The Best of Galaxy’s Edge 2013-2014 (14 page)

However.

When he returns to his seat, a robot is in it.

3. JERRY AND THE ROBOT

At first Jerry thought it was a man in a costume, maybe doing a viral video for Doritos or HostGator. But the robot disabused him by projecting belief and understanding into his head of what it was, where it had come from, why it was here, where it was going, and what it meant to do. Jerry sat next to it, the wind taken out of him.

“My God, we’ll all die,” he said hoarsely.

Nobody heard him. This was because the robot sent out matching sound waves with opposing phase-timings to collide in their ears at just the same moment, canceling his voice. It tinkered likewise with their optic nerves to make them think it wasn’t a robot at all, but a fortyish man in a suit with a bad Caesar cut. When it first got to the airport, it had let everyone see it as is, but so many parents had asked it to pose with their kids it took 35 minutes to get past the main entrance. But it decided to show itself to Jerry, as a kind of self-sustaining conversation piece.

“Don’t worry,” it said. “Maybe Nuttalberg will pay up.”

Jerry’s eyes focused on something about three miles in the distance.

“But the bill is the entire
GDP
of the solar system for the next million years,” he said.

“True,” said the robot, nodding at the woman with the daughter across from them. “But what did you expect, something for nothing?”

“Well, no,” Jerry said. “But my God.”

“And anyway, after, your world will be debt-free. You can do whatever you want. What a party I imagine you’ll have. I can’t wait to try the hors d’oeuvres. I’m speaking figuratively, of course. I’ve created a poem for the occasion: ‘When you breathe, I want to be the air for you / As long as I don’t then have to pass through your pulmonary alveoli / Have my oxygen bound to the iron in your red blood cells and consumed by your body’s oxidative processes / My wastes excreted through your kidneys / To travel through corroded pipes to the sewage treatment plant amidst the other unpleasantness / I mean I have strong romantic feelings, yes / But let’s be realistic / I’m not into anything gross.’ Do you think I should rhyme it? You can’t believe I’m single, can you Jerry? Let’s face it. Some women are terrified by honesty.”

“But that’s—you can’t do that,” said Jerry.

“Recite poetry?”

“No. Kill everyone.”

“No, I can,” said the robot, and it showed him, by way of a gorgeous induced hallucination, how it could connect all the forces to wipe out the solar system.

“No, I believe you,” said Jerry, “but it’s immoral.”

“Morals,” said the robot, “are defined by the system in which they exist. Immorality’s the new morality. Though also, saying something is the new something is the new saying something is so ’90s. I looked it up on your Internet.”

“But you’re damaged,” said Jerry. “You’re supposed to go to the world leaders.”

“Again, frame of reference. From my infinite perspective, it’s the universe that’s damaged, and I’m putting it right.”

Nobody’s the bad guy in their own story after all. Jerry had read about cultural relativism in a few in-flight magazines, but he thought this was spreading it thin.

“But think of all the lives,” he said.

“I have,” said the robot. “I’ve examined them all to a sub-sub-sub-sub-atomic level. I’m rounding. Actually I went deeper than that. This makes the most logical sense. Observe.”

It showed Jerry then, by projecting its rationale into his brain. It had to augment his intelligence to avoid the information overload ripping his frontal cortex apart like neural confetti. For one brief shining moment he was fifty times smarter than Einstein, and he saw plainly how the robot’s choice of action was really best for everyone involved, no matter that it was also insane and beyond genocidal. I could explain, but again, the iguana.

Jerry sat back, mortified, mollified, his soul crushed to a metaphorical pulp. If the wind had been taken out of him before, now someone had stolen the actual sails and deconstructed the ship and made attractive natural wood furniture from it and sold it on the Internet with free shipping. But at the same time he knew what to do. Because when he’d been hyperintelligent, he’d had an idea.

“But you still don’t understand,” he said.

“Nonsense,” said the robot. “You don’t believe that. You’ve seen it.”

“I’ve seen it through you,” he said. “But you’re myopic.”

The robot turned to regard him.

“I could rearrange the physicality of my facial molecules to form a nose so I could use it to snort, but it’s not worth the effort. What are you talking, myopic? My understanding is infinite.”

“So that’s the wrong word,” Jerry said. “Not myopic. Too broad. What’s the word for that?”

“Fathead?”

“Close enough. What I mean is, you see it all at once. You need to narrow your field to really get what I’m saying. Until then you have no leg to stand on, and I win the argument.”

“Manipulative,” said the robot, dismissively. “But I’ll bite, because it’s not hard and I imagine it’ll be so much fun saying I told you so after.”

And the robot did. It inhabited Jerry, one hundred percent, traveling back in time first, to a moment some three days ago while he’d sat in first class on a flight to Virginia, and it shut out everything else.

It had never seen or felt the like of it before. The fidelity was incredible. With all other sense and thought turned off, the interior of a human was all intensity and focus and fine Corinthian leather. It picked up the little plastic cup of Scotch and melting ice from the tray table and felt the smooth, curving cold on its fingertips. It raised it, a sudden bump of turbulence making it almost spill a drop, and cautiously sipped, feeling the cool and the warmth hit its mouth and spread stomachwards, the taste like King Midas threw up in an oak tree and then set it on fire. It picked a Zwieback out of the wrapper on the little snack tray and munched it, the absence of all other data making its crunch and sweetness blaze like a comestible sun. It got in a conversation with the fat man next to it about workplace training that brought tears to its eyes.

And suddenly it saw the tragedy of its existence. A near-omniscient and all-powerful, unbalanced robot can never truly compartmentalize the way a human can. To a human, the moment was a singular thing, upright and locked, stowed in the overhead compartment or under the seat bottom in front, so few distractions, 100% of a single, microscopic facet of the world right there for the taking. The feeling was pleasant, to say the least. Like jumping in cool water after a day spent in a blast furnace or a room full of eight-year-olds. Relaxing. The robot wanted more.

So, using powers beyond our ability to comprehend, it rewound itself back to the moment of Jerry’s birth, and it lived his whole life, from his first breath in a hospital in Indiana to his last in a nursing home bed in East Texas. But it didn’t stop there. It then lived the life of every being that had ever or would ever exist in the solar system from beginning to end, including all the penguins and Simon Cowell, experiencing all the joys, sorrows, tragedies, triumphs, all the colds and upset stomachs and awkward dinners and games of pickup and sex and kangaroo births and love and insults and preenings and naps. All the French kisses, deaths, broken arms, triple backflips, moltings, and incarcerations over crimes that it did and/or didn’t commit. And it was gorgeous, beautiful, unaccountably lovely and lonely, and perfect.

And when it had finished, it returned to the seat next to Jerry, at the departure gate for the flight he would board soon for Florida, and it gave him another mental flash to show him what it had done.

“And?” Jerry said.

“Well, apart from making you swerve at the wrong time and causing a potential car accident, squirrels are pretty harmless. Nobody ever worries about swimming in squirrel-infested waters or surviving the squirrel apocalypse.”

“No, I mean our world.”

The robot simulated a sigh for purposes of conveying inner struggle. “I have to admit that you’re right,” it said. “To destroy even one of those lives short of its destined fullness would be a crime of disastrous proportions. In fact, I think I’ll create a heaven for you all to exist in even after you’re dead.”

It could do that. It showed Jerry how, then stood him up and gave him a hug. It was awkward.

“Thank you,” it said.

“Okay,” said Jerry, patting it, trying to break off.

4. ROBOT AGAIN

The skink. Baking. Soaking up warmth while it can before dusk. Then here comes the robot. It casts a shadow, and the skink reacts by not moving. The robot understands it deeply, having lived its whole life, including this part.

“Hello,” it says, and it digs itself into the ground, and is gone.

The skink sits staring out both sides of its head. One eye sees the paper the robot has left. Letters on it say: “Invoice: For the creation of every living being and inanimate object on and near Earth from the beginning of time through the end, including but not limited to sponges, the Encyclopedia Britannica, Lawrence Welk, Paul Prudhomme, Sirhan Sirhan, kittens, Lexan, the Earl of Sandwich, and string: No charge. You’re welcome.”

Which if you think about it is pretty generous. Especially considering that for the next five billion years it had decided to think about cellophane tape.

Published in Galaxy’s Edge Issue 8
Copyright
©
2014 by Tom Gerencer. All rights reserved.

T
his evening he appeared again.

He was silent. He had never uttered a single word, but I knew his feelings toward me. We had met many times when I was little—maybe dozens—before I even noticed the aid he had given me in his own imperceptible way.

I don’t know exactly when it happened. It seems to me that the first time I paid attention to him occurred when I was just approaching the full flower of maturity. I had become used to his presence, for he hadn’t changed in any discernible way. He was as fresh as ever, and devoid of those marks that the passing of time invariably leaves on others. During all our meetings my heart fluttered with a special fascination; a crazy thirst for life filled me, and I felt beautiful, more alive than ever, drunk with a certain tender happiness.

I needed time to understand that I loved him. It did not happen at once. He captured my heart, step by step. He never spoke, but I knew his thoughts. Sometimes I was sad or angry, and he inevitably appeared, scarcely hinting at such feelings as he had toward me—always silent, always ready to comfort and be with me. Calm as fate itself. Gradually, these meetings obsessed me and filled my mind, I began waiting for them; without the uneasiness and impatience inherent in every love, but rather with the quiet confidence that everything happens when it has to happen.

He never disappointed me. Sometimes he stayed away for months, but I knew that he was thinking about me; that he was following and observing me; and I was trying to be beautiful. For him.

He loved meeting me at dusk. At such moments something imperceptible and strong existed between us—more than friendship, a power superior even to love. I was his and he was mine.

This evening he appeared again. I was waiting for him. Something in the shadows’ slow sliding through the garden told me he would come. Wrapped only in purity and coolness, the dusk crept over my body, coloring it in tender violet shades. I stretched and reached out to him, while the fragrance of the blooming irises sweetly soaked into my pores, and I looked for him. He wasn’t late. The tears were his words …

During our meetings I never once asked myself what awaited us. We were bound together by something more than love. Sometimes I return to that evening in my memory and I understand that the beauty of my body was my present—the only present that could be worthy of him. And he accepted it.

I never thought about our future. I just knew that no matter what happened, he would continue to love me forever.

What was left for me was just the memory of my leaves and blossoms reaching out for him, and the fragrance of the dew drops as I finally exposed my pistil to those strange, bewitching and cool tears of my lover, called Rain.

Published in Galaxy’s Edge Issue 5
Copyright
©
2013 by Sabina Theo. All rights reserved.