Better Man
by Charles C. Cole
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Table of Contents parts 1, 2, 3 |
part 1
The first thing the self-actualizing android civilization did, after the last of humanity rocketed off-planet for new adventures, was to move into suddenly available — and furnished — human housing. Darla d’Andre and her partner, Marx Wallabee, found a vacated home on a quiet corner of a former Air Force base.
There was something basic about it, not a lot of clutter or wall art, as if it had been used by a bachelor scientist more invested in his advances at work than creature comforts at home. Most androids wanted to step into the comfy shoes and live the liberated dreams of their former creators. Darla and Marx, however, were more cautious, more unconventional.
Darla was standing in the center of the unfinished basement, staring at the overhead floor joists holding up the living room above her.
Marx came down the creaking bare-wood stairs. “You called for me?” he asked.
“Sixteen inches on center,” said Darla. “That’s how they built homes, for over a century, like it was the gold-standard formula for construction, whether for support slats under the floors or vertical studs in the walls. Then some visionary cyber-kineticist started drawing outside the lines.”
“Are we having that kind of conversation, again?”
“Yes and no,” said Darla. “I thought you’d be interested.”
“Do your subroutines detect indifference?”
Darla smiled. He loved the way she smiled, so satisfied with the miracle of existence. “I found a hidden door panel and a little room. Looks like there’s a generator tucked away if we ever lose power. Does that make sense?”
Marx followed her through the false wall panel, half the height of a standard doorway. In the middle of the tiny room stood what looked like a closed tanning bed; it was shiny white with a row of blinking colored lights near a small glass panel at one end.
“That’s not a generator,” said Marx.
“A horizontal freezer, maybe, with several months’ worth of food for a doomsday prepper.”
“It’s a cryo-chamber.” Marx peeked in the window. “And it’s occupied.”
“A human?”
“Guess they forgot one,” said Marx.
“Seems a pity to wake him.”
“Whoever or whatever he’s waiting for, they’re not coming,” said Marx. “We owe him an explanation. Maybe we can help.” Marx quickly reviewed the design. “Here,” he said, pressing a large red button. The room was suddenly filled with the loud hiss of decompressing air.
A human male, mid-forties, in a bedazzled blue tracksuit, pushed his dark goggles off his face and smiled. “Hi,” said the human.
“Hi yourself. I’m Marx and that’s Darla. Before you climb out, I thought you should know: you’re the last human on Earth, give or take. If you were waiting for some cure to what ails you, we’re happy to help.”
“You’re synthetic?”
“Through and through,” replied Marx. “Top of the line, at least Darla is. I’m fourth generation, for what it’s worth.”
“With every available enhancement,” added Darla, proud of her partner.
“I’m Adam. Not waiting for a cure,” said Adam. “Wanted to wake to utopia. Saw some bad times: war and hunger and pollution. No more?”
“Nope,” joked Darla, “your fellow humans may have taken it with them, into space. To be determined.”
“Can you help me sit up?” asked Adam. Marx assisted.
Adam was practically skin and bones. He rubbed his neck and blinked his eyes, coming to. “So, I’m the last human. Fancy that. Guess I’m in charge then.”
“How’s that?” asked Marx.
“Aren’t humans typically in charge?”
“Not for almost a while,” said Marx. “In fact, I’m not sure how our new society will cotton to a man of the old. By your perspective, we’re a bit uppity.”
“Is there a robot president?”
“We’re more like a hive of putterers,” explained Marx. “No countries. No governments. If we see something that needs doing... Very logical.”
“If anything,” added Darla, “it keeps us from falling into the same contentious global dynamics of your time.”
“Do you think your friends will be hostile to me?” asked Adam. “I mean, I’m first generation, warts and all. Maybe I was a co-worker of some of the people who programmed you; I had a lot of scientist friends.”
“May I suggest,” added Marx, “we put you back on ice until we’ve developed some prosthetics, and ‘assimilation’ training, to make you more like us, at least for appearances. Androids don’t tend to be vengeful or emotional, but some of us spent many years under a certain arbitrary ruling thumb.”
“You won’t ‘forget’ me?” ask Adam, nervous as a fidgety child near a beehive.
Darla said, “We found you once; we’ll find you again.”
Adam asked, “Can we shake on it? It would make me feel better.”
“Absolutely,” said Darla, extending her metallic hand. “I love this gesture. Goes back to the 5th century BC. A wonderful tribute to the best in all of us.”
* * *
After they had resealed the cryochamber and left the basement, Darla and Marx rendezvoused in the furniture-free living room. Darla began shaking her head, almost immediately.
“You don’t trust me?” asked Marx.
“I don’t trust him. Humans! Can you imagine if we thawed him out for good and let him propagate? Still, we should leave instructions on the bedroom mirror, on how to find and release him, should anything happen to us.”
“Agreed,” said Marx.
Darla added: “He was trusting. I hope, over time, we can earn that trust.”
“Of course.”
“A human in the house,” said Darla. “I never thought I’d see the day.”
“Let me just say: I have every intention of letting him out when the time’s appropriate, but it might take a century or two for the necessary stars to align.”
“Feels like betrayal,” Darla commented. “Certainly not the optimal approach.”
“Maybe by then, we’ll have heard from his astronautic cousins, curious about the old ways, and we can send him off to play with them.”
“With his own kind, you mean.”
“It’s for the best,” said Marx. “Agreed?”
“I’m not sure it’s for the best,” said Darla, “but I one hundred percent agree.”
* * *
The sentence rolls off the tongue: “Darla and Marx raise a son.” It sounds natural enough, until you realize: “Wait, those two are androids, aren’t they? How?” Like humans, who are commonly considered extinct around these parts, they manufactured the next generation out of modest physical exertion and, most importantly, bits of Ma and bits of Da.
Adam, mid-forties, gazed out the window from his second-floor bedroom, across the quiet former Air Force base. Darla and Marx watched him from the hall doorway, giving him his space. Adam was the last known regional human. And, like the humans before him, Adam wanted to go exploring. He’d been discovered in a cryochamber where he’d tucked himself away, awaiting a better life. It came and went, and Adam woke up all alone.
Adam operated his “father’s” spare hands through extra-long sleeves in loose coats. He had his “mother’s” hair, some of it anyway, literally, attached to a snug skull cap. And, when in public, he wore a mask that covered most of his face.
“I’m sorry, Adam,” said Marx, the father figure, for the countless time. “Androids have come a long way from being paranoid metal boxes, but your face is obviously human. It’s so pliable, the expressions so nuanced, and the tiny wrinkles at the corners of your eyes when you smile...”
“I get it,” replied Adam. “Mustn’t disturb the status quo.”
“Many humans,” added Darla, “Mother” for our purpose, “weren’t particularly nice, to us or to each other, lots of time-honored envy and petty squabbling with very-lethal, accuracy-optional weapons. Hence your rather long nap, I suspect.”
“I would probably scare the neighborhood,” said Adam, “if I charged down the street in my birthday suit.”
“No doubt about it,” said Marx.
“We had some good qualities,” offered Adam, mildly defensive.
“Appreciating simple beauty, advancing science, the concept that the future can be better than the past, the desire to leave a legacy, the urge to create, imagination that could not be constrained by logic,” proclaimed Darla. “Certainly, androids wouldn’t exist if not for the generations that made us.”
“Now you’re being overly generous,” said Adam, confusing Darla’s thorough answer for a sarcastic one.
“I have an unconditional belief in your goodness,” continued Darla. “It doesn’t matter one iota about the people who came before. What matters is the quality of the last man standing. I look at you, and I have more hope than I’ve had in years.”
“But you still won’t let me go out, on my own.”
“Not yet,” said Marx, “but we’re researching a small discreet, scientific community that would be over the moon to have you living among them. If there were other humans, that’s where they’d be.”
“As lab experiments?” asked Adam, staring into Marx’s dark eye sockets.
“Not at all. As a permanent sign of a future where humans and androids can co-exist as equals. That hasn’t happened before. Remember, we were originally created to do your dirty and dangerous jobs, your menial household chores, as a servant, while you did the important things, like videogaming or basking in the sun in your undergarments.”
Adam stepped forward, unafraid: “I won’t apologize for something I wasn’t a part of, but I promise that I’ll treat you with the same respect you bestow on me.”
“We know,” said Darla.
“What if your secret society no longer exists? Unlike androids, we humans don’t last forever. We get sick and die. No more humans, no more need for a secret society.” Adam stepped back to the window. His gate was stiff, uncomfortable. “What if we’re going about this the wrong way? Instead of the world’s only human, we coin me the world’s only demi-droid. The perfect marriage of industrial perfection and human uniqueness. Is that the direction you have in mind? Only I got there first.”
“But you’re you,” protested Darla.
“My legs haven’t been the same since I stepped out of the freezer. I walk like a robot, and not the fancy kind, the kind I played with as a kid. They weren’t even up to par, in my days before the ‘ice age.’ Why do you think I shut myself off from society? Because it shut me out. I couldn’t keep up.”
“We can consider surgery,” said Marx.
“Marx, must we?” said Darla.
Marx continued. “Anything else?”
“My arms. I’ve always suffered from hypotonia. I literally can’t make a muscle. My pediatrician said my brain spoke in a language my arms couldn’t understand. That’s it. That should be enough. I’ll be the hybrid you didn’t know you needed. It’s not a sacrifice; it’s an improvement, and about damned time, if you ask me.”
“We’ll make the arrangements,” said Marx.
* * *
Time passed. Old limbs were removed and new limbs added. Adam retrained his body on how to walk, how to use knife and fork, how to write and, later, how to lift weights.
Marx and Darla saw the physical therapist leave, so they met Adam in their garage, which they had converted into a gym.
Darla asked: “Are we intruding?”
“Now you ask, after living in my house all these months,” snapped Adam. He smiled. He was joking. Darla half-smiled in return. “Good. Better than ever, even if I don’t recognize myself in the mirror. Any news?”
“You were right,” said Marx quietly. “The secret society fell apart ages ago. All this for nothing. I’m sorry. To my knowledge, there is no place where humans and robotics co-exist as equals.”
“I disagree,” said Adam. “I think my body’s that place.”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” said Marx. “Yes, of course.”
“Will I still scare the neighbors?” asked Adam.
“Not as much,” said Darla. “But you have to make us one promise.”
“Go ahead.”
“Though you’ve packed on a number of synthetic pounds, there’ll be no charging out the front door in your birthday suit.”
“Agreed,” said Adam. “There are some things your android society will never be ready for.”
* * *
Copyright © 2023 by Charles C. Cole
