K. Jeter - Edge Of Human

"Come on, fellas." He gazed around at the empty rooms, the spaces that were silent now but had held as much of a real life as he'd ever known. "We should be just about all packed up now." He and the others, the companions left to him, had done what they could to clean up the blood smeared on the angle of the walls and the remainder of the mess caused by his true love's death. Her second one, Sebastian reminded himself. That made him even sadder, thinking that poor little Pris had had to go through all that twice. It wasn't fair; she'd never hurt anyone, or at least not much.

Right now, he didn't even know where she was. He hadn't had the heart to pull the batteries from Pris's braindamaged corpse, shut off the various switches and relays that had kept her moving feebly around. She must've crept away, he thought sadly. Out into the zone's rubble, to lie down with the other broken and unfunctional things, debris among debris. Whatever blind spark that had remained inside her would die out in the ashes and rags and splintered, scrappy bones of the world.

Colonel Fuzzy and Squeaker Hussar came back over to where they had left him in the sideways apartment. They bent down low, their faces coming close to his; he had to turn his own slightly away, to avoid getting poked in the eye by Squeaker's elongated nose. He knew what they were doing. With every sense organ he'd built into them — mainly optical, though the teddy bear's round, fleece-lined ears were more finely tuned than a human's, and Squeaker actually did have some extra olfactory receptors built into that thing-they were trying to assess what condition he was in, physically and mentally. They knew some great tragedy had occurred, devastating every fiber of his being. He felt as though the one appendage he couldn't sacrifice, his heart, had been scooped out of his frail chest. Squeaker and the Colonel were aware that death had visited them in their home, she'd come swaggering in on spike heels, and with a big noise had removed one of their number, from the world of the living to that other place where all one's batteries were run down flat and the light behind one's button eyes went out. They were worried and fearful that that was where he was going, too.

"It's okay." Sebastian reached up and scratched behind the teddy bear's ears. Squeaker was less given to intimate body contact; he knew that for him to come this near, the circuits inside the spiked helmet must be in a considerable state of distress. "You don't have to worry about me. I'll be fine."

He had to wonder where they'd gotten that behavior from; it wasn't anything he'd programmed into them. From the beginning, they were supposed to have been jolly little fellows, happy creations, rays of sunshine in his gloomy life. He'd wired in logic paths by which the teddy bear and the toy soldier were able to learn new aspects of their environment and modify their behaviors based on that data-a basic feedback loop-but all this tenderhearted fussing and crooning was something different. Or was it? He'd have to think about that, when they got to wherever they were going to next.

Squeaker helped strap him into the papoose carrier on Colonel Fuzzy's back. Food and batteries and other survival necessities had already been piled into the drag sling they used for scavenging the welfare drops.

"Wait a minute, fellas. I gotta leave a message."

The teddy bear, impatient to start traveling before dark set in, stamped its feet. "Just hold your horses," soothed Sebastian. "This'll only take a minute."

He had the colonel back up toward the biggest bare wall in the apartment. That would make a nice canvas, he'd decided; those other folks were so busy and rushed, coming and going and killing other people, that he didn't want to risk having his words overlooked. Using the black spray can from a Chaka Signature Model Li'l Graffitster Kit, part of the art supplies that'd come in a drop several months ago, he carefully spelled out what he had to say.

DEAR MR. DECKER… That was what he'd overheard the woman calling the man.

Biting down on his tongue, Sebastian sprayed out the next words.

MY FRIENDS AND I ARE MOVING ON. THERE ARE TOO MANY PAINFUL MEMORIES

FOR US TO STAY HERE. That was putting it mildly. He flinched every time the tape ran through his thoughts again, of poor Pris flying through the air with her head shot open. THANKS FOR NOT KILLING US AS WELL. As soon as he saw those blurry-edged words on the wall, he regretted them. The logic seemed a little whacked; people should try not to kill you, just as a matter of course. There wasn't time to do the

message over; the teddy bear was getting restive. He hurried to finish up. I HOPE YOU FIND WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING FOR. VERY BEST REGARDS, SEBASTIAN.

That would have to do; the spray can was nearly exhausted. He'd gotten some of the black paint on his single hand; tossing the can aside, he rubbed the smear against his coveralls with its pinned-up sleeve and trouser legs.

"Okay, okay. We're ready to leave now." He jounced up and down in the papoose carrier as Colonel Fuzzy hurried for the door. "Take it easy, you're gonna shake my head off!"

Outside, the three friends headed east, their shadows racing before them. Sebastian glanced over his shoulder as the teddy bear marched along. In the distance he could just make out the skyline of Los Angeles, the sunset bleeding red light around the dark towers. He supposed things had worked out fifty-fifty for him in this corner of the universe. He'd found true love, his heart's desire, but had had it taken away from him again. Still, he thought. Least I had it for a little while.

He turned away, setting his cheek against the back of the teddy bear's head. Closing his eyes but not sleeping. Not for a long while.

Darkness and life; both had begun again, the city moving into the nocturnal portion of its cycle. When everything comes crawling out, thought Holden, looking down from the freight spinner's cockpit at the lights carpeting the earth.

He'd decided, when he'd left the sideways zone, upon the general outline of his course of action. Circumstances-his own failing strength; the overtaxed artificial heart and lungs inside his chest had begun to sputter and wheeze alarmingly, complete with fuzzy-edged blackout dots hitting his sight like negative snowflakes-dictated that he needed assistance. Not later, when events had settled out, but now. So they would be determined as he wished, as an active agent in the historical process, or at least this little part of it, and not some breathing vegetable strapped by tubes to a hospital bed.

A terrible vision had come to him as the freight spinner completed another circle above LA's downtown core, of his bio-mechanical innards reaching their stress limit and going into some half-powered, partially shut-down mode, just enough to keep him alive in the pilot's seat, but not conscious. Even worse off than he'd been in the hospital. No longer human, a thing kept alive by pumps and artificially inflated bladders, wearing his face and his clothes, riding around forever in the sky on the course he'd set when his brain had still been functioning. Through the rotation of day and night, the progress of the seasons, the manifestations of dry and monsoon beating against the transparent cockpit dome, the curved glass shielding his blank, unseeing eyes…

Well, not exactly forever, thought Holden with glum relief. He supposed the police would have eventually shot the freight spinner out of the sky, just for violating air-space regulations. Or else they would've let it go on, and it would've eventually run out of fuel, plunging down into the streets. He could just see some by-the-manual uniformed cop with one jackboot up on a fender-high piece of the wreckage, writing out a ticket for parking in a restricted zone.

The night had settled in complete, the somberly violet line at the horizon, the last vestige of sun slicing extinguished beneath the cliff front of mounting clouds. Dark enough now for him to move further into the specifics of the plan upon which he'd decided. If he needed assistance, to keep from either dying or blacking out, there was only one place he could go, one person to whom he could turn. The police department, either on an official basis or by getting hold of his old friends and acquaintances on the force, was out of the question. No telling how rotted out the whole structure of the central station was with conspiracy; anybody he talked to there could be one of the bastards who'd determined, for their own malevolent reasons, that the only good blade runner was a dead one. And as for Deckard, who was presumably as much a target as anyone else… that was a no-go as well. For a lot of reasons, some of which Holden had spent the time up in the air mulling over.