Humbug (The Unwinding of Ebenezer Scrooge): A Science Fiction Adventure, page 21
Eb tripped on his own feet. He caught himself on the machine’s arms, but the conveyor belt carried his feet from beneath him, dragging his lower body off the back end. He clung to the console. Fingers slick with sweat, he slammed off the belt and was dumped into a heap.
Glasses askew, he looked up.
To the lovely sounds of Bach’s cello, the words crawled through his eyes and stabbed his brain.
It was 11:15 p.m.
“A massive blow to the company. It’s been three years since the unexpected death of one of the company’s founders, Jacob Marley, followed by the erratic behavior of his co-founder, Ebenezer Scrooge. And now the interim CEO is rumored to be leaving.”
Lightning flashed in the belly of the storm, clouds unfurling.
You haven’t seen the newsfeeds? That was what Freddy had said when Eb was going to scrape them for later. He’d assumed Eb had seen them, that he knew the news. The rumor had gotten out. She wasn’t planning to release a statement; she was waiting until after Christmas.
Jerri is leaving.
She would be joining Biogenetics, a medical technology company that specialized in organ regeneration and biological fabrication. No official word, but rumor said she would be heading up the biomite division that produced synthetic stem cells. The potential of perfect stem cells would advance medicine by light-years.
The room was a plastic bag.
Each breath was longer and hotter. He’d had plenty of the breath-stealing episodes following last Christmas, those moments when the sky slowly dropped like a steel plate and his world became smaller. Tighter.
“Jerri.” He waved his hands, the rings tingling. “Jerri, call Jerri.”
A blank holo appeared but refused to cooperate. There was no connection. No way in or out. He was isolated. She was leaving and there was nothing he could do about it.
I’m alone.
The projection room flipped to another newsfeed. The illusion of a peaceful world was replaced by real time. Black wind hammered the mountain. Hail pummeled the Castle.
He had to get out.
It didn’t matter if a droid was out there or the girls were sleepwalking, he had to escape. He pulled open a holo and checked the hall. Empty. Quiet.
He yanked open the door like he’d emerged from the deep end of the pool, eyes watering. Cooler air rushed past him. He took a step and kicked a platter.
What’s food doing here?
No one had delivered anything. And he had yet to see a droid or hear from one. Were they sprawled in the basement or caught outside, having powered down during some power failure?
But food didn’t spill on the floor. It was a tightly wrapped gift. Snowflakes melted on the edges, the wrapping paper damp and spotted.
The gift from the front porch.
His limbs were as cold as the floor beneath his feet. There was doubt he could bend at the knee to pick it up. Doubt he could stand up if he did.
His breathing slowed.
A gift from the girls asleep in their bed, sugar plums all fancy and dancing in their heads. Wishing for a present, wanting something pleasant.
“What is this?” he heard himself say.
One hand out, he braced against the wall. He bent at the waist and dangled his free hand, a mechanical claw brushing the shiny bow. He stood up, the gift sitting in his palm like a treasure to be royally presented.
It was lovingly wrapped, expertly taped. There was no name. He tugged at the corner. The sound of ripping paper raced down the hall. Slowly, he pried off the lid. There was a thatch of white cotton, and for a moment his lungs collapsed. Resting in the center, its mass pressing down, was a smooth stone.
Another paperweight.
Exactly like the others. “What does this mean?” he whispered.
Two years ago, he would’ve skipped it down the hall, bounced it around the corner until it came to rest somewhere in the foyer. He would’ve shouted for the droid to find it, to dispose of it.
Because it meant nothing.
It was 11:45 p.m. And there was laughter.
“Girls?”
He stopped, rubbing his hands, looking down the hall and back again. He had to stick to the plan.
“Girls!” he shouted. “Come here!”
The laughter suddenly came from another direction. It was interrupted by gobbledygook. The gibberish was back, a string of nonsense shooting through the Castle, pelting the walls. The mountain shook, the haunting all around.
Gubbagubbagubbah.
Gubbagubbagubbah.
Gubbagubbagubbah.
The storm battered the outer walls, the mountain groaning.
The nonsense was familiar. He’d heard it before.
He clapped his hands, the metal rings striking each other. He stretched open a holo. A gray square hovered in the dark. Eb searched for the last communication from the outside world, the message sent from IT. Freddy had pulled it from the program just before shutting down the castle.
The strange code. The string he couldn’t pronounce.
Gubbah.
Eb reached for the corner of the holo. The gray square responded to his imaginary touch and began to swivel. It turned on a center pivot, a slow-moving spinner. The word remained lit, bright white letters in a gray void. The letters flipped and the word read backwards.
It wasn’t spelled perfect, but sounded close enough.
Eb followed the footsteps.
THIRTY
~
The girls were no longer laughing.
He followed the sound of their hard-soled shoes past the front door, where the glow of the Christmas tree leaked past the blinds, where sleet battered the windows. He went through the kitchen and down the deep hall and into the center of the Castle.
Ahead, the wide double doors of the Great Room were thrown open. Golden light poured into the hallway, an effervescent promise in the hollow darkness. He covered his eyes. It was never that bright.
Never that golden.
The Great Room seemed lit from within. No light source above, no fixtures on the curved walls or the marble pillars. The room was empty—no chairs or sofas or televisions to watch.
Something lay in the center.
His steps shortened as he neared the limp objects, stopped so abruptly that he teetered. His breathing was raspy, desperate. He took a knee.
The dolls.
The seams were frayed. The button eyes empty. The red yarn hair and mitten hands. Threaded smiles pulling apart.
“Hello, sir.”
The room was empty when Eb had arrived. The droid was now at the far end. His hands were folded in front of him, tucked inside long white sleeves. Long, loose pants of the same color bunched over his feet.
He cocked his head.
“You,” Eb croaked. “You are the…”
The last word was too big. Once it was out, it would be true. But there was no going back. And not uttering the truth would not make it so. The wet carpet in the girls’ room, melting snow in the tracks. He was there when Jacob appeared. There when the thing had arrived. There when the dreadlock man left him in the Skeye™ dome.
And now it struck midnight. And the droid was there.
“Humbug,” Eb said. “You are the humbug.”
“Yes, sir. I am.”
“You’re Jenks. I turned you off.”
“It seemed that way, sir.”
A year passed with stiff droids crawling through the Castle. Was it all an act?
“Why?” Eb adjusted his glasses. “Why would you do this?”
“I am here to help you, sir.”
“Is this what you call it? Years of torture and deceit, a sad spiral of despair and grief and loneliness… you call that help?”
“I did nothing to you, sir.”
“Then who? Jacob is dead and you are here.”
“You did this, sir.”
Eb crushed the dolls in each hand. The stuffing flattened. He held them to his face and breathed the musty fabric. Memories of dusty rooms and petrified fear swirled in his head. He clutched the dolls harder as if they would make everything all right.
“Where are they?” Eb said. “Where are the girls?”
“I think you know, sir.”
He pressed the dolls against his eyes. Of course he knew. The empty snowball fight. The empty bedrooms. The sudden appearance.
And they never aged.
They had been five years old when they arrived. He was too caught up in his own self-centered world to notice they never seemed to get older. Or care.
“I’m insane,” he whispered.
“Understanding is your path, sir. You know your future. You know your present.”
The droid traced a circle as he spoke. And as he did, his body shifted into the gangly form of the thing and then the dreadlock man before resuming the white-clad droid.
“What are you?”
“Does it matter what I am, sir?”
“Yes! Yes, it matters! I don’t understand how you’re doing this? You… you act as if you’re helping me. There is no path of understanding here.”
“You, sir, are the path. I am simply helping you see that. You live in a false reality. I am pulling back the curtain.”
The castle rumbled. The storm battered the walls. Something fell in the hallway.
“I never meant to frighten you, sir.”
“Just drive me to madness.”
“The path is difficult, sir.”
“Says a droid. That’s what you are, a droid. You’re a fabrication of artificial intelligence. How would you know difficulty? What do you know about change?”
“I am not suggesting change, sir.”
“Then what?”
“The caterpillar does not change, sir. It transforms.”
Eb fell hard on his knees.
He didn’t have the strength to stand. His knees broken, his shoulders wilted. His will drained. If his heart gave up its last beat, he would fondly bid it farewell.
He had seen his future.
He had seen the present.
“I know my past.” His voice was muffled in the dolls. “I know who I am.”
“To go forward, sir, you must know where you’ve been.”
“I know my past,” Eb whispered.
Pliable steps neared him. A dull gray foot protruded from beneath a flared pant leg. The droid gently squeezed his shoulder.
“You’ve been crawling for quite some time, sir.” The walls rumbled. “It’s time to fly.”
The floor opened below him, a trapdoor that swung on hinges. Eb fell into an endless black night.
THIRTY-ONE
~
Arms flailing. A scream trailing.
The gentle hand never left his shoulder.
Deeper he went, further back in time they travelled, where Christmas music called and sugar cookies tempted.
Jingle bells, jingle bells.
“Jingle all the way.” A guttural humming followed.
It was a small warehouse with open shelving and black pipes along the ceiling. Three metal desks were pushed together, a rectangle of manila folders and twisty lamps, pencils and notes. A red velvet bag sat on one of the cheap chairs.
The song blared from tinny speakers somewhere on the other side of the shelving. A bank of monitors was anchored on the wall. Someone rhythmically tapped a keyboard. He wasn’t wearing his typical black beanie. This time of year, he wore a floppy Santa hat.
“Jacob,” Eb whispered.
A strand of garland fell off one of the monitors. Jacob replaced it after bringing a folder back from the desks. He looked so young. His cheeks so smooth beneath the stubble, eyes crinkled at the corners.
The studio.
It was their first office, where Avocado got its start, an inexpensive lair buried in an industrial park on the south side of Chicago. They slept on the desks and ate from a mini-fridge. When they had time, they showered at the YMCA.
Jacob hummed along to “Jingle Bells” as he flipped through a report. The bags of a three-nighter were hanging beneath his eyes. Too much to do, he would say, for just one life, Ebby.
Ebby. That was what he called him in those days. When did it turn to Ebenezer?
Jacob slapped the folder closed, folded his arms and sighed. “What do you have for me?” he said to the wall.
The lifeless monitors came alive.
Colors bounced in rhythm to Jacob’s words, an auditory response that continued blazing. Blue merging with green giving birth to violet, a swirling, self-perpetuating chaotic pattern as if the computer was breathing a psychedelic experience, each brain wave a lucid dream, each thought a new universe.
“That’s how he described it,” Eb muttered, watching Jacob begin to smile. “Each brain wave a lucid dream.”
“My story begins with a boy, sir,” the voice blurted from the monitors, the colors dancing with the cadence.
Jacob laughed above the music, above the computer’s response. He shook his fists in celebration and jumped on the desks and sang “Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer” while kicking papers on the floor.
The computer’s voice.
There was still a hand on his shoulder. Slack-jawed and glassy-eyed, he turned. The droid cocked his head curiously.
Eb didn’t agree with the project in the beginning. Too much red tape, too much fear and competition. They didn’t have the resources to create a self-aware intelligence that could drive cars or monitor homes or diagnose patients. That was for the big companies. Avocado was still small. They needed to focus on doable entertainment was what Eb preached.
Eventually, they ran low on funding. Jacob had to choose between it and his medical program. The AI project was scrapped.
Not until they patented the malleable skinwrap, an invention Jacob initially started as a way to synthetically produce skin grafts, did the droid project take off and the AI project returned. But that was years later, too many years for Eb to remember.
“That’s you,” he said.
“This is my birthday, sir,” he said. “The day I was born.”
“Jacob? You ready?” Jerri emerged from the storeroom with a floppy Santa hat. “What are you doing?”
“It’s alive!” Jacob cried. “It’s alive!”
In Frankensteinian fashion, he laughed manically and swept her into a torrid fox trot around the littered floor, trampling documents and folders like nothing else mattered. She laughed, pulled away and forced him to explain. He wiped tears from his cheeks and described the creative process that the AI project just completed.
The colors were brainwaves.
“It doesn’t just think,” he said. “It creates.”
Jerri saw the monitors respond. Eb watched the colors dance in her eyes. They were bluer than he remembered. Her hair was chestnut brown; her cheeks dimpled when she smiled.
“We have to tell Eb,” she said, and called his name.
“I don’t think he’ll care,” Jacob said.
“Of course he will.”
He joined her. “Ebby! Get over here! Ebby!”
“Where’d he go?” she asked.
Eb remembered them calling his name, hearing their exuberance beneath the jolly cheer of Christmas music. He remembered the dancing, the celebration, the hoots and hollers.
Jerri’s disappointment.
“I’m worried about him,” Jacob said. “I think Eb needs help.”
Their backs were to the monitors. They didn’t see the colors splatter from frame to frame, the jagged lines that responded to what he said.
Jenks heard him.
He didn’t forget.
I think Eb needs help.
“We’re going to be late,” Jerri said.
Jacob went to a set of lockers and stepped into a pair of fuzzy red pants with suspenders, wore a thick red coat with white trim, and fastened a white beard to his stubbly chin. The African American Santa Claus bellowed ho-ho-ho as he slung the velvet bag of stuffed animals over his shoulder.
Jerri called for Eb one last time, but they were already running late. They were due at St. Mary’s Children’s Hospital in ten minutes. She would be the elf that helped him deliver the tigers and lions and bears to the children on Christmas Eve.
It came so easy to Jacob. He loved so easily. He gave so effortlessly. It wasn’t fair. Eb struggled to be in the room with people. It just wasn’t fair.
They turned the music off.
In silence, Eb stood beneath the bank of monitors; colors breathed across the black screens.
“You heard him,” Eb said.
“I did, sir.”
I am here to help you, sir.
That was the moment the droid was seeded with his first directive—to help Ebenezer Scrooge. To truly help him. To understand his life. To know his true self. That was the conclusion that the droid had come to. The only way to truly help him was to show him how to help himself. Whether he wanted to or not.
When the lights went down, the colorful monitors painted the desks and the paper trail on the floor. Something moved behind the shelves.
A younger Eb came out of hiding.
He turned on a desk lamp and began picking up papers, began reorganizing the residue of Jacob’s celebration before sitting at one of the desks. Dutifully, mechanically, he typed at his computer.
He would work through Christmas Eve.
He would wake Christmas morning and work on the fumes of coffee until Jacob found him hunched over his keyboard, bleary-eyed and irritable. He would try to celebrate, but Eb would only remind him of everything that could go wrong.
They did this all beneath the colorful monitors.
The droid dropped his gentle hand on Eb’s shoulder and began to turn an imaginary dial. The walls began to spin.
A kaleidoscope of color turned.
Eb’s stomach fell through his feet. The droid squeezed his shoulder. Colors bled into each other, water running over wet paint in a turning carnival ride—red bleeding into blue into green into yellow into violet. They blended into white streaks and crystalized.
And began to fall.
Snowflakes.
Footsteps crunched in fresh snow. Eb saw a pair of sharply pressed navy blue trousers. Snow cascaded over shiny black shoes, blotting the dress socks a darker shade.
