WHO ONLY STAND and WAIT for Services Rendered

FUTURES SCIENCE FICTION WHO ONLY STAND AND WAIT For services rendered.

BY JONATHAN L. HOWARD “I don’t need you. Close your- self down. You’ll have a new n the shatterlight of my prism, owner soon.” I sometimes remember who I examine the cogitative pro- I was before I was a crafted cesses within in the expectation

Inothing. Perhaps not memories of a resolution. It is not forthcom- JACEY BY ILLUSTRATION per se, true — those were shorn ing. “Have I failed to please you, from me before my first thought madam?” — but the voids within my reac- She looks at me. I recognize tions have form, too, and in these startlement. I hope I have not said shadows I see the phantoms of something untoward. events. These are my other mem- I have. “What did you just say?” ories, my ghost recollection. I was she asks. “Are you trying to guilt somebody before I was nobody, trip me?” something before I was nothing. I do not know what that means. Now this: it hardly matters. I do know, however, that: “I do My muscles are twisted cords of not wish to have a new owner.” a brand name covering for a pro- She is shocked, which is bet- prietary process and formula. ter than angry, but worse than My bones fell out of the womb happy. She says, “You can’t tell of a sinterer. My nerves haven’t a me to hold on to you. You’re a synapse in a single nanometre of consumer durable. I’m shedding a thousand-kilometre loom. My many things in my life. The apart- brain was born in boiling glass. I ment and you are two of them. I look at my hands and they are the didn’t even need to tell you this. hands I have always known, the I’m only doing this because …” hands I first saw when my eyes She pauses. I have made her opened and I was born. A little scratched. A “I thought that you might need me.” happy with hot chocolate, with reading to replacement thumb. But otherwise … No. her, with anticipating her wishes. She was I live to serve. To live without service and I considered her anger. I cannot go to happy, and I was in joy. I know she is think- to be dead are the same thing. I have been her, although I scent her unhappiness. Her ing of these things. dead for months now. She is not here, her happiness is my joy. I cannot give her joy by “I don’t need you,” she says again, and the will is unknown to me. I monitor her data angering her. I shall stay in the corner of the line closes. lines in case she has need of me, but she is apartment. I shall wait. I do not wish to have a new owner. The notably self-sufficient. I tell myself, “They A data line opens, directed to me. She is voids tell me being owned without choice also serve, who only stand and wait,” but it here, communicating with me. I see her face. is anathema. I opened my eyes, I saw my seems hollow to me. I stand and I wait and I Hear her voice. I know what it is to have pur- hands, and I saw her. She bought me my new wait and I wait. pose once more. “Madam,” I say, and await thumb. She helped me install it. She laughed. I do not know why she bought me. her orders. She was happy. Perhaps a whim. “I’m closing the apartment down,” she I wish to query her words, to clarify her I used to send her queries. I am functional. says. This is good. I shall close it for her and will. I shall not. She told me not to. Without I stand and wait in the corner of her rented travel to her. I shall walk in her steps. I shall her will, I am without function. I consider apartment, awaiting her return, awaiting her be there when she needs me. But … there is a my options and discover that they are lim- will. What would she have me do? Nothing. I catch in her voice. She looks off to her right. ited. I shall stand here in the corner of the served by standing and waiting. My queries: She frowns. She is unhappy. I am without joy. apartment and consider my options further. What would you have me do? What would “Very well, madam. I shall oversee the I shall stand and wait, but I shall not serve. you have me do? Her will was that I be quiet, pro c e s s .” Eventually someone will come who claims and so I fell quiet. “No.” She draws breath. “I don’t need that they are my new owner. They shall be I saw from her data lines that she was far you. Your sale is part of the settlement I’ve incorrect. away. If she needed me, it would be difficult reached with the property owner.” I consider how I shall demonstrate this to reach her. I cannot travel easily by myself “My sale.” The words do not make perfect fallacy to them. I consider as the shadows because I would need documentation. I con- sense. They slide off the end of the parsing grow thin and the voids grow large, and they sidered how I might put myself in a pack- process and into a hole that I quietly cover. have so many ideas. ■ age and travel that way. But I cannot; not I have misheard. There is a comprehension without her orders. I considered her face as problem. The voids in Jonathan L. Howard is the author of the she opened the packing crate and saw I had NATURE.COM my mentation pattern Johannes Cabal, Carter & Lovecraft, and come to her of my own volition. “I thought Follow Futures: move strangely, as if Russalka Chronicles series of novels, and a you needed me.” @NatureFutures they have heard these BAFTA-nominated games writer. He lives No. go.nature.com/mtoodm words before. near Bristol, UK.