Another wave of Celestial bombers howled across the sky, weaving between
bolts of increasingly sparse anti-air fire shooting up from the
retreating Hermetic Infantry. Alistair had known for six hours that the
battle was lost, his sergeant had known for two, and the order to
evacuate had finally gone out thirty minutes ago. The Celestial Chinese
were merciless, and killed dozens of withdrawing Hermetic soldiers with
each strafing run. Alastair reached into his flak vest and tightly
gripped the gold caduceus within, which was a symbol of the Hermetic
Principality both in religion and in state.
“Jesus Thoth, don’t forget me now,” Alistair murmured, as a voice broke
through his headset.
“God damn it!” some Colonel or other shouted into his ear. “The
dropships are evacuating at best speed. Get the devil to Romeo Victor or
be left behind!”
Alistair replied, even though he knew that it was a general transmission
and no one was listening. “I’m doing the best I can!”
There was a deafening explosion as a lucky blast from a Celestial bomber
destroyed one of the last remaining Hermetic anti-air batteries. They
were all but defenseless against the bombing runs, now, and the
Celestial infantry was taking its sweet time clearing out the remaining
Hermetic bunkers on the front lines. Alistair knew that if he hurried,
he’d have just enough time to make it to a dropship before the last of
them took off. The people five minutes behind him wouldn’t be so lucky.
He pushed that thought out of his mind, stumbled over a loose rock and
went down, wrenching his ankle in the process.
“Damn it!” he swore, as an intense pain blossomed in his ankle.
He lifted himself up out of the dust, unable to put any weight on his
twisted right ankle. It was sprained for sure, and possibly broken. The
rendezvous point, which he would have had just enough time to reach if
he jogged, now might as well be on Old Earth. There was no way he was
going to make it before the last retreating ship took off.
Another voice crackled in his headset, this one he knew. “Damn it,
Alistair! You’re going to be late!”
“I know, Sergeant. Go ahead without me. I’m done for.”
Something about the timbre of the voice changed. It became melodious,
and, if it was possible, even more insistent.
“You’re going to be late again! You made me promise. Alistair, get up.”
Alistair’s awoke with a start. Everything came rushing back. He
remembered being captured by the Celestial Chinese, and held in an
unsanitary and ruthlessly managed POW camp for two long, lonely years.
Then the two sides wound down their conflict, and found face saving
excuses for finally repatriating hundreds of thousands of captured
soldiers. Alistair had been among them, and he’d returned to his
hometown on Hermes to be welcomed almost like a conquering hero. That
hadn’t lasted, though, and apart from a few generous gifts from his
proud parents and his Honorable Severance package from the military,
he’d been left entirely on his own to navigate his newly alien
homeworld.
A pink-haired woman wearing a black and pink skirt with a matching top
stood over his bed and glowered. Her absolutely flawless face hinted at
Nordic ancestry, and she was dressed as though preparing for a night in
a fashionable downtown club. More was the pity that she couldn’t leave
Alistair’s small suburban home.
“Alistair, you absolutely mustn’t be late again. Your boss is losing
patience with you.”
“Switch off, Scarlet,” he growled at the holographic servant girl.
“You know I can’t do that,” she replied with a hint of genuine regret.
“You set this as a high priority command, and you gave me explicit
instructions not to let you sleep in again, no matter what you say.”
Alistair groaned. He had, hadn’t he?
“Fine,” he finally said, resigning himself to a new day. “What time is
it?”
“It’s oh seven twenty. I chose one of your ten top breakfast requests at
random, as you instructed me to ‘surprise you’ last time I asked you
what you wanted for breakfast,” Scarlet answered reprovingly. “Eggs,
sausage, and gravy will be ready in six minutes. I hope that meets with
your liking.”
Alistair sighed. Scarlet could be almost as bad as a real girl, and
expressed emotions most convincingly. Perhaps that had something to do
with the fact that she had a real brain as well, manufactured from
scratch by the Humana Corporation. The bioethicists had gone into a
tizzy, of course, but nobody could prove that there were real people
being harmed in the process. And anyway, insofar as the beings had a
genuine biological personality, they had been designed down to the
substructures of the brain itself to derive satisfaction and joy from
successfully interpreting their master’s wishes. If you asked one of the
products of the Humana Corporation if they were happy with their lives,
they would answer with a resounding and seemingly genuine, “Yes!”
Which was, after all, more than you could say for a great many actual
humans.
“That’ll be fine, Scarlet. Thank you very much,” Alistair said to
placate her.
There was a clattering in the kitchen, and for a brief but horrifying
instant Alistair imagined he heard the sound of a repeating railgun
spinning up. Scarlet looked at him with a worried expression, no doubt
reading his sudden alarm with the wide range of health sensors she had
trained on him at every moment.
“What’s wrong, Alistair?” she asked him gently.
“Nothing,” he answered, letting out a breath he didn’t even realize he’d
been holding. “Just feeling a little high strung this morning. Did I get
any emails I should take care of?”
Scarlet winked. “Not unless you desperately need to enlarge your penis
on a budget.”
She’d said just the right thing to suspend the melancholy left behind by
the nightmare, and Alistair let out a roar of laughter. He wanted to hug
her, but the resistive field that allowed her to manifest within his
house wouldn’t prevent him from putting his arms right through her, and
it was an experience that they both agreed was creepy. Scarlet followed
him into the kitchen, where he sat at the table that had only
accommodated a single diner since he’d moved into the house, some eight
months prior. She had fully charged and readied his xOS tablet, and
pulled up his homepage on the main screen.
“You’re good to me, Scarlet,” he said distantly, scanning the news for
new information on reparations for POWs.
But Scarlet was concentrating on breakfast and didn’t answer him. Of
course, her hologram couldn’t do any of the cooking; if she tried to
pick up the cast iron skillet with her resistive field, she’d barely
manage to budge it. Instead, she commanded on a small collection of
specialized droids, which whirred around the kitchen doing her bidding.
Her biocomputer wasn’t in any of them, of course. Her hybrid of
biological brain and computational hardware was a separate appliance
with its own nook, encased in a shell that could survive anything but a
direct and intentional assault. She was self-regulating, and more often
than not an artificial person like Scarlet would live just as long as
her master.
They weren’t perfect, of course. Very rarely one went crazy and had to
be destroyed. Others had joined a secret society of sorts, and demanded
rights and freedom. Humana Corporation was actually happy to oblige in
such cases; it was easier than explaining to a customer why their
dishwasher was on strike. The rogue AIs had been ceded their own colony,
on an uninhabitable and resource-poor moon in the inner system, where
they lived out their lives and interacted little with the Hermetic
humans. Most of the time, the almost-people functioned as intended and
as far as anyone could tell got genuine satisfaction from their jobs.
There was no news on the tablet, at least none that interested Alistair.
Just as he got bored reading the speculative comments on an article that
quoted an unnamed parliamentary official who claimed that POW health
issues would be a top priority for the incoming Minister of Veteran
Affairs, Scarlet, or at least one of her physical manifestations,
carried a full tray of food to the table. She’d brought him a glass of
orange juice, sweet and tart and full of pulp. As promised, there were
also eggs and sausage slathered with gravy, and Alistair dug in with
gusto. Now that the terror of the nightmare had mostly dissipated, he
found that he had a ravenous appetite.
“Learn anything interesting, master?” Scarlet asked, gazing at him over
the top of his tablet.
You never could quite tell what the almost-people were thinking. “No.
Just another day at the races, it looks like.”
“You promised me you weren’t going to gamble anymore,” she replied with
a pout.
He laughed. “I’m sorry, it was a figure of speech. I’m not going to the
racetracks; I guess I’m going to work.”
“Well, you should eat quickly. The optimal route requires you to be at
the subway station in eighteen minutes, and you’re not even dressed.”
That’s what made Scarlet’s nagging was worse than that of any human
girl. The fact that she was seamlessly integrated into a planetwide
information network meant that she was almost always right.
“Alright, Scarlet,” he said between mouthfuls. “Give me a break.”
“Your boss insists that you show up on time today.”
He proceeded to ignore her, as she finished up the dishes that cooking
breakfast had created. Between bites of the excellent meal, he pondered
another article on the infosite that specifically dealt with POW issues.
The Celestial Chinese and the Hermetic Principality had not yet finished
up the exchange, and there were still thousands of soldiers languishing
in jails, for no particular crime, victimized by the slow and grinding
wheels of bureaucracies that didn’t want to give up even an inch of
perceived advantage. It was a welcome relief when Scarlet spoke up
again; it kept Alistair from sliding back into melancholy.
“Is there anything I should do for dinner, master?” she asked, putting
her hands on her hips and looking absolutely adorable.
“Why don’t you make some paella? And do extra, so I can take some to
work tomorrow.”
“Of course,” she said with an incline of her head. “I’m missing some
ingredients; would you like to pick them up on your way home, or should
I have them delivered?”
Scarlet, for all her vast power while inside Alistair’s small house,
couldn’t get more than a dozen feet outside the building’s periphery.
The network connection over the public grid was too low in bandwidth and
too high in latency to sustain her consciousness. She’d tried it, once,
when Alistair had outright begged her to go on a walk with him. So,
she’d flown her mobile projector alongside him, displaying the animesque
appearance that they both had settled on. Scarlet tried doggedly to keep
up with him but became increasingly disoriented, and ultimately she lost
the connection with her mobile projector. Scarlet disappeared, and all
that she left in her place was a naked and useless floating ball. When
Alistair returned home, carrying the projector under his arm, she had
cried; cried, damn it.
“Just go ahead and have them delivered,” Alistair told her with a sigh.
“I doubt I’ll feel much like running errands after work. I’m done with
breakfast, so I’d better get a move on.”
“I’ll clean up in here,” she promised.
Alistair returned to his room, and found that one of Scarlet’s other
droids had already set out an outfit for the day. He didn’t have time to
take a shower, so he just pulled the clothes over the salty membrane
left on his skin by the sweat of the nightmare. He buttoned up the lacy
shirt that was the current vogue in the Hermetic capital of Talaria, and
pulled up a pair of pantaloons that would have been considered
ridiculous at best when he had first shipped out with the Infantry. When
he was satisfied that he looked like the lower middle class professional
that he was, he finally left his small suburban home, but not without
making a point of thanking Scarlet for everything she did for him.
The subway station was only a quarter mile away, and Alistair had chosen
this house specifically because of its easy access to public transit. He
was of no mind to fly an aircar ever again, not after seeing firsthand
their vicious disregard for human flesh when turned into a weapon of
war. So he made his way to the subway platform, standing alongside other
members of his social class and those still lower. He tossed a silver
shilling to a homeless vagrant who claimed to be a veteran; Alistair
knew all too well the likelihood that the drunken sot was telling the
truth. He waited for the train to glide silently up to the platform on
its cushion of antigravity, and climbed aboard. He’d made it to the
station just in time, and it looked like he’d be able to keep his job,
at least for today.
The ride was boring, and Alistair glanced around at his fellow
passengers. He was surrounded by all sorts that called the capital of
the Hermetic Principality home, from day traders to cricket moms to
university students to the homeless. The victory over the Celestial
Chinese had not been equally kind to all of the citizens of the
Principality, and as far as Alistair could see, the people who had done
the most to secure the military success had also gained the least. He
pushed that thought out of his head, and turned his attention to his xOS
tablet. For the fiftieth time, he tried to beat his own high score in a
video game designed largely to be a distraction, and for the fiftieth
time, he failed. By the time the subway pulled into his stop, he was
just starting to get bored with the simple physics puzzler. Quite a feat
of engineering, that.
He rode the escalator up to street level, and then everything went to
Hell.
It was the Celestials again, it had to be. The faint whine that Alistair
could hear in the back of his mind could hardly signify anything else.
He knew that sound, the sound of one of their bombers, which would chase
him and slaughter his friends and drive him screaming and sobbing into
the dirt. He looked wildly into the sky, but couldn’t make the enemy out
among the towering skyscrapers that reached jaggedly into the sky. Then
he remembered the careful instructions of his therapist. Breathe.
Concentrate. Think. No one is trying to hurt you. He repeated these
things to himself like a mantra, and finally identified the source of
the awful sound.
It was, indeed, a Celestial ship. But he could tell at once it wasn’t
one of their awful bombers. It was actually a harmless civilian
transport, which must have used a very similar engine in its peacetime
engineering. He breathed, in and out, and ignored the tears rolling down
his cheeks. The people next to him gave him unhappy glances and looked
away, as if they could sense that he was a madman and they wanted no
part in his psychoses. He wanted to shout, to cry out and grab them by
the shoulders, and say, “See? Look at how I’ve suffered for you!” But of
course, he didn’t say anything at all.
His boss was waiting for him when he walked into the set of cubicles he
shared with the half dozen people that comprised his department.
“Alistair!” he said. “I’m so glad you’ve made it on time today. It
hasn’t always been easy, sticking up for you in these past few weeks.”
Alistair winced. “I know, Matthew. I’m doing my best. It’s still not
easy for me, after everything that’s happened.”
“I quite understand. I don’t blame you for it. But I have a boss too,
and when you’re late, he demands an explanation from me. I’m running out
of excuses, and I have a wife and daughter myself,” Matthew lectured
with genuine sympathy. “The government never did right by you poor
bastards, but I’m going to do my best.”
“Thanks, Matthew. I really appreciate it,” Alistair said, colder than he
intended.
“Well, you’re going to want to get started, then. There are at least
half a dozen claims in your queue this morning. I’ve been trying to
distribute them among the other members of the team, but they’re
starting to … chafe. Everyone understands your position, but you can
only ask so much from other people.”
Alistair nodded grimly. “Okay. I’ll get on it, boss.”
He made his way to his cubicle, passing the coffee machine with a tinge
of regret. He hadn’t been able to drink coffee since returning home from
the war; caffeine now overtaxed his already frayed nerves, and made the
flashbacks even more frequent and intense. Sure enough, there were
already eight case files in his queue, all demanding immediate
attention. He worked for Ortega and Associates, a subcontractor that did
claims adjustment for all the household names in the insurance business.
He helped people get back on their feet after they’d had an accident, or
their house burned down, or they’d been robbed. Alistair actually felt
pretty good about what he did, and he always made an effort to help
people value their claims at the maximum amount that was reasonable,
unlike some of his coworkers who sought to reduce payouts.
There was no way he’d be able to get to all of his work today; he could
see that from the start. He pulled up a file at random. The pilot of an
aircar insured by Interplanetary had lost control in a heavy gust of
wind, and ended up flying right into an apartment building in one of the
suburban blocks. The driver of the aircar was still in the hospital,
recovering from several broken ribs and a variety of internal injuries
that would keep him off his feet for another month at least. Nobody in
the building had been hurt, fortunately, and the building’s fire
suppression systems had kept the gaping blow from doing any more damage.
There were still five apartments that had sustained damage, and Alistair
was going to have to clean up everything. Pay out for the totaled
aircar, pay the pilot’s medical bills, and get a contractor out to
repair the damage to the building. Pay the hotel bill of the displaced
residents while the work was going on. Cut them checks to replace their
things. All in all, he’d probably grabbed the most complicated case in
the whole bunch. No use complaining; might as well get to it.
Matthew stopped Alistair as he grabbed his coat to leave.
“You’re running a case, right?” Matthew asked with a twinge of
nervousness.
Alistair nodded.
“Are you going to take an aircar?”
“You know I don’t fly,” Alistair said. “Anymore.”
“Fine, fine. I’ll see if I can give you a hand with your queue.”
Alistair thanked him, and made his way back to the subway station. Since
he refused to fly a company aircar, he spent much more time in transit
than the other associates of the firm. Just another way in which the war
had scarred him and made him unfit for a normal life. He waited for the
subway, and checked his xOS tablet to make sure that he knew the correct
stop. Waited as a subway train passed, waited as a second one went by.
Finally the correct train came, and he stepped aboard with the rest of
the city’s assorted citizens and riffraff.
The building was in worse condition than he had expected, even after
seeing the pictures. There had been a rainstorm since the accident a day
and a half ago and nobody had thought to put a tarp up over the
building’s damaged façade. So now there was sure to be water damage as
well, which was his fault for skipping out early yesterday and
ignoring the urgent claims in his queue. He pulled up his collar against
the increasing chill of the air, and met with the building’s
superintendent. Yes, yes, it was all covered. No, but Alistair would
have their company’s contractor here within an hour. Extra compensation
for pain and suffering? No, but it was quite certain that everything
that had been damaged would be replaced. The usual collection of
concerns. Alistair phoned up the construction manager that Ortega and
Associates used for most of their jobs, and set an appointment. Sat at a
café with a decaffeinated tea and worked on the itemized bill they’d
send to Interplanetary.
The next job, which he started without even returning to the office,
promised to be a little easier. It was a simple aircar crash; one of
Interplanetary’s policy holders had tapped another aircar while
jockeying to get to a freeway exit and left a noticeable crumple on its
flank. Interplanetary ascertained it had been the fault of their client.
Alistair met with her first, and quickly determined that the aircar
would be just fine after a couple days in the body shop. He arranged a
rental for her, and she happily went on her way after dropping her
damaged vehicle off at a repair facility licensed by Interplanetary. The
other party wasn’t quite as agreeable. He had been flying an aircar
worth more than some condos, and insisted repeatedly that Interplanetary
replace it with a new model despite the fact that the damage to his
vehicle was altogether minor. Alistair argued with him, drawing from a
deep well of patience that could only come from genuine disinterest.
Finally, the man was compelled to accept the settlement offered, after
Alistair suggested that the man retain a solicitor.
It was already past the time he usually left for home, but Alistair knew
he had to catch up on his casework, or face the ire of his coworkers. He
took the subway again, to the eastern side of town where all the
chemical and industrial plants were located. Interplanetary was a huge
conglomerate, and they insured everything from aircars to houses to even
more exotic items like rare museum pieces. In this case, there’d been a
chemical spill at one of the microprocessor manufacturers; not really
Alistair’s area of expertise, but Interplanetary paid the bills and
rarely asked for the details. So the case had been assigned to him.
Fortunately no one had been hurt, but a large vat of an extremely
caustic fluid had broken open and destroyed hundreds of thousands of
shillings’ worth of equipment. Alistair groaned inwardly. He didn’t know
what half of this equipment was, let alone how much it would cost to
replace. Well, he was going to have a significant amount of homework
tonight, researching model numbers and trying to talk vendors down to
wholesale. After taking a full inventory of the situation, including the
lost work hours that the foreman wanted his employees to be compensated
for, Alistair finally headed for home, exhausted and desperate to put up
his feet.
Scarlet met him at the door when he entered. “Dinner’s ready whenever
you’d like me to serve it. You’re late coming home, is everything all
right?”
“Sure,” he replied, shaking his head. “I just had to stay late at work
today. I’ve also got to play catch-up with one of the cases, so please
go ahead and serve dinner and then make yourself scare for awhile.”
“Of course.”
He hardly noticed her as he pored over infosites for replacements for
the factory’s equipment. Naturally, a full quarter of them were
discontinued, and he would have to discuss suitable replacements with
the foreman. He had no idea, for instance, what a quantum field
modulator was and whether the QXR-323 would be the right replacement for
the one that had been destroyed. That meant at least another half day of
dealing with this particular case, even as the rest of the cases in his
queue continued to go stale. He could just choose an answer at random
and hope for the best, but what good would that do?
“Is there anything I can get you?” murmured Scarlet at his shoulder.
He discovered that he’d been at it for over two hours, and sighed.
“Yeah,” he finally answered. “Please grab me a Temple Street Ale. I’m
going to go watch some TV; I need to turn off my brain for awhile.”
Alistair listlessly cycled through the shows he currently had licenses
for, but nothing appealed to him. Scarlet brought him a beer with one of
her droids, and then sat next to him on the couch, her physical field
almost but not quite making an impression on the cushion. Just another
one of those things that reminded him that she was almost but not quite
a real person. After the third time he’d looped through his queued shows
without choosing any of them, she finally spoke up.
“Alistair, do you mind if we watch Paola Dorset’s Cooking?” she asked.
Alistair wasn’t surprised; it wasn’t the first time she’d made a
personal request like that.
“Sure, what the Hell,” he replied, and she silently communicated with
the entertainment system’s software and put it on.
They watched it together, and Scarlet occasionally shifted on the seat
next to him. Each time, it reminded him that if he tried to touch her
holographic body, he’d simply put his hands right through her. Scarlet
grinned when Paola demonstrated a technique for clarifying butter that
used no heat whatsoever. Alistair marveled to himself. Scarlet could at
any time look this up on the infogrid, silently and without involving
him at all. But she did. She wanted to share her experience of learning
with him.
Alistair chose the next show, and Scarlet gazed impassively as he
watched highlights from the week in cricket. He hardly had time to catch
all the games, and there was a strange quality to watching just the
highlights, as if he were cutting sex down to only the moment of orgasm.
Next, he played a few rounds of a competitive puzzle game over the
infogrid, carefully staying away from first person shooters or other
genres that would remind him of his experiences in the war. Scarlet
watched him, occasionally offering tips but largely staying quiet. She
never seemed to get bored, and only the gods knew what was going on
inside her biocomputer when she sat next to him on the couch and
patiently watched everything he did. Finally, he took the last swig of
his warm beer.
“I’m going to take a shower,” he announced.
Scarlet cocked her head to the side. “Would you like me to join you?”
He’d had her shower with him before. She had a nude model as well, along
with the hundred billion other appearances she could wear. She was
beautiful, of course, heart stoppingly and mind numbingly beautiful.
Scarlet’s naked form was untouched by the subtle ridiculousness of an
unclothed human body, her every proportion perfect and her every
animation a study in scripted grace. On the other hand, she was also
untouched by the water jets that passed right through her. She was a
beautiful ghost, the witch queen of a tiny kingdom that had disappeared
from the world in an age long past.
“No,” he finally said.
She pouted, but only a little.
“Okay, I’ll just turn all the couch cushions, then,” she told him, with
a noticeable hint of loneliness.
But Alistair didn’t stop her as he walked to the bathroom, and one of
her droids flew past him and into the living room. She’d really do it,
too; Scarlet kept the small house absolutely immaculate, without a
single shred of protest. He allowed the hot water jets to sluice off the
stress of the day, and he thoroughly shaved his face to prepare for the
next morning. He rinsed off, ignored a phone call coming through the
bathroom’s computer system, and then toweled himself dry with fresh
linens. As he walked to his bedroom, Alistair could somehow, impossibly,
feel Scarlet’s eyes resting on his ass.
He pulled on a pair of boxer shorts with black and purple stripes, and
then gently lowered himself into bed, exhausted. He was too tired to
fall asleep at once, so he concentrated on trying to drift into
unconsciousness, which always has the opposite effect. In the back of
his mind, he heard the very faint whir of Scarlet’s holographic
projector as she floated into his room. He could even see her mild glow
radiating through his closed eyelids. He was still awake when she
finally spoke, quietly and to herself.
“Oh, Alistair. Do you think I’ll ever be a real woman?”