Крис Бекетт - The Holy Machine

It was at this moment that I clearly saw for the first time that Lucy and I would have to escape to the Outlands and that somehow I would have to pass her off as human being. We would make a new life out there. There’s always work for translators.

‘You look worried.’

‘No, just thinking. But I’d better go.’

‘Somewhere important again, eh?’

‘Something like that.’

I flipped the TV back for a third look at the scene outside the News Building.

‘Poor things,’ I muttered.

‘Poor thing, you mean. Only one man got killed.’

‘No, I meant the machines. Like the man in that old Greek story: always having to push that boulder up the hill, but always having it roll back down again before he gets to the top.’

She smiled. ‘You really do have a soft spot for robots don’t you?’

I drew out all my share of my father’s inheritance, moving it first to several different bank accounts, then withdrawing much of it as cash: a suspicious act in Illyria, where cash was normally only used for small transactions, like buying kebabs from street vendors. I bought a car, and began stocking it with things that I might need. For Lucy I bought women’s clothes, and books, and several kilos of sugar (sugar was what kept her going, that and egg-white and lemon juice and the vitamin tablets that she needed to maintain her living skin). I visited Lucy daily to coach her over and over again in the plan I had devised.

Then one evening I was watching TV with Ruth – some dreary game show that she liked – and the programme was interrupted for an announcement from the President.

‘As many people are aware, there was a tragic incident recently, where a man was killed by a malfunctioning robot of the self-evolving variety. This is the only recorded incident of its kind, and I have every confidence in the benefits of self-evolving cybernetics, and in the Labour Replacement program introduced by my much-missed predecessor, Professor Ullman. Nevertheless, in order to ensure there is no repetition, and to ensure full public confidence in our robot labour force, I intend to introduce new security measures. As from today, all self-evolving robots will be subjected to a six monthly “wipe-clean”…’

‘How lovely!’ sighed Ruth dreamily, ‘To have all your memories wiped away and start again, over and over…’

I flipped off the TV and looked round at her. The announcement meant that it was time to go. If Lucy was wiped clean she would cease to be Lucy, and would become again the empty machine she had been when she first left the factory. But this meant leaving Ruth behind. And I realized I could say nothing at all to Ruth about it. No kind of goodbye was possible, no kind of warning, no kind of explanation.

‘Why did you turn the TV off, George?’ she complained, ‘It’ll go back to the show in a minute!’

‘I… er… wondered if you’d like me to come into SenSpace for a bit?’

She laughed.

‘I don’t believe you’ve ever said that before.’

Then she looked at me sharply.

‘George, you’re not going away are you?’

‘Of course not, what gave you that idea? I’m just bored of the TV.’

‘Good, because you know I would die if you ever left me.’

Late that night I helped Ruth climb out of her SenSpace suit and tucked her up in bed.

Then, when I was sure she was asleep, I opened cupboards and drawers and began the final stages of packing for my escape.

When at last I lay down and attempted, without much hope, to get some sleep, I sank for a short time into a dream in which I was travelling by bus to my father’s house, holding in my hand a letter I’d written on pages and pages of lined paper.

The journey was full of obstacles. One bus broke down. Another headed in the wrong direction. Then I lost my money. I had to walk and took a wrong turning which led up onto a wild, bare part of the mountainside.

And then, when I did eventually reach his house, there was no answer when I knocked on the door. I pushed open the letterbox to call to him. As I opened it, it gave a kind of sigh, sucking in the air.

I tried the door. I found that it was unlocked. As soon as the latch was released, the wind flung the door open, dragging me in and pulling the letter out of my hand. The sheets of paper went fluttering away up the stairs. When I chased after them I found there was a laboratory up there. There were computers, cables, sine wave monitors, gravitonic panels… and right in the middle of the room, there was a kind of Gate. It seemed to be responsible for the wind, because the pages of my letter went flying towards it. And through it, there was another world, a bone-white plain as bare and barren as the moon, sucking in the air of Earth. My papers were bowling away across the dusty plain. I rushed in after them. The Gate fell into the distance behind me, along with the small glimpse it afforded of the laboratory and sunlight and Earth.

There were no features in the landscape at all except for scattered stones, of different shapes and sizes, stretching away into the distance. There was something quite dreadful about those stones, which must have lain here like this unseen for hundreds of thousands of years without a single eye to see them – without a single mind, however lowly, to give their existence some kind of purpose.

Then I saw my father ahead of me, lying on his back in a gap between two boulders. He had been there for some time. Poisonous rays had beaten down on him and shrivelled him up. His cheeks were sunken and his chest fluttered precariously, his quivering heart and lungs clinging on by thin strands inside his brown cage of ribs.

But his eyes swivelled round in his skull, his dry mouth whispered my name and I could see he was seeking some sort of reconciliation. I felt that in this final hour he wanted us to become in reality a father and a son. I felt I was expected to stoop and kiss that shrivelled leathery brow.

Reluctantly I took his hand and held it.

But I couldn’t look at him. I looked across the dead world, where the stones, one after another, stretched away into the distance.

Far away I could still just make out one last white sheet of paper, about to disappear over the horizon.

A few minutes after the ASPU house opened, I walked in and went through to the lounge.

Lucy was in her usual place. She smiled, stood up and came towards me.

I let her come close so I could be sure that she heard. Then I said: ‘No. I’ve seen a lot of you lately. I think I’ll try one of the others.’

This was the agreed signal to tell her that the day had arrived. She sat down, as I’d coached her again and again, but this time in a vacant seat near to the door.

I looked round the room. I chose the schoolgirl Helen with the scar on her upper lip. She led me up to her fake locker-room and I had her kneel on the floor with her back to me so she couldn’t see me. Then I threatened her.

‘I’m going to smash you with this iron bar. I’m going to break your head in. I’m going to cover the floor with your microchips and wires.’

The syntec issued a standard warning: ‘I will have to contact Security if you damage me in any way.’

I knew, from questioning Lucy about the house procedures, that Security would have already been contacted by ultrasound, and would already be on its way. But I wanted to make sure that Helen did not now send out a ‘false alarm’ signal, so I kept up the threats.

‘It’s too late my dear,’ I said, ‘It’ll be too late. By the time the security robot arrives you’ll be fit for nothing but the scrapyard.’

Then the door opened and Security came in.