Крис Бекетт: The Holy Machine

They were waiting round the edge of a big dark-red room, some reclining on sofas, some perched on stools, others standing. If you looked in their direction, they would smile and try to catch your eye and start to move towards you. If you looked away they would stop.

The music meandered on and on and on. Sometimes it seemed like saxophones, sometimes like an orchestra of violins from long ago and sometimes like girlish voices that repeated the same few words over and over: ‘Love me, baby, baby love me, baby, baby, my baby love…’

Male sleepwalkers wandered round and round the room, blank-faced, avoiding one another’s eyes, round and round. From time to time one or other of them would come to a stop and a smiling syntec would step forward. The man would be led from the room, as meek and docile as a lost little boy.

‘George!’

A plump, balding middle-aged man stood in front of me.

‘It is George isn’t it? Nice to see you! What’s a good-looking young man like you doing in a place like this?’

He had a faint Irish accent and I vaguely recognized him as one of Word for Word’s clients, an export manager for some firm that peddled technological trinkets to the near-medieval states beyond our frontiers.

‘Paddy, remember? Old Paddy Malone. The one with the stupid computer that’s supposed to talk Turkish but can’t! A nice piece of work you did for us there, young George, a very good job indeed!’

He was grinning, he was slapping me jovially on the shoulders but sweat was pouring down his face.

‘What a feast, eh?’ he chuckled, gesturing around the room, ‘Look at that black one over there, isn’t she a peach ?’

A robot coated in silky black skin saw him pointing, smiled and made to get up from its seat, but the watery eyes of the export manager had moved on.

‘And will you look at that little thing! Don’t you just want to…’

Passing ghost-like men modified their course slightly so as not to run into us.

‘I tell you what, George my old buddy, this place has been the making of my marriage! Any time that little itch comes along, you know, I just get down here and sort it out, no problems, no grief for anyone, at no more than the price of a half-decent meal out! Not that I’d actually want to bother the dear wife you know with the actual…’

Again he tailed off. His eyes looked past me. Sweat poured off his bald head. Sweat dripped from his chin. The ghosts went gliding by.

‘Hey! Look over there! That is new! Just look at the tits on that thing! I think I can see where old Paddy’s going to find his berth tonight.’

Some sort of reaction was building up inside me. I shook away his arm. He wasn’t paying any attention in any case, but was grinning stupidly as the big-breasted syntec came to greet him as if old Paddy was what it had been waiting for all its life.

Horrified, I rushed from the room. I was in such a hurry that I crashed straight into one of those syntec elfin boys which was leading out a bewildered Albanian guestworker with three days stubble on his chin. I sent it flying across the floor.

‘Allah have mercy,’ whispered the dazed Albanian.

As I crossed the lobby, I saw Lucy coming down the stairs. I recognized her at once. She was even prettier than she had been on the TV, wearing a loose jumper and a pair of jeans, like a student, like a girl of my own age. She saw me looking at her and caught my eye and smiled…

But the experience of the lounge had broken the illusion. This was not really a she at all. It was an it , a doll, a mannequin, no more real than Ruth’s SenSpace.

‘Ugh!’ I muttered as I turned away and headed for the door.

‘Enjoy the rest of your evening!’ called out the receptionist, ‘Hope we see you again soon!’

‘No chance, plastic one!’ I called back as I stepped out into the street and breathed in the evening air.

I felt pleased with myself as I headed for the subway that would take me home. That was that dealt with, I said to myself, that was that nonsense out of my system.

I remember I noticed a fly-posted notice at the subway entrance.

‘The Holist League,’ it read, ‘The whole is more than the parts…’

It brought into my mind again the strange image of Ullman in reverse, creating man out of dust.

Then I bought a bag of fresh doughnuts from a Greek vendor and made my way down to the train in its warm bright tunnel.

When I got home, Ruth wasn’t in SenSpace as I had expected, but pacing round the living room with Charlie trundling after her, helpfully proffering tranquillizers, tea, brandy and a sandwich with his four spindly arms.

‘Oh George, where have you been ? I wish you’d say when you’re going to be late. I needed you here. It’s Shirley! Someone’s coming round to see us. I’m going out of my mind with worry…’

I told Charlie to put down the other things – the tea was slopping all over the floor – give her the brandy and then fetch another one for me. I took her by the shoulders and made her sit down. She grabbed my hand and clung on so tightly that it hurt. Then she started to cry.

‘What do you mean, it’s Shirley?’ I asked her, prizing my hand free from hers.

Shirley was another robot, one of three robot janitors in our tower, who cleaned the lifts and stairs, carried out simple maintenance jobs, and took turns on desk duty in the lobby. They were ‘plastecs’. Cheaper and much more common than syntecs, plastecs had rubbery plastic skins rather than actual flesh. Our landlord had installed them about a year previously, taking advantage of government subsidies to replace the three middle-aged Macedonians who’d previously performed these tasks.

‘She’s gone off. I saw her in the street, just walking away. I even spoke to her. I said “Hello Shirley” and she just looked at me and walked straight past. You know how friendly she normally is? You know how she says “Hi there, Ruth!” Well, she didn’t. She just looked at me and made…’ Ruth began to sob again, ‘She just looked at me and made this kind of growl…’

I laughed angrily then got up and walked over to the window, gulping down my brandy.

Beyond the towers, the sea was blue and hazy. There was a white ship far away in the distance.

I turned round.

‘Listen Ruth, Shirley is a machine. Maybe she’s gone wrong in some way. Machines sometimes do that. I was dealing with a translation system only yesterday that had started putting the word ‘not’ into every Serbian sentence…’

‘I wish you didn’t do that work, languages and foreign countries. You’ve got no idea how dangerous those people can be. They hate us out there, George!’

‘What I’m telling you is this: if a machine goes wrong it’s no big deal. Now let’s get some supper. Charlie, what have we got in the freezer other than pizza?’

Charlie trundled towards us: ‘Steak, lasagne, cod, plaice, Irish stew…’ he began.

‘Someone’s coming to see me about it!’ Ruth whimpered, ‘Someone from the robot company. They phoned every apartment in the building. A whole team of them are coming round to interview everyone who saw Shirley in the last ten days.’

‘…French fries, waffles, chocolate ice-cream, strawberry ice-cream, lemon sorbet…’ Charlie broke off the list to pick up an ultrasound transmission from the door.

‘Someone to see you Ruth,’ he announced, ‘Her name is Marija Mejic, from the Illyria Cybernetic Corporation.’

She turned out to be a young woman of about my own age. She was friendly, intelligent and rather pretty, which immediately threw me into confusion. I was very frightened of attractive young women in those days.