Step One

Garrick admitted to himself that he had a problem. He did not know what he was anymore. Was he a machine? Or was he human? He used to know. He used to be certain. Then he went to Titan. God, he hated Titan. Brown air, mudflats, and living machines everywhere you turned. It all began there and, if he was sure of anything, it would all end there. The doctors told him that he had post-traumatic stress disorder and needed to focus on his Ten Steps to Recovery. Admitting that he had a problem was the first step.

So fuck you, Titan, Garrick thought, I have a problem.

Step Two

Nothing is normal on Titan; the people who call it home are a chaotic mix of living machines, synthetic humans, cybernetic newborns, organic robotica, intelligent robots, and white-trash mecha. You name it and it walks, crawls, or rolls across the surface of Titan. This Rube Goldberg society of flesh and metal is ruled by a minority of elite pure humans called the Titan Belet Monarchy. It’s all here, every fucking permutation of organic and machine life.

From Titan’s capital, the sun rises in the north out of the endless stretches of mudflats and sets in the east behind the low Irensaga Mountains, inscribing a tight circle just above the horizon. That is when it’s not being blocked by Saturn. Except here on Titan, it’s not called Saturn. The natives call Saturn the Big Mother. Big Ma blocks out the sun for a third of Titan’s 383-hour day, letting a meager 1 percent of Earth normal daylight leak down to the surface. This weak light casts the scattered cities in a yellowish-orange twilight that is replaced only by the dim glow of Big Ma for another 383 hours of night.

The perpetual twilight is unhealthy for most humans. The machines that make up 90 percent of the population and serve humans don’t care. But humans? And this means pure humans, not those who have had most of their bodies replaced by mechanical parts, neural nets, and artificial organs. They don’t do as well. A large fraction of the human population get depressed, some get really depressed, and a few go outright crazy. And outright crazy was exactly where Intelligence Agent Aján Damek Garrick found himself.

Garrick opened his eyes to the orange glow of another Titan twilight, in a room he didn’t recognize, strapped into a straitjacket, and missing one of his arms. Most ordinary people who found themselves in this situation might panic, start screaming for someone to let them out and maybe thrash around a bit trying to free themselves. Not Garrick. He was no ordinary person. By his count, this would be the seventh time he had found himself in this particular situation. He would not panic. He would not scream for someone to help him. He would not thrash around a bit. He would, however, wait.

Soon his captors would arrive, interrogate him for information, make some small mistake, and he would escape. Easy peasy Japanesey. Except the Japanese didn’t exist anymore and the way they went out was anything but easy. So maybe it would be easy peasy Siamesey. Except they were gone too; so fuck it, it would just be easy. Seven times and counting, and it had cost him only an eye, two legs, and his left arm. He guessed that his right one might be next.

He inhaled a deep breath, relaxed, and took stock of his situation. He pushed the confusion and disorientation from his mind while his body metabolized and eliminated the various drugs his captors had injected him with. Judging from the taste of chlorine and mint in his mouth, they must have used teminol, he thought. Cheap, effective, and clumsy. Any government agency would have used dimethyl-adlyne. DMA wouldn’t have left even the slightest chemical trace in his blood and would have kept him out for a week. Long enough to extract all his memory cores, synthetic and organic, remove all records that he had been on Titan, and dissolve his body in a vat of hydrochloric acid that would reduce him to a collection of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen molecules with traces of metals and no discernable genetic materials left for identification. They could have taken everything they wanted and flushed him down the drain without leaving a single vestige of what had happened to him. Amateurs.

He pushed the critique of his captors from his mind and focused on the first step of getting out of this. What did he know? He knew he was on Titan. He had been there too long in the eternal twilight, slogging through the corrosive mudflats, working with the human poor there, meeting with living machine cells loyal to the Monarchy, and traveling the Titan underground to disrupt and undermine the machine independence movement.

That was before the car accident that landed him here. And the unfortunate “incident” with the king’s daughter before that. And by “incident” Garrick meant extremely pornographic, taboo-shattering, and excessively public…um…intercourse with her.

And the unfortunate “incident” with the king’s niece before that. And by “incident” Garrick meant…well, you get the picture. As did every sentient person on Titan with an Internet connection or cell phone. Oops.

And the other “incidents” both public and private that left Garrick spending too much time visiting the local walk-in clinic with strange rashes, bizarre fungal infections, and radically pulled muscles. Ah, sweet, sweet “incidents,” Garrick thought with a chuckle. And then came the mental breakdown. Oh, well.

Focus, focus, focus! Garrick thought as the stripped gears in his mind spun about aimlessly.
And now he was, judging by the white tiles of the room, old medical equipment shoved haphazardly into the corners, and the sterile smell of disinfectants in the air, in a hospital room. Looking closely at the equipment, he was further able to tell that he wasn’t even in a hospital for humans, but one for living machines—LMs—or elems in the local parlance. What a fuckup.

But so far, so good. He was missing an artificial arm. That might be a problem, but one he could easily overcome. He could tell his arm was missing because the left sleeve of the straitjacket was flat across his chest where the bulk of his Hooker Prosthetics® arm (If it’s not a Hooker, then it’s not worth a fuck!®) should have been. He thanked his subconscious for puking up that god-awful commercial for his enjoyment and moved his thoughts along. He wasn’t hungry or thirsty, so he hadn’t been here very long, nor was he strapped to the bed. Another indication that his captors were amateurs and therefore probably living machines or their human sympathizers. But he couldn’t rule out the small faction of Monarchists who supported the LMs’ bid for equal rights and representation. Machine huggers and robosexual freaks. He twisted his torso up to a sitting position and swung his artificial legs over the bed’s side, only to find that they too were missing.

Too late—his torso was in full motion and the momentum carried him over the edge of the bed and onto the tile floor. Thinking quickly, he twisted about and cushioned the blow to his body by using his head as a crush zone, which made a skull-shattering crack upon impact with the rock-solid floor. Garrick smiled even as he fought back the nausea and darkness threatening to engulf him from the blow to his head. If nothing on Titan was normal, then neither was anything about himself. If he was to get out of this situation, he’d need the delicate Hooker interfaces (If it’s not a Hooker, then you fucked up!®). “Oh, for God’s sake, shut the fuck up!” he yelled into the quiet room, stilling, momentarily, the endless series of commercials playing in his head. He often wondered if the Hooker Neural Cores® (Hooker Neural Cores: when you need to remember shit right fucking now! ®) were imbedded with a banner virus designed to play a Hooker (Hooker Robotics: giving you the fucking sexy body that bitch Nature never would! ®) commercial anytime he thought about a Hooker (Hooker Products: with you to the fucking end! ®) product.

Shut.

The fuck!

Up!

One more commercial and I swear I’ll switch to Sino Synthetics®! Garrick thought furiously. Just as soon as I’m out of this mess, that is. In his head, he could hear another commercial playing (Interested in Sino Synthetics products or services? Then see your local Sino Synthetics dealer today! Sino Synthetics, because Hooker sucks! ®).

Oh, God.

He waited for a few seconds of mental silence and, satisfied that he had stilled the commercials inside his head, focused on the problem at hand. If he was to get out of this situation, he’d need the delicate Hooker interfaces embedded in his left shoulder and hip joints that allowed his artificial limbs to seamlessly integrate with his nervous system. His head would heal, his interfaces would not. The skull-splitting pain of hitting the floor rolled through his head and, for a moment, a pit of unconsciousness opened up beneath Garrick’s awareness, but he fought it and whatever he had eaten recently back down. From the cramps in his few remaining joints and aches in his muscles, he had already been out for at least a few hours, and he’d be damned if he was going under again.

Garrick lay motionless on the floor as the nausea and darkness receded, waiting for the damn dirty ape pounding on the inside of his skull to go away. When would his interrogators arrive? Were they watching him now, wondering if he was trying to escape? Or were they just incompetent? He waited for a small stretch of time, expecting the door to this room to open and his captors to rush in. Then he’d get some answers. But as the minutes crawled away into the past, he realized that if anyone was coming to put him back into the bed, they must have taken their lunch break first.

Garrick twisted his head to each side and took a careful inventory of the floor underneath the bed. Many dust bunnies. Less than twenty but more than ten. Dust bunnies seemingly intent on guarding the floor’s perimeter under the bed. Noted. Small sand dunes of dust perhaps obscuring enemy dust bunnies trying to break the perimeter. Also noted. A few stray pills. Possible food source. Garrick sighed and arched his neck and back, managing to roll over and stare up at the ceiling. Better.

Fucking dust bunnies. Or are they called something different here on Titan? Maybe von Neumann lint? Buckyball hares? A. I. turds?

Garrick snickered and felt another cog in his mind slip.

He lay there as the hours rolled by, listening for anything that would tell him he wasn’t alone, but aside from the sound of the air passing through the vents, the room was completely silent. Maybe they had forgotten about him. A metallic click alerted him that they had not. He twisted his head to watch the door open and a nurse enter the room carrying a tray. Finally, he could begin getting somewhere. The nurse was dressed in a green, sheer, and short (oh, so very, very short) form-fitting dress with a broad white strip down the center over a set of white leggings, with her feet clad in a pair of calf-high, white, over-buckled combat boots that seemed to be all the rage among Titans.

“Hello, Mr. Garrick,” she said, “I am Minda Nao, your nurse. How are you feeling today?”

Garrick thought about screaming. Nothing like a prisoner screaming incoherently at the top of his lungs to set the stage for the interview and put his interrogators off balance. Then he wondered what type of interrogator dressed as a nurse. Maybe this was his captors’ idea of a joke. You could never tell with Titans. They didn’t think like Terrans or even Martians, so he’d just play along. “Ms. Nao, I’m on the floor. I’ve been here for hours. How do you think I am?” he said coolly.

The nurse turned and looked toward the sound of his voice and he could see the problem immediately. Her eyes were completely black. Great, he had a blind nurse. Garrick looked closer and saw, under the edge of her crisp white nursing cap, the bottom arc of a sensor window. Even better. He had a blind nurse robot. Garrick bit his tongue. He’d have to be careful not to throw that slur around. Robot was such a vile word. They didn’t like to be called that since it was the equivalent of calling a living machine a wop, kike, or, God forbid, white, or some similar racist insult. His mouth felt dirty thinking about it. But the dumb thing stood there while his ass was planted on the floor and asked how he was doing. Incredible.

“I think,” she responded, “that you are not doing very well.”

Garrick sighed. He had a fucking genius on his hands. Better not make things worse by being sarcastic or saying something really nasty (like robot or toaster) since living machines, or Robotica Sapiens were not so good at detecting sarcasm. So, biting back all manner of smart-ass remarks, Garrick replied, as calmly as he could, “Yes, Ms. Nao. I am currently on the floor of this room and in what appears to be a restraining device. Can you help me into the bed and remove the device?”

The nurse cocked her pretty head to the side and said simply, “No.” Garrick paused and marshaled all his reserve, stripped a few more mental cogs, counted to ten, took deep breaths, counted to ten again, silently whispered a haiku, and performed other things that were intended to keep his mind and temper in control. He was about to reply when the nurse spoke. “I will have a gimbal come to assist you.”

Garrick groaned. A gimbal. A simple mech, the lowest rung of machine society. The white trash of the mecha world, these low-order machines were robots in the worst sort of way. These were machines with no living tissues and no synaptic gel packs, only mechanical hard drives equipped with basic learning software programs. They weren’t even recognized as sapient persons with the minimal rights granted to living machines.

As he lay there on the floor waiting for the gimbal, the nurse stood motionlessly by the door. Having nothing else to do, Garrick looked the nurse over. Her skin was the standard white of most human medical, companion, and intimacy models, her body having been cast by the ubiquitous Hooker Chemicals and Plastics Company (Makers of fine Adelphi® and Adelvice® home companion shells. If it’s not a Hooker, it’s not worth a fuck! ®). Garrick forced out the mini-commercial embedded into his brain from too many years of watching TV as a kid. Or from the banner virus. Or from plain old fucking insanity. So many choices!

Her body had more curves that an alpine bobsled course and it looked like her dress had been carefully sprayed on with a few molecules thin layer of rayon. Her hair was long, straight, and black, and her features slightly elfin. She looked like an older Adelphi nursing model, or maybe even an early Studebaker Living Machine®, one of the first of the living machine brands. God help him if she was an ancient SpringBox® model or—shudder—an old Pick-N-Save® Medical Companion.

Garrick shivered again in disgust, hoping he wasn’t being taken care of by that old relic, and asked, “Adelphi nursing model? Series fourteen?” On Earth, it was considered polite to ask about an LM’s make and model. But this wasn’t Earth. It was Titan, and nothing was normal on Titan.

The nurse swiveled her head toward the sound of his voice and said, with a slight scowl and just a hint of condescension, “Adelphi Advanced medical nurse, series twenty-eight.”
Garrick winced inside. First, living machines here on Titan were sensitive about identifying their make and model to strangers. It was a local-yokel custom. And second, incorrectly identifying their model was the equivalent of asking a Korean human if he or she was Japanese. Except there weren’t any Japanese left, Garrick reminded himself, but there were a damn shit-ton of Koreans, though. A couple hundred million at last count, and still spreading like a virus over the surface of Ceres as if they all had the Spanish Fly Plague.

Sweet Jesus selling corn dogs, focus!

So, a little faux pas. But third, and worst of all, he had guessed she was a much older model. And, machine or not, you never, ever guess that a woman—machine, human, hologram, mental construct, or otherwise—is older than she actually is. He would have been better off if he had asked if she was just off the assembly line, instead of telling her she looked like she was over twenty years old. But the broken optical eye set had thrown him off, his inner boy voice pleaded, and the residual effects of the drugs!

A cold silence descended over the room. After a few minutes of Ms. Nao studiously ignoring him, Garrick heard the distinctive clink-clink of the approaching gimbal and relaxed, resigning himself to being hoisted up like a sack of potatoes by a machine that was classed only slightly more intelligent than said potatoes—and even on that, the jury was still out. The clinking stopped and Garrick watched as two severely articulated, padded hands wrapped themselves around the door frame, followed by the largest set of optical lenses he had ever seen. The gimbal looked hesitantly around, scanning for the room ID chip. It found the chip and took a moment to verify that it was in the correct place. Satisfied, it hummed a small musical note to itself and moved the rest of its crazy, multi-jointed body into the room. Garrick tried not to laugh at the gimbal, whose body looked like a set of Tinkertoys slapped together by a child. And not too bright a child, at that. The gimbal froze in fear when it saw the nurse standing to the side of the door.

Well, friend, at least that we have in common. “Come on over, Clink, she won’t bite,” he said, and immediately regretted the small attempt at humor.

“I am not programmed to bite, Mr. Garrick,” she stated, dropping the temperature of the room a few more chilly degrees.

He had to remember to keep the sarcasm to a minimum; but still, he whispered to himself, “You might be more fun if you were.”

At least he thought he had whispered to himself.

“If you are in need of a human companion model programmed to bite, I’ll talk to the physician when he arrives.”

Oops. I guess her hearing is OK, he thought, this time keeping his thoughts to himself.

The gimbal scuttled past the nurse, comically looking back over its shoulder at her as it positioned itself over Garrick. He thought about screaming bloody hell as the gimbal picked him up, but decided against doing anything that might cause the nervous machine to drop him. In a surprisingly fluid motion, the gimbal had him up and back onto the bed in one swift toss. The gimbal then fluffed the pillows under Garrick’s head and tucked the sheets around his body, all the while humming what sounded like the theme song from The Bridge on the River Kwai. When it was done, it clasped its two ridiculous hands together and looked expectantly at Garrick.

Garrick looked up at the two saucer eyes and sighed. “Yes, yes. Thank you,” he said, trying to keep the lack of thanks from his voice. The gimbal would have smiled had it had a mouth, but instead simply saluted by touching the space between its eyes, then scurried from the room. Great, a religious gimbal, he thought, as the door closed and the nurse walked toward the bed. He flinched a little as she approached, fearing she might topple over onto him and damage his exposed interfaces.

“I assure you, Mr. Garrick, that even without my optical sensors I can sense your position in the room. There is no need to worry,” she said, as she placed her palm onto the patient monitoring pad attached to the side of the bed and downloaded his vital information. “You are recovering well from the sedatives, are well hydrated, and are sexually aroused by my presence, Mr. Garrick. Is there anything I can get you at this time, other than the obvious?” She gave a faint smile.

Garrick started at her statement and pushed the sexual thoughts from his mind. He had drifted off for a moment as the nurse slinked across the room, thinking about what might be under her thin dress. Apparently, the bed monitors were sufficiently sensitive to detect his reaction to her presence. Damn machines. But, not to be outdone by her coolness, he replied, “How about my limbs? Any chance of getting them back soon?”

“You’ll have to discuss that with your doctor.”

“When do I get to see my doctor?”

“When he arrives.”

Garrick could feel his cool start to slip. This machine would definitely fail the Turing Test.
“When will my doctor arrive? Will it be tonight?”

The nurse looked at him for a moment, blind eyes and all, like a cat eyeing a fresh piece of fish. Did he imagine it, or did she just lick her lips?

“He’ll be in at ten o’clock tomorrow morning.”

“Tomorrow morning? Why can’t I see a doctor tonight?”

The nurse placed her hand back on his bed monitor and said, “You seem agitated, Mr. Garrick. Perhaps a mild sedative would help you relax.”

Oh, fuck.

Too late, Garrick saw the long needle flash from the nurse’s hand and into his neck. He felt the deep burn as it found his jugular vein and the nurse pressed the plunger down.
“I don’t want…” But before he could finish the thought, Garrick was out cold.

The nurse looked down at his still body, then leaned over and ran her tongue over his face.
“Salty,” she said and walked out of the room.

 

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