Wil McCarthy - The Collapsium

It was like waking up underwater, yes. How did that happen?

He felt his blood stir, and wondered, finally, if this was what he’d been needing: human interaction to keep his physics problems in balance. No man was an island, the saying went. Never mind a whole planet. Indeed, he could fix his network gate immediately and send a message down into the Queendom, asking which of his friends would consider forgiving his long silence. Perhaps it would cause a stir in the media— they’d always had a strange interest in his affairs—but for God’s sake, why should he let that bother him?

He shot to his feet and, leaving the chaise lounge behind, marched homeward with more determination and enthusiasm than he’d had for much of anything lately.

“Door,” he said as he approached the house. Obligingly, the nearest wall formed a stained-glass door and opened it for him. He stepped through, and the interior lights came on dimly and began easing him from darkness to full interior light.

Robots danced out of his way, offering nothing in the way of food or drink because lately he’d been yelling at them for that, but one battered thing, far less graceful than its peers, moved directly into his path and spread its arms.

“Hugo,” he said, with a warmth that surprised even him. “Hugo, old fellow, have I neglected you as well? Have a hug, then, yes. Are you well this morning?”

The robot’s neck squeaked audibly as its head nodded, twice, and then the thing was stepping clumsily out of his way and looking around the house as if bewildered. Hugo was an experiment of sorts: an ordinary household robot not controlled by the household, not controlled by anything except its own desires and intentions. In general these were minimal and quite peculiar, unlike the desires of a person or a pet or an invading insect, but on occasion—perhaps by sheer coincidence—its behavior could be touchingly childlike.

“There, there,” he told it, and patted its head a few times. He’d felt a stab of guilt, thinking of young Vivian. She could be childlike, too, but even five years ago she’d been uncomfortably adult about some other things, and by now she was a young woman, her quite charming girlishness probably a thing of the past, or else taking on the overtones of adult affectation. How dreadful for him, that he could let such a thing slip by and feel guilty only now, when it was too late to do anything about it. Had he really tried to teach poor Hugo to play shuffleboard? That was a poor idea from the start, and if playing against the house’s robots was no fun either, well, had he never considered that Vivian might like to play? Or Tamra, or somebody“ ?

“House,” he said sternly, turning to face the central fax orifice, “I require network access as soon as possible.”

“Planetary maintenance?” the house asked, perhaps thinking he needed to access the little world’s store of raw materials—water, air, pure element stock for the fax’s matter buffers… Perhaps that seemed likelier than the alternative: that he needed people. His house knew him too well.

“No, no,” he told it, “the Iscog.”

“Acknowledged,” the house said, and he could have sworn it sounded surprised. Iscog: the Inner System Collapsiter Grid. The Queendom’s telecom network.

Bruno, feeling somewhat indignant at that perhaps-imagined reaction, said, “I did build the thing, you know. The Iscog. I’ve a right to take an interest in the people using it.”

“Of course, sir,” the house agreed, and now it sounded imperturbably mechanical. “Gate repair is in progress. Estimated completion time, nine seconds. Gate repair is complete.”

Bruno frowned. That was too easy—a further indictment of his neglect. Had it waited all these years, for him to say those few simple words? Well, bah. There was no help for it now; the thing to do was to move forward.

“Record a letter,” he said.

But before the house could answer, the fax gate sizzled and glowed, and a human figure tumbled out of it and fell, sprawling, to the floor.

“Oh!” it said, in a voice—a male voice—like a sob. The figure reached out a hand, and stroked the floor as if caressing it. “Oh, can it? Can it be? Have I’s-s-spilled at last to the feet of de Towaji?”

Nonplussed, Bruno took a step backward and sputtered, “Sir, my goodness! Have you been authorized to access this portal? What are you doing here?” And then, belatedly, “Are you all right?”

“All right?” the man sobbed giddily, looking up from his face-down sprawl. “All right? The concept eludes. No pain is being applied. Is that an answer?”

“Are you injured?”

“Injured? Mortally! Or not at all; the distinction is less important than you probably imagine.”

The question was far from frivolous; fax gate filters were supposed to strip the injuries and illnesses and general wear-and-tear of life from the bodies that passed through them. Conversely, they were supposed to leave affectations like baldness and pierce-holes alone, especially if the subject’s genome appendices commanded it. In the case of this man, though, the fax seemed to have had a very hard time making up its mind; his clothing hung off him in tatters, even its software apparently defunct; and beneath it, where the skin should be exposed, there was instead a varicolored and decidedly lumpy surface, like tattooed scar tissue. The hands appeared crooked and malformed, as did the feet projecting from the remains of a pair of suede knee boots, and the face… Something odd had been done to the face, it had been flattened somehow, the nose pushed upward and the cheeks drawn down, creating a piggish sort of look. And yet, for all that, the face looked worryingly familiar.

“Do I know you, sir?” Bruno asked. His voice trembled; he had the distinct feeling that the answer would upset him.

The sprawled man looked up at him and smiled in a most horrific way. “Do you not recognize me, de Towaji? I’d hoped not, actually, for I’m no fit thing for your remembrance. The only claim I have to usefulness—the only claim!—is that I was once your-s-s-self. Look upon me, de Towaji, and despair: I am precisely as low as you can sink.”

Bruno’s household managed to get the stranger washed and into fresh clothing, over repeated and strenuous protests.

“This thing? I’m no fit inhabitant for a garment like this. No! Away! Don’t touch me. Please!”

The robots, dashing about in their usual poetic blur, nonetheless betrayed a curious deference or solicitousness toward the stranger, and by using their bodies in conjunction with strategically held towels and clothes, they managed to keep the surface of his body almost completely hidden. Bruno caught glimpses of ridged or puckered flesh, colored over with strange designs, and he very briefly observed a complete word calligraphed along the stranger’s leg. “PENITENT,” it looked like, though he was far from certain about that.

Finally, the protests died down, and the stranger said, “Ah, who’s myself to argue? It’s your generosity that’s given me these doublet and tights, not my own deserving, of which there is—take my word of it—none whatsoever.”

“Oh, nonsense,” Bruno said carefully, unsure what to make of a remark like that. Unsure what to make of this person at all, wondering what had happened to him and why he’d chosen to come here in what seemed to be an hour of quite desperate need.

But the stranger only laughed. “You haven’t grasped the tenth of it, Declarant-Philander, you who’ve never yet made acquaintance with the lash. Ah, what a lordly figure you cut! Your knees unbent, your eyes unaverted. Do you crawl? Do you plead? Do you think yours-s-self incapable of it?”