The Erased, page 14
Keenan, the bushy-eyed workhorse, was an interesting character to say the least. He was a neo-con who supported the Family Planning Act with great vigor. He met with his local Veterans of Foreign Wars lodge almost three times a week, and decried our nation's dependence on newfangled technology, such as these amazing creatures being developed by "the goddamn Asians," as he'd say. And yet, what he'd do in the privacy of his den of virtual iniquity seemed to go entirely against every public conviction he'd ever espoused.
Thorpe, the host of this first hub I attended, had a different background. He was a Navy man who ported all over the world during the wars. It was on his journeys that he acquired his taste for bedding married women. I got the feeling, in the stories that he'd tell me and the others in the group, that there was something beneath the surface when he'd discuss these wives. My imagination ran wild on him -- perhaps he had to extort sexual favors from enemy wives for the favor of not killing their husbands -- but again, that was probably simply my imagination.
There were three or four others in this first hub group. No women. These were the first dissenters in the wake of the Family Planning Act. The advocates who were rebelling in the privacy of basements and dark bars, where they could hide their perversions from the light of day.
There are a certain number of suits ready for when you arrive. The host cleans out an area where you can put on the suit and remote into your android. One thing that nearly busted me in that first hub session: you have to know where you want to go. You could also search by region and available androids or gynoids that could be remoted into. They put your helmet on, your visor, slip on the gloves and the rest of the suit. Some of them just wore the suits under their normal clothes, as though their outward appearance was the secret identity of some crazed spandexed superhero. You could just plug into the suit and the helmet, and boom, you were in search mode.
I had to go through with it that first time; it wasn't something you could fake your way through. You had buds inserted into your ears tight so you were surrounded by the audio of wherever you went. It's a good thing too -- who would want to hear the weird grunts and moans emanating from the likes of a Keenan or a Thorpe. You're also mic'd so you can broadcast your words to the android on the other end.
In my first remoting session, I was some house android in New York City. There it was the middle of the night, and it was clear that I was in some Manhattanite's studio apartment. Nobody appeared to be home. Honestly, the strangest thing to get used to is that your neural network is transmitting commands to another body -- your body is back in Culver City, CA, and is lying on the floor lifeless. The suit interrupts the commands your brain is sending to other parts of your body. Your face and mouth are unaffected. You're remoting into some other being.
The feeling itself is dreamlike. You're floating along without moving, sensory commands interrupted and transmitted. A feeling of peace takes you over. You're almost perfect. The world itself feels paper thin. Your hands are stronger than they've ever been before, but they're also child-like. You're learning how to move again. Maybe you feel like picking up a sofa and lifting it over your head as though it were a mere toy. If you don't treat the paper world delicately, it tears apart.
I realized this first time the danger inherent in loosing this technology upon the world -- but truth be told, it existed before the androids themselves. Now to break into your home, these criminals and bloody savages only need the right password. They don't need guns or baseball bats or shivs anymore; no, they have super-powerful mechanical men that can wreak havoc inside your home.
But there was something so transcendent about the experience -- like the remote session did something to the chemicals in your brain to produce a brief state of euphoria. The inherent dangers that I'm expressing to you now, I didn't even realize while I was inside that machine. Thoreau once wrote, "beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes." Well this enterprise requires us to cloak our soul in new clothes, clothes which could crack a planet in half. What are we to do about this? The technology exists, and it will be used, for that is the way of technology.
And technology is a great way to enhance the human coital experience. After all, aren't the pornography geeks the ones who end up deciding the technology that gets adapted? Well take that case to the nth degree with the remoting experience. As a drug like MDMA (commonly known as Ecstacy) has been wont to increase physical pleasure between individuals, the natural reaction to remoting into a mechanical being intensifies such pleasure as well.
Naturally, I had to experience it for myself, at great personal risk. While on assignment to get the original story that became this piece of illiterature that you find yourself ingesting right now, my wife was mere weeks away from giving birth to my first son, Julio. The experience here led to my eventual divorce. But, as Emerson said, "Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could."
Coming out of the experience is just as euphoric. Keenan, the old bastard, he'd be the first out of the suit and would alert each of us to disconnect, whether our signals were being tracked by some unseen forces or whether time was just up and wives were coming home to invade "poker night" in the suburbs. In most cases, you just kept the suit on under your normal clothes as you left, and if you made a mess you'd have the inclination to clean up yourself. Sort of a "you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here" scenario.
So out of these often strange and quiet encounters a legend was born, of odd old perverts who had found some secret euphoria, beyond the senses that man was granted. And that at some point, maybe there'd be no need to transmit yourself into something else, but that maybe you'd be able to become something else. There'd be no need to simulate the experience of an artificial person, you'll be able to emulate a real person in the artifice.
24. i recognize you (63)
What exactly did you do?
You know I’m talking to you. You know I found your building. But what really upsets me? He doesn’t know who I am.
At all.
I talk at him and he says he doesn’t know me.
Is this because you’re fond of me, Puppylove? You just couldn’t bear to watch this man be with me anymore so you find some way to erase his mind?
Back up. Let me start over. I told you I was going to get into that building. You know the one. The one past the forest – in the clearing. The one with mirror windows that looks like an old office building. The one I was sure had something to do with the administration of this place. You’re an administrator, but you walk amongst us. Does that mean you live on the Home campus? The dormitories? Are you somewhere right here? Beneath our very noses?
Yes, I made it into the building. I just didn’t understand what I was seeing. I had to do everything I could to remain in the shadows. It wasn’t very difficult to get in. If it is an administration building, and I’m not entirely sure that it is, your security sucks. I was just able to walk right in and right out the south side door. There are only three ways into the place – a north exit, south, and main. It’s a long building that seems to extend quite a ways north and south, but only about 5 or 6 stories tall. I’m amazed we can’t see it from the campus, but I’m sure that has to do with the treeline. And anyway, you can’t see inside, mirrors, glass houses.
So tell me, Puppylove. It’s just between you and me.
Who were those people?
What exactly is going on there? It just looks like you have more prisoners – only, they don’t know that they can leave. They just stay there, in their little converted cubicles, with the lights out. The only lights come in through the windows but they don’t seem to mind much.
I didn’t talk to them, I only looked. And I got the feeling that it was important that I was able to watch them for the little while that I could. Before I could be forcibly removed by one of the androids from the upper levels. Oh, I’m sorry, am I supposed to call them Orderlies? Nurses? I forget. Is that where they’re supplied from?
And then the medical level. I couldn’t stay on that floor… too much light. Like one of those NMAC stores. All bright lights and flash. Clean. Sterile. Cold. Rooms upon rooms upon rooms with medical equipment, personnel buzzing like bees, machines everywhere. I was only able to dart from one or two doors in before I had to make my way back to the stairwell so I wouldn't be seen.
And then I caught a glimpse of a small black box in the stairwell with a beeping red light. So you were watching me even there.
I began to panic until I realized that I must have been seen coming in the building. I doubled back to the door where I entered to find that, sure enough, there was a camera on me. As a matter of fact, there were cameras on me through my entire voyage in and out of this building. But no security halted me. Nobody came running after me. I was not put down by an Orderly with a retractable taser baton. Before I thought to test my luck, I made my way back here, to the campus. To my room.
That was the first visit.
Is this your way of declaring your intentions? Of wooing me, Puppylove? To allow me to move about the compound with impunity?
Do you expect me not to try to leave now? Do you expect me to not try to find my way off the grounds and escape this place, so lovingly referred to as 'Home'? The longer I stay here, the less sense you make.
But then, there's the problem of Anthony. I began to notice during days that he wouldn't acknowledge me whatsoever. I'd pass by him without even a nod or a wink. Then I'd try to say something to him and he wouldn't even look at me. Then, after I felt like he was jilting me, I burst out in the mess hall at him, shouting about how nobody gives a crap about his Joy Division and Kafka nonsense. This other man, Ian, number 77, looked at me with shock. But he was also rubbing his temples with his fingers. He moved to grab me by the arm, but that's when Anthony acknowledged me. He pulled Ian away. This man, this 77, he looked like he wanted to ask me something. That face, at the same time confused, horrified, and shocked, he just doesn't look away.
But each night for a week, I'd sneak into Block's room. I heard him say, "I've never spoken to her in my life," to this Ian man. But he has. And Stockton, the older, bald guy who talks circles around everyone, he said something to Block. And Block rubbed his temples, just like Ian. He's... he's not just avoiding me or trying to hide our relationship. He acted like there was no genuine recognition of me whatsoever.
Both you and I know, Mr. Puppylove, it’s his face that I cradle in the darkness. His body that keeps me warm. The heart pumping beneath his chest that keeps rhythm with mine.
Does it burn you up?
You watch me on your screen, with your cold stare. Is your pup on your lap? Is that what keeps you warm? That and your inflated sense of accomplishment, with which you pull the wool over the eyes of everyone on this campus?
What have you done?
The day after the incident in the mess hall, I went for my second visit. And that’s when I was completely astonished. This time, I didn’t bother to sneak in the shadows. Sure, there was a certain sense of caution – I went into the same entrance on the south side of the building… but it was my curiosity that got the better of me. I had the opportunity, Puppylove, to just leave the building… to just keep moving beyond and escape simply and quietly…
But something was gnawing at me. The extra prisoners. I couldn’t leave, could I? I had to know. Yet what I found, it seemed just… damn impossible.
I entered the door and I saw the beeping red light immediately – this time I knew where to look for it. I smiled for you, Puppylove. Licked my teeth for the camera, just for you. Nobody came.
First I went back to the medical level, the white hallway and rooms. The machines. The busy bee Orderlies. And I moved about them with total impunity.
It was the strangest feeling – I just walked past them as though they didn’t notice me there. Some of these Orderlies share the same faces, and that can be a little jarring. There were also Nurses buzzing about. And every once in awhile I feel like I catch a spark of recognition from one of them, but they just go about their business. None of them speak to me, but none of them speak around me either. It’s as though there’s an aura that surrounds me that tells them to shut up. Which is strange because there’s voices down the hallway, in other rooms, just outside my auditory field. Murmuring.
I walk down the white hallway and peer into rooms. I see them, buzzing about their machines, some in strange all-white uniforms that cover their heads but not their faces. Sparks fly somewhere, in front of someone wearing dark shades. Sometimes one of these busy bees will stand in a doorway, peering at me, not allowing me to look around them.
Are you showing me? Are you letting them show me? Show, but not tell?
I make my way back to the staircase. It's time to go see the extra prisoners. And see them I do.
Their boxes have numbers.
Numbers that correspond to us.
The boxes begin at number 16. The first I come across is the one in box 24, with curly black hair and scruff. He's sweaty and shocked to see me.
"Who're... who're you?"
I answer quietly, just above a whisper. "My name's Rita. What's yours?" I approach him -- he's sitting in the corner of this converted cubicle, knees up to his face. There's a mattress inside the cube -- pillow and blanket. What is going on here? races through my mind. They're just sitting in the dark doing nothing. Who feeds them? Who takes them to the bathroom?
Or do they even need to be fed?
I shiver.
"You know you can leave here. There's very little security."
He's shaking, almost violently. Rocking back and forth. He never did answer my question about a name. I prompt him again, but his head moves from side to side -- almost a convulsion. He begins to mouth a word, and stutters, "Kah...Kap...Kapl...Ka..." but then resigns his attempt. "I don't remember. None of us remember."
These are shadows of human beings in this dark place.
There's nobody in the cube across from 24. The corresponding number would be 27. They're lined three rows deep in each aisle, so six to an aisle. And they don't really appear to be talking to each other.
"Who's in charge here?" I shout across the entire floor. Nobody answers.
I hear sobbing. Someone says, "They won't let me die." This is only a row over from the quiet man in box 24. The sobbing is coming from the man in box 34. And I recognize him because he's the man I've been spending my nights with.
What have you people done?
Naturally, he doesn't recognize me whatsoever. I ask him his name and he says, "They told me my name is Anthony."
"Who told you that, Anthony?" I whisper quietly and kneel beside him. I stroke his hair from his face. He looks younger than his counterpart, but like the man in 24, you can tell he's been crying. He's shaking, but it seems like it's not for the same reasons. He's humming a tune, but I can't place it.
"A man came in here. Said I was owed a debt. He said my name was Anthony. He rambled on with these stories. He stopped me from trying to throw myself out the window. Said that we all owe him a great..."
And he starts convulsing violently on the floor. He's epileptic, seizing. I find myself startled and knocked backward onto the mattress. I'm hoping he doesn't bite off his own tongue. I rush back to him and hug him close to me tight, hoping it will somehow stave off the seizure as quickly as possible.
Did you watch all of this, Puppylove? Did you see genuine emotion in me? Pathos? What is it you're trying to prove?
I wait until the seizure passes and then lay Anthony down on his mattress.
There's only one more thing for me to look for in this place. I hear someone say, "Huh," from a few rows over, near a window. Then I'm tiptoeing down the aisles to find box 63.
But nobody's there.
Sincerely yours,
Rita
Tags: busy bees
25. extinction event (me)
Let’s talk about Anthony Block. For that we have to go back in time, around a hundred years, back to 1939 and a man named Leo Szilard. At the beginning of this particular story, this man, this physicist, was lost… driving around Long Island, searching for the most brilliant man alive; maybe even the most brilliant man who ever lived. Can you imagine the course of history being determined by simply offering directions to the wrong lost driver?
And then there’s that question about history having an architecture.
Maybe it actually began with a book, years before that. Maybe it began when Szilard read H.G. Wells The World Set Free, in which the master of science fiction offered his vision of a world with nuclear weapons, published in 1914. Upon reading that book, Szilard conceived of the nuclear chain reaction. Just another example of how books can change the world in the most inconceivable ways… Szilard learned that an experiment had been conducted in 1939 Nazi Germany, an experiment that had successfully produced nuclear fission. This man realized the danger of leaving such technology to the Germans of that era, so desperate on world domination and creating their perfect man. He drafted a letter that would be sent to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But who was Szilard? Why would FDR listen to him?
So he got in his car and drove to Long Island and got lost, looking for a particular house, a particular man, with whom he could share a particular discussion and gain a signature on his letter. The man was Albert Einstein, and the letter became the basis for the Manhattan Project, which led to America’s development of atomic weapons. The letter was the greatest regret of Einstein’s life. Szilard’s too.
