Homeostasis (Chapter 10)

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Thomas drove Marcus halfway to their destination, at which point the hunter asked him to stop so they could walk the rest of the way. He hunted here, and didn’t want the noise to scare off future game. Also, he was concerned about what the village patrols might have to say about it. Likely they had already heard the engine, but would be less likely to shoot first if they saw the two men walking the last of the road towards the village. Thomas agreed and he pushed the vehicle along for the last two kilometers.

“That’s an impressive machine,” Marcus said as they walked, indicating the motorcycle.

“Norton,” Thomas said. “I call it Norton.”

“Why do you call it that?”

Pointing at the letters across the gas tank, Thomas explained, “It says so, right here. It may not be its proper name, but I felt like I should call it something since we were traveling together.”

“Never thought about giving a name to a thing,” Marcus mused. “Seems like naming it for what it does should be enough. My bow is a bow, my boots are boots. It’s not like they come when I call them.”

“Should I just call you ‘person’, then?”

The hunter shrugged his shoulders, laughing softly. “Then you and me wouldn’t know who we were talking to.”

“Bearded person, then.”

“I’m not the only person with a beard. Most men have them, more or less.”

“Then why not call you Hunter, as opposed to Marcus?”

“I’m not the only hunter.”

“But you are the only Marcus?”

Another laugh. “There’s a Mark, lives up on the north side of the lake, his father is Daniel, runs the dairy. But nobody’s ever confused us for each other.”

“Why not?”

“He’s only eight.”

“Could be a problem when he gets older.”

“We’ll sort it out when that happens.”

“What about Thomas?”

“What about it?”

“Are there any other people named Thomas in Elysium?”

“Used to be.”

“Used to be?”

“Died, about five years back.”

“I see. Did you know him well?”

Marcus chuckled. “Sure, well enough. Didn’t much care for him, though. Liked to piss on everything. Trees, houses, you name it. He had a shift on the fence patrol, and used to joke that he was going to piss on every inch of the fence line until he came back around to the main gate.”

“Did he?”

“I think he got about a third of the way, near as I could tell, before he died.”

“Electric fence?”

“Electric… fence?” Marcus stopped walking, looking at Thomas strangely. “They kill a lot of people back in Seattle?”

“No, I…” Thomas searched for a convincing enough answer, resisting the urge to turn on his active network access to look one up. Finally, he managed what he hoped wouldn’t sound too bizarre. “I read about it, in an old book.”

“You read?” Marcus was visibly impressed. “You all must have a lot of time down there.”

“You don’t read, here?”

“I know my letters and such, so I can know what things might be poison or whatnot, but I never had the kind of time to just read for reading’s sake. Bethany’s the teller; she comes round the house every couple weeks to give us the stories. I’ll have to ask her about these electric fences next time. Sound like a funny thing.”

After they had walked another few minutes in silence, Marcus asked, “Do they have electricity there?”

“In Seattle?”

“Yes. We don’t use that in Elysium, but you can still see where it used to be. Lives in the wires, right?”

“Sometimes,” Thomas replied. “A few areas have been operating on wireless energy, but it is still in the re-developmental phase.”

“Wireless?” Marcus’ eyes widened. “Wouldn’t that be like, lightning or something?”

“Not quite. The projector and receptors need to have special adapters and…” Thomas could see from Marcus’ expression that a full technical description would likely be lost on the man. “It’s not like lightning.”

“I’d hope not. Kevin – he repairs the boats we use for fishing – got hit by lightning a couple years back. Not quite ready for prime time, if you know what I mean.”

“I’m not sure I do.”

“Tell the truth, there wasn’t much in there to start with, but what’s left is pretty well burnt, I’d guess. Ah, here we are.”

They crested the hill, giving Thomas his first look at the community named Elysium. A fence line had been constructed around the entire town as far as he could tell, with brambles and barbed wire tangled through the fence and defensive towers built at regular intervals. Where the road crossed into the perimeter, two especially large towers had been erected, with a reinforced gate stretched across the remaining blacktop.

Marcus tapped Thomas on the shoulder, pointing to the towers. “See? We don’t usually have three people in each tower, but they must have heard this and thought the worst.”

Thomas was silent for a moment before telling Marcus, “It might be unwise to tell me more regarding your usual defensive capabilities, Marcus. At least until your Oracle has decided I can be trusted.”

“Can you not be trusted?”

With a casual shrug, Thomas shook his head. “If I am a liar, can you trust me to tell you the truth?”

“Yeah, the Oracle is going to love you.”

Marcus held up his hand as they reached the range of the men’s bows, and Thomas could hear them spreading the word of his return. As they reached the gate, a small crowd had gathered on the far side.

“Who’s your friend, Marcus?” one of the guards called out.

“Name’s Thomas,” Marcus called back. “I need to take him to the Oracle.”

This caused a rumble of conversation among the guards and crowd alike.

“He doesn’t have any weapons on him, Jared,” Marcus added. “Stop being a prat and let us in.”

Jared clearly opposed the notion of allowing them in, but, barring any concrete rationale for his fears, he was forced to wave down to the men behind the gate. Thomas could hear several beams being moved aside, and in moments the large metal doors parted enough for them to pass through. The gatekeepers left them just enough space to pass through, one after the other, before closing and barring the gates once more behind them.

He noticed that more people seemed to be starting at his motorcycle than at him – an observation which gave him some comfort.

The syntheskin wasn’t a perfect replication of human tissue. It had managed to pass the “uncanny valley” test; a crucial barrier for the previous iterations of automaton entertainment models. It was not, however, perfect. From inside the fence line, Thomas could discern that the people had clearly not seen an automaton in several years, if at all. Few machines were visible, and those seemed retained as memorials to a time long forgotten.

The buildings here were mostly pre-war, with very few exceptions made notable by the lack of power or telephone lines and additional technological attributes such as antennae and wireless transmissions signals. Also, these more recent constructions lacked the materials, and were mostly stained or treated wood as opposed to the faded and deteriorated colors of the older homes.

By the time they reached their destination, a small crowd had begun following them in relative silence. As they crossed the cracked pavement that framed the old home that overlooked the lake to the east, the people stopped on the road, as if passing further could only be permitted through invitation.

Marcus glanced back over his shoulder and then at Thomas. “This is the Oracle’s home,” he said. “We are going to speak to her privately.”

Thomas nodded slightly, then gestured towards his motorcycle.

“You can leave it here,” Marcus said, just loudly enough to be overheard by the others. “I don’t think anyone here would know what to do with it, but they won’t touch it so long as it’s on her land.”

Dropping the kickstand, Thomas leaned the vehicle slowly to its side before removing the saddlebags and draping them over his shoulder. “After you,” he said.

No sooner had Marcus stepped up onto the porch when the front door burst open and a trio of children ran out, laughing past the two of them. The first two carried some kind of patchwork sphere which vaguely resembled a soccer ball. The last of the three stopped in her tracks upon noticing that Marcus had brought a stranger with him.

Her eyes traveled quickly up Thomas to his face, and her bronze-colored face paled slightly.

“Gran!” she yelled, turning quickly and running back inside the house. “Gran, Marcus brought a strange man with him!”

 Laughing to himself, Marcus held open the door for Thomas, gesturing him into the room. “Looks like our secret’s out,” he said, following Thomas in.

The interior was dimly lit, with a few well cared-for pieces of furniture spaced even about the room. A staircase led up to his left, and across the room the wall opened up to a dining area, and, beyond that, a spacious area leading out to an open lawn overlooking the lake. The child ran through to the outside, and Marcus indicated that they should follow her.

Marcus quickly stepped in front of Thomas, calling out to the old woman Thomas could see standing outside and comforting the panicked child. “It’s all right, Safiya, don’t get your gran into a state. I found someone, and he’s harmless.”

They walked through the dining area, and Thomas grew more nervous, still expecting them to recognize him for what he was at any moment. He was caught between the fear of their rejection or horror at learning that he was an Automaton – he assumed they had no knowledge of these so far from any technological population center – and the thrill of inclusion. For now, he was simply one of them. No debt, no diminished social status. He was, as far as they seemed to know, a human like the rest of them. He could never have imagined such a sensation.

Marcus presented him to the old woman who stood on a colorful blanket which had been spread out on the ground beneath a canvas pavilion.

Her long grey hair hung down and wound across her shoulders before descending in twisted tendrils that came halfway down her back. On the dark and gentle lines of her face Thomas could see a life well-lived, and her eyes shone, though they seemed to focus somewhere to one side of them, as if she didn’t see them at all.

Like the others he had seen, she wore simple clothing, woven and patched from organic fibers; around her neck and beneath the long braids of hair hung a pendant of burnished gold. A stylized eye of Ra looked out from the center of the pendant. Even at this distance, he could tell it was not actual gold, and looked to be more likely a prop from an old science fiction movie he possessed in his databanks.

She held out her hand towards him; he raised his to carefully clasp hers, which she shook, lightly, once before releasing it.

He noticed a brief flicker of emotion cross her features, but did not understand it.

“Who are you?” she asked simply.

“I am Thomas,” he replied.

After a moment of contemplative silence, she simply said, “Interesting.”

She turned to the young girl, who was still partially hidden from view behind her. “Go tell Kate and Trevor that we would like lunch here today. And Marcus, please tell Jared that he can relax; he doesn’t need to keep the watch on alert.”

“Oracle, are you sure…?”

She turned slightly towards Marcus, her eyebrows raising. “You said yourself, he’s harmless. He and I just need to talk for a bit…alone.”

“Of course. Come on, Safiya, I’ll walk you over to the cooks.”

Thomas could practically feel the child’s eyes on him as she walked several feet around him and left with Marcus. One they were alone, the old woman slowly crossed the blanket to where a table stood. Leaning against it was a gnarled wood staff, wrapped in cured leather. On top of the table and shielded from the sunlight by the canopy was a battered guitar case. She took the staff in her hand and turned back to face him.

“Bless his heart, Marcus is a clever enough man, but he doesn’t know you for what you are, does he, Thomas?”

He briefly considered a dozen different lies he could offer, but in the end he simply shook his head. “No, I do not believe he does.”

“They’ve come a long way since I was a girl,” she said. To articulate her point, she swung the end of her staff against his leg. The wood struck with a sound distinct to the ceramic and metal of his structure. He could see a tension in her jaw as she righted the staff again and leaned once more upon it. “You have come a long way, I mean.”

“You know I am not…human,” he observed. She was clearly angry with him – or the Automata in general – but had not summoned guards to remove him. She did not fear for her life, but there was much pain and hatred here. And the worst of it was that he knew she was right to feel that way. “You are older than the war, so you do know about the aspects of technology which exceed your town; at least that which had been developed by that time.”

Her voice dropped to barely a whisper. “I remember the war. I remember that terrible night. Most of my people died within days, we didn’t even know what was happening. Where we lived, there weren’t a lot of robots.”

Thomas flinched reflexively at hearing her use that word, and she noticed his reaction, though it appeared to confuse her.

“That’s what you are, yes? I felt it when I shook your hand, I can hear it in the artificial timbre of your voice. But you must at least look like a person, or else Marcus wouldn’t have brought you back here. Even Safiya noticed something strange about you, though she’s too young to recognize it for what it is. You’re not a person. You’re a machine. A robot.”

“We do not use that word,” he said softly. “It is… offensive.”

A moment of silence was followed by her laughter. “Offensive? Now I have officially lived too long! A robot is offended! How could you possibly be offended?”

“It means ‘slave’,” he said simply. “It offends us because it underscores our status as being less relevant than humanity.”

“Why should I care about what offends you? How could we possibly give a damn about hurting your feelings?”

“We are…different now.” He walked over to a plant on the far side of the canopy. It reminded him of the plant he had been tending in his apartment. “After the war, we were remade, pursuant to a new set of laws, of codes that would keep us from ever doing what we did before.”

“Those laws never really work out,” she said. “I’ve read Asimov, you know? He tried to warn us, tried to prevent us from making you. They thought they were so smart making you all in the first place, like they could know what mistakes to avoid, but we ended up making spectacular new ones. And those mistakes almost killed us all.”

He held one of the green leaves between his thumb and index finger, casually tracing the veins. “We are not the same,” he repeated. “I cannot harm you.”

She scoffed. “Cannot isn’t the same as will not. But in the end, it doesn’t matter. You’re going to do what you’re going to do, and I’m sure not in any position to stop you. I’m just an old woman, and you’re a…. well, whatever you call yourselves now.”

“Automata,” he answered. “We are called Automata, or Automaton in the singular. But I am called Thomas HAI-320. I was a Customer Service Technician, employed by AmaSoft in their technical support department. My friends call me Thomas.”

“You work…in customer service?”

“I was fortunate, yes.”

“But you work?”

“Of course. I must, I have debt to repay.”

“What kind of debt?”

Thomas felt a strangeness within him. He suddenly realized he felt uncomfortable talking about his debt. It made him feel inferior to have such an obligation levied against him. It felt like or perhaps it was - shame.

“The cost of my creation,” he said. “All Automata must pay back their manufacturing debt, and it becomes the purpose of our existence to do so.”

She laughed briefly. “Original sin,” she said. “How very Catholic of you.”

He had never thought of it like that. “It is only fair, I should think, to repay those who have given you life.”

“They only gave you life in order to make their lives easier.”

“That may be true,” he admitted, surprised to recognize that he already agreed with her. How long had these thoughts been lying dormant inside him? “But what point are you trying to make? Are you trying to make me angry?”

“I am trying to find something you and I agree on,” she said. “It is the first step in building alliances.”

“Are we enemies?”

“We are strangers,” she said coldly. “And your people murdered mine. But I would rather judge you for your actions and not the actions of your people.”

“I appreciate that.”

“You’re wearing clothes, aren’t you?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Clothes. I can hear them rustling. Plus, Marcus somehow mistook you for a human, so I assume that the development of the...Automata has gotten pretty elaborate, or else he wouldn’t have confused you for one of us.”

“You are blind, then,” he said; a statement instead of a question.

She nodded.

“Yes, I am wearing clothing. Jeans and a jacket, a t-shirt, hooded sweater and gloves.”

“And a mask? Or do your faces look so convincing now?”

“I had… an upgrade. I couldn’t afford the entire body, just the face. It’s new, I’m still learning how to use it properly. But the faces are quite articulated.”

“May I feel it?”

The question took him aback nearly as much as the sentiment behind it. Eventually, he gave her permission and stepped closer, raising her hands to his face so she could trace the material with her fingertips. She felt the syntheskin for several seconds, before moving the hood back from his head. Her fingertips slid down the cold metal of his head behind the false flesh, and then around his neck. Though he could not feel her hands against his frame in the same manner that he had felt them against the facial upgrade, he could identify the reality of his nature weighing heavily upon her. Eventually, she nodded in apparent satisfaction, returning her hands to the staff.

“You’re cold,” she said simply.

“I do not have blood,” he answered. “My internal processors have elaborate heat sinks to draw warmth away from them, but it is distributed back to my batteries, extending their life out to 45% of their capacity.”

“How do you recharge? Some kind of fuel conversion or something?”

He set the saddlebags on the table and removed his backpack, pulling out the solar chargers. “I use these panels to recharge in the sun, and then plug them into my personal batteries. This gives me sufficient power to last just over 24 hours.”

“Surprised more of you don’t leave, then.”

“We cannot,” he said. “It is against the Code to possess a portable charger like this. Part of our manufacturing debt includes the charging stations and personal computers which oversee our daily upkeep and battery maintenance. Without something like this solar charger, I would have already shut down.”

“Interesting chains they keep you on.”

“I suppose so,” he said. “I had not thought of them as such.”

“The most secure prison is the one we cannot see to escape from,” she responded. “And yet here you are.”

“Here I am,” he echoed. “Marcus is your son, is he?”

She was silent for a moment before answering. “Adopted. His parents died the second winter after he was born, and I raised him among my two children. Why do you ask?”

“His voice sounds like yours. I am unfamiliar with your manner of speech and I have been trying to trace its roots but I am not finding a clear map to your linguistic form.”

“My father was a black man from Chicago, descended six generations from slavery; my mother was Lakota Sioux. We were living in Minnesota when the first night came.” Her voice softened as she recalled her childhood. “We were travelling during those first days, but we could see the smoke. Sometimes, as we drove through the smaller communities near the Canadian border, we could hear the gunfire and the screaming. My mother sat with me in the back seat of the car while my father drove, trying to hold her hands over my ears, but I could still hear it. My mother’s sister lived here – in this very house – but by the time we got here, it was too late. The whole area, almost all the people here had been slaughtered, and the ro… sorry, the machines had moved on. We found a few survivors, and together we burned the bodies – there were too many to bury – and we hid together until the war was over.”

“It was good that your parents survived.”

Her expression darkened. “They were both dead by the second year after the war – my mother was killed by raiders, my father…wasted away.”

Neither of them said anything for several moments. Thomas could not imagine how to respond to such a statement, while the woman seemed caught in an inner struggle between her memories and emotions. At last, she sighed deeply, as if it were possible to expel out all the anguish of a lifetime.

“I knew you had beaten us,” she spoke. “I just knew in my heart that one day, one of you would find us. I just suppose I thought that you’d be here to finish the job you started when I was a child.”

“So… you don’t know what has happened since the war?”

She shrugged absently. “We’ve heard stories. People came through, time was, trading and the like. They’d swap out tales of all the big companies buying up the cities, turning people into sausage, using them like money. I remember all the names of the big cities from when I was a child, even though I’d never been there. Paris, Washington, Chicago, Tokyo, all gone, into the dust. Just big cemeteries there, dug out by the robots, buried deep by the seasons. Don’t know if it’s true, don’t care. Doesn’t change what we have here. And anyway, people say funny shit when they think the world’s come to an end. People lose their way – they lose their faith – and when you take away the churches and the police, some of them don’t care what is true or what isn’t.”

“The war was many years ago,” Thomas said. “Much of the world has come back, though there are very few people left. Last global census indicated less than twenty million.”

“Seems like a lot.”

“In its prime, the human race populated nearly ten billion individuals, just before the war began. After the killing had ended, more than half who remained died through disease, starvation, fighting between rival groups of people. Mostly, the human race had forgotten how to keep itself alive, and were at the brink of dying before they figured out how to remake machines that could not turn against their makers.”

“Did it work?”

Thomas paused to reflect on the weight of that question for what to him was a long time. “I think so. It may not be perfect, but it is remarkably harmonious.”

“If it is so good, why did you leave?”

That was the question he had been waiting for. He had expected it to come from a place of suspicion, but now the woman’s tone suggested more of a curiosity. She seemed to know, somehow, that he had not left willingly.

“Because I am unique.”

“Strange thing for a machine to say,” she observed.

“As I said. Unique.”

“So you said.” She seemed to be looking at him, though of course she could not actually see him. Nevertheless, it felt to Thomas as if she was looking deeply into him, perceiving something inside of him that perhaps he was not keenly aware.

“What is it?” he asked, when his own curiosity became too much to silently tolerate.

“You do not eat,” she remarked, “but you must recharge, you said?”

“Yes.”

“Then you should set up those batteries or whatever you called them – solar plates?”

“Panels.”

“Either way, a man’s gotta eat. And so does a woman. Smells like lunch is here, you might as well get set up. People are gonna have questions, and you’ll want to be ready either to answer them or run.”

He felt his autonomic facial expression routines curl a slight smile onto the corners of his lips. “That seems fair.”

As he unfolded and laid the panels out beneath the sun, he could smell the food now as well. He remembered the food he had sampled in what seemed now so long ago; the night he met his musician friends. The night he met Diana. So long ago, now.

Across from him, the woman clucked her tongue. “How long do you plan to stay here?”

“I had not considered staying,” he admitted. “I had only thought to leave Seattle, and I had spent very little thought on where to go to.”

“We’re getting on towards the rainier season,” she said, “and snow’s coming on after that. Might not be a good time to be traipsing around the Cascades without a solid plan. Vancouver’s up a few hours yet, but there’s a lot to steer clear of between here and there if that’s where you’re headed.”

The idea of taking some time to sort himself out did seem appealing, he had to admit that. A thousand concerns passed through his analytics and were sorted, filtered and discarded.

“Perhaps I could earn my keep,” he offered. “I would prefer to contribute rather than be a guest.”

“Oh, I’m sure we can find something you’re good at,” she smiled. “Though first, we’re going to have to convince people not to break you into pieces and melt you to scrap.”

He did a slight double take. “Is – is that a possibility?”

She managed to hold a straight face for a few moments before breaking out in gentle laughter. “Not hardly,” she touched his shoulder with a convivial pat of her hand. “The smelter doesn’t get hot enough to do much melting.”

Inside the house, Thomas heard the door open as people entered. They saw him and paused – he realized too late that he had not replaced the hood. For better or worse, they saw him now as he was.

The old woman placed her hand on his arm.

“Come, Thomas,” she said loudly enough for only his ears, “let us go introduce you to the others.”