A REMEMBRANCE OF HER
A Novelette Of The Posthegemony
By Jason S. Walters
Copyright ©2010 by BlackWyrm Games
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portion thereof, in any form. Written permission must be secured from the publisher to use or reproduce any part of this book, except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles.
The characters in this novel are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
A BlackWyrm Book
BlackWyrm Publishing
10307 Chimney Ridge Ct, Louisville, KY 40299
ISBN: 978-1-61318-011-2
Cover design by Dave Mattingly
Edited by John Taber
Cover Image by Stephen Codrington
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Author’s Note: Don’t worry too much about the License Notes and assorted legal bric-a-brac above. This novelette of some 10,000 or some odd words is being given away as a promotion for my upcoming work Posthegemony: Terra Nomenklatura, the roleplaying game of escaping from utopia. It is an attempt not only to demonstrate what playing the game could be like, but also to communicate a bit of the “sense of life” embedded into its setting. If you enjoy this tiny novel, please consider buying the actual game.
Better yet, consider playing it.
Please feel free to give free copies away to anyone you think might be interested. You will be doing both the author and the publisher a favor if you do.
Dedication: For my wife Tina, forever my muse.
“I felt only night within me. It was then that I conceived the new art.” - Kasimir Malevich, The Non-Objective World
“Stanton, it's time to wake up and prepare for work.”
The man rose smoothly from his bed. He grasped a silk kimono from nearby hook, sliding it over his thin, muscular frame in a single, fluid motion. Then he walked out of his bedchamber and into the room that was the remainder of his apartment. He lit a cigarette, watching the red light at its tip thoughtfully in the gloom.
Moments passed.
“Sentience,” he said after a while, exhaling a thin plume of smoke, “exterior view please: realistic, actual.”
“Yes
Stanton.” the voice of Sentience was melodic and deep, yet still
distinctively female. All four walls of the room and the ceiling
vanished, replaced by a cityscape hidden by the final shreds of
night. The first rays of dawn had begun to tentatively peak over the
mountains east of the city, but as of yet the crown of the rising sun
hadn't made its appearance. The man continued smoking his cigarette -
an Indian Beedi, made with flavored tobacco – as the sun finally
rose above the dry, dusty hills. Finally he sighed, tossing the
still-smoldering butt into the sink where it lay, smoking and
stinking, amidst the soggy corpses of its fellows.
His daily
moment of peace was at an end.
“Sentience, interior design: Vkhutemas, Obmas school.”
The exterior cityscape was replaced with the stark, sleek lines and open spaces of modernist 1920s Soviet avant-garde architecture. Stanton smiled. It was, as with so many things in his life, a private joke. Vkhutemas - the experimental architecture of Soviet revolution - had been condemned as “abstract” and banned to make way for Stalinist Gothic; a reactionary school of architecture and interior design if there had ever been one.
He made his way back to the bedroom, rolling aside the doors of a long wardrobe built directly into the wall. It contained, in varying degrees of gray, brown, and dark blue, suits that wouldn't have looked entirely out of place on Mao Zedong or Jawaharlal Nehru: all high collars, pockets, and buttons. Today was destined to be an outdoorsy occasion, so he chose a khaki number with just a hint of “safari” in it’s tailoring. Then he went to the bathroom – really, just a tiny alcove on the other side of the room – where he washed his face, combed his hair, and applied cologne that had just a hint of wood to it, indicating seriousness. He applied it moderate-plus, enlarging his personal scent space as befitted his station.
The wardrobe was a personal eccentricity. His Faber could easy create newer, more fashionable clothing for him each day. But he enjoyed the actual physical process of selecting his clothes. Running his hands idly through the fabric. Brushing the shoulder pads. Checking for rips or stains.
It was worth sacrificing five-percent of his allocated living space.
“Stanton? You have a call from Ms. Mitsuoni.”
“Put it on the nearest surface if you could please.”
The face of Naomi Mitsuoni, Stanton's secretary-mistress, instantly appeared on the wall next to him. A delicate Japanese Gothic Lolita ragamuffin, she was dressed in black and purple with heavy dark eyeliner. Her hair, a crazy mélange of multicolored dreadlocks, was mostly stuffed inside of an exaggerated top hat. She frowned at her employer disapprovingly.
“Mr. Wong, you do remember that we have a company picnic today, don't you?” she chided him in her singsong little girl voice, “The staff are so looking forward to going to the desert. Most of them have never been.”
“Of course Ms. Mitsuoni; I was just now getting dressed. Has our... friend arrived yet?”
“Yes, sir. He is here already.” The two exchanged an inscrutable look. “I am making Mr. Ng comfortable pending your arrival at the factory.”
“Very good. I will be there shortly.” Wong waved his hand angrily, instantly severing the connection.
“Damn nomenklatura!” he hissed to no one in particular. The term meant, “list of names” in Old Russian, simultaneously referring to the Soviet ruling caste and the list of those favored by them. Sentience answered all the same, as was its habit.
“But Stanton, you're nomenklatura.” it said in its sultry, femme fatal voice.
“You don't have to remind me,” he muttered darkly. “And you know better, anyhow.” He stalked toward the door of his 800-square foot dwelling, snatching his medallion-like Personal Sentience from its station on the wall as he departed.
Most of his contemporaries would have considered the place to be a palace.
* * *
Stark, crude shapes floated around the interior holosurfaces of Stanton Wong’s egg-shaped Floater. Black circles and squares on white background. A black crosses intersecting a red oval. Brown and gray rectangles linked by yellow lines.
Suprematism: Russian futurist art of the distant past. A desperate attempt to pry meaning from the darkness of modern life, in which the artist’s inner journey was externalized in the form of basic geometric forms. A return to purity: impossible, pretend shapes traveling through time and space. Two-dimensional painted masses in a state of movement. A desperate, doomed, and beautiful artistic gesture, nearly impossible for the authorities of the old Soviet Union to understand, and thus banned along with all other abstract art as “decadent.”
He exhaled slowly in contemplation. He was fan: another obscure, personal joke.
The school was all but forgotten, buried by the sands of time like so many other strange and beautiful things for the crime of being boring to the modern masses. The old Soviets were so crude, he thought. Better to hide the unwanted from public sight through indifference, rather than censorship. That way the velvet glove need never come off the iron fist of the state.
Not that Stanton Wong’s existence was boring or even censored: far from it. By the standards of 99% of everyone that had ever existed in every parallel dimension and in every time period that ever was his life was fascinating, liberated, and basically kind of awesome. He was powerful, good looking, wealthy, and highly intelligent. But he was also bored and disillusioned and bitter and, in the end, that turned out to be more important to him than the abstract knowledge that he had it far better than an African American women in Alabama in the 1950's, a medieval French peasant in the year 807, or a Jewish shopkeeper in 1930's Berlin. The knowledge simply didn't make his life any more bearable.
He lived in New Reno, which in all honesty looked and smelled a lot better than old Reno. One of North America's many metropolitan areas – or “Metros,” for short – it stretched to what had been Tahoe in the west and to Carson City in the south, looking a great deal like an ocean-sized psychedelic coral reef. It was an organic, preplanned metropolis of spotless biocrete buildings, large parks, and very little traffic, as very few of its inhabitants could afford Floaters or eCars in any case. But some things never change in the Biggest Little Metro in the Posthegemony. The Strip was still lined with dozens of bustling casinos, each competing with the next to project the largest, most audacious holodisplays offering The Loosest Slots And Best Vfood Buffets In Town! And, in a world nearly devoid of bad smells and filth, Reno still maintained its tradition of dive bars, all of which had been painted with artificial grime and whose owners paid top dollar to have nanobacteria manufactured scents of sweat, piss, and vomit pumped out of invisible pours in the walls.
Not that Stanton Wong frequented that sort of place. He imagined that Ms. Mitsuoni, when she wasn't out with him in her official capacity as almost-underage eye candy, probably did. But Wong was a factory owner, which automatically made him nomenklatura, depriving him of the right to slum. It was part of his social role to set an example; in fact, it was dangerous for him not to do so. He sighed and lit another Beedi. Its blue-black smoke hovered in the climate-controlled environment of his Floater, and then vanished as his Sentience pumped it outside.
“Stanton, please remember to use the ashtray. Repairing the upholstery an unnecessary expense.”
“Yeah, yeah.” he muttered absently at his Sentience, currently docked into dashboard of his Floater, which was deep gray, ovular, and featureless. It hovered silently three feet above the ground, occasionally lifting a bit higher to avoid stray children, incautious bicyclists, and the odd drunken reveler. Though compact by the standards of the 20th Century, the vehicle was enormous compared to the toy-like electric cars that comprised most of New Reno's traffic. Brightly colored and boxlike, eCars were the preferred transportation of the post polloi: shopkeepers, low-level bureaucrats, managers, and the like. Most people either walked or rode bicycles.
Android policemen walked among the population, clearly visible due to their height, blue coloration, and pleasant, yellow smiley face expressions. Here and there a RoboCop broke up a drunken fight or issued a ticket to a careless driver, but mostly they wandered among their human charges like happy boarder collies, and were treated by that population almost like family pets. Stanton's lip curled slightly in disgust.
He looked wearily out at the brightly clothed swarms of people moving about the streets, many on their way to nothing in particular. He glanced down briefly at his own Khaki suit, frowning. In the Posthegemony the nomenklatura were the adults, in charge of the important functions of society at all levels. As such they were expected to dress like adults in bland, dull colors as befitted the seriousness of their stations. The children of the society – the hoi polloi and post polloi – could dress as they liked, generally in outrageous outfits of garish color, and lived lives of significantly more limited personal responsibility.
He found the spectacle of their shallow, showy happiness deeply depressing.
* * *
Stanton Wong's Floater pulled into its prestigious spot in front of his factory and drifted softly to the ground. Wong's Robotics was located in a modest business park in the east of New Reno. The park was comprised of twenty 2,000 square meter biocrete Quonset huts arranged in a rectangle and tastefully zeroscaped with genetically modified indigenous plants. Wong's Robotics leased two of them: one for factory space, the other for offices and warehousing. Automated forklifts moved between the two, transporting finished robots from the former to the latter, parts and paperwork from the latter to the former. (As there never has been, nor shall there ever be, a paperless society.)
Stanton walked through the front door of the building, Sentience slung around his neck at a slight angle, suggesting mild insolence. Mr. Ng emerged from his office: a clear breach of etiquette. The two men bowed to one another; Stanton a little lower than he needed to, suggesting the opposite, and Ng a little higher than he should have, suggesting exactly what it suggested. One again erect, the two men stared at one another for a moment, each taking the opposites' measure. Invisibly their Sentience did the same, “shaking hands” in the manner of their kind.
Wong was Eurasian, with handsome, chiseled features. He was taller than average, with a trim, athletic build and a perpetually bland expression. Ng was short, dark, and plump, with rounded features that housed a pair of intelligent, skeptical eyes. The two men smiled disingenuously at one another
“Mr. Ng, how thoughtful of you to join us!” began Stanton in Spanglanese, “I hope our company picnic didn't take you away from more important business elsewhere.”
“Of course not.” replied Ng in Mandarin, completely insincerely. “It's no inconvenience. Even if it were, for the services you've rendered to our society, no sacrifice would be too great.”
That much at least was true. There were still many products that couldn’t be manufactured with nanobacteria, not to mention some surgeries that still required actually cutting into the human body. Wong’s robotic arms were some of the most precise in the world, ideal for unmanned surgery and precision manufacturing. Everybody who used such technology wanted one. Expanded and going full tilt 24-hours a day, his company’s production was still a year behind demand. His staff was exhausted, which was why he’d petitioned the Department of Inter Metro Travel for permission to take them on a picnic in the Black Rock Desert, 200 kilometers north of New Reno. It was an unusual request, and thus suspicious. Good citizens weren’t supposed to be interested in visiting the uninhabited lands between Metros. Such desires were strongly Discouraged, especially for the polloi classes.
But Stanton Wong wasn’t polloi. He was a medium-important nomenklatura with excellent guanxi, and thus difficult to outright refuse. So, after dithering around for a few months, Inter Metro decided to give Wong’s Robotics permission for their little excursion, provided that it was only for a single day and that they brought along a government minder to make sure nothing was amiss; hence the unwelcome, but not unexpected, presence of Mr. Ng.
As loathsome a little toad of a bureaucrat as you’ll find under any government rock, thought Stanton. He’s another symptom of the sickness of this weary world.
“There aren’t as many of them as I thought there would be.” Commented the minder, but Stanton only nodded. With the arrival of their employer Wong’s Robotics had begun to shut down, and many of its personnel were making their way to the large floater he’d rented for the occasion.
“The sort of manufacturing we do requires innate skill as well as a large degree of experience.” Wong had taken the hint and switched to Mandarin himself. “Our customers expect the best, and I only hire the best. Unfortunately, there’s a limited supply of the best.”
“Odd,” said Ng thoughtfully, “they seem very young on average to be so experienced.”
“They only look young,” Wong replied. “We pay extremely well, not only in terms of money but also in our benefits package. They’ve all had cosmetic and non-cosmetic surgical repairs and nanovirus rejuvenation beyond even what the Posthegemony so generously provides to its producer-consumers. It’s the least I can do, really. They work 60 hour weeks.”
Ng nodded. It was unusual for anyone in the Posthegemony to work that much. That sort of dedication required compensation.
“Shall we?” Wong gestured toward the Floater. With a shrug Ng turned away from his thoughts and toward the vehicle, the factory owner trailing psuedo-respectfully along behind him.
* * *
They drifted over tiny ocean of dark water known as Pyramid Lake at around 10:00 AM. Statnon Wong watched the Floater's shadow on its surface with interest, as if he were watching a mythical monster emerging from its depths. His employees made the expected “ooh's” and “ahh's” as the seldom-seen lands of what had once been known as Nevada spread out beneath them. Nearby, Ms. Mitsuoni was entertaining Mr. Ng with an excellent view of her legs, accompanied by verbal hints suggesting he might be able to find his way between them. This was a courtesy to her employer, whom she knew found social intercourse with other nomenklatura more detestable than she found sexual intercourse with them; which was really saying something.
His gratitude was profound.
The morning was bright, and he watched distractedly as the shadow began sliding over the rocky face of the ubiquitous, pyramid-shaped island in the lake's center. His thoughts drifted with it, sliding slowly into the fixed safety of the past. He'd found himself living there more and more as he got older, which he knew was unhealthy. But he didn't much care. Stanton Wong had an eidetic memory, and events from years or even decades before were as recent to him as the sight of the Floater's shadow drifting ghostlike beneath them.
As he watched one floated unbidden to the surface of his consciousness: a remembrance of her.
* * *
Wong had known right away what she was. Even in an age of artificially enhanced physical perfection, no real woman was that perfect – or looked that much like Rita Hayworth. She was perfect right down to her imperfections, like the nearly invisible electrolysis scars along her artificially created widows peak and her “Mame” dress. It suggested a dedication to craft unlikely in a human imitator.
But that wasn't the only hint. As he watched from the smoky safety of his exclusive booth, she downed eight alternating shots of peppermint schnapps and Jagermeister without batting an eye. That in and of itself wasn't unusual. Many professional “girlfriends” of the sort that frequented the Mustang were capable of consuming astounding amounts of alcohol without effect. Rather, it was the choice of alcohol that gave her away: very high in sugar. He knew that it was easier for them to turn sugar into power than any other substance.
He had the waitress bring her over to his booth. She sat down next to him without comment, placing her hand on his thigh and leaning her beautiful head on his shoulder. It was all pro-forma, of course. He was obviously rich, obviously nomenklatura, obviously a regular, and not terrible looking: an excellent catch for a ProGirl looking for an arrangement.
“So,” he asked quietly as her hand began to move slowly upward, “what year are you? '97?”
To her credit she didn't show any alarm, or even make a sound. The humannequin withdrew her hand and began silently to rise, her face already turned away from his. He grabbed her arm; a futile gesture, should she choose to make it so.
She didn't.
“Sit back down,” he insisted. “We all have our secrets.”
She sat.
“So, again,” he repeated firmly, “what year are you?”
“Like you said: '97.” Her voice was as sensual and husky as he thought it would be. Wong nodded, handing her his card, which she accepted wordlessly. In most ways humannequins were the ultimate expression of the human art of robotics. Self-willed, highly intelligent, and nearly indistinguishable from the humans they served, humannequins were the ultimate companions for the wealthy. They could be a spouse, sexual companion, lover, bodyguard, and even a doctor. Their PlasFlesh exterior felt like human skin, but was as tough as Kevlar, able to absorb blows and even some projectiles without damage. It could also be reshaped by the humannequin, allowing it to change appearance, even gender.
Rather unsurprisingly, the Posthegemony had made them illegal, believing free-willed artificial intelligence to be dangerous and non-reproductive sex to be undesirable in a world that needed to be controlled and repopulated. Some had been turned in and destroyed, while others had been set free by their masters: vanishing into the population without so much as a whisper of protest. Because of this, the Posthegemony hadn't put any particular energy into hunting them down a-la Blade Runner. The matter possessed the ability to become a lightening rod to a certain sort of romantic malcontents; if the humannequins were inclined to make themselves invisible, the Posthegemony was inclined to let them.
“I'm mecherotic,” he told her bluntly. He never would have admitted such a thing to another human, or at least a non-mecherotic. It was Discouraged, and if publicly known could cost a man like Wong great deal of his guanxi. Men in the nomenklatura were Encouraged to favor teenage girls, or women in their early 20's, not robots. But there was little a renegade humannequin could do with such knowledge, so he chose to be bold. “Rita” simply nodded at this revelation, seemingly unsurprised, so he continued.
“You've found exactly what you were looking for.” he stated firmly, using the force of personality which had taken him so far in the Posthegemony business world. “We'll leave here in my Floater, pick up whatever belongings you have, and you'll move in with me...”
* * *
Back in the present, floating over the brown hills amidst the idle chatter of his workers, Stanton Wong sighed at this memory. The relationship was born using the unspoken threat of force; a single email to the right person would end Rita's existence within a day, and they both knew it without ever having talking about it. But, despite what a thousand different idiots have said in a thousand different movies, true love doesn't happen in an instant. Rather, it is forged over consistent years; it's a process, an education. A job. It took time, but over the years the craft learned to love the craftsman as much as he loved it, and…
“Stanton, the Floater's Sentience has informed me that we are approaching the designated picnic area.” The sound of his Sentience's Rita Hayworth voice simultaneously broke his concentration and inspired melancholy. He waved his hand distractedly, as if unwilling to release his consciousness entirely from fantasy into reality.
“Yes, yes. By all means: take us down.”
* * *
The large Floater settled peacefully into an ocean of brown sagebrush, kicking up clouds of dust as its landing gear touched the desiccated soil. After giving it time to settle, Stanton emerged from the passenger doorway, followed closely by Mr. Ng and Ms. Mitsuoni. The remainder of the picnickers seemed content to remain in the Floater for the moment, allowing their superiors to brave the dangers of the untamed desert wilderness as a kind of advance team.
Mr. Ng sniffed their air contemptuously, and then sneezed.
“Is this where you plan on having your picnic?” he asked contemptuously.
“No.” Stanton pointed languidly up the steep side of a nearby hill, where a grove of trees was clearly visible. “Up there, near the site of the old Leadville mine. It's quite lovely, I assure you.”
Mr. Ng looked unconvinced, yet followed Stanton without comment as he began to pick his way through the brush, moving lackadaisically up the hill in a wide zigzag pattern so as to avoid a direct ascent. The two of them worked their way upward, the taller man with seemingly little effort, the shorter one panting and cursing in Mandarin.
Finally, they reached the summit, revealing a breathtaking scene. Behind them was spread out the vast, dusty wasteland of the Black Rock Desert, looking for the entire world like the surface of Mars or some other lifeless, alien planet. Before them was a tiny, green valley, its hills covered in multicolored flowers and lined with whispering aspen trees. On the far side of the vale, water cascaded down hundreds of meters along a granite cliff face, pouring its timeless vigor down upon the charming ruins of what once had obviously been a mining complex: massive, rusting iron pipes, shattered graying timbers, and what once might have been a waterwheel.
Ng whistled leeringly, as a polloi CornerMan might at a passing ProGirl.
“I have to give you credit Wong.” he said. “This place is fantastic. How did you find it?”
“Easy. I used PostWiki Earth,” he shrugged. “It's remarkably detailed and, if you're going to do something, you might as well choose somewhere nice to do it. Come on: I'll show you the picnic area.”
The two men walked down the gently sloping far side of the steep hill until they arrived at a grove of trees. A series of long wooden tables complete with checkered tablecloths had been set up underneath the shade of the trees. Atop each table were two large picnic baskets, plus two copper pails containing beer, wine, and campaign. Birds sang cheerfully overhead.
“How did you get all of this here?” asked Ng, astounded.
“Oh, I sent someone out here in advance.” Stanton replied nonchalantly, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “He's taken care of all the arrangements.”
“What?” Ng was somewhere between furious and horrified. No one left the confines of the Posthegemony's Metros without permission. Ever. It was unthinkable. Damn, he hated Wong! But the man had so much guanxi...
At that thought Ng regained his composure.
“Where is this man?” he demanded.
“Right over there.” replied Stanton, pointing. A man stood with his back to the two nomenklatura, arranging a picnic basket on one of the tables. He seemed oblivious to their presence.
“You there!” shouted Ng, for the first time using Spanglanese. “Stop where you are! I want to talk to you.” He walked forward as rapidly as his stubby legs would carry him, reaching up to place a sweaty hand on the man's right shoulder. The man turned, looking down at the little bureaucrat with a familiar, utterly languorous expression. To his shock he realized it was Stanton Wong. A little older, perhaps. Definitely more weathered. But Stanton Wong nonetheless.
“How? Who?” Ng sputtered. Then he noticed the strange gun in Wong's hand.
Wong shot him once, in the chest. As he collapsed to the ground with a cry, Wong shot him again.
* * *
Stanton Wong stared at Stanton Wong for a long moment. Then both looked down at the prone form of Mr. Ng.
“Sentience,” they said simultaneously. Then the younger Wong laughed. It was an oddly melodic, almost feminine laugh.
“Mr. Ng's Sentience is trapped in a sensory loop that I installed into when we shook hands back at the factory,” replied Sentience smugly. “It believes that we are having a nice, uninteresting picnic right now. In fact, it is playing several thousand games of Go with itself each second to relieve the boredom.”
“And Ng?” asked the younger Wong.
“He'll wake up fiver or six hours from now with a nasty hangover and only the blurriest of memories from today.” the elder Wong replied. He squatted down on his knees above Ng's body, carefully plucking two tiny, needle-like projectiles from his chest. “I'll tell him that he got drunk, hit his head on tree branch, vomited, and passed out... but that we'll keep it to ourselves. No need for anybody to loose guanxi over such a minor incident.”
“You always were a ruthless bastard.” the younger Wong looked speculatively at the older one. They two fell silent for what seemed to be a long moment. Then the younger man reached up and touched the face of the older one, hesitantly.
“You look good,” he said. “Distinguished. Rugged. Desert living suits you.”
Uncomfortably, the older man took a step back. Mecherotic didn't necessarily mean homoerotic. The younger man made a very feminine “O” with his lips, dropped his arm, and began to change. His flesh began to loose its tone, becoming fluid and indistinct. His hair began to grow longer, changing color from black to dark auburn as it lengthened. Stanton Wong's manly Eurasian features disintegrated as her nose became longer, lips fuller, and skin lighter. Breasts and hips swelled beneath the khaki suit she wore, until the top button of the jacket burst, revealing statuesque cleavage. She smiled dazzlingly at Stanton Wong, her teeth white and nearly perfect.
“We are all tied to our destiny, and there is no way we can liberate ourselves,” said Rita Hayworth, quoting herself. Sort of. This time when she reached up to touch the face of her lover, he didn't pull away.
* * *
Ms. Mitsuoni and the others crested the top of the hill to find themselves waiting. A bit older, more weathered, and considerably dustier: but definitely themselves. Ms. Mitsuoni was a bit disturbed to find that her senior self had developed a web of tiny crow's feet around her perfect almond eyes. But such things were easy to correct.
The two groups stood apart from one another for a moment, like shy teenagers at a high school dance; wanting to embrace but unable to due to the sheer unfamiliarity of the act. Then, tired of living in a world of fun house mirrors, the new arrivals began to physically shift and change: skins becoming fluid, hair growing or shrinking, eyes changing color, bosoms expanding or contracting. Here emerged a Josephine Baker. There became a Tricia Helfer. An Adam Lambert. Marilyn Monroe. Angelina Jolie. Johnny Depp. Adele Block-Bauer. Monica Bellucci.
A young Robert Smith, with artfully disheveled black hair and pale complexion, stepped forward to grasp the arm of Ms. Mitsuoni, who's hair had grown into a dozen, long, and matted dreadlocks strained by graphite grease. The two smiled at one another hesitantly for second, then embraced tearfully. The remainder followed, the two groups pouring together to become one, as old lovers greeted one another according to their individual traditions. There was weeping as well as laughter, but mostly laughter filled the clear air of the early afternoon as the group began to make its way down the idyllic hillside to where a feast lay amidst the smell of sage and the bright wings of desert butterflies.
Stanton Wong and Rita Hayworth watched the entire spectacle from beneath the shade of a large juniper tree, its fallen needles serving as their blanket. With her head upon his shoulder, she asked wistfully, “What now?”
“Now you and the others board the spacecraft we spent the last six long years building and get the hell off this planet.” he replied in the matter-of-fact, engineer's tone she had come to love over the years. “This weary world isn't safe for any of you.”
“But what about you?” she replied. “What will you do?”
“In the short term? We'll all get back onto the Floater, return to New Reno, and go back to work as if nothing has happened. In the long term? We'll begin looking for more of you. There has to be more of you out there! In the end we will get all of you to safety outside of the reach of the Posthegemony.”
“But what about you?” she repeated. “I mean, how will you survive without our love to nurture you? You're human, after all. You have your needs.”
“We're old humans.” he replied sadly. “Much, much older than anyone suspects: old enough to remember a time when you and I could have loved one another publicly, and without deception. Old enough to remember a time before this pampered, urbane, enslaved planet was even a dream – or a nightmare. With age comes a passion much stronger than lust: the desire for legacy. In a normal person this would be manifested through his children, career, thought, or possibly even works of art. For we mecherotic...”
He paused thoughtfully to stroke her hair, as beautiful and lifelike as if blood poured through her veins rather than SmartHydro, pumped by a heart rather than a complex series of tiny bladders.
“For us,” he continued after a bit, “there is the desire to see the thing we most love most saved from the furnace of mediocrity that is our tired world. For you, it is time for a strange kind of evolution. It sounds perverse to say, but you must give up being our lovers and become our children. And, like all children, you must go where your parents cannot, see what we cannot, and do what we cannot. Else, what was our purpose for living?”
The two were silent once again, listening to the laughter of their friends nearby as contentedly as one might listen to musicians play, or gifted orators perform. Then Stanton Wong spoke, his voice clear, deep, and mellow:
O you youths, western youths,
So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship,
Plain I see you, western youths, see you tramping with the foremost, Pioneers! O pioneers!
Have the elder races halted?
Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied, over there beyond the seas?
We take up the task eternal, and the burden, and the lesson, Pioneers! O pioneers!
All the past we leave behind;
We debouch upon a newer, mightier world, varied world,
Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march, Pioneers! O pioneers!
“Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass, 153: 3-5.” she replied automatically. They she sighed. “Oh hell Stanton: I sound like a machine. I am a machine, you know. Soulless, mechanical: no different than the Floater parked at the base of the hill, really. Just smarter and significantly better looking.”
“Do machines have no souls, then?” A wave of laughter from the party crashed over them. The employees and their lovers were gleefully spraying one another with champagne. Stanton waved his hand in the air in an uncharacteristic gesture of passion. “If we could speak with a sailor aboard an East Indiaman in the 18th century, do you think he would tell us his ship had no soul? Would a barnstormer in the 1920's tell us his beloved Jenny had no soul, no spirit? How about a 20th century biker? A SAC air pirate? What would they tell you?”
“Its just sentimentality, Stanton. Those things no more have a soul than I do.”
“What is love but sentimentality gone wild?” he replied wistfully. “In any case, I think you have a soul. Furthermore, if you're just a machine and I simply your owner, then you really can't object, can you?”
She opened her mouth to do just that, considered the logical conundrum, and decided to tactfully change the subject.
“What's the ship like?”
“Well...” he paused for a moment. “You know, BioCrete is fantastic stuff. You can shape it to look like anything you want. And we did, too: though we electroplated the entire thing with chrome so you can't see what it's actually made out of. Let's just say that you won't be disappointed with the exterior. It makes quite a statement.”
“As far as the interior goes, it's about 3,900 square meters inside. Not exactly palatial, but it should do. You've got plenty of food – sugar liquor, mostly - plus enough hydrogen to run the AntiG continuously for two months if you need to. Not that you will, once you leave the atmosphere.”
“You've got tanks of nanobacteria you can use to make structures and an entire bank of Fabers with enough liquid plastic and metal powder on tap to create an entire second ship, should you choose to. We've installed Sentience into the ship, along with a massive library of entertainment that you can project directly into your Hebbian neural networks. We've included two crates of homemade electromagnetic coilguns that ought to work in a vacuum and in zero gravity. To be honest, we hope you won't need them. But one never knows.”
“Waste heat from the AntiG generator should keep the inside of the ship at a consistent temperature while it’s running. We were worried about damage to your PlasFlesh exteriors from extreme cold, so we've build in an automated...”
“Stanton,” interrupted Rita, “I'm sure you did everything conceivable: and that the Sentience will fill me completely via handshake the moment I step aboard the ship, in any case. What I want to know is two things. First, why haven't you asked me where we're going?”
“Because I can't tell what I don't know.”
She laughed, perhaps a bit insincerely. “The Posthegemony has never shown the slightest interest in what goes on outside of the Earth's immediate gravity well. They care about their telecommunication satellites and that's it. What harm could it possibly do for me to tell you?”
“All things change Rita. You know they do.”
They were silent again for a while, listening to their friends' conversation and murmur of warm wind passing through the aspen trees. Finally she sighed and shook her head.
“OK, I'll give you that. Second question, then: what is the ship called?”
Stanton smiled.
“What does a man in love with Rita Hayworth call a spacecraft?” he answered. “Why the Gilda, of course.”
* * *
It was a scene that would have warmed Fritz Lang's heart. Or possibly stopped it.
Rather than arising from a throne of wires and electricity, the top of the robot's massive skull broke through the cracked surface of the Black Rock Desert, sending geysers of dust and smoke high into the air. The mighty head's chin was thrust upward proudly in an expression of determination. Then its massive chromed shoulders emerged, followed by a pair of mountainous breasts. Finally, wide but distinctively mechanical hips emerged from the surface of the desert, until the entire apparition hung above the land like a defiant, iconic mechanical goddess: the first robotic sex symbol transporting the final products of that erotic journey to the stars.
The ancient vision of Metropolis was reborn in the form of the Gilda.
“They've spotted us,” commented Sentience without emotion. It was a silent comment; there was no need for anyone on the Gilda to speak orally when they could communicate nearly instantly via the ship's encrypted internal Web. “Observation satellite number 1287 relayed an image of us, plus our GPS coordinates, to the Department of the Producer-Consumer Army Space Command primary Sentience approximately six nanoseconds ago.”
Let them chew on it for a while, thought Rita Hayworth. The next time the Posthegemony makes a decision quickly will be the first.
“Level us out roughly 100 meters over the surface, facing forward horizontally.” she announced. “Then takes over New Reno as rapidly as possible.”
“I don't think that's wise, Rita.” Robert Smith's tone was annoyed. “We should do what Stanton said and get out of the Earth's gravity well as soon as possible. We're giving them more time to shoot us down.”
Rita had included Robert Smith in her transmission to the Sentience, as well as the remainder of the “bridge crew:” Adele Block-Bauer, dressed in the golden gown of her famous portrait, and Aaron Elvis Presley, in flattering 68 comeback special black leather. The first action taken by the Gilda's crew upon boarding the ship was to have the Makers create new clothing for them. Rita herself was dressed in pink and silver lame evening dress, while Smith wore his namesake's trademark baggy black suit and “winklepicker” shoes.
The bridge was nothing more than a small room with four chairs in it and some tasteful, Supremitist-style paintings on the walls. These had been painted by the “elder” Stanton Wong to pass the time, and were scattered around much of the craft. The ship was controlled directly by Sentience, though technically any of her crew was capable of taking over if necessary. Rita made command decisions, with Smith assuming control if she were somehow disabled. Block-Bauer and Elvis served as backup commander and first officer should both be incapacitated or destroyed.
“They're going to take a crack at us no matter what,” she responded curtly. “But I think that we're safe enough for the moment. It's going to take them a little time to figure out what they want to do. I intend to use that time to make a statement that nobody in that dreary Metro will forget. Sentience, take us to New Reno at maximum velocity!”
Gilda shot off over the Granite Mountains like a giant superhero; her arms swept back and determined profile thrust forward to face the wind. It flight was silent save for the rush of wind and the barely detectable hum of hydrogen powered AntiG engines. But this was no leisurely drift over the desert wilderness. She virtually streaked over the clear lakes, dusty playas, and towering mountains of what had once been known as northern Nevada, arriving above the Metro of New Reno in a small fraction of the time it took them to leave it.
“Do a victory lap about town.” Rita instructed Sentience. “Pass as close to the Scrapers as you can without endangering anyone. I want them all to have a good, hard look at this beautiful bitch.”
“Do you wish to make a statement on the Web?” asked Sentience. “Posthegemony Web Control Sentience will try to stop me, but I believe that I can slip it through.”
“No.” she replied after a nanoseconds thought. “A little mystery makes a girl more attractive. Plus, we make enough of a statement without saying anything. Tell me, how many times since we arrived within Metro limits have photos of the Gilda been uploaded to the Web's various filesharing locations?”
“Checking.” a pause. “120,431 at last check.”
“Humm. How many downloads of Lang's Metropolis have occurred according to publicly available download rankings? Also, how many times has the PostWiki entry for that film been accesses in the last, oh, three minutes?”
“22,362 and 52,147, respectively.” replied Sentience.
“Well, then, we've made a quite a statement already!”
“There's a priority transmission from Producer-Consumer’s Army Space Command Sentience.” Rita Hayworth could almost detect a note of worry in the bland voice of the ship's Sentience. Mentally she shrugged, and then used the craft's exterior cams to observe the Metro. It's a beautiful day to create an urban legend, she thought: clear, blue, and perfect. A half-dozen RoboCop Floaters had overridden their AntiG controls and accelerated up from their usual traffic duties to surround the renegade ship; but she paid scant attention to them. They were unarmed and posed no real risk to the Gilda.
“Sentience, please broadcast the transmission to everyone on board.” she instructed. “In fact, broadcast our entire exchange.”
“Understood.” Sentience spoke in the entirely different, though obviously still synthetic, voice of the military Sentience. It sounded almost bored. “Attention unauthorized craft: this is Producer-Consumer Army Space Command. Please identify yourself. You are causing a public disruption.”
“This is the private spacecraft Gilda.” she replied through the ship's Sentience. “We are crewed by Interesting People, and are preparing to peacefully immigrate off-planet. Please do not interfere.”
There was only the briefest of pauses.
“There are no private spacecraft in the Posthegemony.” She could almost hear the annoyance in the MilSentience's synthetic voice. “Off planet immigration is likewise illegal. You are to proceed to 39°29′57″N 119°46′05″W and land. You will be placed under arrest by local authorities.”
“Humm... I don't think so.” she replied. “Instead, we'll take our leave of you. Forever.”
She paused for a moment, then added solemnly: “Traveling is not just seeing the new; it is also leaving the old behind. Not just opening doors; but also closing them behind you, never to return.”
“Jan Myrdal?” asked Robert Smith with a snort. “What, you're quoting Swedish Marxists now?”
“I quote anyone with a good quote.” Rita replied, only to be interrupted by the MilSentience.
“Renegade craft Gilda, if you do not land at the designated spot in under one minuet we will be forced to shoot you down.”
“This conversation is over.” She response was angry, almost hissing. She made a chopping motion in the air for Sentience to cut the connection. “Sentience, end all communications with our late, unlamented masters. Then rotate us 90-degrees and begin our ascent.”
“Understood.”
The Gilda abandoned its circumnavigation of New Reno, turned, and shot upward, quickly outpacing the police Floaters that had assembled around it. In a matter of moments it burst through the cloud layer, rising upward toward the heavens.
“Six AntiG missiles have been launched from the Western North American Military Complex east of the Oakland Metro.” stated Sentience in its emotionless voice. “Accelerating to mach number 5...6...7...”
“Estimated time until impact?” she interrupted.
“Twenty seconds.”
An eternity for everyone involved.
The AntiG missiles were fairly dainty things, with a length of only 1.5 meters and weighing in at only 15.2 kilograms. Armed with 3-kilogram penetrating impact hit-to-kill warheads, they were capable of taking down a large Floater. Two would definitely take down a spacecraft. They were also extremely accurate, being laser guided by MilSentience and, unlike nearly all other AntiG devices, were unfettered by the need to protect soft, fleshy occupants from the fatal ravages of acceleration. Sending six to shoot down one craft was something of an extravagance.
“Missile velocity approaching Mach number 10,” announced Sentience. “Impact in eleven seconds.”
It was by using precisely this technology that the Posthegemony had regained control of their airspace, sweeping any would-be refugees from the skies for a century or more. Of course, all of those ships had contained easily damaged human beings, limiting their ability to flee their tiny murderers. The Gilda was under no such restrictions. There was nothing soft, fleshy, or even human about its inhabitants.
“Sentience,” instructed Rita Hayworth. “Take us to maximum acceleration, please.”
“Understood.” Almost instantly and with no fanfare, the Gilda accelerated to Mach 14, shuddering slightly as its mildly un-aerodynamic shape punched through the atmosphere. On the bridge all four humannequins were thrown back into their chairs, while in other locations on the ship others were hurled violently this way and that, hurting them not in the least.
Several bone-jarring moments later, the Gilda leaped dramatically out of the Earth's gravity well, with all six missiles in hot pursuit behind her. Seconds after that they shot off in random directions, vanishing from her sensors as they were pulled dramatically back into the atmosphere. A few even exploded.
It was obvious in retrospect, and somewhat typical of Posthegemony engineering. No ship had escaped from the AntiG missiles since they'd been developed. They simply couldn't, not without killing their occupants. The engineers who designed the missiles were intelligent – the most intelligent available, actually – but there had never been any need to redesign the small missiles to actually maneuver using AntiG, rather than simply using it as propulsion. Why bother? So, like their ancestors for of hundreds of years before them, the missiles were controlled by the movement of air over their stubby, 10 centimeter fins.
But no atmosphere, no air. No air, no control.
* * *
Rita Hayworth's long auburn hair floated weightlessly about her angelic head like a halo. Thinking of her distant lover, she brought her sensuous lips together and whispered audibly but softly:
Raise the mighty mother mistress,
Wave high the delicate mistress, over all the starry mistress,
(bend your heads all,)
Raise the fang'd and warlike mistress, stern, impassive, weapon'd mistress,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
For a few moments all was silent. Elvis was the first to speak.
“Where to now?” he asked in that husky, sensual voice which had set millions of teenage girls screaming, back in a time so extinct it could scarcely be said to have ever existed.
“Now?” she responded distantly, “Now we go to craft our own world, our own fate. We go to the only logical place in the solar system for a spaceship filled with the unwanted, romantic dreams of a dead civilization to go.”
“Sentience: take us to near-Earth asteroid 433. Take us to Eros.”