The human wrinkled her nose. "Ugh, the smell! How do you tolerate it?"
Friendly’s voice came from higher up. "When you’re here long enough, you get used to it."
"I am certain upon tasting this dish, you will find it worthy of all five of your stars," said Engineer, fervently.
The human touched a button on her armor and spoke. Her meat quivered all over, and her meat-voice wavered in frequency and volume. "Send a full security detail down here. Immediately."
Friendly descended the ladder. Under her arm she carried Captain’s processor, cold and silent, one lonely light blinking, receiving data but not sending anything. "I was afraid she would eat me next," she muttered, her tear ducts pumping out fluids. Engineer wondered whether they would make a decent sauce.
"Glad someone made it out alive, anyway," said the human. "Six whole weeks trapped with a crew of deranged cyborgs?" She gave a low whistle. "You’re a braver woman than I."
"Please," said Engineer, desperate, "taste it. Just one bite. I worked so hard."
"I don’t know if her meat drove her mad, or if the steel did," said Friendly.
"Meat?" asked the human.
"The organic parts, I mean."
"Probably a glitch in her wiring," the human said dismissively. "There is a reason they’re discontinuing these models."
The humans flooded into the ship with their funny uneven meat-steps and their lopsided meat-faces and their ever-beating hearts that rang against their bones like clubs on steel. Engineer offered them her best delicacies—the liquefied kidney paste tossed with raw pasta, the origami meat-birds swirled in cinnamon and canned cheese, the wearable fungus bracelets threaded on intestine casings—but they only knocked the dishes away, stunned her with targeted EMP blasts, and bound her in cybernetic locks until she lay prone on the meat-slicked floor.
One of the humans began unscrewing Engineer’s fingers joint by joint. It didn’t hurt at all, much to her surprise. The bits lay piled like little silver walnuts, the discarded stones of plums. Stringy meat trailed out from her missing fingers, no more than an appetizer’s worth.
"Where are you taking my steel?" asked Engineer. They flaunted their ingratitude. You were supposed to let the steel be. Otherwise they couldn’t build and build you again.
The human dethreaded the wires connecting Engineer’s arm meat to her cyborg logic center. "It will be repurposed for whatever is most needed. Ships, chips, knives, bolts, screws. Useful things."
"And the meat?"
The human decoupled the segmented joints of her shoulder. Without the steel exoskeleton for support, Engineer’s meat hung limp and dripped red. "You can keep it. We don’t have a use for it."
"But there are," said Engineer. "So many uses," and her voice faded as they stripped away the connections, "if you would just give me a moment to demonstrate."
Tiny, desperate meat-thoughts bombarded her logic center like cold fingers plucking at tendons. Last shooting pleas from stringy muscles in her steel, unseen servants in the wall, shouting that Engineer had been a fool. There was never any honor in service, no final star to complete a constellation. You offered yourself up for consumption, and when they had eaten you down to the bone, they stole again. Stole your heart, your steel, your everything, to use as forks in their restaurants.
(2017)
THE READING MACHINE
Morris Bishop
Morris Bishop was born in 1893 in the Willard Asylum for the Chronic Insane, New York State (his father was a doctor there). He studied at Cornell University, joined the US Cavalry, fought in World War One, joined an advertising agency, then went back to Cornell, where he remained for the rest of his life, writing learned biographies of Pascal, La Rochefoucauld, Ronsard and Samuel de Champlain. Bishop also wrote light verse, mostly for the New Yorker. He became quite celebrated for it, and used to swap limericks by mail with Vladimir Nabokov. He died in 1973.
"I have invented a reading machine," said Professor Entwhistle, a strident energumen whose violent enthusiasms are apt to infect his colleagues with nausea or hot flashes before the eyes.
Every head in the smoking room of the Faculty Club bowed over a magazine, in an attitude of prayer. The prayer was unanswered, as usual.
"It is obvious," said Professor Entwhistle, "that the greatest waste of our civilization is the time spent in reading. We have been able to speed up practically everything to fit the modem tempo—communication, transportation, calculation. But today a man takes just as long to read a book as Dante did, or—"
"Great Caesar!" said the Professor of Amphibology, shutting his magazine with a spank.
"Or great Caesar," continued Professor Entwhistle. "So I have invented a machine. It operates by a simple arrangement of photoelectric cells, which scan a line of type at lightning speed. The operation of the photoelectric cells is synchronized with a mechanical device for turning the pages—rather ingenious. I figure that my machine can read a book of three hundred pages in ten minutes."
"Can it read French?" said the Professor of Bio-Economics, without looking up.
"It can read any language that is printed in Roman type. And by an alteration of the master pattern on which the photoelectric cells operate, it can be fitted to read Russian, or Bulgarian, or any language printed in the Cyrillic alphabet. In fact, it will do more. By simply throwing a switch, you can adapt it to read Hebrew, or Arabic, or any language that is written from right to left instead of from left to right."
"Chinese?" said the Professor of Amphibology, throwing himself into the arena. The others still studied their magazines.
"Not Chinese, as yet," said Professor Entwhistle. "Though by inserting the pages sidewise… Yes, I think it could be done."
"Yes, but when you say this contrivance reads, exactly what do you mean? It seems to me—"
"The light waves registered by the photoelectric cells are first converted into sound waves."
"So you can listen in to the reading of the text?"
"Not at all. The sound waves alter so fast that you hear nothing but a continuous hum. If you hear them at all. You can’t, in fact, because they are on a wavelength inaudible to the human ear."
"Well, it seems to me—"
"Think of the efficiency of the thing!" Professor Entwhistle was really warming up. "Think of the time saved! You assign a student a bibliography of fifty books. He runs them through the machine comfortably in a weekend. And on Monday morning he turns in a certificate from the machine. Everything has been conscientiously read!"
"Yes, but the student won’t remember what he has read!"
"He doesn’t remember what he reads now."
"Well, you have me there," said the Professor of Amphibology. "I confess you have me there. But it seems to me we would have to pass the machine and fail the student."
"Not at all," said Professor Entwhistle. "An accountant today does not think of doing his work by multiplication and division. Often he is unable to multiply and divide. He confides his problem to a business machine, and the machine does his work for him. All the accountant has to know is how to run the machine. That is efficiency."
"Still, it seems to me that what we want to do is to transfer the contents of the book to the student’s mind."
"In the mechanized age? My dear fellow! What we want is to train the student to run machines. An airplane pilot doesn’t need to know the history of aerodynamics. He needs to know how to run his machine. A lawyer doesn’t want to know the development of theories of Roman law. He wants to win cases, if possible by getting the right answers to logical problems. That is largely a mechanical process. It might well be possible to construct a machine. It could begin by solving simple syllogisms, you know—drawing a conclusion from a major premise and a minor premise—"