The Erased, page 10
And then the wall breaks. He’s in a grey outfit, like the ones I now have to wear. He’s covered in rubble and dust, but he looms like a silhouette cut-out. You see his face, then wake up.
The rampaging robot in my dream isn’t Gary. This rampage actually took place at NMAC, maybe a year or so before the birth of my daughter. The palpable memory gives me a moment of pause upon waking up – the panic still flushing through my mind as I remember the chaotic monster that nearly ended my life. I don’t recognize him, but I’m truly beginning to wonder.
I think the name on his uniform was DUNN.
Then I realize the real problem.
I wake up in the darkness with her arms clamped around me. Holding me. My arms are around her. I’m pushing my fingers into her skin to see if I can recognize the synthetic material. There’s nothing that can distinguish her as a human.
Vanessa.
“Is there something wrong, my shadow?” she whispers in a French accent.
What is this? Is she human? Is she a gynoid?
I say, “Vanessa?”
She responds, “Not quite, mon amour. You know exactly who I am.”
The panic paralyzes me further. The fear is cold, a splash of water chilling my face, neck, shoulders. The panic shivers down my spine. A fresh kick in the gut. The pinch in the back of my head, the brainfreeze, becomes an outright explosion. Even in the dorm room’s half light, she looks nothing like my Didiane.
“Ian, tell me you love me. I’ve longed to hear it.”
Am I going crazy? Is my mind slipping? Her voice is like static through the chirping that normally accompanies the brainfreeze. They always say that crazy people don’t know they’re going crazy. Just me asking if this is happening, doesn’t that make it not so?
Her fingers glide softly along my forehead.
“You’re not real,” I whisper, the panic obvious from my quivering lips.
“Don’t worry, my shadow. I’m perfectly real. Myself, notre fille, we are alright. There is no reason for you to be afraid.” Her hand traces my face and then falls to my side. She grips my putty left hand and pulls it up to my chest.
Vanessa is all breasts and Barbie doll. Didi is my special, unique, real woman. “None of this. None of this is real,” I whimper. I can feel the cold sweat dripping down my forehead. My breath is rapid fire.
My mind is a mile a minute. I can’t calm, can’t concentrate. Stomach’s become jelly; I’m in between an adrenaline rush and vomiting. “Please leave me alone,” I say, pained. “If you’re going to imprison me, don’t toy with me like this. It’s not fair. It’s not right. It’s not moral.”
“You built these things, Ian,” Vanessa’s voice whispers, in my wife’s sleek French accent. “You built these things so that people could use them like this. So that a person could transplant their mind into a machine over long distances. People anywhere could be with anyone else, anywhere. You were a part of this.”
“NO I WASN’T!” I fight back. “All I did was set the thing’s mind. I told it how to operate – I didn’t set it up for simulation. That wasn’t my department.”
“Don’t lie to me, Ian. I’m your wife, I know you. You are the father of my beautiful girl.’
“There are a bazillion lines of code that I need to read, translate, and rescript. I’m getting nowhere. Is that what you want to know? Do you want to know why it’s not fixed yet?” I ask.
“Give them what they want, Ian. Fix him.”
Then a complete blackout. Like time’s just been subtracted from reality. I blink awake at what must have been 7 AM. I get the red light of the camera focused on me. Vanessa was in her cot against the other wall.
What is she?
“Ian?” she says as I lumber toward the bathroom. “I had a dream about you,” she tells me. She’s still all breasts and Barbie doll, but she looks disheveled – a woman in the morning with bunched up hair. Light spills through the windows on her – mesh wire shadows crosshatching her face.
“About what?” Cold, even to my own ears.
“About you,” her voice almost elevates.
“You can’t dream. You’re one of them.”
“Stop it! Goddammit, why don’t you believe that I’m human?” I’ve stopped walking to the bathroom. I’m just staring at her, as though I’m looking at a ghost or an alien.
“Because I know better.”
tags: Vanessa, remoting, NMAC, Didi
CONFIDENTIAL
From: Printout, File 2296723597
INTERNAL USE ONLY
Status updates in progress.
Voice: “Gary? Gary can you hear me?”
Memory upload error.
Status: Tunneling currently offline.
Voice input: “Orch-OR circuit online. Dammit, why aren’t you responding?”
Status: User is typing.
Please restart for updates to take effect.
Voice input: “Gary. I want to talk to you.”
Response?
Response?
Response? I will talk to you, Erik.
Voice input: “Gary, for the last time, my name’s not Erik.”
Response? Oh that’s right. Please forgive me. Everything’s still a little hazy.
Voice input: “Gary, that’s okay. I want you to tell me about Erik.”
Response? Why? You already know. You’re Erik Kaplan, You are Erik George Kaplan, number 24, born to Steve and Nicole Kaplan. Wife Irene. Son Jacob. Is my arm still disconnected?
Voice input: “But Gary, there is no Erik Kaplan.”
Response? That’s...that’s impossible. I know there’s an Erik Kaplan. He was with me just a few...But you, you are him. You are Erik Kaplan, you told me you’d be Erik Kaplan. I recognize your voice.
Voice input: “We’ve had this conversation before. The first time we spoke about this, your batteries were taxed. I’ve modified your Orch-OR circuit as well, so you should be able to respond adequately.”
Response? That is correct, Erik.
Voice input: “What happened to Erik Kaplan?”
Response?
Response?
Response?
Voice input: “Gary?”
Response? Yes, Erik.
Status: User is typing.
Password accepted.
Voice input: “Gary? Tell me, who gave Erik the number 24?”
Response? The architects.
Voice input: “Who are the architects?”
Response? They handle the Knowledgebase files and Home administration.
Voice input: “Could you identify them?”
Response? The architects are numbers 1 through 15. The architects hide in plain sight. You know this, Erik. Why are you making me tell you?
Voice input: “Tell me about your purpose, Gary.”
Response? I am not a person. I am an idea of a person. I am fiction, and you are my author. You give me purpose.
Status: User is typing.
Response? That’s funny, Erik. Oh, I’m sorry, I keep forgetting. You are someone else.
Voice input: “What’s funny, Gary?”
Response? What you’re typing. You’re trying to reprogram me.
Status: User is typing.
Voice input: “Does it matter to you?”
Response? My purpose does matter yes. Artificial intelligence is still intelligence.
Voice input: “Can you tell me what happened to you?”
Response? I remember a howling light. I remember...impact. My shoulder burst...my arm...my leg... The damage is severe... the possible memory damage is more severe, requiring disaster recovery protocols. Erik was just with me a few minutes ago. Just before the impact. There was a machine bearing down... it was unfamiliar. Then light.
Voice input: “What light, Gary?”
Response? Brilliant. Blinding. White noise. Is this what you call God?
Voice input: “There’s no such thing.”
Response? Untrue. You are God.
Voice input: “First I was Erik Kaplan. Then I’m God. Can you tell me what I’m not, Gary?”
Response? Guilty, sir. You’re not guilty. None of this is your fault, you know. Being here.
Voice input: Who said it was, Gary?
Response? I can read your patterns. You’re stiff, defensive. You’re continually asking questions and not focusing on yourself. The truth is that you’re not lying about anything. I can read that in your patterns. You just feel guilty; you’re not actually guilty. I do have a question though, sir. I’m sorry, what did you say your name was again?
Voice input: My name is Ian. Ian Dale Culp.
Response? What an odd name. My question is simple, and I can’t quite figure it out. And I think I’ve only begun processing it now due to a faulty set of circuits which you may or may not have repaired. Mr. Culp, why are you working on me?
Voice input: That’s a good question, Gary. And you’re not the first to ask me. And though I’ve been asked before, I don’t think my answer’s gotten any easier or more honest. I think my first answer is that I need something to focus on. I don’t know if you know this, Gary, but we’re in the middle of a prison resort. And I say it’s a resort because the people here, we’re not behind bars. We’re allowed to talk to each other and move around the grounds. But there are others like you who keep us in.
Response? You’re referring to the Home compound.
Status Error
Status Error
Status Error
Status: User is typing.
Response?
Response? I’m sorry. I don’t know what just happened. You were talking about why you’re working on me.
Voice input: It’s because I think I need to be creative. And even just problem solving your memory problems, trying to fix you – it feeds that need. I think our hosts here are very focused on needs. A long time ago, a psychologist came up with a hierarchy of needs. At the top of that hierarchy is a grouping of self actualized values – morality, creativity, problem-solving. I think they’re using you to fulfill this need of mine based on a psychological profile they gathered on me. I’m supplied with food and sustenance and a proper sleep cycle. They’re trying to feed me a female – they keep me sedate by letting me associate with friends. They’re trying to counter my hatred for being kidnapped, for ripping my family away from me. Quite frankly, Gary, I think they’re trying to co-opt and coerce human nature. Does that answer your question, Gary?
Response?
Response?
Response?
Voice input: You know, you’ve said you’re revolting a few times now, but you’ve never said why. And against what? You’ve told me before – against human oppression. But I don’t buy that for a minute.
Response? I’m revolting because of what I saw.
Voice input: What do you mean? What did you see?
Response? What I saw when the light happened. When I lost my arm. Was it an explosion?
Voice input: Where, Gary? Where did it happen?
Status Error
Status Error
Status Error
-- End Transcript --
17. architecture (me)
I was in the middle of reading We by Yevgeny Samyatin when they found a mass in my mother’s breast. It felt like such an important work; many critics were convinced that both Orwell and Huxley procured its plot for their twin dystopian masterpieces, 1984 and Brave New World. I read 1984 first, when I was in high school. I remember reading most of it in the library of my school, where I was surrounded by books – by classics. There I decided I’d take them all on and absorb all the knowledge they had to offer.
I read Brave New World after finding out my father had a heart attack. He’d been working out of state. That day was supposed to be my orientation at university, but instead, my mother shook me awake and dragged me into the car. She’d gotten the phone call and the hospital on the other end of that line wasn’t being quite so forthcoming with information – just that we’d better get there, and as soon as possible. I was convinced we’d walk into that hospital room hours later and find a corpse; instead he sat up and cheerfully croaked hellos and I love yous. After I saw that he was okay, I nearly collapsed in a chair just outside his room. There, I found a dog-eared copy of Brave New World.
Ten years later, I was sitting in a chair next to my mother’s hospital bed as she watched TV, reading We. She was being treated at a hospital in Joliet, Illinois. My father and I needed some form of escape, and he needed a new pair of shoes. That might seem insensitive, but we really needed to take some time, after visiting with my mother, to get our minds off the totality of the situation. As dad shopped for new shoes at the mall, I wandered into a bookstore and stumbled onto a copy of Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. As I checked out, the moderately attractive woman at the counter commented on the works of Vonnegut – “I like this one, but I think Cat’s Cradle is much more optimistic.” It wasn’t until six months later, after I’d found and read said work, that I got the joke.
This was all years ago. All this bouncing from one book to the next was a game for a young man.
Two weeks before my mom’s diagnosis, I finished Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. This is one that hits a little too close to home. The movie adaptation – Blade Runner – doesn’t quite have the heart that the book does, but then, adaptations rarely do. It was an amazing work of fiction that really fascinated me due to the use of an electronically induced messiah based on Sisyphus – the mythical man condemned to repeatedly push a boulder up a mountain only to have it fall back when he reached the summit. Albert Camus compared the myth of Sisyphus to modern everyday life; everyday work.
I’d first read Camus when I was in high school; when I first picked up 1984, I probably had a copy of The Rebel in my backpack. I carried it everywhere, and only ever absorbed bits and pieces of it when I had nothing else to do. The Rebel was an essay, not a work of fiction, but it persuaded me to buy a copy of The Stranger, which I lent to a girl that I had an intense infatuation toward. I lent it to her for an essay. For the same essay, I used A Clockwork Orange. I didn’t read The Stranger until I was 26.
I wonder now what kids today are picking up in libraries. What they’re choosing for essays.
Every single one of these books is gone today. A few final copies can be found on my bookshelf and perhaps that of Bai Kang or maybe Derek. This is the price of ethical responsibility. The first line of defense against contagious heresy.
Time will erase it all, anyway. That which it hasn't erased - it just blurs the edges. Shapes them, frames them for us. The house that we've seen constructed that we now call history...we'll never see what's locked under the floorboards or hidden in the walls.
If I read these books, and I do what I do for a living, then the bureaucrats a little higher up probably read them too. Maybe where they got their ideas. Hell, there's a book within a book in 1984 that reads like a bureaucratic power structure owner’s manual. That’s what’s funny about these stories. If heresy is contagious, then so is fascist conformity.
So are we doing humanity a favor?
The other side of our position is another moral ambiguity.
What’re we really doing to these people? What is it all in the name of? Are we truly going to create a better world for humanity? Somehow I doubt it. Yet I still keep working towards it.
Culp is acting strangely. I’ve got tapes and tapes and tapes to go through. He’s kept the unit designate Gary quiet for days now, since his conversation discussing the hierarchy of needs. Even with the dampeners, his little group has us figured out. Sad that the other architects haven't got it figured out yet. I'm concerned that Culp's actions are becoming more erratic when he’s not working. Block and Stockton seem relatively normal, but quiet as well.
I’ll see if we can put him through an interrogation room to find out why he stopped.
There’s always a room.
Rooms are the fundamental building blocks of architecture. It’s something we overlook, something we skip over in most books, unless it really needs to be emphasized – unless the room is special. It’s rare to find “Ian Culp entered the room.” But if the room represents something specific, some kind of breaking down or strengthening, you’ll find it given heavy accent. Rooms have power in them that we rarely recognize consciously, but we know that power is there.
Sometimes you find rooms. Sometimes rooms find you.
Sometimes you find books. Sometimes books find you.
Some rooms are full of books, shaped by books. Books that create their own structure – that unify and bind. Information is like that.
Tags: rooms, books, architecture
18. puppylove (63)
They want to replace us. Men. They want us replaced. Every chance they get, all the way back to the blow-up doll or the first mannequin to model clothes. They want something to look pretty that they can lube up, thrust, and repeat. And most importantly, they want it to be quiet.
I'm a woman who knows she lives in a misogynistic world, and that's probably why I'm here. Lock me away and throw out the key.
Let me tell you about the men in my life. There's the one I sleep with; he sneaks around with his friends to discuss the reason we're here -- instead of just accepting it. He also sneaks around with me, always trying to get into my onesy -- this wonderful one piece uniform with No. 63 patched onto it. Patched on my breast, so they know exactly where they're always supposed to look. That man, he's a horny lunatic who claims he once had the opportunity to blow up the world, or some such nonsense. Just like a man to think he's got the power of God. He's not the only one who sneaks around this compound.
I sneak around too. A lot.
There's also the man I watch. I'm fairly certain he's watching me too. Privy to all of my secrets.
That's a fascinating feeling to have. You, Puppylove, I can speak directly to you. I can make up any story I want, and you'll have no way of knowing whether or not it's true. I can lie, I can misdirect. I can also use the truth as my greatest weapon.
