THE HOUSE IN THE PORT:pt 2

by J.R. Torina

Deciding to just sidestep this, I returned to the photo. “So, I don’t get it--exactly what is it? Fangs? A mask?”

“Yea, a mask. But not fangs… Think FISH,” he said, his voice raising in pitch.

Fish--again. “Uh, well…” Then it hit me. “Tentacles?”

“Yes--yes,” he exhaled, sounding relieved, as he slapped me on the back.

“So, we have here a very old photograph, of a church, or what was once a church, sort of a fog or mist in the area, with a few hunchbacks going inside. All this, and a man wearing a robe, and a mask with… tentacles? So, what’s the connection? What does it all mean?”

“Innsmouth, the whole village was once a fishin’ village,” the old man started.

“The Marshes, the Gilmans, the Eliots, and a few other families all lived there. For generations back, they was always a fisher folk there, til…” His voice trailed off.

“Until?” I pressed him.

“Until somewhere along the way, they took to worshippin’ fish-gods,” he said. His attitude was one of relief for getting all this off his chest, as well as one of fear, for telling me any of it at all.

“Well, when did this happen?”

“I’m thinkin’ it was somewheres around the early 1900’s at least, when the folk in Innsmouth were first visited by… them…”

“Them?”

“The Deep Ones.”

I am a practical and rational man, but the old man and his mysterious way of speaking was beginning to annoy me. He seemed as if he wanted to tell me some things about Innsmouth, but every small, cryptic nugget of information he gave me merely opened up more questions. I pressed him again for more information. “Mustus, who, or what, are Deep Ones? Are they deep sea fishermen? Pirates? What are you talking about, man?”

“No, no, Deep Ones ain’t no pirates, and they ain’t fishermen--they are fish-men.”

“You mean, literally?” I asked him, somewhat surprised, hiding the smirk that was creeping up the side of my mouth.

I reasoned that I came here for the Gazette, looking for some story information, but about devil worshippers; occultists. I had no idea about rumors of fish-men, or places where freakish looking people followed masked men into churches. I decided to get what I could from him, and see if I could possibly get a story out of it, or link the devil worshippers and cultist activities with the so-called fish men, or “Deep Ones”, as he called them.

“Fish men, yes,” he said, interrupting my thoughts.

“The people of Innsmouth are basically slaves--or… aco… acol…” he trailed off.

“Acolytes?” I finished for him.

“Yea, ye got it. Acolytes. They’s acolytes--servants--of the Deep Ones. The townsfolk do their bidding, whether it’s buildin’ temples, attendin' rituals, or…” again, the old man trailed off.

“Or?”

“Or… or…” Here he was stammering, as if he couldn’t bring himself to say whatever it was he was going to say.

“Mustus, you responded to my letter and invited me here to tell me what you know-- so spill it, man!” I barked.

“These acolytes, they work, worship… and breed… with the Deep Ones.” The look on his face was one of horror.

“Breed?” I asked him, incredulously. “How, exactly? I mean, you’re telling me that these fishermen, this entire town, they live in nocturnal obeisance to some supernatural belief that men--fish men--from the sea will come to them? Is that good or bad?”

“’Pends on yer point o’ view” the old man replied, his voice hushed now.

I was about ready to strangle him. The way he kept baiting me, then giving me so little information, was bothersome to say the least. I was about to remark to him on this and make my way to the door, when I noticed him staring at the next photo in the book, as if he were hypnotized by it.

I looked at it to see what it was that had him so mesmerized. A photograph, equally as old as the one before it of the cathedral exterior, but this one was evidently inside the place. From what I could see of it, it seemed as if there were strange gargoyle-type decorations and bas-relief carvings all along the wall of the place. There, in the center of the photo, was the man in the black robe, with the strange octopoidal mask on. He was standing to face what was obviously the congregation, arms in the air in some type of gesture. I commented to Mustus, “High Priest, of whatever this cult is?”

“Yes…”

“You seem distraught, Mustus--what is it?”

“Memories, jis’ memories…” he trailed off again.

I glanced over to the opposing page in the old man’s photo album, or whatever this book was. To my astonishment, I saw the unbelievable. There, in that second old photograph, was that same room I had just noticed, with it’s strange “fishy” decorations, and what appeared to be an altar of sorts. Upon this altar, a beautiful, nude woman was seated, staring as if into space, as if she were waiting for something. I noticed she wasn’t completely nude; she wore a necklace, which bore a small medallion. It must have been of some ritual significance, but it was too hard to make out in the picture. This photo was both beautiful yet repulsive. Beautiful, for the woman, her pretty face, her curves and soft, white skin; repulsive, that such a beautiful sight, a work of art at any other time, in any other place, should be found--willingly, I wondered--in a repulsive place such as where she'd been photographed.

As Mustus turned the page, breaking the spell we both seemed to have fallen under, I remembered what it was that I was here for--if that even mattered any more, after being exposed to some of the macabre wonders that the old man kept.

“So, Mustus--tell me. There is a cult--an Order--of someone or something called “Dagon”, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Apparently, they have some connection with the people in the fishing town of Innsmouth, whom are either members, or just followers. There appears to be a man in charge, a high priest, who is wearing a mask resembling some octopus thing. Now I see a beautiful woman sitting on a stone block, or an altar. Are you trying to tell me that there followed some sort of grisly ritual sacrifice? Was she killed, in sacrificial offering, to this “Dagon”?”

“No, no--she weren’t killed.”

I lost patience. Leaving my normal reserved character, I grabbed the man by the shoulders, brought my face to his, raising my voice--“Mustus. You agreed to talk to me, not give me bits and pieces of cryptic musings, not to answer questions with vague answers and more questions! You invited me here for answers that you assured me you had, about a suspected evil cult along the coast. You assured me you had ties to this cult, which you have severed, trying to shirk off that dark past life. Now I need to know, since we had a deal, as well as that it seems that you are trying to tell me something, but are having… reservations? Damn it, man, tell me what is going on! Tell me what has gone on.”

He seemed to be somewhat removed from his stupor, as well as a bit angered at my treatment of him. Straightening out his filthy jacket, he sat down, dust flying up from the wretched couch. “The church, well--it ain’t no church. It’s a grand cathedral from ancient times, but it ain’t no church anymore. It’s used by the followers of Dagon--The Esoteric Order of Dagon.”

“And who, what--is Dagon?”

“Dagon is a fish-god, from ancient times. If you look up in the bible, you’ll see. Dagon, He’s the Philistines’ god. A fish, but He walks like a man. He’s part of both, I guess. Don’t know much history, much less ancient times an’ such.”

I remembered the books on his shelf.

He continued, “Anyways, the pictures yer lookin’ at, they was taken inside the cathedral.”

“I had gathered as much”, I stated.

“Well, every so often, they would gather, have the fertility ritual. Other than that, there were nightly services. The music--if ye can call it that--that came outta that place… It frightened me to no end. Sometimes I’d hear screams.”

“You mean…” I was about to ask about ritual sacrifice, though he told me that didn’t occur.

“No, no--no one was killed, nothin’ like that. Them girls--they was brought in, fer the fertility ritual. I can only guess they screamed, when they realized what a mess they’d gotten themselves into.”

“What do you mean?”

The old man removed his hand from the second photo he was seemingly transfixed by-- to reveal something so horrid, so stupendously ghastly, that at first I simply didn’t believe what I saw.

“That’s what I mean.”

There was the beautiful woman from the previous photograph; but now, she lay on her back upon that stone block or altar. She lay spreadeagled, and between her thighs, obviously engaging in sexual intercourse with this poor woman, was a creature straight out of Greek--or Philistine-?-mythology.

It was shaped like man, but not shaped like a man. It was bipedal, with two legs and two arms; a grotesque parody of a human head jutted from it’s squared shoulders. It was darkly colored, wet and glistening in what could only be torchlight inside that hellish place. It’s skin appeared to be soft and baggy. The face was a vile distortion of some man and fish hybrid. Large, dull eyes, ears pressed into the sides of the skull, no real nose to speak of. The mouth--that ghastly, grotesque mouth… Large, fleshy tubes for lips, those small, sharp, numerous teeth; its mouth was agape in a rictus of pleasure, for all I could make out on that vile thing. But how could that be? Surely, this was some character in some ritual costume? Surely, this was a mask--wasn’t it? Mask or no, it struck me that despite being a foul beast, I had seen these types of features before; only too recently, in fact. Looking again at the picture, the woman in the photo seemed to be in a state of total complacency, almost as if she was willing for this to happen. “She seems… unfazed?” I asked.

“She done given herself over to them, freely, wholly,” he cried, with more than a hint of regret in his voice.

“Mustus, did you know her?”

“She was my wife!” he exclaimed.

Now things were starting to make sense. I wondered if I should press him further for information, and if I should still even consider any of this for my story in The Gazette. Not sure what to say, I simply asked him how she came to this obscene fate, and apparently, willingly so.

“They told ‘er, they told ‘er that they would come git us anyway, and that we couldn’t leave if we tried. They told us if we didn’t join them, they’d kill us. That was it. It was either join ‘em or be killed by ‘em. What would ye have done?” Before I could answer, he continued. “My Emma--my dear, sweet Emma--she realized the only way out was for her to sacrifice herself to ‘em, and she done it all jus’ to save me! She saved me… It shoulda been me savin’ her. But what could I do?”

“So, these people, these Deep Ones--they kidnapped her?”

“No, no--they ain’t the Deep Ones, and they didn’t kidnap ‘er exactly. They gave us the ultimatum, and at first we refused. The Deep Ones, they’s the fish-men, the beast like in this picture. I keep this picture--you would think Id’ve burned it first thing, but I kept it--to remind me of her sacrifice, and of my revenge. They ‘pregnated ‘er, so they could birth more Deep Ones. I wasn’t the only man in town that had to give up his woman.”

“So, you don’t think there were just a few extremists… in this… this cult?”

“Ye ain’t never been to Innsmouth. Ye ain’t never seen the folk there. They’re freaks, the lot of ‘em!” he cried.

Click Here for Part 3 of THE HOUSE IN THE PORT
a novella to be serialized in 12 daily installments
©by J.R. Torina

THE HOUSE IN THE PORT:pt 1

by J.R. Torina



the Diary of Ambrose Smith

OCTOBER 13, 1951

Here I am in Portland, Oregon. I can’t say I really miss Salt Lake City. There wasn’t much happening there, though I did make a few friends that I’ll surely miss. But the offer to come to the beautiful and dark coast of Portland, working in my dream field, was just too enticing to pass up. So far, I’ve had quite a time getting all of my things unpacked into Uncle Varley’s house that he willed me. Shame about the poor old man. Max is very excited. He already can’t wait every day to run down the beach and jump into the ocean. He even caught a fish once. A true hunting dog, if ever there was one. A dirty dog, too--I had to bathe and shampoo him twice already, and I’ve only been here for two weeks. The Portland Gazette had caught wind of my extra-curricular activities and interests; in particular, my (somewhat unhealthy, according to Mom and Dad) interest in the macabre. Oregon seems to be a hotbed right now for secret cults and their activities, as well as UFOs, martians, Bigfoot--you name it. I have already received a note from somebody here who has heard of my affairs. The Gazette had recently reprinted a few of my columns, those that I have already had published before in pulp magazines such as Fantastic Science Fiction. This fellow--whose name is Mustus Marsh, of all things--claims to have a plethora of insider information on a secret devil-worshiping cult from somewhere along the coastal towns; apparently they meet, have rituals, and even sacrifices. I’m sure it’s just some crazy old fisherman’s tale of people he just doesn’t understand, but--what the hell. I bet the “cult” in question is probably some religious sect, like the Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses. But a good reporter can’t afford to turn down any leads now, can he?



CHAPTER I




“Innsmouth? I remember ol' Innsmouth, fer sure,” chortled old Mustus Marsh. “I remember them ol’ houses, all sagged and in disrepair, the Order’s new building… and them Innsmouth folk…” Here, his voice trailed away. His face seemed dreamlike and almost lost in time.

It was here that I first noticed the weird distorted features on Mustus’s face… His strangely… piscine? Yes, piscine features. His head seemed as if it was once as large as, if not previously larger than, a normal man’s; yet, it seemed as if it were pressed inwards from the sides. His ears also bore something of those strange qualities. They seemed flattened, almost pressed into the sides of his head.

But these were not the worst of it. His lips, or rather, his mouth; it was so very wide, almost as if it were a parody of a normal man’s mouth. It had to be at least five inches across; his lips were thick, ropey--unbelievably so. His teeth… Those terrible teeth… Small, like a child’s, but sharp… rather like a fish.

But, most terrible of all--those eyes. The eyes appeared glassy and very moist. In fact, almost dripping wet. The eyelids, what there were of them, shrunk back almost completely behind the orbs of his eyes. Upon this inspection, I noticed something peculiar about his skin, even around the shock of mane he called a beard, which was ragged and coarse looking. Were those… scales? Surely my imagination was playing tricks on me. Scales… on a man?


"Ain't no devil a Christian man kin make up that rivals the devils I’ve seen"

The hoarse sound of the old man’s voice brought me out of my serene investigations of his fish-like features, and back to the moment, sitting on his rotting porch, surrounded by refuse and filth.

“The Order o’ Dagon, they had themselves a buildin’ that was all new and such, while the rest of the town went to hell.”

To hell indeed, I thought--but not, most likely, in the same way Marsh was referring to.

“Well, the Order’s buildin’ their church, and the Refinery,” said the old man.

“Refinery?”, I asked him.

“Yep, they--the Marshes, I mean--had themselves a refinery they ran, refinin’ oils and salts from the sea.”

“But, surely, that was just the cover story, right? I mean, they just used that refinery as a front to make money for their real activities--didn’t they? The Marsh family, I mean? They were really actually devil worshippers--weren’t they?”

Here the old man shot me a look. “Ye think so, boy?” he asked. It was almost a challenge.

I simply froze, not knowing what I had unlocked here.

“Best ye come see. Ain’t no devil a Christian man kin make up that rivals the devils I’ve seen. I’ll show ye.”

Cursing myself for a being a fool for even coming here alone, I stood up to leave. Before I could muster up an appropriate lie to just get the hell out of there, the old man’s gnarled hand was on my elbow firmly.

He opened the front door.


CHAPTER II



The old door was warped and rotted. Its paint was flaking and peeling off all over; the knob, a rusted antique, was loose and rickety, barely hanging in the door itself. The first thing to assault me was the unbelievably oppressive stench of fish. As if reading my thoughts, the old man called out in front of me, “Don’t mind that stink, I jis’ been doin’ some night fishin’. Fishin’s always better at night. Ain't done cleaned anything yet.”

I found it curious to note that there was no fish to be seen anywhere, nor were there any freezers to keep said fish in. Thinking it best to keep this observation to myself, I said nothing.

After an awkward moment, I offered some paltry conversation, lest the old man suspect my observations or discomfort in this filthy den of decay. “What were you fishing for? Cod?”

“Heh, well, jis’ about anythin’ I kin catch, ye see," the old man laughed.

He rummaged through a few stacks of musty old tomes lying about on a pitted and scarred oaken table in the den. Some of them literally spewed dust as he opened them. He continued peering inside to glean their contents.

“Ah, here we are!” he exclaimed. Slapping the old leather-bound book onto the smaller but equally ancient and battered coffee table, he motioned me to sit down next to him, on what was one of the filthiest, dirtiest couches I had ever seen. A myriad of stains colored it here and there, and the dust of centuries enveloped the thing.

I looked up, and saw various plaques on the wall of animals he had pulled from the sea. Some of them, like the occasional trout or cod, were rather large, but somewhat normal; normal, mind you, compared to some of the other things he had. Whether or not they were real, I don’t know. There were plaques with deep sea anglers--both male and female. There were blow fish, porcupine fish, barracudas, and a few other varieties that I just didn’t recognize.

The shelves along the other wall contained a carny’s dream. Preserved fish, a shrunken human head, a human skull, various occult trinkets (they appeared to be of an occult nature, anyway; at any rate, they were esoteric, to be sure), and an arsenal of books, most of them dealing with magic, the occult, or ancient civilizations.


“The guy in the doorway--he’s got… fangs?”

Again, the old man’s voice me away from my attentions to the details of this bizarre rookery of occult books and objects. “Ye can see here the hall itself”, he said, pointing to the picture on the first page. The paper was yellowed, curled, torn; the picture contained therein was a black and white photo, in relatively decent shape, considering the weathered condition of the book it was kept in. The photograph was of a church, or cathedral, ancient in design. Even though it was night in the photo, I could clearly read the sign in front of the building, declaring it as “The Esoteric Order of Dagon”.

Before I could ask the old man who or what “Dagon” was, or what “the Order” was about, he asked another of his cryptic questions: “Notice anythin’ strange?”

I noticed two or three dark figures in front of the edifice in the photograph, as if making their way inside. From the distance the picture was taken from, one could not ascertain who exactly these figures may be. “Well, it’s very… old?” I asked him, not sure what he was getting at.

“No, no, well, yeah, it’s old, fer sure, but what else do ye notice?” he asked.

I looked again. “Give me a hint,” I asked.

“Lookit them, the folks--what do ye see?”

I looked yet again--more closely this time. I noticed that two figures, somewhat slumped, were heading up the steps of the cathedral. One from the right, similarly bent over, was also heading in that direction. “So, some of the people here, they seem to be… deformed?”

“Yea, yea, and--?” he asked excitedly.

I looked at the fourth figure in the photograph. It was a man, a person--a being… wearing a robe, but--what was that? He seemed to have… fangs protruding from his lips?

“The guy in the doorway--he’s got… fangs?”

“Not fangs.”

“Well, what?” I asked.

“Remember what ye heard, why ye were investigatin’…”

“I am investigating rumors of purported devil worshippers and human sacrifice in the coastal towns out here,” I exclaimed. I wondered why he asked me something he already knew.

“No, ye’re not.”

“Oh?”

“No. Ye’re gonna be investigatin’ fish men. Deep Ones.”

“Who?”

“Fish men, that come from the sea--they look like a man--two arms, two legs--but that’s all. They have scales, fins, webbed fingers and toes. They been breedin’ with people here--and back east, on the coast there too--for years.”

“Excuse me…?”

“Yes, yes, ye gotta believe me.”

“Piscine creatures--that walk upright, like a man--in the villages of men, off of their coasts; and worst of all, intermingling… and breeding with… men.”

“Yea, yea, you got it so far,” the old man carried on.



Click Here for Part 2 of THE HOUSE IN THE PORT
a novella to be serialized in 12 daily installments
©by J.R. Torina

PLASTIC CHILDREN:Part 3

by Nigel Strange

II


He started to work the next week. The job paid extremely well, and in a few months he was able to move into an apartment nearby and ride a bicycle to work. He hung up one of his Plan B posters and began to experiment with more expensive foods that didn't come in a self-nuking can. The apartment was small, but it was his, and that was all that mattered. He began to look forward to the next day, rather than dread it. Greg quickly learned what he was supposed to do and adapted easily to the new environment. He even began learning Japanese. As the months passed, he found himself gaining weight. At first, this was a welcome change from the skeletal physique to which he had been accustomed. After a while, though, he decided it was time to either grow muscles, stop eating, or drink more espresso. He opted for the latter.

The job had strange, irrational undercurrents that troubled his overactive mind. He could not totally efface the unpleasant feeling of being a parent, no matter how many times he reminded himself that the robots were just machines. Mr. Kenshi, before he was replaced by Spazzo, explained to him that the robots were made small, like children, so they would be less threatening to people. After all: why would you feel threatened by a six year old child? As people became accustomed to them, they would gradually be made in larger sizes, so they could take over more jobs, such as driving, which required a certain stature.

Despite their small size, though, the bots were threatening. When Greg walked into the training room, he always got the feeling that they were talking about something just before he walked in, in their controlled, modulated bot-whispers. They would stare at him and wait patiently for the lesson to begin. Their camera eyes never blinked. They did not register comprehension, sympathy, or anger. They were like glass-covered wells of emptiness. Greg imagined that if insects were intelligent and really huge, they would closely resemble robots in thought and deed. The bots definitely gave him the same kind of creepy feelings one gets from observing insects.

They asked many questions, some of which seemed reasonable, and some that seemed totally insane. Greg was supposed to note the ones that were asking the strange questions, as this indicated some kind of behavioral instability that would need to be dealt with.

They were also threatening because of what they represented. He could never rid himself of the guilt he experienced from working in a company that dedicated itself to the eradication of the working class. Greg recalled a conversation with Yoshi, who was one of the lead designers, on this very subject.

"We have always tried to find ways of automating our work. We have machines that can do just about anything a man can do. We have machines that do manufacturing, machines that do planning, we even have machines to play games for us: Chessmeister, for instance. We have machines to build other machines. What is left for humanity?"

"Love-making?"

"You are obviously unfamiliar with our entire product line."

Yamako Corporation wanted to spin this as a Renaissance for humanity in which men are no longer judged by what they do, but for who they are. Marketing pointed out that, for so long, that's how men have been judged: what functions they provide...what skills they have...what they can do to put food on the table. The future man would not be defined by these things, they maintained, because robots will do them instead.

“What then, defines a man,” Greg asked, “if it is not his ability to do work?”

“That is a tough question to which I believe our society lacks any answer at all. We have long criticized men for viewing women as sex objects, but we must now admit that we view men as objects of work: slaves of the workplace whose function is only to provide food, clothing, and shelter for the womenfolk and children. We are objectivized today in the same way women were over their sexuality.”

“Well, at least women can't be fired from their sexuality.”

“You forget about our product line, again,” said Yoshi with a disquieting smirk.

“So: as women have striven to divorce themselves from their sexuality,” Greg pondered aloud, “are we to expect some similar kind of psychotic break from men and their careers? Are we to become simple organisms who have nothing to do in life but consume and reproduce, like bacteria? Are we to consider ourselves as something other than our jobs? If so: what?”

“You are complicating things beyond need.”

“Well, you tell me, Yoshi: if you are not a robot developer, then what are you? Who are you? What does your life mean when you are no longer needed to fulfill some function or other?”

“I am a person.”

“But what does that mean?”

“I…I am not really sure how to answer that question.”

“My point, I think, has been made.”

“Well, biologically, we exist in order to reproduce,” said Yoshi, helpfully. “I think that is the most basic need, and robots cannot fulfill it.”

“So we only exist in order to perpetuate the species?”

“Yes. The ultimate ambition for men is to attract women, who will mate with us so we can reproduce. That is what life is about, when you cut out all the artificial trappings,” Yoshi opined.

“The basic question is: what do women find attractive,” Greg agreed. “That's really the bottom line as far as being a man goes, isn't it? If you can attract a mate and reproduce, that's says you're successful at being a man. That's it in a nutshell, my friend. Career choices, fancy cars, nifty clothes…all that stuff is really there to attract women. So, the question is: are women attracted to unemployed guys who sit on their asses all day because they've all been displaced by robots?”

“Hehe, are you suggesting that a woman would marry a robot?”

“Why not? It's not even funny,” said Greg. “We have sperm banks, and now we have bots to be their slaves. What possible inducement is there for them to choose us over them?”

“Sex appeal?”

“Well, it seems we've come full circle then,” said Greg with a snort. “In the society of robots, men will be nothing but sex-objects.”

“I think I would like that,” said Yoshi.

“I know a lot of guys, though, who are better looking than I am,” said Greg. “Without fast cars, fat wallets, and fancy suits, most guys would never get laid.” Yoshi laughed. It was a nervous laugh from a pock-marked geeky face sticking out of a fancy suit. “You also forget,” Greg added, twisting the knife, “the full extent of our product line.”


#



The bots' minds were neural networks. Rather than try to program all their behaviors, which would be infinitely time-consuming, the bot developers placed neural networks in them, with some rudimentary programs, such as knowledge-seeking behaviors and a reward-punishment system that would allow them to be trained. After that, they seemed to mold themselves to whatever task one had for them. They were slow learners at first, but they had good memories, so once they finally did learn something, it stuck.

Greg noticed that after a few months of “life,” they even began to express emotions, like real children. Kenshi explained to him that this was a normal part of the robot life cycle. Emotions were a kind of display, really. The robots are very observant, and they can see how humans interact with one another, and they learn how to mimic those behaviors to achieve the desired effects on their human companions. Greg found it disturbing that the robots faked their emotions simply to control his own behavior. He could not say why this was more disquieting than the thought they might have real emotions. Perhaps it was because it caused him to wonder if his own emotions were anything more than a display he used himself to affect those around him. The more he learned of the bots, the more he questioned the nature of his own humanity, analyzed it, dissected it, and thus, the more disturbing the encounters became. As the robots learned his skills, he saw them develop into something more human, and himself, as if a dark reflection of their progress, becoming more like a machine.

An example of this subtle role-reversal occurred one day when he was training a couple of bots, whom he named Rockem and Sockem, to be waiters. The objective was to train them to anticipate his needs. Greg usually ate lunch at Donkey Hotei's, which was a combination Mexican and Chinese fast food restaurant (the logo was a big fat guy with a donkey's head, reclining and playing with children). So, each day, he would send Rockem and Sockem to get his food for him. He provided them with the credit chip so they could pay for it. Eventually, he would not even tell them what he wanted, for they would automatically know, based on his prior behaviors. The problems occurred when he decided he didn't want a chow-mein chimichanga, but a squid taco. They would not believe him. They expected him to eat the same thing, every day, or, at least, to establish some predictable pattern. By making a decision that was not automatic or predictable, he was violating what the bots considered to be some kind of holy writ, and they refused to do what he asked.

What was frightening was not that they had failed to understand his needs, but that they had understood his needs too well. They understood, better than he did, that he had become somewhat automated himself. He had settled into a predictable habit of eating the same thing every day, not so much because he enjoyed chow-mein chimichangas, but because he wanted subconsciously to be served well. So long as he made his needs fit a schedule, the robots would be able to anticipate his every need. All the while he felt proud of himself for training the bots to anticipate his requirements were an illusion caused by his increasing predictability. It was possible for machines to anticipate human needs, but only if humans became more mechanical.

Greg felt that this was a grand occasion for him to execute the punishment feature, so he scolded them. The bots were made to be about the same size as small children, and, in most respects, they were made to respond to the same kind of stimuli. So, they were programmed to enjoy being petted, for which they had special sensors in their plastic skull plates. After associating the petting with praise, the secondary reinforcement could then take the place of the primary. This made it so Greg could tell the bot that it did a good job, rather than having to resort to the physical affection the bots craved. Punishment was similarly conditioned. The bots responded negatively to slaps, and were most sensitive in the rump area (Greg could not believe they were made to be spanked). After a few of these spankings, coupled with negative words, the robots would begin to associate punishment with the use of certain angry words. The whole idea, it was explained, was to make training the bots as natural as possible for the humans, so they would be more readily accepted by society. It was also a method of instruction that had thousands of years of precedent, so it was time-tested and mother-approved. So, Greg loudly rebuked Rockem and Sockem for failing to anticipate his needs. Inside, however, he knew that he was only projecting upon the robots his own contrition. He was angry at himself for allowing himself to be ruled by those mechanical children, and upon reflection, he was angry at himself for allowing himself to take that anger out on them.

One day, when Greg walked into the training room, he found Rockem and Sockem petting one another. He immediately punished the two of them, feeling furious at them and himself for being in the situation. He had not clearly reasoned why it made him so angry. After all: they weren't human. It wasn't like they were committing adultery or anything. Nevertheless, it made him squeamish. He tried to explain his feelings to Mr. Sato, who, he discovered later, worked in security.

They were eating at Donkey Hotei's, watching a child play with an Instapet. The little boy opened the can and this thing that looked vaguely like a cross between a purple frog and a rabbit lurched out onto the table. Instapets were genetically engineered animals that lived for a few days and died. The environmentalists lost the battle to prevent them from existing because they were cloned without reproductive organs. No reproduction, no threat to the environment. They didn't even have mouths or digestive tracts. Greg had no idea how they grew them.

“So, Rockem and Sockem were petting one another?” asked Mr. Sato.

“Yeah, I caught them doing it when I got in this morning.”

“What did you do?”

“I slapped them several times, hard.”

“Why did you do that?”

“I don't know. I felt angry. I can't explain it. Mr. Tanaka said I should act naturally around them, as if they were children, but I can't see why I was so angry. If they were real kids, I…I don't know.”

“They are real children: plastic children,” said Mr. Sato. “However, what they were doing amounts to a crime. They were attempting to replace your authority over them. You see: you are their source of pleasure and pain: that is why they obey you. If they learn how to obtain pleasure when you are not around, they will no longer require your approval, and then they will no longer obey.”

“So, you're saying they're being willful?”

“Exactly,” said Mr. Sato gravely, before sucking down a mouthful of Spanish noodles. “You were angry because the robots were undermining your authority. This is very serious.”

“Huh, never thought of it that way.” The frog-thing hopped by Greg's foot and he fought the overwhelming urge to crush it. The child bent down and picked it up, giggling. Greg fought a similar urge with respect to the child.

“You were right in punishing them for auto-stimulating.”

“Yeah?”

“You should format them and start over,” said Mr. Sato after a few moments of reflection. “Punishing them after they pleasured each other may have undesirable consequences.”

“Such as?”

“Such as unpredictability. It is difficult to say what they will do. They have become unstable and unreliable. Best to have their nets normalized and start over again.”

“You know, I've already invested several months with them. They're already at a mental age of twelve or so.”

“That is unfortunate, Mr. Hunter, but it must be done. I am relying on you to do this.” Greg sighed. “Mr. Hunter, I hope you are not becoming emotionally attached to them.”

“No, no, of course not!” he protested. “I was just thinking about all that work down the drain.”

“Consider it a learning experience. Perhaps you should only train one robot at a time, or at least keep them separated when they are not being supervised. This might avoid a similar incident in the future.”

“Thanks for your insights,” said Greg, chewing his chow-mein chimichanga.

When Greg got back to the training room, Rockem and Sockem were hiding from him. He looked around for them and eventually found them under his desk. He pulled Rockem (the blue one) out first. After a brief struggle, he forced Rockem face-down onto the desk so he could reach up inside its head and flip the power switch. After Rockem went limp, he opened the head cavity and attached some interface cords to it, which he used to connect Rockem's electronic brain to his laptop computer. After a few seconds, he had begun to format Rockem's brain.

The easiest way to think of a neural net is like a black box full of spiderwebs. The intersections where the strands of web are connected are called nodes. These nodes have numbers associated with them called weights. When the net learns to associate a stimulus with a proper response, the weights in the nodes change slightly according to a complex mathematical formula. The actual response is compared to the correct response and the differences are noted and the node weights are changed accordingly. In this way, the actual response shifts toward the correct response. After many trials, the net is correct almost all the time. Neural nets were used because in the real world, unlike the binary world, stimuli are not ones and zeros, but a lot of gray area that needs to be interpreted. Formatting such a net, as Greg was doing, essentially meant wiping away the accumulated information stored in the node weights: setting them all back to default, factory standard, and turning Rockem into the plastic equivalent to a drooling idiot while Sockem looked on.

Despite his reason, Greg could not help but to feel a pang of grief. He hated himself for feeling this way about a robot. After all: they're just machines, he told himself, but they are machines that act like humans to a remarkable degree. The idea of taking a machine-child and erasing its personality seemed to him like a kind of savage assault. Although he did not show it, he felt the lump rising in his throat. He had a double-espresso when he had finished wiping Rockem's brain, and took a short break in order to better comport and prepare himself, emotionally, for the next one.

When Greg went back to find Sockem (the red one) it was not where he left it.

He looked briefly around the training center when he discovered that the security door was open. Greg felt for his key card and discovered it was gone.

“Little fucker!” said Greg to himself. He immediately got on his phone and alerted Mr. Sato. Mr. Sato did not waste any time asking pointless questions. After Greg told him that Sockem stole his key card and left the training center, he interrupted, saying that he had to act immediately. Before Greg could continue, Mr. Sato had already hung up.

Ten seconds later, there was a shrill beeping noise, followed by a friendly female voice that calmly told everyone that the building was now considered under “lock down,” and that nobody could open any doors or communicate with the outside world. Everyone should remain calm while it was being sorted out. Everyone should just continue with their work as usual.

A long time passed, what seemed to Greg like hours, before the door opened. Several guys in heavy body-armor walked in with assault rifles, jangling with grenades. One of them asked Greg if there were any robots present.

Just that one, said Greg, pointing to Rockem, who was sitting on the edge of the desk, his skull-plate still off. The leader made some subtle signal that Greg failed to catch and one of the other security goons opened up with his rifle. Plastic splintered and flew in small shards as the lead ripped through the thin carapace and destroyed the delicate circuitry within. The smells of gunpowder and burned plastic and electrical wire filled the room. Greg's ears were hurt and were ringing loudly. He glared angrily at the captain or whatever the guy was, but had not the courage to actually start an argument with a guy who was holding an assault rifle.

“Sorry about that,” said the Captain.

“You could at least have warned me,” said Greg, massaging his ears.

“Can't take any chances,” the Captain said, as though Greg had said nothing. He then gave a quick hand-gesture and the squad left. Greg quickly turned to his laptop to see if any stray bullets hit it and was relieved to find that none had. He waved his hands about, trying to disperse some of the carcinogenic smoke around his desk. He then sat down and tried to collect his thoughts. He was not sure how he would get any more work done that day, but he didn't think he could get home yet, either.

He was just about to shove Rockem's corpse into the trash when he heard a quiet thud behind him. Turning, he saw Sockem, who had apparently just dropped to the floor from a hiding place near the ceiling. Greg tried to call Mr. Sato again, but the phone did not work. Sockem had already broken the line. Thinking quickly, he decided to put himself between Sockem and the door. It was a precaution, though whether it was to prevent Sockem from escaping, or to prevent Sockem from blocking his own escape, Greg was not sure. It worked both ways, he told himself.

Sockem moved with the quick efficiency of a spider, perfectly balanced, and quick, yet lacking what most people would consider grace. It was too efficient to be graceful. Too dangerous. Grace was beautiful. This was not. Sockem had a pair of scissors that Greg recognized as his own. They were sharp and very pointy. Terrified as Greg was by the menace of the scissors, what really freaked him out was the total lack of emotion on Sockem's ersatz face. Here was Greg, scared out of his wits by a thing that had no emotion at all, or betrayed none. It must have something, he thought, or else it wouldn't be acting that way. What disturbed him the most was the action without emotion, the instant switch to violence without any of the usual indicators that humans relied on to keep themselves away from dangerous people. There were no cues, no hints: nothing to tell you that the robot that served you tea every day was about to take a claw hammer to your skull. Greg looked for something with which to defend himself: something that might stop a scissor stab.

He did not have to look for long. A plastic clip-board was nearby, so he picked it up and prepared to wield it as shield or cudgel as the opportunity presented itself.

Luckily for Greg, the opportunity did not happen. As Sockem approached, a single shot rang out from behind Greg. It caught Sockem right in the head, blowing the head-plate off and burning through that little spheroid of neural networks that gave Sockem an artificial identity. The rest of Sockem did a back flip amidst a spray of plastic and silicon particles. Greg turned and saw Mr. Sato holstering his .45.

“Domo arigato, Sato-san,” said Greg with a bow. Mr. Sato smiled and nodded back. “How did you know Sockem would be hiding in here, waiting for an opportunity to kill me?” he asked.

“They always do that,” said Mr. Sato flatly. His smile had vanished from his nondescript face so unobtrusively that Greg did not know it was gone until afterward, causing him to wonder if he had even smiled at all.



III



Tadashi Tomei was a small, beetle-like man with thick glasses, which were partly an affectation and partly a necessity caused by his obsession with staring at small print. It was this obsession that got him his position as corporate lawyer. His grooming was normally impeccable, but today, after the robot massacre, he looked a bit rumpled and slightly disheveled: his collar was undone with his tie loosened enough so that the fatty, limp sail under his chin could wag freely as he spoke. He clutched a small suitcase of documents and was surrounded by intimidating-looking suits. They had arrived shortly after the smoke cleared. Tomei scuttled into the training room where Greg was still recovering from his ordeal. He laid the case out on Greg's desk and snapped the thing open with the flair of a circus performer. Mounds of documents seethed within. Unsigned documents…

“Mr. Hunter,” said Mr. Tadashi. “We, at Yamako, would like to convey our great apologies for the danger you were in, and to remind you of your confidentiality agreement with Yamako corporation.”

“Confidentiality?” asked Greg.

“It is very important for Yamako's image that the events of today remain under our strictest confidence, Mr. Hunter. I hope I am making myself clear,” he said. One of the suits reached into his front jacket pocket. Greg cleared his throat. Nothing happened for a while. A bead of sweat trickled from Greg's temple.

“Sure thing,” said Greg with a smile. Tomei nodded. The suit continued the motion he started when he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small box of mints and offered one to Greg, who refused.

“I am pleased with your continued loyalty to Yamako, and although I trust your word completely, there are certain unavoidable procedures that we now perform. It is strict company policy,” he said smiling. Sure: company policy, thought Greg. Nobody is really responsible for anything: it was “the company” that made people do things they did not want to do. Greg understood all too well. “There are some forms for you to fill out, sign, and initial. Please also read the notices carefully before signing or initialing.”

“So it's just business as usual for Yamako?” asked Greg in disbelief.

“Of course! Why would it not be?”

“Don't you think that producing homicidal robots is unethical?”

“Mr. Hunter: corporations do not have ethics. The only rule they obey is the rule of self-preservation. Yamako could not survive without the robot industry. What you saw today was a minor glitch that will be corrected in future version of the X-98 series.”

“How?”

“How what?”

“How will the glitch be fixed? Do you even know what went wrong with them? How can you fix something you don't really understand?”

“The glitches will be fixed, Mr. Hunter,” he said peremptorily. His face was set like flabby stone and his gristly eyes narrowed through the fishbowl glasses. One of the suits reached into his breast pocket again. Another mint, Greg presumed. He smiled and picked up the first paper and began to read it.

Greg read, initialed, and signed papers late into the night as Tomei and his squadron of suits with mints in their jacket pockets stood about. Greg wondered if he was being singled out because it happened to him or if it was because he was not Japanese. Maybe he hadn't been singled out: maybe they were doing this to everyone. He doubted it, though.

He finally got to go home after midnight. He could not remember anything but fragments of what he had agreed to. He was not sure, but he thought he read something about someone having the right to cut out his tongue if he spoke a word of what happened to anyone. When he got to bed, Yamako was still in business. It would continue to make robots, and these robots would continue to be sold to millions of homes around the world. Everyone would eventually have one, like cars, like microwave ovens. The idea kept him awake all night.



end PLASTIC CHILDREN

Click Here for Part 1 of the serialization of the novella
THE HOUSE IN THE PORT, by J.R. Torina

PLASTIC CHILDREN:Part 2

by Nigel Strange

The Yamako building was like a white plastic knife-blade sticking out of the vast asphalt belly of the single level parking lot, which was speckled with the multi-colored plastic cars owned by the employees. Greg was directed to park in a lot near the back, and was considering his survival chances attempting to walk the distance to the building when a tram pulled up and offered to drive him directly to the front door. He thanked the plastic driver and settled into the plastic seat. The tram pulled out and snaked its way through the parking lot to the building. As it did so, Greg noticed that he was not alone. He thought he was alone, but was startled to discover another man sitting next to him on the tram, surprisingly close, considering that he hadn't noticed him before. The man had average Japanese features, and wore a nondescript suit of unremarkable color and quality. Greg nodded to him, and he nodded back, flashing a perfunctory smile.

“Late for work?” asked Greg. “Or are you back from an early lunch?”

“I do not keep regular hours,” said the man in an even voice. He spoke perfect English, though, without a trace of accent.

Greg suddenly felt sorry for the Japanese men and women who were forced to leave their homeland and live in the comparative slum of any other country they exploited for their corporation's profits. It must be like a slimy hell for them to be surrounded by such human detritus and scum as could be found everywhere else. Greg was surprised by his own thoughts. Then, he looked at himself, and realized that he was such detritus. Greg could feel himself quite at home with the title: Dreg of humanity. Then again, most people were. Greg did not resent the Japanese, though, like some Americans did. He admired them. He envied them, but he did not hate them. They were, after all, only doing what anyone else would have done if they were bright enough to have taken advantage of certain economic opportunities. He was rather ashamed that his own people had failed him so miserably. They had sold the country out, despite vocal protests from fringe elements of society that could see the writing on the wall. They treated America like a kind of commons to be exploited instead of a nation that looked after its own people. When there was nothing left of the wealth of America, they rolled over and apologized for being stupid. By then, of course, it was too late. The Japanese people protected their culture, while Americans diluted theirs until the word 'culture' lost all meaning. With no culture, there was no ethos, no solidarity, no strength, no protection, no economic power.

It is a subtle thing, the disintegration of a people, yet Greg had witnessed it in his lifetime. The process seemed inevitable as the effect of gravity, or entropy. Then again, he sometimes wondered if it was really a natural process that had doomed his culture, or a clever contrivance from the elites in unholy union between corporations and government. In any case, as the culture became more Balkanized, there were fewer cultural norms. Polite society ceased to have a reference for itself: as there were many norms, so the norm became null. Since there are so many different cultures with different needs, everyone cannot be simultaneously happy, and nothing suffices but to rule the lowest common denominator. Diversity, however, ensured that human behavior continued to slip through the hands of the ever-increasingly draconian laws like sand through a child's fingers. Laws are written to account for increasingly erratic behavior caused by the disintegration of norms, until everything was illegal all the time, and nobody could be counted on to know or do what was right, for the concept of moral rightness or wrongness was lost in the sea of buzzing diversity. Only the law was right. If you were not in jail, you were a good citizen. Everything else was moral behavior by default. Who was to say what was right or wrong? Good or evil? Black or white? The System. Thus, the system of laws slowly assumed the mantle of moral and ethical absolute, transferring responsibility from the individual to itself.

A symptom of this decline of individual responsibility was evident in the progression of legal defenses predicated on the diffusion of personal responsibility. Murderers, muggers, and rapists were not responsible for their behavior: they were victims of an unjust social order. People in the legal system did not consider individuals smart enough to avoid spilling hot drinks, eating the wrong foods, or drinking to excess. Instead, corporations were held accountable because they failed to exert enough control over individuals to prevent them from harming themselves. Thus, the transfer of power from the individual to corporations meant a simultaneous shift of responsibility from the individual to the system. The system was supposed to know what was good for its subjects. The system was supposed to take care of all their needs. The system, thus, was responsible. In a sense, the system became human, while human beings became human resources. An abstract THING, such as a corporation, a legal fiction, could therefore be held responsible for making the ethical decisions, while individual people had become something less than human. They had become consumers: cattle to be milked for cash without human dignity, self determination, or civil rights. Greg had seen all this come to pass in his own lifetime. He wondered if the pendulum would ever swing in the other direction.

“Where are you going?” asked the man sitting next to Greg.

“Hmm?”

“Where are you going?” he asked again.

“Oh, sorry: I was lost in thought. I have an appointment to see Mr. Kenshi, third floor.” Greg had never been on such a long tram ride.

“I am going that way myself. Perhaps I could accompany you.”

“Do you know your way around this building?”

“Intimately,” said the Japanese man.

“Greg Hunter,” said Greg, holding out his hand. The other man did not shake it, but gave a stately nod.

“Sato Shinjiro,” said the man. “You may simply call me Mr. Sato, however, as my first name is probably difficult for you to pronounce.”

“Your first name?”

“Hah! Sorry: my given name.”

The lobby of the Yamako building was immense. It reminded Greg of the Crystal Cathedral he visited once or twice as a kid. The floors were gray tiles, surrounded by high glass windows, held together with a white framework of steel or perhaps PVC tubing. In the center was a large diamond-shaped desk. There was a kiosk nearby with a holovision showing robots doing household chores, rescuing children from burning buildings, and playing chess with Russians. Behind the desk stood a very attractive Japanese woman in a gray suit. Her hair was immaculately braided. She wore a little hat that matched her outfit, complete with silver trim around the edges. She regarded him expressionlessly as he approached the desk, then, as though he had stepped on a triggering mechanism in the floor, her face lit up like a fluorescent light bulb as she smiled a greeting to him automatically.

“Welcome to Yamako corporation,” she said grandiloquently. “May I offer you any services?”

“I'm looking for the elevator,” said Greg.

“This way,” interrupted Mr. Sato. “Follow me.”

“You should follow Mr. Sato,” said the woman. This told Greg a couple of things. It told him that Mr. Sato must be important if the woman at the front desk knew him by name. It also suggested that Greg had better do whatever he said if he knew what was best for him. He did so. Mr. Sato efficiently directed him to Mr. Kenshi's office and left him at the door. Greg knocked and waited for a buzz to be let in. Greg wondered why the security was so elaborate.

Mr. Kenshi's office was small and featureless. It conveyed none of the stark vastness of the lobby on the first floor, or the Zenlike simplicity of the hallway. His desk had a small device that served simultaneously as a computer and a space heater (the second function was considered an undocumented feature of the product). Around it were bits of paper, though there was nothing flammable closer than five inches away from the computer. Greg imagined that Mr. Kenshi may have had personal experiences in the past that reinforced the company safety policies in this regard. He had a small teapot on his desk also, in the shape of a dog. A teacup rested nearby. On the wall behind him was an enormous scroll with beautiful Kanji executed by a master. Greg had no idea what it said, but he could tell it was done with exquisite skill and style.

“Mr. Hunter, please sit down,” said Mr. Kenshi, indicating the chair. Greg sat and tried not to slouch.

“I have been looking over your electronic resume, and I find it most interesting. I would like to ask you a few questions about your job history.”

“OK, go ahead.”

“You graduated in the 95 percentile from UC Irvine, with a triple major in physics, music, and computer programming. Quite an accomplishment. You must have taken twenty four units every quarter to do that.”

“I owe it all to my discipline and unforgiving regimen of caffeine ingestion.”

“Perhaps we should experiment with caffeine at Yamako,” said Mr. Kenshi, apparently trying to make a joke. Greg smiled and attempted a conciliatory laugh.

“It says that you immediately went on to work for Braincom.”

“Yes.”

“You were programming for Braincom?”

“I was designing their expert systems, at first, then I went on to code a few AI modules for them.”

“Very impressive. It says you were there only two years.”

“After I initialized the programming strategies, they laid me off and hired programmers from the…ah…global market that could follow my initial direction but for a sixth the cost of American programmers.”

“I see. So you found another job as a programmer?”

“Yes, at Siedler Industries. They wanted someone to do more low level programming. I lasted there for about two months before they laid off the American workers and hired people from India.”

“How unfortunate. That was the last programming job you had?”

“I decided that programming was the wrong career choice, so I decided to go into Information Technology.”

“Yes. So you went back to school?”

“I hadn't even managed to pay off my student loans, but I went back to school for several years in order go get a degree and certification in IT, networking, and computer science.”

“So what happened then?”

“I found a job, but after another year, I discovered that all those jobs had migrated to China.”

“I am beginning to see a pattern here,” said Mr. Kenshi, taking a sip of his tea.

“I tried doing tech support at the Trogant corporation. That lasted for a few months before they exported the jobs to India. This time, I decided to get smart and move to Bombay. I found my job again in India and picked it right up, about a month before they automated the tech support system using an expert machine from Braincom. They laid off all the guys in India, so I guess I wasn't the only one out on that score. So, I went back to school in order to get a teaching degree. I figured: teaching people was a kind of service that would not be outsourced to another country or done by robots.”

“So you taught for a year?”

“Yes. My assumption was incorrect. Within a year of getting my fifth degree, the jobs had all migrated. It was about that point I decided not to go to school anymore. My education could not keep up with the disintegration of our economy.”

“A wise choice,” said Mr. Kenshi, apparently unaware of the irony. “It is much better to leap into a career with no training than to train for a job that will not exist when you finish your training.

“Mr. Hunter, my initial impression of you has been confirmed by reading this resume. You are a unique individual. You seem to live on the cutting-edge of obsolescence, the bleeding edge of oblivion. I do not believe I have seen in a single individual a better indicator of economic trends. Whatever job you seek becomes the next job to go overseas, or to be outsourced or automated. You are like a magnetic compass that always points to the next business opportunity for Yamako.”

“Is that so unique?” asked Greg, rather surprised by Mr. Kenshi's bluntness, or, as he thought of it, lack of autonomic politeness he thought was some kind of genetic trait.

“Not unique in a general way, but unique nonetheless. Millions of Americans are constantly forced to reschool and repurpose their lives, constantly forced to march ahead of the advancing army of automation and cheap labor, but you, Mr. Hunter, seem to hit every single trend precisely at the moment before its complete collapse. It is for that reason we have been watching you with particular interest.”

“We? Who's we?”

“We at Yamako.”

“Ok, I'm getting a little creeped out now.”

“Mr. Hunter: do not think it was a coincidence that I took Spazzo to your place in the subway. We had just developed a robot that could do what you did, and we were quite successful in displacing you.”

“I knew you did that on purpose!”

“Quite so, but you perhaps do not understand why.”

“OK, why? Why pick on me?”

“Because, as I mentioned earlier, you are a leading economic indicator. Your life is the vanguard of economic decline. You are a loser, but you are the pinnacle of losers. You are the epitome of the loser. I'm sorry if my language offends, but I am trying to make you understand your importance to the future of Yamako. By studying you, we have discovered the new market directions and new industries into which we should expand, and we have been fairly successful. Spazzo is proof of that.”

“I think I'm beginning to understand this chaos,” said Greg. “But don't you think you're sabotaging this system you've devised?”

“How so?”

“You say that I am the economic indicator, however, it is your company that has influenced my decisions about what careers to pursue. You're influencing your own predictor, invalidating its predictions. Your company is what has forced me to abandon my career goals. You say you follow me to the next market, but you are pushing me ahead of you. Secondly, if you offer me a job here at Yamako, are you not worried that, given the predictive nature of my job history, that Yamako, itself, will become obsolete?”

“What you have just said, Mr. Hunter, has great wisdom. I will leave these ideas for you to ponder. You seem to know much already, but I cannot reveal any more to you at this time, except that we would like to hire you to teach our robots to do what you do.”

“You want me to teach your robots how to become obsolete?”

“Hehe, Mr. Hunter. That was quite amusing,” said Mr. Kenshi, attempting to appear genuinely amused. “You cannot teach someone obsolescence.”

“Then what?”

“Let me try to explain. You seem to have an instinct for pursuing skills that are about to become automated. What we would like to do is have you teach our robots those skills, so that we can better define the market for automation.”

“In other words,” said Greg, “you want to direct the market to define certain skills as obsolete and ready to be automated, and you want me to identify those skills and to get your robots proficient in them so that when the market agrees with your assessment, you'll have a whole workforce of robots waiting to take over the new job niches as corporations follow your lead and lay people off. Is that what you're saying?”

“Mr. Hunter. You have an exquisite grasp of the situation. I am very impressed.”

“That's because my next career choice was to be a human resource manager…like yourself.”

Mr. Kenshi laughed nervously, then fiddled around with his papers while he collected his thoughts.

“I can start immediately,” said Greg, smiling.

Click Here for Part 3--the conclusion of
PLASTIC CHILDREN, by Nigel Strange

PLASTIC CHILDREN:Part 1

by Nigel Strange

painting by Jesse Stevens



I


Greg was a contractor, or so he told himself, and that meant he had odd jobs filter down to him occasionally. He imagined his existence as one similar to those fish that live in the deepest, darkest pits of the ocean, who survive only on what dead matter sinks to the bottom from the glistening waters above. It was dark, though, and always getting darker.

Whenever there was nothing else, he knew he could make a few bucks playing his violin in the subway station. He was actually quite good at it. He even played in a death-affirming string quartet for a while, called Plan B. They put out a couple of independent CDs that nobody bought. He still had a couple of the posters rolled up in his car, so that, one day, when he could afford a place to live, he could get them framed and put them on the wall.

Lately, he found himself playing the violin more and more, and doing what he considered his “real” work less and less. Obsolescence had a kind of kinetic traction and once it got started, it accelerated. It manifested in the way he appeared, the way he dressed, the way his eyes narrowed into that hungry look you see in wild predators on the brink of starvation. Employers can smell desperation. So, it only made sense to employ one's self as much as possible. He did this by playing the violin for odd-change that people condescended to let fall in his violin case. Every note, to him, was the embodiment of his worthlessness. It gave his music an edge of pathos, which seemed to suck the change from people's pockets like a vacuum.

One day, as he was getting ready to set up in his usual space, he saw it: a small white plastic thing, proudly emblazoned with its Yamako logo, playing the trumpet. It stood in his very spot at the station, with the trumpet case open, as though it were some beggar who could use the cash to buy himself one last bottle of cheap booze before expiring behind a dumpster. It played with somewhat sloppy technique, Greg noted. He had no idea how they could make a robot that could play trumpet. After all: you need lips to play a trumpet, and no robot he'd seen had lips. Usually, they had little holes where the speakers were, or sometimes they had animatronic lips of hard plastic. None, though, had anything that could be considered real lips, capable of producing the embrasure required to play an instrument, yet, there it was: belting out clumsy, flatulent notes that sounded a little like a cross between The Entertainer and Baby Elephant Walk.

Nearby, almost hiding behind a briefcase, stood a grinning Japanese man in a suit. He looked down at the robot with the kind of pride a man has watching his grandson's solo recital at school. His head bobbed slightly with the forced rhythm of the trumpet-torturing robot, and his grin seemed as though his lips were formed that way, naturally, like they simply couldn't be stretched far enough to close all the way over his slightly yellowed smoker's teeth. His fingers drummed along the side of the briefcase he held onto at chest-level. Greg noted the Yamako tie tack the Japanese man wore, as if his enthusiasm and proximity were not enough already to implicate him as the robot's benefactor.

What infuriated Greg the most, though, was how much money the robot had collected. The trumpet case was full of bills! Not just singles, either. There were twenties in there as well. Did people realize that robots didn't need money? The notion was infuriating: People would rather watch a clumsy robot play an instrument, and give it money, than to feed a poor hungry man with real talent.

Once, long ago, people used to do that kind of thing with monkeys, he thought. He'd never actually seen such a thing, but there were oblique references to this activity in old cartoons and movies and such, if you knew where to find old 20th century entertainment. People would shell out money for a monkey with a cup and a guy turning the crank on some box because the monkey was cute, not because either of them had talent…that, and the monkey would piss on you if you didn't put out. The robots didn't piss, thankfully, but what they did was perhaps more disturbing than getting sprayed with animal urine: they reminded you that your life was at their convenience, not vice versa. They reminded you that, no matter how special you thought you were, how long you might have devoted yourself to a talent or a discipline, no matter how skilled you were: your place in society was one day going to belong to them. So to survive, you had to constantly keep moving to improve yourself, to keep an edge over the automated scabs for another year or two. Just one more year…one more day…then you might have enough money to buy your own little trumpet-player and allow it to support you while it played Taps for the middle class.

The wind started kicking up in the tunnel, and Greg turned instinctively to look down the tracks for the headlights of the train coming. He was suddenly possessed by a simple, yet nearly overwhelming urge to kick the robot onto the tracks as the train approached. In fact, he fantasized about this very act as the train pulled up. The Japanese man must have been reading his mind, or so it seemed, for his smile faded and he reached down to close the case and take his bot somewhere else, where it might be appreciated again.

“Where'd you get that thing?” asked Greg, trying to muster what was left of his humanity in order to present a smile.

“Pardon me?”

“Your robot,” said Greg, pointing down at the little thing. It looked like it was trying to do the peepee dance as it hopped from one plastic leg to the other. It was only about three feet tall, so its head was right at crotch level, he thought with revulsion.

“Ah, that is Spazzo. Isn't he great? I taught him to play the trumpet myself.”

“Yeah, great. Are you a music teacher or something?”

“That is correct. I used to teach children how to play musical instruments. Now, of course, children aren't interested in learning, so I trained Spazzo. Maybe I can train more robots. Maybe I can get a robot band together. Wouldn't that be something?”

“Yeah, you could call it Plan C.”

“Pardon me?”

“Nothing. I thought you worked for Yamako, since you have the tie tack,” said Greg.

“Oh, you know my little secret, then,” said the man conspiratorially. “I do work for Yamako now, but I really was a music teacher. I do this as a way of demonstrating their superiority in robotics. People see Spazzo playing the trumpet, and they wonder if he's so good at that, maybe he would be a nice house robot who could serve drinks and clean and maybe even cook.”

“How can a robot cook? I mean: doesn't it take some kind of taste buds or something? They can't even smell.”

“They have smoke detectors to alert you if there is a fire,” said the man smiling again. “Besides, nobody really cooks anymore, you know. They just take a package from the freezer and place it in the microwave oven, then press a button. Ding! It's done! I don't see any reason why Spazzo couldn't do that was well as any human.”

“So, you really think Spazzo here, or something like it--“

“Him,” corrected the Japanese man.

“It,” corrected Greg, “should be in every home?”

“Why not? They can do so many things around the house, even balance your checkbook, hahaha!” The man's laugh was a mechanical one, like his robot: it had no feeling. “They are very sophisticated in their reasoning. They can tell when you are angry, so they stay out of your way. They can anticipate your needs, too, so when you need something, they will be right there to take care of it.”

“Are you married, Mr….”

“Kenshi. That is a very personal question.”

“I apologize, Mr. Kenshi,” said Greg. Then, he caught himself. He had heard of these sneaky advertising traps, but he never thought he would be a victim himself. Sometime, near the end of the 20th century, they started doing these advertising campaigns in which they hired people off the street to go into public places, or even private ones, and basically do a live advertisement for some product or other. It might be some pretty girl at the airport who is just a little too enamored by her cellular phone, or it might be that guy in the bar sporting a portable gaming system, or some kid wearing shoes that light up when you kick someone's teeth in. Damn advertisers would crawl up your ass if they could sell you a hemorrhoid ointment. They're everywhere, like bacteria, seeking to infect every little crevice, every blank wall or surface with the stink of their commercialism. Now, Greg finally realized how insidious they were. He had walked right into an advertisement and didn't even realize it until it was too late. The commercial hooks were flailing about, like the waving legs of a beetle on its back, trying to grab onto anything at all to right itself: a Japanese beetle in this case.

“I have already forgotten. Young man, you seem to be intelligent, and, if you will excuse my bluntness, you appear to be in need of gainful employment by the state of your attire.”

“None taken,” said Greg cynically.

“Pardon me?”

“I am not offended by your presumption that I am unemployed. My clothes are admittedly…lacking in freshness.”

“Yes, that is exactly the phrase I was looking for,” said Mr. Kenshi nodding his head. Spazzo was counting the money in the case and folding the bills carefully, sticking them into a money belt as the train began to pull away from the station. A small white piece of paper fluttered by in the wake, like a ghost.

“Perhaps you would be interested in a position at Yamako? Do you have any programming ability?”

“I used to program computers for a while, until they changed the politics.”

“You play the violin, also?”

“How do you know?”

“I believe I've seen you play here a few times,” said Mr. Kenshi, his grin reminding Greg of the grill of a car during the execution of a flawless hit-and-run.

“So you've seen me play here?” he asked, incredulously. Mr. Kenshi nodded. “You would know, then, that your robot, Despaizo or whatever you call it, was playing exactly in my spot?” Greg began to feel the same urge he felt earlier rising within, only this time, it was not the robot he wished to push onto the tracks.

“You have a wonderful gift,” said Mr. Kenshi, oblivious, this time, to Greg's innermost thoughts. “I think there might be a place for you with Yamako.”

“What? Cleaning up after robots? Maybe I could play my violin in the lobby to amuse your mechanical guests?"

“Ah, you misunderstand,” said Mr. Kenshi, his smile fading. “I am suggesting that you do what I am doing.”

“Which is?”

“Advertising for Yamako.”

“No.”

“Please take my card,” said Kenshi, proffering a white smart card. Everyone had these now. You so much as get it near a computer and it will start uploading all kinds of stuff into your hardware…mostly advertising shit. Sometimes it was a virus. Sometimes a trojan. Usually, it was adverts. Probably radiates gamma rays, maybe to make you sterile while it's fucking your computer.

“No. Keep your card.”

“I see your hesitation,” he said, putting the card away. “This one is plain paper.”

“Just paper?” he asked, inspecting the card for hidden mylar chips.

“Just paper.”

Greg hadn't seen a simple paper card in a long time. Only high-class executives had paper cards these days. This one was quite elegant too. The Japanese seemed to have a thing for business cards. It was beyond Greg to reason with it, but he accepted the card. It was, as all business cards were, just a millimeter too long to go into the plastic card-holder in his wallet, so he jammed it into the pocket where the bills go, like he did with every other business card he owned. He always told himself he would trim them later and put them into the plastic card-holder, but he never did. Why did they make those plastic card flaps, anyway, if they were going to make them just a little too small?

As Kenshi and the robot walked away, the robot reached up to hold Kenshi's hand. Greg shuddered involuntarily.


#


Greg awoke in his usual fashion: cramped and partially numb from the nightly contortion he suffered in order to sleep in his Hugo Mini. They were cars that were originally made for people who could hitherto only afford to buy bicycles. They were economical, though: all plastic, and they ran on biodeisel…chicken grease, corn oil, or whatever oily substance you could find in sufficient quantity. The exhaust smelled like whatever you put in.

It was painted primer gray. Like most Hugo cars, it was originally colored with Emotochrome™, which, because of advances in technology, caused the car's exterior to behave like a mood ring. The paint color would reflect the mood of the driver, as measured by various autonomic sensors in the seat and steering wheel, and display the driver's emotional state to whomever was on the road at the time. This undermined years of carefully practiced repression on the part of the driver. If you were angry, for instance, it would turn red. If you were depressed, it would be black. If you were happy, it would be blue. Greg had never seen a blue Mini.

No matter how carefully the driver attempted to conceal his anger, fear, frustration, and hatred of other drivers, the car would broadcast their emotional state to every other driver on the road. Predictably, this caused a kind of paranoia cascade. Each emotional car made the other drivers more nervous: the more nervous other drivers got, the more their car colors caused fear in surrounding drivers. This caused a kind of fear-feedback loop on the freeway that culminated in several attacks of paranoia, followed by full-bore freeway shootouts. Eventually, most Mini owners responded to what they considered an insult to their privacy by painting their cars primer gray. Currently, there was a law that was being pushed by the Hugo corporation that would make it illegal to paint over the Emotochrome™ paint. They said that it was important for law enforcement to be able to see the emotional state of the driver before deciding whether or not to make a random stop to check for weapons.

The car was full of Greg's remaining worldly possessions, including those Plan B posters that sometimes gave him the sinking feeling he would never have a wall to hang them on.

The sky outside was dim and cloudy. He could tell that even through the layer of grime and condensation that gave him a modicum of privacy when he needed it. He opened the door to the chill air and went to a nearby culvert to relieve himself, hoping that there would not be a homeless person, human or otherwise, within. Morning air always had that fresh quality, even though you could barely discern it through the smell of decaying civilization. There was also a strange noise in the air, a kind of rumble. He always thought it was the sound of rush hour, of distant freeways lined with cars crawling nose to bumper, slower than most people could walk. He never confirmed it, though. Maybe there was some machine beneath the city that they turned on in the morning that made that low-pitched grinding noise. He could not imagine the purpose of such a thing. Perhaps it ground the bones of the homeless. Perhaps it simply served to put people on edge in the morning, to slowly gnaw away at their reserves of sanity.

After finishing at the culvert, he walked over to the dew-catcher. It was a special rig he bought for about three dollars. Most homeless people had these wonderful devices. They were cheaply produced, inflatable, and yet very valuable: they caught dew, rain, fog, or whatever moisture was in the air, even the exhaust of those hydrogen vehicles, and condensed it into potable drinking water…after you boiled it. Last night was a good catch, he thought inspecting the collection bag. He poured the contents of the plastic bag into his espresso machine. He then got his paper bag of espresso ground Jamaican coffee (he had a friend in the government who could score real coffee) and delicately poured a few ounces into the filter. He then locked the seals and started a blister can to cook it on. In a few minutes, his Hugo Mini was filled with the aroma of espresso. This was usually the high-point in Greg's day. After drinking this, he opened an auto-cooking can of Spam. There was some chemical or something on it or in it that caused it to instantly cook when you opened the can and exposed it to the atmosphere. You had to pull off the lid with the convenient little ring that broke off half the time, and then put the thing down on some flame-retardant tile or something before it went China Syndrome in your hands. He wondered who was the brilliant mind that came up with the idea. After it sizzled and cooled a bit, he wolfed it down, knowing that the vitamin-enriched tofu injections would give him the nutrients necessary for survival. This would compensate for the poverty of the rest of his diet.

After he ate his breakfast and performed his morning ablutions in the San Gabriel River, he remembered the small Yamako card in his wallet. He flipped it out and looked at it. After debating for a few minutes, he decided to give the number a call on his five-dollar cell phone. The time on it was nearly used up, so he would have to be brief.

“Good morning,” said Mr. Kenshi on the other end.

“Mr. Kenshi, this is Greg Hunter. I wanted to inquire about the job opportunity you mentioned yesterday in the subway station.”

“Excellent, Mr. Hunter. I will look forward to seeing you at eleven o'clock.”

“Where?”

“Oh, the Yamako building. I'm in room 304. Please be punctual.”

“Where is the Yamako building?”

“The local building is in downtown Irvine. From that, you should be able to discover your trajectory.”

“Yeah. OK. I'll see you then.”

“Good morning,” said Mr. Kenshi. Greg looked and saw he only had seven seconds left on his phone. Not even enough time for an emergency call, he told himself, as he threw the disposable phone into the trash.

On his way back to the car, he noticed the cleaners at work again. They wore black latex uniforms that were practically level 10 protection against microbes and such. These were complete with heavy rubber boots, gloves, and a gas mask under a face shield. It's important to accessorize. They had industrial strength control nozzles that ejected a kind of sweet-smelling foamy water to remove the dark stain left behind by a fresh corpse. Another homeless person died in the evening. No name, no status, no credit. When they die, the only trace they leave behind (sometimes) is a stain on the pavement, which was quickly cleaned up by the city. Seemed to Greg there was one of these every day…probably more.

Greg had heard stories of places where homeless people could live while they were looking for work. They were called flop-houses or something. One paid a small price to sleep there and you got a shower and a meal. People would live there until they could afford to get an apartment, then they'd leave. Too bad there were no such places in the 21st century. Unemployed people were like baby birds that fall from the nest. They were not expected to be able to make it for long. They were not expected to find jobs again. They were expected to die. Greg had managed to live in that limbo between civilized life and death for too long. He knew that there would not be many opportunities for him to find work. Being homeless was like having leprosy. Nobody would hire you if you were homeless, and you would remain homeless until you got a job. The contradiction never seemed to bother potential employers. They could always find another person who was even more desperate for the job. Maybe someone from China, India, or one of the Stan countries: Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc.

Greg remembered how, at the dawn of the 21st century, Americans were concerned about their jobs being sold overseas to these countries. It was obvious, though, that an American could never compete with someone who was willing to do the same work for 1/6th the wage, so the opening of the trade barriers that had hitherto protected American workers from the ravages of the Third World had crumbled like the stone walls of a fortress. Like water through a broken dam, money and jobs flowed fast and furious from the comparatively rich nation of America into the comparatively poor nations of the East. When the money/jobs stopped flowing, nobody was left above sea-level, except Japan, which had erected the very same trade barriers that had once protected America. It was ironic that now the Stan countries, along with China and India were complaining about losing their jobs to the automated workers marching out of factories in Japan. They called them the “Plastic Peril,” which Greg recalled was some reference to some ancient historical xenophobia. The fact was, though: Japan was the most wealthy country in the world, rather, it was the ONLY wealthy country in the world, and while the human population of the country slowly dwindled because they desired more space, the robot population, which one might think of as Japanese, was growing. Ironically, much of the information about robotics Japan had so successfully leveraged had begun as research in the United States. Too bad nobody thought to keep that information as a proprietary secret.

It had been a while since Greg had started the Mini. He was not sure if it would start, but the damn thing was built to last a year or two, and he'd only had it two. With a loud grinding noise, it came to life, spewing a toxic-smelling cloud of rancid fat into the air, choking passersby as he stepped on the accelerator. The Mini had an e-port, which gave him a satellite link to the Internet. He got the directions to the Yamako building from that, and the car told him where to go. He needed to start early, though. A typical drive from Los Angeles to Irvine took about five to six hours. Greg thought that if he ever got enough money, he'd buy one of those little commuter darts, maybe a Vaunt Wombat 800. Then he could fly over the huddled masses and get there in a few minutes. He saw one streak by, low enough to hear the roar of its engines. The driver was just showing off: there was no need to fly that low except to humiliate the drivers on the ground. Jerk. Greg rolled down his window and released the tension building up in his middle finger, thrusting it into the hot, orange sky.



Click here for Part 2 of
PLASTIC CHILDREN

,
by Nigel Strange

[PLASTIC CHILDREN is serialized into 3 Parts,
concluding this Friday--the day after tomorrow]
©by Nigel Strange