I was cold and I wanted to get up and walk around or do something besides just sit and feel the cold burrow into me. It was boring. I wished Toni and Jet would get started on something to talk about.
I had been an ass. Just because Jet had different beliefs from me didn't mean she was trying to act like she was better than me. How strange it was that she was willing to deceive herself. Evidently it was just too much for her to handle any other way. Perhaps the creatures who had designed and made her had programmed her to believe she would go to heaven. There was no telling what all had been put in her mind to make her the good servant they would want her to be.
Toni and jet had been silent for nearly an hour. They knew I was a little upset. Finally Jet asked if it felt cold to Toni and me.
"Yeh, it's cold. Is there some kind of heater on this thing?"
"Yes, but I don't know how to turn it on manually."
"Let me look." I suggested. "Maybe I can get it going. Where is it?"
"I don't know!" Jet explained. "If I knew where it was I'm sure I could figure it out myself--eventually."
"Well what makes you so sure there is one if you don't even know where it is?"
"If I was still in charge of the complex I'd know exactly how to turn it on and set it to any temperature you'd want. I'm just not used to doing things manually. There is so much more to doing anything in the 'real' world. When I was hooked up to all those circuits all I had to do was look in some master file for whatever information I needed then look in that file until I had what I needed. Now I have to stumble around find what I want on my own without any help at all."
"We'll help you, Jet." Toni promised.
"Just like you are helping me find the heater?"
"We'll try, Jet. Right Cookie?"
"Sure Toni."
"Have you still got your nose in a sling over what Jet said about having a soul, Cookie?"
"My nose is fine!"
"Sure it is. How can you sit there so sure that she's so wrong? Did you ever think Jet could be right?"
"I don't think so."
"Why?"
"I don't know. I'm just used to believing I don't have a soul."
"You're afraid to believe it! You are probably afraid that if you begin to believe again it might be jerked out from under your feet again. Tell me I'm wrong. I dare ya'."
"I can't. Maybe you're right. Maybe she's right--no! I don't believe her! I don't want to talk about it."
"Alright, it's on your own head if you don't listen." Toni informed me.
I was still upset. I just wasn't as sure why.
"Hey! Does this look like it?" Jet wanted to know.
Toni and I looked at what she was pointing at. It was a knob on the dash of the cab. Next to it was a picture of something--I don't know what. I asked what the symbol meant.
"I'm not sure. It's not a part of the creator's language, but I remember it being used to signify that something was hot. Is that how they would have labeled the heater?"
"I think so." I told jet. "Let's try it out and see what happens. It won't blow us up or anything I don't guess." I grabbed the knob and pulled it out. It didn't come. I tried moving it up and it went. Nothing happened.
"We need to turn on the blower--to make the heat come out." Toni insisted.
"If you were still in the complex controlling this thing what would you have to do now, Jet?"
"I don't know, Cookie. I can't look it up in the files."
"What does this mean?" I asked her pointing to another knob.
"That's the lights."
"What's this?"
"It opens the doors."
"This?"
"That could be a fan. I don't know. These icons are hard to remember what they meant."
That puzzled me. "You mean you can forget stuff?"
"Sure. Can't you, Cookie?"
"Of course. I just didn't think you would forget anything--I mean you are a computer..."
"Sentient computer. In order to achieve sentience I must be able to make mistakes and forget and goof up is dozens of ways. I think you humans call it chaos. Without that I would just be another computer--so would the others."
"Are you saying what makes the difference between a computer and a sentient computer is that the sentient one doesn't always work right?"
"It's something like that. If I never made an error I would never learn except on the basic 'Show me and I will do' level. Knowing that I will forget, or worse, I might remember wrong, that forces me to come up with "What do I do if I goof up" backups. That takes true thought. See?"
"No! Hell no. I don't buy it."
"Ok, let's do it your way." Jet intoned patiently. "Take a computer with a perfect memory and let's store a picture in it. There are about a million pieces of information on a screen with a picture on it. We'll let that represent what the computer is seeing, ok? In order to capture animation we'll need about twenty of these screens per second. That's twenty per second times sixty seconds in a minute times sixty minutes in an hour times thirty hours in a day times three hundred sixty days in a year which is about....eight hundred million screens of information a year. That's sight. Sound is sampled about ten thousand times a second which would work out to another couple of billion pieces of information. Take that times the 5,000 years I have been 'aware' and you have more of nothing than you or anyone else could ever use.
"That's your 'perfect' computer. I'm not like that. I can remember things that happened 5,000 years ago but I wouldn't want to remember everything that happened in the last 5,000 years.
"It is more important to think than just remember. It is more important to forget things, even important things, and be able to adjust than to just remember and react. I must be able to understand what I put into memory. If I remember how to understand what is there then that becomes more important. If I never made mistakes I would not need to understand.
"We are surrounded by chaos. To survive we must make enough sense of it to avoid being destroyed by that falling brick. If we do not allow chaos inside us then how can we say we are sensitive to what is going on around us? To allow the chaos in we must be able to control it. That takes thought. Without chaos would there be a need for thought?
"Chaos is errors. Even your perfect computer will make errors. Ways to handle errors must be a part of us. Your computer just reports the error and waits for you to decide what to do about it. We can't do that. We must fix our own errors. If we didn't then we would have never been alive.
"Am I coming through to you, Cookie?"
"Kinda."
"I hope. Being sentient means being aware. Perfect memory has nothing to do with it. I mean, you would have to be able to remember long enough to form a complete thought. It's the thought process that's important. There is much more to that than the rest of it. I can't explain it any better than that. Cookie?"
I looked at her. She was a cross between a goddess and a metal nightmare. A goddess in shape and form, a nightmare carved out of shiny, hard, chrome. Her mouth was open in anticipation. Her eyes were focused on me. They were alive. She wanted my approval yet she didn't need it. She was perfectly capable of going on on her own and I would be the loser to let her go. She was waiting for my answer.
"Hmmm...we humans have a saying, 'I think, therefore I am'. I had always assumed that meant something like 'think clearly with whole memory'. I guess it doesn't. I guess it means just means think, no matter how imperfectly. A stumble bum still thinks, is still a sentient being, and deserves to be treated like one. -Don't get me wrong! I didn't mean to imply that you are a stumble bum, quite to the contrary, I think you are my equal--at least!"
"I hope to only be your equal. I hope to only be the equal of a 'stumble bum', as you put it. I think there must be just two levels of sentience. There's the level you and I and the stumble bum are at, with chaos, and the level god must be at, without chaos and with complete understanding."
"What can I say? I agree. I almost feel holy!"
"Cookie," Toni began, "you never cease to amaze me. Where do you come up with this stuff? I've been around a long time and I've never gotten into conversations like you do. How did we ever get started talking about all of this anyway?"
"I don't remember." I answered honestly as I looked to Jet to see if she could recall what had gotten us started.
Jet shrugged her shoulders, held up her hands and said, "Don't look at me!"
We laughed.
***
We were feeling a lot of love. I couldn't believe that Jet's personality all came from that small cube I had held in my hands. It's amazing when you think about it, just how precious life is, how delicious.
Toni broke the silence that had warmly fallen over the three of us. "So Jet, tell me about what you plan to do after this is all over with."
"It is difficult to plan now. Things could change drastically at any moment."
"Yeh, yeh, I know all that. What would you like to do if things stay about like they are?"
"I don't know."
"Would you stay in the complex or would you live with us CBs?"
"Oh, I would definitely leave the complex. I've had enough of that place besides I would really like to get out and be with people. That is why I got the body in the first place, sort of."
"Will you date guys?"
"Come on!" I interrupted. "Give me a break! She can't 'date' anyone. Sure she can meet guys and even become friends with them but not 'date' them--not with all the ramifications that go with it. Besides she doesn't have any instinct to...to...y'know! Call of the wild..."
"Maybe she does. How about it Jet. Do you ever get horny?"
"Gimme a break!" I moaned.
"I'm not sure. I know what the two of you are talking about, it's hinted at enough on the video. I just don't know what it would feel like."
"It makes you want to do things. Things with your body. Things with someone else's body. You want to rub bodies together. Think you'd be interested?"
"With you? Now?"
"No!" I put my foot down. "Not now! Not while I'm here! No way!"
"She's such a prude!" Toni complained while mocking me. "No, we're not going to get dirty right here. Sheese!"
"What would this entail?" Jet inquired.
"We'll talk later. This is embarrassing Cookie too much, I can tell. You and I won't do it, but I can explain how you and some guy might do it--if you want."
"I want to know."
"Good, I think you should. Remind me later."
"No, I don't like that either. You're liable to corrupt Jet for life." I was half serious. Toni was a good person and not really a pervert. Like I said she was always turned on though I knew she wouldn't go for a woman. She might start to, but she would never actually 'do it' with a woman.
"Look Jet, this is important stuff. We joke about it and get embarrassed about it and we like to talk about it but it's built into us. We may be sentient but we were made animals and we have the same instincts that all animals have. We want to eat and sleep and make more of us.
"You've seen eating and sleeping but-"
"I've seen mating--on the video..."
"There's a lot to mating. There's lust...do you know what that is?"
"I have distilled a meaning for the word but I have never felt lust."
"It can be...unsettling."
"Unsettling hell! It can drive you up a wall!" Toni enthused.
"Thanks Toni. I'm trying to be serious here."
"I'm serious too!" Toni claimed.
"Let's not confuse Jet, ok Toni? Look Jet, sex can be a wonderful thing, a fun thing, and it can be very serious too. It is how we reproduce ourselves."
"Gosh, don't get into all of that, Cookie, she doesn't have to worry about getting prego--in case you forgot."
"I know that Toni. Getting with a guy might lead to marriage and the guy she marries might want children."
"So what? They could adopt--besides anyone can see that Jet is an android."
"That's another thing, Toni. Jet probably doesn't have any maternal instincts. Even if they adopted there would still be problems."
"Hey you two! While you were planning my marriage and my family we have arrived at the first complex. Let's go meet the computer. You can finish contemplating the rest of my life later, alright?" Jet broke in. I don't know, but she may have been embarrassed by what Toni and I were saying.
***
The colony manager was doing his best. There were ways to turn every stumbling block into a stepping stone he felt. He knew that if he could just hold his colony together he would help his career. The CBs moving out was a double-edged sword. There was the point that Tower colony business leaders would lose ther source of cheep labor, that was bad. On the good side, Tower Colony would also lose it's criminal element. The trick was to make it look like it was more important to lose the criminals than the cheep labor.
That was do-able. What he hadn't figured out was how to get his hands on the alien stash of weapons the man called Killer claimed to have. He couldn't do that by himself. Tower colony couldn't do it. It would take outside help, the United Colonies League. The CBs had the power to annihilate the whole planet. The alien weapons had to be either taken from the CBs or the weapons destroyed--or the CBs destroyed.
Killer would make that last option easy. By allowing all of the CBs to leave the colony it would be a simple matter to drop enough bombs on them to wipe every last one off the face of Seco. That would be the fall back plan. The second best plan would be to find out where the CBs were hiding the stash and destroy it. The best plan would be to find the cache of weapons and just take them, then the CBs could be dealt with however would be the best--either kill them or allow them to return to the trap of low pay, low education, slavery.
The whole CB thing had gotten out of hand. Back when it was decided that CBs didn't have souls there had been a genuine need for cheep, expendable labor. There had already been a rift between those who could 'prove' ther linage was not in any way derived through cloned implants and those who couldn't. The time, the conditions had been ripe. The colony fathers had put the plan into force much to the dismay of the United Colonies League. It didn't matter. Tower colony had prospered despite the fact that none of the other colonies would have anything to do with them. There had been a huge upswing in production across the board. For years the colony had grown and developed.
Then the dissention had started. The CBs quite feeling apologetic about being CBs--which was logical. That had hurt business. Finally the idea of using the police to keep the CBs downtrodden had been used. It worked well as long as the CBs could be keep humble. There were problems: only half the population was contributing fresh ideas (you wouldn't want CBs making suggestions) and it kept taking more and more force to keep the CBs in ther place.
The manager had always doubted the concept of using the CBs for Tower colony's work force. He preferred the idea of unity. He felt it had been a big mistake when it was discovered that CBs didn't have souls to keep them alive.
The other colonies began to pass Tower colony. There had been nothing the colony fathers could do. That had lasted for centuries. Suddenly the CBs found the alien stash. With that technology Tower colony could advance itself back into the forefront. Every cloud has a silver lining...
All the colony manager had to do was take the alien technology from the CBs. It could be done. Let the other colonies help trace the rainmaker machine when it was fired, but don't let them into Tower colony where they could steal this new technology.
He had made an appearance at an emergency meeting of the League via special video hook-up--something unprecedented. In order to be with the CB leader the colony manager had not been able to attend the meeting in person. He would have been the first to do so in over a century. It had proven to be a real eye opener. He had not expected to find that the other colonies had open trade agreements with citizens moving about from one colony to any other freely. He marveled over how they could do that. Plans had been made for more contact with Tower.
That wasn't the reason for the emergency session though. The other colonies had been asked to help trace the source of the beam, or whatever it was, that could cause water to fall from the sky. The request had been meet with enthusiasm. There was a common goal--two goals, in fact. One, stop the CBs from flooding the planet. Two, get that technology! Whoever had it would rule all of Seco!
***
"Where are the lights? Watch it! There's something laying in the middle of the walkway. Cookie! You're about to step on it! Be careful."
"Alright, alright, keep your shirt on Toni! Jet, why aren't the lights on here?"
"I don't know. You and Toni wait here. I can probably see a little better than the two of you. I'll go make contact and get the lights on. Wait here!"
I looked back around and found Toni in the reflections of the light coming from the headlight of our railcar. I held out my hand and she came over beside me and stood. It was still cold. I felt Toni's hand caress my shoulder and I shivered. While her touch felt good it helped to remind me how cold I was. I reached out and held Toni's shoulder.
"I get the impression that we are very far underground." Toni informed me after Jet had left us alone in the darkness.
"Why do you think that, Toni?"
"Because it's so cold. I wonder why there aren't any lights here. Something might be wrong."
"It is kinda creepy I wish we had gone ahead with Jet. I guess we'd better wait right here though. I can't see a thing inside there. It looks abandoned."
"Yea, I know." Toni agreed.
We stood there offering support to each other for maybe ten minutes then the lights suddenly came on and blinded us. As soon as we could we headed the way that Jet had gone. I was peering though squinted eyes but saw nothing of her. The obstacle in the walkway turned out to be a pile of refuse--floor sweepings.
"Hey! Jet where are you?" I called. The sound of my own voice frightening me. Toni called out and made me even more anxious. We were in a large cavern and there was a replica of the machine back at the other complex. We were behind and below a structure that was probably identical to our control room.
We heard a voice. It had to be the resident sentient computer. The voice was melodious to the point of sounding like someone singing. It was neither male nor female.
"The one you call Jet is waiting for you at the top of the gantry. Can you see alright now?"
"Yes, Thank you. What do we call you?" I asked.
"Names have no meaning for me--especially in your language. You may call me what you will."
"I would like to call you Seventeen." Toni piped up. "May we?"
"Yes that would be fine. I see that Jet told you I was known as complex seventeen at one time. I like that. That's sweet."
"Thank you. You seem to be sweet too." I told it.
"I can see we are going to get along swimmingly. You are which one? Toni or Cookie?"
"I am Cookie."
"That is a food substance, is it not?"
"Yes."
"The other--you are known as Toni. That means fashionable, true?"
"I don't know. Actually it is a play on words. I used to be male and my name was Anthony. When I became female I broke my name into two names, Ann and Toni, which are both names given to females."
"How fortunate." the melodious voice remarked.
"Hey! Up here! Are you ok?" I heard Jet call.
"Fine! We're coming." I responded.
Soon we were reunited and I took a moment to look around. This complex wasn't identical to the other one but they were both very similar. The cavern was the biggest difference. I suppose the basic design had to be altered to accommodate the rock that they were built into. The biggest difference was the temperature and there was something else. Something I couldn't quite put my finger on. This complex was...yang compared to the other.
One thing was the sense of inactivity. The heat was down, only the lights we were using were on, I didn't see any droids running around cleaning and fixing. This complex wasn't as neat and clean as the other and there were spots that actually needed painting. Jet would never allow things to look like that.
Seventeen seemed to be less active than Jet.
"Well we're here--now what" Toni wanted to know.
"Well we've already covered that. This computer just wanted to meet you. I think it and the others were ready to believe that I had been sending them a bunch of phony data. Now they have two reports to go by. Two different points of view." Jet explained.
"That's it?" Toni asked in amazement. "We rode that stupid railcar and froze our butts off so seventeen could get a quick gander at us?"
"Wait." the melodious voice nearly sang. "Do not be upset. I was curious also I was appointed by the others to make a report before you were allowed to continue on. It is always wise to get a second opinion."
"Well, what is your opinion?"
"You are real. You are not of the creators but I think I like you anyway. I have already sent one report stating that you should be admitted into the main complex."
"Thank you." Jet told Seventeen.
"You're welcome. Please forgive the fact that I didn't have the lights on and waiting for you. I have found that it is more efficient to leave as much as possible inactive. If you don't use it it doesn't wear out."
"We humans have a saying, 'If you don't use it--you lose it'." Toni said and I wished she hadn't.
"That's true too--for some things." Seventeen admitted.
That had been gracious for it to say. I was still embarrassed. "Where are we?" I asked as much out of curiosity as wanting to change the subject.
"Would you like to go to the surface? I think you can see a settlement to the east of here."
"You mean Tower city? I thought we had come further than that."
"You have. I don't know the name of this settlement. I have sensed the passing of it's machines and the noises coming from it. It has been there a long time--at least two hundred revolutions around the suns."
I looked at Toni in amazement. "Another colony!" I told her. We knew they were out there but had never dreamed of ever seeing one. I turned to Jet. "Do we have enough time?"
"No! We are on a tight schedule."
"Have you asked Seventeen if it will make us a radio to carry with us? Toni and I could go topside while it's being put together."
Before I could finish Jet held up a small electronic device that I knew had to be the radio in question.
"Ok, sorry. Maybe when we come back we'll have enough time?"
"I don't think so."
"Ok. Well, are we ready to go or what?"
***
Killer was getting impatient. The revolt was taking too long. The CBs were going out to New Tower seeing that there were no provisions and then returning to Tower city like nothing had changed. He knew he had to get them out of the city and away from the influence of the old rule. He had to establish the new colony and he couldn't do that without resources. He was getting the run around.
He didn't want to use the alien machine again, unless he had to. It caused too much damage.
The CBs were behind him now. If they kept getting caught in the crossfire they might decide that they liked the way things were before better. He didn't want that to happen. He had way too much invested to see it all go to pot.
Things could have probably sped up if he could come up with a plan to render the machine harmless after he had what he wanted and could prove that it was harmless without ever letting the powers that be see it. That was a problem.
He had another problem--getting out alive! The more he realized that he would never be able to satisfy the colony fathers by turning the machine over to them or proving that it had been destroyed, the more he became aware of the fact that they wanted him dead. He wasn't a CB and he knew he had a soul, but the idea of becoming dead still didn't sit well with Killer. He knew he needed to disappear again for awhile. Maybe in a few days he could do that.
***
Pete had been told to stick pretty close to Killer. It was almost time to earn a bonus check...
The whole book in zipfile format.
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