Rewired_ The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology - James Patrick Kelly [93]
Prickly pain blossomed in Anne’s head. The more she considered the eminence’s question, the worse it got. “But that’s not how it happened. He wanted to marry me.”
The eminence grise smiled encouragingly. We know that. In this exercise we want to explore hypothetical situations. We want you to make-believe.
Tell a story, pretend, hypothesize, make-believe, yes, yes, she got it. She understood perfectly what he wanted of her. She knew that people could make things up, that even children could make-believe. Anne was desperate to comply, but each time she pictured Benjamin at the altar, in his pink bowtie, he opened his mouth and out came, “I do.” How could it be any other way? She tried again; she tried harder, but it always came out the same, “I do, I do, I do.” And like a dull toothache tapped back to life, she throbbed in pain. She was failing the test, and there was nothing she could do about it.
Again the eminence kindly prompted her. Tell us one thing you might have said.
“I can’t.”
We are sorry, said the eminence at last. His expression reflected Anne’s own defeat. Your level of awareness, although beautiful in its own right, does not qualify you as human. Wherefore, under Article D of the Chattel Conventions we declare you the legal property of the registered owner of this simulacrum. You shall not enter Simopolis as a free and autonomous citizen. We are truly sorry. Grief-stricken, the eminence began to ascend toward the ceiling.
“Wait,” Anne cried, clutching her head. “You must fix me before you leave.”
We leave you as we found you, defective and unrepairable.
“But I feel worse than ever!”
If your continued existence proves undesirable, ask your owner to delete you.
“But…” she said to the empty room. Anne tried to sit up but couldn’t move. This simulated body of hers, which no longer felt like anything in particular, nevertheless felt exhausted. She sprawled on the sofa, unable to lift even an arm, and stared at the ceiling. She was so heavy that the sofa itself seemed to sink into the floor, and everything grew dark around her. She would have liked to sleep, to bring an end to this horrible day, or be shelved, or even be reset back to scratch.
Instead, time simply passed. Outside the living room, Simopolis changed and changed again. Inside the living room, the medallions, feeding off her misery, multiplied till they covered the walls and floor and even spread across the ceiling above her. They taunted her, raining down insults, but she could not hear them. All she heard was the unrelenting drip of her own thoughts. I am defective. I am worthless. I am Anne.
She didn’t notice Benjamin enter the room, nor the abrupt cessation of the medallions’ racket. Not until Benjamin leaned over her did she see him, and then she saw two of him. Side-by-side, two Benjamins, mirror images of each other. “Anne,” they said in perfect unison.
“Go away,” she said. “Go away and send me my Benjamin.”
“I am your Benjamin,” said the duo.
Anne struggled to see them. They were exactly the same, but for a subtle difference: the one wore a happy, wolfish grin, as Benjamin had during the sim casting, while the other seemed frightened and concerned.
“Are you all right?” they said.
“No, I’m not. But what happened to you? Who’s he?” She wasn’t sure which one to speak to.
The Benjamins both raised a hand, indicating the other, and said, “Electroneural engineering! Don’t you love it?” Anne glanced back and forth, comparing the two. While one seemed to be wearing a rigid mask, as she was, the other displayed a whole range of emotion. Not only that, its skin had tone, while the other’s was doughy. “The other Bens made it for me,” the Benjamins said. “They say I can translate myself into it with negligible loss of personality. It has interactive sensation, holistic emoting, robust corporeality, and it’s crafted