Chapter 56
“I got called for the lottery.”
“Oh.”
She pulled the chit of government plastic from her pocket. Charlie would have had to run it through her wrist scanner to read the data on it, but Remy was a ‘china. His pseudoflesh was equipped with scanners and sensors. The human skin had more than a thousand nerve endings per inch, and while Remy’s own covering was a poor imitation, it was, at least, flexible for programming.
Remy thumbed the plastic, reading the chip.
Nothing so life-shattering should be in such simple, cold numbers, he thought.
35,108.
One hundred thousand humans, every year. Fifty-thousand men and the same number of women.
“I probably won’t get called. It’s a miracle that I even made it this far.”
Remy nodded. He didn’t know what else to do. He ran a protocol line, searched the databanks for something. Anything.
“Congratulations.” He finally chose a word.
“You’re…not happy for me.” Charlie actually turned entirely to face him, her whole attention on him.
Remy touched blue storage in his own, personal databanks. He’d never uploaded these memories, never had them removed from his ‘banks. He was, perhaps, getting old. He’d been removed twice now to entirely new avatars. His software and firmware had been upgraded and renewed exactly one hundred and eight times. Maybe it was time to retire, to seek the blackness of forgetting, the empty nothing of a complete wipe. His parts melted down for scrap and salvage. Anything but to have to form another one of these blue databanks.
“Remy?” Had he been ignoring her? Lost in his own thoughts? How strange.
“It’s complicated.” He gave her his haughtiest expression. “A machine thing.”
“Tell me.” She twined her fingers with his; Charlie always did like physical contact.
“I find myself conflicted. I don’t want to lose you. At the same time, Charlie, I am programmed to desire your happiness over everything else. You know that.”
“Why would you lose me?”
“If you’re selected, if you are given such a grand opportunity, you will not live here anymore. Your job, your quarters, all that will be turned over to someone else. You will be a mother. You will have your child and your life and what need will you have for a ‘china companion? Marriage, you know, it’s legal there, among the breeders. You’ll meet someone there, someone with his own child, and you’ll be happy, you know. What more could you want, what could any human want? To give life to another? It’s an amazing thing. A wonderful thing.”
Charlie frowned. That broke something inside him, as it usually did. He wanted her to be happy, he needed her to be happy. It was his job, his purpose, his guiding star. “And what will happen to you?”
“The same thing that would happen if you died. I’ll go back to the Factory. I might still be refurbished. Download my memories, get a new owner.” He shrugged. He was a companion, one of the best, an L-model 7. It had happened before. Many times. Maybe he really was done. If he did a complete wipe, he would still exist, as an object. A ‘china. But not as this particular incarnation. The memories that made him what he was.
“I could sell the ticket,” Charlie suggested. There was a strange pain in her eyes. He’d never quite seen it before.
“Why would you do that?”
“You’re not the only one in the room with something to lose,” she said. “It’s complicated. It’s a human thing.”
“Do not anthropomorphize me. I am ‘china. A machine. I can be programmed to feel something entirely different than I do now. I am only…There is no word for what I feel; sadness for a future that is not meant for me. I have searched for that word, and it does not exist.”
Charlie leaned on her elbow, touched his pseudoflesh face with her finger. “And what you are feeling right now is real. It is as real as what I feel. In a hundred years, I will be dead and gone and what I feel right now will be no less real. I will die, you will be erased, we will both be forgotten, and if that’s not a tragedy, then nothing that humans have created is worth enduring.”
“What are you saying?” Human emotion. Madness. Lunacy. Those things which he did not understand, and still there were his blue databanks. Concealed from the factory. Where he would save, would keep, every memory he ever had. Sometimes, at night, he would examine them. Were they not the stuff of dreams? Could he not have dreams?
“I am saying that I love you, Remy. You. Not the machine you are, not the plastic and wires and steel, not the lithium batteries, but you. The person inside the machine. I’m not going to leave you behind.”
“That’s madness,” Remy whispered. Something burned inside him. Smoke would come pouring out his ears and mouth and his inner workings would shriek and come to a grinding halt. He was breaking. He was broken.