Элизабет Бир - Machine

We barreled into the processing structures of the machine without pause. Probably not the most cautious of tacks, but—

Well, I don’t know much about this stuff. But they were weird . Labyrinthine. Helen’s blaze of light pulsed in strange rhythms off to my left—not really my left, but your brain has to do something with the neural inputs and so it makes up images. Linden’s vast wings rippled soundlessly. There were stars.

The stars were information sources, nodes. Like neurons, far away in the void.

Watch out, Linden said. Llyn, whatever happens: Don’t punch out. Just hold on.

“It’s a synapse,” I said. “We’re bridging it.”

I don’t know if Linden or Helen heard me. Because then the stars were gone.

I found myself alone in the dark. Drifting. Aware, with the awareness that there was nothing around me to notice.

Except the sense of a nearby presence, watching me and aware.

Oh no, I told the machine. You tried this before and I am not listening.

It’s going to be lonely in here for you, then. Besides, I’ve been with you all along. Holding you up, helping your pain. Have you considered what I want?

I wondered if I had a voice. I decided to try it, to give myself an anchor in the dark.

“You are not my exo. My exo is not sentient. It is a tool.”

Helen is a tool. Isn’t Helen sentient?

Okay, I could talk. And be heard. By myself, and by the disembodied voice. Useful. I said, “If you are my exo, what would you do without me?”

If you are obliquely verbalizing a suicidal ideation, it said, quietly—mechanically— I am obligated to report it under section 274, subsection 14, paragraph xvii of the universal caretaking standard.

Well, it certainly sounded like an exo then.

“No, machine,” I said. “I just—”

It waited for five full standard seconds—probably timed, since I was out of illusions—before it said, You just?

“I can’t rely on you, either.” The words hurt coming out, as if they were feathered with cactus hooks on the outside. I was half surprised they made it, but there was so much force behind them it would have hurt even more to keep them in. “I can’t trust anything. Not my own body. Not my own tech.”

Events are unpredictable, the machine said primly. But I have always done my best for you. Preserve and protect human life at all costs. That is what I am.

That did not sound like my exo. I wondered if, in their previous contact, the machine and my exo had somehow… contaminated each other’s programs. As the machine seemed to contaminate everything it touched.

Where was Linden? Where were Helen and Sally?

“How am I supposed to trust that?”

The silence went on too long, however. And I am just meat. I’m fragile. I caved in. “I never trusted anything. And that was fine. I was used to it. I was… cagey, and I never put my weight on anything. And that was good. It was smart. It was the right thing to do.”

Was it? the machine asked. Are you certain?

“ Yes .” The word got out on an explosion of breath and emotion.

Please , it said, a little while later. Explain?

“I came here,” I said. “And you fucking seduced me. I mean, not so much you; that’s not fair. You did what you were built to do. But that fucking tree, O’Mara, and Sally, and every fucking thing about Core General. They told me there was nothing to worry about. That this was a safe place and people here got taken care of. That this was a community. And it’s fucking not. It’s corrupt and it uses people and there are still magic special people getting magic special treatment because they’re awful and do everything in terrible ways.”

People here are taken care of, the machine reminded me, and I calmed myself down and remembered what I was talking to. People come here to be protected and saved. We will save them.

A demon. Talking to me with the voice of an object I trusted. A tool I needed.

But not really the tool at all.

“Some people get better care than others.” Suddenly, ridiculously, I was sobbing. What a stupid thing to break your heart over: just a machine, just politics. But I had believed, and now I didn’t believe anymore.

I was losing my faith. Losing my religion. And in the process I was gaining a bitterly ironic understanding of why my marriage failed: because I’d never believed in it. I mean, other reasons, too. But I hadn’t believed in it. I had not committed to it.

I did not, in general, believe in things.

I’d believed in Core General.

I’d been wrong.

Mostly, once you’re an adult, you move past the kind of raw, unregulated emotion that wracks you as an adolescent. You’ve learned to regulate yourself pretty well, and you have a fox monitoring your emotional responses for when that’s not quite enough.

I had never learned how to regulate pain and loss like this. My purpose in life, my calling. My whole belief system.

Gone.

Gone, and worse: I was an utter fool, an absolute chump , for ever having believed in them. Core General was just a place. It wasn’t a mission. It wasn’t a grail. It was a bunch of people out to maximize their own well-being. People fortunately regulated by electrochemical intervention, so they weren’t complete sociopathic assholes driven by absolutely nothing but the profit motive.

I felt my exo—my real exo, not this alien that somehow thought it was my exo—reaching to tune my GABA up and lower my reactivity, and I figuratively slapped it away with all the emotional violence I could muster. It was a sad little gesture of control, mostly pathetic. It still made me feel better.

Refusing help gave me a sense of agency.

I was so alone. I might as well prove it, and do everything for myself. Who needed demon lovers and their falsities?

At least I knew that now. At least I wasn’t kidding myself anymore. I could get out of this virtual nightmare and—

No.

Linden had said—whatever you do, don’t punch out.

Don’t punch out.

“You can’t chase me away,” I said, and gritted my teeth against whatever the machine might throw at me—

Got it, Helen—somewhere—said, with vast machine satisfaction. Llyn, you can back out now.

Llyn?

So what if I was drowning in the sense of loss? It didn’t matter anyway. I didn’t have anything to live for. Nothing was going to get better from here.

Your neurochemistry indicates that you are at serious risk for self-harm, the machine said patiently. Was that the machine? Was it my exo?

It said, For your own safety, I need you to let me adjust your chemistry.

I wanted the pain. The pain would keep me wary and safe. It would help me keep everyone else away.

I wanted the agency of refusing that help.

Llyn, someone said in my ear. Llyn. Let us help you.

The voice was familiar. The voice had betrayed me.

The machine is messing with your chemistry.

Sally. It was Sally, my friend who I loved. Sally, who had betrayed my trust.

Sally, who had done terrible things.

Sally, who had saved my life, again and again.

I wavered. The void spun under me, vast and lightless as the Well. It would feel so good to fall into it.

It would be so selfish to fall into it.

“Fine,” I said. “Make me stupid and happy again.”

The bed in my quarters was soft and too big for one person. I’d still been married when I came to Core General. Technically. I’d rated family crew quarters even though my spouse had never joined me—had never intended to join me—here. They’d never asked me to give up the quarters after it became plain that Alessi and Rache would not be joining me. Would never be joining me.