“Cute idea. You think that makes us some sort of resuscitated zombies? No, sorry, those are just rumors floating around the System, Vasily. I was never alive, so I don’t miss what I never had. But if you really want to know, sometimes I dream while I’m awake.”
“About electric sheep?”
“Good one. I didn’t know you were a Blade Runner fan. But it so happens I have a friend on the Burroughs whose name is Deckard, would you believe it, and he loaned me the novel and the movie. They’re both good.”
“Wow, a well-educated cop and everything, I’m in luck. Anyways, what do positronic police robots dream about? Catching criminals, or pozzie women?”
“You know we don’t have sex, Vasily. But work isn’t everything for us, either. For example, right now I’m dreaming how sweet it would be if a micrometeorite cracked your helmet and shut you up, once and for all.”
“Ha. Nice. Piece of advice, robot: instead of dreaming, try praying. And you know what? I love you too, Raymond.”
We were floating through the infinite void, nothing above and nothing below, our helmets held tight against each other. With his extraordinary engineering skills, Vasily had figured out how to tie us together, harness to harness, so our helmets would be in contact and we could talk. There’s no sound in a vacuum, but it travels fine through solids. Vasily’s words resonated through my whole suit.
“I always thought there wouldn’t be any room to move around in the asteroid belt, but look how empty this is. A guy could die of boredom. I’d even take a comet passing by now and then, it’d make a nice show.”
“Vasily, at the speed we’re going, we could float for thousands of years even inside the rings of Saturn without running into a particle larger than an atom. Space is mainly a vacuum—didn’t they teach you that in school?”
“Yeah, and they also taught me not to squeeze my pimples, and that reality really exists and isn’t just an illusion of our senses. But I guess they didn’t teach me very well: I’ve always squeezed my pimples, and don’t you think the asteroid belt is maybe as crowded as I said, it’s just that we see it like this?”
“You’re starting to worry me, Afortunado. Maybe we’ve been floating here for too many hours. Look me in the eye. That’s the way to solipsism. You’re starting to deny reality, and you’ll end up saying you’re God.”
“….”
“Don’t you go quiet on me, for the love of—whatever it is you love. Talk to me. Dammit, talk to me!”
“Chill, Raymond. I’m not that far gone. Or did you forget I spent three years in the hole on your pretty little station and stayed sane? I was just joking. And I wanted to find out how positronic robots cursed.”
“Heh. I love you too, Vasily, you know?”
“Good thing, because as tight as we’re tied together, if we didn’t love each other—”
The damned destroyer had found our shuttle just five minutes after we abandoned ship. But they didn’t open fire and obliterate it, as we had hoped; Makrow was an old dog who knew all the tricks, and he must have known the shuttle would be empty and undefended. In any case, they checked to be sure. We hid behind a couple of frozen clouds and watched as a figure in a pressure suit, which from its enormous size could only have been the Colossaur ex-bagger, left the pirate ship and entered ours. I cursed myself for neglecting to rig up at least an explosive booby trap in the airlock or something. We could have been down one enemy. Like I said, after everything’s over it’s easy to see where you slipped up.
“Raymond, do you believe in God?”
“Good question. I guess not. It hasn’t been proved that such an entity is real. But I don’t have enough material to deny his existence either. Let’s say: I have no opinion. I’m a skeptic, waiting for evidence.”
“I understand. For us humans it’s easy: God was the one who created us in his image and likeness. You guys, on the other hand, knowing you’re the aliens’ creatures—I guess it’s better to deny God than to accept a god like that. If I had to pray to a Grodo I’d die of shame.”
“It isn’t that easy, Vasily. If byzantine arguments and theological muddles are your thing, try this one: God used the aliens and the humans to create us, as a living symbol that we’re all equal before Him. I’m not going to defend the idea, but doesn’t it seem perfectly possible? We pozzies would be the best of both cultures.”
“Hey, buratino, that ain’t bad if what you wanna do is pump up your ego. But let’s change the subject or I’ll start to believe that God created the universe for my own personal suffering. How old are you, Raymond? Did you have any sort of childhood?”
“You gotta stop with the dumb questions. You know perfectly well all pozzies are the same age, fifty-seven. We were all created when the aliens arrived, when the William S. Burroughs was built. And we were born—or rather, assembled—as adults. Who would have any respect for a child police officer, even if he was a robot? Better we talk about you, Vasily Fernández. How did you choose this life?”
“Sorry, Raymond, nobody chooses to be a crook. It’s what you do for survival when you got no other options. How many possibilities you think a kid like me—no parents, no family—had? Was I supposed to mortgage forty years of my life so a corporation would pay for my studies and let me become an engineer? Or maybe buy a ship, become a trader, and haggle with aliens on your station? Yeah, I could have done that, I guess—but it never occurred to me. I was too worried each morning might be my last. The life of a child alone in the world ain’t easy. It don’t get any better when you’re a teenager alone. So—look here, buddy, let’s quit gabbing for a while, before I say a couple of things you wouldn’t want to hear.”
“Okay, Vasily, as you wish.”
After a thorough search to be sure the shuttle was empty, the bad guys blew it up, of course. Good thing we were far away. Then the Chimera started hunting in the vicinity like a shark circling a shipwrecked sailor’s raft.
Five days had gone by since then. Not a minute more or less. It occurred to me that having a computer built into your brain can sometimes be a defect. I figured my pal must have already lost his sense of time, if not his mind altogether. In a way I envied him. He was beyond all responsibility. Not me. I had to keep talking to him, constantly, even when he refused to answer: if anything stood between him and madness, it was my being here, always trying to strike up conversations, which began to seem more and more incoherent to me.
“Raymond, where’d we screw up?”
“Huh?”
“You know. Those two novels by your guy Chandler you told me from memory—in the end, the good guys always win. Maybe they get beat up and arrested and worse along the way, but they win. So, what did we do wrong?”
“Well, it isn’t all over yet. Sometimes real life isn’t like a novel.”
“Hey, that was supposed to be my line! Look, I think our problem is, I ain’t one of your honest but unorthodox private eyes. I ain’t even a cop, just another crook. Fighting fire with fire don’t always work, looks like.”
“That’s not your fault, Vasily. You did your part, and you did it well. You went above and beyond. If you hadn’t put your powers to work, most likely we wouldn’t be here now, and I’m very grateful to you for it.”