Time to go

An artificially enhanced human from a dystopian future ponders existence

So, here we are. Awake at last. I wonder how long I’ve been hibernating? Upgrades can take a week or more, sometimes. Where’s the clock? Everything’s too bright. Can’t see for now. Feeling stiff. Best to take things steady at first.

            Upgrades are great things but you can never be sure exactly what they’ve done at first. It’s like any maintenance service, really. Much of the time they fulfil your order happily. Sometimes they find and fix things you didn’t know were broke, but then they can leave things which were passable but not as perfect as you’d like. Besides, when the work is being paid for by your employer – the University in my case – they have some say in what’s done. Staff have to repay the investment by being fine-tuned to current requirements.
            Anyway, the engineers don’t often make a mess of things these days. Yes, I know there’s a few exceptions. But then life’s a risk anyway, isn’t it? You never know what’ll get thrown at you. But I’m feeling OK, so let’s hope.
            Let’s see. Eyelids are still a bit heavy. No, the light’s still too bright. Like looking at the mid-drought sun. They must have serviced the optics. Or replaced them. I knew they were getting dim but didn’t think they were that bad. Unless of course they’ve forgotten to dim the room lights. They’re supposed to dim them for all Upgrades as it can be a shock to the system when you first wake up, especially if you’ve had an optical renewal. But then, they’re rushed off their feet these days, so little things easily get overlooked. Not that that’s an excuse for bad customer service, of course. They say the demand for Upgrades has never been higher, especially now they’re getting so good at them. But that’s when things can start to slip.
            So, let’s try again. Slowly, one at a time. … Adjust gradually. … Why don’t they paint the walls in these facilities a quieter, more relaxing colour? White – well, off white, anyway – is a bit startling. Still, if I screw my eyes up I can just about keep them open for a second or two. Where’s that clock? There’s something up on the wall ahead. … Round. … Blurry, but they say when you’ve had optics done it takes a while to get back in focus. If I stare at it, as much as I can in a couple of blinks, it should get sharper. It’ll also stave off any dizziness, too, which I suffered from after the last couple of upgrades.
            I really need to raise my head more, but it’s very stiff. Can’t manage that yet. So what is that thing? A little wheel? It’s got, what, numbers, on it? Two spokes? Must be some modern art. Or ancient art. Can I read the numbers? … Blink first. … Twelve at the top. Eleven just before it. One after it. No! Don’t tell me it’s an old clock! Or a picture of one. An analogue clock? Here?
            Or is it decoration? A scenic picture would be better, a cityscape you could look at and pick out different details. You need that as a mental exercise when you wake up, especially if you’ve had any neural implants – gets the old brain connections buzzing and the new ones bedding down. That can take a couple of weeks, depending on how much extra information they’ve loaded in. And if, as sometimes happens, they’ve sliced out a little bit more than they should have to make room – we’re talking micro-patches and individual brain-cell connections here – then it can take a while to get reconfigured properly so you don’t lose too much of what you knew or remembered before.
            Anyway, I recognised it, so no damage done there. Shows the distant memories haven’t been corrupted. A clock is one of the first things you need after an upgrade, of course. You need it so you can reset your internal clock, adjust to the new conditions and prepare to pick up where you left off. It stabilises you back in life after however long you’ve been in what they call hibernation. Frozen out of society is the more colloquial expression. Cartoonists sometimes portray fresh Upgrades like polar bears emerging from their dens – which is a sort of mute protest, or poignant reminder (depending on your viewpoint) of the fact that there aren’t any polar bears any more.
           Usually, of course, I’d have all the everyday data I need in my pandascope. They still haven’t come up with a better generic name for a Personalised Integrated Data Source. I think they were so-called because of course at first they were rare like pandas, but now all Upgrades have them. I guess they’ll think of another name before long because soon no-one will remember what pandas were.
           I quite like DogLog – Your friend indeed because there’s still a few pet dogs kept by people who’ve got big gardens, since animals were banned from public places. You have to be very rich to have a garden of course. There is a patch of grass and a couple of trees at the University, but we’re an ancient institution and like to keep hold of some of our heritage. It’s real grass, too. You don’t see much of that around these days.
           I had a dog, once, as a kid. It used to chase a ball and bring it back. Seemed fun at the time. But we had to eat it when the drought started. Like most people did, before governments organised ocean desalination and land irrigation to restore food production. Anyway DogLog’s a brand name, and they don’t use those at the University. Ours have a more prosaic but also academic-sounding brand name, Elephantus, based supposedly on the fabled memory powers of elephants. You only find elephants in south Asia now, where it’s wet enough for forests to grow. It’s funny how they keep coming up with animal names; my psychology colleagues say it’s nostalgia for a lost past.
           Still, that little digression proves my mind’s obviously working quite well, even if a bit randomly. But then, it’s probably still a bit fuddled. Making random connections while it adjusts, restoring awareness. Like dreaming, only less bizarre.
           Anyway, whatever brand you’re fitted with, they take them out when you’re having an upgrade in order to service them and synchronise them with your latest improvements. They usually wire them back in under local anaesthetic later. Hence, you need a clock in the room when you wake up.
           The trouble is, it’s an analogue clock, and that’s not so good, is it? Why isn’t it digital: day name, number, and month on top; hours, minutes and seconds below? I haven’t seen an analogue one for a century or two. And I don’t think they give the date. What’s the use of a clock without a date in here of all places?
           So, I know what it is. But how on earth does it work?
           I do remember my grandmother – or it might have been my great-grandmother – had one. She did show us how to use it. But even then it was a novelty. Being a kid – yes, she must have been my great-grandmother – you don’t really take old fashioned stuff in. Basic educational mantra: don’t clutter your mind with information you’re never going to need. Like not eating too much first course so you’ve got room for dessert. Anyway, it was scary as well. She said it was a grandfather – or I suppose great-grandfather, maybe even great-great-grandfather – and it didn’t look anything like human or Android. And he made this loud tick every time a sort of leg – you could see it through a clear panel in his exoskeleton – swung one way and then the other. But he never moved anywhere, so I couldn’t see the point of the leg. But she said his face told you the time. Somehow.
            So, this’ll be a test of the powers of recall. The face, as she called it, has two pointers. Hands, that was it. Two hands and one leg. Only this one on the wall hasn’t got a leg so far as I can see. The best thing would be to raise myself up a bit so I can see it better. Test the arms, push down on them. … No! … Too hard. Very stiff. Weak, too.
            Wonder if the legs work yet? Try raising them one at a time. … That one’s barely responding. … Nor’s the other. Gosh. I must have been under for a while. Although they should have serviced all the joints. A couple needed replacing so I’m assuming that’s been done; I’d expect them to be a bit stiff at first. You can’t tell if there’s been a replacement or just a lubrication service these days. Not like the old days when they sliced you up first. Really primitive that was. These days it’s just a little incision, slide out the old and in with the new. Then a few sessions in the zero gravity machine just to get the muscles moving freely without carrying any body weight, and you’re back to normal in a week. In fact, more than back to normal; more back to where you were years ago or whenever you had your last upgrade.
            It restores your youth, or at least makes you decades younger physically, with all the advantages of age-developed experience intact. Recharges your batteries, so to speak – and literally, for the implants, of course. All the enjoyment without the excess. Or, as the bosses say, all the productivity without the mistakes. The ad slogan for this facility makes it sound racier, of course. That’s one thing that hasn’t changed over the centuries – marketing hype. Still the same as ever. “Spice up your life with Slice and Splice. Upgrades to suit all budgets. Age no object.” Slice and Splice; bit corny but descriptive of the procedure, though.
            And talking of youth, I’ve just thought. Better check. … Hold on. … Aah, good. That’s OK. No sex change. It wasn’t ordered in my case, and if it is ordered, generally it doesn’t create any problems. But it has been known to happen accidentally when they splice in fresh neural circuits. Plug in to the wrong bit of the brain and you’ve suddenly got a woman’s mind in a man’s body, or vice versa. And despite all the progress, they’ve never been able to equalise them completely. Androids, of course, are gender-neutral, which still makes them seem a bit odd.
             They usually realise the error before the end of the procedure, and sort the mind out to match the body before you wake up. Or vice-versa. But, I’m told, that can still be a bit of a shock, like in the past when surgeons cut off the wrong leg by mistake. Of course, when that happened they usually cut the other leg off as well so at least the initial problem was solved even if it left you with a new one. Rumour has it that some Upgrades who’ve had it by accident have become so confused and unstable that they’ve had to be incinerated.
              Where was I? Clock. Must try and work out the clock. Still can’t push up. I should have ordered power joints and flexithene muscles. They only do that on special order since they put them in an Upgrade by mistake once. Left his accountancy job and won all the athletics medals going. Until they discovered the error. That was when the sporting authorities changed their categories, so that Upgrades had their own events like disabled athletes did in the past. I can just about remember Para Olympics, as they called them. Don’t need them now, of course. Paras are not allowed. Upgrade or incineration; that’s their choice.
             Anyway, so long as my legs are still strong enough to climb mountains, and arms strong enough to abseil down into volcanoes, I’m happy. I’m not the sort of geologist who stays in the lecture theatre when they’re well into their second century. If the University wants me to continue field research, that’s fine by me. I enjoy it.
            So, how can I find out the time? Two hands. A long one and a short one. Long one’s on nine. Short one on four. What on earth does that mean? This is where all our advanced education lets us down. Right now, even in my current state, I could work out on the back of an envelope – not that we have envelopes any more of course, but I know what I mean – I could work out say the rate of continental drift between Africa and the Americas and therefore when the continents will re-unite as they once were and we won’t need ships any more.
            Or I could work out the pressure factors along the Pacific Ring of Fire, factor in the likely meteorological trends over the next decade, along with data from the deep-earth sensors in Australia, Japan and China and the deep-sea sensors staked out on the ocean floor – they were a major robotic triumph, getting them in precise positions and transmitting in real time – I could take all that and tell you when and where the next earthquake or volcanic eruption will take place, what strength it will be, which land masses will be affected and what the size and direction of the resulting tsunami will be, and therefore what remedial action, if any, needs to be taken.
             But I can’t tell the time from an analogue clock. Whatever my great-grandmother taught me has been over-written by more recent information. Look again. Long hand seems closer to the ten. Short one’s stuck on four. That could mean it’s actually operational, if one hand has moved, unless it’s an optical illusion. Although as the other one hasn’t moved, it could be malfunctioning like an Android with its circuits in a twist. Defeats the object of self-cleaning walls, of course, putting anything up on them. That’s one thing we’ve never been able to eliminate – dust. Not using carboniferous fuels has eliminated a lot of the atmospheric particulates that caused the big drought, but you can’t do anything about the dead human cells we all shed every day. And there’s also the miniscule particles of flexithene rubbing off as Upgrades and Androids move around.
             Marvellous material, flexithene, but the flecks can clog lungs and joints if they’re allowed to build up. I count flexithene as one of my big contributions. Not that I invented it of course, but my work on the pioneering robotics that sent Androids to the ocean floor to plant our geological sensors led to Androids being developed to harvest the plastic that had been stupidly dumped in the seas by our forefathers. It’s easily recycled now and turned into flexithene which is by far the commonest material for Upgrade implants and Android bodies. And it has the added advantage of creating unpolluted areas where fish can be farmed on a gigantic scale. If they weren’t the world would have run short of protein decades ago and I wouldn’t be lying here trying to tell the time.
              OK, use your logic, Charles. Charles! That’s another good sign – I know my name! It’s a relief to know I’m thinking clearly. That’s the biggest risk of upgrades, of course. Tweak the wrong connection and bingo! You’re a zombie. Or you’ve forgotten something essential like who you are, where you live and that sort of stuff. It used to be quite common before Upgrades, of course. Dementia. It still happens, I gather, with Basics, as their brains and bodies degenerate, but since they abolished retirement most Basics die from tissue fatigue long before the disease sets in. Or they take voluntary incineration.
              They don’t like being called Basics, of course, but that’s the official classification. They prefer “Normals”. But what’s normal about doing the menial tasks Upgrades and Androids wouldn’t look at? What’s normal about living in a body that slowly falls apart from so-called natural causes? Some of them – the militant ones, who stage protests now and again, which is about the surest way of being eliminated by the security forces, but they still risk it for what they call “the cause” – they even call themselves “Naturals” or “Purists”. Pure, natural flesh and blood. No added extras. No artificial ingredients. Dinosaurs, that’s what they are. And they’ll go the same way, too, unless we farm a few for domestic tasks.
              They haven’t a hope, of course. Doomed to a life of suffering, trapped in a mundane body in a mundane world for a fraction of the time we Upgrades enjoy. Of course, I do appreciate that they can’t afford to be upgraded. Upgrades are still very expensive. But there are proper savings schemes, if employers don’t count you indispensable enough to pay for a procedure. The only downside to employer-funded upgrades is that you lose some of your freedom – you get to live where the employer says. But all your meals are provided and you get a small pension for occasional personal needs – not that there are many. I’m not complaining. I’ve got a nice room in the University, which Basics come and clean; the food’s fine, prepared for me according to my personal diet data, by Basics (with a little help from Androids).
              And I’ve even got that patch of grass and couple of trees to look at. Although not even Faculty members are allowed to walk on it. The authorities don’t want it trampled down; the extra maintenance would use too much water. They still have to pay a Basic to water and mow it occasionally, too, and that adds to costs. The Basics also have to drain it after the occasional monsoon, because since the drought rain falling on parched soil doesn’t soak in much. Monsoon water is cheaper inland than desalinated water from the oceans so they channel it into the reservoirs they dug when they flattened many of those older individual houses and bungalows. They took up so much space compared with apartment blocks. There’s still a few houses left, of course, reserved for favoured Upgrades. They’re the ones with gardens.
              In the old days it was Androids who did the mundane stuff, but now they’re so much more advanced they work closely with Upgrades on creative tasks and do for us the skilled jobs that we can’t – like diving to the bottom of the Pacific to set up quake sensors. We Upgrades tend to be the academics, the managers, the strategists and the decision makers. Androids are the skilled workers. Basics are, well, just basic humans who survive as best they can. Which, generally, isn’t for long. Of course, technically for legal purposes all three classes are regarded as “human”. The government made that clear a while ago to stave off rebellions by both Basics and a few Androids who appeared unusually stubborn. Most people thought that was a software glitch, but rumour has it that some Androids have become quite definitely sentient.
             So. That long hand seems to have moved again; nearer the twelve now. The short one is still on four. Say – it can’t be, can it? Is the short one in fact the date? Nearly twelve o’clock on the fourth? But the fourth of what? Think, Charles. When was I booked in for? Near the end of June? About the 14^th I think. So if it’s the fourth of July now, that would mean I’ve been under for about three weeks. That’s a bit long, but not unknown for a thorough upgrade.
              The fourth of July. American Independence Day! That’s a good omen. Waking up to a new lease of life on Independence Day! Wonder if there’s turkey on the menu – although of course, you can’t eat much straight away, not having had anything for three weeks. Could upset the insides – and you don’t know what they’ve replaced there, either. New organs, like new circuit and skeletal implants, take a while to get up to full functioning capacity.
               Independence is a joke, of course. The celebrations are a sort of tradition, but no-one’s truly independent these days. Facilities like Slice and Splice and the technologies they employ are supra-national. So are all the manufacturers and food producers. They have to be. They’ve invested billions of every currency under the sun to keep the human race viable (in all its three classes), and governments are beholden to them. The downside is that they’ve replaced wars over territory with wars over contracts.
              Twelve o’clock. But those analogue clocks only counted twelve hours, didn’t they? This one does, anyway. There’s twenty-four hours in a day. So is it twelve noon or twelve midnight? How are you supposed to tell? You really do wonder at the stupidity of our ancestors. I mean, there’s only two days a year when day and night are exactly twelve hours long. So to find out if it was night or day presumably they had to look out of the window! Fancy making all the other 363.2422 days conform to the two equinoxes! No wonder they switched to digital 24-hour clocks. Well, they had to, I suppose, when they divided the day into three sections of eight hours and allocated each person on earth one section to work in, one to sleep in, and one for travelling to work, eating, and all that stuff. Seven days a week.
              But then, if it’s twelve o’clock now, it only seems a few minutes ago when it was ten o’clock. Maybe I keep dozing off without realising it. It does take a bit of time to emerge from hibernation. Although I don’t remember it being like this before. But no two upgrade experiences are alike.
              Wait! What’s that? Something moved, over there near the clock. A Basic, maybe? Cleaning the floor? Looks like it but I still can’t get upright enough to see properly. I’m surprised no-one’s come to check on me – the sensors should have alerted them to the fact that I’m awake. But as I said, they’re very busy these days. Try calling it. That’ll also test voice box and auditory functions too.
              “Accuse be! Good oo shell be …” Gosh, this is hard. Mouth hardly works. Face is really stiff. Feels like what those people who had old-fashioned facelifts must have felt. Beauty treatments? My grandmother called them ugly treatments. She said it made their faces look like stiff cardboard. I suppose today we’d say they looked more Android than human. I mean, fancy injecting botulism into your skin! It’s a poison, for goodness sake! Still done by some back-street technicians, they say – mostly for Basics who can’t afford upgrades. Better just getting a flexithene skin replacement if you really need it. Much safer. They charge extra for that, of course, which can be a problem. But with retinal recognition used universally now, facial features hardly matter at all. People never look at faces now, just the eyes.
             Anyway. Where’s that Basic gone? Is it still there? Try again, louder. “Cuse be! Ebbyron dare?”  Well, I heard it, so the auditory system must be working fine. Unless I was just feeling the vibrations and thought I was hearing it. Careful, don’t start to get pessimistic. But there’s the figure again – must have heard me. “Ai! Pease! Wash dime? An tee dote?” No, that doesn’t sound right. “Tee dite?”
              Honestly! It’s just gone off! That’s the trouble with Basics. They’ve no respect for Upgrades. They’re supposed to serve us, not snub us. What’s the clock doing? Can I see? Seems harder pushing up, not easier. Long hand on one. Short one still on four. Another hour gone already? Can’t have. Clock must be malfunctioning.
             Oh! What’s that? It’s back? Made me jump. Can’t be the Basic though. Wearing a white coat. Engineer! At last. “Cello! Clad do shee oo!”
             “Good afternoon, Mr Charles.”
             “Chow bib guparade jo?”
             “I beg your pardon?”
             “By guparade. Pot rerk bib oo boo?
            “Having trouble with our speech, are we? If you’re asking about your upgrade, Mr Charles, there has been no upgrade. Our initial assessment indicated that you needed more work than your employer was prepared to pay for. Your neural circuits seem to have sustained some damage. You must have been working them very hard.”
             “Chant pee wight. Pi stold guparade roz pooked.”
             “We did offer your employer the chance to enter you in our experimental HumAndroid^(R)  programme, which involves transferring your accumulated knowledge and personality into an almost synthetic Android. We even offered to do it for half the normal price, as it’s still a very uncertain procedure. That’s why we mostly use Basics, as they’re cheaper, but we like to try it on Upgrades that have largely worn out too. But the University said they had all your knowledge stored and couldn’t justify the cost. Everyone wears out eventually, Mr Charles!”
            Don’t understand. Never been treated like this before. So why’ve I been here so long? So what is the time? “Wash dime?”
            “I beg your pardon, Mr Charles?”
             Oh, come on! You’re an engineer. Surely you understand English! Try pointing to the clock. Better, point to his pandascope. There. “Wash dime?”
            "Oh, the time, Mr Charles? Why, it’s time for you to go. We’ll recover all your usable components and recycle them into others, of course. You’ll live on, in a manner of speaking. As for the incineration of the rest, you won’t notice the flames at all.”

© Derek Williams December 2017