Крис Бекетт - The Holy Machine

He trailed off, realizing that he was hardly addressing the central issue.

‘I’m afraid you’re not going to be able to get out and about much anymore Mrs Simling,’ he said.

He hesitated. He had no instinct about these things, that was the problem.

‘What we can do nowadays,’ he said, ‘is to wire your nerves up directly to SenSpace. Perhaps you’ve heard of the Direct Link procedure? We can link you up so you can move around freely in there, even if you can’t do so out here. You can still get the sensation of limbs and eyes and so on…’

Ruth’s lips moved, as if she was struggling to speak.

The doctor knew he was getting it wrong. This woman had just woken up to find her body hacked back to a stump, and here he was gabbling about compensation claims and SenSpace.

‘I know it’s not the same,’ he said, almost humbly.

He looked over at the pretty syntec nurse, who was attending to a nutrient drip at the end of the bed. Seeing him looking at her, the nurse at once eagerly caught his eye and gave him another meltingly lovely smile. He smiled back, broadly. Then he turned his attention back, with an effort and again with some resentment, to his very unsexy patient.

‘But of course it is ever so real in SenSpace now as you know, and you meet people and build a house and visit friends and…’

‘So I will live in SenSpace permanently?’ said Ruth, finally managing to speak.

They were the first words she had spoken out loud for many days.

‘Yes. But of course…’

Ruth laughed merrily, cutting right across him.

‘Always? Even sleep there? Even get up there in the morning? No-one will ever tell me I’ve been in there long enough?’

‘Yes, but as I say you can…’

‘Oh that’s wonderful!’ said Ruth, still laughing. ‘It’s like a dream come true!’

The doctor stared at the thin ruined face, with the wires disappearing under the bandage over its eyes. It seemed quite horrible to him to see it laugh.

‘…As I say, if you want to look around outside, you can always hire a Vehicle.’

Ruth wasn’t listening. She looked up at the grainy face of the doctor. He was sneaking another look at the pretty syntec. And the syntec was giving him yet another dazzling smile.

‘Just exactly what I wanted,’ said Ruth.

‘Oh, well, good…’ the doctor said vaguely.

He was thinking at that moment about the syntec nurse. It struck him suddenly that this third smile was exactly the same as the other two, right down to the slight leftward tilt of the head. It wasn’t like a new smile at all, more like replaying the same smile again. And this took away its charm.

The fact was that, like thousands of SE machines across Illyria, the nurse had been wiped clean. A whole vocabulary of flirtation, which she had learnt from the doctor and others like him, had all been wiped away, along with a whole repertoire of patient care. All over the territory this had been happening: syntecs and robots being loaded into vans and taken back to the factories where they were made, artificial intelligences being shut down and reprogrammed again from scratch.

The doctor pulled his attention reluctantly back to his patient.

‘Well, good. I’m glad you are so positive about it. If there are any problems, don’t hesitate to ask…’

‘Just do it quickly please,’ Ruth said.

The reality of her position was beginning to hit her. She needed SenSpace. She was appalled by the prospect of having to lie here in this hospital room while her fears came pressing in around her bed.

There was no one else to fill this space, no-one but fears to come and visit her.

‘I’ve got a son. George…’ she said to the syntec, the doctor having slipped away.

The syntec made some enquiries with Hospital Control.

‘I’m afraid we haven’t been able to locate him. It seems he is travelling abroad.’

Some hours later she was wheeled back into the operating theatre. An eminent neurosurgeon called Professor Patel had been called in. She specialized in the neuro-cybernetic interface. Her bread and butter was artificial limbs and eyes. The Direct Link procedure was rather more of a challenge.

A small team of student doctors, nurses and technicians gathered round her and looked down solemnly at my mother’s little body.

Dreamy with opiates, Ruth smiled up at the grainy, flat faces above her. An injection was administered. The faces floated away like bubbles towards the surface. A blade shone with an almost unbearable sweetness, and she slid gratefully down it. Down the silvery slide, bright as the sun.

When Ruth came to she had arms and legs again, and she could see clearly in colour and three dimensions. She was in the bedroom of her little house. She was surrounded on all sides by vases of flowers.

‘Welcome back, Little Rose,’ said a kind, familiar voice.

‘Oh Sol !’ she exclaimed, with tears streaming from her eyes.

‘Take it easy now, Rose,’ said Mr Gladheim, ‘take it easy. I’m not going to go away!’

He reached out to her and she took his hand and squeezed it, then held on to it tightly.

She was still confused by the anaesthetic.

‘There!’ she said, ‘I knew the doctors were wrong when they said I’d got no hands!’

Mr Gladheim smiled, stroking the back of the hand that he was holding.

‘Whether or not people have hands,’ Ruth grumbled mildly, ‘you’d think doctors would know about such things!’

‘You certainly would.’

‘Oh I ache, I ache so much. What have they done to me?’

‘Well at least you’re back with us,’ said Mr Gladheim, ‘and this time we’re not going to let you go!’

‘I’ll go if I want! I can hire a Vehicle you know!’

Ruth started to sit up. Her motor nerves were now wired directly into the SenSpace system via a radio transmitter, and were no longer connected to muscles of flesh and blood. So sitting up was achieved without her real body moving at all, and was therefore no more painful than lying still.

She put her imaginary feet on the imaginary carpet on the imaginary bedroom floor. All the right sensations poured up her sensory nerves.

‘Come on. Let’s go into the garden!’ she said to Mr Gladheim.

She quite liked ordering him around.

‘Yes, let’s! I know everyone will be dying to see you.’

‘What about Charlie and George?’ said Little Rose guiltily.

But then she was out in the sunshine, and there were Gramps and Bessy and Delmont and all her other neighbours.

‘Three cheers!’ they all hollered, ‘Three cheers for Little Rose!’

‘Don’t look at them!’

Lucy and I sat outside a café in the centre of Ioannina, near to the archaeological museum. The usual group of boys and young men had gathered round to stare at the immaculate young woman from the City, as had happened several times already.

‘Don’t look at them, Lucy.’

I knew that if she looked at them and saw them smiling, she would respond. She would smile back, she would give them her sweet come-on look, she would even start getting up from her seat. The last time it happened, in a town near the border, it had very much excited the boys that had gathered round her. It had made them catcall and guffaw and whistle. But it had made them angry too. Their eyes had become cold. They had looked around for the religious police, hating Lucy for what she awoke in them.

‘That’s right,’ I said, ‘just don’t look at them.’

She looked at me instead. But I made the mistake of smiling encouragingly and immediately she was doing it all to me , reaching out for my hand, running her thumb over my credit bracelet, looking longingly into my eyes…