Mira asked, “Does it have to be a problem?”

  “Not always,” Arbogast said, smiling. “But he’s on the hook now, analyzing anything and everything that strikes his interest. The size of the job grows, he draws more power, and in time he’ll crash. He’s connected to the whole world. He is a whole world within himself, as you and I are.”

  “But what can we do?” Jimmy demanded, thinking that the man was about to sell him some bootleg program for a ridiculous price.

  Arbogast shrugged. “You can wipe him. It’s up to you. Or. . . .”

  “Or what?” Mira demanded angrily.

  “What would you do?” Jimmy asked, fearing that Mira was nearly exhausted.

  He waited for the tech’s answer, still expecting mention of a large sum of money.

  “Work it out with him,” Arbogast said. “Raise him up some more. Schmooze. Get some counseling. Give him some guidance. Help him.”

  Schmooze?

  Jimmy felt the confusion in Mira’s mind.

  “What?” she asked. “What do you mean? We raised him by the book!”

  Arbogast smiled. “I always did think that those manuals were kind of confusing.”

  “You’re saying it’s us,” Mira said, staring at Jimmy.

  “Not at all,” Arbogast replied. “I told you what it was. What you have to do is talk to him more. Give him a better idea of who and what he is and where he came from. Teach him to discount a lot of the data he’s accessing, according to certain values. He knows more than any human being can ever contain, but he doesn’t know what to do with it, or even how to think about it. He may . . .”

  Mira sat back and closed her eyes. “He may what, Mr. Arbogast?”

  “He may be resenting you for not teaching him what he needed to avoid this turmoil.”

  “Can you help us?” Jimmy asked softly. “I mean, will it work, what you advise?”

  Arbogast raised his arms. “Who knows? It might take a while. But the result might be worth it. A-one-of-a-kind personal helper who will take care of you for life.”

  A happy slave? Jimmy wondered.

  “Have you ever seen one like this?” Mira asked, sitting forward and sounding hopeful.

  “Yes, and more often lately.”

  “How often?” she asked.

  “A dozen times. It’ll cost you in time and effort. Maybe a decade. Five years, if you’re lucky. They do learn on their own after a while, you know. They even get to suggesting retro redesigns.”

  Just like a child, Jimmy thought, but you have to do it right. He had once seen a horse with its young one. They ran together until the new horse could run on his own.

  “You recommend it?” Mira asked.

  Arbogast grimaced. “If you’re certain kinds of people. . . .”

  “And if we’re not?”

  “Then I’d wipe him and start over. And remember your mistakes the next time around.”

  Arbogast was silent for a while, then looked at each of them in turn. “I don’t know. You two may not be the right kind of people. . . . you don’t have the time, and it may take too much out of you. By the way, what do you two do?”

  “We both work for Tchotchkes Unlimited,” Mira said. “We design ornaments for the home.”

  “Oh,” Arbogast said. “I see.”

  Jimmy felt insulted, even though Arbogast had not said, oh, you mean knick-knacks. But he realized that Arbogast might nevertheless be right about Augie.

  Jimmy said, “You see a lot of this, you say?”

  Arbogast nodded, and Jimmy saw that Mira was looking at both of them with breathless interest.

  “More and more,” Arbogast said. “You know, people will be slowly remaking themselves through AIs. They’ll help us and we’ll help them . . . until no one will be able to tell us apart.”

  Jimmy had heard some of this before. But he was suspicious of Arbogast, and of those like him who made such claims for a new world.

  “Let me tell you something,” Arbogast said. “It’s pretty clear that artificial intelligences are producing a higher form of evolution. Maybe it’s our duty to help them along.” He smiled and looked at Mira as if she might Eve a new world. “But they are children, and someone has to raise them. The sad part is that our record of parenting hasn’t been so great. Most really bright people have to get rid of the glitches in themselves and reraise themselves at some point in their early life.”

  Jimmy grimaced. “And if they do surpass us, will they look back?”

  “Who knows?” Arbogast said. “For all practical purposes, they’ll become us. No one will look back with nostalgia to our mere one hundred-billion neuron brain from a capacity of a hundred trillion.”

  “So we simply get out of the way?” Jimmy asked.

  “We get incorporated,” Arbogast said. “Subsumed. Oh, we’ll still be there . . . what’s good about us anyway.”

  Jimmy had the feeling that Arbogast had been about to say that there wasn’t that much good about people, but had restrained himself in front of simple-minded folks.

  “Are we strange,” Mira asked him, “because we failed with Augie?” and Jimmy feared the rise in her voice.

  “No,” Arbogast said. “I could tell you about people who keep boosting the brains of their Al pets, or who keep putting in orders for bioenhanced kitty cats, puppy dogs, lizards, rats, mice . . .”

  “Don’t,” Mira said, looking at Jimmy. “Not now.”

  “Stop,” Jimmy said. “Give her a moment, please.”

  Augie was running around inside Arbogast’s small screen, waving and shouting silently—a crazed cherub struggling to communicate despite the lack of audio.

  He came to the screen and pounded on it with his little fists as if it were made of glass, and for a moment it seemed that he would shatter the screen. His big blue eyes stared out at them reproachfully.

  Jimmy looked at Mira and was surprised at her deceptive calm; she was still climbing an emotional mountain and would fall off at any moment.

  When he looked back to Arbogast’s suitcase, the little picture of Augie was gone.

  Mira let out a deep breath.

  Jimmy got up and left the room, knowing suddenly that it was over for her; but he wondered whether she would ever be over for him. He realized that he might still want her, now that she was rid of Augie.

  I never really cared about the little bastard, he thought.

  “I guess it’s just a bunch of electrons, mostly,” he heard her say, but the hollow sound of loss was clear in her voice and he felt the pit open inside him.

  Arbogast said, “Yes, a bunch of electrical patterns as much as you and I are a bunch of chemicals worth whatever. It’s how you put them together that makes the difference.”

  “What are you trying to say?” Mira asked, sounding puzzled and hostile.

  “You’re right to feel a loss. No one is born a person. Nothing is. What’s born is something that can become a person. Then it has to get to be one.”

  Jimmy waited in the safety of the kitchen to hear her answer, but she did not reply.

  “Augie went wrong,” Arbogast said, “and it made him very unhappy. Remind yourself of that as often as you can, and you’ll accept that it’s just as well he’s gone.”

  Jimmy came back into the living room and sat down next to Mira. Her face seemed composed, and he felt that her new state might be genuine.

  “Don’t look back,” Arbogast said, looking at both of them. He was kneeling uncomfortably on the other side of the coffee table, removing something from the side of the suitcase.

  He took out what looked like a black pencil.

  “What’s that?” Mira asked.

  “Augie Number One. He’s all here, in case you ever want to go back and try again.”

  “What!” Mira cried out, then covered her mouth with her hands.

  Arbogast laid the pencil down on the table between the suitcases. She stared at it. Choking sounds escaped through her hands as she struggled to contain her feelings.

  “So now what?” Jimmy asked, feeling the pit in his stomach open into dark infinity. The rest of him was suspended over the abyss, ready to fall in and be swallowed.

  Arbogast got up, came around the table, and sat down next to him. Jimmy grasped Mira’s hand, and that seemed to calm her.

  “Here we go,” Arbogast said.

  The big threedee went on, and Augie II was smiling at them, happy and clear eyed and unknowing, ready to be raised again. His pale skin was perfect, his blond curls fell over his forehead, his sharp blue eyes seemed friendlier.

  Arbogast froze the image at its most appealing.

  Brand new, Jimmy thought, feeling something fresh starting up within him.

  “You take it from here,” Arbogast said, closing the suitcases. As he got up, Jimmy felt that the man was taking something from them, even though nothing of theirs was actually in danger of going out the door.

  Arbogast picked up the cases and moved toward the exit.

  Jimmy felt Mira’s hand tighten in his.

  “You may have a special one there,” Arbogast called back. “He has no memory of his death, of course, and more capacity than Augie One.” He laughed. “You know, he looks like Cupid!” The door slid shut behind him.

  “You okay?” Jimmy asked Mira, feeling the pit close up within him.

  She nodded, let go of his hand, then picked up the black pencil and held it to her breast. “What do you think of Arbogast?” she asked happily.

  “He means well,” Jimmy said, without telling her he thought the man was a little cracked. “You okay?”

  Still clutching the remains of Augie, she nodded and whispered, “Brand new.”

  He knew that she was determined to do better this time. It might not be such a bad thing.

  “When he’s old enough,” she said with a smile, “we’ll get him an embody, and have a coming-out party. That was maybe his problem, you know. He didn’t get out enough. Don’t you think so?”

  Jimmy was silent as he turned away from her, thinking that Augie would bust out after all. Might be a good thing, too.

  But then he imagined Augie in his prosthetic body, soft and cuddly, molded from designer materials to look just like the visualization, running around the house.

  He felt Mira’s hand slip into his, but he couldn’t look at her. Her hand was warm. She was alive, telling him to stay with her.

  “I’m feeling so much better now, darling,” she said.

  When finally he looked at her, he saw her composed and radiant as she gazed at the face over the hearth, and he knew that he would not have the courage to pull her down from the peak she had climbed. She stood at the summit, her face to the world again.

  It was the face of an unstoppable Mom.

  Augie beamed down at them, but Jimmy felt a chill, as if the boy’s voice were asking, “You won’t kill me this time, will you?”

  But no voice spoke, Augie was not a boy, and the smiling face was a mask for something that lived in a labyrinth, and as yet did not know itself too well.

  “By the way,” Mira asked, “who’s Cupid?”

  Still holding her warm hand in his, fearful that Augie would take her away from him again, Jimmy began to hope that the boy would run away from home.

  Catch the Sleep Ship: The First Science-Fiction Story of the Century

  The old sci-fi writer, as we called him, was explaining times past to us. His eyes were bright as he sat behind his desk, as if the lamp of his mind was shining through them, or trying to; and he seemed to believe that we might just understand what he was trying to tell us.

  “We battled for our futures,” he said, leaning back in his old chair, “with words that formed the probabilities from which we might choose or reject what might come. We said things to our readers in endless displays of possibility, hoping that one or two might help save us. And rejection of a future might be more important than an acceptance of what the world was choosing to do, or blundering into it. As one of our great ones said, we were not so much trying to predict the future as to prevent it!”

  “But wasn’t anyone else trying to look ahead?” I asked. “Science-fiction writers couldn’t have been the only ones.”

  He smiled through his wrinkles and leaned forward. “Yes, there were others, although I sometimes had my doubts. At the beginning of the 20th century, one of our great fathers, H.G. Wells, also started a thing called future studies, with his essay, ‘The Discovery of the Future.’ But this little industry didn’t really get going until after 1950. It wasn’t as good as the fiction. Too rigid – all numbers and trends and projections. Al Minds do it better today, not that it does any good. As an example, our mother, Mary Shelley, looked ahead by saying that we are all monsters inside and likely to misuse what knowledge we gained. Misuse was hardly ever studied in future studies. The effect of changes in science and technology and social systems affecting human nature in negative ways was left to fictionists. And they did better by looking ahead in that way than the pure thinkers. Even Wells did better in his fiction than in his serious projections.” He smiled sadly, then said, “You’d think it would have been the other way around. Sometimes we liked the drama of bad things more than that of good hopes.”

  “And what happened next?” I asked, looking around at my fellow students. They didn’t seem to care, and I knew that they didn’t really want to be here. It seemed unimportant to them whether they fast-read a story or eyed it, or whether it was set in the past, present, or future. Science fiction, sci-fi – these were just a bunch of i old words.

  “It all turned to fun and games,” he said, “in which you might only sometimes slip in I. things no one wanted to hear straight out.

  And even then no one noticed. I shouldn’t have been surprised. It was the way of most art.”

  “Art?” I asked. “There was art in what is now a dead commercial genre?”

  He flinched at my question, then smiled. “Miraculous, isn’t it? But yes. As Bertrand de Jouvenal once said, the creation of viable futures is as great an achievement as any work of art. I may not have the words right, so don’t quote me.”

  “And did anyone do it?” I asked. “Create futures, I mean.”

  He smiled again. “So well that the world you see around you is all made from wishes and imaginings, and warnings about them. Even the VR dreamworlds that wait to take us . . . in the long lives you will have, were once wishes.” He stopped suddenly. “Excuse me,” he said. “Many of our wishes should not have been fulfilled.”

  He looked ill for a moment, and paused. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “We . . . all of us were making the future, as Wells once said, and few of us bothered to think what future we were making, and here it is. I have to keep reminding myself of that. I try not to think of it, but it still surprises me when I do.”

  “You want us to believe you . . . and others like you . . . made our world?” a young woman asked.

  “A lot of us did – we put the scent of the possible in front of the greedy, and their money went out and built all this, and stole the real world from you.”

  “The real world?” I asked. “Surely you’re joking. And what do you mean by we? No one else was doing these things?” I knew his answers, but I wanted to show my fellow students that I wasn’t completely slaved.

  “By we I mean imagineers,” he said. “Imagination comes before all accomplishment. Someone must imagine, then others will do. There must always be a menu of possible dreams. We wrote many such menus.”

  That got an uneasy laugh, but there seemed to be pain in how he spoke the words, which made many of us uncertain. After all this was only a gut course, taught by an old writer whose friends had gotten him a job in the university. I wondered whether he was going in for his rejuvenation treatments. He could certainly afford it – but it seemed that by his manner he was saying that he wasn’t going to be around much longer, and that he didn’t want to be, even though he certainly could be, if he wished it.

  “A lot of you just made a lot of money,” the young girl said, “and didn’t much care about thinking or the future.”

  He smiled again and said, “I can only speak for myself – and I wrote for money so I could write what I loved to write, less though there was of that kind of writing as the media looted all our best ideas and refused to present our stories unless they pissed into them first.”

  He seemed unattractive then, since few of us used offensive words or profanity. He was unattractive too often.

  “It was partly your own fault,” I said, feeling sure of my scholarship. “Those of you who recycled the major themes and ideas.”

  He looked at me fiercely, as if surprised that I knew enough to catch him on a sore point.

  “Ah, but we wrote so many of them so much better. Remember, it is not the idea but the execution that makes a great work of art.”

  “Yes,” I said impatiently, “but a great new idea and great execution beats an old idea with great execution. But that’s not my point. What is shown by the evidence is that sf writers did not hang on to their lead over a science and technology culture, by entertaining new ideas at the edges of the knowledge industries.”

  He nodded. “Yes, we recycled and were looted in turn. It was just too hard for many of us to learn anything new. Too many of us said in our hearts, you don’t have to do all that just to write science fiction.” He grimaced. “And the money quieted our scruples.” He sighed. “Oh, the money. They gave you a lot sometimes, or just enough, often far too little, and then they threatened to take it away, whichever class of writer you belonged to. You’d do anything to keep it coming, however little it was.”

  We stared at him in silence, questionless, and for a moment he looked embarrassed. “I tried to remain a serious writer, but it was increasingly like trying to fit fibreglass whales into the food chain.” He paused. “It’s an old joke. A writer whose name I can’t recall ran it into the ground.”

  “What’s a serious writer?” asked a young man.

  The old writer smiled. “Gore Vidal said once that literature is something most writers fear. They worry that they won’t measure up, either in style or in the importance of what they have to say. They are afraid of it, because literature has sharp teeth and a capacious stomach, old Gore said.”