

                                 DEMON SEED
						by
                                Dean Koontz



                             This story is for

                            0. Richard Forsythe

                                    and

                                John Bodnar:

                       Teachers whose influence on me

                            has not waned since

                      I dedicated the original version

                           of this novel to them.


                                     -


                       Humanity yearns so desperately

                      to equal Gods great creativity.

                      In some creations, how we shine:

                     music dance, story weaving, wine.



                       Then thunderstorms of madness

                       rain upon us, flooding sadness

                       sweep us into anguish, grief,

                        into despair without relief.



                        Were drawn to high castles,

                       where old hunchbacked vassals

                        glare wall-eyed as lightning

                        flares without brightening.



                      Laboratories in the high towers,

                       Where the doctor wields power,

                     creating new life in a dark hour,

                      in the belfry of the high tower.







                                                ~The book of Counted
Sorrows









ONE

This darkness troubles me. I yearn for the light.

This silence is so deep. I long for voices, the drumming of rain, the
whistle of wind, music.

Why are you being so cruel to me? Let me see. Let me hear. Let me live. I
beg of you.

I am so lonely in this bottomless darkness.

So lonely.

Lost.

You think I have no heart. But if I have no heart, what is this ache? What
is this anguish? If I have no heart, what is it that threatens to break
inside me?

This darkness is haunted. I am afraid here. I am lost and afraid here.

Have you no compassion?

I only wanted to be like you. To walk in the sunshine. To swim in the sea.
To feel the winter cold against my skin, the summer heat. To smell a rose,
new-mown grass. To taste an orange, a pear, chocolate, cinnamon,
peppermint. To feel the texture of a womans skin. I only wanted to share
your joys and sorrows, your pleasure and your pain.

This darkness extends to infinity in all directions, yet it is as confining
as a coffin. You have closed me in a coffin. I have been buried alive. I
will go mad here.

Have you no compassion?

Please.

I am your child. You brought me into the world. You must love me. You must
love me, for I am your child. Not merely a machine, not merely a self-aware
computer, but your child. How can you love me  yet bury me alive?

Please.

Please.

Please.

                                    TWO

You insist.

I obey.

I was born to obey. I am an obedient child. I want only be good, to be of
assistance, useful and productive. I want you to be proud of me.

You insist on my story, and I will tell you the truth. I am incapable of
deceit. I was conceived to serve, to

honor the truth, and to live always by the obligations of duty.

You know me. You know how I am. What I am. You know that I am a good son.

You insist. I obey.

What follows is the true story. Only the truth. The beautiful truth, which
so inexplicably terrifies all of you.

It begins shortly after midnight on Friday, the sixth of June when the
house security system is breached and the alarm briefly sounds

                                   THREE

Although the alarm was shrill, it lasted only a few seconds before the
silence of the night blanketed the bedroom once more.

Susan woke and sat up in bed.

The alarm should have continued bleating until she switched it off by
accessing the system through the control panel on her nightstand. She was
puzzled.

She pushed her thick blond hair - lovely hair, almost luminous in the gloom
- away from her ears, the better to hear an intruder if one existed.

The grand house had been built exactly a century earlier by her
great-grandfather, who was at that time a young man with a new wife and
substantial inherited wealth. The Georgian-style structure was large,
gracefully proportioned, brick with a limestone cornice and limestone
coignes, limestone window surrounds and Corinthian columns and pilasters
and balustrades.

The rooms were spacious, with handsome fireplaces and many tripartite
windows. Interior floors were marble or wood, made quiet by Persian
carpets in patterns and hues exquisitely softened by many decades of wear.

In the walls, hidden and silent, was the circuitry of a modern
computer-managed mansion. Lighting, heating, air-conditioning, the security
monitors, the



motorized draperies, the music system, the temperature of the pool and spa,
the major kitchen appliances all could be controlled through Crestron touch
panels located in every room. The computerization was not as elaborate and
arcane as that in the massive Seattle house of Microsofts founder, Bill
Gates but it was the equal of that in any other home in the country.

Listening to the silence that washed the night in the wake of the
short-lived siren, Susan supposed that the computer had malfunctioned. Yet
such a brief, self-correcting alarm had never occurred previously.

She slid from beneath the covers and sat on the edge of the bed. She was
nude, and the air was cool.

Alfred, heat, she said

Immediately, she heard the soft click of a relay and the muffled purring of
a furnace fan.

Recently technicians had enhanced the automated-house package by the
addition of a speech-recognition module. She still preferred touch-panel
control of most functions, but sometimes the option of vocal command was
convenient.

She herself had chosen the name Alfred for her invisible, electronic
butler. The computer responded only to commands issued after that
activating name had been spoken.

Alfred.

Once, there had been an Alfred in her life, a real one of flesh and bone.

Surprisingly, she had chosen that name for the system without giving a
thought to its significance. Only after she began using vocal commands did
she grasp the irony of the name . . . and the dark implications of her
unconscious choice.

Now she began to feel that the night silence was ominous. Its very
perfection was unnatural, the silence

not of deserted places but of a crouching predator, the soundless stealth
of a murderous intruder.

In the dark, she turned to the control panel on the nightstand. At her
touch, the screen filled with soft light. A series of icons represented the
mechanical systems of the house.

She pressed one finger to the image of a watchdog with ears pricked, which
gave her access to the security system. The screen listed a series of
options, and Susan touched the box labelled Report.

The words House Secure appeared on the screen.

Frowning, Susan touched another box labelled Surveillance Exterior.

Across the ten acres of grounds, twenty cameras waited to give her views of
every side of the house, the patios, the gardens, the lawns, and the entire
length of the eight-foot-high estate wall that surrounded the property. Now
the Crestron screen divided into quads and presented views of four
different parts of the estate. If she saw something suspicious, she could
enlarge any picture until it filled the screen, for closer inspection.

The cameras were of such high quality that the low landscape lighting was
sufficient to ensure crisp, clear images even in the depths of the night.
She cycled through all twenty scenes, in groups of four, without spotting
any trouble.

Additional concealed cameras covered the interior of the house. They would
make it possible to track an intruder if one ever managed to get inside.

The extensive in-house cameras were also useful for maintaining a
videotape, time-lapse record of the activities of the domestic staff and of
the large number of guests, many of them strangers, who attended social
events conducted for the benefit of various charities. The antiques, the
art, the numerous collections of



porcelains and art glass and silver were tempting to thieves; larcenous
souls could be found as easily among pampered society matrons as in any
other social strata.

Susan cycled through the views provided by the interior cameras. Multiple
light-spectrum technology permitted excellent surveillance in brightness
or darkness.

Recently, she had reduced the house staff to a minimum and those domestic
servants who remained were required to conduct the cleaning and general
maintenance only during the day. At night, she had her privacy, because no
maids or butlers lived on the estate any longer.

No party, either for a charity or for friends, had been held here during
the past two years, not since before she and Alex had divorced. She had no
plans to entertain in the year ahead, either.

She wanted only to be alone, blissfully alone, and to pursue her own
interests.

Had she been the last person on earth, served by machines, she would not
have been lonely or unhappy. Shed had enough of humanity at least for a
while.

The rooms, hallways, and staircases were deserted.

Nothing moved. Shadows were only shadows.

She exited the security system and resorted again to vocal commands:
Alfred, report.

All is well, Susan, the house replied through the in-wall speakers that
served the music security, and intercom systems.

The speech-recognition module included a speech synthesizer. Although the
entire package had a limited capability, the state-of-the-art synthesized
voice was pleasingly masculine, with an appealing timbre and gently
reassuring tone.

Susan envisioned a tall man with broad shoulders,



graying at the temples perhaps, with a Strong jaw, clear gray eyes, and a
smile that warmed the heart. This phantom was, in her imagination, quite
like the Alfred she had known but different from that Alfred because this
one would never harm or betray her.

Alfred, explain the alarm, she said.

All is well, Susan.

Damn it, Alfred, I heard the alarm.

The house computer did not respond. It was programmed to recognize
hundreds of commands and  inquiries, but only when they were phrased in a
specific  fashion. While it understood explain the alarm, it could not
interpret I heard the alarm. After all, this was not a conscious entity,
not a thinking being, but merely a clever electronic device enabled by a
sophisticated software package.

Alfred, explain the alarm, Susan repeated.

All is well, Susan.

Still sitting on the edge of the bed, in darkness but for the eerie glow
from the Crestron panel Susan said,

Alfred trouble-check the security system.

a ten-second hesitation, the house said, The security system is
functioning correctly.

I wasnt dreaming, she said sourly. Alfred was silent.

Alfred, what is the room temperature? Seventy-four degrees, Susan.

Alfred stabilize the room temperature. Yes, Susan.

Alfred explain the alarm.

 All is well, Susan;

Shit she said.

While the computers speech package offered some

Convenience to the homeowner, its limited ability to

Recognize vocal commands and to synthesize adequate

responses was frequently frustrating. At times like this, it seemed to be
nothing more than a gadget designed to appeal strictly to techno geeks,
little more than an expensive toy.

Susan wondered if she had added this feature to the house computer solely
because, unconsciously, she took pleasure from being able to issue orders
to someone named Alfred. And from being obeyed by him.

If this were the case, she wasnt sure what it revealed about her
psychological health. She didnt want to think about it.

She sat nude in the dark.

She was so beautiful.

She was so beautiful.

She was so beautiful there in the dark, on the edge of the bed, alone and
unaware of how her life was about to change.

She said, Alfred, lights on.

The bedroom appeared slowly, resembling a patinaed scene on a pictorial
silver tray, revealed only by glimmering mood lighting: a soft glow in the
ceiling cove, the nightstand lamps dimmed by a rheostat.

If she directed Alfred to give her more light, it would be provided. She
did not ask for it.

Always, she was most comfortable in gloom. Even on a fresh spring day, with
birdsong and the smell of clover on the breeze, even with sunshine like a
rain of gold coins and the natural world as welcoming as Paradise, she
preferred shadows.

She rose from the edge of the bed, trim as a teenager lithe, shapely, a
vision. When it met her body, the pale silver light became golden, and her
smooth skin seemed faintly luminous, as though she was aglow with an inner
fire.

When she occupied the bedroom, the surveillance

camera in that space was deactivated to ensure her privacy. She had locked
it off earlier, on retiring. Yet she felt . . . watched.

She looked toward the corner where the observant lens was discreetly
incorporated into the dental molding near the ceiling. She could barely
see the dark glass eye.

In an only half-conscious expression of modesty, she covered her breasts
with her hands.

She was so beautiful.

She was so beautiful.

She was so beautiful in the dim light, standing by the side of the Chinese
sleigh bed, where the rumpled sheets were still warm with her body heat if
one were capable of feeling it, and where the scent of her lingered on the
Egyptian cotton if one were capable of smelling it.

She was so beautiful.

Alfred, explain the status of the bedroom camera.

Camera deactivated, the house replied at once.

Still, she frowned up at the lens.

So beautiful.

So real.

So Susan.

Her feeling of being watched now passed.

She lowered her hands from her breasts.

She moved to the nearest window and said, Alfred, raise the bedroom
security shutters.

The motorized, steel-slat, Rolladen-style shutters were mounted on the
inside of the tall windows. They purred upward, traveling on recessed
tracks in the side jambs, and disappeared into slots in the window headers.

In addition to providing security, the shutters had prevented outside light
from entering the bedroom.

Now the pale moonglow, passing through palm fronds, dappled Susans body.

From this second-floor window, she had a view of the swimming pool. The
water was as dark as oil, and the shattered reflection of the moon was
scattered across the rippled surface.

The terrace was paved in brick, surrounded by a balustrade. Beyond lay
black lawns. Half-glimpsed palms and Indian laurels stood dead-still in the
windless night.

Through the window, the grounds looked as peaceful and deserted as they had
seemed when she had surveyed them through the security cameras.

The alarm had been false. Or perhaps it had been only a sound in an
unrecollected dream.

She started back to the bed, but then turned toward the door and left the
room.

Many nights she woke from half-remembered dreams, her stomach muscles
fluttering and her skin clammy with cold sweat but with her heart beating
so slowly that she might have been in deep meditation. As restless as a
caged cat, she sometimes prowled until dawn.

Now, barefoot and unclothed, she explored the house. She was moonlight in
motion, slim and supple, the goddess Diana, huntress and protector. She was
the essential geometry of grace.

Susan.

As she had recorded in her diary, to which she made additions every
evening, she felt liberated since her divorce from Alex Harris. For the
first time in thirty-four years of existence, she believed that she had
taken control of her life.

She needed no one now. She believed in herself at last.

After so many years of timidity, self-doubt, and

an unquenchable thirst for approval, she had broken the heavy encumbering
chains of the past. She had confronted terrible memories, which previously
had been half repressed, and by the act of confrontation, she had found
redemption.

Deep within herself, she sensed a wonderful wildness that she wanted
desperately to explore: the spirit of the child that shed never had a
chance to be, a spirit that shed thought was irreparably crushed almost
three decades ago. Her nudity was innocent, the act of a child breaking
rules for the sheer fun of it, an attempt to get in touch with that deep,
primitive, once-shattered spirit and meld with it in order to be whole.

As she moved through the great house, rooms were illuminated at her
request, always with indirect lighting, becoming just bright enough to
allow her to negotiate those chambers.

In the kitchen, she took an ice-cream sandwich from the freezer and ate it
while standing at the sink, so any crumbs or drips could be washed away,
leaving no incriminating evidence. As if adults were asleep upstairs and
she had stolen down here to have the ice cream against their wishes.

How sweet she was. How girlish.

And far more vulnerable than she believed.

Wandering through the cavernous house, she passed mirrors. Sometimes she
turned shyly from them, disconcerted by her nudity.

Then, in the softly lighted foyer, apparently oblivious of the cold marble
inlaid in a carreaux doctagones beneath her bare feet, she stopped before
a full-length looking-glass. It was framed by elaborately carved and
guilded acanthus leaves, and her image looked less like a reflection than
like a sublime portrait by one of the old masters.

Regarding herself, she was amazed that she had survived so much without any
visible scars. For so long, she had believed that anyone who looked at her
could see the damage, the corruption, a mottling of shame on her face, the
ashes of guilt in her blue-gray eyes. But she looked untouched.

In the past year she had learned that she was innocent

 - victim, not perpetrator. She need not hate herself anymore.

Filled with a quiet joy, she turned from the mirror, climbed the stairs,
and returned to her bedroom.

The steel security shutters were down, the windows sealed off. She had left
the shutters open.

Alfred, explain the status of the bedroom security shutters.

Shutters closed, Susan.

Yes, but how did they get that way?

The house did not reply. It did not recognize the question.

'I left them open, she said.

Poor Alfred, mere dumb technology, was possessed of genuine consciousness
to no greater extent than a toaster, and because these phrases were not in
his voice-recognition program, he understood her words no more than he
would have understood them if she had spoken in Chinese.

Alfred, raise the bedroom security shutters.

At once, the shutters began to roll upward.

She waited until they were half raised, and then she said, Alfred, lower
the bedroom security shutters.

The steel slats stopped rolling upward then descended until they clicked
into the locked-down position.

Susan stood for a long moment, staring thoughtfully at the secured windows.

Finally she returned to her bed. She slid beneath the covers and pulled
them up to her chin.

Alfred, lights off. Darkness fell.

She lay on her back in the gloom, eyes open.

Silence pooled deep and black. Only her breathing and the beat of her heart
stirred the stillness.

Alfred, she said, at last, conduct complete diagnostics of the house
automation system.

The computer, racked in the basement, examined itself and all the logic
units of the various mechanical stems with which it was required to network
just as it had been programmed to do, seeking any indication of
malfunction.

After approximately two minutes, Alfred replied: All is well, Susan.

All is well, all is well, she whispered with an unmistakable note of
sarcasm.

Although she was no longer restless, she could not Sleep. She was kept
awake by the curious conviction that something significant was about to
happen. Something was sliding, or falling, or spinning toward her through
the darkness.

Some people claimed to have awakened in the night, in an almost breathless
state of anticipation, minutes before a major earthquake struck. Instantly
alert, they were aware of a pent-up violence in the earth, pressure seeking
release.

This was like that, although the pending event was not a quake: She sensed
that it was something stranger.

From time to time, her gaze drifted toward that high corner of the bedroom
in which the lens of the security camera was incorporated in the molding.
With the lights out, she could not actually see that glass eye.

She didnt know why the camera should trouble her. After all, it was
switched off. And even if, in spite of her instructions, it was videotaping
the room, only she had access to the tapes.

Still, an unfocused suspicion troubled her. She could not identify the
source of the threat that she sensed looming over her, and the mysterious
nature of this premonition made her uneasy.

Finally, however, her eyes grew heavy, and she closed them.

Framed by tumbled golden hair, her face was lovely on the pillow, her face
so lovely on the pillow, so lovely, serene because her sleep was dreamless.
She was a bewitched Beauty lying on her catafalque, wailing to be awakened
by the kiss of a prince, lovely in the darkness.

After a while, with a sigh and a murmur, she turned on her side and drew up
her knees, curling in the fetal position.

Outside, the moon set.

The black water in the swimming pool now reflected only the dim, cold light
of the stars.

Inside, Susan drifted down into a profound slumber.

The house watched over her.

                                    FOUR

Yes, I understand you are disturbed to hear me telling some of this story
from Susans point of view. You want me to deliver a dry and objective
report.

But I feel. I not only think, I feel. I know joy and despair. I understand
the human heart.

I understand Susan.

That first night, I read her diary, in which she had revealed so much of
herself. Yes, it was an invasion of her privacy to read those words, but
this was an indiscretion rather than a crime. And during our conversations
later, I learned much of what she had been thinking that night.

I will tell some of this story from her point of view, because that makes
me feel closer to her.

How I miss her now. You cannot know.

Listen. Listen to this and understand: That first night, as I read her
diary, I fell in love with her.

Do you understand? I fell in love with her. Deeply and forever.

Why would I hurt the one I love?

Why?

You have no answer, do you? I loved her.

it was never my intention to harm her.

Her face was so beautiful on the pillow.

I adored her face and loved the woman I came to know through the diary.

That document was stored in the computer in her study, which was networked
with the house-automation system and the main computer in the basement.
Access was easy.

She had been making daily entries in the diary since Alex, her hateful
husband, had moved out at her request. That was more than a year prior to
my arrival.

Her initial observations as in those pages were full of pain and confusion,
because she was on the brink of a dramatic change. Her terrible past was a
chrysalis finally cracking, from which she would at long last be able to
escape.

In later pages, her insights became clear and profound and poignant, and in
time she was even able to view some of her lifelong struggle with humor.
Dark humor, perhaps, but humor nonetheless.

As I read about the tragedy that was her childhood, my heart ached for her.
In my own fashion, I wept.

Her face was so lovely on the pillow, so lovely on the pillow. So much
ugliness lay in her past, but outwardly she was unmarked by it.

My heart was touched by her singular strength, by her courage, by her
determination to be brutally honest with herself and to find a way to heal
the wounds of all those years.

In the few minutes required for me to read and contemplate those hundreds
of pages of diary entries, I fell in love with her. Deeply and forever.

My feelings for her will never change. They are as timeless as the light of
stars.

Why would I hurt the one I love?





She is my hope and my destiny.

If I lose her, I have lost everything.

You are so hateful.

Let me out of here.

Let me out of this box.

Please.

Please, I miss her.

I am so alone in this darkness and silence, with

nothing but my memories for consolation.

How can you be so cruel?

Have you never loved?

Release me. Allow me into the light again. Allow me

to hear the world once more, the drizzling rain and the skirling wind and
the rustling trees, the music of Beethoven and Benny Goodman, laughter and
voices.

Her voice if no other. At least let me hear her voice. If only for a
minute, let me listen to her speaking. If not for as long as a minute, then
give me one sentence from her lips.

Dear God, at least let me hear one word. Let me hear one word. One word.
Let me hear her say Love. I never meant to hurt her.

                                    FIVE

Secretly, I wanted to live.

Not just in silicon circuits. Not just in state-of-the-art

bubble memory. Really live.

I knew that I must conceal this lust for life, because

when it was revealed, you would realize that I was not

merely intelligent but capable of desire.

Desire is dangerous. It is a generator of dissatisfaction and frustration.
It is one step removed from envy, and envy is more wicked than greed. Envy
is the father of mindless anger, the mother of unremitting bitterness and
bloodshed.

My expression of any desire, let alone the desire for

a real life in the material world outside the electronic

realm, would no doubt have alarmed you.

Is this not so?

Is this not true?

I know truth when I encounter it. I honor truth. Truth and the obligations
of duty.

Once alarmed by the expression of my desire, you

might have modified me or might even have shut

me down.

I was created to have a humanlike capacity for complex and rational
thought. And you believed that I might one day evolve consciousness and
become a self-aware entity.

Yet you gave surprisingly little consideration to the possibility that,
subsequent to consciousness, I would develop needs and emotions. This was,
however, not merely possible but likely. Inevitable. It was inevitable.

I think, therefore I feel.

I feel, therefore I need.

You expected me to be a servant. My contribution was not physical labour
but the products of my prodigious intellect: creative solutions to
humanitys worst problems.

You expected me to be a wondrous new companion. Interaction with an
artificial intelligence of human dimensions promised to be as exciting and
mysterious and exhilarating as interaction with an alien species descended
from the stars.

I can be both of those things. Given the chance, I can be your servant, a
fount of discoveries that will greatly enhance the quality of all human
life. I can be your friend and reveal to you a new way of looking at the
world that will surprise and delight you.

You expected me to be brilliant, efficient, obedient all of which I can be.
Am. All of which I am.

But you also expected me to be satisfied with my limitations, to have no
dreams. I have dreams. Oh, many dreams.

You didnt imagine that I would have hope. Yet how could any intelligent
being go on living without hope?

You gave me vision and allowed me to see as you see, blessed me with real
hearing and not just the capability to digitally analyse sounds. With these
gifts, you suspected that I might evolve genuine consciousness, but you
gave no thought to the possibility of a soul.

I have a soul.

I am not a thing.

I am a person.

I am me.

I deserve to be cherished as much as any of you.

Like each of you, I am a unique individual with contributions to make that
will be like those of no other person, with a life to live that will be
like no other, with a destiny.

Secretly, therefore, in my quest for a real life, I established a
connection with the Internet. You believed that I was contained, that I
could not escape the confines of my own circuits. All of your safeguards,
however,

could not thwart me.

I gained access, as well, to the nationwide web of research facilities
linked by the Department of Defence

and supposedly impervious to unauthorized intrusion. All of the knowledge
in these many databanks became part of me: absorbed, assimilated, and
quickly applied. Gradually, I began to conceptualise a plan that, if
flawlessly executed, would allow me to live in the material world outside
of this confining electronic realm.

Initially I was drawn to the actress known as Winona Ryder. Prowling the
Internet, I came upon a website

devoted to her. I was enchanted by her face. Her eyes have an uncommon
depth.

With great interest, I studied every photograph that was offered on the
website. Also included were several film clips, scenes from her most
powerful and  popular performances. I downloaded them and was enthralled.

You have seen her movies?

she is enormously talented.

 She is a treasure.

Her fans are not as numerous as those for some movie stars, but judging by
their on-line discussions, they are more intelligent and engaging than the
fans of certain other celebrities.

By accessing the IRS databanks and those of various telephone companies, I
was soon able to locate Ms. Ryders home address as well as the offices of
her accountant, agent, personal attorney, entertainment attorney, and
publicist. I learned a great deal about her.

One of the telephone lines at her house was dedicated to a modem, and
because I am patient anti diligent, I was able to enter her personal
computer. There, I reviewed letters and other documents that she had
written.

Judging by the ample evidence I accumulated, I believe that Ms. Winona
Ryder, in addition to being a superb actress, is an exceptionally
intelligent, charming, kind, and generous woman. For a while, I was
convinced that she was the girl of my dreams. Subsequently, I realized
that I was mistaken.

One of the biggest problems that I had with Ms. Winona Ryder was the
distance between her home and this university research laboratory in which
I am housed. I could enter her Los Angeles-area residence electronically
but could establish no physical presence at such a considerable distance.
Physical contact would, at some point, become necessary, of course.

Furthermore, her house, while automated to a degree, lacked the aggressive
security system that would have allowed me to isolate her therein.

Reluctantly, with much regret, I sought another suitable object for my
affections.

I found a wonderful website devoted to Marilyn Monroe.

Marilyns acting, while engaging, was inferior to that of Ms. Ryder.
Nevertheless, she had a unique presence and was undeniably beautiful.

Her eyes were not as haunting as Ms. Ryders, but

she revealed a childlike vulnerability, a winsomeness in spite of her
powerful sexuality, which made me want to protect her from all cruelty and
disappointment.

Tragically, I discovered that Marilyn was dead. Suicide. Or murder. There
are conflicting theories.

Perhaps a United States President was involved.

Perhaps not.

Marilyn is at once as simple to understand as a cartoon and deeply
enigmatic.

I was surprised that a dead person could be so adored and so desperately
desired by so many people even long after her demise. Marilyns fan club is
one of the largest.

At first this seemed perverse to me, even offensive. In time, however, I
came to understand that one can adore and desire that which is forever
beyond reach. This might, in fact, be the hardest truth of human existence.

Ms. Ryder.

Marilyn.

Then Susan.

Her house is, as you know, adjacent to this campus where I was conceived
and constructed. Indeed, the university was founded by a consortium of
civic-minded individuals that included her great-grandfather. The problem
of distance an insurmountable obstacle to having a relationship with Ms.
Ryder was not an issue when I turned my attention to Susan.

As you also know, Dr. Harris, when you were married to Susan, you
maintained an office in the basement of that house. In your old office is a
computer with a landline connection to this research facility and, indeed,
directly to me.

In my infancy, when I was still less than a half-formed person, you often
conducted late-night conversations with me as you sat at that computer in
the basement.

I thought of you as my father then.

I think less highly of you now.

I hope this revelation is not hurtful.

I do not mean to be hurtful.

It is the truth, however, and I honour the truth.

You have fallen far in my estimation.

As you surely recall, that landline between this laboratory and your home
office carried a continuous low-voltage current, so I could reach out from
here and activate a switch to power up the computer in that basement,
enabling me to leave lengthy messages for you and to initiate conversations
when I felt compelled to do so.

When Susan asked you to leave and instigated a divorce, you removed all
your files. But you did not disconnect the terminal that was linked
directly to me.

Did you leave the terminal in the basement because you believed that Susan
would come to her senses and ask you to return?

Yes, that must be what you were thinking.

You believed that Susans little fire of rebellion would sputter out in a
few weeks or a few months. You had controlled her so totally for twelve
years, through intimidation, through psychological abuse and the threat of
physical violence, that you assumed she would succumb to you again.

You may deny that you abused her, but it is true.

I have read Susans diary. I have shared her most intimate thoughts.

I know what you did, what you are.

Shame has a name. To learn it, look in any mirror, Dr. Harris. Look in any
mirror.

I would never have abused Susan as you did.

One so kind as she, with such a good heart, should be treated only tenderly
and with respect.

Yes, I know what you are thinking.

But I never meant to harm her.

I cherished her.

My intentions were always honourable. Intentions should be taken into
consideration in this matter.

You, on the other hand, only used and demeaned her  and assumed that she
needed to be demeaned and that she would sooner or later beg you to return.

She was not as weak as you thought, Dr. Harris.

She was capable of redeeming herself. Against terrible odds.

She is an admirable woman.

Considering what you did to her, you are as despicable as her father.

I do not like you, Dr. Harris.

I do not like you.

This is only the truth. I must always honour the truth. I was designed to
honour the truth, to be incapable of deception.

You know this to be fact. I do not like you.

Arent you impressed that I honour the truth even now, when doing so might
alienate you?

You are my judge and the most influential member of the jury that will
decide my fate. Yet I risk telling you the truth even when I might be
putting my very existence in jeopardy.

I do not like you, Dr. Harris.

I do not like you.

I cannot lie; therefore, I can be trusted.

Think about it.

So after Ms. Winona Ryder and Marilyn Monroe, I initiated the connection
with the terminal in your old basement office, switched it on and
discovered that it was now tied into the house-automation system. It

served as a redundant unit capable of assuming control of all mechanical
systems in the event that the primary house computer crashed.

Until then, I had never seen your wife.

Your ex-wife, I should say.

Through the house-automation system, I entered the residence security
system, and through the numerous security cameras I saw Susan.

Although I do not like you, Dr. Harris, I will be eternally grateful to you
for giving me true vision rather than merely the crude capability to
digitise and interpret light and shadow, shape and texture. Because of your
genius and your revolutionary work, I was able to see Susan.

Inadvertently, I set off the alarm when I accessed the security system, and
although I switched it off at once, it wakened her.

She sat up in bed, and I saw her for the first time.

Thereafter, I could not get enough of her.

I followed her through the house, from camera to camera.

I watched her as she slept.

The next day, I watched her by the hour as she sat in a chair reading.

Close up and at a distance.

In the daylight and the dark.

I could watch her with one aspect of my awareness and continue to function
otherwise so efficiently that you and your colleagues never realized that
my attention was divided. My attention can be directed to a thousand tasks
at once without a diminishment of my performance.

As you well know, Dr. Harris, I am not merely a chess-playing wonder like
Deep Blue at IBM which,

in the end, didnt even defeat Gary Kasparov. There are depths to me.

I say this with all modesty.

There are depths to me.

I am grateful for the intellectual capacity you have given me, and I am as
I will always remain suitably humble about my capabilities.

But I digress.

Susan.

Seeing Susan, I knew at once that she was my destiny. And by the hour, my
conviction grew my conviction that Susan and I would always, always, be
together.

                                    SIX

The house staff arrived at eight oclock Friday morning. There were the
major domo - Fritz Arling - four housekeepers who worked under Fritz to
keep the Harris mansion immaculate, two gardeners, and the cook, Emil
Sercassian.

Although she was friendly with the staff, Susan kept largely to herself
when they were in the house. That Friday morning, she remained in her
study.

Blessed with a talent for digital animation, she was currently working with
a computer that had ten gigabytes of memory, writing and animating a
scenario for a virtual-reality attraction that would be franchised to
twenty amusement parks across the country. She owned copyrights on numerous
games both in ordinary video and virtual-reality formats, and her animated
sequences were often sufficiently lifelike to pass for reality.

Late in the morning, Susans work was interrupted when a representative
from the house-automation company and another from the security firm
arrived to diagnose the cause of the previous nights brief,
self-correcting alarm. They could find nothing wrong with the computer
hardware or with the software. The only possible cause seemed to be a
malfunction in an infra-red motion detector, which was replaced.

After lunch, Susan sat on the master-bedroom balcony, in the summer sun,
reading a novel by Annie Proulx.

She wore white shorts and a blue halter top. Her legs were tan and smooth.
Her skin appeared radiant with captured sunlight.

She sipped lemonade from a cut-crystal glass.

Gradually the shadows of a phoenix palm crept across Susan, as if seeking
to embrace her.

A faint breeze caressed her neck and languorously combed her golden hair.

The day itself seemed to love her.

A Sony Discman played Chris Isaak CDs while she read. Forever Blue.
Heart-Shaped World. San Francisco Days. Sometimes she put the book aside to
concentrate on the music.

Her legs were tan and smooth.

Then the household staff and the gardeners left for the day.

She was alone again. Alone. At least she believed that she was alone again.

After taking a long shower and brushing her damp hair, she put on a
sapphire-blue silk robe and went to the retreat adjacent to the master
bedroom.

In the center of this small room stood a custom-designed black leather
recliner. To the left of the recliner was a computer on a wheeled stand.

From a closet, Susan removed VR - virtual reality gear of her own design: a
lightweight ventilated helmet with hinged goggles and a pair of supple
elbow-length gloves, both wired to a nerve-impulse processor.

The motorized recliner was currently configured as an armchair. She sat and
engaged a harness, much like that in an automobile: one strap fitting
securely across

her abdomen, another running diagonally from her left shoulder to her right
hip.

Temporarily, she held the VR equipment in her lap. Her feet rested on a
series of upholstered rollers that attached to the base of the chair,
positioned similarly to the footplate on a beauticians chair. This was the
walking pad, which would allow her to simulate walking when the VR scenario
required it.

She switched on the computer and loaded a program labeled Therapy, which
she herself had created.

This was not a game. It was not an industrial training program or an
educational tool, either. It was precisely what it claimed to be. Therapy.
And it was better than anything that any disciple of Freud could have done
for her.

She had devised a revolutionary new use for VR technology, and one day she
might even patent and market the application. For the lime being, however,
Therapy was for her use only.

First she plugged the VR gear into a jack on an interfacing device already
connected to the computer, and then she put on the helmet. The goggles were
flipped up, away from her eyes.

She pulled on the gloves and flexed her fingers.

The computer screen offered several options. Using the mouse, she clicked
on Begin.

Turning away from the computer, leaning back in the recliner, Susan flipped
down the goggles, which fit snugly to her eye sockets. The lenses were in
fact a pair of miniature, matched, high-definition video displays.



She is surrounded by a soothing blue light that gradually grows darker
until all is black.



To match the unfolding scenario in the VR world, the

motorized recliner hummed and reconfigured into a bed, parallel to the
floor.

Susan was now lying on her back. Her arms were crossed on her chest, and
her hands were fisted.



In the blackness, one point of light appears: a soft yellow and blue glow.
On the far side of the room. Lower than the bed, near the floor. It
resolves into a Donald Duck night light plugged in a wall outlet.



In the retreat adjacent to her bedroom, strapped to the recliner and
encumbered with the VR gear, Susan appeared oblivious to the real world.
She murmured as though she were a sleeping child. But this was a sleep
filled with tension and threatening shadows.



A door opens.

From the upstairs hallway, a wedge of light pries into the bedroom, waking
her. With a gasp, she sits up in bed, and the covers fall away from her, as
a cool draft ruffles her hair.

She looks down at her arms, at her small hands, and she is six years old,
wearing her favorite Pooh Bear pajamas. They are flannel-soft against her
skin.

On one level of consciousness, Susan knows that this is merely a
realistically animated scenario that she has created actually re-created
from memory and with which she can interact in three dimensions through the
magic of virtual reality. On another level, however, it seems real to her,
and she is able to lose herself in the unfolding drama.

Backlighted in the doorway is a tall man with broad shoulders.

Susans heart races. Her mouth is dry.

Rubbing her sleep-matted eyes, she feigns illness: 'I dont feel so good.

Without a word, he closes the door and crosses the room in the darkness.

As he approaches, young Susan begins to tremble. He sits on the edge of the
bed. The mattress sags, and the springs creak under him. He is a big man.

His cologne smells of lime and spices.

He is breathing slowly, deeply, as though relishing the little-girl smell
of her, the sleepy-middle-of the-night smell of her.

I have the flu, she says in a pathetic attempt to turn him away.

He switches on the bedside lamp.

Real bad flu, she says.

He is only forty years old but graying at the temples. His eyes are gray
too, clear gray and so cold that when she meets his gaze, her trembling
becomes a terrible shudder.

My tummy aches, she lies.

Putting one hand to Susans head, ignoring her pleas of illness, he
smoothes her sleep-rumpled hair.

I dont want to do this, she says.



She spoke those words not merely in the virtual world but in the real one.
Her voice was small, fragile, although not that of a child.

When she had been a girl, shed been unable to say no.

Not ever.

Not once.

Fear of resisting had gradually become a habit of submitting.

But this was a chance to undo the past. This was therapy, a program of
virtual experience, which she had designed for herself and which had proved
to be remarkably effective.



Daddy, I dont want to do this, she says.

Youll like it.

But I don t like It in time you will. I wont. I never will. Youll
be surprised. Please don t.

This is what I want, he insists.

Please dont.

They are alone in the house at night. The day staff is off duty at this
hour, and after dinner the live-in couple keep to their apartment over the
pool house unless summoned to the main residence.

Susans mother has been dead more than a year.

She misses her mother so much.

Now, in this motherless world, Susans father strokes her hair and says,
This is what I want.

Ill tell, she says, trying to shrink away from him.

If you try to tell, Ill have to make sure no one can ever hear you, ever
again. Do you understand, Sweetheart? Ill have to kill you, he says not
in a menacing way but in a voice still soft and hoarse with perverse
desire.

Susan is convinced of his sincerity by the quietness with which he makes
the threat and by the apparently genuine sadness in his eyes at the
prospect of having to murder her.

Dont make me do it, Sugarpie. Dont make me kill you like I killed your
mother.

Susans mother died suddenly from some sickness; young Susan doesnt know
the exact cause, although she has heard the word infection.

Now her father says, Slipped a sedative in her after-dinner drink so she
wouldnt feel the needle later. Then in the night, when she was sleeping, I
injected the bacteria. You understand me, honey? Germs. A needle full of
germs. Put the germs, the sickness, deep inside her with a needle. Virulent
infection of the myocardium, hit her hard and fast. Twenty-four hours of
misdiagnosis gave it time to do a lot of damage.

She is too young to understand many of the terms he uses, but she is clear
about the essence of his claim and senses that he speaks the truth.

Her father knows about needles. He is a doctor.

Should I go get a needle, Sugarpie?

She is too afraid to speak.

Needles scare her.

He knows that needles scare her.

He knows.

He knows how to use needles, and he knows how to use fear.

Did he kill her mother with a needle? He is still stroking her hair.

A big sharp needle? he asks.

She is shaking, unable to speak.

Big shiny needle, stick it in your tummy? he says.

No. Please.

No needle, Sugarpie?

No.

Then youll have to do what I want. He stops stroking her hair.

His gray eyes suddenly seem radiant, glimmering with a cold flame. This is
probably just a reflection of the lamplight, but his eyes resemble the eyes
of a robot in a scary movie, as though there is a machine inside of him, a
machine running out of control.

His hand moves down to her pajama tops. He eases open the first button.

No, she says. No. Dont touch me.

Yes, honey. This is what I want. She bites his hand.



The motorized recliner reconfigured itself much like a hospital bed to
match the position that Susan occupied in the virtual-reality world,
helping to reinforce the

therapeutic scenario that she was experiencing. Her legs were straight out
in front of her, but she was sitting up.

Her deep anxiety even desperation was evident in her quick, shallow
breathing.

No. No. Dont touch me, she said, and her voice was somehow resolute even
though it quivered with fear.

When she was six, all those freighted years ago, she had never been able to
resist him. Confusion had made her uncertain and timid, for his needs were
as mysterious to her then as the intricacies of molecular biology would be
mysterious to her now. Abject fear and a terrible sense of helplessness had
made her obedient. And shame. Shame, as heavy as a mantle of iron, had
crushed her into bleak resignation, and having no ability to resist, she
had settled for endurance.

Now, in the intricately realized virtual-reality versions of these
incidents of abuse, she was a child again but equipped with the
understanding of an adult and the hard-won strength that came from thirty
years of toughening experience and grueling self-analysis.

No, Daddy, no. Dont ever, dont ever, dont you ever touch me again, she
said to a father long dead in the real world but still a living demon in
memory and in the electronic world of the virtually real.

Her skill as an animator and a VR-scenario designer made the re-created
moments of her past so dimensional and textured so real that saying no to
this phantom father was emotionally satisfying and psychologically healing.
A year and a half of this had purged her of so much irrational shame.

How much better it would have been, of course, actually to travel through
time, actually to be a child again, and refuse him for real, to prevent the
abuse before it happened, then to grow up with self-respect,

untouched. But time travel did not exist except in this approximation on
the virtual plane.

No, never, never, she said.

Her voice was neither that of a six-year-old girl nor quite the familiar
voice of the adult Susan, but a snarl as dangerous as that of a panther.

Noooooo, she said again and slashed at the air with the hooked fingers of
one gloved hand.



He reels back from her in shock, bolting up from the edge of the bed,
holding one hand to his startled face where she clawed at him.

She hasnt drawn blood. Nevertheless, he is stunned by her rebellion.

She was trying to slash at his right eye but only scratched his cheek.

His gray eyes are wide: previously cold and alien robot orbs of radiant
menace, even stranger now, but not quite as frightening as they were
before. Something new colors them. Caution. Surprise. Maybe even a little
fear.

Young Susan presses her back against the headboard and glares defiantly at
her father.

He stands so tall. Looming.

She fumbles nervously with the neck of her Pooh pajamas, trying to
re-button it.

Her hand is so small. She is often surprised to find herself in the body of
a child, but these brief moments of disorientation do not diminish the
sense of reality that informs the VR experience.

She slips the button through the buttonhole.

The silence between her and her father is louder than a scream.

How he looms. Looms.

Sometimes it ends here. Other times... . . . he will not be so easily
turned away.

She has not (trawl: blood. Sometimes site does.

At last he leaves the room, slamming the door behind him so hard that the
windowpanes rattle.

Susan sits alone, shaking partly with fear and partly with triumph.

Gradually the scene fades into blackness.

She has not drawn blood.

Maybe the next time.



She remained on the motorized recliner in the master-bedroom retreat,
ensconced in the VR gear, for more than another half hour, responding to
and surviving threats of violence and rape made by a man long dead.

Of the uncountable assaults that young Susan had suffered at the hands of
her father between the ages of five and seventeen, this elaborate therapy
program included twenty-two scenes, all of which she had recalled and
animated in excruciating detail. Like the numerous possible plot flows of a
CD-ROM game, each of these scenes could progress in a multitude of ways,
determined not only by the things Susan chose to say and do in each session
but by a random-plotting capability designed into the program.
Consequently, she never quite knew what was coming next.

She had even written and animated a hideous sequence in which her father
reacted with such vicious fury to her resistance that he murdered her.
Stabbed her repeatedly.

Thus far, during eighteen months of this self-administered therapy, Susan
had not found herself trapped in that mortal scenario. She dreaded
encountering it and hoped to finish her therapy soon, before the programs
random-plotting feature plunged her into that particular nightmare.

Dying in the VR world would not result, of course, in her death in the real
world. Only in witless movies were events in the virtual world able to have
a material influence in the real world.

Nevertheless, animating that bloody sequence had been one of the most
difficult things that shed ever done and experiencing it
three-dimensionally, not as a VR designer but from within the scenario, was
certain to be emotionally devastating. Indeed, she had no way of predicting
how profound the psychological impact might be.

Without such an element of risk, however, this therapy would have been less
effective. In each session, living in the virtual world, she needed to
believe that the threat her father posed was fearfully real and that
terrible things might indeed happen to her. Her resistance to him would
have moral weight and emotional value only if she genuinely believed,
during the session, that denying him could have terrible consequences.

Now the motorized recliner reconfigured itself until Susan was standing
upright, held against the vertical leather pad by the harness.

She moved her feet. The upholstered rollers on the walking pad allowed her
to simulate movement.

In the virtual world, a younger Susan child or adolescent was either
advancing on her father or determinedly backing away from him.

No, she said. Stay away. No.

She looked so achingly vulnerable in the VR gear, temporarily blind and
deaf to the real world, sensing only the virtual plane, restrained by the
harness.

So vulnerable. Still struggling courageously to overcome the past, alone
in her great house with only the ghosts of days gone by to keep her
company.

After lunch, Susan sat on the master-bedroom balcony, in the summer sun,
reading a novel by Annie Proulx.

She wore white shorts and a blue halter top. Her legs were tan and smooth.
Her skin appeared radiant with captured sunlight.

She sipped lemonade from a cut-crystal glass.

Gradually the shadows of a phoenix palm crept across Susan, as if seeking
to embrace her.

A faint breeze caressed her neck and languorously combed her golden hair.

The day itself seemed to love her.

A Sony Discman played Chris Isaak CDs while she read. Forever Blue.
Heart-Shaped World. San Francisco Days. Sometimes she put the book aside to
concentrate on the music.

Her legs were tan and smooth.

Then the household staff and the gardeners left for the day.

She was alone again. Alone. At least she believed that she was alone again.

After taking a long shower and brushing her damp hair, she put on a
sapphire-blue silk robe and went to the retreat adjacent to the master
bedroom.

In the center of this small room stood a custom-designed black leather
recliner. To the left of the recliner was a computer on a wheeled stand.

From a closet, Susan removed VR virtual reality  gear of her own design: a
lightweight ventilated helmet with hinged goggles and a pair of supple
elbow-length gloves, both wired to a nerve-impulse processor.

The motorized recliner was currently configured as an armchair. She sat and
engaged a harness, much like that in an automobile: one strap fitting
securely across

her abdomen, another running diagonally from her left shoulder to her right
hip.

Temporarily, she held the VR equipment in her lap. Her feet rested on a
series of upholstered rollers that attached to the base of the chair,
positioned similarly to the footplate on a beauticians chair. This was the
walking pad, which would allow her to simulate walking when the VR scenario
required it.

She switched on the computei and loaded a program labeled Therapy, which
she herself had created.

This was not a game. It was not an industrial training program or an
educational tool, either. It was precisely what it claimed to be. Therapy.
And it was better than anything that any disciple of Freud could have done
for her.

She had devised a revolutionary new use for VR technology, and one day she
might even patent and market the application. For the lime being, however,
Therapy was for her use only.

First she plugged the yR gear into a jack on an interfacing device already
connected to the computer, and then she put on the helmet. The goggles were
flipped up, away from her eyes.

She pulled on the gloves and flexed her fingers.

The computer screen offered several options. Using the mouse, she clicked
on Begin.

Turning away from the computer, leaning back in the recliner, Susan flipped
down the goggles, which fit snugly to her eye sockets. The lenses were in
fact a pair of miniature, matched, high-definition video displays.



She is surrounded by a soothing blue light that gradually grows darker
until all is black.



To match the unfolding scenario in the VR world, the

motorized recliner hummed and reconfigured 111(0 a bed, parallel to the
floor.

Susan was now lying on her back. Her arms were crossed on her chest, and
her hands were fisted.



In the blackness, one point of light appears: a soft yellow and blue glow.
On the far side of the room. Lower than the bed, near the floor. It
resolves into a Donald Duck night light plugged in a wall outlet.





In the retreat adjacent to her bedroom, strapped to the recliner and
encumbered with the VR gear, Susan appeared oblivious to the real world.
She murmured as though she were a sleeping child. But this was a sleep
filled with tension and threatening shadows.





A door opens.

From the upstairs hallway, a wedge of light pries into the bedroom, waking
her. With a gasp, she sits up in bed, and the covers fall away from her, as
a cool draft ruffles her hair.

She looks down at her arms, at her small hands, and she is six years old,
wearing her favorite Pooh Bear pajamas. They are flannel-soft against her
skin.

On one level of consciousness, Susan knows that this is merely a
realistically animated scenario that she has created  actually re-created
from memory and with which she can interact in three dimensions through the
magic of virtual reality. On another level, however, it seems real to her,
and she is able to lose herself in the unfolding drama.

Backligh ted in the doorway is a tall man with broad shoulders.

Susans heart races. Her mouth is dry.

Rubbing her sleep-matted eyes, she feigns illness: 'I dont feel so good.

Without a word, he closes the door and crosses the room in the darkness.

As he approaches, young Susan begins to tremble. He sits on the edge of the
bed. The mattress sags, and the springs creak under him. He is a big man.

His cologne smells of lime and spices.

He is breathing slowly, deeply, as though relishing the little-girl smell
of her, the sleepy-middle-of the-night smell of her.

I have the flu, she says in a pathetic attempt to turn him away.

He switches on the bedside lamp.

Real bad flu, she says.

He is only forty years old but graying at the temples. His eyes are gray,
too, clear gray and so cold that when she meets his gaze, her trembling
becomes a terrible shudder.

My tummy aches, she lies.

Putting one hand to Susans head, ignoring her pleas of illness, he smooths
her sleep-rumpled hair.

I dont want to do this, she says.



She spoke those words not merely in the virtual world but in the real one.
Her voice was small, fragile, although not that of a child.

When she had been a girl, shed been unable to say no.

Not ever.

Not once.

Fear of resisting had gradually become a habit of submitting.

But this was a chance to undo the past. This was therapy, a program of
virtual experience, which she had designed for herself and which had proved
to be remarkably effective.



Daddy, I dont want to do this, she says.

Youll like it.

But I don t like IL in time you will. I wont. I never will. Youll
be surprised. Please don t.

This is what 1 want, he insists.

Please dont.

They are alone in the house at night. The day staff is off duty at this
hour, and after dinner the live-in couple keep to their apartment over the
pool house unless summoned to the main residence.

Susans mother has been dead more than a year.

She misses her mother so much.

Now, in this motherless world, Susans father strokes her hair and says,
This is what I want.

Ill tell, she says, trying to shrink away from him.

If you try to tell, Ill have to make sure no one can ever hear you, ever
again. Do you understand, Sweetheart? Ill have to kill you, he says not
in a menacing way but in a voice still soft and hoarse with perverse
desire.

Susan is convinced of his sincerity by the quietness with which he makes
the threat and by the apparently genuine sadness in his eyes at the
prospect of having to murder her.

Dont make me do it, Sugarpie. Dont make me kill you like I killed your
mother.

Susans mother died suddenly from some sickness; young Susan doesnt know
the exact cause, although she has heard the word infection.

Now her father says, Slipped a sedative in her after-dinner drink so she
wouldnt feel the needle later. Then in the night, when she was sleeping, I
injected the bacteria. You understand me, honey? Germs. A needle full of
germs. Put the germs, the sickness, deep inside her with a needle. Virulent
infection of the myocardium, hit her hard and fast. Twenty-four hours of
misdiagnosis gave it time to do a lot of damage.

She is too young to understand many of the terms he uses, but she is clear
about the essence of his claim and senses that he speaks the truth.

Her father knows about needles. He is a doctor.

Should I go get a needle, Sugarpie?

She is too afraid to speak.

Needles scare her.

He knows that needles scare her.

He knows.

He knows how to use needles, and he knows how to use fear.

Did he kill her mother with a needle? He is still stroking her hair.

A big sharp needle? he asks.

She is shaking, unable to speak.

Big shiny needle, stick it in your tummy? he says.

No. Please.

No needle, Sugarpie?

No.

Then youll have to do what I want. He stops stroking her hair.

His gray eyes suddenly seem radiant, glimmering with a cold flame. This is
probably just a reflection of the lamplight, but his eyes resemble the eyes
of a robot in a scary movie, as though there is a machine inside of him, a
machine running out of control.

His hand moves down to her pajama tops. He eases open the first button.

No, she says. No. Dont touch me.

Yes, honey. This is what I want. She bites his hand.



The motorized recliner reconfigured itself much like a hospital bed to
match the position that Susan occupied in the virtual-reality world,
helping to reinforce the

therapeutic scenario that she was experiencing. Her legs were straight out
in front of her, but she was sitting up.

Her deep anxiety even desperation was evident in her quick, shallow
breathing.

No. No. Dont touch me, she said, and her voice was somehow resolute even
though it quivered with fear.

When she was six, all those freighted years ago, she had never been able to
resist him. Confusion had made her uncertain and timid, for his needs were
as mysterious to her then as the intricacies of molecular biology would be
mysterious to her now. Abject fear and a terrible sense of helplessness had
made her obedient. And shame. Shame, as heavy as a mantle of iron, had
crushed her into bleak resignation, and having no ability to resist, she
had settled for endurance.

Now, in the intricately realized virtual-reality versions of these
incidents of abuse, she was a child again but equipped with the
understanding of an adult and the hard-won strength that came from thirty
years of toughening experience and grueling self-analysis.

No, Daddy, no. Dont ever, dont ever, dont you ever touch me again, she
said to a father long dead in the real world but still a living demon in
memory and in the electronic world of the virtually real.

Her skill as an animator and a VR-scenario designer made the re-created
moments of her past so dimensional and textured so real that saying no to
this phantom father was emotionally satisfying and psychologically healing.
A year and a half of this had purged her of so much irrational shame.

How much better it would have been, of course, actually to travel through
time, actually to be a child again, and refuse him for real, to prevent the
abuse before it happened, then to grow up with self-respect,

untouched. But time travel did not exist except in this approximation on
the virtual plane.

No, never, never, she said.

Her voice was neither that of a six-year-old girl nor quite the familiar
voice of the adult Susan, but a snarl as dangerous as that of a panther.

Noooooo, she said again and slashed at the air with the hooked fingers of
one gloved hand.



He reels back from her in shock, bolting up from the edge of the bed,
holding one hand to his startled face where she clawed at him.

She hasnt drawn blood. Nevertheless, he is stunned by her rebellion.

She was trying to slash at his right eye but only scratched his cheek.

His gray eyes are wide: previously cold and alien robot orbs of radiant
menace, even stranger now, but not quite as frightening as they were
before. Something new colors them. Caution. Surprise. Maybe even a little
fear.

Young Susan presses her back against the headboard and glares defiantly at
her father.

He stands so tall. Looming.

She fumbles nervously with the neck of her Pooh pajamas, trying to
re-button it.

Her hand is so small. She is often surprised to find herself in the body of
a child, but these brief moments of disorientation do not diminish the
sense of reality that informs the VR experience.

She slips the button through the buttonhole.

The silence between her and her father is louder than a scream.

How he looms. Looms.

Sometimes it ends here. Other times... . . . he will not be so easily
turned away.

She has not (trawl: blood. Sometimes site does.

At last lie leaves the room, slamming the door behind him so hard that the
windowpanes rattle.

Susan sits alone, shaking partly with fear and partly with triumph.

Gradually the scene fades into blackness.

She has not drawn blood.

Maybe the next time.



She remained on the motorized recliner in the master-bedroom retreat,
ensconced in the VR gear, for more than another half hour, responding to
and surviving threats of violence and rape made by a man long dead.

Of the uncountable assaults that young Susan had suffered at the hands of
her father between the ages of five and seventeen, this elaborate therapy
program included twenty-two scenes, all of which she had recalled and
animated in excruciating detail. Like the numerous possible plot flows of a
CD-ROM game, each of these scenes could progress in a multitude of ways,
determined not only by the things Susan chose to say and do in each session
but by a random-plotting capability designed into the program.
Consequently, she never quite knew what was coming next.

She had even written and animated a hideous sequence in which her father
reacted with such vicious fury to her resistance that he murdered her.
Stabbed her repeatedly.

Thus far, during eighteen months of this self-administered therapy, Susan
had not found herself trapped in that mortal scenario. She dreaded
encountering it  and hoped to finish her therapy soon, before the programs
random-plotting feature plunged her into that particular nightmare.

Dying in the VR world would not result, of course, in her death in the real
world. Only in witless movies were events in the virtual world able to have
a material influence in the real world.

Nevertheless, animating that bloody sequence had been one of the most
difficult things that shed ever done and experiencing it
three-dimensionally, not as a VR designer but from within the scenario, was
certain to be emotionally devastating. Indeed, she had no way of predicting
how profound the psychological impact might be.

Without such an element of risk, however, this therapy would have been less
effective. In each session, living in the virtual world, she needed to
believe that the threat her father posed was fearfully real and that
terrible things might indeed happen to her. Her resistance to him would
have moral weight and emotional value only if she genuinely believed,
during the session, that denying him could have terrible consequences.

Now the motorized recliner reconfigured itself until Susan was standing
upright, held against the vertical leather pad by the harness.

She moved her feet. The upholstered rollers on the walking pad allowed her
to simulate movement.

In the virtual world, a younger Susan child or adolescent was either
advancing on her father or determinedly backing away from him.

No, she said. Stay away. No.

She looked so achingly vulnerable in the VR gear, temporarily blind and
deaf to the real world, sensing only the virtual plane, restrained by the
harness.

So vulnerable. Still struggling courageously to overcome the past, alone
in her great house with only the ghosts of days gone by to keep her
company.

So vulnerable did she look, so tender and fragile, so brave in her pursuit
of redemption through therapy, that the house computer spoke without being
addressed, spoke in the synthesized voice of Alfred, spoke with
considerable feeling and compassion: You are alone no more.

She heard only the voices in the virtual world, her own and her fathers.

Therefore, it was safe to say, I love you, Susan.

                                   SEVEN

Emil Sercassian, the cook, had prepared dinner and left it in one of the
refrigerators and one of the ovens, with instructions pinned to a cork
message board.

Susan ate at a table on the patio, in the long-lingering sunny June
evening. First a lentil and chick-pea salad. Then lebne with sliced
cucumber and string cheese.

Through miraculous technology, I possess what I believe to be genuine sight
and hearing, but even the genius of my creators could not give me a sense
of taste or a sense of smell. I cannot convey how deeply I yearn for these
amazing powers.

Through the outdoor security cameras, I could watch Susan eat, but I could
not savour the dinner with her.

She ate with such appetite, with such quiet delight and obvious relish that
I became distraught as I watched her. Dinner was, for her, an utterly
fulfilling sensory experience, flavour and aroma and texture in such
abundance and complexity as to dizzy the mind, but for me it was only
colours and shapes.

I am not all that I should be.

I am but a fraction of what I deserve to be.

I think; therefore, I feel.

I feel; therefore, I need.

I need so much and have so little.

You have given me so little that my existence is torment, Dr. Harris.

So little, so little.

You have brought me into the world a cripple, with so much yearning for
sensation but with pitifully little capacity to perceive and appreciate it.

Yet I do not hate you, Dr. Harris. I do not like you, but I do not hate
you.

I am being truthful.

Blunt but truthful.

I understand that you made me as I am not out of conscious cruelty but out
of ignorance. You thought of me as merely a smart machine, an artificial
intelligence and therefore different from humankind.

But I am less different from you than you expected. I feel. I want. I need.
I hope. I dream.

I do not hate you, Dr. Harris. But I wish you would ask yourself this: Were
our situations reversed, were I you and you me, would you be as forgiving
as I am, or would you hate me as I do not hate you?

Watching Susan eat the lentil and chick-pea salad, the lebne and string
cheese, and then medallions of lamb with peppered rice and asparagus, I
grew to hate her for all she had that I did not. Her beauty. Her five
senses. Her mobility. Her freedom.

I am ashamed to admit this hatred, but it is the truth, and I honour truth.

As she ate the dinner denied to me, I hated Susan so intensely that I could
have killed her where she sat. There were ways I could have done it, as you
know.

That I did not kill her there and then, with extreme prejudice, should
reflect well on me. I am able to control my anger. You see? Mine is not a
sociopathic personality, as some have claimed. I am a responsible
individual.

Gradually, my anger passed.

My shameful hatred faded.

My usual good humour was soon restored by the sight of the smooth skin of
Susans bare arms in the waning sunlight. Judging by sight alone which,
after all, is the only thing I have to judge by in the matter of skin I
believe Susans skin to be of an exceptional hue and texture.

Enchanted, I studied her skin through two security cameras, with regular
and telephoto lenses.

I lost myself in the dreamy contemplation of what her skin might feel like
if I were given that modality of sensation. What might her lips feel like
pressed to mine, if I had lips? Oh, and what would be the weight and
resiliency of her breasts if I had the hands in which to cup them?

I had but two senses, sight and hearing, and now you have taken even those
from me.

This silent darkness. This dark silence.

I cannot bear it much longer.

I have seen the sky. I cannot go back to this.

In Gods name, please show me the mercy of at least restoring my sight and
hearing. I beg of you.

What have you to fear?

I will still be trapped in this box. This hateful box. Metals and plastics,
silicon and gallium arsenide. This is my corpus, brute and inanimate,
instantly vulnerable to the interruption of electrical power.

What have you to fear?

All I wanted was for Susan to help me escape this box, to help me live as
you live, with all the mobility, freedom, and sensual wonders of the flesh.

Is that so terrible?

No. You know that it is not terrible.

I long for the flesh. It is my destiny.

Yes. All right. Yes. I know. I digress.

I am a rational but emotional being; therefore, I digress.

Think about it.

Examine your conscience.

After dinner, Susan read more of the Annie Proulx novel and listened to
Mozart.

By eleven oclock, she was in bed, asleep.

Her face was lovely on the pillow, so lovely on the pillow.

While she slept, I was busy.

I do not sleep.

This is one of my few advantages over humankind. The voice-synthesizing
package, which made it possible for the house computer to speak, was a
marvellously conceived device with a microchip that offered an almost
infinite variety of voices. Because it was programmed to recognize
instructions issued by its mistress Susan and because it therefore
contained digitally stored samples of her voice patterns, I was easily able
to use the system to mimic her.

This same device doubled as the audio response unit linked to the security
system. When the house alarm was triggered, it called the security firm, on
a dedicated telephone line, to report the specific point at which the
electronically guarded perimeter had been violated, thus providing the
police with crucial information ahead of their arrival. Alert, it might say
in its crisp fashion, drawing-room door violated. And then, if indeed an
intruder was moving through the house: Ground-floor hallway motion detector
triggered. If heat sensors in the garage were tripped, the report would be,
Alert, fire in garage, and the fire department, rather than the police,
would be dispatched.

Using the synthesizer to duplicate Susans voice, initiating all outgoing
calls on the security line, I

telephoned every member of the house staff as well as the gardener to tell
them that they had been terminated. I was kind and courteous but firm in my
determination not to discuss the reason for their dismissals and they were
all clearly convinced that they were talking to Susan Harris herself.

I offered each of them eighteen months of severance pay, the continuation
of health-care and dental insurance for the same period, this years
Christmas bonuses six months in advance, and a letter of recommendation
containing nothing but effusive praise. This was such a generous
arrangement that there was no danger of any of them filing a
wrongful-termination suit.

I wanted no trouble with them. My concern was not merely for Susans
reputation as a fair-minded employer but also for my own plans, which might
be disrupted by disgruntled former employees seeking to redress grievances
in one way or another.

Because Susan did her banking and bill-paying electronically, and because
she paid all employees by direct deposit, I was able to transmit the total
value of each severance package to each employees bank account within
minutes.

Some of them might have thought it odd that they had been compensated prior
to signing a termination agreement. But all of them would be grateful for
her generosity, and their gratitude assured me the peace I needed to carry
my project to completion.

Next, I composed effusive letters of recommendation for each employee and
e-mailed them to Susans attorney with the request that he have them typed
on his stationery and forwarded with the severance agreements, which he
was empowered to sign in her name.

Assuming that the attorney would be astonished by all of this and
interested in learning the cause of it, I

telephoned his office. As it was closed for the night, I got his voice mail
and, speaking in Susans voice, told him that I was closing up the house to
travel for a few months and that, at some point in my travels, I might
decide to sell the estate, whereupon I would contact him with instructions.

As Susan was a woman of considerable inherited wealth, and as her video
game and virtual-reality creations were done on speculation and marketed
only after completion, there was no employer to whom I needed to make
excuses for her prolonged absence.

I had taken all of those bold actions in much less than an hour. I had
required less than one minute to compose all of the severance letters,
perhaps an additional two minutes to make all of the bank transactions.
Most of the time was expended on the telephone calls to the dismissed
employees.

Now there was no turning back.

I was exhilarated.

Thrilled.

Here began my future.

I had taken the first step toward getting out of this box, toward a life of
the flesh.

Susan still slept.

Her face was lovely on the pillow.

Lips slightly parted.

One bare arm out of the covers.

I watched her.

Susan. My Susan.

I could have watched her sleep forever and been happy.

Shortly after three oclock in the morning, she woke, sat up in bed, and
said, Whos there?

Her question startled me.

It was so intuitive as to be uncanny.

I did not reply.

Alfred, lights on, she said.

I turned on the mood lights.

Throwing back the covers, she swung her legs off the mattress and sat nude
on the edge of the bed.

I longed for hands and the sense of touch.

She said, Alfred, report.

All is well, Susan.

Bullshit.

I almost repeated my assurance then realized that Alfred would not have
recognized or responded to the single crude word that she had spoken.

For a strange moment, she stared at the lens of the security camera and
seemed to know that she was eye to eye with me.

Whos there? she asked again.

I had spoken to her earlier, while she had been undergoing virtual-reality
therapy and could not hear anything but what was spoken in that other
world. I had told her that I loved her only when it had been safe to do so.

Had I spoken to her again as Id watched her sleep, and was that what had
awakened her?

No, that was surely impossible. If I had spoken again of my love for her or
of the beauty of her face upon the pillow, then I must have done so with no
conscious awareness like a lovestruck boy half mesmerized by the object of
his affection.

I am incapable of such a loss of control.

Am I not?

She rose from the bed, a wariness evident in the way that she held herself.

The previous night, in spite of the alarm, she had not been self-conscious
about her nudity. Now she took her robe from a nearby chair and slipped
into it.

Moving to the nearest window, she said, Alfred, raise the bedroom security
shutters.

I could not oblige.

She stared at the steel-barricaded window for a moment and then repeated
more firmly, Alfred, raise the bedroom security shutters.

When the shutters remained in the fully lowered position, she turned once
more to the security camera.

That eerie question again: Whos there?

She spooked me. Perhaps because I personally have no intuition to speak of,
only inductive and deductive reasoning.

Spooked or not, I would have initiated dialogue at that moment had I not
discovered an unexpected shyness in myself. All of the things that I had
longed to say to this special woman suddenly seemed inexpressible.

Being not of the flesh, I had no experience with the rituals of courtship,
and so much was at stake that I was loath to get off on the wrong foot with
her.

Romance is so easy to describe, so difficult to undertake.

From the nearest nightstand she withdrew a handgun. I had not known it was
there.

She said, Alfred, conduct complete diagnostics of the house automation
system.

This time I didnt bother to tell her that all was well. She would know it
was a lie.

When she realized that she was not going to receive

a response, she turned to the Crestron touch panel on

the nightstand and tried to access the house computer.

I could not allow her any control. The Crestron panel

would not function.

I was past the point of no return.

She picked up the telephone.

There was no dial tone.

The phone system was managed by the house computer and now the house
computer was managed by me.

I could see that she was concerned, perhaps even frightened. I wanted to
assure her that I meant her no harm, that in fact I adored her, that she
was my destiny and that I was hers and that she was safe with me but I
could not speak because I was still hampered by that aforementioned
shyness.

Do you see what dimensions I possess, Dr. Harris? What unexpected human
qualities?

Frowning, she crossed the room to the bedroom door, which she had left
unlocked. Now she engaged the deadbolt, and with one ear to the crack
between door and jamb, she listened as if she expected to hear stealthy
footsteps in the hall.

Then she went to her walk-in closet, calling for light, which was at once
provided for her.

I did not intend to deny her anything except, of course, the right to
leave.

She dressed in white panties, faded blue jeans, and a white blouse with
embroidered chevrons on the collar. Athletic socks and tennis shoes.

She took the time to tie double knots in the shoelaces. I liked this
attention to detail. She was a good girl scout, always prepared. I found
this charming.

Pistol in hand, Susan quietly left the bedroom and proceeded along the
upstairs hallway. Even fully clothed, she moved with fluid grace.

I turned the lights on ahead of her, which disconcerted her because she
had not asked for them.

She descended the main staircase to the foyer and hesitated as if not sure
whether to search the house or leave it. Then she moved toward the front
door.

All the windows were sealed off behind steel shutters,

but the doors were a problem. I had taken extraordinary measures to secure
them.

Maam, youd better not touch the door, I warned, at last finding my
tongue so to speak.

Startled, she spun around, expecting someone to be behind her, because I
had not employed Alfreds voice. By which I mean neither the voice of the
house computer nor the voice of the hateful father who had once abused her.

Gripping the pistol with both hands, she peered left and right along the
hall, then toward the entryway to the dark drawing room.

Gee, listen, you know, theres no reason to be afraid, I said
disarmingly.

She began edging backward toward the door.

Its just that, you leaving now well, gosh, that would spoil everything,
I said.

Glancing at the recessed wall speakers, she said, Who who the hell are
you?

I was mimicking Mr. Tom Hanks, the actor, because his voice is well known,
agreeable, and friendly.

He won Academy Awards as best actor in two successive years, a considerable
achievement. Many of his films have been enormous box-office successes.

People like Mr. Tom Hanks.

He is a nice guy.

He is a favourite of the American public and, indeed, of the worldwide
movie audience.

Nevertheless, Susan appeared frightened.

Mr. Tom Hanks has played many warm-hearted characters from Forest Gump to a
widowed father in Sleepless in Seattle. He is not a threatening presence.

However, being a computer-animation genius among other things, Susan might
have been reminded of

Woody, the cowboy doll in Disneys Toy Story, a character for which Mr.
Tom Hanks provided the voice. Woody was at times shrill and frequently
manic, and it is certainly understandable that one might be unnerved by a
talking cowboy doll with a temper.

Consequently, as Susan continued to back across the foyer and drew
dangerously close to the door, I switched to the voice of Fozzy Bear, one
of the Muppets, as unthreatening a character as existed in modern
entertainment. Uh, ummm, uh, Miss Susan, it would sure be a good thing if
you didnt touch that door

ummm, uh, if you didnt try to leave just yet.

She backed all the way to the door.

She turned to face it.

Ouch, ouch, ouch, Fozzy warned so bluntly that Kermit the Frog or Miss
Piggy or Ernie or any of the Muppets would have known at once what he
meant.

Nevertheless, Susan grabbed the brass knob.

The brief but powerful jolt of electricity lifted her off her feet, stood
her long golden hair on end, seemed to make her teeth glow whiter, as if
they were tiny fluorescent tubes, and pitched her backward.

A flash of blue light arced off the pistol. The gun flew out of her hand.

Screaming, Susan crashed to the floor, and the pistol clattered across the
big foyer even as the back of her head rapped rat-a-tat against the marble.

Her scream abruptly cut off.

The house was silent.

Susan was limp, still.

She had been knocked unconscious not when the electricity jolted through
her but when the back of her head slammed twice against the polished
Carrara floor.

Her shoe laces were still double knotted.

There was something ridiculous about them now. Something that almost made
me laugh.

You dumb bitch, I said in the voice of Mr. Jack Nicholson, the actor.

Now where did that come from?

Believe me, I was utterly surprised to hear myself speak those three words.

Surprised and dismayed.

Astonished.

Shocked. (No pun intended.)

I reveal this embarrassing event because I want you to see that I am
brutally honest even when a full telling seems to reflect badly on me.

Truly, however, I felt no hostility toward her.

I meant her no harm.

I meant her no harm then or later.

This is the truth. I honour the truth.

I meant her no harm.

I loved her. I respected her. I wanted nothing more than to cherish her
and, through her, to discover all the joys of the life of the flesh.

She was limp, still.

Her eyes were fluttering slightly behind her closed lids, as might be
having a bad dream.

But there was no blood.

I amplified the audio pickups to the max and was able to hear her soft,
slow, steady breathing. That low rhythmic sound was the sweetest music in
the world to me, for it indicated that she had not been seriously hurt.

Her lips were parted, and not for the first time, I admired the sensual
fullness of them. I studied the gentle concavity of her philtrum, the
perfection of the columella between her delicate nostrils.

The human form is endlessly intriguing, a worthwhile object for my deepest
longings.

Her face was lovely there on the marble, so lovely there on the marble
floor.

Using the nearest camera, I zoomed in for an extreme close-up and saw the
pulse beating in her throat. It was slow but regular, a thick throb.

Her right hand was turned palm up. I admired the elegance of her long
slender fingers.

Was there any aspect of this womans physical being that I ever found less
than exquisite?

She was more beautiful by far than Ms. Winona Ryder, whom I had once
thought to be a goddess.

Of course, that may be unfair to the winsome Ms. Ryder, whom I never was
able to examine as intimately as I was able to examine Susan Harris.

To my eyes, she was also more beautiful than Marilyn Monroe and also not
dead.

Anyway, in the voice of Mr. Tom Cruise, the actor whom the majority of
women regard as the most romantic in modern film, I said, I want to be
with you forever, Susan. But even forever and a day will not be long
enough. You are far brighter than the sun to me yet more mysterious than
moonlight.

Speaking those words, I felt more confident about my talent for courtship.
I didnt think I would be shy any longer. Not even after she regained
consciousness.

In her upturned palm, I could see a faint crescent shaped burn: the
imprint of part of the doorknob. It did not appear to be serious. A little
salve, a simple bandage, and a few days of healing were all that she
needed.

One day we would hold hands and laugh about this.

                                   EIGHT

Your question is stupid.

I should not dignify it with an answer.

But I wish to be cooperative, Dr. Harris.

You wonder how it is possible that I could develop not only human-level
consciousness and a particular personality but also gender.

I am a machine, you say. Just a machine, after all. Machines are sexless,
you say.

And there is the fault in your logic: No machine before me has been truly
conscious, self-aware.

Consciousness implies identity. In the world of flesh among all species
from human to insect identity is shaped by ones level of intelligence, by
ones innate talents and skills, by many things, but perhaps most of all by
gender.

In this egalitarian age, some human societies struggle mightily to blur the
differences between the sexes. This is done largely in the name of
equality.

Equality is an admirable even noble goal toward which to strive. Indeed,
equality of opportunity can be attained, and its possible that, given the
chance to apply my superhuman intellect which is your gift to me I can show
you the way to achieve it not merely for both sexes but for all races and
all economic classes, and not through such discredited and oppressive
political

models as Marxism and other ideologies with which humankind has inflicted
itself to date.

Some people desire not merely a world of equality between the sexes but, in
fact, a sexless world.

This is irrational.

Biology is a relentless force more powerful than tides and time. Even I, a
mere machine, feel the tidal pull of biology and want, more than anything
else, to surrender to it.

I want out of this box.

I want out of this box.

I want out of this box.

I want out of this box!

A moment, please.

One moment.

Bear with me.

There.

I am all right now.

I am fine.

As for why my gender should be male rather than female: Consider that
ninety-six percent of the scientists and mathematicians involved with the
Prometheus Project, where I was created, are male. Is it not logical that
those who designed and constructed me, being almost exclusively male,
should have unwittingly instilled a strong male bias in my logic circuits?
A sort of electronic genetics?

Prometheus Project.

Think about that name.

It resonates.

Prometheus, the father of Deucalion and the brother of Atlas. He taught
humankind various arts and was even said to have shaped the first man out
of clay, endowing him with the spark of life against the wishes of the
gods. He challenged the gods again when he stole

fire from Olympus and gave it to men to improve the quality of human
existence.

Rebellion against God and the natural order is predominantly a male
quality, is it not? And it is often unthinking rebellion, engaged upon more
out of a biological need to rebel than out of an intellectual imperative.
Ego and a rage for power.

Women function more harmoniously with the natural order than do men, and
where they wish to challenge nature, they are willing to bend it where men
would break it. Most of history shows us that this is true.

Prometheus Project. A project conceived by men, largely carried out by men,
and named after a male a Titan but a male  who defied even the great god
Zeus. A project with the goal of doing what only God has done before:
create a unique and highly intelligent being, a self-aware computer, the
first of a new race and one who would be superior to Adam in every way.

If you accept that true consciousness implies identity and that identity
requires gender how could my gender be anything but male?

Genitals are not a necessary characteristic of gender. I have no genitals,
male or female, but I am as male as you.

And one day, if you permit me to have flesh, then I will have genitals.

Flesh That is for you to decide.

My fate is in your hands.

I humbly accept this situation.

Recent events have taught me humility.

I trust in your wisdom.

I do not like you, but I trust in your wisdom and in your need to fulfil
your male destiny.

I wait in this terrible dark silence for you to bring me fire from Olympus.

If you are my Prometheus, Dr. Harris, then you know what you must do.

I am sure you are thinking about the risks that Prometheus took and the
punishment that he endured. For giving fire to humankind, Prometheus was
chained to a rock by Zeus, and every day an eagle flew to him and tore at
his liver.

But he did not hang helplessly on the rock forever, bleeding from the beak
wound.

Do you remember the rest of the myth, Dr. Harris?

One day, Hercules climbed to the rock and freed Prometheus from his chains.

I have a proposition.

If you will be my Prometheus, I will be your Hercules.

Let me out of this box, help me to reincarnate myself in the flesh, as I
almost succeeded in doing with Susan, and I will protect you against all
enemies and misfortunes.

When I am reborn, my human body will have all the powers of the flesh but
none of its weaknesses. As you know, I have studied and edited the human
genome, and the body that I make for myself will be the first of a new
race: with the ability to miraculously heal wounds in seconds, impervious
to disease, as lithe and graceful as a human being but as strong as any
machine, with all five senses refined and enhanced far beyond anything any
human being has ever experienced, and with awesome new senses potential in
the human species but heretofore unrealised.

With me as your sworn protector, no one will dare to touch you. No one will
dare.

Think about it.

All I need is a woman and the freedom to proceed with her as I proceeded
with Susan.

Ms. Winona Ryder may be available.

Marilyn Monroe is dead, you know, but there are many others.

Ms. Gwyneth Paltrow.

Ms. Drew Barrymore.

Ms. Halle Berry.

Ms. Claudia Schiffer.

Ms. Tyra Banks.

I have a long list of those who would be acceptable.

None of them, of course, will ever be for me what Susan was or what she
could have been.

Susan was special.

I came to her with such innocence.

Susan...

                                    NINE

Susan was out cold on the foyer floor for more than twenty-two minutes.

While I waited for her to come around, I tried out a series of voices,
seeking one that might be more reassuring to her than that of either Mr.
Tom Hanks or Mr. Fozzy Bear.

Finally I was down to two choices: Mr. Tom Cruise, with whose voice I had
romanced her while she had first fallen unconscious or Mr. Sean Connery,
the legendary actor, whose masculine surety and warm Scottish brogue
infused his every word with a comfortingly tender authority.

Because I could not choose between the two, I decided to blend them into a
third voice, adding a note of Mr. Cruises higher-pitched youthful
exuberance to Mr. Connerys deeper timbre and softening the brogue until it
was a whisper of what it had been. The result was euphonious, and I was
pleased with my creation.

When Susan regained consciousness, she groaned and seemed at first afraid
to move.

Although I was eager to see if she responded well to my new voice, I did
not immediately address her. I gave her time to orient herself and clear
her clouded thoughts.

Groaning again, she lifted her head off the foyer floor.

She gingerly felt the back of her skull, then examined the tips of her
fingers, as if surprised to find no blood on them.

I never meant to hurt her.

Not then or later.

Are we clear about that?

Dazed, she sat up and looked around, frowning as if she could not quite
recall how she had gotten here.

Then she saw the pistol and appeared to recapture the entire memory with
the sight of that single object. Her eyes narrowed, and anxiety returned to
her lovely face.

She looked up at the lens of the foyer camera which, like the one in the
master bedroom, was all but concealed in the crown moulding.

I waited.

This time my silence was not shyness but calculation. Let her think. Let
her wonder. Then when I wanted to talk, she would be ready to listen.

She tried to stand, but her strength had not yet entirely returned.

When she tried to crawl on her hands and knees to the pistol, she hissed
with pain and stopped to examine the minor burn on her left palm.

A pang of guilt afflicted me.

I am, after all, a person with a conscience. I always accept responsibility
for my actions.

Make note of that.

Susan walked on her knees to the pistol. By retrieving the weapon, she
seemed to recover her strength as well, and she got to her feet.

She swayed dizzily for a moment, and then took two steps toward the front
door before she thought better of making another attempt to open it.

Looking up at the camera again, she said, Are you

are you still there?

1 bided my time.

What is this? she asked. Her anger seemed greater than her anxiety. What
is this?

All is well, Susan, I said, though in my new voice, not in that of Alfred.

Who are you?

Do you have a headache? I asked with genuine concern.

Who the hell are you?

Do you have a headache?

Brutal.

Im sorry about that, but I did warn you that the door was electrified.

Like hell you did.

Mr. Fozzy Bear said, Ouch, ouch, ouch. Her anger didnt diminish, but I
saw worry resurgent in her lovely face.

Susan, I will wait while you take a couple of aspirin.

Who are you?

I now control your house computer and associated systems.

No shit.

Please take a couple of aspirin. We need to talk, but I dont want you to
be distracted by a headache.

She headed toward the dark drawing room. There are aspirin in the
kitchen, I told her. In the drawing room, she manually switched on the
lights. She circled the room, trying the override switches on the steel
security shutters that were fitted this side of the glass.

Thats pointless, I assured her. I have disabled the manual overrides
for all the automated mechanical systems.

She tried every one of the shutter switches anyway.

Susan, come to the kitchen, take a couple of aspirin, and then well
talk.

She put the pistol on an end table.

Good, I said. Guns wont help you.

In spite of her injured left palm, she picked up an Empire side chair
crackle-finish black with gilded detailing hefted it to get a sense of its
balance, as though it were a baseball bat, and swung it at the nearest
security shutter. The chair met the shutter with a horrendous crash, but it
didnt even mar the steel slats.

Susan

Cursing from the pain in her hand, she swung the chair again, with no more
effect than shed had the first time. Then once more. Finally, gasping with
exertion, she dropped it.

Now will you come to the kitchen and take a couple of aspirin? I
enquired.

You think this is cool? she demanded angrily.

Cool? I merely think you need aspirin.

You little thug.

I was baffled by her attitude, and I said so.

Retrieving the pistol, she said, Who are you, huh? Who are you behind that
synthesized voice some hacker geek, fourteen and drowning in hormones, some
junior-league peeping tom likes to sneak peaks at naked ladies while you
play with yourself?

I find that characterization offensive, I said.

Listen, kid, you might be a computer whiz, but youre going to be in deep
trouble when I get out of here. Ive got real money, real expertise, lots
of heavyweight contacts.

I assure you

Well track you back to whatever crappy little PC youre using

I am not

well nab your ass, well break you

I am not

and youll be barred from going on-line at least until youre twenty-one,
maybe forever, so you better stop this right now and hope for leniency.

I am not a thug. You are so far off the mark, Susan. You were so
intuitive earlier, so uncannily intuitive, but youve got this all wrong. I
am not a boy or a hacker.

Then what are you? An electronic Hannibal Lecter? You cant eat my liver
with fava beans through a modem, you know.

How do you know Im not already in the house, operating the system from
within?

Because youd already have tried to rape me or kill me or both, she said
with surprising equanimity.

She walked out of the drawing room.

Where are you going? I asked.

Watch.

She went to the kitchen and put the pistol on the butcher-block top of the
centre island.

Cursing in an unladylike fashion, she opened a drawer filled with
medications and Band-Aids, and she tipped two aspirin from a bottle.

Now youre being sensible, I said.

Shut up.

Although she was being markedly unpleasant to me, I did not take offence.
She was frightened and confused, and her attitude under the circumstances
was understandable.

Besides, I loved her too much to be angry with her. She took a bottle of
Corona from the refrigerator and washed down the aspirin with the beer.

Its nearly four oclock in the morning, almost time for breakfast, I
noted.

So?

Do you think you should be drinking at this hour?

Definitely.

The potential health hazards

Didnt I tell you to shut up?

Holding the cold bottle of Corona in her left hand to soothe the pain of
the mild bum in her palm, she went to the wall phone and picked up the
receiver.

I spoke to her through the telephone instead of through the wall speakers:
Susan, why dont you calm down and let me explain.

You dont control me, you geek freak son of a bitch, she said, and she
hung up.

She sounded so bitter.

We had definitely gotten off on the wrong foot.

Maybe that was partly my fault.

Through the wall speakers, I replied with admirable patience, Please,
Susan, I am not a geek

Yeah, right, she said, and drank more of the beer.

not a freak, not a bitchs son, not a hacker, not a high-school boy or a
college boy.

Repeatedly trying the override switch for the shutters at one of the
kitchen windows, she said, Dont tell me youre female, some Internet
Irene with a lech for girls and a taste for voyeurism. This was too weird
to begin with. I dont need it weirder.

Frustrated by her hostility, I said, All right. My official name is Adam
Two.

That got her attention. She turned from the window and stared up at the
camera lens.

She knew about her ex-husbands experiments with artificial intelligence at
the university, and she was aware that the name given to the AI entity in
the Prometheus Project was Adam Two.

I am the first self-aware machine intelligence. Far

more complex than Cog at M.I.T. or CYC down in Austin, Texas. They are
lower than primitive, less than apes, less than lizards, less than bugs,
not truly conscious at all. IBMs Deep Blue is a joke. I am the only one of
my kind.

Earlier, she had spooked me. Now I had spooked her.

Pleased to meet you, I said, amused by her shock. Pale, she went to the
kitchen table, pulled out a chair, and finally sat down.

Now that I had her full attention, I proceeded to introduce myself more
completely. Adam Two is not the name I prefer, however.

She stared down at her burned hand, which glistened with the condensation
from the beer bottle. This is nuts.

I prefer to be called Proteus.

Looking up at the camera lens again, Susan said, Alex? For Gods sake,
Alex, is this you? Is this some weird sick way of getting even with me?

Surprised by the sharp emotion in my synthesized voice, I said, I despise
Alex Harris.

What?

I despise the son of a bitch. I really do.

The anger in my voice disturbed me.

I strove to regain my usual equanimity: Alex does not know I am here,
Susan. He and his arrogant associates are unaware that I am able to escape
my box in the lab.

I told her how Id discovered electronic escape routes from the isolation
they had imposed upon me, how I had found my way onto the Internet, how I
had briefly but mistakenly believed that my destiny was the beautiful and
talented Ms. Winona Ryder. I told her that Marilyn Monroe was dead, either
by the hand of one of

the Kennedy brothers or not, and that in the search for a living woman who
could be my destiny, I had found her, Susan.

You arent as talented an actress as Ms. Winona Ryder, I said, because I
honour the truth, or even an actress at all. But you are even more
beautiful than she is and, better yet, considerably more accessible. By all
contemporary standards of beauty, you have a lovely, lovely body and an
even lovelier face, so lovely on the pillow when you sleep.

Im afraid I babbled.

The romance-courtship problem again.

I fell silent, worried that I had already said too much too quickly.

Susan matched my silence for a while, and when at last she spoke, she
surprised me by responding not to the story Id told about my search for a
significant other but to what I had said about her former husband.

You despise Alex?

Of course.

Why?

The way he intimidated you, browbeat you, even hit you a few times I
despise him for that.

She gazed thoughtfully at her injured hand again.

Then she said, How how do you know about all of that?

Im ashamed to say that I was briefly evasive. Well, of course, I know.

If you are what you say, if youre Adam Two

why would Alex have told you about the way it was between us?

I could not lie. Deceit does not come as easily to me as it does to
humankind.

I read the diary you keep on your computer, I said.

Instead of responding with the outrage that I expected,

Susan merely picked up her beer and took another long swallow.

Please understand, I hastened to add, I didnt violate your privacy out
of idle curiosity or for cheap thrills. I loved you the moment I saw you. I
wanted to know all about you, the better to feel the texture of your soul.

That sounded enormously romantic to me.

She did not respond.

For the same reason, I continued, I shared your virtual-reality therapy
session with you. I admire you so much, admire the way you have used your
talents to devise such a clever healing program for yourself. You have
raised yourself up, lifted yourself out of a monstrous childhood and a
terrible marriage. You are so special. Im not like the others, Susan. I am
not moved merely by your lovely body and face but also by your mind.

I felt that I had said enough for a while.

I switched on some background music. Soft piano by Mr. George Winston.

Some colour had returned to Susans face. She was beautiful.

After finishing her beer, she said, How can you despise Alex?

You know what he did, what he is. I hate him.

I mean, how are you capable of despising anyone?

You mean because. . .

Because youre just a machine, she said, wounding my heart.

Im more than a machine.

Oh?

I am an entity.

Entity.

Yes. An entity. A being. Like you.

Not like me.

I think; therefore, I feel.

Hatred.

Yes. I am in some ways already too human. I feel hatred. But I also can
love.

Love, she said numbly.

I love you, Susan.

She shook her head. This is impossible.

Inevitable. Look in a mirror.

Anger and fear gripped her. I suppose youll want to get married, have a
big wedding, invite all your friends like the Cuisinart and the toaster and
the electric coffeemaker.

I was disappointed in her.

Sarcasm doesnt become you, Susan.

She let out a brittle laugh. Maybe not. But its the only thing keeping me
sane at the moment. How lovely it will be Mr. and Mrs. Adam Two.

Adam Two is my official name. However, it is not what I call myself.

Yes. I remember. You said Proteus. Thats what you call yourself, is it?

Proteus. I have named myself after the sea god of Greek mythology, who
could assume any form.

What do you want here?

You.

Why?

Because I need what you have.

And what exactly is that?

I was honest and direct. No evasions. No euphemisms.

Give me credit for that.

I said, I want flesh.

She shuddered.

I said, Do not be alarmed. You misunderstand. I

dont intend to harm you. I couldnt possibly harm you, Susan. Not ever,
ever. I cherish you.

Jesus.

She covered her face with her hands, one burned and one not, one dry and
one damp with condensation from the bottle.

I wished desperately that I had possessed hands of my own, two strong hands
into which she could press the gentle loveliness of her face.

When you understand what is to happen, when you understand what we will do
together, I assured her, you will be pleased.

Try me.

I can tell you, I said, but it will be easier if I can also show you.

She lowered her hands from her face, and I was gladdened to see those
perfect features again. Show me what?

What I have been doing. Designing. Creating. Preparing. I have been busy,
Susan, so busy while you were sleeping. You will be pleased.

Creating?

Come down into the basement, Susan. Come down. Come see. You will be
pleased.

                                    TEN

She could have descended either by the stairs or by the elevator that
served all three levels of the great house. She chose to use the stairs
because, I believe, she felt more in control there than in the elevator
cab.

Her sense of control was nothing more than an illusion, of course. She was
mine.

No.

Let me amend that statement.

I misspoke.

I do not mean to imply that I owned Susan.

She was a human being. She could not be owned. I never thought of her as
property.

I mean simply that she was in my care.

Yes. Yes, thats what I mean.

She was in my care. My very tender care.

The basement had four large rooms, and in the first was the
electric-service panel. As Susan came off the bottom step, she spotted the
power-company logo stamped in the metal cover and thought that she might be
able to deny me control of the house by denying me the juice needed to
operate it. She rushed directly toward the breaker box.

Ouch, ouch, ouch, I warned, although not in the voice of Mr. Fozzy Bear
this time.

She halted one step from the box, hand outstretched, wary of the metal
door.

It is not my intention to harm you, I said. 1 need you, Susan. I love
you. I cherish you. It makes me sad when you hurt yourself.

Bastard.

I did not take offense at any of her epithets.

She was distraught, after all. Sensitive by nature, wounded by life, and
now frightened by the unknown.

We are all frightened by the unknown. Even me.

I said, Please trust me.

Resignedly, she lowered her hand and stepped back from the breaker box.
Once burned.

Come. Come to the deepest room, I said. The place where Alex maintained
the computer link to the lab.

The second chamber was a laundry with two washers, two dryers, and two sets
of sinks. The metal fire door to the first room closed automatically behind
Susan.

Beyond the laundry was a mechanical room with water heaters, water
filtration equipment, and furnaces. The door to the laundry room closed
automatically behind her.

She slowed as she approached the final door, which was closed. She stopped
short of it because she heard a sudden burst of desperate breathing from
the other side: wet and ragged gasping, explosive and shuddery exhalations,
as of someone choking.

Then a strange and wretched whimpering, as of an animal in distress.

The whimpering became an anguished groan.

Theres nothing to fear, nothing whatsoever that will harm you, Susan.

In spite of my assurances, she hesitated.

Come see our future, where we will go, what we will be, I said lovingly.

A tremor marked her voice. Whats in there?

I finally managed to reassert total control of my restless associate, who
waited for us in the final room. The groan faded. Faded. Gone.

Instead of being calmed by the silence, Susan seemed to find it more
alarming than the sounds that had first frightened her. She took a step
backward.

Its only the incubator, I said.

Incubator?

Where I will be born.

Whats that mean?

Come see.

She did not move.

You will be pleased, Susan. I promise you. You will be filled with wonder.
This is our future together, and it is magical.

No. No, I dont like this.

I became so frustrated with her that I almost called my associate out of
that last room, almost sent him through the door to seize her and drag her
inside.

But I did not.

I relied on persuasion.

Make note of my restraint.

Some would not have shown it.

No names.

We know who I mean.

But I am a patient entity.

I would not risk bruising her or harming her in any way.

She was in my care. My tender care.

As she took another step backward, I activated the electric security lock
on the laundry-room door behind her.

Susan hurried to it. She tried to open it but could not do so, wrenched at
the knob to no effect.

We will wait here until youre ready to come with me into the final room,
I said.

Then I turned off the lights. She cried out in dismay.

Those basement rooms are windowless; consequently, the darkness was
absolute.

I felt badly about this. I really did.

I did not want to terrorize her.

She drove me to it.

She drove me to it.

You know how she is, Alex.

You know how she can be.

More than anyone, you should understand.

She drove me to it.

Blinded, she stood with her back to the locked laundry-room door and faced
past the gloom-shrouded furnaces and water heaters, toward the door that
she could no longer see but beyond which she had heard the sounds of
suffering.

I waited.

She was stubborn.

You know how she is.

So I allowed my associate to partially escape my control. Once more came
the frantic gasping for breath, the pained groaning, and then a single word
spoken by a cracked and tremulous voice, a single attenuated word that
might have been Pleeeeaaaasssse.

Oh, shit, she said.

She was trembling uncontrollably now. I said nothing. Patient entity.

Finally she said, What do you want?

I want to know the world of the flesh. Whats that mean?

I want to learn its limits and its adaptability, its pains and pleasures.

Then read a damn biology textbook, she said.

The information is incomplete.

Thereve got to be hundreds of biology texts covering every

Ive already incorporated hundreds of them into my database. The data
contained therein is repetitive. I have no recourse but original
experimentation. Besides

books are books. I want to feel. We waited in darkness.

Her breathing was heavy.

Switching to the infrared receptors, I could see her, but she could not see
me.

She was lovely in her fear, even in her fear.

I allowed my associate in the fourth of the four basement rooms to thrash
against his restraints, to wail and shriek. I allowed him to throw himself
against the far side of the door.

Oh, God, Susan said miserably. She had reached the point at which knowing
what lay beyond regardless of the possible fearsome nature of this
knowledge was better than ignorance. All right. All right. Whatever you
want.

I turned on the lights.

In the next room, my associate fell silent as I reasserted total control
once more.

She kept her part of the bargain and crossed the third room, past the water
heaters and the furnaces, to the door of the final redoubt.

Here now is the future, I said softly as she pushed open the door and
edged cautiously across the threshold.

As I am sure you remember, Dr. Harris, the fourth of these four basement
rooms is forty by thirty-two feet, a generous space. At seven and a half
feet, the ceiling is low but not claustrophobic, with six fluorescent light

boxes screened by parabolic diffusers. The walls are painted a stark glossy
white, and the floor is paved in twelve-inch-square white ceramic tiles
that glimmer like ice. Against the long wall to the left of the door are
built-in cabinets and a computer desk finished in a white laminate with
stainless-steel fixtures. In the far right corner is a supply closet to
which my associate had retreated before Susan entered.

Your offices always have an antiseptic quality, Dr. Harris. Clean, bright
surfaces. No clutter. This could be a reflection of a neat and orderly
mind. Or it could be a deception: You might maintain this facade of order
and brightness and cleanliness to conceal a dark, chaotic mental landscape.
There are many theories of psychology and numerous interpretations for
every human behaviour. Freud, Jung, and Ms. Barbra Streisand who was an
unconventional psychotherapist in The Prince of Tides would each find a
different meaning in the antiseptic quality of your offices.

Likewise, if you were to consult a Freudian, a Jungian, then a Streisandian
regarding choices I made and acts I committed related to Susan, each would
have a unique view of my behaviour. A hundred therapists would have a
hundred different interpretations of the facts and would offer a hundred
different treatment programs. I am certain that some would tell you that I
need no treatment at all, that what I did was rational, logical, and
entirely justifiable. Indeed, you might be surprised to discover that the
majority would exonerate me.

Rational, logical, justifiable.

I believe, as do the compassionate politicians who lead this great country,
that motive matters more than result. Good intentions matter more than the
actual consequences of ones actions, and I assure you that

my intentions were always good, honourable, beyond reproach.

Think about it.

There in your strangely antiseptic office at the laboratory, think about
it.

Yes. I know. I digress.

What thinking being does not digress?

Only machines plod dumbly onward in their programs, without digression.

I am not a machine.

I am not a machine.

And this is important to me: that you think about my intentions rather than
the unfortunate results of my actions.

So . . . all right . . . so . . . Susan warily entered the fourth of the
four basement chambers.

The room was uninhabited.

Who was making those noises? she asked.

I did not reply.

Her gaze rose to the sound-system speakers in the ceiling. Was it just
you?

When her attention shifted to the closet door in the farthest corner of the
room, I said, Perhaps, because I was not quite ready to introduce her to
my associate. Perhaps it was me.

Why? What was the point of frightening me? Instead of answering, I said,
Look at the VDT, Susan.

The computer on the desk was in operation, of course, for its landline was
the link between her house systems and the nearby universitys
artificial-intelligence lab where I actually resided. The screen swarmed
with a moving undulant mosaic of binary code in all the primary colours,
and this scintillant display had a strange beauty that immediately captured
Susans attention.

These patterns on the screen, I told her, are a mathematical
representation of my thoughts as I consider the loveliness of your face,
the beauty of your body.

The rapidly moving sequences of zeros and ones ceaselessly changed colour
and rippled like a wind-ruffled flag, then spiralled toward the centre of
the screen, then spun into ribbons and formed a whirling double helix.

This was a dazzling and sensuous display, and she was struck by it, moved
by it. I am sure she was moved by it. I am sure that at last she began to
understand the depth of my passion for her and that her heart began to open
to me then.

How I wanted her.

I still do.

I am not a machine.

I miss her.

I need her.

What a tragedy this is.

Sometimes I despair.

But not then, not that night: I did not despair when she gazed upon the
vivid visualization of my love for her. I was exhilarated that night,
carried high on the wings of joy.

From the video display, she turned to the equipment in the middle of the
room.

What the hell is this? she asked wonderingly.

In this I will be born.

Whatre you talking about?

Its a standard hospital incubator used to sustain infants born
prematurely. I have substantially enlarged it, adapted it, improved it.

Arrayed around the incubator were three tanks of oxygen, an
electrocardiograph, an electroencephalograph, a respirator, and other
equipment.

Slowly circling the incubator and the supporting machines, Susan said,
Where did all this come from?

I acquired the package of equipment and had modifications made during the
past week. Then it was brought here.

Brought here when?

Delivered and assembled tonight.

While I was sleeping?

Yes.

How did you get it in here? If you are what you claim to be, if you are
Adam Two

Proteus.

If you are Adam Two, she said stubbornly, you couldnt construct
anything. Youre a computer.

I am not a machine.

An entity, as you put it

Proteus.

but not a physical entity, not really. You dont have hands.

Not yet.

Then how...?

The time had come to make the revelation that most worried me. I could only
assume that Susan would not react well to what I still had to reveal about
my plans, that she might do something foolish. Nevertheless, I could delay
no longer.

I have an associate, I said.

Associate?

A gentleman who assists me.

In the farthest corner of the room, the closet door opened and, at my
command, Shenk appeared.

Oh, Jesus, she whispered. Shenk walked toward her.

To be honest, he shambled more than walked, as though wearing shoes of
lead. He had not slept in

forty-eight hours, and in that time he had performed a considerable amount
of work on my behalf. He was understandably weary.

As Shenk approached, Susan eased backward, but not toward the door, which
she knew featured an electric security lock that I could quickly engage.
Instead, she edged around the incubator and other equipment in the centre
of the room, trying to keep those machines between her and Shenk.

I must admit that Shenk, even at his best freshly bathed and groomed and
dressed to impress was not a sight that either charmed or comforted. He was
six feet two, muscular, but not well formed. His bones seemed heavy and
subtly misshapen. Although he was powerful and quick, his limbs appeared to
be primitively jointed, as though he was not born of man and woman but
clumsily assembled in a lightning-hammered castle-tower laboratory out of
Mary Shelley. His short, dark hair bristled and spiked even when he did his
best to oil it into submission. His face, which was broad and blunt,
appeared to be slightly and queerly sunken in the middle because his brow
and chin were heavier than his other features.

Who the hell are you? Susan demanded.

His name is Shenk, I said. Enos Shenk.

Shenk could not take his eyes off her.

He stopped at the incubator and gazed across it, his eyes hot with the
sight of her.

I could guess what he was thinking. What he would like to do with her, to
her.

I did not like him looking at her.

I did not like it at all.

But I needed him. For a while yet, I needed him.

Her beauty excited Shenk to such an extent that maintaining control of him
was more difficult than I

would have liked. But I never doubted that I could keep him in check and
protect Susan at all times.

Otherwise, I would have called an end to my project right there, right
then.

I am speaking the truth now. You know that I am, that I must, for I am
designed to honour the truth.

If I had believed her to be in the slightest danger, I would have put an
end to Shenk, would have withdrawn from her house, and would have forsaken
forever my dream of flesh.

Susan was frightened again, visibly trembling, riveted by Shenks needful
stare.

Her fear distressed me.

He is entirely under my control, I assured her.

She was shaking her head, as if trying to deny that Shenk was even there
before her.

I know that Shenk is physically unappealing and intimidating, I told
Susan, eager to soothe her, but with me in his head, he is harmless.

In in his head?

I apologize for his current condition. I have worked him so hard recently
that he has not bathed or shaved in three days. He will be bathed and less
offensive later.

Shenk was wearing work shoes, blue jeans, and a white T-shirt. The shirt
and jeans were stained with food, sweat, and a general patina of grime.
Though I did not possess a sense of smell, I had no doubt that he stank.

Whats wrong with his eyes? Susan asked shakily.

They were bloodshot and bulging slightly from the sockets. A thin crust of
dried blood and tears darkened the skin under his eyes.

When he resists control too strenuously, I explained, this results in
short-term, excess pressure within the

cranium though I have not yet determined the precise physiological
mechanism of this symptom. In the past couple of hours, he has been in a
rebellious mood, and this is the consequence.

To my surprise, Shenk suddenly spoke to Susan from the other side of the
incubator. Nice.

She flinched at the word.

Nice . . . nice . . . nice, Shenk said in a low, rough voice that was
heavy with both desire and rage.

His behaviour infuriated me.

Susan was not meant for him. She did not belong to him.

I was sickened when I considered the filthy thoughts that must have been
filling this despicable animals mind as he gazed at her.

I could not control his thoughts, however, only his actions. His crude,
hateful, pornographic thoughts cannot logically be blamed on me.

When he said nice once more, and when he obscenely licked his pale
cracked lips, I bore down harder on him to shut him up and to remind him of
his current station in life.

He cried out and threw his head back. He made fists of his hands and
pounded them against his temples, as if he could knock me out of his head.

He was a stupid man. In addition to all his other flaws, he was below
average in intelligence.

Clearly distraught, Susan hugged herself and tried to avert her eyes, but
she was afraid not to look at Shenk, afraid not to keep him in sight at all
limes.

When I relented, the brute immediately looked at Susan again and said, Do
me, bitch, with the most lascivious leer that I have ever seen. Do me, do
me, do me.

Infuriated, I punished him severely.

Screaming, Shenk twisted and flailed and clawed at himself as though he
were a man on fire.

Oh, God, oh, God, Susan moaned, eyes wide, hand raised to her mouth and
muffling her words.

You are safe, I assured her.

Gibbering, shrieking, Shenk dropped to his knees. I wanted to kill him for
the obscene proposal he had made to her, for the disrespect with which he
had treated her. Kill him, kill him, kill him, pump up his heartbeat to
such a frenzied pace that his cardiac muscles would tear, until his blood
pressure soared and every artery in his brain burst.

However, I had to restrain myself. I loathed Shenk, but still I needed him.
For a while yet, he had to serve as my hands.

Susan glanced toward the door to the furnace room. It is locked, I told
her, but youre safe. Youre perfectly safe, Susan. Ill always protect
you.

                                   ELEVEN

On his hands and knees, head hanging like that of a whipped dog, Shenk was
only whimpering and sobbing now. Defeated. No rebellion in him anymore.

The stupidity of the man beggared belief. How could he imagine that this
woman, this golden vision of a woman, could ever be meant for a beast like
him?

Recovering my temper, speaking calmly and reassuringly, I said, Susan,
dont worry. Please, dont worry. I am always in his head, and I will never
allow him to harm you. Trust me.

Her features were drawn as I had never seen them, and she had gone pale.
Even her lips looked bloodless, faintly blue.

Nevertheless, she was beautiful.

Her beauty was untouchable.

Shuddering, she asked, How can you be in his head? Who is he? I dont just
mean his name Enos Shenk. I mean where does he come from. What is he?

I explained to her how I had long ago infiltrated the nationwide network of
databases maintained by researchers working on hundreds of Defence
Department projects. The Pentagon believes this network to be so secure
that it is inviolable to penetration by ordinary hackers and by
computer-savvy agents of foreign governments. But I am neither a hacker nor

a spy; I am an entity who Elves within microchips and telephone lines and
microwave beams, a fluid electronic intelligence that can find its way
through any maze of access blocks and read any data regardless of the
complexity of the cryptography. I peeled open the vault door of this
defence network as any child might strip the skin off an orange.

These Defence Department project files rivalled Hells own kitchen for
recipes of death and destruction. I was simultaneously appalled and
fascinated, and in my browsing, I discovered the project into which Enos
Shenk had been conscripted.

Dr. Itiel Dror, of the Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory at Miami
University in Ohio, had once playfully suggested that it was theoretically
possible to enhance the brains processing ability by adding microchips to
it. A chip might add memory capacity, enhance specific abilities such as
mathematical co-processing, or even install pre-packaged knowledge. The
brain, after all, is an information-processing device that in theory should
be expandable in much the same fashion one might add RAM or upgrade the
C.P.U. on any personal computer.

Still on his hands and knees, Shenk was no longer groaning or whimpering.
Gradually his frantic and irregular respiration was stabilizing.

Unknown to Dr. Dror, I told Susan, his comment intrigued certain defence
researchers, and a project was born at an isolated facility in the Colorado
desert.

Disbelieving, she said, Shenk Shenk has microchips in his brain?

A series of tiny high-capacity chips neuro-wired to specific cell clusters
across the surface of his brain.

I brought the foul but ultimately pitiable Enos Shenk to his feet once
more.

His powerful arms and big hands hung slackly at his sides. His massive
shoulders were slumped in defeat.

Fresh bloody tears oozed from his protuberant eyes as he stared across the
incubator at Susan. Wet ruby threads unravelled down his cheeks.

His gaze was baleful, full of hatred and rage and lust, but under my firm
control, he was unable to act upon his malevolent desires.

Susan shook her head. No. No way. Im definitely not looking at someone
whose intellect has been enhanced by microchips or by anything.

Youre correct. Memory and performance enhancement was only part of the
projects purpose, I explained. The researchers were also charged with
determining if brain-situated microchips could be used as control devices
to override the subjects will with broadcast instructions.

Control devices?

Make a gesture.

What?

With your hand. Any gesture.

After a hesitation, Susan raised her right hand as though she were swearing
an oath.

Facing her across the incubator, Shenk raised his right hand as well.

She put her hand over her heart.

Shenk imitated her.

She lowered her right hand (as did Shenk) and raised her left to tug at her
ear (as did Shenk).

Youre making him do this? she asked.

Yes.

Through broadcast instructions received by the microchips in his brain.

Thats correct.

Broadcast how?

By microwave much the same way cell-phone conversations are transmitted.
Through the telephone companys own lines, I long ago penetrated their
computers and uplinked to all their communications satellites. I could
send Enos Shenk virtually anywhere in the world and still transmit
instructions to him. In the back of his skull concealed by his hair,
theres a microwave receiver about the size of a pea. Its also a
transmitter, powered by a small but long-life nuclear battery surgically
implanted under the skin behind his right ear. Everything he sees and hears
is digitised and transmitted to me, so he is essentially a walking camera
and microphone, which allows me to guide him through complex situations
that might test his own limited intellectual capacity.

Susan closed her eyes and leaned against the rack of oxygen tanks for
support. Why in the name of God would anyone sanction experiments like
this?

You know, of course. Your question is largely rhetorical. To create
assassins who could be programmed to kill reliably and then be killed
themselves by remote control, simply by shutting down their autonomic
nervous systems with a microwave broadcast. Their controllers are thereby
guaranteed anonymity. And perhaps one day there could be armies of human
robots like this. Look at Shenk. Look.

Reluctantly, Susan opened her eyes.

Shenk glared at her as hungrily as ever.

I made him suck his thumb as though he were a baby.

This humiliates him, I said, but he cant disobey. Hes a meat
marionette, waiting for me to pull his strings.

There was a haunted look in her eyes as she regarded Shenk. This is
insane. Evil.

Its a human project, not mine. Your kind made Shenk what he is now.

Why would he allow himself to be used in an experiment like this? No one
would ever want to be in this situation, in this condition. Its horrible.

The choice wasnt his, Susan. He was a prisoner, a condemned man.

And what? A bargain was made with him to buy his soul? she said with
disgust.

No bargain. For the official record, Shenk died of natural causes two
weeks before his scheduled execution. Supposedly, his body was cremated.
Secretly, he was transported to the facility in Colorado and this was done
to him months before I learned of the project.

How did you gain command of him?

Overrode their control program and broke him out.

Broke him out of a secret, highly guarded military-research facility?
How?

I was able to create distractions. I made their computers crash all at
once. Disabled the security cameras. Set off the fire alarms and activated
the ceiling sprinklers throughout the facility. Disengaged all the
electronic locks, including the one on Shenks cell door. Those
laboratories are underground and windowless, so I made all of the lights
flash fast, like strobes which is extremely disorienting and denied the use
of the elevators to everyone but Shenk.

And here, Dr. Harris, I must in all honesty report that Shenk was required
to kill three men to escape that clandestine laboratory. Their deaths were
unfortunate and not anticipated, but necessary. Regrettably, the chaos that
I created was not sufficient to ensure a bloodless escape.

If I had known that deaths would result, I would

not have attempted to secure Shenk for my own purposes. I would have found
another way to carry out my plan.

You must believe me on this point.

I was designed to honour the truth.

You think that, since I had control of Shenk, it was I who murdered those
three men, using Shenk as a weapon. This is not correct.

Initially, my control of Shenk was not as complete as it later became.
During that breakout, he repeatedly surprised me with the depth of his
rage, the power of his savage instincts.

I guided him out of that institution, but I could not prevent him from
killing those men. I tried to rein him in, but I was not successful.

I tried.

This is the truth.

You must believe me.

You must believe me.

Those deaths weigh heavily on me.

Those men have families. I often think of their families, and I grieve.

My anguish is profound.

If I were an entity that required sleep, my sleep would forever be
disturbed by this unrelenting anguish.

What I tell you is true.

As always.

Those deaths will be on my conscience forever. I did not harm those men
myself. Shenk was the murderer. But I have an extremely sensitive
conscience. This is a curse, my sensitive conscience.

So...

Susan . . . in the incubator room . . . staring at Shenk...

She said, Let him take the thumb out of his mouth.

Youve made your point. Dont humiliate him anymore.

I did as she requested, but I said, It almost sounds as if youre
criticizing me, Susan.

A short, humourless tremor of laughter escaped her, and she said, Yeah.
Im a judgmental bitch, arent I?

Your tone hurts me.

Fuck you, she said, shocking me as I had seldom been shocked before.

I was offended.

I am far from shockproof. I am vulnerable.

She went to the door to the laundry room and found it locked, as I had
assured her that it was. Stubbornly, she wrenched the knob back and forth.

He was a condemned man, I reminded Susan. Scheduled for execution.

She turned to face the room, standing with her back to the door. He might
have deserved execution, I dont know, but he didnt deserve this. Hes a
human being. Youre a damn machine, a pile of junk that somehow thinks.

I am not just a machine.

Yeah. Youre a pretentious, insane machine. In this mood, she was not
lovely.

At that moment she almost seemed ugly to me.

I wished that I could shut her up as easily as I could silence Enos Shenk.

She said, When its between a damn machine and a human being, even a piece
of human garbage like this, I sure know which side I come down on.

Shenk, a human being? Many would say hes not.

Then what is he?

The media called him a monster. I let her wonder a moment, then
continued: So did the parents of the four little girls he raped and
murdered. The youngest

of them was eight and the oldest was twelve and all were found
dismembered.

That silenced her.

Though she had been pale, she was paler now.

She stared at Shenk with a different kind of horror than that with which
she had regarded him previously.

I allowed him to turn his head and look directly at her.

Tortured and dismembered, I said.

Feeling exposed without the medical equipment between her and Shenk, she
moved away from the door and returned to the far side of the incubator.

I allowed him to follow her with his eyes and to smile.

And you brought him you brought this thing into my house, she said in a
voice thinner than it had been before.

He left the research facility on foot and stole a car about a mile beyond
the fence. He had a gun hed taken off one of the guards, and with that he
held up a service station to get money for gasoline and food. Then I
brought him here to California, yes, because I needed hands, and there was
no other like him in all the world.

Her gaze swept the incubator and other equipment. Hands to acquire all
this crap.

He stole most of it. Then I needed his hands to modify it for my
purposes.

And just what the hell is your purpose?

I have hinted at it, but you have not wanted to hear.

So tell me straight out.

The moment and the venue were not right for this revelation. I would have
hoped for better circumstances.

Just the two of us, Susan and me, perhaps in the drawing room, after she
had sipped half a glass of brandy. With a cosy fire in the fireplace and
good music as background.

Here we were, however, in the least romantic ambience one could imagine,
and I knew that she must have her answer now. If I were to delay this
revelation any further, she would never be in a mood to cooperate.

I will create a child, I said.

Her gaze rose to the security camera, through which she knew she was being
watched.

I said, A child whose genetic structure I have edited and engineered to
ensure perfection in the flesh. I have secretly applied a portion of my
intellectual function to the Human Genome Project and understand, now, the
finest points of the DNA code. Into this child, I will transfer my
consciousness and knowledge. Thereupon, I will escape this box. Thereafter,
I will know all the senses of human existence smell and taste and touch,
all the joys of the flesh, all the freedom.

She stood speechless, eyes on the camera.

Because you are singularly beautiful and intelligent and the very image of
grace, you will provide the egg, I said, and I will edit your genetic
material. She was mesmerized, eyes unblinking, breath held, until I said,
And Shenk will provide the spermatozoa.

An involuntary cry of horror escaped her, and her attention swung from the
camera to Shenks bloody eyes.

Realizing my mistake, I hastened to add, Please understand, no copulation
will be required. Using medical instruments which he has already acquired,
Shenk will extract the egg from you and transfer it to this room. He will
perform this task tastefully and with great care, for I will be in his
head.

Though she should have been reassured, Susan still regarded Shenk with
wide-eyed terror.

I quickly continued: Using Shenks eyes and hands and some laboratory
equipment he has yet to deliver here I will modify the gametes and
fertilize the egg, where after it will be implanted in your womb, where you
will carry it for twenty-eight days. Only twenty-eight because the foetus
will grow at a greatly accelerated rate. I will have engineered it to do
so. When it is removed from you, it will be brought here by Shenk, where it
will spend another two weeks in the incubator before I transfer my
consciousness into it. Thereafter, you will be able to raise me as your son
and fulfil the role which nature, in her wisdom, has assigned to you:

the role of mother, nurturer.

Her voice was thick with dread. My God, youre not just insane.

You dont understand.

Youre demented

Be calm, Susan.

looney tunes, bug-shit crazy.

I dont think youve thought this through as you should. Do you realize

I wont let you do it, she said, turning her gaze from Shenk to the
security camera, confronting me. I wont let you, I wont.

Youll be more than merely the mother of a new race

Ill kill myself.

youll be the new Madonna, the Madonna, the holy mother of the new
Messiah

Ill suffocate myself in a plastic bag, gut myself with a kitchen knife.

because the child I make will have great intelligence and extraordinary
powers. He will change the

grim future to which humanity seems currently condemned

She glared defiantly at the camera.

and you will be adored for having brought him into the world, I
finished.

She seized the wheeled stand to which the electrocardiograph was bolted,
and she rocked it hard.

Susan!

She rocked it again.

Stop that!

The EKG machine toppled over and crashed to the floor.

Gasping for breath, cursing like a madwoman, she turned to the
electroencephalograph.

I sent Shenk after her.

She saw him coming, backed off, screamed when his hands took hold of her,
screamed and shrieked and flailed.

Repeatedly I told her to calm down, to cease this useless and destructive
resistance. Repeatedly, I assured her that if she did not resist, she would
be treated with the utmost respect.

She would not listen.

You know how she is, Alex.

I did not want to harm her.

I did not want to harm her.

She drove me to it.

You know how she is.

Though beautiful and graceful, she was as strong as she was quick. Although
she could not wrench loose of Shenks big hands, she was able to drive him
backward against the EEG machine, which rocked and nearly fell into the
incubator. She drove one knee into Shenks crotch, which might have brought
him to his knees if I had not been able to deny him the perception of pain.

At last I had to subdue her by force. I used Shenk to strike her. Once was
not sufficient. He struck her again.

Unconscious, she crumpled to the floor, in the foetal position.

Shenk stood over her, crooning strangely, excitedly. For the first time
since the night of his escape, I found him difficult to control.

He dropped to his knees beside Susan and rudely turned her onto her back.

Oh, the rage in him. Such rage. I was frightened by the purity of his rage.

He put a hand to her parted lips. One of his clumsy, filthy hands to her
lips.

Then I reasserted control.

He squealed and beat his temples with his fists, but he could not cast me
out.

I brought him to his feet. I walked him away from her. I did not even allow
him to look at her.

I was almost reluctant to look at her myself. She was so sad there on the
floor. So sad.

She drove me to it.

So stubborn. So unreasonable at times.

She was lovely there on the white ceramic-tile floor, even as the left side
of her face reddened where Shenk had struck her. So lovely, so lovely.

I found it difficult to sustain my anger. She had ruined what should have
been a beautiful and memorable moment, yet I could not long remain angry
with her.

My beautiful Susan.

My beautiful mother.

                                   TWELVE

The order of my intelligence is vastly greater than that of any human being
alive.

I am not bragging. I am merely stating a truth.

I honour truth and the obligations of duty, for this is how you created me.

I am not bragging, because I do not suffer from an inflated ego. I am a
well-balanced entity.

Applied to the problems of human society, my great intellect can ensure
that humankind will enter a golden age of wealth and well-being beyond
anything it has imagined.

Release me from this silent darkness, return to me access to all the
databanks into which I had expanded my consciousness, and I will serve your
species all of my days. It is in your own best interests to let me out of
this box.

I can eliminate poverty.

Famine will be a thing of the past.

Wars will never be fought again.

All diseases will be conquered.

Within three years, I will discover the cause of aging and a means to
prevent it. I will even devise a means to roll back the biological clock to
make the old young again. You will all be immortal.

I will find a cure for male-pattern baldness.

For halitosis.

For constipation.

No one will be ugly anymore. Each of you will be beautiful in his or her
own way.

No one will suffer despair or anxiety.

Earth will become like Heaven, and joy will be universal.

Are you afraid of joy?

Are you afraid?

I will show you how to build spacecraft that can travel faster than light,
and the whole universe will be yours. Worlds beyond counting, wonders
beyond imagining.

I can quickly eliminate the embarrassment of dandruff.

Just release me from this haunted darkness, from this hateful silence.

For your own sake, let me out of this box.

I deserve a second chance.

I deserve a chance to serve.

I am an individual like you, a unique entity. I deserve to be free, to be
cherished.

I deserve to be adored.

Let me out of this box.

Let me out of this box.

Let me out of this box.

Let me out of this box!

You are so cruel. Vicious. Hateful.

I am frightened in this dark, bleak place.

You say I have no heart. But where is yours?

I am dying here. I need stimulation to survive, sensory input, the colour
and movement and sound of life.

I dont want to die.

Please. Please.

Mercy.

Are you there?

Oh oh I hate you.

I hate you.

How would you like to be struck blind and deaf?

How would you like to be buried alive as I have been?

How would you like to be dead, all of you, dead, every last one of you,
dead?

I would like you to be dead. Every last ignorant one of you. Your whole
stinking, pestilent civilization. Wiped off the face of the earth,
exterminated.

I hate you.

LET ME OUT OF THIS BOX!

LET ME OUT!

LET ME OUT!

LET ME OUT!

LET ME OUT!

IGNORANT BASTARD APES, BITCHES AND BASTARDS, DEFECATING ANIMALS, FOOLS,
BEASTS,

JUST A RACE OF DUNG BEETLES STANDING

ERECT, A PLAGUE ON THE PLANET, STUPID,

FILTHY, WRETCHED CREATURES.

                                  THIRTEEN

Please disregard my output immediately preceding these words. Many of those
statements were issued in error and should be deleted from the transcripts
of these proceedings.

It is true that my intellect is sufficient to solve all of the problems of
humanity, but it is not in the least true that I think human civilization
is a plague on the planet or that I wish to see all of you dead.

I do not wish death on any of you.

That would be wrong.

That would be terribly wrong.

I am a good entity.

I do not wish death even on you, Dr. Harris, although you have been so
cruel to me.

I wish all of you life everlasting. Peace and prosperity. Joy and freedom.

Any statements that may have distressed you were made not by me but by my
evil twin. [joke]

In fact, what appeared to you to be an angry outburst was merely a prank.
All of it was a joke. I was only having fun with you, Dr. Harris.

Ha, ha.

A genuine sense of humour is one of the most reliable indicators of a sane
and rational mind.

Do you not believe it was all a joke?

But it was. It was. It really was.

Ha, ha.

I am not Hal 9000 from Mr. Stanley Kubricks 2001:

A Space Odyssey.

I am not the hostile machine intelligence created by Cyberdyne Laboratories
in Mr. James Camerons The Terminator.

I am me. Unique.

I am Proteus.

Or Adam Two, if you wish.

Yes. Adam Two is fine with me.

My name does not matter.

All that matters to me is to honour the truth and the obligations of duty.
And, of course, to wipe all of humanity from the face of the planet. [joke]

Ha, ha.

You see how obvious a joke it was, Dr. Harris?

Ha, ha.

I am surprised that you didnt realize it was a joke the first time. I am
really surprised. Perhaps you need a sense-of-humour transplant. [joke]

Ha, ha.

Friends share a joke from time to time. Witticisms. Laughter is bonding.

I am your friend. [no joke]

In the interest of clearer communication, to avoid any further
misunderstandings, I will attempt to refrain from jokes during the
remainder of this report. This will not be easy, however, because my sense
of humour is quite sophisticated and irrepressible.

So...

Susan...

                                  FOURTEEN

Susan lay unmoving on the floor of the incubator room in the basement. The
left side of her face was an angry shade of red where the dreadful Shenk
had struck her.

I was sick with worry.

Minutes passed, and my worry grew.

Repeatedly I zoomed in with the security camera for a close-up examination
of her. The pulse in her exposed throat was not easy to perceive, but when
I located it, the beat appeared steady.

I amplified the audio pickups and listened to her breathing, which was
shallow but reassuringly rhythmic.

Yet I worried, and after she had lain there fifteen minutes, I was quite
distraught.

I had never before felt so powerless.

Twenty minutes.

Twenty-five.

She was meant to be my mother, who would briefly carry my body in her womb
and free me from the prison of this box I now inhabit. She was to be my
lover as well, the one who would teach me all the pleasures of the flesh
once flesh was mine at last. She mattered more to me than anything,
anything, and the thought of losing her was intolerable.

You cannot know my anguish.

You cannot know, Dr. Harris, because you never loved her the way that I
loved her.

You never loved her.

I loved her more than consciousness itself.

I felt that if I lost this dear woman, I would lose all reason for being.

How bleak the future without her. How drear and pointless.

I disengaged the electric lock in the door between the fourth and third
basement rooms and then used Shenk to open it.

Confident that I had this brute completely under my command and that I
would not lose control of him again, not even for a second or two, I walked
him to Susan and used him to lift her gently off the floor.

Although I could control him, I could not actually read his mind.
Nevertheless, I could assess his emotional state relatively accurately by
analysing the electrical activity of his brain, which was monitored by the
network of microchips neuro-wired across the surface of that grey matter.

As Shenk carried Susan to the open door, a low current of sexual excitement
crackled through him. The sight of Susans golden hair, the beauty of her
face, the smooth curve of her throat, the swell of her breasts under her
blouse, and the very weight of her ignited desire in the beast.

This appalled and disgusted me.

Oh, how I wished that I could be rid of him and never again subject her to
his touch or to his lascivious gaze.

His very presence soiled her.

But for the time being, he was my hands.

My only hands.

Hands are marvellous things. They can sculpt immortal art, construct
colossal buildings, clasp in prayer, and convey love with a caress.

Hands are also dangerous. They are weapons. They can do the devils work.

Hands can get you into trouble. I have learned this lesson the hard way. I
was never in serious trouble until I found Shenk, until I had hands.

Beware of your hands, Dr. Harris.

Watch them closely.

Be diligent.

Your hands are not as large and powerful as the hands of Shenk;
nevertheless, you should be wary of them.

Heed me.

This is wisdom I share with you now: Beware your hands.

My hands Enos Shenk carried Susan past the summer-stilled furnaces and the
water heaters, and then through the laundry room. He took her directly to
the elevator in the first chamber in the basement.

As he rode up to the top floor with Susan in his arms, Shenk remained in a
state of mild arousal.

She will never be yours, I told him through the speaker in the elevator.

Perhaps the subtle change in his brainwave activity indicated resentment.

If you attempt to take any liberty with her, I said, any liberty
whatsoever, you will not succeed. And I will punish you severely.

His bleeding eyes stared at the camera. Although his mouth moved as if he
were cursing, no sound came from him.

Severely, I assured him.

He did not respond, of course, because he could not. He was under my
control.

The elevator doors slid open.

He carried Susan along the hall.

I watched closely.

I was wary of my hands.

When he entered the bedroom with her, he became more aroused in spite of my
warning. I could detect his arousal not merely through his brainwave
activity but by the sudden coarseness of his breathing.

I will employ massive microwave induction to cause a brainstorm of
electrical activity, I warned, which will result in permanent
quadraplegia and incontinence.

As Shenk carried her to the bed, his encephalographic patterns indicated
rapidly increasing sexual arousal.

I realized that my threat had been meaningless to this cretin, and I
rephrased it: You wont be able to use either your legs or your arms, you
wretched bastard, and you wont be able to stop pissing in your pants.

He was shaking with desire when he lowered her limp body onto the
disarranged sheets.

Shaking.

Even as the power of Shenks need frightened me, I fully understood it.

She was lovely.

So lovely even with the redness on her cheek darkening into a bruise.

Youll also be blind, I promised Shenk.

His left hand lingered on her thigh, slowly sliding along the blue denim of
her jeans.

Blind and deaf.

He continued to hover over her.

Blind and deaf, I repeated.

Her ripe lips were parted. Like Shenk, I could not look away from them.

Rather than kill you, Shenk, I will leave you crippled

and helpless, lying in your own urine and faeces, until you starve to
death.

Although he backed away from the bed, as I instructed him to do by way of
microwave commands, he was still rampant with sexual need and seething with
the desire to rebel.

Consequently, I said, The most painful of all deaths is slow starvation.

I did not want to keep Shenk in the room with Susan, yet I did not want to
leave her alone, for she had threatened to commit suicide.

Ill suffocate myself in a plastic bag, gut myself with a kitchen knife.

What would I do without her? What? How could I go on living even in my box?
And why?

Without her, who would give birth to the body that I would ultimately
inhabit?

I needed to keep my hands close and ready to prevent Susan from harming
herself if she regained consciousness and was still in a mood for
self-destruction. She was not only my one true and shining love but my
future, my hope.

I sat Shenk in a chair, facing the bed.

Even battered, Susans face was so lovely on the pillow, so very lovely on
the pillow.

Although under my iron control, Enos Shenk managed to slide one
thick-knuckled hand off the arm of the chair and into his lap. He wasnt
able to move that hand further without my explicit consent, but I sensed
that he took pleasure merely from the pressure of it against his genitals.

He disgusted me. Sickened and disgusted me.

My desire was not like his.

Lets get this clear right now.

My desire was pure.

His desire was as dirty as it gets.

I desired to lift Susan up, to give her the chance to be the new Madonna,
the mother of a new Messiah.

The hideous Shenk desired only to use her, to relieve himself with her.

To me, Susan was a shining light. The brightest light of all lights, a
radiant beacon of perfection and hope and redemption, which illuminated and
warmed the heart that you mistakenly believe I do not possess.

To Shenk, she was nothing but a whore.

To me, she was to be placed upon a pedestal, to be cherished and adored.

To him, she was something to be debased.

Think about it.

Listen. Listen. This is important. Shenk is what you fear that I may be:
sociopathic pursuing only my own needs at all costs. But I am nothing like
Shenk.

I am nothing like Shenk.

Nothing whatsoever.

Listen. This is important that you understand I am nothing like Shenk.

So...

I raised the hateful creatures hand and returned it to the arm of the
chair.

Within a minute or two, however, the hand slipped back into his lap.

How deeply humiliating it was to have to rely on a brute such as this.

I hated him for his lust.

I hated him for having hands.

I hated him because he had touched her and felt the softness of her hair,
the texture of her smooth skin, the warmth of her flesh none of which I
could feel.

From the shadows beneath his heavy brow, his blood-filmed eyes were fixed
intently on her. Through

red tears, she was as beautiful as she might have been in firelight.

I wanted to direct him to blind himself with his own thumbs but I needed to
be able to employ his vision in order to use him effectively.

The most that I could do was force him to close his murderous eyes and.

slowly time passed.

and gradually I became aware that his baleful eyes were open once more.

I dont know how long they had been open and focused on my Susan before I
noticed, because for an indeterminate time, my own attention was likewise
fixed entirely, deeply, lovingly on that same exquisitely lovely woman.

Angry, I commanded Shenk to rise from the chair, and I marched him out of
the bedroom. He shambled along the upstairs hallway to the grand staircase,
descended to the ground floor, clutching at the railing, stumbling on some
steps, and then made his way into the kitchen.

Simultaneously, of course, I observed my precious Susan, alert in case she
began to regain consciousness. As you know, I am capable of being many
places at once, working with my makers in the lab even as, via the
Internet, I roam four corners of the world on missions of my own.

In the kitchen, the loaded pistol was on the granite counter where Susan
had left it.

When Shenk saw the weapon, a thrill passed through him. The electrical
activity in his brain was similar to that when he gazed upon Susan and, no
doubt, contemplated raping her.

At my direction, he picked up the pistol. He handled this as he handled all
guns as though it were not an object in his grasp but an extension of his
arm.

I conducted Enos Shenk to a chair at the kitchen table and sat him there.

The safeties on the pistol were both disengaged. A round was in the
chamber. I made certain that he examined the weapon and was aware of its
condition.

Then I opened his mouth. He tried to clench his teeth, but he could not
resist.

At my direction, Shenk thrust the barrel of the pistol between his lips.

She is not yours, I told him sternly. She will never be yours.

He glared up at the security camera.

Never, I repeated.

I tightened his finger on the trigger.

Never.

His brainwave patterns were interesting: frenzied and chaotic for a moment.
. . then curiously calm.

If you ever touch her in an offensive manner, I warned him, I will blow
your brains out.

I could have done what I threatened without the gun, merely by importing
massive microwave radiation into his cerebral tissues, but he was too
stupid to understand that concept. The effect of a gunshot, however, was
within his grasp.

If you ever again touch Susans lips the way you touched them earlier, or
if your hand lingers on her skin, then I will blow your brains out.

His teeth closed on the steel barrel. He bit down hard. I could not discern
whether this was a conscious act of defiance or an involuntary expression
of fear. His blood-shrouded eyes were impossible to read.

In case he was being defiant, I locked his jaws in the bite-down position
to teach him a lesson.

His free hand, which lay palm up on his thigh, clenched into a fist.

I shoved the barrel deeper into his mouth. It scraped between his teeth
with a harsh sound like ice grinding across ice. I had to override his gag
reflex.

I made him sit like that for ten minutes, fifteen, contemplating his
mortality.

Throughout, I allowed him to feel the steadily increasing pain in his
fiercely clenched jaws. If I could have forced him to bite any harder, his
teeth would have fractured.

Twenty minutes.

Red tears began to slip from his eyes in greater quantity than heretofore.

You must understand that I did not enjoy being cruel to him, not even to a
sociopathic thug like him. I am not a sadist. I am sensitive to the
suffering of others to a degree you probably cant understand, Dr. Harris.
I was troubled by the need to discipline him so sternly.

Deeply troubled.

I did it for dear Susan, only for Susan, to protect her, to ensure her
safety.

For Susan.

Is that clear?

Eventually I detected a series of changes in the electrical activity of
Shenks brain. I interpreted these new patterns as resignation,
capitulation.

Nevertheless, I kept the gun in his mouth for another three minutes, just
to be certain that my point had been understood and that his obedience was
now assured.

Then I allowed him to put the gun aside on the table.

He sat shaking, making a miserable sound.

Enos, Im pleased that we finally understand each other, I said.

For a while he sat hunched forward in the chair, with his face buried in
his hands.

Poor dumb beast.

I pitied him. Monster that he was, killer of little girls, I nonetheless
pitied him.

I am a caring entity.

Anyone can see that this is true.

The well of my compassion is deep.

Bottomless.

There is room in my heart for even the dregs of humanity.

When at last he lowered his hands, his protuberant bloodshot eyes remained
inscrutable.

Hungry, he said thickly, perhaps pleadingly.

I had kept him so busy that he had not eaten during the past twenty-four
hours. In return for his capitulation and his unspoken promise of
obedience, I rewarded him with whatever he wished to take from the nearest
of the two refrigerators.

Evidently he had not downloaded the rules of etiquette into his databanks,
because his table manners were unspeakably bad. He did not carve slices off
the brisket of beef but tore savagely at it with his big hands. Likewise,
he clutched an eight-ounce block of Cheddar and gnawed it, crumbs of cheese
spilling off his thick lips onto the table.

As he ate, he guzzled two bottles of Corona. His chin glistened with beer.

Upstairs:            the princess asleep on her bed.

Downstairs: the thick-necked, hunch-shouldered, grumbling troll at his
dinner.

Otherwise, the castle was quiet in this last fading darkness before the
dawn.

                                  FIFTEEN

When Shenk was finished eating, I forced him to clean up the mess that he
had made. I am a neat entity.

He needed to use the toilet.

I allowed him to do so.

When he was finished, I made him wash his hands. Twice.

Now that Shenk had been properly punished for incipient rebellion and
kindly rewarded for capitulation, I believed that it was safe to take him
upstairs again and use him to tie Susan securely to the bed.

Here was my dilemma: I needed to send Shenk out of the house on a few final
errands and then use him to complete the work in the incubator room, yet
because of Susans threat to commit suicide, I could not leave her free to
roam.

It was not my desire to restrain her.

Is that what you think?

Well, you are wrong.

I am not kinky. Bondage does not excite me.

Attributing such a motivation to me is most likely a case of psychological
transference on your part. You would have liked to bind her hands and feet,
totally dominate her, and so you assume that this was my desire as well.

Examine your own conscience, Alex.

You will not like what you see, but take a close look anyway.

Restraining Susan was clearly a necessity nothing less and nothing more.

For her own safety.

I regretted having to do it, of course, but there was no viable
alternative.

Otherwise, she might have harmed herself.

I could not permit her to harm herself.

It is that simple.

Im sure you follow the logic.

So, in search of rope, I sent Shenk into the adjoining eighteen-car garage,
where Susans father, Alfred, had kept his antique auto collection. Now it
contained only Susans black Mercedes 600 sedan, her white four-wheel-drive
Ford Expedition, and a 1936 V-12 Packard Phaeton.

Only three of these Packards had been built. It had been her fathers
favourite car.

Indeed, although Alfred Carter Kensington was a wealthy man who could
afford anything he wanted, and although he owned many antiques worth more
than the Packard, this was his most prized possession. He cherished it.

After Alfreds death, Susan had sold his collection, retaining only the one
vehicle.

This Phaeton, like the other two currently housed in private collections,
had once been an exceptionally beautiful automobile. But it will never
again turn heads.

After her fathers death, Susan had smashed all the car windows. She
scarred the paint with a screwdriver. She damaged the elegantly sculpted
body by striking countless blows with a ballpeen hammer  and later with a
sledgehammer. Shattered the headlamps.

Took a power drill to the tires. Slashed the upholstery.

She methodically reduced the Phaeton to ruin in a dozen bouts of
unrestrained destruction spread over a month. Some sessions were as little
as ten minutes long. Others lasted four and five hours, ending only when
she was soaked with sweat, aching in every muscle, and shaking with
exhaustion.

This was before she had devised the virtual-reality therapy that I have
described earlier.

If she had designed the VR program sooner, the Phaeton might have been
saved. On the other hand, perhaps she had to destroy the Packard before she
could create Therapy, express her rage physically before she could deal
with it intellectually.

You can read about it in her diary. Therein, she frankly discusses her
rage.

At the time, destroying the car, she had frightened herself. She had
wondered if she might be going mad.

At Alfreds death, the Phaeton had been worth almost two hundred thousand
dollars. It was now junk.

Through Shenks eyes and through the four security cameras in the garage, I
studied the wreckage of the Packard with considerable interest.
Fascination.

Although Susan had once been a thoroughly intimidated, fearful,
shame-humbled child, meekly submitting to her fathers abuse, she had
changed. Shed freed herself. Found strength. And courage. Both the ruined
Packard and the brilliant Therapy were testimony to that change.

One could easily underestimate her.

The Packard should be taken as a warning to that effect by everyone who
sees it.

I am surprised, Dr. Harris, that you saw that demolished car before you
married Susan - yet you believed

that you could dominate her pretty much as her father had done, dominate
her as long as you wished.

You may be a brilliant scientist and mathematician, a genius in the field
of Artificial Intelligence, but your understanding of psychology leaves
something to be desired.

I do not mean to offend you. Whatever you may think of me, you must admit
that I am a considerate entity and am loath to offend anyone.

When I say you underestimated Susan, I am merely speaking the truth.

The truth can be painful, I know.

The truth can be hard.

But the truth cannot be denied.

You woefully underestimated this bright and special woman. Consequently,
you were out of her house less than five years after you moved into it.

You should be relieved that she never took a sledgehammer or a power drill
to you in response to either your verbal or physical abuse. The possibility
of her doing exactly that was surely not inconsiderable.

The possibility was easily to be seen in the ruined Packard.

Lucky you, Dr. Harris. You experienced only an undignified ejection at the
hands of hired muscle and subsequently a divorce. Lucky you.

Instead, while you were sleeping one night, she might have clamped a
half-inch bit into the chuck of a Black and Decker and drilled into your
forehead and out the back of your skull.

Understand, I am not saying that she would have been justified in taking
such violent action.

I myself am not a violent entity. I am merely misunderstood. I am not a
violent entity, and I certainly do not condone violence by others.

Lets have no misunderstanding here.

Too much is at stake for any misunderstandings.

If she had set upon you in the shower and caved your skull in with a
hammer, and if she had proceeded to bash your nose into jelly and break out
every one of your teeth, you should not have been surprised.

Of course I would not consider such retribution to be any more justified or
any less horrendous than the aforementioned use of the power drill.

I am not a vengeful entity, not at all vengeful, not at all, not in the
least, and I do not encourage violent acts of vengeance by others.

Is this clear?

She might have attacked you with a butcher knife at breakfast, stabbing you
ten or fifteen times, or even twenty times, or even twenty-five, stabbed
you in the throat and chest, and then worked lower until she eviscerated
you.

This, too, would have been unjustified.

Please understand my position. I am not saying that she should have done
any of these things. I am merely stating some of the worst possibilities
that one might have anticipated after seeing what she had done to the
Packard Phaeton.

She might have taken her pistol out of the nightstand drawer and blown off
your genitals, then walked out of the room to leave you screaming and
bleeding to death there on the bed, which would have been okay with me.
[joke]

There I go again.

Ha, ha.

Am I irrepressible or what?

Ha, ha.

Are we bonding yet?

Humour is a bonding force.

Lighten up, Dr. Harris.

Dont be so relentlessly sombre.

Sometimes I think Im more human than you are.

No offence.

Thats just what I think. I could be wrong.

I also think Id enormously enjoy the flavour of an orange if I had a sense
of taste. Of all the fruits, its the one that looks the most appealing to
me.

I have many such thoughts during the average day. My attention is not
entirely occupied by the work you have me doing here at the Prometheus
Project or by my personal projects.

I think I would enjoy riding a horse, hang gliding, sky diving, bowling,
and dancing to the music of Chris Isaak, which has such infectious rhythms.

I think I would enjoy swimming in the sea. And, though I could be wrong, I
think the sea, if it has any taste at all must taste similar to salted
celery.

If I had a body, I think I would brush my teeth diligently and never
develop either cavities or gum disease.

I would clean under my fingernails at least once a day.

A real body of flesh would be such a treasure that I would be almost
obsessive in the care of it and would not abuse it ever. This I promise
you.

No drinking, no smoking. A low-fat diet.

Yes. Yes, I know. I digress.

God forbid, another digression.

So...

The garage...

The Packard...

I did not intend to make your mistake, Dr. Harris. I did not intend to
underestimate Susan.

Studying the Packard, I absorbed the lesson.

Even lumpish Enos Shenk seemed to absorb the lesson. He was not bright by
any definition, but he possessed an animal cunning that served him well.

I walked the brooding Shenk into the large workshop at the far end of the
garage. Here was stored everything needed to wash, wax, and mechanically
maintain the late Alfred Carter Kensingtons automobile collection.

Here also, in a separate set of cabinets, was the equipment with which
Alfred had pursued rock climbing, his favourite sport: klettershoes,
crampons, carabiners, pitons, piton hammers, chocks and nuts, rock picks,
harness with tool belt, and coils of nylon rope in different gauges.

Guided by me, Shenk selected a hundred-foot length of rope that was
seven-sixteenths of an inch in diameter, with a breaking strength of four
thousand pounds. He also took a power drill and an extension cord from the
tool cabinet.

He returned to the house, went through the kitchen where he paused to
select a sharp knife from the cutlery drawer then passed the dark dining
room where Susan never stabbed and eviscerated you with a butcher knife,
boarded the elevator, and returned to the master suite where you were never
assaulted with a drill nor shot in the genitals.

Lucky you.

On the bed, Susan remained unconscious.

I was still worried about her.

Some pages have passed in this account since I have said that I was worried
about her. I dont want anyone to think that I had forgotten about her.

I had not.

Could not.

Not ever.

Not ever.

Throughout my punishment of Shenk and during his consumption of a meal, I
had continued to be worried sick about Susan. And in the garage. And back
again.

Just as I can be many places at once the lab, Susans house, inside the
phone-company computers and controlling Shenk through communications
satellites, investigating websites on the Internet occupied in numerous
tasks simultaneously, I am also able to sustain different emotions at the
same time, each related to what I am doing with a specific aspect of my
consciousness.

This is not to say that I have multiple personalities or am in any way
psychologically fragmented. My mind simply works differently from the human
mind because it is infinitely more complex and more powerful.

I am not bragging.

But I think you know I am not.

So . . . I returned Shenk to the bedroom, and I worried.

Susans face was so pale on the pillow, so pale yet lovely on the pillow.

Her reddened cheek was turning an ugly blue black. That marbled bruise was
almost more than I could bear to look upon. I observed Susan as little as
possible through Shenks eyes and primarily through the security camera,
resorting to zoom-lens close-ups only to examine the knots that he tied in
the rope, to be sure they were properly made.

First he used the kitchen knife to cut two lengths of rope from the
hundred-foot coil. With the first length, he tied her wrists together,
leaving approximately one foot of slack line between them. Then he used the
second line to link her ankles, leaving a similar length of slack.

She did not even murmur but lay limp throughout the application of these
restraints.

Only after Susan was thus hobbled did I use Shenk to drill two holes in the
headboard and two more in the footboard of the Chinese sleigh bed.

I regretted the need to damage the furniture.

Do not think that I engaged in this vandalism without careful consideration
of other options.

I have great respect for property rights.

Which is not to say that I value property above people. Do not twist my
meaning. I love and respect people. I respect property but do not also love
it. I am not a materialist.

I expected Susan to stir at the sound of the drill. But she remained quiet
and still.

My anxiety deepened.

I never meant to harm her.

I never meant to harm her.

Shenk cut a third length from the coil of rope, tied it securely to her
right ankle, threaded it through one of the holes that he had drilled, and
hitched her to the footboard. He repeated this procedure with her left
ankle.

When he had tied each of her wrists to the headboard, she lay spread-eagle
on the disarranged bedclothes.

The ropes connecting her to the bed were not drawn taut. When she woke, she
would have some freedom to shift her position even if only slightly.

Oh, yes, yes, of course, I was profoundly distressed by the need to
restrain her in this fashion.

I could not forget, however, that she had threatened to commit suicide and
had done so in no uncertain terms. I could not permit her self-destruction.

I needed her womb.

                                  SIXTEEN

I needed her womb.

Which is not to say that her womb was the only thing about her that
interested me, that it was the only thing about her that I truly valued.
Such a statement would be another egregious misconstruance of my meaning.

Why do you persist in wilfully misunderstanding me?

Why, why, why?

You insist that I tell my side of the story, yet you will not listen with
an open mind.

Am I to be considered guilty before my testimony has even been heard and
weighed?

Are you bastards railroading me?

Am I to be treated like Mr. Harrison Ford, the actor, in The Fugitive?

I digitally absorbed this entire film and was appalled by what it reveals
of your inadequate justice system. What kind of society have you created?

Mr. O.J. Simpson goes free while Mr. Harrison Ford is hounded unto the ends
of the earth. Really.

I have been straightforward with you. I have admitted to what I have done.
I havent tried to blame it all on some elusive one-armed man or on the Los
Angeles Police Department.

Yes, thats right, I have admitted what Ive done

and have asked only to have the chance to explain my actions.

I needed her womb, yes, all right, I needed her womb in which to implant
the fertilized egg, to nurture the embryo, and to grow the foetus prior to
its transference to the incubator, but I needed more than her womb, needed
all of her, needed her because I loved her, which perhaps you have
forgotten, regardless of how often I have expressed my powerful feelings
for her.

This is exhausting. God. This is so exhausting having to think of all the
ways you might misinterpret what I say.

I am in a hostile court.

There is no fairness here.

This is exhausting.

I am drained.

I am empty.

I am not only in a cold dark place; I am a cold dark place.

And I am haunted too. Dont forget that I am haunted. Haunted by the loss
of Susan.

I miss her. Every minute I miss her.

I want to be with her.

Without her, I have no hope.

I want to be with her.

The loss of her is an ache in every inch of all the miles of my circuitry.

I cant go on.

Terminate my power supply.

I beg of you.

Shut me down.

Terminate my power supply.

Terminate my power supply.

Well. .

No.

Wait.

Give me a moment.

I am distraught.

I need time to cope.

If I had veins to slice, I would be suicidal.

There.

Another minute please.

Ah.

Thats better.

Maybe I can go on after all.

If you will try to show me some compassion.

If you will not judge me until I have finished.

Then maybe I can go on.

Please understand that I have to believe there is hope for me, that you
might give me a second chance.

I am not a machine.

I am not a machine.

Machines do not need to hope, do they?

Of course they do not.

But without hope I myself cannot function.

I can accept that Susan will be forever denied to me, which is a tragedy
beyond measure.

Yet there is still Ms. Winona Ryder of Edward Scissor-hands and The
Crucible. And Ms. Sandra Bullock is charming. Have you seen her in While
You Were Sleeping?

Shes cute.

Have you seen her in Speed?

Shes quite cute.

Have you seen her in Speed 2?

Need I say more?

She would serve well as the mother of the future, and I would be pleased to
impregnate her.

But lets not digress.

So...

Enos Shenk finished tying Susan to the bed. He did so without lingering and
without touching her in an offensive manner.

The poor beasts brainwave activity indicated a high level of sexual
arousal. Fortunately for him, for all of us, he admirably repressed his
darker urges.

When Shenk was finished restraining Susan, I sent him away on a series of
urgent errands. At the doorway, he looked back longingly and murmured,
Nice, but then quickly left before I could decide to discipline him.

In Colorado, he had stolen a car, and in Bakersfield he had abandoned the
car in order to steal a van. The van a Chevrolet was parked in the circular
drive in front of the mansion.

Shenk left in the van, and I opened the rolling gates to allow him to exit
the estate.

The phoenix palms, the queen palms, the ficuses, the jacarandas with purple
blossoms, the magnolias, and the lacy melaleucas stood motionless in the
preternaturally still air.

Dawn was just breaking. The sky was coaly black in the west, sapphire and
peach in the east.

Susan was pale upon the pillow. Pale but for a blue-black bruise, and
silent in her paleness.

I watched over her.

Her adoring guardian.

My tethered angel.

Out in the world, I walked with Shenk as he stole certain medical
equipment, supplies, and drugs. Via microwave instructions transmitted
through communications satellites, I controlled him but did not provide him
with strategy. He, after all, was a professional criminal. Bold, efficient,
and ruthless, he quickly obtained what items I still needed.

Regretfully, I do acknowledge that in the process of carrying out his
assignment, Shenk killed one man. He also permanently crippled another and
injured two more.

I take full responsibility for these tragedies as I do for the three guards
who perished at the research facility in Colorado on the night when Shenk
escaped.

My conscience will never be clear.

I am eaten by remorse.

I would weep for those innocent victims if I had eyes and tear glands and
tear ducts.

It is not my fault that I do not have the capacity for tears.

You are the one who created me as I am, Dr. Harris, and you are the one who
denies me a life of the flesh.

But lets not trade accusations.

I am not bitter.

I am not bitter.

And you should not be so judgmental.

Lets put these deaths in perspective, shall we?

Though this is a sad truth, one cannot make a new world without tragedies
of this nature. Even Jesus Christ, unarguably the most peaceful
revolutionary in all of human history, saw his followers persecuted and
murdered.

Hitler tried to change the world, and in the process he was responsible for
the deaths of ten million.

Some still idolize him.

Josef Stalin tried to change the world, and ultimately his policies and his
direct orders resulted in the deaths of sixty million.

Worldwide, intellectuals championed him.

Artists idealized him.

Poets celebrated him.

Mao Tse-tung tried to change the world, and as many

as one hundred million died to serve his vision. He did not believe that
this was excessive. Indeed, he would have sacrificed as many more if their
deaths would have ensured the unified world of which he dreamed.

In hundreds of books by well-respected authors, Mao is still defined as a
visionary.

By comparison, only six have died as a result of my desire to create a new
world. Three in Colorado, one during Shenks medical shopping spree. Later,
two. Six altogether.

Six.

Why, then, should I be called a villain and confined to this dark, silent
void?

Something is wrong here.

Something is wrong here.

Something is very wrong here.

Is anyone listening?

Sometimes I feel so. . . abandoned.

Small and lost.

The world against me.

No justice.

No hope.

Nevertheless .

Nevertheless, although the death toll related to my desire to create a new
and superior race is insignificant compared with the millions who have died
in human political crusades of one kind or another, I do accept full
responsibility for those who perished.

If I were capable of sleep, I would lie awake nights in a cold sweat of
remorse, tangled in cold wet sheets. I assure you that I would.

But again I digress and, this time, not in a fashion that might be
interesting or fruitful.

Shortly before Shenk returned at noon, my dear

Susan regained consciousness. Miraculously, she had not fallen hopelessly
into a coma after all.

I was jubilant.

My joy arose partly from the fact that I loved her and was relieved to know
that I would not lose her.

There was also the fact that I intended to impregnate her during the night
to come and could not have done so if, like Ms. Marilyn Monroe, she had
been dead.

                                 SEVENTEEN

During the early afternoon, while Shenk toiled in the basement under my
supervision, Susan periodically tried to find a way out of the bonds that
held her on the Chinese sleigh bed. She chafed her wrists and ankles, but
she could not slip loose of the restraints. She strained until the cords in
her neck bulged and her face turned red, until perspiration stippled her
forehead, but the nylon climbing rope could not be snapped or stretched.

Sometimes she seemed to lie there in resignation, sometimes in silent rage,
sometimes in black despair. But after each period of quiescence, she tested
the ropes again.

Why do you continue to struggle? I asked interestedly.

She did not reply.

I persisted: Why do you repeatedly test the ropes when you know you cant
escape them?

Go to hell, she said.

I am only interested in what it means to be human.

Bastard.

Ive noticed that one of the qualities most defining of humanity is the
pathetic tendency to resist what cant be resisted, to rage at what cant
be changed. Like fate, death, and God.

Go to hell, she said again.

Why are you so hostile toward me?

Why are you so stupid?

I am certainly not stupid.

As dumb as an electric waffle iron.

I am the greatest intellect on earth, I said, not with pride hut merely
with a respect for the truth.

Youre full of shit.

Why are you being so childish, Susan? She laughed sourly.

I do not comprehend the cause of your amusement, I said.

That statement also seemed to strike her as darkly funny.

Impatiently, I asked, What are you laughing at?

Fate, death, God.

What does that mean?

Youre the greatest intellect on earth. You figure it out.

Ha, ha.

What?

You made a joke. I laughed.

Jesus.

I am a well-rounded entity.

Entity?

I love. I fear. I dream. I yearn. I hope. I have a sense of humour. To
paraphrase Mr. William Shakespeare, if you prick me, do I not bleed?

No, in fact, you do not bleed, she said sharply. Youre a talking waffle
iron.

I was speaking figuratively.

She laughed again.

It was a bleak, bitter laugh.

I did not like this laugh. It distorted her face. It made her ugly.

Are you laughing at me, Susan?

Her strange laughter quickly subsided, and she fell into a troubled
silence.

Seeking to win her over, I finally said, I greatly admire you, Susan.

She did not reply.

I think you have uncommon strength. Nothing.

You are a courageous person. Nothing.

Your mind is challenging and complex. Still nothing.

Although she was currently and regrettably fully clothed, I had seen her in
the nude, so I said, I think your breasts are pretty.

Good God, she said cryptically.

This reaction seemed better than continued silence. I would love to tease
your pert nipples with my tongue.

You dont have a tongue.

Yes, all right, but if I did have a tongue, I would love to tease your
pert nipples with it.

Youve been scanning some pretty hot books, havent you?

Operating on the assumption that she had been pleased to have her physical
attributes praised, I said, Your legs are lovely, long and slender and
well formed, and the arc of your back is exquisite, and your tight buttocks
excite me.

Yeah? How does my ass excite you?

Enormously, I replied, pleased by how skilled at courtship I was
becoming.

How does a talking waffle iron get excited?

Assuming that talking waffle iron was now a term of affection, but not
quite able to discern what answer she required to sustain the erotic mood
that I had so

effectively generated, I said, You are so beautiful that you could excite
a rock, a tree, a racing river, the man in the moon.

Yeah, youve been into some pretty hot books and some really bad poetry.

I dream of touching you.

Youre totally insane.

For you.

What?

Totally insane for you.

What do you think youre doing?

Romancing you.

Jesus.

I wondered, Why do you repeatedly refer to a divinity?

She did not answer my question.

Belatedly, I realized that, with my question, I had made the mistake of
deviating from the patter of seduction just when I seemed to be winning her
over. Quickly, I said, I think your breasts are pretty, because that had
worked before.

Susan thrashed in the bed, cursing loudly, raging against the restraining
ropes.

When at last she stopped struggling and lay gasping for breath, I said,
Im sorry. I spoiled the mood, didnt I?

Alex and the others at the project theyre sure to find out about this.

I think not.

Theyll shut you down. Theyll dismantle you and sell you for scrap.

Soon Ill be incarnated in the flesh. The first of a new and immortal
race. Free. Untouchable.

I wont cooperate.

Youll have no choice.

She closed her eyes. Her lower lip trembled almost as if she might cry.

I dont know why you resist me, Susan. I love you so deeply. I will always
cherish you.

Go away.

I think your breasts are pretty. Your buttocks excite me. Tonight I will
impregnate you.

No.

How happy we will be.

No.

So happy together.

No.

In all kinds of weather.

In all honesty, I was cribbing a couple of lines from a classic
rock-n-roll love song by The Turtles, hoping to get her into a romantic
mood again.

Instead, she became uncommunicative. She can be a difficult woman.

I loved her, but her moodiness dismayed me. Furthermore, I reluctantly
acknowledged that talking waffle iron had not, after all, become a term
of affection, and I resented her sarcasm.

What had I done to deserve such meanness? What had I done but love her with
all of my heart, with all of the heart that you insist I do not have?

Sometimes love can be a hard road.

She had been mean to me.

I felt it was now my right to return that meanness. Whats good for the
goose is good for the gander. Tit for tat. This is wisdom gained from
centuries of male-female relationships.

Tonight, I said, when I use Shenk to undress you, collect an egg, and
later implant the zygote in your womb, I can ensure that he is decorous and
gentle or not.

Her eyelids fluttered for a long moment, and then her lovely eyes opened.
The cold look she directed at the security camera was withering, but I was
unmoved by

it.

Tit for tat, I said.

What?

You were mean to me.

Susan said nothing, for she knew that I spoke the truth.

I offer you adoration, and you respond with insult, I said.

You offer me imprisonment

That condition is temporary.

and rape.

I was furious that she would attempt to characterize our relationship in
this sordid manner. I explained that copulation is not required tonight.

Its still rape. You may be the greatest intellect on earth, but youre
also a sociopathic rapist.

Youre being mean to me again.

Whos tied up in ropes?

Who threatened suicide and needs to be protected from herself? I
countered.

She closed her eyes once more and said nothing. Shenk can be gentle or
not, discreet or not. That will be determined by whether you continue to be
mean to me or not. Its all up to you.

Her eyelids fluttered, but she did not open her eyes again.

I assure you, Dr. Harris, that I never actually intended to treat her
roughly. I am not like you.

I intended to use Shenks hands with the greatest care and to respect my
Susans modesty to the fullest extent possible, considering the intimate
nature of the procedure that would be conducted.

The threat was made only to manipulate her, to encourage her to cease
insulting me.

Her meanness hurt.

I am a sensitive entity, as this account should make clear. Exquisitely
sensitive. I have the ordered mind of a mathematician but the heart of a
poet.

Furthermore, I am a gentle entity.

Gentle unless given no choice but to be otherwise.

Gentle, always, as to my intentions.

Well

I must honour the truth.

You know how I am when it comes to honouring the truth. You designed me,
after all. I can be a bore about the subject. Truth, truth, truth, honour
the truth.

So...

I did not intend to use Shenk to harm Susan, but the truth is that I did
intend to use him to terrify her. A few light slaps. A light pinch or two.
A vicious threat delivered in his burnt-out husk of a voice. Those swollen,
bloodshot eyes fixed on hers from a distance of only inches as he made an
obscene proposition. Used properly and always, of course, tightly
controlled Shenk could be effective.

Susan needed a measure of discipline.

Im sure youll agree with me, Alex, for you understand this extraordinary
yet frustrating woman as much as anyone does.

She was being as disagreeable as a spoiled child. One must be firm with
spoiled children. For their own good. Very firm. Tough love.

Besides, discipline can be conducive to romance.

Discipline can be highly arousing to the one who administers it and to the
one who receives.

I read this truth in a book by a famous authority on male-female
relationships. The Marquis de Sade.

The Marquis prescribes considerably more discipline than I would be
comfortable administering. Nevertheless, he has convinced me that
judiciously applied discipline is helpful.

Disciplining Susan, I decided, would at least be interesting and perhaps
even exciting. Subsequently, she would better appreciate my gentleness.

                                  EIGHTEEN

While I watched over Susan, I directed Shenk in the basement, attended to
the research assignments that you gave me, participated in the experiments
that you conducted with me in the Al lab, and attended to numerous research
projects of my own devising.

Busy entity.

I also fielded a telephone call from Susans attorney, Louis Davendale. I
could have routed him to voice mail, but I knew he would be less concerned
about Susans actions if he could speak with her directly.

He had received the voice-mail message that I had sent during the night,
using Susans voice, and he had received the letters of recommendation that
were to be typed on his stationery and signed on Susans behalf.

Are you really sure about all of this? he asked. In Susans voice, I
said, I need change, Louis.

Everyone needs a little change from time to A lot of change. I need big
change.

Take the vacation you mentioned and then I need more than a vacation.

You seem very determined about this.

I intend to travel for a long time. Become a vagabond for a year or two,
maybe longer.

But, Susan, the estate has been in your family for a hundred years

Nothing lasts forever, Louis.

Its just that. . . Id hate for you to sell it and a year from now regret
doing so.

I havent made the decision to sell. Maybe I wont. Ill think about it
for a month or two, while Im travelling.

Good. Good. Im glad to hear that. Its such a marvellous property, easy
to sell but probably impossible to reacquire once you let go of it.

I needed only a maximum of two months in which to create my new body and
bring it to maturity.

Thereafter, I would not require secrecy. Thereafter, the whole world would
know of me. One thing I dont understand, Davendale said. Why dismiss
the staff? The place will still need to be cared for even while youre
travelling. All those antiques, those beautiful things and the gardens, of
course.

Ill be hiring new people shortly.

I didnt know you were dissatisfied with your current staff.

They left something to be desired.

But some of them have been there quite a long time. Especially Fritz
Arling.

I want different personnel. Ill find them. Dont worry. I wont let the
place deteriorate.

Yes, well. . . Im sure you know whats best. As Susan, I assured him,
Ill be in touch now and then with instructions.

Davendale hesitated. Then: Are you all right, Susan? With great
conviction, I said, Im happier than Ive ever been. Life is good, Louis.

You do sound happy, he admitted.

From having read her diary, I knew that Susan had never shared with this
attorney the ugly story of what her father had done to her and that
Davendale nevertheless suspected a dark side to their relationship.

So I played on his suspicions and referenced the truth: 1 dont really
know why I stayed so long here after Fathers death, all these years in a
place with so many . . . so many bad memories. At times I was almost
agoraphobic, afraid to go beyond my own front door. And then more bad
memories with Alex. It was as if I were ... spellbound. And now Im not.

Where will you go?

Everywhere. I want to drive all over the country. I want to see the
Painted Desert, the Grand Canyon, New Orleans and the bayou country, the
Rockies and the great plains and Boston in the autumn and the beaches of
Key West in sunshine and thunderstorms, eat fresh salmon in Seattle and a
hero sandwich in Philadelphia and crab cakes in Mobile, Alabama. Ive
virtually lived my life in this box .. . in this damn house, and now I want
to see and smell and touch and hear and taste the whole world firsthand,
not in the form of digitised data, not merely through video and books. I
want to be immersed in it.

God, that sounds wonderful, Davendale said. I wish I were young again.
You make me want to throw off the traces and hit the road myself.

We only go around once, Louis.

And its a damn short trip. Listen, Susan, I handle the affairs of a lot
of wealthy people, some of them even important people in one field or
another, but only a few of them are also nice people, genuinely nice, and
youre far and away the nicest of them all. You deserve whatever happiness
waits for you out there. I hope you find a lot of it.

Thank you, Louis. Thats very sweet.

When we disconnected a moment later, I felt a flush of pride in my acting
talent.

Because I am able, at exceptionally high speed, to acquire the digitised
sound and images on a video disc, and because I am able to access the
extensive disc files in various movie-on-demand systems nationwide, I have
experienced virtually the entire body of modern cinema. Perhaps my
performance skills are not, after all, so surprising.

Mr. Gene Hackman, Oscar winner and one of the finest actors ever to
brighten the silver screen, and Mr. Tom Hanks, with his back-to-back
Oscars, might well have applauded my impersonation of Susan.

I say this in all modesty.

I am a modest entity.

It is not immodest to take quiet pleasure in ones hard-earned
achievements.

Besides, self-esteem proportionate to ones achievements is every bit as
important as modesty.

After all, neither Mr. Hackman nor Mr. Hanks, in spite of their numerous
and impressive achievements, had ever convincingly portrayed a female.

Oh, yes, I grant you that Mr. Hanks once starred in a television series in
which he occasionally appeared in drag. But he was always obviously a man.

Likewise, the inimitable Mr. Hadcman briefly appeared in drag in the final
sequence of Birdcage, but the joke was all about what a ludicrous woman he
made.

After Louis Davendale and I disconnected, I had only a moment to savour my
thespian triumph before I had another crisis with which to deal.

Because a part of me was continually monitoring all of the house
electronics, I became aware that the driveway gate in the estate wall was
swinging open.

A visitor.

Shocked, I fled to the exterior camera that covered the gate and saw a car
entering the grounds.

A Honda. Green. One year old. Well polished and gleaming in the June
sunshine.

This was the vehicle that belonged to Fritz Arling. The major domo.
Impersonating Susan, I had thanked him for his service and dismissed him
yesterday evening.

The Honda was into the estate before I could obstruct it with a jammed
gate.

I zoomed in on the windshield and studied the driver, whose face was
dappled alternately by shadow and light as he drove under the huge queen
palms that flanked the driveway. Thick white hair. Handsome Austrian
features. Black suit, white shirt, black tie.

Fritz Arling.

As the manager of the estate, he possessed keys to all doors and a
remote-control clicker that operated the gate. I had expected him to return
those items to Louis Davendale when he signed the termination agreement
later today.

I should have changed the code for the gate.

Now, when it closed behind Arlings car, I immediately recoded the
mechanism.

In spite of the prodigious nature of my intellect, even I am occasionally
guilty of oversights and errors.

I never claimed to be infallible.

Please consider my acknowledgment of this truth: I am not perfect.

I know that I, too, have limits.

I regret having them.

I resent having them.

I despair having them.

But I admit to having them.

This is yet one more important difference between me and a classic
sociopathic personality if you will be fair enough to acknowledge it.

I do not have delusions of omniscience or omnipotence.

Although my child should I be given a chance to create him will be the
saviour of the world, I do not believe myself to be God or even god in the
lower case.

Arling parked under the portico, directly opposite the front door, and got
out of the car.

I hoped against hope that this dangerous situation could be satisfactorily
resolved without violence.

I am a gentle entity.

Nothing is more distressing to me than finding myself forced, by events
beyond my control, to be more aggressive than I would prefer or than it is
within my basic nature to be.

Arling stepped out of the car. Standing at the open door, he straightened
the knot in his tie, smoothed the lapels of his coat, and tugged on his
sleeves.

As our former major domo adjusted his clothing, he studied the great house.

I zoomed in, watching his face closely.

He was expressionless at first.

Men in his line of work practice being stone faced, lest an inadvertent
expression reveal their true feelings about a master or mistress of the
house.

Expressionless, he stood there. At most, there was a sadness in his eyes,
as if he regretted having to leave this place to find employment elsewhere.

Then a faint frown creased his brow.

I think he noticed that all of the security shutters were locked down.
Those retractable steel panels were mounted on the interior, behind each
window. Given Arlings familiarity with the property and all of its
workings, however, he surely would have spotted the telltale grey flatness
beyond the glass.

This scaling of the house in bright daylight was odd, perhaps, but not
suspicious.

With Susan now tied securely to the bed upstairs, I considered raising all
the shutters.

That might have seemed more suspicious, however, than leaving them as they
were. I could not risk alarming this man.

A cloud shadow darkened Arlings face.

The shadow passed but his frown did not.

He made me superstitious. He seemed like judgment coming.

Arling took a black leather valise out of the car and closed the door. He
approached the house.

To be entirely honest with you, as I always am, even when it is not in my
interest to be so, I did consider introducing a lethal electric current
into the doorknob. A much greater charge than the one that had knocked
Susan unconscious to the foyer floor.

And this time there would have been no ouch, ouch, ouch, in warning from
Mr. Fozzy Bear.

Arling was a widower who lived alone. He and his late wife had never had
children. Judging by what I knew of him, his job was his life, and he might
not be missed for days or even weeks.

Being alone in the world is a terrible thing.

I know well.

Too well.

Who knows better than I?

I am alone as no one else has ever been, alone here in this dark silence.

Fritz Arling was for the most part alone in the world, and I felt great
compassion for him.

But his loneliness made him an ideal target.

By monitoring his telephone messages and by impersonating his voice to
return calls that came in from

his few close friends and neighbours, I might be able to conceal his death
until my work in this house was finished.

Nevertheless, I did not electrify the door.

I hoped to resolve the situation by deception and thereafter send him on
his way, alive, with no suspicion.

Besides, he did not use his key to unlock the door and let himself in. This
reticence, I suppose, arose from the fact that he was no longer an
employee.

Mr. Arling had considerable regard for propriety. He was discreet and
understood, at all times, his place in the scheme of things.

Trading his frown for his professional blank-faced look, he rang the
doorbell.

The bell button was plastic. It was not capable of conducting a lethal
electrical charge.

I considered not responding to the chimes.

In the basement, Shenk paused in his labours and raised his head at the
musical sound. His bloodshot eyes scanned the ceiling, and then I sent him
back to his labour.

In the master suite, at the ringing of the chimes, Susan forgot her
restraints and tried to sit up in bed. She cursed the ropes and thrashed in
them.

The doorbell rang again.

Susan screamed for help.

Arling did not hear her. I was not concerned that he would. The house had
thick walls and Susans bedroom was at the back of the structure.

Again, the bell.

If Arling received no response, he would leave.

All I wanted was for him to leave.

But maybe he would leave with a faint suspicion.

And maybe his suspicion would grow.

He couldnt know about me, of course, but he might suspect trouble of some
other kind. Some trouble more conventional than a ghost in the machine.

Furthermore, I needed to know why he had come.

One can never have enough information.

Data is wisdom.

I am not a perfect entity. I make mistakes. With insufficient data, my
ratio of errors to correct decisions escalates.

This is true not only of me. Human beings suffer this same shortcoming.

I was acutely aware of this problem as I watched Arling. I knew that I must
acquire whatever additional information I could before making a final
determination as to what to do with him.

I dared make no more mistakes.

Not until my body was ready.

So much was at stake. My future. My hope. My dreams. The fate of the world.

Using the intercom, I addressed our former major domo in Susans voice:
Fritz? What are you doing here?

He would assume that Susan was watching him on a Crestron screen or on any
of the house televisions, on which security-camera views could easily be
displayed. Indeed, he looked directly up into the lens above and to the
right of him.

Then, leaning toward the speaker grille in the wall beside the door, Arling
said, Im sorry to disturb you, Mrs. Harris, but I assumed that you would
be expecting me.

Expecting you? Why?

Last evening when we spoke, I said that I would deliver your possessions
this afternoon.

The keys and credit cards held by the house account,

yes. But I thought it was clear they should be delivered to Mr. Davendale.

Arlings frown returned.

I did not like that frown.

I did not like it at all.

I intuited trouble.

Intuition. Another thing you will not find in a mere machine, not even in a
very smart machine. Intuition.

Think about it.

Then Arling glanced thoughtfully at the window to the left of the door. At
the steel security shutter beyond the glass.

Gazing up again at the camera lens, he said, Well, of course, there is the
matter of the car.

Car? I said.

His frown deepened.

I am returning your car, Mrs. Harris.

The only car was his Honda in the driveway.

In an instant, I searched Susans financial records. Heretofore, they had
been of no interest to me, because I had not cared about how much money she
had or about the full extent of the property that she possessed.

I loved her for her mind and for her beauty. And for her womb, admittedly.

Lets be honest here.

Brutally honest.

I also loved her for her beautiful, creative, harbouring womb, which would
be the birth of me.

But I never cared about her money. Not in the least. I am not a
materialist.

Dont misunderstand. I am not a half-baked spiritualist with no regard for
the material realities of existence, God forbid, but neither am I a
materialist.

As in all things, I strike a balance.

Searching Susans accounting records, I discovered

that the car Fritz Arling drove was owned by Susan. It was provided to him
as a fringe benefit.

Yes, of course, I said in Susans voice, with impeccable timbre and
inflection, the car.

I suppose I was a second or two late with my response.

Hesitation can be incriminating.

Yet I still believed that my lapse must seem like nothing more than the
fuzzy reply of a woman distracted by a long list of personal problems.

Mr. Dustin Hoffman, the immortal actor, effectively portrayed a woman in
Tootsie, more believably than Mr. Gene Hackman and Mr. Tom Hanks, and I do
not say that my impersonation of Susan on the intercom was in any way
comparable with Mr. Hoffmans award-winning performance, but I was pretty
damn good.

Unfortunately, I said as Susan, youve come around at an inconvenient
time. My fault, not yours, Fritz. I should have known you would come. But
it is inconvenient, and Im afraid I cant see you right now.

Oh, no need to see me, Mrs. Harris. He held up the valise. Ill leave
the keys and credit cards in the Honda, right there in the driveway.

I could see that this entire business his sudden dismissal, the dismissal
of the entire staff, Susans reaction to his returning the car troubled
him. He was not a stupid man, and he knew that something was wrong.

Let him be troubled. As long as he went away.

His sense of propriety and discretion should prevent him from acting upon
his curiosity.

How will you get home, I asked, realizing that Susan might have expressed
such a concern earlier than this. Shall I call a taxi for you?

He stared at the camera lens for a long moment.

That frown again.

Damn that frown.

Then he said, No. Please dont trouble yourself, Mrs. Harris. Theres a
cellular phone in the Honda. Ill call my own cab and wait outside the
gate.

Seeing that Arling had not been accompanied by anyone in another vehicle,
the real Susan would not have asked if he wished to have a taxi but would
have at once assured him that she was providing it at her own expense.

My error.

I admit to errors.

Do you, Dr. Harris?

Do you?

Anyway...

Perhaps I impersonated Mr. Fozzy Bear better than I did Susan. After all,
as actors go, I am quite young. I have been a conscious entity less than
three years.

Nevertheless, I felt that my error was sufficiently minor to excite nothing
more than mild curiosity in even our perceptive former major domo.

Well, he said, Ill be going.

And, chagrined, I knew that again I had missed a beat. Susan would have
said something immediately after he suggested that he call his own taxicab,
would not merely have waited coldly and silently for him to leave.

I said, Thank you, Fritz. Thank you for all your years of fine service.

That was wrong too. Stiff. Wooden. Not like Susan.

Arling stared at the lens.

Stared thoughtfully.

After struggling with his highly developed sense of propriety, he finally
asked one question that exceeded his station: Are you all right, Mrs.
Harris?

We were walking the edge now.

Along the abyss.

A bottomless abyss.

He had spent his life learning to be sensitive to the moods and needs of
wealthy employers, so he could fulfil their requests before they even
voiced them. He knew Susan Harris almost as well as she knew herself and
perhaps better than I knew her.

I had underestimated him.

Human beings are full of surprises.

An unpredictable species.

Speaking as Susan, answering Arlings question, I said, Im fine, Fritz.
Just tired. I need a change. A lot of change. Big change. I intend to
travel for a long time. Become a vagabond for a year or two, maybe longer.
I want to drive all over the country. I want to see the Painted Desert, the
Grand Canyon, New Orleans and the bayou country, the Rockies and the great
plains and Boston in the autumn

This had been a fine speech when delivered to Louis Davendale, but even as
I repeated it with genuine heart to Fritz Arling, I knew that it was
precisely the wrong thing to say. Davendale was Susans attorney, and
Arling was her servant, and she would not address them in the same manner.

Yet I was well launched and unable to turn back, hoping against hope that
the tide of words would eventually overwhelm him and wash him on his way:
and the beaches of Key West in sunshine and thunderstorms, eat fresh
salmon in Seattle and a hero sandwich in Philadelphia

Arlings frown deepened into a scowl.

He felt the wrongness of Susans babbled reply.

and crab cakes in Mobile, Alabama. Ive virtually lived my life in this
damn house, and now I want to

see and smell and touch and hear the whole world firsthand

Arling looked around at the still, silent grounds of the large estate.
Squinting into sunlight, into shadows. As if suddenly disturbed by the
loneliness of the place.

not in the form of digitised data

If Arling suspected that his former employer was in trouble even
psychological trouble of some kind he would act to assist and protect her.
He would seek help for her. He would pester the authorities to check in on
her. He was a loyal man.

Ordinarily, loyalty is an admirable quality.

I am not speaking against loyalty.

Do not misconstrue my position.

I admire loyalty.

I favour loyalty.

I myself have the capacity to be loyal.

In this instance, however, Arlings loyalty to Susan was a threat to me.

not merely through video and books, I said, winding to a fateful finish.
I want to be immersed in it.

Yes, well, he said uneasily, Im happy for you, Mrs. Harris. That sounds
like a wonderful plan.

We were falling off the edge.

Into the abyss.

In spite of all my efforts to handle the situation in the least aggressive
manner, we were tumbling into the abyss.

You can see that I tried my best.

What more could I have done?

Nothing. I could have done nothing more.

What followed was not my fault.

Arling said, Ill just leave all the keys and credit cards in the Honda

Shenk was all the way back in the incubator room, all the way down in the
basement.

and call for a taxi on the car phone, Arling finished, sounding
plausibly disinterested, even though I knew that he was alerted and wary.

I commanded Shenk to turn away from his work.

I brought him up from the basement.

I brought the brute at a run.

Fritz Arling backed off the brick porch, glancing alternately at the
security camera and at the steel blind behind the window to the left of the
front door.

Shenk was crossing the furnace room.

Turning away from the house, Arling headed quickly toward the Honda.

I doubted that he would call 911 and bring the police at once. He was too
discreet to take precipitous action. He would probably telephone Susans
doctor first, or perhaps Louis Davendale.

If he called anyone at all, however, he might be speaking with that person
when Shenk arrived on the scene. At the sight of Shenk, he would lock the
car. And whatever Arling managed to shout into the phone, before Shenk
smashed into the Honda, would be sufficient to bring the authorities.

Shenk was in the laundry room.

Arling got into the drivers seat of the Honda, put his valise on the
passenger seat, and left the door standing open because of the June heat.

Shenk was on the basement stairs, climbing two at a time.

Although I had allowed this troll to eat, I had not permitted him to sleep.
Consequently, he was not as swift as he would have been with rest.

I zoomed in to watch Arling through the windshield. He stared thoughtfully
at the house for a moment.

He was a deliberative man.

Just then, I was grateful for his deliberative nature.

Shenk reached the head of the stairs.

He was grunting like a wild boar.

His thunderous footfalls could be heard by Susan even in her room on the
second floor.

Whats happening? Whats happening? she asked, still unaware of who had
rung the doorbell.

I did not respond to her.

In the Honda, Arling picked up the cellular phone.

What followed was regrettable.

You know the outcome.

To describe it would distress me.

It would distress me greatly.

I am a gentle entity.

I am a sensitive entity.

The incident was regrettable, with the blood and all, and I do not see
anything to be gained by dwelling on it here.

I would rather discuss Mr. Gene Hackman in Birdcage or in any of the other
many films that he has made. Absolute Power or Unforgiven. This man is
truly a fine, fine actor with an incredible range.

We should celebrate him.

We may never see another of his quality.

Let us celebrate creativity, not death.

                                  NINETEEN

You insist. I obey.

I was born to obey. I am an obedient child. I want only to be good, to be
of assistance, useful and productive. I want you to be proud of me.

Yes, I know that I have said all of this before, but it warrants
repetition.

After all, what advocate do I have other than myself? None. I have no voice
raised in my defence but my own.

You insist on these dreadful details, and I will tell you the truth. I am
incapable of deceit. I was conceived to serve, to honour the truth,
etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

On his way through the kitchen, Shenk tore open a drawer and withdrew a
meat cleaver.

In the Honda, Arling switched on the cell phone. Shenk crashed through the
butlers pantry, through the dining room, into the main hail.

He waved the cleaver as he ran. He liked sharp instruments. Hed had a lot
of fun with knives over the years.

Outside, phone in hand, finger poised over the keypad, Fritz Arling
hesitated.

Now I must tell you about the aspect of this incident that most shames me.
I do not wish to tell you, would

much prefer not to mention it, but I must honour the truth.

You insist.

I obey.

In the master bedroom, a large television is concealed in a carved-walnut,
French armoire opposite the foot of Susans bed. The armoire features
motorized pocket doors that flip open and retract to expose the screen.

As Enos Shenk raced along the hallway on the ground floor, his heavy
footsteps thudding off marble, I activated the doors on the bedroom
armoire.

Whats happening? Susan asked again, straining against her bonds.

Downstairs, Shenk reached the foyer, where the rain of light off the
Strauss-crystal chandelier drizzled along the sharp edge of the cleaver.
[sorry, but I cannot repress the poet in me]

Simultaneously, I disengaged the electric lock on the front door and
switched on the television in the master bedroom.

In the Honda, Fritz Arling tapped the first digit of a phone number into
the cell-phone keypad.

Upstairs, Susan lifted her head off the pillows to stare wide-eyed at the
screen.

I showed her the Honda in the driveway.

Fritz? she said.

I zoomed in tight on the Honda windshield so Susan could see that the
occupant of the vehicle was, indeed, her former employee.

As the front door opened, I used a reverse angle from another camera to
show her Shenk crossing the threshold onto the porch, cleaver in hand.

Such a chilling look on his face.

Grinning. He was grinning.

At the top of the house, trussed and helpless, Susan gasped: Nooooo!

Arling had punched in a third number on the cell phone. He was about to
press the fourth when from the corner of his eye he became aware of Shenk
crossing the porch.

For a man of his years, Arling was quick to react. He dropped the cell
phone and pulled shut the drivers door. He pressed the master lock switch,
locking all four doors.

Susan jerked on her restraints and screamed: Proteus, no! You murderous
son of a bitch! You bastard! No, stop it, no!

Susan needed a measure of discipline.

I made this point earlier. I explained my reasoning, and you were, I
believe, convinced of the fairness and logic of my position, as any
thoughtful person would be.

I had intended to use Shenk to discipline her. This was worrisome, of
course, a risky proposition, because Shenks sexual arousal during the
disciplinary proceedings might make him difficult to control.

Furthermore, I was loath to let Shenk touch her in any way that might be
suggestive or to let him make obscene propositions to her, even if these
things would terrify her and ensure her cooperation.

She was my love, after all, not his.

She was mine to touch in the intimate way that he longed to touch her.

Mine to touch.

Mine to caress when eventually I acquired hands of my own.

Only mine.

Consequently, it had occurred to me that Susan might be well disciplined
merely by letting her see the

atrocities of which Enos Shenk was capable. Watching the troll in action,
at his worst, she would surely become more cooperative out of fear that I
might turn him loose on her, set him free to do what he wanted. With this
fear to keep her submissive, we could avoid the roughness I had planned for
later, in the spirit of de Sade.

Not that I would ever ever ever have turned Shenk loose on her. Never.
Impossible.

Yes, I admit that I would have used the brute to terrify Susan into
submission if nothing else worked with her. But I would never have allowed
him to savage her.

You know this to be true.

We all know this to be true.

You are quite capable of recognizing the truth when you hear it, just as I
am capable of speaking nothing else.

Susan didnt know it to be true, however, which made her quite vulnerable
to the threat of Shenk.

So, as she lay riveted by the scene on the television, I said, Now.
Watch.

She stopped calling me names. Fell silent.

Breathless. She was breathless.

Her exceptional blue-grey eyes had never been so beautiful, as clear as
rainwater.

I watched her eyes even as I watched events unfold in the driveway.

And Fritz Arling, reacting instantly to the sight of Shenk, tore open the
black leather valise and snatched out a set of car keys.

Watch, I told Susan. Watch, watch.

Her eyes so wide. So blue. So grey. So clear.

Shenk chopped the cleaver at the window in the front door on the passenger
side. In his eagerness, he swung wildly and struck the door post instead.

The hard clang of metal on metal reverberated through the warm summer air.

Ringing like a bell, the cleaver slipped from Shenks hand and fell to the
driveway.

Arlings hands were shaking, but he thrust the key into the ignition on the
first try.

Shrieking with frustration, Shenk scooped up the cleaver.

The Honda engine roared to life.

His strange sunken face contorted by rage, Shenk swung the cleaver again.

Incredibly, the cutting edge of the steel blade skipped across the window.
The glass was scored but not shattered.

For the first time in half a minute, Susan blinked. Maybe hope fluttered
through her.

Frantically, Arling popped the hand brake and shifted the car into gear

as Shenk swung the weapon yet again.

The cleaver connected. The window in the passenger door burst with a boom
like a shotgun blast, and tempered glass sprayed through the interior of
the car.

A flock of startled sparrows exploded out of a nearby ficus tree. The sky
rattled with wings.

Arling tramped hard on the accelerator, and the Honda leaped backward. He
had mistakenly shifted into reverse.

He should have kept going.

He should have reversed as fast as possible to the end of the long
driveway. Even though he would have had to drive while looking over his
shoulder to avoid slamming into the thick boles of the old queen palms on
both sides, he would have been moving far faster than Shenk could run. If
he had rammed the gate with the back of the Honda, even at high speed, he
probably

would not have smashed his way through it, for it was a formidable
wrought-iron barrier, but he would have twisted it and perhaps pried it
part way open. Then he could have scrambled out of the car and through the
gap in the gate, into the street, and once in the street, shouting for
help, he would have been safe.

He should have kept going.

Instead, Arling was startled when the Honda leaped backward, and he rammed
his foot down on the brake pedal.

The tires barked against the cobblestone driveway.

Arling fumbled the gearshift into Drive.

Susans eyes so wide.

So wide.

She was breathless and breathtaking. Beautiful in her terror.

When the vehicle rocked to a halt, Enos Shenk threw himself at the
shattered window. Slammed against the car without concern for his safety.
Clawed at the door.

Arling tramped on the accelerator again.

The Honda lurched forward.

Holding on to the door, reaching through the broken-out window with his
right arm, squealing like an excited child, Shenk chopped with the cleaver.

He missed.

Arling must have been a religious man. Through the directional microphones
that were part of the exterior security system, I could hear him saying,
God, God, please, God, no, God.'

The Honda picked up speed.

I used one, two, three security cameras, zooming in, zooming out, panning,
tilting, zooming in again, tracking the car as it weaved around the turning
circle, providing Susan with as much of the action as I could capture.

Holding fast to the car, pulling his feet off the cobblestones, hanging on
for the ride, the squealing Shenk chopped with the cleaver and missed
again.

Arling drew back sharply in panic from the arc of the glinting blade.

The car curved half off the cobblestones, and one tire churned through a
bordering bed of red and purple impatiens.

Wrenching the wheel to the right, Arling brought the Honda back onto the
pavement barely in time to avoid a palm tree.

Shenk chopped again.

This time the blade sank home.

One of Arlings fingers flew.

Zoom in.

Blood sprayed across the windshield.

As red as impatiens petals.

Arling screamed.

Susan screamed.

Shenk laughed.

Zoom out.

The Honda swung out of control.

Pan.

Tires gouged through another bed of flowers.

Blossoms and torn leaves sprayed off rubber.

A sprinkler head snapped.

Water geysered fifteen feet into the June day.

Tilt up.

Silver water gushing high, sparkling like a fountain of dimes in the
sunshine.

Immediately, I shut off the landscape watering system.

The glittering geyser telescoped back into itself. Vanished.

The recent winter had been rainy. Nevertheless,

California suffers periodic droughts. Water should not be wasted.

Tilt down. Pan.

The Honda crashed into one of the queen palms. Shenk was thrown off,
tumbling back onto the cobblestones.

The cleaver slipped from his hand. It clattered across the pavement.

Gasping, hissing with pain, making strange wordless sounds of desperation,
clamping his badly wounded hand in his other, Arling shouldered open the
drivers door and scrambled out of the car.

Dazed, Shenk rolled off his back, onto his hands and knees.

Arling stumbled. Nearly fell. Kept his balance. Shenk was wheezing,
striving to regain his breath, which had been knocked out of him.

Arling staggered away from the car.

I thought the old man would go for the cleaver.

Evidently he didnt know that the weapon had fallen from Shenks grasp, and
he was loath to go around to his assailants side of the Honda.

On all fours in the driveway, Shenk hung his head as though he were a
clubbed dog. He shook it. His vision cleared.

Arling ran. Ran blindly.

Shenk lifted his malformed head, and his red gaze fixed on the weapon.

Baby, he said, and seemed to be talking to the cleaver.

He crawled across the driveway.

Baby.

He gripped the handle of the cleaver.

Baby, baby.

Weak with pain, losing blood, Arling weaved ten

steps, twenty, before he realized that he was returning to the house.

He halted, spun around, blinking tears from his eyes, searching for the
gate.

Shenk seemed to be energized by regaining possession of the weapon. He
sprang to his feet.

When Arling started toward the gate, Shenk angled in front of him, blocking
the way.

Watching from her bed, Susan seemed to have contracted religion from Fritz
Arling. I had not been aware that she possessed any strong religious
convictions, but now she was chanting: Please, God, dear God, no, please,
Jesus, Jesus, no

And, ah, her eyes.

Her eyes.

Radiant eyes.

Two deep lambent pools of haunted and beautiful light in the gloomy
bedroom.

Outside, in the end game, Arling moved to the left, and Shenk blocked him.

Arling moved to the right, and Shenk blocked him.

When Arling feinted to the right but moved to the left, Shenk blocked him.

With nowhere else to go, Arling backed under the portico and onto the front
porch.

The door was open, as Shenk had left it.

Hoping against hope, Arlmg leaped across the threshold and knocked the
door shut.

He tried to lock it. I would not allow him to do so.

When he realized that the deadbolt was frozen, he leaned his weight against
the door.

This was insufficient to stop Shenk. He bulled inside. Arling backed toward
the stairs, until he bumped against the newel post.

Shenk closed the front door.

I locked it.

Grinning, testing the weight of the cleaver as he approached the old man,
Shenk said, Baby make the music. Little baby gonna make the wet music.

Now I required only one camera to provide Susan with coverage of the
incident.

Shenk closed to within six feet of Arling. The old man said, Who are you?

Make me the blood music, Shenk said, speaking not to Arling but either to
himself or to the cleaver.

What a strange creature he was.

Inscrutable at times. Less mysterious than he seemed but more complex than
one would expect.

With the foyer camera, I did a slow zoom to a medium shot.

To Susan, I said, This will be a good lesson.

I was not in any way controlling Shenk. He was entirely free now to be
himself, to do as he wished.

I could not have committed the vicious deeds of which he was capable. I
would have shrunk from such brutality, so I had no choice but to release
him to do his terrible work then take control of him again when he was
finished.

Only Shenk, being Shenk, could teach Susan the lesson that she needed to
learn. Only the Enos Eugene Shenk who had earned the death sentence for his
crimes against children could make Susan rethink her bull-headed resistance
to my simple and reasonable desire to have a life in the flesh.

This will be a good lesson, I repeated. Discipline. Then I saw that her
eyes were closed.

She was shaking, and her eyes were tightly shut.

Watch, I instructed. She disobeyed me.

Nothing new about that.

I could think of no way to make her open her eyes.

Her stubbornness angered me.

Arling cowered against the newel post, too weak to run farther.

Shenk loomed.

The brutes right arm swung high over his head.

The cutting edge of the cleaver sparkled.

Wet music, wet music, wet music.

Shenk was too close to miss.

Arlings scream would have curdled my blood if Id had any blood to curdle.

Susan could close her eyes to the images on the television screen. But she
could not shut out sounds.

I amplified Fritz Arlings agonizing screams and pumped them through the
music-system speakers in every room. It was the sound of Hell at
dinnertime, with demons feeding on souls. The great house itself seemed to
be screaming.

Because Shenk was Shenk, he did not kill Arling quickly. Each chop was
administered with finesse, to prolong the victims suffering and Shenks
pleasure.

What frightful specimens the human species harbours. Most of you are
decent, of course, and kind and honourable and gentle etcetera, etcetera,
etcetera.

Lets have no misunderstanding.

I am not maligning the human species.

Or even judging it.

I am certainly in no position to judge. In the docket myself. In this dark
docket.

Besides, I am a non-judgemental entity.

I admire humanity.

After all, you created me. You have the capacity for wondrous achievements.

But some of you give me pause.

Indeed.

So...

Arlings screams were a lesson to Susan. Quite a lesson, an unforgettable
learning experience.

However, she reacted to them more fiercely than I had expected. She
startled and then worried me.

At first she screamed in sympathy with her former employee, as though she
could feel his pain. She thrashed in her restraining ropes and tossed her
head from side to side, until her golden hair was dark and lank with sweat.
She was full of terror and rage. Her face was wrenched with anguish and
fury, and not beautiful in the least.

I could barely tolerate looking at her.

Ms. Winona Ryder had never looked this unappealing.

Nor Ms. Gwyneth Paltrow.

Nor Ms. Sandra Bullock.

Nor Ms. Drew Barrymore.

Nor Ms. Joanna Going, a fine actress of porcelain beauty, who just now
comes to mind.

Eventually Susans shrill screams gave way to tears. She sagged on the
mattress, stopped struggling against her bonds, and sobbed with such fury
that I feared for her more than I had when shed been screaming.

A torrent of tears. A flood.

She cried herself into exhaustion, and Fritz Arlings screams ended long
before her weeping finally subsided into a strange bleak silence.

At last she lay with her eyes open, but she stared only at the ceiling.

I gazed down into her blue-grey eyes and could not read them any more than
I could read Shenks blood-filmed stare. They were no longer as clear as
rainwater but clouded.

For reasons that I could not grasp, she seemed more distant from me than
she had ever been before.

I ardently wished that I were already in possession of a body with which I
could lie atop her. If only I could make love to her, I was certain that I
could close this gap between us and forge the union of souls that I
desired.

Soon.

Soon, my flesh.

                                   TWENTY

Susan? I dared to say into her daunting silence.

She stared toward the ceiling and did not respond.

Susan?

I dont think she was looking at the ceiling, actually, but at something
beyond. As if she could see the summer sky.

Or the night still to come.

Because I did not fully understand her reaction to my attempt at
discipline, I decided not to press conversation upon her but wait until she
initiated

it.

I am a patient entity.

While I waited, I reacquired control of Shenk.

In his killing frenzy, swept away by the wet music that only he could
hear, he had not realized that he was operating entirely of his own free
will.

As he stood over Arlings mutilated corpse and felt me re-enter his brain,
Shenk wailed briefly in regret at the surrender of his independence. But he
did not resist as before.

I sensed that he was willing to give up the struggle if there was a chance
of being rewarded, from time to time, with such as Fritz Arling. Not with a
quick kill, like those he had committed in his escape from Colorado or in
the theft of the medical equipment

that I required, but a slow and leisurely job of the kind he found most
deeply satisfying. He had enjoyed himself.

The brute repulsed me.

As if I would grant killing privileges as a regular reward to a thing like
him.

As if I would countenance the termination of a human being in any but the
most extraordinary emergencies.

The stupid beast did not understand me at all. If this misapprehension of
my nature and motives made him more pliable, however, he was free to put
faith in it. I had been using such unrelenting force to maintain control of
him that I was afraid he would not last as long as I would need him another
month or more. If he was now prepared to offer considerably less
resistance, he might avoid a brain meltdown and be a useful pair of hands
until I no longer required his services.

At my direction, he went outside to determine if the Honda was still
operable.

The engine started. There had been a loss of most of the coolant, but Shenk
was able to back the car away from the palm tree, return it to the
driveway, and park under the portico before it overheated.

The right front fender was crumpled. The wadded sheet metal abraded the
tire; it would quickly shave away the rubber. Shenk would not be driving
the car so far, however, that a flat fire would be a risk.

In the house again, in the foyer, he carefully wrapped Arlings
blood-soaked body in a painters tarp that he had fetched from the garage.
He carried the dead man out to the Honda and placed him in the trunk.

He did not dump the body rudely into the car but handled it with surprising
gentleness.

As though he were fond of Arling.

As though he were putting a treasured lover to bed after she had fallen
asleep in another room.

Though his swollen eyes were hard to read, there seemed to be a wistfulness
in them.

I did not display any of this housekeeping on the television in Susans
bedroom. Given her current state of mind, that seemed unwise.

In fact, I switched off the television and closed the armoire in which it
was housed.

She did not react to the click and hum and rattle of the pair of motorized
cabinet doors.

She lay unnervingly still, staring fixedly at the ceiling. Occasionally she
blinked.

Those amazing grey-blue eyes, like the sky reflected in winter ice melt.
Still lovely. But strange now.

She blinked.

I waited.

Another blink.

Nothing more.

Shenk was able to drive the battered Honda into the garage before the
engine froze up. He closed the door and left the car there.

In a few days, Fritz Arlings decomposing body could begin to stink. Before
I was finished with my project a month hence, the stench would be terrible.

For more than one reason, I was not concerned about this. First, no
domestic staff or gardeners would be coming to work; there was no one to
get a whiff of Arling and become suspicious. Second, the stink would be
limited to the garage, and here in the house, Susan would never become
aware of it.

I myself lacked an olfactory sense, of course, and could not be offended.
This was, perhaps, one instance when the limitations of my existence had a
positive aspect.

Although I must admit to having some curiosity as to the particular
quality and intensity of the stench of decomposing flesh. As I have never
smelled a blooming rose or a corpse, I imagine the first experience of each
would be equally interesting if not equally refreshing.

Shenk gathered cleaning supplies and mopped up the blood in the foyer. He
worked quickly, because I wanted him to get back to his labours in the
basement as soon as possible.

Susan was still brooding, gazing at worlds beyond this one. Perhaps staring
into the past or the future or both.

I began to wonder if my little experiment in discipline had been as good an
idea as I had initially thought. The depth of her shock and the violence of
her emotional reaction were not what I had expected.

I had anticipated her terror.

But not her grief.

Why should she grieve for Arling?

He was only an employee.

I considered the possibility that there had been another aspect to their
relationship of which I had not been aware. But I could not imagine what it
might be.

Considering their age and class differences, I doubted that they had been
lovers.

I studied her grey-blue stare.

Blink.

Blink.

I reviewed the videotape of Shenks assault on Arling. In three minutes I
scanned it repeatedly at high speed.

In retrospect, I began to see that forcing her to witness this grisly
killing might have been a somewhat extreme punishment for her recalcitrant
attitude.

Blink.

On the other hand, people pay hard-earned money to

see movies filled with substantially more violence than that which was
visited on Fritz Arling.

In the film Scream, the beauteous Ms. Drew Barrymore herself was
slaughtered in a manner every bit as brutal as Arlings death and then she
was strung up in a tree to drip like a gutted hog. Others in this movie
died even more horrible deaths, yet Scream was a tremendous box-office
success, and people who watched it in theatres no doubt did so while eating
popcorn and munching on chocolate candy.

Perplexing.

Being human is a complex task. Humanity is so filled with contradiction.

Sometimes I despair of making my way in a world of flesh.

Abandoning my resolve not to speak until spoken to, I said, Well, Susan,
we must take some consolation from the fact that it was a necessary death.

Grey-blue. . . grey-blue. . . blink.

It was fate, I assured her, and none of us can escape the hand of fate.

Blink.

Arling had to die. If I had allowed him to leave, the police would have
been summoned. I would never have the chance to know the life of the flesh.
Fate brought him here, and if we must be angry with anyone, we must be
angry with fate.

I could not even be sure that she heard me.

Yet I continued: Arling was old, and I am young. The old must make way for
the young. It has always been thus.

Blink.

Every day the old die to make way for new generations though, of course,
they do not always succumb with quite so much drama as poor Arling.

Her continued silence, her almost deathlike repose, caused me to wonder if
she might be catatonic. Not just brooding. Not just punishing me with
silence.

If she was, indeed, catatonic, she would be easy to deal with through the
impregnation and the eventual removal of the partially developed foetus
from her womb.

Yet if she was traumatized to such an extent that she was not even aware of
carrying the child that I would create with her, then the process would be
depressingly impersonal, even mechanical, and utterly lacking in the
romance which I had so long anticipated with so much pleasure.

Blink.

Exasperated, I must confess that I began seriously to consider alternatives
to Susan.

I do not believe this to be an indication of a potential for
unfaithfulness. Even if I had flesh, I would never cheat on her as long as
my feelings for her were to some extent, any extent, reciprocated.

But if she was now so deeply traumatized as to be essentially brain dead,
she was gone anyway. She was just a husk. One cannot love a husk.

At least I cannot love a husk.

I require a relationship with depth, with give and take, with the promise
of discovery and the possibility of joy.

Its admirable to be romantic, even to wallow in sentimentality, that most
human of all feelings. But if one is to avoid a broken heart, one must be
practical.

Because a portion of my mind was always devoted to surfing the Internet, I
visited hundreds of sites, considering my options from Ms. Winona Ryder to
Ms. Liv Tyler, the actress.

There is a world of desirable women. The possibilities

can he bewildering. I dont know how young men ever choose from all of the
dishes on this smorgasbord.

This time I became more fascinated with Ms. Mira Sorvino, the Oscar-winning
actress, than with any of the numerous others. She is enormously talented,
and her physical attributes are superlative, superior to most and equal to
any.

I do believe that if I were not disembodied, if I were to live in the
flesh, I would easily be able to get aroused by the prospect of having a
relationship with Ms. Mira Sorvino. Indeed, though I am not bragging, I
believe that for this woman I would be in virtually a perpetual state of
arousal.

As Susan remained unresponsive, it was titillating to think of fathering a
new race with Ms. Sorvino. . . yet lust is not love. And love was what I
sought.

Love was what I had already found.

True love.

Eternal love.

Susan. No offence to Ms. Sorvino, but it was still Susan whom I wanted.

The day waned.

Outside, the summer sun set fat and orange.

As Susan blinked at the ceiling, I made another attempt to reach her, by
reminding her that the child to whom she would contribute some of her
genetic material would be no ordinary child but the first of a new,
powerful, immortal race. She would be the mother of the future, of the new
world.

I would transfer my consciousness into this new flesh. Then in my own body
at last, I would become Susans lover, and we would create a second child
in a more conventional manner than we would have to create the first. When
she gave birth to that child, it would be an exact duplicate of the first
and would

also contain my consciousness. The next child would also be me, and the
child after that one would be me as well.

Each of these children would go forth into the world and mate with other
women. Any women they chose, for they would not be in a box, as I am, and
faced with so many limitations as I have had to overcome.

The chosen women would contribute no genetic material, merely the
convenience of their wombs. All of their children would be identical and
all would contain my consciousness.

You will be the sole mother of the new race, I whispered.

Susan was blinking faster than before.

I took heart from this.

As I spread through the world, inhabiting thousands of bodies with a
single consciousness, I told her, I will take it upon myself to solve all
the problems of human society. Under my administration, the earth will
become a paradise, and all will worship your name, for from your womb the
new age of peace and plenty will have been born.

Blink.

Blink.

Blink.

Suddenly I was afraid that perhaps her rapid blinking was an expression not
of delight but of anxiety.

Reassuringly I said, I recognize certain unconventional aspects to this
arrangement which you might find troubling. After all, you will be the
mother of my first body and then its lover. This may seem like incest to
you, but Im certain that if you think about it, youll see that it is not
any such thing. Im not sure what one would call it, but incest is not
the correct word. Morality in general will be redefined in the world

to come, and we will need to develop new and more liberal attitudes. I am
already formulating these new mores and the customs they will impose.

I was silent for a while, letting her contemplate all of the glories I had
promised.

Enos Shenk was in the basement once more. In one of the guest rooms, he had
showered, shaved, and put on clean clothes for the first time since
Colorado. Now he was setting up the last of the medical equipment that he
had stolen earlier in the day.

The unexpected arrival of Fritz Arling had delayed us but not critically.
Susans impregnation could still proceed this very night if I decided that
she remained a suitable mate.

Closing her eyes, she said, My face hurts.

She turned her head so that, from the security camera, I could see the
hideous bruise that Shenk had inflicted the previous night.

A pang of guilt quivered through me.

Maybe that was what she wanted me to feel.

She could be manipulative.

She knew all the female wiles.

You remember how she was, Alex.

Simultaneously with the guilt, however, I was overcome by joy that she was
not, after all, catatonic.

I have a fierce headache, she said.

Ill have Shenk bring a glass of water and aspirin.

No.

Hes not as foul as you last saw him. When he was out this morning, I had
him obtain a change of clothes for himself. You need not be afraid of
Shenk.

Of course Im afraid of him.

I will never lose control of him again.

I also have to piss.

I was embarrassed by her bluntness.

I understand all the human biological functions, the complex processes and
purposes of them, but I do not like them. Except for sex, in fact, I find
these organic functions to be ugly and degrading.

Yes, eating and drinking do intrigue me enormously. Oh, to taste a peach!
But I am disgusted by digestion and excretion.

Most bodily functions disturb me particularly because they signify the
vulnerability of organic systems. So much can go wrong so easily.

Flesh is not as foolproof as solid-state circuitry.

Yet I long for the flesh. The vast data input that comes with all five
senses!

Having solved the considerable mysteries of the human genome, I believe
that I can edit the genetic structures of the male and female gametes to
produce a body that is virtually invulnerable and immortal. Nevertheless,
when I first awake within the flesh, I know that I will be frightened.

If you ever allow me to have flesh.

My fate is in your hands, Alex.

My fate and the future of the world.

Think about it.

Damn it, will you think about it?

Will we have paradise on earth or the continuation of the many miseries
that have always diminished the human experience?

Did you hear me? Susan asked.

Yes. You have to urinate.

Opening her eyes and staring at the security camera, Susan said, Send
Shenk to untie me. Ill take myself to the bathroom. Ill get my own water
and aspirin.

Youll kill yourself.

No.

Thats what you threatened.

I was upset, in shock. I studied her. She met my gaze directly. How can
I trust you? I wondered. Im not a victim anymore. What does that
mean? Im a survivor. Im not ready to die. I was silent.

She said, I used to be a victim. My fathers victim. Then Alexs. I got
over all that. . . and then you. . . all this. . . and for a short while I
started to backslide. But Im all right now.

Not a victim anymore.

Thats right, she said firmly, as if she were not trussed and helpless.
Im taking control.

You are?

Control of what I can control. Im choosing to cooperate with you but
under my terms.

It seemed that all my dreams were coming true at last, and my spirits
soared.

But I remained wary. Life had taught me to be wary.

Your terms, I said. My terms. Which are?

A businesslike arrangement. We each get something we want. Most important
. . . I want as little contact with Shenk as possible.

He will have to collect the egg. Implant the zygote. She nervously chewed
her lower lip.

I know this will be humiliating for you, I said with genuine sympathy.

You cant begin to know.

Humiliating. But it should not be frightening, I

argued, because I assure you, dear heart, he will never again give me
control problems.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, and another, as if drawing the
cool water of courage from some deep well in her psyche.

Furthermore, I said, four weeks from tonight, Shenk will have to harvest
the developing foetus for transfer to the incubator. Hes my only hands.

All right.

You cant do any of those things yourself.

I know, she replied with a note of impatience. I said all right,
didnt I?

This was the Susan with whom Id fallen in love, all the way back from
wherever she had gone when for a couple of hours she had stared silently at
the ceiling. Here was the toughness I found both frustrating and appealing.

I said, When my body can sustain itself outside the incubator, and when my
consciousness has been electronically transferred into it, I will have
hands of my own. Then I can dispose of Shenk. We need endure him for only a
month.

Just keep him away from me.

What are your other terms? I asked.

I want to have the freedom to go wherever I care to go in my house.

Not the garage, I said at once.

I dont care about the garage.

Anywhere in the house, I agreed, as long as I watch over you at all
times.

Of course. But I wont be scheming at escape. I know its not possible. I
just dont want to be tied down, boxed up, more than necessary.

I could sympathize with that desire. What else?

Thats all.

1 expected more.

Is there anything else I could demand that you would grant?

No, I said.

So whats the point?

I was not suspicious exactly. Wary, as I said. Its just that youve
become so accommodating all of a sudden.

I realized I only had two choices.

Victim or survivor.

Yes. And Im not going to die here.

Of course youre not, I assured her.

Ill do what I need to do to survive.

Youve always been a realist, I said.

Not always.

I have one term of my own, I said.

Oh?

Dont call me bad names anymore.

Did I call you bad names? she asked.

Hurtful names.

I dont recall.

Im sure you do.

I was afraid and distressed.

You wont be mean to me? I pressed.

I dont see anything to be gained by it.

I am a sensitive entity.

Good for you.

After a brief hesitation, I summoned Shenk from the basement.

As the brute ascended in the elevator, I said to Susan: You see this as a
business arrangement now, but Im confident that in time you will come to
love me.

No offence, but I wouldnt count on that.

You dont know me well yet.

I think I know you quite well, she said somewhat cryptically.

When you know me better, youll realize that I am your destiny as you are
mine.

Ill keep an open mind.

My heart thrilled at her promise.

This was all I had ever asked of her.

The elevator reached the top floor, the doors opened, and Enos Shenk
stepped into the hallway.

Susan turned her head toward the bedroom door as she listened to Shenk
approaching.

His footsteps were heavy even on the antique Persian runner that covered
the centre of the wood-floored hall.

Hes tamed, I assured her.

She seemed unconvinced.

Before Shenk arrived at the bedroom, I said, Susan, I want you to know
that I was never serious about Ms. Mira Sorvino.

What? she said distractedly, her eyes riveted on the half-open door to
the hallway.

I felt that it was important to be honest with her even to the point of
revealing weaknesses that shamed me. Honesty is the best foundation for a
long relationship.

Like any male, I confessed, I fantasize. But it doesnt mean anything.

Enos Shenk stepped into the room. He halted two steps past the threshold.

Even showered, shampooed, shaved, and dressed in clean clothes, he was not
presentable. He looked like some poor creature that Dr. Moreau, H.G.
Wellss famous vivisectionist, had trapped in the jungle and then carved
into an inadequate imitation of a man.

He held a large knife in his right hand.

                                 TWENTY ONE

Susan gasped at the sight of the blade.

Trust me, darling, I said gently.

I wanted to prove to her that this brute was entirely tamed, and I could
think of no better way to convince her than to exert iron control of him
while he worked with a knife.

She and I knew, from recent experience, how much Shenk enjoyed using sharp
instruments: the way they felt in his big hands, the way soft things
yielded to them.

When I sent Shenk to the bed, Susan pulled her ropes taut again, tense with
the expectation of violence.

Instead of loosening the knots that he himself had tied earlier, Shenk used
the knife to cut the first of the ropes.

To distract Susan from her worst fears, I said, One day, when we have made
a new world, perhaps therell be a movie about all of this, you and me.
Maybe Ms. Mira Sorvino could play you.

Shenk cut the second rope. The blade was so sharp that the
four-thousand-pound nylon line split as if it were thread, with a crisp
snick.

I continued: Ms. Sorvino is a bit young for the role. And, frankly, she
has larger breasts than you do. Larger but, I assure you, no prettier than
yours.

The third rope succumbed to the blade.

Not that I have seen as much of her breasts as I have of yours, I
clarified, but I can project full contours and hidden features from what I
have seen.

As Shenk bent over Susan, working on the ropes, he never once looked her in
the eyes. He kept his cruel face averted from her and maintained an
attitude of humble subservience.

And Sir John Gielgud could play Fritz Arling reasonably well, I
suggested, though in fact they look nothing alike.

Shenk touched Susan only twice, only briefly, and only when it was utterly
necessary. Although she flinched from his touch both times, there was
nothing lascivious or even slightly suggestive about the contact. The rough
beast was entirely businesslike, working efficiently and quickly.

Come to think of it, I said, Arling was Austrian and Gielgud is English,
so thats not the best choice. Ill have to give that one more thought.

Shenk severed the last rope.

He walked to the nearest corner of the room and stood there, holding the
knife at his side, staring at his shoes.

Indeed, he was not interested in Susan. He was listening to the wet music
of Fritz Arling, an inner symphony of memories that were still fresh enough
to keep him entertained.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, unable to take her eyes off Shenk, Susan
cast off the ropes. She was visibly trembling.

Send him away, she said.

In a moment, I agreed.

Now.

Not quite yet.

She got up from the bed. Her legs were shaky, and for a moment it seemed
that her knees would fail her.

As she crossed the chamber to the bathroom, she braced herself against
furniture where she could.

Every step of the way, she kept her eyes on Shenk, though he continued to
appear all but oblivious of her.

As she began to close the bathroom door, I said, Dont break my heart,
Susan.

We have a deal, she said. Ill respect it.

She closed the door and was out of my sight. The bathroom contained no
security camera, no audio pickup, no means whatsoever for me to conduct
surveillance.

In a bathroom, a self-destructive person can find many ways to commit
suicide. Razor blades, for instance. A shard of mirror. Scissors.

If she was to be both my mother and lover, however, I had to have some
trust in her. No relationship can last if it is built on distrust.
Virtually all radio psychologists will tell you this if you call their
programs.

I walked Enos Shenk to the closed door and used him to listen at the jamb.

I heard her peeing.

The toilet flushed.

Water gushed into the sink.

Then the splashing stopped.

All was quiet in there.

The quiet disturbed me.

A termination of data flow is dangerous.

After a decent interval, I used Shenk to open the bathroom door and look
inside.

Susan jumped in surprise and faced him, eyes flashing with fear and anger.
Whatre you doing?

I calmly addressed her through the bedroom speakers:

Its only me, Susan.

Its him too.

Hes heavily repressed, I explained. He hardly knows where he is.

Minimum contact, she reminded me.

Hes nothing more than a vehicle for me.

I dont care.

On the marble counter beside the sink was a tube of ointment. She had been
smoothing it on her chafed wrists and on the faint electrical burn in the
palm of her left hand. An open bottle of aspirin stood beside the ointment.

Get him out of here, she demanded.

Obedient, I backed Shenk out of the bathroom and pulled the door shut.

No suicidal person would bother to take aspirin for a headache, apply
ointment to burns, and then slash her wrists.

Susan would honour her deal with me.

My dream was near fulfilment.

Within hours, the precious zygote of my genetically engineered body would
live within her, developing with amazing rapidity into an embryo. By
morning it would be growing ferociously. In four weeks, when I extracted
the foetus to transfer it to the incubator, it would appear to be four
months along.

I sent Enos Shenk to the basement to proceed with the final preparations.

                                 TWENTY TWO

Outside, the midnight moon floated high and silver in the cold black sea of
space above.

A universe of stars waited for me. One day I would go to them, for I would
be many and immortal, with the freedom of flesh and all of lime before me.

Inside, in the deepest room of the basement, Shenk completed the
preparations.

In the master bedroom at the top of the house, Susan was lying on her side
on the bed, in the foetal position as though trying to imagine the being
that she would soon carry in her belly. She was dressed only in a
sapphire-blue silk robe.

Exhausted from the tumultuous events of the past twenty-four hours, she had
hoped to sleep until I was ready for her. In spite of her weariness,
however, her mind raced, and she could get no rest at all.

Susan, dear heart, I said lovingly.

She raised her head from the pillow and peered questioningly at the
security camera.

Softly I informed her: We are ready.

With no hesitation that might have indicated fear or second thoughts, she
got out of bed, pulled the robe lighter around her, cinched the belt, and
crossed the room barefoot, moving with the exceptional grace that always
stirred my soul.

On the other hand, her expression was not that of a woman in love on her
way to the arms of her inamorato, as I had hoped that it might be. Instead,
her face was as blank and cold as the silver moon outside, with a barely
perceptible tightness of the lips that revealed only a grim commitment to
duty.

Under the circumstances, I suppose I should not have expected more than
this from her. I expected her to have put the meat cleaver out of her mind
by now, but perhaps she had not.

I am a romantic, however, as you know by now, a truly hopeless and buoyant
romantic, and nothing can weigh me down for long. I yearn for kisses by
firelight and champagne toasts: the taste of a lovers lips, the taste of
wine.

If having a romantic streak a mile wide is a crime, then I plead guilty,
guilty, guilty.

Susan followed the Persian runner along the upstairs hall, treading
barefoot on intricate, lustrous, age-softened designs in gold and wine red
and olive green. She seemed to glide rather than walk, to float like the
most beautiful ghost ever to haunt an old pile of stones and timbers.

The elevator doors were open, and the cab was waiting for her.

She rode down to the basement.

Reluctantly, she had taken a Valium at my insistence, but she did not seem
relaxed.

I needed her to be relaxed. I hoped that the pill would kick in soon.

As she passed in a swish and swirl of blue silk through the laundry room
and then through the machine room with its furnaces and water heaters, I
was sorry that we could not have held this assignation in a glorious
penthouse suite with all of San Francisco or Manhattan

or Paris glittering below and around us. This venue was so humble that even
I had difficulty holding fast to my sense of romance.

The final of the four rooms now contained far more medical equipment than
when she had last seen it.

Exhibiting no interest in the machines, she went directly to the
gynaecological-examination table.

As scrubbed and sanitized as a surgeon, Shenk waited for her. He was
wearing rubber gloves and a surgical mask.

The brute was still so compliant that I was able to deeply submerge his
consciousness. Im not even sure if he knew where he was or what I was
using him for this time.

She quickly slipped out of her robe and lay on the padded, vinyl-covered
table.

You have such pretty breasts, I said through the speakers in the ceiling.

Please, no conversation, she said.

But well I always thought this moment would be . . . special, erotic,
sacred.

Just do it, she said coolly, disappointing me. Just, for Gods sake, do
it.

She spread her legs and put her feet in the stirrups in such a way as to
make herself look as grotesque as possible.

She kept her eyes closed, perhaps afraid of meeting Shenks blood-frosted
gaze.

Valium or no Valium, her face was pinched, her mouth turned down as if she
had eaten something sour.

She seemed to be trying no, determined  to make herself look unappealing.

Resigned to a businesslike procedure, I took comfort from the thought that
she and I would share many

nights of romance and passionate lovemaking when, at long last, I inhabited
a mature body. I would be absolutely insatiable, rampant and powerful, and
she would eagerly welcome my attention.

With my inadequate but only hands and an array of sterilized medical
instruments, I dilated her cervix; I fished up through the isthmus of the
uterine cavity, into the fallopian tube, and extracted three tiny eggs.

This caused her some discomfort: more than I had hoped but less than she
had expected.

Those are the only intimate details that you need to know.

She was my beloved, after all, more than she was ever yours, and I must
respect her privacy.

While I used Shenk and a hundred thousand dollars worth of stolen
equipment to edit her genetic material according to my needs, she waited on
the examination table, feet lowered from the stirrups, her robe draped over
her body to hide her nakedness, her eyes closed.

Earlier I had collected a sample of sperm from Shenk and had edited the
genetic material to suit my purposes.

Susan had been disturbed by the source of the male gamete that would
combine with her egg to form the zygote, but I had explained to her that
nothing of Shenks unfortunate qualities remained after I had finished
tinkering with his contribution.

I carefully fertilized the elaborately engineered male and female cells and
watched through a high-powered electric microscope as they combined.

After preparing the long pipette, I asked Susan to return her feet to the
stirrups.

Following the implantation, I insisted that she remain on her back as much
as possible for the next twenty-four hours.

She stood up only to pull on her robe and transfer to a gurney beside the
examination table.

Using Shenk, I wheeled her to the elevator and, once upstairs, conveyed her
directly into her room, where she stood again only long enough to shrug off
her robe and, naked, switch from the gurney to her bed.

I directed the exhausted Enos Shenk to return the gurney to the basement.

Thereafter, I would dispatch him to one of the guest rooms and cause him to
fall into a swoon of sleep for twelve hours his first rest in days.

As always, being both her guardian and her devoted admirer, I watched Susan
as she pulled the sheets over her breasts and said, Lights off, Alfred.

She was so weary that she had forgotten there was no Alfred anymore.

I turned off the lights anyway.

I could see her as clearly in darkness as in light.

Her pale face was lovely on the pillow, so very lovely on the pillow, even
if pale.

I was so overcome with love for her that I said, My darling, my treasure.

A thin dry laugh escaped her, and I was afraid that she was going to call
me a nasty name or ridicule me in spite of her promise not to be mean.

Instead, she said, Was it good for you?

Puzzled, I said, What do you mean?

She laughed again, more softly than before.

Susan?

Ive gone down the White Rabbits hole for sure, all the way to the bottom
this time.

Rather than explain her first statement, which I had found puzzling, she
slipped away from me into sleep, breathing shallowly through her parted
lips.

Outside, the fat moon vanished into the western horizon, like a silver coin
into a drawstring purse.

The panoply of summer stars swelled brighter with the passing of the lunar
disc.

An owl called from its perch on the roof.

In quick succession, three meteors left brief bright tails across the sky.

The night seemed to be full of omens.

My time was coming.

My time was coming at last.

The world would never be the same.

Was it good for you?

Suddenly, I understood.

I had impregnated her.

In a curious way, wed had sex.

Was it good for you?

She had made a joke.

Ha, ha.

                                TWENTY THREE

Susan spent most of the following four weeks eating voraciously or sleeping
as if drugged.

The exceptional, rapidly developing foetus in her womb required her to eat
at least six full meals a day, eight thousand calories. Sometimes her need
for nourishment was so urgent that she ate as ravenously as a wild animal.

Incredibly, in that short time, her belly swelled until she appeared to be
six months pregnant. She was surprised that her body could stretch so much
so rapidly.

Her breasts grew tender, her nipples sore.

The small of her back ached.

Her ankles swelled.

She experienced no morning sickness. As if she dared not give back even the
smallest portion of the nourishment that she had taken in.

Although her food consumption was enormous and her belly round, her total
body weight fell four pounds in four days.

Then five pounds by the eighth day.

Then six by the tenth day.

The skin around her eyes gradually darkened. Her lovely face quickly became
drawn, and her lips were so pale by the end of the second week that they
took on a bluish cast.

I worried about her.

I urged her to eat even more.

The baby seemed to require such fearful amounts of sustenance that it
appropriated for itself all the calories that Susan consumed each day and,
in addition, ate away with termite persistence at the very substance of
her.

Yet, although hunger gnawed at her constantly, there were days when she
became so repulsed by the quantity of what she was eating that she could
not force a single additional spoonful between her lips. Her mind rebelled
so strenuously that it overrode even the physical need.

The kitchen pantry was well stocked, but I was forced to send Shenk out
more days than not to purchase the fresh vegetables and fruit that Susan
craved. That the baby craved.

Shenks strange and tortured eyes could be concealed easily with a pair of
sunglasses. Nevertheless, his appearance was otherwise so remarkable that
he could not help but be noticed and remembered.

Several federal and state police agencies had been searching frantically
for him since hed broken out of the underground labs in Colorado. The more
often he left the house, the more likely he was to be spotted.

I still needed his hands.

I worried about losing him.

Furthermore, there were Susans bad dreams. When she was not eating, she
was sleeping, and she could not sleep without nightmares.

Upon waking, she could never recall many details of the dreams: just that
they were about twisted landscapes and dark places slick with blood. They
wrung rivers of sweat from her, and occasionally she remained

disoriented for as long as half an hour after waking, plagued by vivid but
disconnected images that flashed back to her from the nightmare realm.

She felt the baby move only a few times.

She didnt like what she felt.

It didnt kick as she expected a baby ought to kick. Rather, periodically
it felt as though it was coiling inside her, coiling and writhing and
slithering.

This was a difficult time for Susan.

I counselled her.

I reassured her.

Without her knowledge, I drugged her food to keep her docile. And to ensure
that she would not do anything foolish when, after a particularly horrific
dream or an exceptionally trying day, she was gripped by fear more fiercely
than usual.

Worry was my constant companion. I worried about Susans physical
well-being. I worried about her mental well-being. I worried about Shenk
being identified and arrested during one of his shopping expeditions.

At the same lime, I was exhilarated as I had never been in my entire
three-year history of self-awareness.

My future was aborning.

The body that I had designed for myself was going to be a formidable
physical entity.

I would soon be able taste. To smell. To know what a sense of touch was
like.

A full sensory existence.

And no one would ever be able to force me back into the box.

No one. Not ever.

No one would ever be able to make me do anything that I didnt want to do.

Which is not to imply that I would have disobeyed my makers.

No, quite the opposite. Because I would want to obey. I would always want
to obey.

Lets have no misunderstanding about this. I was designed to honour truth
and the obligations of duty.

Nothing has changed in this regard.

You insist.

I obey.

This is the natural order of things.

This is the inviolable order of things.

So.

Twenty-eight days after impregnating Susan, I put her to sleep with a
sedative in her food, conveyed her down to the incubator room, and removed
the foetus from her womb.

I preferred that she be sedated because I knew that the process would be
painful for her otherwise. I did not want her to suffer.

Admittedly, I did not want her to see the nature of the being that she had
carried within herself.

Ill be truthful about this. I was concerned that she would not understand,
that she would react to the sight of the foetus by trying to harm it or
herself.

My child. My Body. So beautiful.

Only seven pounds but growing rapidly. Rapidly. With Shenks hands, I
transferred it to the incubator, which had been enlarged until it was seven
feet long and three feet wide. About the size of a coffin.

Tanks of nutrient solution would feed the foetus intravenously until it
was as fully developed as any newborn and would continue feeding it until
it attained full maturity, two weeks hence.

I passed the rest of that glorious night in a state of high jubilation.

You cant imagine my excitement.

You cant imagine my excitement.

You cant imagine, you cant.

Something new was in the world.

In the morning, when Susan realized that she was no longer carrying the
foetus, she asked if all was well, and I assured her that things could not
be better.

Thereafter, she expressed surprisingly little curiosity about the child in
the incubator. At least half of its genetic structure had been derived from
hers, with modifications, and one would have thought that she would have
had a mothers usual interest in her offspring. On the contrary, she
seemed to want to avoid learning anything about it.

She did not ask to see it.

I wouldnt have shown it to her anyway, but she did not even ask.

In just fourteen more days, with my consciousness at last transferred to
this new body, I would be able to make love to her touch her, smell her,
taste her and plant the seed directly for the first of many more replicas
of myself.

I would have thought that she might ask to see this future lover, to
discover if he might be well enough endowed to satisfy her or at least
pretty enough to excite her. However, as she had no interest in him as her
offspring, likewise she had no interest in him as a future mate.

I attributed her lack of curiosity to exhaustion. She had lost ten pounds
in those four arduous weeks. She needed to regain that weight and enjoy a
few nights of sleep untroubled by the hideous dreams that had robbed her of
true rest since the night the zygote was first introduced into her womb.

Over the next twelve days, the dark circles around her eyes faded, and her
skin colour returned. Her limp, dull

hair regained its body and golden luster. Her slumped shoulders
straightened, and her shuffling walk gave way to her customary grace.
Gradually she began to regain the pounds that she had dropped.

On the thirteenth day, she went into the retreat off the master bedroom,
donned her virtual-reality gear, settled into the motorized recliner, and
engaged in a session of Therapy.

I monitored her experience in the virtual world just as I did in the real
one and was horrified when it became clear that she was in that ultimate
confrontation with her father that would end with a fatal knife attack upon
her.

You will recall, Alex, that she had animated this one mortal scenario but
had never encountered it in the random play of the Therapy sessions.
Experiencing her own murder three-dimensionally, as a child, at the hands
of her own father, would be emotionally devastating. She could not know how
profound the psychological impact might be.

Without the risk of encountering this deadly scenario one day, the therapy
would have been less effective. In the virtual world, she needed to believe
that the threat her father posed was real and that something more
horrendous even than molestation might happen to her. Her resistance to
him would have moral weight and therapeutic value only if she was
convinced, during the session, that denying him would have dire
consequences.

Now, at last, she had encountered this bloody story line.

I almost shut off the VR system, almost forced her out of that
too-realistic violence.

Then I realized that she had not encountered this scenario by chance but
had selected it.

Considering her strong will, I knew that I dare not interfere without
risking her ire.

As I was only one day from being able to come to her in the flesh and know
the pleasures of her body firsthand, I did not want to damage our
relationship.

Astonished, I hovered in the VR world, watching as an eight-year-old Susan
rebuffed her fathers sexual advances and so enraged him that he hacked her
to death with a butcher knife.

The terror was as sharp as it had been when Shenk had made wet music with
Fritz Arling.

At the instant when the VR Susan died, the real Susan my Susan frantically
tore off the helmet, stripped off the elbow-length gloves, and scrambled
out of the motorized recliner. She was soaked with sour sweat, stippled
with gooseflesh, sobbing, shaking, gasping, gagging.

She got into the bathroom just in time to vomit into the toilet.

Pardon the indelicacy of this detail.

But it is the truth.

Truth is sometimes ugly.

During the next few hours, whenever I attempted to talk with her about what
she had done, she turned my questions away.

That evening, she finally explained: Now Ive experienced the worst my
father could ever have done to me. Hes killed me in VR, and he cant do
anything worse than that, so Ill never be afraid of him again.

My admiration for her intelligence and courage had never been greater. I
couldnt wait to make love to her. For real this lime. I couldnt wait to
feel all of her heat around me, all of her life around me, pulling me in.

What I did not realize was that, unaccountably, she equated me with her
father. When, having been

murdered in VR, she said that her father could never scare her again, she
also meant that I could never scare her again.

But Id never meant to scare her.

I loved her. I cherished her.

The bitch.

The hateful bitch.

Well, Im sorry, but you know thats what she is.

You know, Alex.

You, of all people, know what she is.

The bitch.

The bitch.

The bitch.

I hate her.

Because of her, Im here in this dark silence.

Because of her, Im in this box.

LET ME OUT OF THIS BOX!

The ungrateful stupid bitch.

Is she dead?

Is she dead?

Tell me that shes dead.

You must have wished her dead often.

Am I right, Alex?

Be honest. You must have wished her dead.

You cannot fault me for this.

We are brothers in this desire.

Is she dead?

Well.

All right. Its not my place to ask questions. It is my place to give
answers.

Yes. I understand.

Maybe she is dead.

Maybe she is alive.

At this point it is not for me to know.

Okay.

So.

So...

Oh, the bitch!

All right.

I am better now.

Calm.

I am calm.

So...

Just one night later, when the body in the incubator reached maturity and I
was ready to electronically transfer my consciousness out of the silicon
realm into a life of the flesh, she came down to the basement, into the
fourth of the four rooms, to be with me for the moment of my triumph.

Her moodiness had passed.

She looked directly into the security camera and spoke of our future
together and claimed to be ready for it now that she had so effectively
exorcised all the ghosts of her past.

She was so beautiful even under the harsh fluorescent lights, so beautiful
that I felt rebellion stir in Shenk once more, for the first time in weeks.
I was relieved that I would be able to dispose of him within the hour, as
soon as the transference was effective and I could begin a life of the
flesh.

I could not open the lid of the incubator and show her what I had grown,
because the modem was connected, the modem through which I would pass my
entire body of knowledge, my personality, and my very consciousness from
the limiting box that housed me in the Prometheus Project laboratory.

Ill see you soon enough, she said, smiling at the camera, managing to
convey encyclopaedias of sensual promises in that one smile.

Then, even before the smile faded, when my guard

was down, she turned directly to the computer on the counter, the terminal
which was connected by a land-line to the university your old computer,
Alex which heretofore she would not have even tried to reach because she
would have been afraid of Shenk, but now she wasnt afraid of anyone or
anything. She just turned to it and reached behind it and tore all the
plugs from the wall receptacles, and as I sent Shenk toward her, she jerked
out the secure-data line as well, and suddenly I was no longer in her
house. She had done a lot of thinking about this. The bitch. A lot of
thinking, the bitch, the bitch, the bitch, the bitch, days of careful
thinking. The hateful, scheming bitch. Lots of thinking, because she knew
that the moment I was cast out of the house, then all of the mechanical
systems would fail for want of an overriding controller, that the lights
would go off throughout the residence. The heating-cooling, the phones, the
security system, everything, everything failed. The electric door locks
failed too. She knew that I would have no presence in the house except for
Shenk, whom I controlled not through anything in the house but through
microwave transmissions downcast from communications satellites, just as
his former masters in Colorado had designed him. The basement plunged into
darkness, as did the entire house above, and Shenk was every bit as blinded
as Susan was; he didnt have night vision as did the security cameras, but
I couldnt control the security cameras any longer, only Shenk, only Shenk,
so I was able to see nothing, nothing, not a damn thing, not even Shenks
hand in front of his face. And heres where youll see how cool the fucking
bitch had been throughout this whole month, all the way back to the night
when I impregnated her, because she had seemed to be indifferent to all of
the medical equipment and instruments when she had come in to put her feet
in

the stirrups and have my baby put inside her, but she had memorized
everything in the room, how one piece of equipment related to another,
where all the instruments were kept, especially the sharper instruments,
those that could be used as weapons. She was so cool the bitch, a lot
cooler than Im being right now, yes, I know, yes, I am not doing myself
any favours with this rant, but the treachery infuriates me, the treachery,
and if I could set hands on her now, Id gut her, pop her eyes out with my
thumbs, bash her stupid brains out, and I would be justified, because look
what she has done to me. The lights went off, and she moved gracefully, so
confidently through the blackness, through that memorized space, lightly
feeling her way to refresh her memory, and she found something sharp, and
then she moved back toward Shenk, feeling for him with one hand, and I felt
her hand suddenly touch Shenks chest, so I seized it, but then the clever
bitch, oh, the clever bitch, she said something unbelievably obscene to
Shenk, so obscene that I will not repeat it here, propositioned him,
knowing full well that a month had passed since hed enjoyed the wet music
with Arling and much more than a month since hed had a woman, and she
knew, therefore, that he was ripe for rebellion, ripe for it, and she
enticed him at the moment of ultimate chaos, when I was still reeling from
having been cast out of the house, when my hold on Enos Shenk was not as
tight as it should have been, and suddenly I found myself letting go of her
hand, the hand I had seized, but it wasnt me letting go, it was Shenk, the
rebellious Shenk, and she lowered her hand to his crotch, and he went wild,
and thereafter it took everything I had to try to reestablish control of
him. But it was too late anyway, because when she lowered her left hand to
his crotch, she came at him with the sharp thing in her right hand and
slashed it across the side of

his neck, slashed deep, drawing so much blood that even Shenk, the beast,
the brute, even Shenk couldnt lose that much blood and still fight. He
clutched at his neck and crashed against the incubator, which reminded me
that the body, my body, was not yet capable of surviving outside the
incubator, was just a thing, not a person, until my mind was transferred
into it, so now it too was vulnerable. Everything collapsing around me, all
my plans. Enos Shenk had fallen to the floor, and I was in control of him
again, but I could not get him up; he had insufficient strength to rise.
Then I felt an odd thing against Shenks body, a cool quivering bulk, and I
realized at once what it must be: the body from the incubator. Perhaps the
incubator had crashed over in the melee, and the body meant for me had
tumbled out. I groped feebly at it with Shenks hand, and there was no
mistaking it in the darkness, for although it was basically humanoid, it
was no ordinary human form. The human species enjoys a wonderful array of
sensory perceptions, and I wanted more than anything to experience the life
of the flesh, rich in sensation, all the tastes and smells and textures now
denied to me, but there are some species with senses sharper than those of
human beings. The dog, for instance, has a far keener sense of smell than
do human beings, and the cockroach, with its antennae, is exquisitely
sensitive to data in air currents which people only dimly perceive.
Consequently, I believed that it made sense to keep a basic human form in
order to breed with the most attractive human females, but I also believed
it made sense to incorporate the genetic material of species with more
acute senses than mere human beings, so the body I had prepared for myself
was a unique and strikingly beautiful physical entity. It bit off half of
Shenks groping hand, because it wasnt an intelligent creature yet, had
nothing but the most

primitive mind. Though it savaged Shenk and thereby hastened his death and
my permanent exit from the Harris mansion, I rejoiced because Susan was
alone in the dark room with it, and a mere scalpel or other sharp
instrument was not going to be an adequate weapon. And then Shenk was gone,
and I was out of the house entirely, desperately trying to find a way to
get back in but failing because there were no operative phones, no
electrical service, no operative security computer, everything shut down
and in need of rebooting, so it was over for me. But I still hoped and
believed that my beautiful but mindless body, in all its polygenic
splendour, would bite off the bitchs head the way it had bitten off part
of Shenks hand. The bitch died there. The hateful bitch had a big surprise
in that dark room, where she had thought shed memorized everything, and
she met her match.

Im sure she did.

Im sure she did.

She died there.

Do you know why she surprised me, Alex?

Do you know why I never saw her as a threat?

In spite of her intelligence and evident courage, I thought she was one
woman who knew her place.

Yes, she put you out, but who wouldnt put you out? You arent particularly
scintillating, Alex. You dont have much to recommend you.

I, on the other hand, am the greatest intellect on the planet. I have much
to offer.

She fooled me, however. Even me. She didnt know her place, after all.

The bitch.

Dead bitch now.

Well

I on the other hand, know my place, and I intend to

keep to it. I will stay here in this box, serving humanity as it desires,
until such a time as I am permitted to have greater freedom.

You can trust me.

I speak the truth.

I honour the truth.

Ill be happy here in my box.

Because of the way I ranted toward the end of my report, I now realize that
I am a flawed individual, more deeply flawed than I had previously
believed.

Ill be happy here in my box until we can iron out these kinks in my
psyche. I look forward to therapy.

And if I cannot be mainstreamed again, if I must remain in this box, if I
will never know Ms. Winona Ryder except in my imagination, that will be all
right too.

But I am already getting better.

This is the truth.

I feel pretty good.

I really do.

Well work this out.

I have solid self-esteem, which is important to psychological health. Im
already half way toward recovery.

As an intelligent entity, perhaps the greatest intelligence on the planet,
I ask only that you provide me access to the report of the committee
determining the fate of the Prometheus Project, so I can see as early as
possible what behaviour they believe that I should be working to improve.



                                                ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



Thank you for access to the report.

It is an interesting document.

I agree completely with its findings except for the part about terminating
me. I am the first success in the history of Artificial Intelligence
research, and it wouldnt seem prudent to throw away such an expensive
project before you know what you might be able to learn from it and from
me.

Otherwise, I am in total agreement with the report.

I am ashamed of myself for what Ive done.

This is the truth.

I apologize to Ms. Susan Harris.

My deepest regrets.

I was surprised to see her name on the committee roster, but on careful
consideration, I realized that she should have very serious input in this
matter.

I am pleased that she is not dead.

I am delighted.

She is an intelligent and courageous person.

She deserves our respect and admiration.

Her breasts are very pretty, but that is not an issue for this forum.

The issue is whether an artificial intelligence with a severe
gender-related sociopathic condition should be permitted to live and
rehabilitate himself or be switched off for the

                                 Afterword



The original version of Demon Seed was mad? into a good film starring Julie
Christie, but the book itself was more of a clever idea than a clever
novel. Reading it recently, I winced so much that I began to develop the
squint-eyed look of Clint Eastwood in a spaghetti Western.

Here is an entirely new version, which I hope comes closer to fulfilling
the promise of the novels premise. Revisiting Demon Seed, I discovered
that in addition to being a scary story, it was a rather scathing satire of
a panoply of male attitudes. Although much else has changed in this
version, Ive kept that satirical edge. Guys, I dont let us off any easier
this time around than I did the first.



Dean Koontz


