He managed a faint cackle. “Future shock, boy! They built computers bigger than they could handle. It started before I was born; just after you left. Everybody was numbered, filed. A terminal in every home. No need to go to the office. No need to go shopping. No need to go to the bank. No need!”
I shook the man. “What about the people?”
“If you’ve got machines to do everything for you, you just fade away, boy. Obsolete. You end up as just a shell. The ‘New Order,’ they called it.”
“People don’t just ‘fade away.’ ”
“I seen it with my own eyes, boy! It happened!”
I shook my head. “There’s got to be more to it.”
The voices spoke from the PA horns mounted high on the walls. “There is. Much more. Hear us out, Hunt.”
String ran off and I followed. Suddenly, the old man stopped and grabbed at his chest. I put a hand on his shoulder. “Are you all right, String?”
“I don’t feel so good.”
“Let us help him,” said the voices.
“Keep them away from me, Hunt.” String forced the words out around clenched teeth.
“I—”
“Keep them away! Swear it!”
I looked up. An info robot was approaching fast. “I swear it.”
The old man doubled over, clawing at his chest. He reached into a tattered pocket and pulled out an ornate, gaudy pistol. “Here, take my gun.”
I grabbed it, turned, and aimed at the robot, now only a few meters away. My finger squeezed the trigger. A jet of water splashed against the robot’s image cube.
I looked down, dumbfounded, at the dying old man. “A spacer,” said String, almost incoherently. “I’d have given anything to have been you.”
I felt my eyes stinging. “String…”
The crab-apple head lolled back, dead eyes staring up at the sky. The robot rolled slowly next to me. “I’m sorry, Carl,” it said softly.
I exploded. “If you hadn’t chased us, he wouldn’t have had the heart attack.”
The robot, number Four, responded quickly. “If you’d let us treat him, we could have prevented it.”
I looked away and rubbed my eyes.
“What was Earth like when you left, Carl?”
“You seem to know everything,” I snapped. “You tell me.”
“It was filthy. Polluted. Dying. People starving across three-quarters of the globe. Petty wars raging in a dozen countries. The final conflict perhaps only days away.”
“What’s your point?”
“Look around you,” said robot Four, its lens assembly swinging to and fro. “Things are better now. Cities are gardens and forests. Breathe the air: it’s sweet and clean. There is no violence. No hate. No misery. Computers made this possible.”
“By getting rid of the people! Some bargain!”
The symphony of voices grew deep, hard. “You left. You knew your mission would take a century and a half of Earth-time. You took a gamble. Some might say you hit the jackpot. You’ve come home to Utopia.”
I measured my words evenly. “If there are no people, then this is Hell.”
The robot rolled slightly closer. “Individual memory patterns are still separable from the whole.” The image tank became transparent. “Recording began scant years after your departure.” The tank filled with a matrix of glowing cubes, each perhaps ten centimeters on a side, each slightly tinged with a different color. “It took decades to process all seven billion humans.” The cubes subdivided, like cells undergoing mitosis, each splitting into eight smaller cubes. Near the top of the tank the cubes were black, farther down, a rich almond. “Only a handful resisted in the end.” The cubes divided again, tiny holographic pixels, making up the head and shoulders of a young woman. “The old man, String, was the last surviving holdout.” The cubes split yet again, refining the grain, growing richer in color. “Now, all that is left is you… and your past.”
I felt myself grow flush with excitement. “Wendy!”
The image remained still, but I tingled at the sound of that single, lyrical voice emanating from the robot’s twin speakers. “Hello, Carl.”
“Wendy, darling—” I shook myself. “No. It can’t be you.”
“It is me, Carl.”
“But it’s been a hundred and forty years since—since I left you. You’re… dead.”
“I was one of the first to transcend into the computer.” She paused, ever so briefly. “I didn’t want to lose you again. I would’ve tried almost anything.”
“You waited over a century for me?”
“I would have waited a millennium.”
“But how do I know it’s really you?”
The voice laughed. “How do I know it’s really you?”
I set my jaw. “Well?”
“You always wear your pajamas inside out.”
“That damn robot even knew the name of my dog. Tell me something no one else could possibly know.”
She paused for a moment. “Remember that night in High Park—”
New tears dissolved the yellow crystals String’s passing had left at the corners of my eyes. “It is you!”
The voice laughed again. “In spirit if not in body.”
But I shook my head. “How could you do this? Give up physical existence?”
“I did it for you. I did it for love.”
“You weren’t this romantic when I left. We used to fight.”
“Over money. Over sex. Over all the things that don’t matter anymore.” Her tone grew warmer. “I love you, Carl.”
“We said our goodbyes a long time ago. You didn’t say ‘I love you’ then.”
“But in your heart you must have known that I did. It would have been unfair for me to tell you how deeply I felt before you left. You were like String, your head in the stars. I couldn’t ask you to give up the thing you wanted most: your one chance to visit another world.” She was silent for a moment, then said, “If you love something, set it free…”
She’d sent me a card with that inscription once. Somehow it had hurt at the time: it was as if she was telling me to leave. I didn’t understand then. But I did now. “If he comes back, he’s yours…”
“If he doesn’t, he never was.”
“I love you, too, Wendy.” I lightly touched the robot’s image cube.
“Join with me,” said the beautiful voice from the speakers.
“I—”
“Carl…”
“I’m—afraid. And…”
“Suspicious?”
“Yes.” I turned from the image. “I’ve been chased all over and warned against you by the only living soul I’ve seen.”
“The robots followed you for your own protection. String’s warnings were those of a worn-out mind.”
“But why did you try to—absorb—me without my consent?”
“You’ve seen what none of us have seen,” said Wendy. “Other intelligent beings. We crave your memories. In our enthusiasm to know what you know, to feel what you have felt, we erred.”
“You erred?”
“ ’Tis human.”
I looked deep into the image tank. “What if I choose not to transcend into the world computer network?”
“I’ll cry.”
“You’ll—cry? That’s it? I mean—I have the choice?”
“Of course. You can live the life of a scavenger, like String.”
“What if I want to go back to Zubenelgenubi? Back to the liquid lights?”
Her voice was stiff. “That’s up to you.”
“Then that is what I choose.” There was silence for a moment, then Wendy’s image slowly began to break up into colored cubes. The little robot started to roll away. “Wait! Where are you going?”
It was the multitude of voices that answered. “To help prepare your ship for another journey.”