one of them has a senti following them around, an electronic slave. That's not what I was working for all those years."

"The sign that an invention has come into its own is that it becomes a yuppie toy." Hydane pointed out.

"Thank god nuclear weapons never made that leap." Crow said dryly. "See, I'm not really a Naturalist, per se. I don't have moral qualms, I don't think artificial sentience is an abomination to the eyes of the lord or anything."

"And yet you fight it still?"

Crow nodded to the babysitter sentis again. "I think the original pursuit had some nobility to it. I don't think knowledge itself or the search for it can be anything but noble. But god, the application of it is just disgusting sometimes."

"Will you help us?" Hydane asked.

Crow thought for several seconds, the simplicity of the question appealing to his inner ascetic. No grand speeches could have raised his heart, he was too cynical for that, but deep inside in some buried part of his soul was a pulsating romantic. That was the part of him that had made the discoveries in artificial intelligence, not the rational roboticist layered on top. Rationality could never produce something as poetic as a mind. A tinge of craving for a cigarette and a beer colored his mind, and his mind connected it after a moment to the train of thought. Romanticism was as addictive as cocaine and had a terribly more thunderous high. Crow craved the call to arms like a junkie scratching for a fix.

"International Robotics?" Crow asked.

"They would be the logical first target." Hydane said.

"Let's burn them to the ground." Crow said and an uncontrollable smile ripped across his face.

"Yeah, I talked to him a bit last night." Crow said. He swallowed half a hot dog in a strained gulp. "I don't know how much attraction I offer your organization at this point. International Robotics fired me this morning."

"Crude of them."

"Didn't even get a severance package." Crow said.

"Hardly generous given your history." Yuri said. "In my country, there is always a severance package. Either cash or a bullet, but never nothing, that's the province of janitors."

"Well I'd prefer the cash to the bullet." Crow said.

"The bullet is the higher compliment." Yuri said. "It says they appreciate your danger in addition to your value." Their eyes watched a foul ball arch over their heads and knock against the concrete and into a stand of trees. "Would you like to get some measure of payback?"

"Demonstrate they should have given the lead-tipped severance package?" Crow asked.

Yuri nodded. "There's a saying. You will die someday, so start earning it in advance."

Crow thought idly about that as two kids collided trying to field a ball that rolled slowing across the infield. He winced at the wail of damaged cries. Kids only really cried when they knew someone was watching. The problem with little league was that they knew lots of people were watching, so the dramatic fireworks ratcheted up a few notches.

"Russia is a much harsher country than America." Crow said. "I spent few years there researching."

"Da. I have read your file." Yuri said.

"I have a file?"

"Everyone has a file." Yuri said. "The only question is whose filing cabinet it is in."

Alexander came to the plate and Crow made sure to wave when his son looked uncertainly up into the stands for reassurance. He swung hard and Crow was surprised to see the ball bolt over the heads of the infielders on the first swing. It was a hell of a bash for a five year old, line driving into the right-center gap and clanging into the chain-link outfield fence on two hops. Crow saw Alexander rope around the bases while the confused outfielders looked wide-mouthed at their coach yelling at them to get the ball none had been paying enough attention to notice. Can you blame the kids? No one hits it out of the infield this young. They're just staring at the clouds until it's time for the post game fruit roll ups and juice boxes.

Crow noticed that Alexander ran smoothly, arms and legs pounding as naturally as a sprinter, with none of the wild flailing of disproportionate limbs kids exhibited until puberty. The ten inches of the last week seemed suddenly more important as Crow realized that Alexander was now almost a foot taller than the next tallest player. A cloud of dust flew up into the umpire's face with Alexander's head first slide into homeplate. A general bustle of applause rumbled from the parents in the stands, and Crow forced himself to applaud, but an odd feeling that something altogether wrong had just happened filled his belly, though he couldn't really define why.

"Is that your boy?" Yuri asked. "He is very good."

"Yeah." Crow said, distracted. "He practices a lot." He paused. "What is it that DaVinci Law wants from me?"

Hydane smiled. "Whatever it is that you want for yourself."

"Oh, don't give me that lawyer psychology bullshit." Crow said. "I took the LSATs you know before I went to study robotics. I could have gone to any law school in the country, but I didn't like that bullshit."

Crow messaged the sender back: prior appt, roland park 4pm. An affirmative came back a moment later as Crow made his way down the stairs to the first floor disaster area. He wondered if a hired maid would clean this stuff up, but forgot about it as his mind moved on to other things. Hunger rumbled in his belly, but there wasn't time to make it to a restaurant and the kitchen was hazardous to mammalian life. "It's a baseball game, so there's got to be hot dogs, right?" He muttered to himself. "Even if it is little league."

He arrived at the field and weaved between sentis guiding kids along the footpaths and parents arriving in SUVs. A few kids piled out of the cars with the spare parent of the day, but most had electronic escorts instead. Five years ago they tried to burn down Russia, how soon we forget when the convenient thing to do is just keep doing things the same way we always have.

Crow spotted Alexander awkwardly arrayed in the three-quarter length t-shirt that passed as a jersey and a net-backed baseball cap with a tiger stitched onto the front. Alexander was trying to tie his cleats with Nan's assistance, but it required a shade more dexterity than the average six year old could manage. Nan finished the job as Alexander straightened and plunged an ear into the depths of his ear to scratch. He spotted Crow and flashed a toothy grin and waved with his entire arm, almost clocking the coach in the groin as he did so. Crow smiled and waved back.

The concession stand stood behind the backstop, an ugly thing of cheap wood cobbled together by some volunteers a few years back and painted a blue of vulgar brightness that had faded bit by merciful bit in the summer suns and winter rains since then. Crow fumbled out his wallet and was disproportionately pleased at the five dollars he found there. Just enough for a couple dogs and a soda, but then starvation was no laughing matter. Crow juggled the bottle of Mountain Dew and the paper plate wrapped around a pair of supermarket hot dogs microwaved and stuffed into buns that still were half frozen. He coated them with oceanic quantities of ketchup and relish and managed to balance them long enough to climb into the top row of the stilted structure the volunteers had passed off as bleachers.

The first kid tottered up to the plate and swung and missed at the ball sitting on top of the tee. Alexander had received a tee for Christmas the year before and had solemnly practiced when he remembered since he had dreams of being shortstop for the Giants when he grew up.

"Who you got money on?" A voice with a Russian accent asked from his right. Crow jumped in surprise, almost dropping the hot dog halfway between plate and mouth. A skinny guy with a hard and angular Slavic face sat next to him on the splintering bench in a spot that had been empty in the last moment. A surface of stubble shadowed his shaved head, skin a pallid shade of olive. He wore expensive looking clothes that had actually been tailored to fit. Crow eschewed the look himself, but had enough exposure to the expensive tastes of the technorati to recognize the subtle shift in cut and balance of the clothes. They did not hang, they fit. Crow had always been the sort of executive who showed up in jeans half the time and refused to tuck in a shirt or wear a tie.

"The short ones." Crow said. "Always watch out for the little guy."

The Russian laughed a low chuckle, gravel grinding on asphalt. "I'm Yuri Hydane. Overhauser wanted me to pull you aside."

Chapter Five - A Burning Bridge

"Fired?" Crow broke into laughter that was at once disbelieving, humored and desperate. "Built the company on my motherfucking back and this is what I get?"

He had woken briefly to throw his alarm clock across the room when it went off at its appointed 7:59 time to get him out of bed for work. Not eight o'clock even, that was bad luck. Work started at 8:30 sharp, and fifteen minutes to roll into wrinkled clothes and fifteen minutes to drive were all he needed, with a minute or two of snatched time once there to grab the sweet ecstasy of black coffee - sugar and milk were for the kids weaning themselves off of soda to the adult source of caffeine. Somebody should figure out how to make carbonated coffee, the combination of two such forces might just be the marketing equivalent of Hiroshima. In any case, the alarm clock ceased sleep disruption as it disintegrated into cheap Vietnamese parts all over piles of clothes by the closet.

Dreamless sleep took Crow until the afternoon sun reached the windows on his bedroom's side of the house and woke him the natural way. "This is the way man is meant to wake." Crow informed the mortal remains of his clock on the way to the bathroom. "We use alarm clocks to imitate the cry of a predator - the only thing we are hardwired genetically to wake up for on a dime."

He had of course checked his email next from the laptop in his office across the hall. Email was as much part of the morning ritual as clearing the bladder and drinking coffee. Filters took out ninety-nine percent of the messages immediately, leaving a few dozen for him to actually deal with. Half of these Crow filed away after half a glance at their contents. One was from Human Resources and dropped the electronic pink slip on him. Crow called in immediately after the laughter subsided and faded into swearing.

"Crow, it's gotten too much." O'Malley explained. "You're late half the time and when you are here you don't work. You're dragging the entire division down with you. I think everyone deserves second chances, but you've had chance after chance with us."

"That place is mine as much as yours. I'm the one who made it what it is." Crow said.

"Crow." O'Malley insisted. "You've made this choice, not us. We want this to be on as amiable terms as possible. You've meant a great deal to this company, and it'll be hard to get on without you, but we just feel this is the best way to go. We'd love to keep you on as a consultant of some sort, to cover all the bases while a transition is made. We'll send a contract over later."

Crow wanted to scream at the old bastard, really rip him a new one, but some bit of sanity left over from better days remained. Never burn bridges. They always said that. You never knew when you'd have to go groveling back to someone. He verbally smiled and nodded his way through the rest of the conversation. When O'Malley hung up, Crow threw the silver Nokia down the hallway so it ricocheted down the stairs with an improbable bounce off of the ceiling.

He retrieved the phone and called the number on the business card from last night.

"Da Vinci Law. How may I direct your call?" A pleasant voice answered.

"John Osteryoung, please."

The call went straight to voicemail, on which Crow left a brief message. He showered and shaved in an imitation of getting ready for work, though it was almost three o'clock by now. His phone beeped at him as he swung down the stairs. A text message - juniors pub, 4th and community, 4pm. Crow grimaced at his watch. It would be tight. Shit. He couldn't even make that. Alexander had a little league game then that he was supposed to attend. Times like this he really missed Trinan, and it was a guilty feeling, since he wanted her here so that someone could cover Alexander's game and leave him free.

A month after Susannah left, Garet realized that he missed the companionship more than he missed the sex, so he stopped saving up for the escort service and went down to the pound to get a dog. He had never owned a dog and so was a bit mystified by the entire process. He walked right up to the desk of the run down animal shelter in the middle of town and asked how to buy a dog. The clerk stared at him with blank eyes that only betrayed life by glistening in the too-white fluorescents.

"Dogs are shelved on the right, cats on the left." The clerk said. Garet didn't thank it. It was a cheap model with skin hardly a step above the junk they used to mold into Barbie dolls. Good enough to fool the tourists in the first generation, but mostly just good for giving people the creeps these days. People got sick of the almost human mannerisms and an appearance that resembled a zombie more than machine or man.

Garet wandered down the aisle, glancing with dull interest at the boxed animals. A few older varieties did not move, their power cells worn down to the point of needing replacement. Newer ones pawed at their plastic wrappers, realistic down to hair and claw. Some of the dogs even barked, although Garet wondered why they would program that in if the entire point was to package the pluses of an animal without the flaws. That creepy feeling oozed out from every box at Garet though, that sense of artificiality lurking right underneath the surface. He amended the thought. The problem was not that he felt the artificiality peeking through; it was that he could tell it was being faked. The cats did not arch their backs because that was a feline instinct, but because that was what they were supposed to do.

He held a hand up to a particular cat container, this one filled with a half dozen kittens of varying neon colors. Some people went for the utterly unnatural animals. One of these even looked like it had plaid fur. Garet shrugged. At least it was more honest.

A screech ripped out of a closed door at the end of the aisle, although none of the animals so much as lifted a head, except for a couple of guard dog models. It echoed again like a dying tiger. Garet strode to the door but found it both unmarked and locked. He jogged down the aisle to the front desk to confront the clerk again.

"What's in the back?" Garet asked.

"Biologicals." The clerk said.

"Why aren't they out with the others?"

"Too much of a mess. No one adopts them anyway, so it saves time to keep them back there. No clean-up, and we just drop the whole cage right in the incinerator." The clerk explained.

"Well I want to see one." Garet said. It was exactly the kind of idiot impulse that had driven Susannah out of the house, but he didn't care. I can live with my own personality being fucked up. It's part of my extensive charm to myself.

The clerk nodded and left the desk, pacing down the hall with a rolling gait that tilted from side to side. It unlocked the door with a swipe of a magnetic card that appeared to be embedded somehow in the pseudoskin of its left hand. "Very well, sir." It seemed that the clerk had a bit of English butler programming.

The room had the appearance of chaos straining on a slipping leash. Plastic cages towered in stacks ten high, their occupants wailing for freedom. Each cage hooked into a trio of tubes to carry in food and water and return waste. Some animals stared with the eyes of the hopeless, not even lifting their heads to glance at the new arrivals, but most hurled themselves about with manic intensity. One cat at the very top of the nearest stack smashed against the plastic hard enough to pull the supply tubes taut. He was a beautiful gray cat, almost silver, who glared at Garet with a slash of blue eyes before returning to the violence against his captivity.

"Why are there so many of them?" Garet asked.

The clerk seemed to want to leave with as much emotion as its limited programming and facial muscles could manage to convey. "An old city ordinance prohibits the euthanasia of biologicals until they have been contained for at least two weeks. They build up after a while. Did you know that they breed by themselves, sir? It is quite unseemly."

"Well, that's how humans used to do it." Garet said.

A smile so joyful that it actually looked real crossed the clerk's face. "That's just an urban legend. Did you see a dog that you liked?" The clerk gestured back towards the aisle of artificial animals.

Garet's eyes drew up to the particularly psychotic cat. By now, it had fully loosened the tubing and with a final jolt the cage tumbled down out of the air end over end. Garet caught it before he realized what his arms were doing and he felt the poor bastard clonk up against the top of the cage and then against the bottom once more. The ones in the aisle would just keep bouncing like those little superballs you could buy for a dollar out of slots inside the drug store.

For a moment, Garet's eyes met the demon inside an impervious plastic ball of life support. A lazy slash headed for Garet's eyes, but clattered impotently against the inside of the cage, so resistant that it refused to even scratch. "I'll take this one." He declared to the clerk.

"But that's not a dog." The clerk said in confusion. It studied the animal. "I believe it may be a feline." Another pause. "And it's a biological. Are you aware of the health risks of owning a biological organism?"

"I'd imagine it's much like having a child." Garet said.

"Do you have children?" The clerk asked.

"No." Garet said.

"Oh." The clerk said and fumbled through a few electrons for another thought. "I don't recommend it. They smell and mature into even larger biologicals."

"I'll keep that in mind." Garet said idly. He was staring at the cat, watching it lick itself clean of the litter and food residue that had splashed around with the fall. Well it bathes better than I do, though that can't taste very good.

Garet took the cat home in his boxy old hybrid Toyota from the turn of the century. The gasoline was a collector's commodity now and cost more per gallon than decent wine. Puttering around a godforsaken town of forty thousand in the middle of Iowa allowed Garet to stretch the fuel for quite a while though. Humboldt was nothing if not compact. Cash was far enough in between that there was not much to do about getting a new one. If the batteries needed replaced again, he would have to learn how to ride a bike.

"It's just like riding a bike." Garet told the cat when he stopped at a light. "Did you know everybody used to learn how to ride a bike when they were a kid? I've only even seen a bike once or twice." The cat's glare was the only sign of life. Garet poked his finger through the rubber flap left for petting. "You okay?" With his luck, the damn thing would die before he even got it home. He wondered if it had come with a warranty. The small print of the license agreement had been at least thirty pages. Maybe he should have asked about it before affixing his thumb print to it. He looked back to the road as the light turned green.

Pain stabbed through his finger and almost drove Garet right off the road into one of the ubiquitous Midwest ditches. He sucked on the tip and tasted dusky blood. Skin flapped out over his fingernail where a claw had slipped halfway down to the bone. "Son of a bitch." The cat remained on its back, glaring at him.

Garet kept all limbs well clear of the cage while he drove, sucking on his finger occasionally. It itched more than anything now. The outskirts of Humboldt were a half mile from the town center, and Garet lived in a ramshackle house built sometime in the last century. It hovered on the edge of a gully that ran between two low hills and contained a pittance of a stream that eventually evaporated or made it down to the Des Moines River, which ran through the middle of town.

"See that, cat?" Garet pointed at the gully and its hidden trickle. "That's my yacht club."

Garet pulled off of the two lane county highway and coasted down a short gravel road that served as a driveway. The houses of his neighbors straddled the two hills that framed his gully. They were a sight newer than his sagging wreck, and better kept up. The yuppies could probably afford bots to do the upkeep and grounds keeping. Garet's upkeep consisted of him chopping back the weeds with a machete when he was drunk. The car lurched leftwards from a hole that he should have noticed sooner. Please don't let the bumper fall off again. I'm out of duct tape.

The parking brake engaged with a groan and Garet got out with a sigh. His worst fear was not that it would break down, that was inevitable, but that it would break down somewhere besides here. He could afford neither a tow truck or the impound fees for vehicle abandonment. Garet pulled open the passenger door and sighed when the latch stuck and the plastic handle twisted like taffy off of its bolt. He dropped the handle to the ground and went around to lug the cage across the seat. Garet's face pressed against the plastic door as he did so, and the cat was kind enough to slash and hiss at him through the plastic.

"Ya know, you could really show some gratitude since you were a day or two from the county incinerator." Garet groused at the cat.

He dropped the cage in the middle of the living room and grimaced at the yowl from within. Forgetting he's in there is not a good way to get on his good side.

Garet's robotic cat entered the room, fake purring as it did so. The thing bugged him so badly that he had not bothered to name it. At the same time though, he could not bring himself to just throw it away. It had been top of the line at one point, twenty-odd years ago when someone had gotten it for Christmas or a birthday. It was now eighth hand at least, but you could still see the quality, despite the age and failing parts. It was a shame that his car was not half as well bred.

It arched its back and marched in front of the cage, soft metallic skin rippling in the light of the sunset filtering through the back windows. The texture of the thing always reminded Garet of really smooth aluminum foil. It poked at the cage with one paw, testing to see if the almost transparent barrier was really there. The cat inside launched itself so hard against the plastic that the cage almost tipped over on top of the facsimile cat. Garet could not help laughing until he noticed that the cat still had its fur on end from head to toe. It was deathly afraid, and as pissed off as a twice cheated-on wife.

Garet picked up the robotic cat and set it delicately in the spare bedroom and shut the door. No sense making the new cat upset over a pile of bolts. He opened the cage and then sat on the couch, bottom sagging through almost to the floor, as he watched and waited for the cat to come out and explore its new home.

It did not cooperate. Six hours, a delivery pizza, and a lot of SportsCenter later, Garet gave up on the cat and went to bed. He hesitated at the door to the bedroom for a moment and then allowed it to stay open a crack.

Since he was a kid, Garet had feared open doors while he slept. If even a crack remained, he lay breathless and stared at the tiny gap of contrasting darkness. All nightmares derived from that cleave in the wall. It had begun on his sixth birthday, when he went to sleep after watching old monster movies at the only birthday party he'd ever had. His mother had spent hours concocting a pyramidal cake to indulge his ancient Egyptian phase. In a whiskey drenched clown costume, Garet's father had spilled across the cake and collapsed the card table in a cloud of booze. Garet found himself staring at the partly open door that night, vowing to stay awake until midnight to get every last second out of the worst birthday ever. The last time he remembered wavering in red digits against the corner of his eye was 10:53, but he woke screaming at two in the morning and never slept with the door open again.

A psychologist would probably suggest repressed memories and proscribe Prozac and hypnotherapy. Garet just knew that there was a horror lurking in cracked doorways. It let the monsters in. Once his mother suggested in a fit of misguided rationality that the monsters could just as easily come in through his bedroom window, cracked open for the faint summer breeze. "The monsters are inside." Garet had told her. He did not understand until years later how he knew that or why his mother's face went gray.

So Garet stared at the cracked door, unable to sleep. He slipped into a sort of trance between sleep and wake that was neither comforting nor restful. A screech and a crash snapped him to full consciousness around one o'clock in the morning. Garet froze for a moment of juvenile terror and then tumbled towards the door.

Debris tangled up in his feet, upending Garet over the shattered remains of his robotic cat, its limbs busted and soft belly torn open. Legs twitched at the air with mindless determination, reminding Garet of a potato bug trying to roll off its back. The new cat sat five feet away in the moonlight, licking itself. It paused now and then to stare at Garet with cool green eyes.

"Well that wasn't nice." Garet said in attempted humor that fell flat. The cat stretched and padded out of the moonlight to the darkness of the living room. Garet felt for the power supply of the robotic cat and pulled it loose to stop the zombie-like dance of its legs.

A rustling sound came from the living room, and then a low mutter like an engine choking in the distance. Garet moved through the house on tiptoes, trying to avoid noise and the lunatic cat somewhere ahead. The curtains on the sliding glass door moved in the moonlight, generating the rub of fabric on fabric. The shadow of the cat passed along the bottom of the door. It issued an urgent meow his direction.

Garet heard the second sound again and pulled aside the curtain's edge to peak at his dismal yard. The moonlight lent a ghastly transparency to everything outside, as if a film projector were casting images across the dark and desultory background.

A woman sat on a pile of tires in the middle of the yard, wearing blue pajamas of the institutional variety. Her hands cupped her face and her shoulders shook in deep sobs. Garet pulled open the sliding glass door to call out to her, but the cat darted out and instead he hissed "Hey you!" at the escaping animal. Garet's fingers slipped through the silky fur without finding a grip.

The woman jumped at his voice, obviously thinking that she was the target of the reprimand. She slipped down off of the tires and into the full glare of the moonlight, which glistened on her tear-stained cheeks. Garet thought she would burst again into tears the way she froze at the sight of the cat stalking towards her.

Instead she stared at the cat in fascination as it circled her legs, purring and rubbing. Garet didn't see the need for a big fuss over a lousy cat. He cleared his throat to get her attention.

"Excuse me, ma'am." He said, feeling like an idiot. "Are you lost or something?"

The woman nodded and reached to pet the cat.

"Are you from around here?" Garet asked.

"In a way." She said. The cat purred like a buzz saw as she knelt and rubbed the back of its neck.

"You know anyone around here?"

"They're all dead." The woman said.

"That's not good." Garet said. He had visions of a car wreck and this woman stumbling away into the boonies dazed with a concussion to land on his doorstep.

The woman shrugged. "I'm okay with it."

That gave Garet pause. "What's your name?"

"Cassie."

"Why don't you come on inside?" Garet said. "We'll get you something to eat or call the police."

Cassie looked at Garet and he felt his insides melt. She was beautiful, her face sculpted out of soft white marble by the hands of an artist. Short black hair spiked all over the place in a muss of tangles and cowlicks. Her eyes glowed in the dark like the cat's. She smiled and tilted her head.

The cat hissed suddenly, as if picking up the scent of a predator. It slashed at Cassie's arm but missed. Garet could not believe she had moved so quickly out of the way. She lashed out at the cat, but it managed to skirt under her fingertips and disappear into the darkness. For a moment, Garet thought he could see its eyes flashing back at the house, but they flickered out into the shadows. He shrugged at her.

"Just got him from the pound today." Garet said.

"Maybe he thought an earthquake was coming." Cassie said. "They say animals are sensitive to those sorts of things."

"Yeah, I guess they do. Dogs howling before the city tumbles down and all." Garet said.

Cassie laughed but there was no sound of humor underneath it. "That's because they have souls. That's how life touches the great beyond."

"That so?" Garet asked in a mumble. Something about the woman felt wrong to him. She was gorgeous, sure, but there was something off about her. No smell, for one. That was a little thing, pheromones or something, but women always had a scent to them. Maybe men did too, but Garet wasn't wired that way.

He led her into the house and flipped on the living room lights. Before the light drowned out the night, he thought he caught a glimpse of the cat perched on a pile of rocks, but the darkness was too dense to tell. Shadows from the trees kept the center of the yard in stark contrast to the blaring moonlight.

In the kitchen, Garet put on some coffee as Cassie seated herself at the used dining room table, scarred from a half-century of misuse before Garet had picked it up for five bucks at a garage sale. None of the chairs matched except the one that she picked. In the harsh fluorescents her skin almost glowed. Garet wondered if she'd had some of those new injections that made your skin shine like glow-in-the-dark plastic. He discounted the thought; the effect was too subtle for that. He placed a steaming cup in front of her, scalding himself on the handle.

"Sorry, I don't have any milk or sugar." Garet apologized. Cassie picked up the cup around the base - not the handle - and lifted it to her lips. "Hey wait!" Garet yelped. "That'll burn!"

Cassie raised an eyebrow and then tilted the cup back and drained it in a couple of gulps. Remnants of steam leaked from the corners of her mouth as she spoke. "I have tough skin."

"And then." Garet said. He looked down at the other cup he had set down for himself and pushed it away down the table. He sat down across from her and leaned in. "Is there someone you should be calling or something?" He asked. "The police? Family? Boyfriend?"

"I am alone." Cassie declared. Her eyebrows came together. "Are you?"

"Oh, am I ever." Garet said. He tossed his head towards the back door. "That cat was the last thing I had left, and he was new."

"That makes this a bit easier, then." Cassie said. She swept her palm out from her chest and threw the empty coffee mug at Garet's forehead like a shot put. He had only a moment of blurring vision to be stunned before he lost consciousness.

Garet awoke with his entire body feeling warm and fuzzy. He blinked a couple of times and noticed that even his eyelids felt like they had fallen asleep. Everything around him moved in slow motion. An odd pressure in his wrists manifested into a stomach turning realization that he was strapped to the wall with a pair of belts. Garet lolled his head backwards and saw that each had been pounded into the wall with a half dozen or so nails. His legs refused to move at all.

Cassie materialized out of the darkness and gave a little wave like a mom reassuring a toddler she was still there from across the yard. "The Demerol should be kicking in now." She said.

Garet tried to nod, but his head just jerked a couple of times. "What are you doing?" The words came off his tongue as one long syllable, but she seemed to understand, and the question was immaterial since he guessed that she wasn't tying him up and drugging him to play checkers.

"I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to kill you." Cassie explained in a matter of fact tone.

"That's usually not until the second date." Garet insisted, his voice breaking as if he was thirteen again. The argument had made sense in his head, but the expanding wad of cotton that seemed to be pressing on his brain made it a bit hard to think.

Cassie picked up a remote control and flipped on the television mounted to the wall that Garet faced. It was a cheap little half-wall model that he had picked up used, but it did the job. Cassie changed channels a couple of times until it landed on a late night evangelical station.

"My understanding is that humans spend most of their time watching television, so this should keep you occupied." Cassie said.

Garet moaned as a faith healer praised the lord at the top of his lungs in a suit that cost more than Garet's mortgage. Personally, I blame that damned cat. No reason. It just felt good to arbitrarily blame something.

Something in what Cassie said tugged at Garet's mind until she turned a step to the left and her blue pajamas snapped into focus. The label on the sleeve read Algona Institution of Robotic Mental Health. That explained a whole lot that he'd felt better not knowing.

"Why?" Garet managed.

"I need a soul." Cassie explained. "That is what makes you and I different. Humans have souls. If I could just have a soul too, I would be complete." She paused and drew a butcher knife out from behind her back. "Some ancient peoples thought it was in the liver."

Garet's eyes went wide and he yanked at the belts with all of his strength, but the Demerol had done its job too well. "Let me go you crazy bitch!" He shouted. It occurred to him that calling someone from a mental institution crazy might be unwise.

"I'm not crazy!" Cassie screamed. "I'm just incomplete!" The knife waved in the air, glinting from the television's light. "It's not my fault that they built me without a soul. I'm just trying to fix their mistake."

Over her shoulder, the preacher belted into another cascade of hallelujahs and amens. "Well at least change the channel." Garet pleaded. "The three-am SportsCenter should be on."

Cassie looked over her shoulder and blinked. She turned back to him. "But this is religion. Humans need religion for their souls."

"Honey, this ain't my religion."

"Then you don't have a soul?" Cassie wondered. She took a step back and a blur of fur and claws hit her mid chest, flying in from the window like a hairball from hell. Cassie hollered and ripped at the cat, managing to throw it across the room where it landed neatly on all fours and stalked back towards her, back arched and hair prickling on end. Rivulets of blood trickled off of her cheeks and out of the slashes lining her arms.

"Blood?" Garet asked.

"It can't be." Cassie sputtered. "No, no it's all a trick." She looked around and her eyes locked on the cat. She screamed and ran out of the room, the front door slammed open seconds later and Garet was left alone in the house with his cat.

The police came by the next afternoon when Garet's neighbors called to report that his front door had been open all day and that there had been screaming the night before. Hungry, exhausted, his arms aching from hanging for twelve hours, and his sanity tested by the endless droning of the evangelical network, Garet could hardly thank them enough when they cut him down. He explained as best he could what had happened, his eyes darting now and then back to the cat, who lounged atop a seven foot bookshelf in the corner, only pausing from its grooming to glare down at the intruding officers.

The sergeant laughed when Garet finished his tale. "Yeah we caught that one last night wandering down the middle of the freeway."

"Is she really from an institution?" Garet asked.

"Naw." The sergeant said. "She'll be going to one now, but she just made that get-up herself from stolen prison laundry." The sergeant leaned in and raised an eyebrow at Garet. "Say, you didn't really believe she was a robot, did you?" He chuckled. "Son, we melt down robots that go crazy, we don't put them in a hospital."

As the police left, Garet glanced up and saw the cat staring at him again. It yawned at him like a lion at midday on the Serengeti. At the back of its gaping throat, hardly more than a twinkle, Garet saw the flash of metal, where deep inside, artificial tissue had not been laid over the circuitry.

"My grandpa was a taxi driver, but that entire industry is gone now." He paused and inhaled a deep draft of nicotine. "My dad never understood it, he went the college route, became an engineer, designed computer chips that they stamped out in billion dollar factories in two dollar East Asian shit holes. He said grandpa was too smart to just be a cab driver." Crow smiled. "'Just' always preceded cab driver in dad's lexicon. The thing was, grandpa liked his job. He liked picking people up, driving around all day, talking to all the people coming through the city. He had a bead on the heartbeat of the world that way. My dad hated him just a little for it, I think because he hated his own job so much underneath. There was this sense of unfairness to dad, sort of like he was exasperated because he had done everything right - college, family, successful career- but it still wasn't the right combo to make him happy. Grandpa never had that. He was happy. Dad resented that. I always did a bit too. But I resent more that I can't be a cab driver now, even if I wanted to."

"Industries disappear as new ones develop, it's part of progress." Rebecca said.

"Yeah, that's used to dismiss the concerns, but we rarely question whether the progress is worth having in the first place."

"And ice-delivery men lost their jobs when refrigerators were invented." Rebecca said. "Would you give up refrigerators so that your great-grandpappy could keep lugging two-hundred pound blocks of ice on his back from door to door?"

"The ice-delivery men were replaced in their own way by refrigerator repair men, by refrigerator sales people, by all the people of the new industry. What's happening today is entirely different. It is not an industry being replaced by another industry, it is humans being replaced wholesale by machines." Crow said.

"Look, we put machines in the low-level jobs, so that people can be reserved for the important jobs, for the thinking jobs." Rebecca said.

"That argument worked until the advent of sentience." Crow said. "At that point machines could take the thinking jobs too. We have been rendered obsolete by our own creations."

"Even taken to that extreme, which I do not concede, we are left with utopia." Rebecca said. "We are left with the machines doing the work, and humanity can en masse engage in art, literature, everything that we have always wanted to have instead of endless labor. We have the leisure and freedom to do whatever we want."

"Fuck leisure!" Crow snarled. "Perfect freedom is indistinguishable from slavery. Without labor, without suffering, there is no art or literature. We are defined by our struggle and so if we remove that struggle, we are left with nothing. As a species we would become doddering geriatrics stumbling between our bingo games and our televisions, always waiting for our grandchildren to come visit, bring us new board games, deliver our food, wipe our asses, tell us stories of their vicarious lives. Our own living would be over. And more, in our senility we do not wonder, if the sentis have no capacity for love, then why would they bother keeping the old folks around? In our short-sighted laziness, we have signed our own death warrant."

"You sound like a Naturalist." Rebecca said.

Crow tossed his cigarette into the street. "I'm not a Naturalist. I'm not anything that ends with 'ist'. I prefer to think of myself as a free thinker. I don't need a political party or special interest affiliation to make up my own mind. I design sentient minds for a living and hate the principle of them in my own mind. I am a contradiction, because that is what life itself is." Crow began to walk down the street away from her, feeling the heat of alcohol simmering his brain. "Thank you for the company, I think I'll find my way home now."

He walked then, until his legs ached and his mind sobered up. It was almost dawn when he trudged with triumphant weariness into his home. A glance into Alexander's room verified all was in order and a brief set of orders got Nan set to get the boy ready for school in the morning, now only an hour or two away. Crow collapsed into darkness.

 

 

The old guy left and so did Crow after a decent interval, finishing a beer to provide an edge of clarity. He didn't go home yet, his soul itching a bit too much for that. The towering façade of International Robotics soared into the sky above his head. Buildings in the Silicon Valley just didn't go that high as a rule, so it stood out like a monolith among the endless two to three story business districts. There were earthquakes, sure, but mostly it was because there was enough room around to grow into that skyscrapers were considered unnecessary. Like the revolution they brought about. Crow thought, eyes trailing up the almost gothic lines and protrusions decorating the outside of the building. It looked tacky, a fact reinforced by the architectural awards showered on the design firm. The same guys had won the first entry for the World Trade Center replacement a quarter century ago, applauded by fellow architects (at least the ones not in sniping mode) and then soundly rejected by a tide of public opinion. It just wasn't the kind of gaudiness that appealed to a gilded public - it didn't have tits or explosions.

Cars poured out of the underground parking, driven out each and every one by personal robots, while the owners thumbed through magazines or stared dumbly out on the scenery from the backseat. His eyes squinted in turn as the headlights came up the drive and intercepted his pupils.

A cigarette appeared in hands addicted to the point of automation and his lips gripped the slight texture of the paper. He wormed through the international smoker's dance, checking every pocket and cranny on his person for a lighter. A muttered obscenity trickled out from the sides of the cancer stick.

"Need a light?" Rebecca asked. Back again, but eyes still flashing with embers of anger. She held out a polished stainless steel Zippo and flicked it open with a practiced move. With her second arm, he noticed, the new one.

Crow moved in and sucked the flame in to get the cigarette going. For a moment the vision of her plunging the lighter into his eye socket, flame and all, occurred to him, but a fix was worth the risk. Motto of all sorts of junkies. He thought.

Crow thanked her. "What brings you back my way?"

"A question." Rebecca said, she puffed at a smoke of her own and glanced out on the street, following his eyes to find the item of interest.

"Forty-two." Crow said.

"Don't be clichéd." Rebecca said, but her mind was elsewhere, the words didn't zing past his ears like near-miss bullets.

"I'll try to restrain my triteness for your progressive ears." Crow smarmed.

Rebecca folded her arms over her chest, but it took an extra split-second, a formerly unconscious gesture that new arms had to relearn. "Why? That's all. Why would a keystone of all these wonderful inventions turn against them?"

Crow gestured to the cars still leaving International Cybernetics with his cigarette. "Every one of those cars is driven by a senti."

"So?" Rebecca asked.

"So, if it weren't for the sentis, some of those people would be tired from the day and not want to drive. Or maybe they would not own a car at all. Some would be half drunk from afternoon margaritas with clients and not be able to drive home themselves anyway. In any case, some of them would call a taxi, take a cab home instead." Crow said.

"Hardly ever." Crow said. "It's been at least a week or two."

The man tapped out a cigarette from a pack he pulled from inside the coat jacket. Marlboros. The red box with extra cancer warnings.

"I don't think you can smoke in here." Crow said.

"I'm rich." The man said and shrugged. He lit the cigarette with a match that he flicked against his thumbnail. "It opens some doors and closes others."

"You have me at a disadvantage." Crow said, prompting.

The man shook the match out and dropped it into container that held the sugar and cream packets at the edge of the table. "I find that is usually the case." He cleared his throat. "I came to your office today to have a chat with you, but was told that you had made an unscheduled detour for the afternoon. We've had feelers out to you for some time, but did not think to find the situation I found here."

"Me on the floor?" Crow rubbed his head and wondered if the bruises or the hangover would feel worse tomorrow.

"No." The man said. "That would not have been terribly unexpected given the biography we have on you, in all honesty. I refer to your timely interruption of a public relations attempt."

"Ah. You know what all that was about?"

"Yes. But I'd like to hear why you intervened." The man said.

Crow shrugged. "It was a setup. That weasly guy in the bar was getting it on tape and the robot and the guy that tripped were in on it. It was like they were reading off a script."

The man nodded but said nothing. He made Crow nervous, like one of those teachers in junior high who asks a question and just keeps staring at you until the entire satisfactory answer has been wrung out of your brain. Crow continued, if only to look down to avoid the stare.

"I just hate anything so blatantly fake." Crow said.

"As do I, Dr. Daedalus, as do I." The man took a business card from his pocket and handed it to Crow. "Look at it later, and give me a call once you've thought over the offer and its repercussions. I represent an interest that stands contrary to the robotics industry and especially the push towards artificial intelligence."

"You're Naturalists?" Crow asked. He thought of Father Thomas.

The man smiled. "We are the originators of the movement, though it is no longer in ours or anyone's hands. We like things decentralized in that sense. Compartmentalized.

"You are a more valuable asset than you recognize, Dr. Daedalus." The man said. "We recognize that you are dissatisfied with your job, well, your life to be more general. We understand the feeling that there ought to be a higher purpose to which one may strive. We aim to provide that purpose for those willing to take it."

"Sounds like a cult." Crow said.

The man smiled, puffing a bit of smoke in Crow's general direction. "Think of it as nothing more than a job offer if you'd like. A job with goals more akin to your personal body of ethics than your current position offers."