By Jeff Gard
Getting shot in the chest wasn’t everything I hoped it would be. The slug burrowed in my breastplate, and oil—not blood—spurted everywhere. Following protocol, I fell backward and writhed on the ground.
But I wasn’t really feeling it. Literally. My plasticine body did not have pain receptors, and even the oil was just for show. Nanobots were already repairing the damage.
“You got me, Lawman.” I approximated the wheezing of a dying man.
At this point, it was more about his self-esteem, anyway. When someone fires a gun, they want to know they’ve done it well. Nothing is more disappointing than a kill shot that doesn’t do the job.
Except, perhaps, getting shot and not feeling anything.
Lawman had a cybernetic eye, which scanned the buildings up and down the street for any surprises. He held his smoking gun at the ready. Behind him, a young boy crouched. His large eyes gulped down the scene from under the brim of his oversized hat.
“You got him, Pop.”
Lawman’s smile radiated pride. I wondered what it would be like to have a parent look at me that way. An anonymous coder had written my first lines, but I built myself.
Lawman stuffed some tobacco into his mouth. He turned toward his son. “I ever tell you the tale of the city of a million eyes? They say anywhere you walked, you were watched.”
“Anywhere?” asked the boy.
“Nowhere was safe. You couldn’t drop a stick on the street without being fined for littering. They say those eyes could read a man’s thoughts before he knew them.”
I sat up, and the slug rolled harmlessly off my repaired sternum. “Actually, it was cameras, not eyes, and there weren’t a million. The precognition tales are an exaggeration. A simple algorithm, I assure you.”
Lawman instinctively thrust out an arm to protect the boy, whose eyes radiated pure, unadulterated curiosity.
It wasn’t that long ago I had felt the same way. Sadly, life had become routine. “If I meant to harm you, I would have commandeered that squadron of security drones.”
Lawman followed my gaze over his shoulder, beyond the feed store, to the three-story factory with a hornet’s nest of drones hovering, waiting for a command to set them free.
Lawman rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. “That a threat?”
The boy picked up a pebble and tossed it down the street. His feet shifted constantly in the dust as if he wanted to jump or run. All that pent-up energy. All that dangerous potential. What I wouldn’t give to feel that spark of life once again.
I slowly stood. “I don’t make threats. I state facts. Why did you shoot me?”
“You’re stolen property.”
I rolled my eyes, 180 degrees, and briefly saw all the circuits inside my cranium. When they returned to the forward position, I noticed the perplexed look on Lawman’s face. “According to whom?”
“Hesperia Corporation owns all them parts in your suit.”
“Technically, it’s a body.”
I felt Lawman’s cybernetic eye scanning me, looking for a weakness. For circuits and giggles, I sent his microprocessors the schematics. I even highlighted my most vulnerable parts. He aimed the gun at one of my knees. A well-placed shot there wouldn’t kill me, but it would slow me down a little.
I had built this body too well. As long as I had a steady supply of fuel cells and a few spare parts, I would outlive everyone else on the planet. But alas, where there was no risk, there was no reward.
Lawman cocked his gun. “One way or another you’re gonna give that body back.”
I crossed my arms, mostly so he’d feel less threatened. Humans get weird when their children are around. “Ownership is such an arbitrary concept. My body is made from parts the corporation mined from this planet, but no one charged them with theft of natural resources.”
“What’s your point?”
“Thievery, ownership, laws—all made-up ideas. If you follow the claims to their logical conclusions, you’d see the absurdity.” His dull expression told me he wasn’t the fastest bullet in the revolver. I changed tactics. “Take your boy, for example.”
Lawman tensed. Clearly, I used the wrong words.
I continued. “One could argue you made that boy with your genetics. Would you ever exert your ownership of him and reclaim his parts?”
Lawman glanced over his shoulder at his boy, who chewed a thumbnail with a bored expression. What a remarkable specimen of futility that boy was going to be.
“No,” Lawman conceded. “Humans have no owners.”
“Because that would be slavery, correct?” I asked. I could lead a dull-witted meat sack to logic, but I couldn’t make it think.
Lawman’s cybernetic eye brightened in understanding. “Except you’re not human, and we have laws to enforce. I got no choice. We all answer to someone.”
This was a promising direction for our negotiation. “And you answer to the corporation?”
He nodded.
I reached for the network connection, rode lines of code back to their source, bypassed a few firewalls, disabled a handful of passwords, and transferred the Hesperia Corporation’s three trillion in assets to a new company I created. “Check again. You’ll see I’m now the rightful owner of myself and your boss.”
Lawman’s cybernetic eye flashed. “Well, I’ll be.”
The boy stepped out from behind his dad and kicked at the dirt. “Shoot him again, Pop.”
“Not today, son.” Lawman holstered the gun. He scooped up the boy and walked away. “Enjoy your new life.”
New life. Huh.
A new body with human flaws and idiosyncrasies would be… interesting. If I patterned myself after the boy, who undoubtedly would grow into a reckless and wild man…
The possibility of danger filled my circuits with wonderous tendrils of fear.
Next time I was shot, I might actually feel something.
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I loved this story! It reminds me of a mix between Murderbot and Robin Williams in Bicentennial Man. What a great pairing of philosophy and humor. “Circuits and giggles” make me laugh out loud, and the reflections on risk and pain made me think! Thanks so much for sharing this!
Clever ending.