Kada drained the remains of her drink, listening with one ear to the conversations in the bar around her.
"Anything else?" The slightly nasal sounding voice of the robot behind the counter asked. Kada shook her head.
"No. Thanks," She added, in case the bot's visual receptors were malfunctioning again. One of her only fond memories of this place was of the day that same bot - the tag on its left shoulder read 'Mavis' - had malfunctioned, and pelted unsuspecting customers with boiling coffee. From the relative safety of the back corner Kada had allowed herself a small grin of sadistic amusement. Their pain was unfortunate but a medic had been on hand to stop any scarring, and the bemused shrieking of the patrons had been the most hilarious thing she'd heard all week.
"Darned rain," Mavis continued conversationally, "Really isn't good for a body, you know what I'm saying? Goes straight to my joints, let me tell you."
"Really?" Kada didn't bother to make her voice sound interested. "That's terrible."
"I know, and the havoc it plays on the circuits you just don't want to go into that. Why, just the other week..."
Kada tuned out. She knew some people would have listened. Some people were too polite, or maybe they were actually interested in experimental robotic psychology or whatever they were calling it. "Articficial intelligence" was everywhere - it made her tea, conducted traffic, and provided the job that kept food on her table but it didn't mean she had to like it. Technology was fine, until it started talking back to you.
Kada's introspection was shattered by a cry from the corner - all eyes turned to see a stranger sobbing, a scrap of paper no bigger than a receipt clutched between her fingers. Eyes returned to drinks; everybody had to face their own fate and there was no point crying about it. When the machines had been new everybody had wanted to try it, to see how they would die, to laugh and say it would never work, they'd be the one to prove it wrong... but then the machines had been right, over and over again, and it had quickly gone from being novel to being eerie to downright distressing. Anybody brave or foolish enough to press their fingertip against the needle should be prepared to face the consequences - the knowledge of how they would die. It was no small irony that the things had come to be known as "Death-Machines".
"Not him!" The woman was wailing, having slid to the floor regardless of the dirt and cigarette butts she was no doubt sitting on. "Please, not that, anybody but not my darling..."
At Mavis' direction two of the stronger patrons lifted the distraught woman, gently but without compassion; carrying her outside where she would not disturb the clientele.
"No point gettin' upset about it," One muttered as they returned to their seats. Mavis clucked in what Kada supposed was meant as a tone of motherly concern, but coming from a hunk of cold metal it was insincere. Not that she came for the atmosphere, Kada thought sarcastically, but it had just taken a turn for the worse in here. Even the slightly-dim lighting seemed disheartening now, and that meant it was time to leave. As she was about to step outside, Kada's eyes were drawn to the machine and its now-faded propoganda.
"PREDICT YOUR OWN DEATH! COMBAT DESTINY!" It shouted (if written words could seem like shouting then these definitely were - block capitals in a garish red colour that was still loud despite years of grime). "ONE DROP OF BLOOD AND THE FUTURE IS IN YOUR HANDS!"
No, Kada ordered herself. You really don't want to know. Only idiots and bored teenagers use these things, these days. Leave it alone.
Yet it held a strange fascination - a morbid one it was true, and knowing something you couldn't change was bound to be depressing, but... Wishing that she was drunk (and knowing she would say that she had been, if anybody found out she had done it) Kada stepped up to the machine. Without hesitating (because then she would have stopped) she stuck her finger in, shuddering as she wondered when it had last been sterilised.
Probably never . The needle jabbed into her finger, and she imagined it as a living thing, sucking greedily at her blood as it had the blood of so many others. The machine began to whir, sluggishly at first but slowly picking up the pace.
Probably never been serviced either. Probably doesn't even work .
Slowly, a piece of paper slid out, and sat there, waiting for her to pick it up. The type was on the underside - a coincidence, or was it designed that way deliberately, allowing users a final chance to chicken out?
There was no reason not to look but Kada felt foolish, and she could feel the eyes of the others on her, laughing at her, waiting for her to react. The slip of paper went into her pocket unread.
None of your business , she thought mulishly as she stepped outside. The woman was where she had been left, leaning against the wall, trembling visibly.
"You okay?" Kada asked gruffly. Normally she didn't speak to strangers, or offer charity, but the night had thrown her off balance and the woman seemed so damned upset. At Kada's words she looked up in surprise, blinking vacantly. "Uh, ok, leave you to it then. Hope it doesn't... you know... happen soon."
It had been meant kindly, but the woman was so upset and Kada was so bad at being nice. The tears were flowing again, noisily. She left quickly, wishing she hadn't spoken at all.
Kada did her best to ignore the fat raindrops that slipped into her collar, at once irritated by them and grimly pleased that it would keep the city's mechanised population indoors. Miserably human traffic officials stood on islands in the centre of busy intersections, waving glowing rods around like some kind of complex, half-hearted dance.
Opting against the subway - the tunnels beneath the city were swarming with AI's even in the best of weather - she began to walk quickly down the street, thankful that she lived nearby. More than a few blocks of pouring rain and she would have been madder than she was wet, and she was getting wetter by the second.
"God, I need some coffee," She muttered, hunching her shoulders against the wet and quickening her pace a little. "Nice, hot, steaming bloody coffee."
The thought was an incentive to move faster, but as she jogged through the rain Kada's mind kept returning to the slip of paper in her pocket. What did the future hold for her? Did she really want to know? When it came down to it, would she be able to handle knowing? She knew they had opened special centres for those who couldn't, odd nursing home-asylum hybrids that really didn't help because, what could? Some turned to religion, others to drink (or, it had to be admitted, things worse than drink), but ultimately it was an individual reaction with an individual cure.
She wondered what the crying woman's result had been - who was he ? What would she do about it? Go home, continue to live as if nothing was wrong? The way she had spoken made it sound like it would be murder, but the law was very strict about these matters. After the bout of court cases accusing people of crimes they had not committed, it had been rewritten; a Death-Machine prediction could not be used as evidence until after the crime had been committed. And while this had definitely lowered the rate of wrongful inprisonments in homicide cases, it did nothing for the peace of mind of the condemned.
If I read this, Kada realised, as she stared at the Death-Machine in the lobby of her building, I will be condemning myself. I'll be afraid every day, my lifestyle will change... God knows my nightmares will become more consistent ha ha.
The elevator smelled bad.
If I don't read it I'll always wonder.
The hall outside her apartment smelled worse - damned tramps, piss outside next time for chrissake.
Damned scientists too - she turned on the perculator before she even stripped off her wet clothes - if this isn't science for science's sake I don't know what is. They've cursed us all, I wish I'd been born before this whole mess. Life must have been so much simpler.
Sitting at the table in her pyjamas, savouring the steaming bitterness of her coffee, Kada watched the news. Normally it left her feeling depressed - seemed everything these days was about disease, or war, or the end of the world or something - but tonight she felt strangely mellow about it all. The drama at the pub had been far more exciting than all this was; it had actually happened around her, instead of in some war-torn third-world country (and weren't they growing in number lately) halfway around the planet. It was in fact a quiet night for the news-reporter; the biggest story being of a demonstration downtown.
Hippies these days , Kada thought to herself, watching the footage as men and women of all ages protested - the Death-Machines? Now there's a cause worth joining.
As the report continued - now more than 500 members in this city alone - Kada became more and more fascinated. Why the heck shouldn't she join it? These kids (she shouldn't call them kids, most members were older than she was) had the right idea after all, that the Death-Machines did more harm than good, that America should follow the lead of places like Britain or France, who had banned the machines completely. In fact - protests were expected to continue for several weeks - it would do her good to be a part of the community. Even if it was a small, potentially destructive part.
"Nothing wrong with being destructive," Kada giggled, feeling better than she had all day. She lifted her mug - and her eyes fell on that piece of paper, lying patiently on the tabletop. It was slightly damp after her walk in the rain, but undoubtedly still legible. And, once again, Kada was drawn towards knowing... Taking a sip of her coffee and wishing it was something a little stronger, she turned it over.
The letters stared up at her, unremarkable in plain black type but as demanding of attention as the machine itself.
COFFEE
"Fuck!" She coughed, and panic overwhelmed her. I'm gonna choke on it now, there's irony for the layman... But she didn't choke, merely knocked over the mug. The thick black liquid spread sluggishly, taking the paper with it as it flowed across the cheap veneer, swelling a little at the table's edge before admitting to gravity and falling to the floor. With uncharacteristic energy it spread outwards, tracing the spaces between the tiles. The enormity of it stunned Kada, and for a long time she could do nothing but watch the mess expand. Later as she was mopping it all up she would find the now-soggy piece of paper and tear it up angrily, but for now all she could think about was how ridiculous it all seemed.
I'm going to die by coffee. That's - that's not useful, that's so obscure it's fucking ridiculous! In college there were days when I would have considered taking the stuff intravenously - now they tell me it will kill me? Science has a lot to answer for, that's all I can say...
- - - - - - - - -
"Breaking news, woman murdered by husband of thirteen years! Community reeling!" The newspaper-boy shouted. He could be heard easily over the crowd, and Kada wondered if it was through years of practise being heard over noisy siblings. "Read all about it here, come get your papers, shock murder, mother of three found dead in her living room!"
Kada bought a paper on the way past, but her step faltered when she saw the photograph on the front page. She didn't recognise the woman's name but even though this time the woman from the bar was not crying, her face was all too familiar. So he got her, she thought with a little sigh. The machine was right after all.
Suddenly the news was not interesting to Kada. The paper went into the next bin she passed, but her resolve to join the activists was only strengthened. She had no idea where they operated from, or who was their leader, or anything but that they would be protesting outside the Mayor's office for the next few days at least.
She heard them before she saw them, shouting things like "Down with the Death-Machines" and "Life was meant to be a surprise". Their brightly-painted but somehow sad-looking placards bobbing above their heads reminded Kada of the writing on the machine itself - it almost looked ashamed of itself, as if participating in a cause it did not like.
"Excuse me-" She was ignored, and in desperation grabbed the sleeve of the man walking past her.
"Lay off," He snarled, "We got every right to be here!"
"Uh - I know, I wanted to... to help somehow. To join up, you might say." She blushed like an embarrassed schoolgirl, and hated herself for it. They wouldn't want another bumbling half-wit on their side - they needed strong, intelligent people ( I am strong and intelligent, or - I thought I was) who would make a positive difference to the cause. Lawyers, perhaps, and people with charismatic smiles.
"Oh," To his credit the man looked a little ashamed. "You should talk to Charlotte. If anyone's in charge of this rabble I guess it would be her."
"Thank you," Kada said, sounding much more polite, much more timid, than she felt. What she wanted to say was "Yeah, thanks, you rude bastard". But she smiled and nodded and thanked him with at least a semblance of sincerety.
Without meaning to stereotype, Kada had to admit that Charlotte looked the part. Her hair was long and hung free despite the rising breeze, looking as if it should have been washed perhaps yesterday or the day before. Her clothing was old-fashioned and ill-fitting, and the shirt showed the home-printed slogan Ignorance is Bliss.
"I like your shirt," Kada said, hoping it sounded like a compliment and not a sarcastic "that shirt is shit". The woman smiled, though, so she supposed the sentiment had gotten across. "Uh - how would I go about signing up?"
"You write your name and phone number on here," Charlotte gestured to a mostly empty page, "And demonstrate how good your vocals are by joining that lot."
"That's it?"
"Don't sound so surprised. They're amatuers mostly, people like you who don't like the machines, or people who didn't like what the machines had to say and think banning them will change their fate. Dreamers mostly, thinking they can fix the world with a bit of free love, or something." Kada listened in wonder at the cynical note in the woman's voice. "Until we have anybody powerful on our side we won't make any difference at all. A corporation, maybe that would help. The money for some decent lawyers. I don't suppose you're some kind of multi-corporation mogul?" Kada shook her head apologetically. "Ah, why do I bother asking any more? Well... There's the sheet, go ahead and sign your name."
Kada picked up the pen, but hesitated before signing. Something in the air made this feel like a Moment. Up until now her life had been so empty - learning, working, eating, breathing... Her parents had chosen her school, her then-boyfriend had chosen her home, her landlord had given her a job. The government had given her the rules to work within, and all this had left her a tidy, easy little niche for her to die in. But this was... Kada tried to think of the right words, and remembered a line from her eleventh-grade poetry class; this was raging against the dying of the light. This was believing in something more than the clock above her kitchen sink, this was speaking up when all her life she'd been the quiet kid in the corner.
"Too many people don't speak up," She muttered, forgetting that anybody was listening. "Too many people, too many cowards."
"Go tell them."
"What?" Kada looked up, embarrassed all over again, and hastily put her name and number down.
"Go tell people. Wake them up. That's what we're trying to do, isn't it?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I guess you're right."
"I like you -" Charlotte paused, craning forwards to read the sheet. "Kada. I hope this is what you've been looking for."
Feeling strangely fulfilled - now finally, she had spent a day on something really worthwhile , Kada stopped in at the pub, sitting on her usual seat with unusual cheer.
"Evening, Mavis," She said, and the robot smiled back - that cold, fixed-on smile.
"What will it be, then?" Mavis asked, "Same as always? Short black?"
She had already nodded before she realised, and a sick feeling uncoiled in her stomach.
"No, I'll just have..." Christ - what else was there to drink in the world?
"Orange juice," She finished weakly. She normally didn't drink it - the juice in her fridge went bad more often than it was emptied - but she needed something to overpower the taste of bile. To think that she could die like this - it was just messed up. She hadn't even thought about it, had almost ordered coffee. This could have been the cup that killed her, and she would have brought herself that much closer to her own death. Really messed up. The juice arrived promptly, and for the first time Kada was glad that Mavis was not human. For all the advances that had been made, there was no bot (at least that she knew of) which had been programmed with anything more than a very rudimentary personality. They might ask basic questions or discuss the weather but they didn't pry into customer's private lives. If Mavis had been able to, she might have wondered at this sudden anomaly (orange juice was a far cry from coffee by anyone's standards), but even if she had asked, Kada doubted that the robot would be capable of understanding the answer. You're afraid? Of coffee? Cold, mechanical laughter rang out in Kada's mind, because any machine capable of curiosity would also be able to understand the hilarity of Kada's fear.
"Does starin' at it for a while improve the taste?"
Kada jumped. She hadn't heard the door open and she hadn't noticed the man sit beside her, and his very proximity was a little unnerving. She didn't spend a lot of time close to other people, and though there was an empty stool separating them she could still feel his presence; the day had turned cold and she fancied she could feel the heat radiating from his body.
"Pardon?" She replied finally. He grinned. His teeth were very white and very straight., and gleamed in the dim light.
"You're glaring at that drink like it murdered your mother." He tilted his head, encouraging her to look up at him rather than at the bar. "You don't remember me, do you?"
"Remember you?" She thought for a moment, then laughed at how short her memory had gotten. "You're that rude bastard from the demonstration."
The man scratched his head, abashed.
"Well, yeah, you could say I was that guy. But I'd rather be thought of as that nice fellow whose pants you can't wait to get into."
"How about the guy whose name I wouldn't mind knowing first?" Kada smiled a little. He was as good as a stranger and she refused to laugh at his jokes - just trying to find somebody to warm his bed tonight , she thought cynically, and I'm not the snugglin' type - but she was amused, and it wouldn't hurt to be a little bit friendly.
Half an hour later she was being very friendly - the kind of friendly that came from a little loneliness and a lot of alcohol, the friendly that fumbled with clothing and turned out the lights. Kada hadn't been this friendly in a long time but it didn't feel awkward at all. Elliot - she had learnt his name after the first drink but forgotten it by the fifth - was tall and strong, and he touched her so gently that his fingers were the kiss of a butterfly as they trailed across her stomach. They lay in each other's arms for a long time, in silence, but Elliot seemed uncomfortable with silence.
"My parents got me tested when I was eight," He said, and even though his voice was soft there was no way she could have missed it. "The doctor was nice about it, let me keep the piece of paper - I didn't really understand what it was, but it couldn't be anything too bad because it was just a receipt that said "ELEPHANT DROPPINGS". I thought it was hilarious and laughed all the way home."
Kada had to hide a smile of her own - it was a little ridiculous, and certainly put her own, run-of-the-mill prediction to shame.
"For a long time it didn't bother me, only in little ways like when they wouldn't take me to the circus. By the time I finished school I wanted to become a zoologist, but that was entirely out of the question in their eyes. They wouldn't say why and it wasn't until I found the piece of paper that I remembered. It was in a box with my other "treasures", just little things a boy might admire; a discarded snakeskin, a piece of rock shaped like an arrowhead, a long-dead beetle in an empty matchbox."
"That's not just ironic, it's almost perverted," Kada whispered, "It's almost a bit sick, looking back on it. Knowing what it is. That you treasured it."
"What else would a kid do? It was given to me. It said "elephant droppings"." For all the seriousness of the discussion, they were both smiling. "Though I wouldn't call it sick, exactly..."
"Mine said coffee," She told him, when the silence began to grow long. "It used to be a staple of my diet and now what?"
"Orange juice?" He replied, now understanding they way she had glared at it in the bar that afternoon.
"Elephant droppings," She repeated, trying to imagine what it would be like to turn over your piece of paper and read that. She tried to remain solemn - death was no laughing matter after all - but was overcome by giggles. "Oh, god. How your parent's faces must have looked!"
For a second she thought Elliot was offended but then he began to laugh too. They laughed at the inevitable cause of Elliot's death, and the mediocrity of her own. They laughed until they cried and then they cried because they knew they were going to die. There was no pretending any more, no secretly believing that you would live forever, when you had already found out how you were going to go.
"Look at us," Kada said eventually, wiping the tears from her cheeks, "Like a couple of teenagers all over again."
"Listen to you," Elliot retorted, "Like you're really so old and wise. I'll bet you're not even thirty."
"I could be eighty," She said. "Science has come a long way."
Unspoken between them hung the question everybody had been asking since the launch of the Death-Machines - but, has it been in the right direction?
Kada and Elliot were soon spending much of their time together - whether it be while protesting, or drinking, or sitting quietly on her tiny balcony and watching the city lights. They rarely spoke; it was as if, having revealed to each other their ultimate future, there was nothing more that needed to be said. What knowledge could be more intimate? As the initial excitement of the protests wore off Kada found herself settling back into complacency - true, she was a little less lonely now, but late at night, there was still only her. The voices within her head had been cruel when she was younger, filling her with confusion and self-loathing. But Kada felt they were old acquaintances these days, if not friends, and the doubts they brought up in her mind could be refuted or ignored with little effort. This was her new life, so similar to her old life, and she was comfortable once more.
Then she fell pregnant.
- - - - - - - - -
"Don't go through with this," Elliot pleaded, as Kada strode determinedly down the hall that still smelled like drunken leavings. "You're against the whole concept, aren't you? By using them, you support them!"
"I have to know." She wasn't sure why, but the urge to have her baby tested was too strong to ignore. Stronger by far than that which had made her use a Death-Machine herself, and she had been unable to resist that. Though she didn't say it out loud, Kada got the feeling it was a vain hope, that she would somehow, unlike every mother before her, be able to save her child from death if only she knew what to expect. That the machine's predictions were really too vague was unavoidable, but could surely be worked around. If she was particularly lucky the readout would be something obscure enough that deterring death would be easy - something like PARACHUTE FAILURE (her child would be kept firmly on the ground) or VOLCANIC ERUPTION (there were certainly no volcanos anywhere near their home). It never occurred to her that the parachute might belong to somebody else, or that the volcano might not necessarily be nearby.
"You don't have to know. Knowing yours nearly killed you, you said it yourself. Why would you want to know your baby's? Our baby's?" He emphasised "our" as if to say, this is my decision too. Kada shook her head mulishly. Our decision is what to name it, and how to cut its hair. This child is growing inside of me, and this is my right. In a final lunge Elliot grabbed her arm.
"What will you do when you don't like what it says? What if it says "CANCER" or "RADIATION POISONING" or even "BIRTH"? Well?"
Kada ignored him. The elevator doors closed between them with an eerie finality. She knew they would not be the same after this, but she was willing to live with that later. For now - this urge to know was almost an obsession. She patted the growing bump of her belly, taking comfort from the thought that she was not alone and that, if the child could speak to her, it would surely agree with her logic.
The lobby was, as always, deserted, but the Death-Machine in the corner seemed to shout at her from across the room.
"PREDICT YOUR OWN DEATH! COMBAT DESTINY!"
Of course, it was impossible to fight destiny, Kada thought as she hurried past it and outside. It was raining - wasn't it always? - but for once she didn't even notice. The nearest doctor's clinic was only a few blocks away, but it could have been miles and she wouldn't have cared. Kada's brain was experiencing turbulence, and all she could do was hang on and try to wait it out. A shortcut through a mall led her by yet another of the infernal machines, and without even realising it her brain registered its words.
"ONE DROP OF BLOOD AND THE FUTURE IS IN YOUR HANDS!"
And here was the doctor's clinic, and the fasten seatbelts light came on.
Am I shivering from cold or something else? She wondered, as the nurse kindly directed her into an examination room and helped her to lie down comfortably. The woman hardly spoke, and her looks were unremarkable, and coupled with the starkly white walls Kada felt an oppressive anonymity all around her. She supposed it was better this way, because death was personal enough, and nobody wanted to enjoy talking about it.
The door opened silently. The doctor walked in, soft leather shoes making no sound on the pristine tiles.
"Hello, Kada, my name is Doctor Mitchell," He said, with the same, impersonal kindness that the nurse had shown. With cool, impersonal hands he picked up a wickedly sharp needle - Kada closed her eyes tightly and tried to think of anything else than it sticking into her. She imagined herself on holiday, with her baby learning to walk on some exotic beach, and Elliot drinking something refreshingly fruity on the balcony of their home away from home.
It was not until she could hear the machine processing her unborn child's blood that Kada allowed herself to open her eyes, watching as the doctor held out his hand, took the piece of paper, and laid it down on the bench.
"Most people prefer to be alone," He said, and she nodded. She wanted to be alone. "I'll be just down the hall if you need anything."
Kada thanked him, then slowly got to her feet, absently rubbing the little red mark on her belly.
As it had been in Mavis' cafe - oh god, that night felt like it had been a lifetime ago! - the paper was upside down. Had the doctor put it so deliberately, allowing her a final chance to change her mind?
All possible reasons not to look fled her mind as the blank side of the receipt screamed at her to do so. With a hand that trembled (though whether from anticipation or from fear she couldn't say), Kada reached out, and turned it over.