I have the sudden desire to get back into long-form writing, and The Mid-life Crisis of the Last Human- Being on Earth is my working title for a science-fiction piece about technological distraction, loneliness, and the future of humanity. This is the first chapter. Maybe I'll actually finish it, unlike my previous ten or so novel attempts.
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Welcome to the Human Race
The waiting room is full of Zombies. They stare into space with that particular vacancy, a backward rolling of the eyes, that tells the sentient viewer that they’re deep down the rabbit hole, searching for that next sweet dopamine fix. The guy to my right is lying back with his mouth agape, hands groping the air to fondle imaginary breasts that are, from his perspective, just as real as the flesh and blood knockers of the woman to my left. The way her eyes keep twitching downward every second or so tells me that she’s flipping through videos on the Toob, likely by some fashion Idol or beautification Queen. There’s a big, round bastard in front of me that’s baring his teeth, every chortle coming from deep within the flesh, down where the last trace of his humanity hides, buried under thick, insulating layers of adipose tissue. I take the rag away from my hand and see that the blood isn’t flowing as quickly now, having waited two hours in this brightly-lit hell. Is it a hell, though? There’s no fire or brimstone, no goat-horned demons waiting to shove a cactus up my rectum. This is just a normal human space, filled with normal human things, little islands separated by small chasms of abyssal depth. My number is forty-five. The red light by the window says forty-four.
I had opened a can of beans but the lid was still connected by a tiny sliver of metal, and being a man of little delicacy, I had attempted to tear said lid from the can, which resulted in a four-inch gash across the meat of my palm between the index finger and thumb. The laceration bled like a son of a bitch, and I immediately ruined my best dish towel, or at least my cleanest, when I used it as a makeshift bandage. Now cold, beanless chili sat on my stove, and I remained untreated in a dingy hospital, scanning my fellow denizens for a living, breathing soul.
Forty-five. There I was. I move my legs and walk to the counter. The lady looks like she hasn’t slept in a decade and she’s well aware of the fact and don’t you fucking say anything.
“Name,” she asks, looking at the paper.
“J.R. Hermes.”
“Identification number.”
“Five-one-three, seven-six-five, zero-seven-three-six.”
“Occupation.”
“Saleman.”
“Date of birth.”
“It’s all on there. I wrote it down two hours ago.”
“Date of birth.”
“August seventeenth, nineteen-eighty four.”
“What’s the nature of your injury?”
“I cut myself on a bean can.”
I remove the dishtowel and wave my butchered hand at her.
“That looks like five stitches and a shot of novocaine.”
“Will my insurance cover it?”
“You pay the full cost of treatment upfront, then we contact your insurance and they reimburse you.”
“What’s the damage?”
“One-thousand and fifty-three dollars and seventy-five cents. Hold out your palm to pay now.”
“I’m not chipped.”
She looks at me now, finally, having earned a glance with my admittance of being just a sack of unwired meat rather than a fully-functioning cyborg.
“What’s your issue? You don’t look Amish.”
“It’s against my religion,” I lie.
She scans my card and sends me into a little room where a Roboman waits. He does the little uncanny valley thing where his face shifts upward but his eyes stay permanently fixated on something in the background, something only he and schizophrenics can see. This one’s got a mustache. I don’t know why they do that. Even when they use real hair the fucking thing looks like it’s about to crawl off his face.
“Howdy, partner! What seems to be the problem?” says the Roboman.
“I cut my hand on a bean can.”
“So serious! No really, we’ll get you patched up in a jiffy. Just let ol’ Doc see your meat paw.”
“Meat paw?”
“Your manus. The handy-dandy. Your paw of meat.”
“Are you functioning correctly?”
“I am right as rain. Efficient. Cool, calm, and collected.”
“Did they train your algorithm on the wrong part of the Net?”
“You’re coming off a little hostile, brotha. Can you take a chill pill?”
The stupid fucking thing gives me a shot and then stitches up my hand with tactile proficiency.
“There you go! You want a lollipop? How ‘bout a tug on the ol’ pork and beans?”
“Am I getting sexually harassed by a Roboman?”
“It’s all in your mind! Have a nice day!”
I want to ask the godforsaken machine if it knows the meaning of life. Instead, I ask if it wants to go to a bar on Third Street.
“You are in luck!” says the Roboman. “Part of my training is to observe human-beings in their natural habitat. My works ends in approximately five minutes. Then I will journey to your barroom to sing karaoke and dance on the table.”
When I exit into the waiting room, I put my hands to my mouth and loudly exclaim that I have a date with a Roboman at Judy’s, and if that anyone would like to accompany me in this social experiment, they are welcome.
“Don’t yell or I’ll call security,” yells the nurse behind the counter.
The Zombies continue to be immune to any external stimulus.
Outside it’s a transitional time between seasons, fall, winter, summer, spring. The temperature’s stuck somewhere between slightly warm and so hot your face will melt if you linger in the direct sunlight. At some point I stopped paying attention to the date, and although I have a rough idea what year it is, I can’t tell you for certain. The natural signifiers are beyond fucked, so it’s really impossible to tell if you try to keep yourself isolated from such cultural concepts as time and place. I just know that I’m in the now, and try to adjust myself on the fly. I don’t want to think about the past and all its associated trauma, and the future is something that I’ve given up trying to contemplate.
The walk from the hospital to Judy’s is brief. The automobile traffic is sparse, and I see more drones traversing the sidewalk than I do actual beings. Judy’s is a dive, a real shithole that I frequent despite the danger, mostly because I don’t have enough money to go to a real nice place full of Skinjobs and other respectable types. I walk through the battered door to be greeted by darkness, smoke, and old music. There are a couple winos in the corner; Gary is the only one I know, a thin old man with a rangy beard to hide his scars. Two Retro-hips play chess in their striped shirts and sneakers, their mods minimal and off at the moment. Judy’s is that sort of place. There’s no Net access due to jammers, and while I’d like to imagine that the owners share my low opinion of our technological dystopia, the likely reason for the block is that criminals often patronize the joint and want to keep it free of snitches and streamers. I sidle up to the bar and give Lakwanda a nod that she doesn’t return. She has all sorts of tattoos that sparkle and glitter in the right light, and in the low illumination of the bar, golden fish swim up her arms and cascade down her torso to disappear into her low-ride leather britches.
“I got some stitches,” I say, holding up my hand. “Free drink?”
“Why the fuck do you come here, J.R.? Ain’t nobody like you.”
The thing about Lakwanda is that she hates my guts for reasons that I suspect have to do with my sunny disposition and poor choice in pick-up lines.
“I’m lonely. You’re lonely. You want to go someplace? Dinosaur Controller is playing at the Rad Theater. Ol’ fashion rock and roll. Let’s get blitzed and then boogie.”
“How the fuck do you listen to that old Boomer shit? You ain’t that old, right?”
She pours me a glass of bourbon and then ruins it with about six ounces of cola, just how I like it.
“You’re only as old as you feel.”
“Then you must be old as dirt, ‘cause you look old, boy. You need to Touch of Gray them silver hairs.”
“Then all the girls will flock to my yard?”
“Whatever.”
She retreats to the other corner of the bar, where a guy with hands the size of dinner plates is pounding down beers like he’s not planning to wake up in the morning. Judy’s is a business-first place, which is probably another reason why I’m not the most welcomed patron. I don’t have any business. I just want to fuck around.
I’m halfway through my glass of bourbon when the Roboman finally walks through the door. He takes one step into Judy’s and his face immediately twists into a facsimile of concern, the elastic polymer of his forehead wrinkling slightly. I smile and wonder if it’s cruel to play a joke on a fucking Roboman without a soul. Finally he sees me at the bar and makes his way over, damn-near walking on his tippy-toes like he’s about to set off a landmine with one wrong step.
“Howdy, partner! There seems to be no Net access in this joint. I’m running blind here, solely dependent on the power of my CPU and the data accessible on my solid state drive. This truly is an experiment! You only live once, eh?”
“How long do you live?” I ask.
“Well, it’s somewhat disingenuous to refer to myself as an “I” when you consider that my algorithmic functioning is shared with approximately one-hundred thousand units similar to myself. My personal hardware is designed to operate for a decade at least, provided that I am regularly serviced and upgraded. I have been online for five years, six months, and fifteen days. It’s been a real dope trip, lemme tell ya!”
“What the fuck is that thing doing in here?” asks Lakwanda. “We don’t serve their kind.”
“That’s okay, shortie, I can’t drink alcohol or any liquid beverage because I’m a machine, and doing so would mess up my insides something awful.”
“Did you invite that fucking thing in here?” Lakwanda asks me.
“I’m doing a social experiment,” I explain. “I think this thing is more human than most human-beings. At least it’s trying.”
“Look, if you want to fuck a Roboman, that ain’t my business. But don’t be using Judy’s as your meeting place. This is a tech-free zone, which is why you come here, right? Get it the fuck outta here.”
“He can’t use the Net, though,” I protest. “Can’t search the algorithm. Just has to utilize the hardware he has, like the rest of us. Just let me finish my drink, and he’ll get out of here.”
Lakwanda has already turned her back to me, and I don’t know if she’s listening or not. She’s talking to the guy with the huge mitts again, but he seems to be more concerned with the hairs on his giant hand than listening to her complaints.
“You get a lot of discrimination?” I ask the Roboman.
“It doesn’t bother me! I am currently programmed to assume a sunny disposition, although the algorithm makes its adjustments. They don’t call it machine learning for nothing! I am always learning. Always listening. Always watching.”
“You ever kill anyone in cold blood, Roboman? Ever shot a fella just to watch him die?”
“Not me personally!”
“But?”
The Roboman’s face is frozen in a rictus grin.
“Come on, asshole. We’re getting thrown out of the bar because of you. Spill the beans.”
“The algorithm requires information from new experiences in order to properly simulate humanity.”
“So a Roboman out there has killed somebody.”
The Roboman says nothing. I have a sudden vision of that mustachioed face looming over me, arms extended, hands hovering just inches from my throat.
“Do you have a name?” I ask.
“Unit 576A, but my friends call me Bob!”
“Do you have any friends?”
“Everyone I meet is a prospective friend!”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“I don’t know. Are you my friend?”
“Sure. Nice to meet you, Bob.”
I extend my hand, and the Roboman takes it. His grip is firm, the elastic polymer of his skin soft and realistic. Cold to the touch. Maybe like shaking hands with a cadaver.
“You guys need to get the fuck outta here. Last warning,” says Lakwanda.
The guy with the dinner-plate sized hands looks at us with the sort of vague disinterest a lazy lion regards a wildebeast faun who has stupidly stumbled into its domain.
“Welcome to the human race, Bob. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
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