I left a light on in the bathroom, laid down on the bed fully dressed, and watched the room in the half light. Every muscle was stretched tight. Outside the gray light of dawn was already fighting its way through the grime on the windows. I felt as though I was suffocating. I was tired enough to sleep for a week but I knew there would be no sleep until the andy dozed off.
I always had to be the last to fall asleep. I knew no reason for it. That’s the way it had always been. I had to be certain that everyone else was asleep before I could sleep. In screening for the psych tech school they had asked me if I had any sleep disorders. I answered “no.” When I was asleep, I slept. The dozen or so times I would wake during the night were awake disorders. That’s the way I figured it. I also figured if I had any head problems I’d be screened out, and I needed the job.
I closed my eyes and tried to ignore the sounds of the city traffic vibrating the room’s thin walls and windows. The image of the giant chimaera came into my mind and I felt myself frown at the memory.
What was it? It was supposed to be my representation of the most fearful of Alex Shields’s monsters. What could it have been? Shields had gone multiple, and one of those personalities had already been represented by the chimaera. Small, puny, cute chimaera. Where had that giant monster been hiding?
“Having trouble sleeping, Shannon?”
My eyes opened. “What’s it to you?” The room was silent for a moment and then I asked him, “Shields, what’s your big fear?”
There was a pause. When the andy answered his voice was flat, emotionless. “The same as everyone else: staying alive too long.”
“I’m talking about fear, not philosophical hairballs.” I pushed myself up into a sitting position. “What’s that monster in your head, andy? The monster I saw. What is it?”
“You mean that thing with the lion’s head and the dragon’s tail? Isn’t that one of yours?”
“The image is mine. The chimaera is mine, but what it represented is yours. What did it represent? Your big terror, Shields; your big secret. What is it?”
“I don’t know. Aren’t you supposed to tell me?
“Maybe.” I leaned back on my pillow. “Maybe it’ll take another run through your head. Maybe you’re okay enough to sell as is. You seem to be functioning okay, but tomorrow I’ll run you through the test battery to make certain.”
I didn’t hear anything from the andy. The poison of loneliness sickened the moment. The andy was inside the room, but I was one of those who could find loneliness in a packed stadium. The andy’s voice was better than no voice at all. “That little boy, Shields, the one with the almost white hair?”
“I saw him.”
“What does he represent?”
The andy’s head rolled over and he looked at me. “I’m an android. I’ve never been a little boy. I think he might be one of yours.” There was more than a touch of sarcasm in the words.
I ground the answer between my lobes. Mine? My own crap was spilling into the andy’s trash? My memories of being a little boy were fragmented and few. I ran from the idea, but there was nothing else that made sense. The little boy was mine and he wasn’t one of my preselected images. He was something new.
The andy gasped as he rolled to his side, his face to the wall. After a moment he said, “Shannon?”
“What?”
“Is it true what Keegan said about you losing your ticket because of a mental problem?”
“Shut up and go to sleep.”
It wasn’t any of his business. I clasped my fingers behind my head and thought of the little boy with the halo of white hair. Who was he? To some part of me he seemed very familiar. The edge of a strange, frightening feeling came at me and I shook it out of my head. Talk. Any kind of noise to drive out the feelings.
“What’s it like?,” I asked him. “Being a hitter, Shields; what’s it like?”
After a brief moment of strained silence, the andy said, “About the same as being a soldier, except the pay, the food, the weapons, the operations, and the efficiency are better.”
“So, why’d you freak? Killing and dying aren’t big deals to an Akagi combat seventeen.”
“Under certain circumstances they aren’t. Boss Curtain changed the circumstances. Perhaps a piece of me objected.”
An andy objecting? How does an andy object? There are implanted control blocs that are supposed to prevent things like objections, scruples, rebellions. Of course, if they worked all that well, there would be no need for andy psych techs. A bum implant, quality control scanned by a vegetable, little glitches that no one ever really solves, bigger glitches put in there for illegal purposes. Control blocs are like locks on doors: put there to keep honest persons honest, providing they’re stupid and very lucky.
I closed my eyes. The image of the little boy hung in the darkness before me. That halo of white hair, that terribly serious face. I swung my feet to the floor and sat up, my gaze trying to avoid the bottom drawer of the dresser. There was something in there; something I didn’t want to see; something I didn’t want to know. I reached down, pulled open the drawer, and looked inside. There were two ripped winter shirts in there awaiting a mending job I’d probably never get to. Next to them was a broken down cardboard box.
There were photos in the box. In there was a photo of a little boy. It had been sent to me three years ago after my sister’s death. Her suicide. All of the photos she had kept over the years. The day I had received the photos in the mail, I had looked through them. I hadn’t seen them since.
I didn’t get up to look in the box. Some part of me knew that doing so would destroy me. I stretched out on the bed and closed my eyes as I pulled at the neck of my shirt. For some reason I felt like I was choking. I could almost imagine fingers around my throat. I opened my eyes and looked around me. I could feel the fingers around my throat and they were very real, except there was no one there. The feeling eased, but didn’t go away.
As I watched the dark hulk of the dresser squat next to the window, I heard the andy’s breathing coming slow and regular. I was unaware when I finally fell to sleep.
I walked to the base of the steps and looked up into the blackness of that open doorway.
“I am the traveler,” I whispered. “I have control, all of this is symbol, none of this is real.”
The front of the building exploded, deafening me, blinding me, burning my face and hands.
It stood there, four stories tall, roaring fire, acid dripping from its great fangs—
I started awake, choking, a sharp pain in my gut, tears on my cheeks.
I looked around and took a ragged breath. I was alone in the room. The sun was high in the sky, the room filled with light. The andy’s cot was empty and water was running in the bathroom.
My fingers hurt.
I looked down and opened my hands. My fists had been clenched so tightly, my hands, wrists, and arms ached all of the way to my shoulders. My entire body ached.
I wiped my face dry with my palms and stared for an eternity at the bottom drawer of the dresser. I stood up. After a moment of light-headedness passed, I walked over to the dresser and pulled the cardboard box from the bottom drawer. I sat back upon the bed and rummaged through the old photos, searching for the picture of the little boy.