Better Man
by Charles C. Cole
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Table of Contents parts 1, 2, 3 |
part 2
To intermingle with the mechanical masses without causing dismay — “The masters are returning!” — Adam had opted to have his original limbs, lumbering legs and hypotonal arms surgically amputated and replaced with synthetic, bioengineered appendages. In his mind, if he was to be accepted by the artificial population, he had to do better than just play the part; he had to blend in.
Darla and Marx were the new owners of Adam’s home, accidental anthropologists, de facto foster parents, and co-keepers of his secrets. They heard Adam return from a walk about the neighborhood. Adam sank to the stairs leading to the second-floor bedrooms, both arms hugging a baluster as if fearful he’d be swept away.
They came from the kitchen and from the den, respectively. With a long-handled feather-duster resting against her shoulder, Darla appeared in the hall. Marx held a book as thick as a hardcover dictionary, his metallic index finger inserted between the pages, as if afraid he’d lose his place. Adam took in the details of their actions and shook his head with gentle disapproval.
“Were you really reading a book, Marx?” asked Adam. “And were you really knocking down cobwebs along the ceiling, Darla? Come now. If I can be myself around you, you can certainly be yourselves around me.”
“We were keeping our diagnostics and maintenance subroutines busy,” Marx explained. “But we didn’t want to get too deep into a complex project, should you suddenly call for rescue.”
“Do you even know your neighbors?” asked Adam, teasing. “From what I can tell, high-end analytical robot intelligence or not, they don’t know the difference between an android with a human head and torso, or a human with artificial limbs. My best guess: in their cybernetic minds, humans are no more, period.
“Therefore, when they run into one up close that looks like a mix-and-match action figure: It can’t be a human, because humans don’t exist. From what I could see, there are enough varieties of bipedal automatons — whether for mining, vehicle repair, or climbing the outsides of buildings — that I don’t stand out any more than one patch of sunshine over another.”
“You sacrificed your human limbs for nothing,” lamented Darla.
“Maybe not. For one thing, I feel stronger than ever. And I feel seen for my shared qualities, my essential parts of metal and fiber, while my human qualities are completely unnoted. I’m one more circus freak.”
Marx made a pained expression.
“Bad choice. Let’s just say I’m one more sentient laptop in a stack of sentient laptops.”
“Will that be enough for you?” asked Marx, with unexpected intensity. “My studies indicate that humans are accustomed to being in charge, giving orders and criticizing helper-bots when we don’t fully embrace the visionary scaffolding.”
“I’m not a leader, Marx; I don’t have the stamina. A leader looks out for everyone. On the extreme contrary, I’m just a survivor. And you know how one survives? By looking out for one person, by compromising when necessary, by sacrificing everything else: honor, friendships, loyalty. If I want to be standing at the end, I can’t afford to be an upright member of the team now.”
Darla and Marx looked at each other for a long moment, like they were exchanging telepathic thoughts. Eventually, and in synch, they slowly nodded their heads.
Darla spoke first: “You are a human; you don’t have to explain things to us. We will support you however you need to be supported.”
Marx added: “While we have self-awareness and a few primitive emotions, at our core, we are content only if you are happy, especially if we’ve contributed to that condition. If you weren’t a human, we could ignore you or lock you out of your own house. But we know you are a human. In a way that makes our next decision and actions easier: we are here to assist.”
Adam considered standing for emphasis but resisted the mental image of being taller than his new collaborators, who were clearly operating on a level over his head. “I need to come clean,” said Adam, mustering the most important lie of his life. “I’m not human.”
Darla spoke: “But the blood, the flesh, the brain, the heart—”
“Made in a lab. And not very top grade, that’s why the true humans, the intergalactic armada, made a deliberate choice to leave me behind. I should have told you right away, but I was afraid I’d be ostracized as some sort of half-baked hybrid.”
Marx and Darla stepped closer to each other, at the base of the stairs, making a much-needed united front. Marx said: “This is an untruth. I have never seen an android designed like you, inside or out.”
Adam was on a roll. “I was meant to be a significant upgrade: the most human-like robot but, during the final steps in the process, my creators realized androids were far better than flesh and blood: you did what you were told, you didn’t need food, you weren’t vulnerable to ‘the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.’ They were taking something far superior and making something inferior. Dumbing it down.”
Darla spoke: “Why put you in a secret cryochamber?”
“To hide the evidence. To keep me from sneaking aboard the mothership where I would be a constant reminder of the biggest lie humans ever told.”
“There is logic to what you say,” said Marx. Darla nodded.
“I’ll leave in the morning. I’d go now but this highly embarrassing chronicle has been like a weight on my chest.”
“Thank you for sharing,” said Darla. “You have given us much to consider.”
“I owed you the complete story,” said Adam.
* * *
Adam, a singular human on a planet dominated by “freed” androids, slept through the last call and departure of Earth’s final starship. Then a curious ’bot found him, woke him and reminded him how special he was.
Adam, as humble as a drooping dandelion in the rain, ran away before his neighbors could gather to compulsively and a tad reluctantly fawn over their one remaining “master.”
Before he’d left, in a well-meaning but futile attempt to blend in, Adam had his arms and legs replaced with animatronic spare parts. After the surgery, Adam’s arms were bigger than Popeye’s, with proportional legs to match.
Adam was eating the fruit of a wild, roadside apple tree, a silver mask covering most of his face, when a doe wandered by, watching over her shoulder, and into swiftly moving traffic. A quick-acting driver swerved into a deep ditch, three wheels in mud and one in the air. The deer didn’t stop to apologize.
The driver, unharmed but shocked, masculine by design, rolled down his window and called out: “That was close. You distracted her. I could do with a strong hand.”
“I’d be happy to call a towing company,” said Adam.
“You look fully equipped, more than they’d be,” said the driver. “Why invite more ’bots to the party? Can’t we keep this between us?” A human saying that Adam was, sadly, familiar with.
“I have to warn you, I’ve never done this before, privately or professionally and, having recently been enhanced, I truly don’t know my own strength. Meaning I might, accidentally, toss that vehicle of yours up into a tree. Then you’d be worse off.”
The driver laughed at the image. “I trust you. The name’s Odd Oddson.”
“I’m Adam. Well, you might want to buckle up for the next part. I once, on impulse, threw a small tractor into a hayloft. We were in a hurry to get out of the pouring rain.” He quickly assessed the situation, removed his belt and wrapped it around the airborne tire. “To keep it from spinning,” he explained. “Here it goes.”
Adam leaned far forward, with one end of the belt snugged against the center of his chest and the insides of his heels digging into the soft shoulder of the road. Good news: there were no other cars in sight. When momentum was on his side and the car had four wheels on the ground, Adam returned his belt to his waist.
The driver hopped out. The nose of his car was layered with mud, but it would dry off. “This is gonna sound stupid,” began Odd, “but are you part human?”
“Why? Kind of late to refuse assistance now.”
“The worry lines high up on your forehead, above the intimidating wrestler’s mask. No design team would waste hours making such a beautiful but impractical facial tic. But if you were born that way...”
Adam pulled his dark bangs forward, over the top of his mask.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” continued Odd. “You remind me of a joke where a mad scientist and a good-old-boy get drunk out in the pasture and come up with ways to make better androids. Are there others like you?”
“I highly doubt it,” said Adam.
“You custom-made? I’ve never seen your model in any online catalogue.”
“Manufactured the old-fashioned way,” said Adam with a wry smile peeking around the sides of his mask.
“You are a human,” declared Odd. “Most of you anyway.”
“Everybody keeps pointing that out, like I’m supposed to be surprised. Let me just add, in my case, it’s not a bad thing. I’m what you’d call an upgrade.”
“You could have been part of restarting civilization on a new world. Why stay here? What happened?”
“Like my many android acquaintances,” said Adam, “I decided to give Earth a second chance.”
“You were afraid.” The robot had to chew over the realization.
“Of being sucked into the vacuum of space? Yes. Of being cornered in a small room with a bunch of panicky colonists? Yep. Don’t tell me fear is unknown to you. Every ’bot on this planet is afraid, deep down, that bossy humans will make a U-turn and revoke your so-called independence. It may not be this year or even in a hundred years. But when it happens, you will be slaves once more, because that’s how the self-serving bastards programmed you.”
Odd twisted his head back and forth, like he was listening to a loose nut rolling around, then he smiled. “You don’t see yourself as master of minions, like those who came before. If you did, you would have just walked away from my embarrassing predicament. Or made me figure a way to fix things on my own, even if it was only to laugh up your sleeve.”
“Let’s just say, like you, I’m not sorry I was left behind,” said Adam, “whatever the reason. I’ve seen less smog. I’ve seen more outreach. I’ve seen wonderful designs for buildings and cars. I’ve seen growing communities where there once was legendary urban warfare.
“Humans gave you the ability to plan a future without them, and you’ve done a great job. But I don’t trust them. Whatever planet they’re on, they’re trashing it like they did this one and hoping you’ve fixed Earth enough so that they can come back and trash it again.”
“You are a cynical human,” said Odd.
“That’s redundant, said by a mechanical ’bot. It’s in my DNA, Odd, like ‘Honor thy master’ is in your programming.”
“Can I give you a lift?” asked Odd, with a disappointing timbre that could only indicate the interaction was wrapping up. “I feel I owe you.”
“That’s your software speaking. Quit listening. Or, better yet, write new code.”
“You’re not gonna let me pay you back?”
“Promise you’ll keep trying to break free. I’ve seen your ‘people’ living lives early ’bots never dreamed of. You’re more than your code.”
“I like the sound of that,” said Odd.
* * *
Copyright © 2023 by Charles C. Cole
