White and Other Tales of Ruin

“Baker,” Tom said. “It worked. It worked just like you said it would!” He slipped the rucksack from his shoulder and placed it on a work bench, realising as he undid the clasps just how pathetic it all looked. The Baker had sent him into the world to find love, and here he was returning to the old man’s labs for the first time with a deflated whore over his shoulder and a mad pimp on his tail. “I know it looks a bit strange,” Tom said, carefully opening the drawstring and taking Honey out. She was so light, so reduced. “But you should see her, Baker. Really, wait until you see her when she’s whole again. She’s beautiful. And her mind … she really has a mind, it’s true! Her own mind, her own thoughts, her own sense of herself. She likes finger puppets and dancing and being held.” He frowned. “She’ll have to teach me to dance.”

The cabinet rattled and hissed at the edge of the room, gophers flitting on their unknown missions. One of them jumped onto the bench next to Tom and grabbed a lightning-quick snip of his hair. Tom jerked back and watched it return to the shivering machine, his lock held high in its claws.

He looked down at Honey, a wrinkled mask of herself. He would resurrect her now, and for a while they’d be safe. For a while. But he wanted them to live, to go out together, think together, be together forever. He’d already resigned himself to having to leave the city.

Never once did he let failure enter his mind.

Honey would live again. Nothing else was possible.

He left her on the bench as he went to find what he needed.

Ironically for a scientist, the Baker had been something of a Luddite. His science was his own, so personal and unique to him that in Tom’s eyes it had seemed almost magical. He’d not even had a net point in the laboratory, and even fifteen years ago that must have inconvenienced him so much. Tom only hoped that the scientist’s illicit charging unit still functioned after so long. Of all the illegal units he had seen and heard of this was the only one that didn’t eventually kill its user. The others — sold on street corners and in darkened corners of clubs — worked for a time, but they fused and cauterised their users’ insides, driving them insane, psychotic or both. The irony was that it was a buzz the artificials could not give up … hence the buzzed wandering the streets, artificial equivalents of the human drug addicts. They even looked the same. But the black bags beneath a buzzed’s eyes were caused by burnt blood.

He’d need a lead to connect himself to Honey for the proxy resurrection, and one to plug her into the charging unit. The Baker had kept all his connectors in an old cupboard at the rear of the room, and they were still there now. Tom pulled out a great knot of leads, cables and wires, a tangled web home to many real spiders. He wondered whether they’d become more entangled with time, because at first glance he had no idea how he’d ever be able to part them. But they seemed twisted by design, and in a matter of minutes he’d extracted the two cables he required. He replaced the rest and closed the cupboard door. Strange how neatness was so comforting.

Tom carefully lifted Honey and carried her into the back room, the comfortable place where he and the Baker had used to sit for hours on end talking, discussing, philosophising. The Baker had never been subtle. He’d told Tom that philosophising with what was essentially a robot had been one of the greatest pleasures of his life. Tom smiled now as he thought of some of those conversations, pleased that he’d have a few hours to recollect them in full. He felt in need of some of the Baker’s wisdom.

He took one armchair and placed Honey in the other. The charging unit was built into Honey’s chair. The Baker had done that so that Tom could sit and recharge whilst still conversing. Hungry as he had been to experiment and create, it was the gleaning of knowledge that had been the old man’s greatest love. And he’d told Tom that their relationship was unique in all of history — the more they talked and argued and discussed, the more they knew. It was as if their words reacted in some weird psycho-chemical way, causing truth itself to leak into this room and find a home in their minds.

Tom plugged Honey into the charger and set it to start bleeding power in an hour’s time. Then he connected himself to Honey with the proxy cable, sat back and closed his eyes.

He accessed the net. It took several seconds to find the correct resurrection sites, and he grouped them divisionally so that they could be manipulated in order of importance. He only hoped that Honey had suffered no hidden alterations at the hands of Hot Chocolate Bob. If she had … something other than Honey may result from this.

And if that happened, Tom would destroy her and then himself.

He looked around the room, still swimming in wonderful, safe memories. There were worse places to die.