Rewired_ The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology - James Patrick Kelly [90]
“You,” she said, addressing the original medallion, or at least the one she thought was the original, “call Benjamin.”
“The fuck you think I am?” said the insolent little face, “Your personal secretary?”
“Aren’t you?”
“No, I’m not! In fact, I own this place now, and you’re trespassing. So you’d better get lost before I delete your ass!” All the others joined in, taunting her, louder and louder.
“Stop it!” she cried, to no effect. She noticed a medallion elongating, stretching itself until it was twice its length, when, with a pop, it divided into two smaller medallions. More of them divided. They were spreading to the other wall, the ceiling, the floor. “Benjamin!” she cried. “Can you hear me?”
Suddenly all the racket ceased. The medallions dropped off the wall and vanished before hitting the floor. Only one remained, the original one next to the door, but now it was an inert plastic disc with a dull expression frozen on its face.
A man stood in the center of the room. He smiled when Anne noticed him. It was the elderly Benjamin from the auditorium, the real Benjamin. He still wore his clownish leisure suit. “How lovely,” he said, gazing at her. “I’d forgotten how lovely.”
“Oh, really?” said Anne. “I would have thought that doxie thingy might have reminded you.”
“My, my,” said Ben. “You sims certainly exchange data quickly. You left the lecture hall not fifteen minutes ago, and already you know enough to convict me.” He strode around the room touching things. He stopped beneath the mirror, lifted the blue vase from the shelf, and turned it in his hands before carefully replacing it. “There’s speculation, you know, that before Manumission at midnight tonight, you sims will have dispersed all known information so evenly among yourselves that there’ll be a sort of data entropy. And since Simopolis is nothing but data, it will assume a featureless, grey profile. Simopolis will become the first flat universe.” He laughed, which caused him to cough and nearly lose his balance. He clutched the back of the sofa for support. He sat down and continued to cough and hack until he turned red in the face.
“Are you all right?” Anne said, patting him on the back.
“Yes, fine,” he managed to say. “Thank you.” He caught his breath and motioned for her to sit next to him. “I get a little tickle in the back of my throat that the autodoc can’t seem to fix.” His color returned to normal. Up close, Anne could see the papery skin and slight tremor of age. All in all, Cathy seemed to have aged better than he.
“If you don’t mind my asking,” she said, “just how old are you?”
At the question, he bobbed to his feet. “I am one hundred and seventy-eight.” He raised his arms and wheeled around for inspection. “Radical gerontology,” he exclaimed, “don’t you love it? And I’m eighty-five percent original equipment, which is remarkable by today’s standards.” His effort made him dizzy and he sat again.
“Yes, remarkable,” said Anne, “though radical gerontology doesn’t seem to have arrested time altogether.”
“Not yet, but it will,” Ben said. “There are wonders around every corner! Miracles in every lab.” He grew suddenly morose. “At least there were until we were conquered.”
“Conquered?”
“Yes, conquered! What else would you call it when they control every aspect of our lives, from RM acquisition to personal patenting? And now this—robbing us of our own private nonbiologiks.” He grew passionate in his discourse. “It flies in the face of natural capitalism, natural stakeholding—I dare say—in the face of Nature itself! The only explanation I’ve seen on the wad is the not-so-preposterous proposition that whole strategically placed BODS have been surreptitiously killed and replaced by machines!