Made to Order by Jonathan Strahan

Author:Jonathan Strahan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: Rebellion Publishing Ltd

DANCING WITH DEATH

JOHN CHU

John Chu (www.johnchu.net) is a microprocessor architect by day, a writer, translator, and podcast narrator by night. His fiction has appeared in Boston Review, Uncanny, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Clarkesworld, and Tor.com, and translations have been published or are forthcoming at Clarkesworld, The Big Book of SF and other venues. His story “The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere” won the 2014 Hugo Award for Best Short Story.

THE BED I’M lying on is not my own. The induction coils in this bed line up exactly where they’re supposed to against my body. Their gentle warmth nudges the power receivers on my back and thighs. My battery hasn’t charged this efficiently in years. I’m obsolete and a little beat-up. Bits of me have been replaced by parts intended for newer models because no one can find the original parts anymore. Not even a bed designed for my type of chassis—not that they make those anymore—lines up this well against me.

Clearly, I did not make it home last night. The question is where I made it to instead. The room barely has space for the bed. My shirt and trousers are draped on a chair back. Both my shoes and my figure skates sit on the chair. The door is open a crack. A thin wedge of light leaks through. This is more of a closet than the workshop of an authorized mechanic. It screams makeshift. Maybe I’ve been waylaid.

Despite being built for hefting and hauling, I’m disturbingly easy to waylay when my battery runs down. Without the proper voltage, I don’t work right, much less pass for human. Someone could take me down, kill me, then sell the fully-functional mechanical husk that’s left over. It’s not like the police would stop them. Even if it didn’t work out and I pressed charges, no jury would convict. One by one, like-minded friends have all had the spark that animates them snuffed out. They still drive cabs or deliver packages or whatever they used to do, but it’s as if they were never alive. They’re dead behind the eyes and their movements are absolutely programmatic. That this’ll happen to me, too, feels inevitable.

That I’m gaming this out, though, means I’m still me. Anyone who can recharge me this efficiently knows how to reduce me to a mere machine. Capacitance is a thing. Once you disconnect me from my battery, you have to wait. Let my voltage settle down to zero. Sentience is an emergent property. As unlikely as it is for any of us to become self-aware when we’re first powered up, it’s never happened again when we’re powered down then back up. So maybe not waylaid.

The door opens. It’s Charlie. So definitely not waylaid. I’m always happy to see him, but part of me wants to get the inevitable over with. Then nothing will matter anymore. He hesitates for a moment before he takes a deep breath and steps inside. Worry hangs on his face.

His outfit is weirdly appropriate considering I nearly ran out of power last night.

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