AbductiCon (22 page)

Question #1 stepped forward, a girl in black leggings and close–cropped pink hair.

“So are you really robots?” she asked.

Xander rolled his eyes and hoped that nobody noticed. But Boss took it in stride.

“That depends on your exact meaning, and on what you would call a ‘robot’,” he said. “We are made, not born; that makes us a non–organic life form. If you call that a robot, by definition, then the answer would have to be yes, we are. But we are much closer to what your culture and context has called an android…”

“But an android is a human–like robot – and that means you – ”

“Hey,” Xander said, “you had your question! No discussions!”

“Okay, I’ll ask that one,” said the next guy in line, a lanky youth with wire–rimmed spectacles, clad in a tank top that left his arms bare and showed off a complicated tattoo on his upper right arm. “If you self–identify as androids, that implies knowledge and imitation of the human form – so how did you come to that self–identification?”

“We are made in a certain form, with certain functions,” Boss said. “Those things had to originate somewhere. There are some among our kind who dismiss ideas of an origin that did not involve a self–creation process – they begin with the premise that this form was arrived at as our existence has evolved, to suit our purpose and our needs, and that originally we may have existed as something quite different. “

“What, like an android amoeba – and you then evolved into walking android fishies and then maybe silicon–based dinosaurs…?”

Xander roused – this was more questions, again – but before he could say anything the situation got away from him.

“It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it…” someone in the audience intoned darkly.

“Well, not quite,” Boss said, without pausing long enough to allow Xander to get back into the conversation. “I do not think the pathways are necessarily parallel. But in simplistic terms, then yes, you could call that an evolutionary path. Then there are others among us who maintain that our structure and composition implies that we were – at least at some point in our distant past – manufactured, made. By someone other than ourselves. And if we are made, then it is logical to suppose that there must have been a time when the first of us was made – and that this implies a maker, and in that case it may be logical to extrapolate that a maker might choose to make a thing in his own image. Those who believe this have researched our lineage, working back along a complicated timeline preserved in our memory banks, and this research has led us to an image of a human being, in the shape and form that you are familiar with in yourselves right now. The word I have chosen to describe ourselves to you was chosen from a vocabulary provided by this comparison. In other places, or times, or contexts, we may self–refer in different terms; here and now, with you as a reference point, the closest word that may describe us to the point of mutual comprehension is ‘android’.”

“And these are definitely not the droids you were looking for,” someone said from the audience.

Question 3 allowed the laughter to die down and stepped forward – a blonde slip of a girl, wearing cat ears on an Alice band and make–up to accentuate her large green eyes into something that did look a little bit feline.

“Do you sleep?” she purred at Boss.

“No,” Boss said. “Not as you understand that concept.”

“Talk about a wasted question,” someone grumbled from the audience.

“Should one ask if androids dream of electric sheep…?” That came from a man with graying temples sitting in the front row, who then looked so smug that Xander wanted to snack him.

“Next,” he almost growled.

But they weren’t finished, from the audience.

“What next, you ask him if he actually eats…?”

“Just don’t feed them after midnight, they turn into the Terminator…”

More laughter, and Xander made a cutting gesture across his throat with his forefinger.

“This panel has a time limit and the clock is ticking, folks. I said, next!”

Question 4 stumbled forward, as though she had been shoved from behind, and blurted, “Did you time travel? Really? Someone said that you came from the future –
our
future – ”

“That’s pretty much four questions,” Xander said.

“Yes, from what you perceive as your future,” Boss said calmly. “In terms of your years, on your home planet, approximately a thousand years separate this era from the time period which is our own ‘now’.”

“A
thousand years
? A millennium? Like, seriously?”

“A hundred centuries from now…?”

“How would you even know…”

“Why did you go so far…”

“But time travel is not possible,” a man in the audience finally stated stubbornly.

“Yeah, much like you go for a flight around the Moon every day in a hotel floating on a chunk of rock,” the woman next to him said sharply. “Impossible, like that.”

“And how long have you two been married?” Vince inquired conversationally.

The couple in the audience subsided, amidst another round of smothered laughter, and Xander seized his chance.

“Moving on,” he said crisply. “Five? You’re up.”

“Actually, building on that… I’m going to shelve my original question, because now I am interested in something else,” said Question 5. “After all this time… are human beings, are
we
, still, you know, around…?”

“We know of this world, in our time,” Boss said. “It is uninhabited by your kind.”

For once, the answer was greeted by utter silence.

Question 6 said, in a very small voice, “So are we extinct, then…? I mean, everywhere? Was this planet really all that we had?”

That was more than one question again, but this time Xander raised no objection. A part of himself had also shivered and gone cold at that epitaph that Boss had just uttered, and now he turned to the android, anticipating his answer with a mixture of dread and hope.

There was a long pause before Boss spoke again, or maybe it just seemed that way to the hushed audience, but then the android tilted his head a little to the side, as though considering something.

“I am not certain,” he said, “just how much of future history can be told without changing something in it, and if I change something that is to come I may affect my own timeline with that. But I will say this much. There were ships sent from Earth before all trace of your kind vanished from this world. And this happened before your year 2400.”

“Why 2400?” Xander asked, oddly breathless, jumping his own queue. The specified year was centuries in his own future, he would certainly never live to see it himself, but all of a sudden the answer seemed as important as if he were asking what would happen when the sun rose the next morning.

“Because by the year 2400 of your reckoning your world will… no longer be welcoming to your kind,” Boss said, almost unwillingly. “That, too, will be in the process of changing, after – and it may be that someday, in between that time and the end of this world when your sun destroys it completely, there may yet be perfect days in store. But from what we know… your people did not return to the world known as Earth once you left it.”

“So are there other kinds of people out there, then?” asked Question 7, and it felt like another question that had not been the one that the woman who had uttered it had originally meant to ask. “I don’t know… like Klingons? Or the Borg…?”

Uneasy laughter rippled through the audience, which had now grown to the point that there was standing room only at the back of the hall.

“You’ve already
got
Klingons,” grumbled someone in the audience, sitting next to a man kitted out as one.

Boss looked as though he was consulting internal data banks for a moment, but then gave his head a small shake to indicate a negative response. “No Klingons. No Borg. There are other kinds of life out there, though. But you know that already.”

“So – wait – you traced your origins to us? To the humans? So how come you say you aren’t sure, then?” That was Question 8, another question that felt like it was raised by the question that came before it rather than the one originally intended.

“I already answered this,” Boss said. “There are those of us who believe that we may have been made in the image of…”

“Made,” said #8, interrupting. “But MADE. So do you know where the first of you was made…?

“Bzzzt,” Xander said.

“Well, it’s a good question,” said Question 9, the next in the queue. “Short of the Big Bang and the origin of all life, if we’re still to believe that evolution from one level to a higher level takes place over time, every particular kind of life comes from something that came before it. If you aren’t claiming some robotic kind of Immaculate Conception, how
do
you reproduce, then? I mean, you don’t have
sex…”

“Not between ourselves, no,” Boss said.

“With something
else?
” a voice from the audience demanded incredulously. “So who did you sleep with last night, then?”

A smothered yelp from somewhere in the back of the room had heads turning even as another ripple of laughter, this time a little nervous in nature, swept the hall. But whoever had uttered that small inarticulate sound had gathered their wits about them and nobody could see anything untoward.

“We have locations where new units of our kinds are researched, and produced,” Boss said, ignoring the commentary from the hall. “We are always improving on our potential and abilities. It is part of our covenant. We consider flaws in our form and purpose, and we work to rectify them and improve future generations that are accepted as prototypes for future generations.”

“So you’re born, after all, kind of,” said Question 10, his voice curious. “But do you die? Or is your kind immortal?”

“We can exist for a very long time,” Boss said, “in your terms. But although ageing components may be repaired or replaced, eventually the essential core of each one of us becomes obsolete. And when that happens, we enter a recycling program where that which we once were is repurposed when new units are modeled and created. Our memories, of course, go into the memory banks – and you may wish to consider that immortality, if you wish. It is, of a kind.”

“So you live until you die,” Question 11 said. “But can you be hurt…?”

“If you are asking if we can
feel
being hurt, the answer to that is no,” Boss said. “We did not see the purpose in creating in ourselves the thing that I understand in your kind as pain receptors. In organic species pain is… necessary. It alerts to mortal danger. But with us this seemed unnecessary. Yes, early models could indeed be ‘hurt’, if you wish to consider this in the context of that concept, because it was possible for them to lose components of themselves – and these would have to be physically replaced by our technicians. The loss of a limb, for example, would have to be dealt with by a grafting of a new limb to replace the one that was damaged or destroyed. But this was not threatening to their existence, it was an inconvenience. More advanced models were self–repairing, but again, only up to a point. We can be damaged, yes, but not hurt, not in the sense that I think you are using that word.”

There was a short, awkward silence while everyone pondered the idea of mangled robots, and then Question 12 stepped forward, looking vaguely belligerent.

“Well,
I
am going to ask the thing I came up here to ask,” he said, “even though it has nothing to do with anything. What I want to know is, how in the name of Jesus’s horny billy goat are you actually flying this damned rock, and how come we all have power and air and food and stuff, but we don’t have the
Internet
?” He raised his voice a little to be heard over the laughter in the hall. “I mean, do you freaking
realize
just how much spam I am going to have in my inbox when I get hold of it again…?”

“You cannae change the laws of physics!” someone called out from the back of the room. “So how come you did?”

“What you call the laws of physics… may not be complete, at the current level of your scientific development,” Boss said. “It would not be entirely possible to explain. And we apologize for the lack of your Internet. We tried to keep all the life support functions at their optimal level, but we neglected, perhaps, to provide for all the things that you required for sustenance and comfort.”

“So – you think you’re superior to us? I mean, beyond the technology. I’m not going to argue that – it’s painfully obvious that we can’t do what you’re doing. Not yet, anyway. But otherwise? If you believed yourselves created in our image, does that mean you think you were an improvement?” That was Question 13, seizing his chance.

“In some ways,” Boss said. “We…
break
…less easily than you do, and have fewer lasting or permanent consequences when we do. We have better protocols of information storage and retrieval. But we also lack things that you may consider to be – if you insist on using that word – superior in their own way. In cognitive methodology, for example. We do not – cannot – make intuitive leaps which may lead us to solutions that could be applicable to a problem we may be attempting to solve. We use logic. And if logic fails us, we have no recourse.” He paused, and then added, “But logic rarely fails us.”

“So you think you’re better than us,” said Question 14 unexpectedly, shuffling forward past #13, who had opened his mouth to argue but didn’t have a chance to speak. “But I’ve seen you guys around the place. Somebody said that you were the latest model, yourself – the most advanced – and the others, I’ve seen them, they do your bidding. You say jump and they ask how high. You treat them like slaves. Like a slave race, they are there to obey. But we have long since decided – we, the human race – that slavery was not such a good thing. We’ve gone beyond slavery, we no longer believe that one human being can own or absolutely control another…”

“Well, most of us,” someone muttered from the audience. “There are always maroons who think…”

“Shut up, I’m talking, and I haven’t asked my question yet!” #14 said sharply.

“Well, is there a question hidden in the soapbox speech somewhere? If so then spit it out!” the heckler growled.