Selected Short Stories Featuring Analog Memory, Page 2

her music with her as she walked- that kind of retro grunge-tech is popular with the counterculture at the moment.

  Well I didn’t know how much tech she might have in her head, or whether or not she might be electrified enough to make me pass out and wet myself in front of Kerry, so I kept my distance. Now it’s possible that while being leery of her, some ounce of my disdain for people who surgically modify themselves to be cool leaked out, but she turned around and called me a biofascist. I made no attempt to respond, since the depth of my witty rejoinder would have been “Nuh uh.”

  I meekly collected my coffee; Kerry knows my order and always starts it as soon as she sees me. She gave me a pained smile and a shrug; I couldn’t tell if she was being sympathetic, or if the gesture implied I’d gotten what I probably deserved.

  I’m not intolerant; sure, some body modders are freaks, but tolerance doesn’t mean I relinquish my right to be skeeved by skeevy people. The other day I was walking Dog in the park when a man in a trenchcoat flashed me. He had his genitals gene-mod sculpted to look like Vegas-era Elvis being mounted by a raping porpoise, and he had nanotech imbeds that made the porpoise’s eyes follow you and blink while Elvis’ face contorted in various shades of abominable pain. I kicked him in the King; what else should he have expected?

  I’m sure the rant isn’t helping. Technology trying to kill me as a boy made me wary of its application later in life, even when organic computing became all the rage, and it was possible for me to finally be standing at least near the cutting edge with everybody else (of course, that didn’t really last, either, because the cost of biocomp upgrades and the toll it took on the human body made VR more attractive, so that’s where the research dollars went).

  Post-humanity never really took off; the fetishists and the occasionally lagged trendchaser still implant and carve and grow or decay parts at whim, but most of humanity moved on. The only gene-modding that’s really still “in” is additional womb generation, lovingly known in the medical industries as “AWG,” roughly the sound a woman buying one won’t have to make during childbirth. Basically, in the week or so before a pregnancy terms, doctors grow a second, king-sized birth canal directly in the abdominal wall, big enough a doctor can stick his whole head in there if he feels so inclined- though these days they usually just use a robotic arm.

  I wasn’t sure if the statute of limitations on my public shaming had passed, so I was still avoiding the coffee shop. I’d run out of Dog food, since I can’t rely on a kitchen computer to keep food inventories up, so I was on foot running to the local distributor to pick up a container, but I was thinking about some problem at work, and was on autopilot, and walked right up to the open air coffee shop’s counter. Kerry smiled at me, and immediately started on my mocha; that sealed that, no escaping with my dignity intact now.

  I bellied up to the counter. I usually tried not to stare, because Kerry and I seemed to have a romantic détente, and I didn’t want to make her think I was planning an invasion- but hell, this could very well be the last moment I was going to be able to pretend she didn’t think I was an asshole, so I watched her make my mocha. The coffee stand has a sophisticated nanotech kitchen, the kind where all the appliances are synthesized in real-time by nanites that receded into the walls when they were done.

  I’d never worked in such a place, but I’d read that the best brew relied on human intervention- that cooking was closer to playing music- since little things like freshness of the beans and the ambient temperature could make the difference between an okay cup of coffee and a work of java art. Kerry’s fingers danced across the display, playing across a nonexistent keyboard like a concert pianist's, but she took the time to smile and nod at customers or passersby, and once I caught her eye, and I thought she smiled.

  Since I had never watched her work so intently, I didn’t realize until she was pouring the mix into cups that she’d made two of them. “Joan, I’m taking a break,” she said, and the nanite gate receded into the wall enough that she could slip through.

  She handed me one of the mochas and led me down the street. I flashed for an instant to another time, another girl, this same walk, being led away with twin mochas, and the heartbreak that ended in, but before I had the chance to lay that template over this moment and worry she spoke. “She was being a bitch. Seriously, people don’t get speaker-implants unless they want to be noticed. She’s just one of those people who gets off on making the attention she gets negative. I felt really bad for you- but people usually get mic pick-ups with their stereo install, so I couldn’t say anything until she was way out of earshot, and by then you’d disappeared.”

  I hadn’t been prepared for that kind of an infodump, and it took me a moment to react. “So… it’s too late for me to save face by lying about working extra hours?” She smiled.

  “I don’t know, I’m pretty gullible, you can always try it out.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and she blushed. “For the mocha, I meant. And the whole not assuming the absolute worst about me, I guess.”

  “Sure.” She hesitated. “I get off at six. And I’m usually hungry.”

  “That’s a coincidence, because I usually eat around that time. I suppose we could eat together.”

  “And here I thought I was going to have to lead you the whole way to the water.” She sipped her mocha. “I should probably get back.”

  We ate at Leo’s, an old low-tech Italian restaurant I know downtown. The proprietor’s practically Amish, and refuses to have anything more high tech than his antique, analog register in the restaurant. So of course we get along swimmingly- he reminds me of Woody Allen, an old neurotic movie comedian who- just use a search engine.

  The whole time I couldn’t place it, but there was something off. I don’t think it was the sudden realization that this woman I’d stared at for months was a person with thoughts, ideas and feelings independent of my imaginings; she was just different, subtly. And not just because she was wearing a low-cut dress that showed off her collar bone and her exquisite neck.

  She was wonderful. Smarter than I’d dared hope, charming, funny.

  Then suddenly I realized it was late and we were almost alone in the restaurant, with only an older couple making eyes at each other in the corner booth behind us. Kerry yawned. “I’m tired. You should take me home.” The abruptness of it made my heart sink, then it began to race as she stroked my knee beneath the table, and I realized it wasn’t her bed she was planning to sleep in.

  As if he’d read our minds, Leo was there with the check. I have no idea how much of a tip I left, I was scrawling so fast; Leo’s is one of the few places you can actually still sign a paper receipt in town (most clerks stare at me sideways when I ask them to swipe a card for me).

  I don’t want to be salacious, but when I was going down on her everything was right, no, perfect, but something made me uneasy. I’m not one of those people who assumes they don’t deserve to be happy and then distrusts every mildly good thing to come their way- I just didn’t trust this thing. I couldn’t put my finger on it (please, no little man in the boat jokes), but there was something off; perhaps it was that absolutely nothing was off at all, not a moment’s awkwardness, not even one of those weird little body farts that happen when two people writhe together.

  When we were done she fell asleep in my arms; I’m 90-95% sure she’s a robot and I’m smack dab in the middle of the uncanny valley. But it didn’t make any sense. When I get within a few feet of a robot I get faint, but we’d been as close as two people can get, and all I felt was vague anxiety- easily enough explained by how gorgeous she is and the fact that, well, I’ve been over this moment in my head before without ever thinking it a possibility. And biocomputing has never been sophisticated enough for a full on human synthetic.

  That actually brings up a slew of follow-up questions. If Kerry is now a robot, but I’m pretty sure she wasn’t previously, where is human Kerry? Are all robots horny, or is Kerry just experimenting? Or is robot Kerry just into me?
If Kerry is part of a pod-people robot takeover plan, but the humans are all replaced by robots that seem to be more alive than the humans they replace, is that a bad thing?

  I guess it would have to be a little bad. We’re not talking robots creating a new, hedonistic community- it’s a hostile takeover. I think my judgment was (temporarily) muddied by thoughts of a robot orgy. But even if the hostile takeover thing is true, could Kerry possibly be to blame? If her robot was walking around blank, then took over Kerry’s life of its own volition, then yeah, kind of, but a blank robot sticks out like a swollen testicle in bike shorts, so more likely than not it was another robot that abducted Kerry (I know, I know, abduct is probably being optimistic).

  Perhaps more to the point: was this seduction a way to get close enough to me to bot me? Was I going to wake up tomorrow with a new robot body? And I’ll be honest, I was more concerned whether, when I woke up, she’d still be there.

  Kerry, or her robot replacement or whatever, stirred, and noticed I was awake. “Is something wrong?”

  “Not at all,” I said, and kissed her, and her lips were soft, and warm, and inviting. Maybe I was wrong; maybe I was just paranoid. But what if I wasn’t?

  She rolled me