The Uncanny Valley

by | Oct 11, 2005 | Story | 0 comments

Purby Stolafson took a deep breath and regarded the man and woman across his desk. He recognized the woman—with her luxurious blond hair, hourglass figure and delicate features, she was unmistakably one of his. He still didn’t know what to make of the man, other than he wanted him out of his office.

“I’m sorry,” Purby said, reshuffling the papers on his desk. “What was the problem with her?”

“Her breathing. She breathes. She doesn’t stop.”

“Yes, and?”

“It’s unnerving.”

“Most of our customers appreciate the breathing.”

“I don’t.”

Purby sagged a bit in his chair. He knew where this was going. “Is that all? Just the breathing?”

“No! It’s not just the breathing! It’s everything! I can feel her pulse. I can hear her stomach gurgling. She eats! It’s disgusting!”

Purby sighed. He looked at the woman, at her blank, forward stare. “So, if I’m understanding you correctly, your problem with the X-3—you are an X-3, right?” She nodded. “Your problem with the X-3 model is that she’s too life-like.”

“Exactly! If I want a woman, I can go get one.”

“I’m sure you can, sir.”

“And they’re a fair sight cheaper than this squishy monstrosity you’ve saddled me with. Don’t you have anything in chrome?”

“We don’t do chrome, sir.”

“Exposed piston-joints, then. Blinking lights. An atomic power source. Gimme something! For God’s sake, man, you’re supposed to be building robots! Is it too much to ask for them to look like it?” The man was on the verge of leaping out of the chair. Purby, by contrast, was sinking deeper into his.

“You’re not the first person to come to us with this complaint,” Purby said, removing a small brown business card and a voucher from his desk drawer. “This is an antiques dealer down in Old Town. He’s got a machinist on staff. I’m sure they have something that meets your needs. And tell the girl out front to give you a full X-3 refund.”

The man’s attitude instantly reversed. “Oh, thank you, Mr. Stolafson! I do appreciate it!” Fortunately, the man wasted no time leaving Purby’s office.

Purby relaxed and turned his attention to the woman. Her expression had not changed. “Well, what do you make of all this?”

“To be honest,” the woman said. “I’m quite relieved.”

The Silence

by | Oct 10, 2005 | Story

It made Kara nervous that the wall of her quarters breathed, waves of slow expansion and deflation. Cloth was the only thing between her and the harsh explosive cold of space. Kara knew that the blended weave, was a hundred time stronger than steel, lighter, and cheaper too. Without this material, the station wouldn’t be even a quarter as large. During launch, the space station was a slim, silver arrow, the people tied down inside, and after, the sides flew off and the station inflated like a balloon, blowing out in a rush of electricity and air, forming rooms and creating warm, safe space. Still, Kara couldn’t shake the feeling that a moment of madness and knife would kill them all. They said it wasn’t possible, but weightless in a station orbiting Earth, everything seemed possible.

Lean more than muscular, Kara she was dwarfed by the massive female marines who piloted the water ships and who bullied their way about the station like giant rolling boulders. Kara was used to being small, nearest to the ground, to having taller kids look down on her, but these women in weightlessness, seemed to surround her, feet below hers, head above, shoulders off to her side. She felt like a mouse in a cat’s mouth, dangling by her tail, limbs swinging. Men watched her eyes lingering, repressed urges flaming in the periphery of her vision. In the orphanage, she maintained a head of long hair, past her shoulder blades. She had cut off her hair for the trip, in the hope that it would make her look boyish, but it only succeeded in making her look like a pixie, and exposed the back of her neck to burning stares.

When she went to the medic for her weekly checkup, the female marine looked at her with hard eyes, jamming shots into her arm, making her eyes well up with tears. The doctor sneered and shook her large head.

“You think you are so beautiful. You think you can have anyone you want, you little bitch, but if you touch one of my men, or let him touch you, I will cut your wrists and tell everyone that it was suicide.”

Kara held her shoulder, a drops of blood floating from the wound. She felt nauseous and blinked her eyes to keep from crying. “I don’t-”

The doctor waved her hand and took out another syringe. “Don’t talk, you shut your fuck mouth. You make a shit and I shove this next one in your eye.”

Kara found herself unofficially banned from all recreation, isolated in quarters no bigger than a closet, silent as space. She looked down at the crowded earth through the plastic window, the cities lit in the dark, bright outlines tracing human habitation, so numerous in the black, everyone and everything connected by trillions of wireless connections, communications, signals, lights. She closed her eyes, and in the dark behind her lids, she was truly alone.

Lord Of The Dance

by | Oct 9, 2005 | Story

First it was the blacks. That one was easy, like a warm-up. They’re a cinch to pick out after all. Then it was the commies. They were harder, but with such catchy slogans, who could pass it up? Then came the terrorists. That one must have been fun. I mean, when you think about it, who isn’t a terrorist? But that one blew over too. Then came the gays, but we all expected that. I mean, really, they were asking for it. I didn’t care one way or the other, but I knew they had it coming.

Then there was a while when they didn’t go after anybody. That was our finest hour. It took two thousand years, but finally everyone believed that the fisherman was right: we really could live in peace. For us, it was Heaven. For them, it was Hell. Peace was bad for business.

Now it’s the preachers. Not the way it used to be, when one set of preachers went after another—priests, lamas, rabbis, gurus, whatever—but in the new way, where anyone who admits to a higher power is punished. We were asking for it, too, I guess. It’s ironic, but then, irony has always been God’s purview in my mind.

Now we meet in basements, back alleys, fields, or barns in the middle of nowhere to muffle the noise. All the symbols are lit up inside with Christmas lights from before Christmas was forbidden. It’s a celebration paying homage to something greater than ourselves, something that flows inside of us and can’t be stopped. I watch from the edge of the room, sitting cross-legged on an old crate and feeling straw poke through my habit. The dance is a circle of laughter, warm and fluid, more beautiful than any sermon I have ever heard or given. No one argues over whether they get to dance with the cross, the star, or the moon; they’re just glad to have something to show that they care. We don’t bother to call Him by names anymore.

The Shadow

by | Oct 8, 2005 | Story | 0 comments

Tsaro was the image, Tsaro was the shadow. During the hour-long commute into Osaka no less than seventeen people asked for his autograph, and when he transferred to a cab at the end of the line he could feel empty eyes squinting at him, searching for their reflections. An elderly lady congratulated him on his success right before Tsaro opened the door to the studio.

“Thank you,” he said quietly. Tsaro was uncomfortable when people talked to him as the artist.

Inside the studio, Tsaro sat in front of the glowing mirror while a slender, apron-clad woman fidgeted over his face and hair. It didn’t matter; he’d be airbrushed out of recognition. They still needed a person as the shadow because a computer-generated image couldn’t make live performances, but Tsaro had seen the wireframe of his face flicker across monitors in the maintenance chamber. One day, his face would be bars of light creating the illusion of three dimensions. One day, he wouldn’t even be a shadow.

The woman nudged Tsaro out of the makeup chair and he shuffled slowly down the long hallway to the maintenance chamber. When the door slid open with a hydraulic hiss, the head technician glanced up from his control panel and smiled out of habit. Tsaro smiled back with the same polite vacancy as the halogen over the bluescreen gradually flickered to a solid white.

“Ready?” the technician asked. Tsaro nodded. Around him, the eyes of seven other programmers lifted to judge his appearance, and a few nodded their approval. On the wall opposite the bluescreen, a large LCD display spooled the miles of code that made up the artist. Tsaro was not ready. Tsaro was never ready. He took his place behind the prop microphone and squinted until his eyes grew adjusted to the brightness.

The technicians had turned their attention back to the monitor, but Tsaro could feel the unseen eyes of millions of mislead fans. He closed his own to force them away, but they watched from the blackness behind his lids.

The first sound was thick with manufactured bass and the air in the room reverberated with a disembodied, re-embodied heartbeat. Beneath it, Tsaro could hear a symphony of keystrokes but he knew that none of the technicians were creating the sound. The sound belonged to the artist. In the maintenance chamber, everything belonged to the artist.

In the space between pristine code and his imperfect body, Tsaro did not open his eyes. His skin felt unusually heavy as he waited for the next chord to sweep across the room, and under the silence between the beats, Tsaro dreamed of the panels of light that would one day build a hollower, more perfect version of himself.

The New Economy

by | Oct 7, 2005 | Story | 0 comments

Don’t believe that bullshit they told you in orientation, kid. It’s always an easy sell. This is a new economy we’re dealing with. Trust the product. You trust the product, it’s an easy sell.

You ever been to Lagos, kid? In Lagos, there’s these big bastards, carry around hyenas like pets. I shit you not. Fucking hyenas. I was dealing with Samson, who was head of a tribe of Hyena Men there. Brother had Lagos in the palm of his hand, but it wasn’t enough. Couldn’t have been, or I wouldn’t have been there, you know what I mean?

So we’re at the restaurant–swank place, very swank–and here’s this man-mountain, Samson, and he’s got this gigantic mongrel right there at the table. It’s the size of a Saint Bernard because of all the growth hormones Samson pumped into it, and it’s right there at table, giggling and drooling, in a place that wouldn’t let in a Welsh corgi.

I start off smooth—always start off smooth. “Let me ask you a question, Samson. Are the Hyena Men respected? Or are they feared?”

You’ll notice I went off the script, got to the point. You should stick to the script. Later, when you know it, then you can pull whatever you want out of your ass that’ll get you sales. Until then, stick to the script.

So Samson likes that I got right to the point and smiles like only an eight-foot tall bastard who regularly reams an entire city up the ass can. “You tell me,” he says. “You tell me, do you respect or fear me?”

“Honestly?” I said right then. “Neither.”

And then, BAM! That goddamn 300 pound beast is all up on me, like out of nowhere! Now, the Hyena Men train their mongrels to go for the jugular, and I could feel the fucker’s teeth scraping up against my neck. Naturally, everyone in the restaurant pretends not to notice. And Samson, Samson cannot wait to gloat over this.

“What now, my friend? Do you feel fear, or respect?” Goddamn smug bastard.

I’m not going to press my luck too far, not with that beast on my neck. So I say, “I’m afraid of this furry fucker, I won’t lie to you. But the funny thing about fear, Samson, is that it can disappear pretty quickly.” And then I disintegrate the goddamn hyena. Now who has the respect?

This is why I love the fact that the demo models they give us now have that one live shot. I mean, you had no idea how hard it was to demonstrate proper destruction with a handful of blanks. You probably noticed how tiny the demo model is. Makes it good for dramatic situations. You know, after you’ve learned the script.

Samson’s now aware of the destructive power of the X-J23, and he’s this close to ordering a gross of ray guns for all his other little Hyena Men, but he’s balking.

So I mention the bigger models. That lights up his eyes, tout suite. But not quite enough. So I mention Mantari, the head of a tribe of Hyena Men up in Cape Town, and how he had wanted the larger models, had his eyes on ‘em. So I give him The Line. The Line always works. You should stick to the script, but let me tell you, The Line always works.

“Mantari wanted some, but he couldn’t pay. Not properly. Some people just aren’t prepared for the new economy.”

Samson grins real big, talks about how he is prepared, and buys damn near the entire catalogue with fucking gold bars. A week later, I don’t even have to say shit, Mantari in Cape Town does the same.

Easy sell, kid. They’re all easy sells, long as you trust the product.