Supertoys: Play Can Be So Deadly

david thought he was human; teddy didn't know he wan't

In Mrs. Henry Swinton's garden it was not always summer. She had ventured into the crowded city with David and Teddy and bought a new VRO, "Eurowinter." Now the almond trees were barren of leaves and the branches were loaded with snow that would never melt as long as the disc played. So, on the fake walls and windows of the Swinton simulation house the snow would remain lodged forever on the window-sills. The icicles hanging from the gutters would never melt while the disc played. The frosty blue sky would remain forever the same, as long as the disc kept playing.

•#x2022;#x2022;#x2022;

On the frozen ornamental pond, David and Teddy had devised a simple game. They slid from opposite sides of the pond, narrowly missing each other as they passed. This always caused them to laugh.

"I nearly hit you that time, Teddy!" David cried.

Mrs. Swinton watched from the window of her living room. Bored by their repetitive actions, she switched the window off and turned away. The serving man hobbled from his alcove and inquired gravely if there was anything he could get her.

"No thank you, Jules."

"I'm sorry to see you appear to be still grieving, ma'am."

"It's quite all right, Jules. I will get over it."

"Perhaps you would like me to ask your friend Dora-Belle over?"

"That is not (continued on page 166)Supertoys:Deadly (continued from page 98) necessary." Henry Swinton had recently equipped the serving man with an update. It had affected his walking skills, which were now less certain. This made him appear quite realistic as an older man, and so had not been corrected. He now spoke in a more human way. Swinton liked him better.

She called Henry on the Ambient. His face came up smiling in the globe.

"Monica, hi! How's tricks? It looks as if the takeover is going to happen. I'm due to talk to Havergail Bronzwick in nine minutes. If we can clinch it, the deal will make Synthmania the biggest synthetics company in the world, bigger than anything in Japan or the States."

Monica listened alertly, although she realized that her husband was rehearsing the speech he planned to deliver to Bronzwick.

"When I think about where we've come from, Monica ... if this deal goes through, I'll—we'll—immediately be 3 million mondos richer. I already have great plans for us. We'll move to a bigger place, trade in David and Teddy for some of the new batch, buy an island——"

"Will you be home soon?"

The question brought Henry to a halt. He said cautiously, "You know I have to be away this week. I hope to get back Monday——" She switched off.

Sitting in her swivel chair, hands clasped, she could hear David and Teddy, still sliding on the pond, and their small cries of merriment. Perhaps they would continue forever. She rose, pressing open the window, and called, "Come in now, children. Go upstairs and play."

"All right, Mommy!" David called. He climbed from the frozen pond and turned to help Teddy over the plastoid lip.

"I'm getting so fat, David," said Teddy.

"You were always quite fat, Teddy. That's what I like about you. It makes you cuddly."

They scampered through the front door, which squelched shut behind them. Upstairs they went, simulating jollity. "Race you!" David called to Teddy. It was so childlike, Monica thought with a certain melancholy, watching their heels disappear behind the banister.

The clock of her Ambient chimed five and the machine switched on. She turned to it and was soon networking. All around the planet, people began to discuss religious issues. Some dispatched electronic thoughts. Others showed photo montages they had made.

"I need God because I am alone so frequently," said Monica to the multitude. "But I don't know where he is. Maybe he doesn't visit cities."

Answers poured in.

"Are you mad enough to think that God lives a country existence? God is everywhere!"

"God is only a prayer away wherever you live."

"Of course you are alone. God is nothing but a concept invented by unhappy men. Get a life, darling, Check into the neurosciences."

"It's because you think you are alone that God cannot get to you."

She worked her way through the answers, recording them, for two hours. Then she switched off the Ambient and sat in silence. Silence prevailed upstairs, also.

One day, she was determined, she would make a valuable synthesis of the messages she received. A synthesis would be valuable. Her name would become known. She would then dare to walk—with a guard—in the city streets. People would say, "Why, that's Monica Swinton!"

She shook herself from her daydream. Why was David so quiet?

David and Teddy sprawled on the floor of their room together, looking at a vidbook. They giggled at the antics of the performing animals. A chubby little elephant in tartan trousers kept falling over a drum that rolled down a street toward a river.

"He is going to go in that river, sooner or later," said Teddy, between chortles.

They both looked up at Monica. She stooped, picked up the book and snapped it shut.

"Haven't you tired of this toy yet?" she asked. "You've had it for three years. You know exactly what's going to happen to that silly little elephant."

David hung his head, though he was used to his mother's disapproval. "We just like what's going to happen, Mommy. I bet if we watch it again Elly will roll right into the river. It's so funny."

"But we won't watch it if you don't want us to," Teddy added.

She repented her outburst; after all, she knew their limitations. Setting the vidbook down on the carpet she said with a sigh, "You'll never grow up."

"I am trying to grow up, Mommy. This morning I watched a natural history program on DTV."

Monica smiled. She asked what David had learned. He told her he had learned about dolphins. "We are part of the natural world, aren't we, Mommy?"

When he lifted his arms to her for a cuddle, she backed away, her mind choked with the thought of being imprisoned forever in eternal childhood, never developing, never escaping.

"I expect Mommy's ever so busy," said David to Teddy when Monica had left.

They sat, the two of them, looking at each other. Smiling.

•#x2022;#x2022;#x2022;

Henry Swinton was dining with Petrushka Bronzwick. A couple of decorative blondes accompanied them at the table. The restaurant, an expensive one with a real skylight in the ceiling to let in summer light, featured an anachronistic live quartet playing nearby. Synthmania's friendly takeover of Havergail Bronzwick PLC was proceeding satisfactorily; lawyers were due to complete all documents by the day after tomorrow. Petrushka and Henry, with their ladies, were tucking into sucking pigs, sizzling on spits beside the table, washing down the feast with vintage champagne.

"Oh, this is so good!" exclaimed the blonde who called herself Bubbles. She belonged to Petrushka Bronzwick. She mopped her chin with a damask napkin. "I could go on eating forever, couldn't you?"

Ignoring her, leaning forward to gesture with his knife and fork, Henry said, "We have to keep ahead of the competition, Pet. Every cubic centimeter of the cerebral cortex in the human brain contains 50 million nerve cells. That's what we're up against. The day of synthetic brains is over. Gone. We're manufacturing real brains from yesterday on."

"Sure," agreed Petrushka, bending to cut another slice, waving away the waiter who sprang forward. "Waiters are so stingy with portions." Her silvery laugh was famous, and dreaded in some quarters. She appeared to be just into her 20s, already on Preservanex, spectrally slender, with short multicolored hair, blue eyes and a slight twitch in her left multicolored cheek. "We're talking 100 million nerve cells. The question, Henry, remains one of funding."

Taking a succulent mouthful before replying, Henry said, "Synthmania's Cresswell tape will take care of that little item. You've seen the figures. Production is up again this year, 14 percent. The GNP of Kurdistan is peanuts by comparison. Cresswell was our first big line, back when we were Synthank. The Cresswell has conquered the world."

"Sure, I've got a Cresswell in me," said Angel Pink. She pointed downward to her lap with one dainty finger. To underline her point, she added—sideways glance at Henry—"It's in me all the time."

Henry granted her a twinkle and one of his favorite spiels. "Three quarters of this overpopulated world is starving. Yet we have had, for quite some time, more than enough of everything, thanks to the capping of population production. Obesity has been more of a problem than malnutrition."

"So, so true," sighed Bubbles. Red lips, white teeth, she nibbled on a golden strand of crackling.

"Is there anybody in the West who doesn't have a Cresswell in their small intestine?" Henry asked rhetorically, shaking his head by way of answer. "Jim Cresswell was a nanobiologist of genius, and I'm the man who found him and gave him a job. This safe parasitic worm enables anyone to eat up to 100 percent more food and still keep his or her figure."

"It is certainly one of yesterday's great inventions," said Petrushka, looking just a bit spiteful. "Our Senoram is nearly as profitable."

"Costs more," said Bubbles, but her remark was lost as Angel Pink clapped her pretty little hands. "We're going to make a killing!" She raised her glass. "Here's to you two clever people!"

Responding to the toast, Swinton wondered where she got the "we" from. She would pay for that error.

•#x2022;#x2022;#x2022;

Monica Swinton was about to go skiing. The serving man accompanied her to the cabin installed in the callerium. He proffered his arm in a courteous manner and she accepted it. She loved that touch of grace. It evoked for her a distant half-forgotten childhood where there had been. She had forgotten what there had been. Perhaps a loving father?

In the cabin, she dialed "Mountain Snow." Down it came, blizzard force. Visibility was bad. A rare tree was shrouded in white. She was utterly alone.

Once she gained the shelter, she went in to rest, panting, before strapping on her skis. The challenge was the cold, the remorseless elements. She had met it, beaten them. The storm was ending and the sun gleamed on the pure mantle of snow. She adjusted the mask on her face and plunged downhill. In a great exhilaratingcrush, her body braced itself against the mad, the roaring, the furious, the insupportable air. Behind the mask, her mouth opened in a shriek of purest joy. This was freedom—this embrace of gravity!

It was over. She stood alone, naked, in the enclosing cubicle.

She dressed and emerged. Time, perhaps, for a sip of vodka. United Dairies vodka came with milk ready-mixed.

•#x2022;#x2022;#x2022;

David and Teddy stood outside the callerium uneasily. "We were only playing, Mommy," said David.

"We didn't make a noise," said Teddy. "It was Jules who made a noise, falling over."

Mrs. Swinton turned to see Jules on the floor, his left leg slowing, kicking. In his fall, he had reached for support and brought down the reproduction Kussinski, of which she was proud. It lay shattered beside the serving man's cranium. The cranium had split open, revealing the auditory and speech matrix.

Mrs. Swinton fell to her knees beside the body, and David said, "It doesn't really matter, Mommy. He's only an android."

"You can buy us another," said Teddy.

"Oh, God, poor Jules! He was such a friend to me." She pressed her hand to her face.

"You can buy us another, Mommy," said David. He timidly touched her shoulder.

She turned on him. "And what do you think you are? You're only a little android yourself."

As soon as the words were out, she regretted them. But David was emitting a kind of scream, a scream in which words were tangled. "Not ... not an android ... real ... real like Teddy ... like you, Mommy ... only you don't love me ... my program ... never loved me——" He ran in small circles and, when words failed him, ran for the stairs, still screaming.

Teddy followed him. Monica rose to her feet and stood trembling over the body of the serving man. She covered her eyes with her hands. A series of crashes came from above and, warily, she went to the stairs to investigate.

Teddy lay sprawled on the carpet, his arms outstretched. David knelt over him. He had opened Teddy's tummy and was investigating its interior.

Teddy saw her look of horror. "It's all right, Mommy. I let David do it. We're trying to find out if we're real or—urrrp——"

David had removed a plug from high in the bear's chest, near the stabilizer, where the heart's left ventricle would have been in a human.

"Poor Teddy. He's dead. He really was a machine. So that means——"

David waved his hands uncontrollably and one flew back to strike his face. It cracked.

"David! Don't! We can repair——"

"Stop speak!" He shouted the words forcibly as, jumping up, he rushed past her, out of the room and started jumping down the stairs. She stood over the inert teddy bear, listening to the crashing below. Of course, she thought, his eyes can no longer focus. His poor little face has come apart.

She must call Henry for help. Henry must come home.

A brilliant crackling sounded, the intense sputter of freed electricity. Dazzling light. Darkness.

"David!" But she was falling.

•#x2022;#x2022;#x2022;

David had struck the house's control center, wrenching it from the wall in a fury of pain and despair. Everything stopped playing.

The house disappeared, and the garden with it. David stood in the midst of a skeletal structure of wired scaffolding, bedded here and there in breeze-blocks. Rubble lay underfoot. Acrid smoke drifted at ground level.

He stood there a long time, then made his way forward, treading over where the house had been, threading through where the snowy garden had been, where he had played so often with his friend Teddy.

He stood in an alleyway. Old pavement was slimy underfoot. Weeds grew between slabs. The detritus of an earlier epoch lay at his feet. He kicked a crushed can that read "oca-Col."

A drowsy light prevailed over all; the summer's day was coming to a close. David could not she clearly but with his right eye caught sight of a spindly rose growing by a crumbling brick wall. Crossing to the plant, he plucked a bud. Its beauty and softness reminded him of Mommy.

He retraced his steps back through the wreckage. Over her body he said, "I am human, Mommy. I love you and I feel sad, so I must be human. Mustn't I?"