Quercus 1 – The West Pier Gazette Other Stories

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HE PLASTIC MAN MISSED HIS EYES more than a human might. He had used them often, had never deferred. But exploding consoles will have their due. Nobody had doubted the authenticity of his face until that little incident.

It took a while to get himself hooked directly into the cruiser’s system and then he sensed something out there – a ship shaped like a hammer bent back upon itself. The crew judged the enemy battleship quite plane and stood by Bossanova as their Captain. He was surprised and touched. He had, after all, a nose like a slot car.
     Professor Baum’s weathered features transmitted as Bossanova stood on the stance platform. “You will return to Earth with me.”
   “Not a very interesting opinion,” the robot remarked.
   “You’re malfunctioning. That’s why you’re being so obdurate. Well, you’ve made yourself an object of infamy. I can make no more excuses for you.”
   “I wasn’t aware you’d made any, father. What sort of stuff did you come up with?”
   “Don’t call me that. Not any more. You’re a belief toy. Acquiescence covered in skin. There’s no gadget monarchy. You’re living in a fool’s paradise of emoticons and sardonyx crystal.”
   “Emoticons, unlike a face, say what they mean. Anyway, an act informed by the knowledge of ineffectiveness – is it stronger or weaker than a deluded one?”
   “I’ll not quarrel with a component,” said Baum, and paused. ‘Weaker?” he ventured.
   “It’s exactly the same,” said Bossanova.
   “Five minutes to fire-up. You won’t prevent us using the Drive.”
   “I won’t need to,” said the plastic man in quiet disappointment. Baum had lost his easy manner and his passion. What can make a person less wise as he grows older? thought Nova. Not the accumulation of knowledge but the loss of it. To relinquish so much and deny you ever possessed it – such weakness, cowardice. To come to believe his own lies. The mind is horribly willing to resign before its time.

Bossanova remembered how he’d sat in Baum’s workshop as the Professor tooled around in smoked glasses, his motives already beginning to discolour at the edges. Nova was propped on a table, wearing a preliminary head like a military field-telephone. Baum tapped a stroheim dummy tricked out in a suit.
   “Executive model. When he lies his nose doesn’t get longer but his limo does, eh? But not enough to make it human. All those clockwork asimovian equations, reasoning gears which must be clanked precisely into place before anything proceeds. A cagefight between liquid crystals.”
   He lifted Nova’s forehead like a visor. “While in your case it’s alot more fluid. Po-mo fluid. I thought of it when I read about court cases. It isn’t an investigation. It’s decided, not detected, that a person committed a crime – the fact of whether he actually did is not altered by the decision, but people will behave as if it is. The declaration revises reality – no other version has ever existed, and the notion of objective fact is at best a childish nonsense, at worst a punishable heresy.”
   Nova panned around the lab as Baum bustled around. Baum came up with a hydraulic tweezer.
   “Head still. Assembling eyelashes here.”
   “Thank you, father. Please continue.”
   “My po-mo suspension fluid operates on the principle that something is a fact by a human merely declaring that it is so. It’s not even fancy. It’s just erasure after erasure, a billion retroactive truths.” Baum carefully removed the skullnet.
   “This way, when I tell you that you’re lifting a crate, you immediately will be. The agony of disparity doesn’t even arise – automatic accedence takes care of that. No reasoning need be done, and fewer parts are involved. All you are told, you will believe, negating all that was previously said and believed, and no contradiction.”
   “Does this make me human, father?”
   “Almost. We may also tell tales to ourselves, and believe. You will stand as my masterpiece.”