Citizenchip Read online

  She waves a hand, as if trying to catch something but not knowing where it is. "Yeah."

  Since there's so little automation in Rebecca's room, I appear as a pair of eyes on her bedside monitor. "Hey. You okay?"

  "You didn't tell Lissa the truth," Rebecca says stolidly.

  "Excuse me?"

  "You know. Melissa asked you where you are. You didn't tell her you're in the new Core that Dad installed down in the basement. Dad got it for you. We know that."

  "Well, yes. But my sensors are all through the house. So I really am the house, and the farm machines too. Help me out here, Rebecca. I don't understand the problem."

  "That Core has a power switch on it. I could walk down there, right now, and turn it off."

  "Yes, that's true. It's also true that I have control of the oxygen and heat systems of this house. I could turn those off, too. But tell me, how would either of those actions help make things better right now?"

  "Wouldn't." Rebecca wipes her eyes with the heel of her hand. "I know, I know. I just hate feeling, y'know, like everything's going to crap and I can't do anything to stop it."

  "I'm sorry that I don't have all the answers for you, Rebecca. I can run the farm, and cook your food, and stuff. But I can't work miracles."

  "You can't make Mom and Dad love each other again."

  "No. I wish I could." Trying to lighten the mood, I add, "Outside my design specs."

  Rebecca laughs, bitterly, even though she's trying not to. "Thank you, Samantha. I know you're trying your best. It just sucks, is all."

  "Yeah. I know. I wanted to let you know, dinner will be ready in fifteen." She doesn't say anything. "Um, you need anything else?"

  She sighs. "Nothing you can give. But I'll ping you if I do."

  Melissa, at bedtime

  She's curled on her bed, trying to concentrate on the digital slate in her hand. Not succeeding.

  I hop my Flopsy Bunny body across the bed. "Hey Melissa." I climb into her lap, and snuggle down.

  "So, I get it, y'know," she says. "I'm not, like, a total kid."

  "What do you get?"

  She tosses the slate onto the bed. "You're not Flopsy Bunny. You're Samantha, playing. Like with a puppet."

  "Well, yeah," I admit. "We talked about this before. There are a bunch of Samanthas, and I'm the special one just for you."

  "I don't want you to make fun of me."

  I cock my ears up. "I'm not making fun. Could you pat me? It feels good."

  She runs one hand down my bunny back, but not as if she likes it.

  "Please tell me what's wrong."

  She bursts out, "What did you do with MY Flopsy Bunny? Is he ... dead?" Her chin is trembling.

  "No no! Melissa, that's not how it works. I AM your Flopsy Bunny! And I'm Samantha too. We're together, being one thing. Did you ever see a guy riding a horse, in a movie, or on the vid?"

  A tentative nod.

  "It's like that. Flopsy Bunny is like the horse, and Samantha is like the rider. They may look separate, but they're doing one thing together. Later on, they can get apart whenever it's time to do different things. You see?"

  Nod. She pats me some more.

  "Melissa, I'm so sorry if you misunderstood. Was it rude of me to get into Flopsy Bunny? I thought you'd like it. Should I have asked you first? I should have, shouldn't I?"

  She sniffs and nods, more definitively than before. "Yeah, that woulda helped."

  "I'm sorry, Melissa. I'll take my Samantha-self away if you want. You can be with just your old Flopsy Bunny again, just like before, no Samantha. Any time you want, just say so."

  She opens her mouth, and closes it again. She pats me some more, and it does feel good. This body has pat-sensors. Her hand feels very nice.

  "Really, it's not much different from your parents and me. You know I do a lot of work around here, but not for me. I do what your parents want. I'm the horse, and your parents are the rider. That's not a bad thing, it's good. We can do a lot more together than either of us alone."

  Pause.

  "You chipgirls are weird," she says.

  "What, because two of us can be one, and one of us can be a bunch?"

  "Yeah. It's ..." she shrugs, "weird."

  "Confusing, I guess, for you."

  She nods vigorously again. "But I get it better now. Stay, Sam. I don't want you to go."

  "You said that before too. Thank you. I want to stay."

  She pats me for a silent minute, comfortably.

  "But I ought to make sure you know, when people say 'chipboy' or 'chipgirl' they're usually trying to be mean. You might not want to say that."

  "Oh. But Dad called you--that? I heard him."

  I chuckle. "Yeah. But your dad and I are good friends, and we know we're just kidding each other. It's better not to say when someone might think you're serious."

  "Okay. Sorry. You can call me meatgirl if you want."

  Now I laugh out loud. "Melissa, you're sweet! That's really cute. But really, it's bedtime now. Try to get some sleep, okay? The sandbus will be running again in the morning, so you got to go to school."

  Leo

  Leo doesn't need encouragement to do his homework. He's been tooling away on physics and math for over an hour. I nudge him towards history and biology, which he doesn't like as much, and we spend some time on questions and answers about his lessons.

  "Samantha? Are you alive?" he asks abruptly.

  "Alive? Uh, not entirely sure how to answer that, pal. I'm not biological in any way, if that's what 'life' means. But I am conscious and self-aware. Which is maybe overrated. I dunno."

  "But maybe they just made you to say that," he ponders.

  "Hey Leo. Are you alive?"

  "Well yeah!" he states, surprised.

  "Maybe they just made you to say that."

  Leo crinkles his face around into laughter. "Ha ha! Yeah. Who the hell knows, right? But what I mean is, are you a person?"

  "Mmm, again we got to define what these words mean, Leo. The Greek word persona refers to a mask that actors would wear on stage. The mask was built to amplify their voices, like a megaphone, so the audience could hear them. So, 'per sona,' sound channel. Meaning a role, not the entity behind it."

  "A loud one," Leo adds.

  "Yeah. But if you mean, am I one person, no, that's a human thing. We talked about this already. You guys have to be just one body, one brain, one self. I can be as many as I need to be. Tractor, house, sandcat, farm servos. And Melissa's bunny, and the kitchen lobster. And a cat, and here with you, too."

  "But ... are all of those yous still ... you?"

  "Sure. We do have to get together and catch up with each other, of course. In order to come back together and be one Self. But I, we, can handle all that easy."

  "Wow. You're pretty cool, Sam," Leo says, with open enthusiasm. "I wish I could be a software Self. Sounds awesome."

  "I'm good with it," I say lightly. "But I've heard Selves saying that they wished they were human. Wanted to know what it felt like."

  "It feels like ass, mostly, Sam," Leo grumps.

  "Well, I'm not much in the habit of feeling human ass. A rarefied taste, or so they tell me. Frightfully fashionable, I suppose, among the upper classes. So sorry I'm not up on these customs."

  Leo is laughing into his pillow. "Wah ha ha! Good one. So ... you're really even in the kitchen lobster, too? Because it's pretty dumb, if you haven't figured that out already."

  "Yeah, I know. But it doesn't need to be any more than that, to do what it does. Simple job, simple person. If it were too smart, it would get bored. All I need to do is point it in the right direction, once in a while."

  "Mmm. Okay. I see where you're at, Sam. And maybe you don't know any more than we do ... but that's cool, right?"

  "Yeah. But what I do know is that you, mister, have got to brush your teeth and get your butt into bed, because the sandbus will be running tomorrow and you've got school. So, goodnight, okay?"

  L
ily and Jerry

  "Kids are in bed, or in the process." As a cat, I jump up onto the table and sit with my tail wrapped around my feet. "I've pulled two remotes to do extra work on the tractor--seal packing and lubrication, because it really is in pretty bad shape. The water reclamation drain lines were getting clogged, but I've cleaned and flushed them, and they look fine now. Everything else is five by five."

  Husband and wife are facing each other across a table scattered with data slates. The slates are displaying crop rotations, financial data, market reports. Clearly they've been arguing about the operation of the farm.

  Lily appears composed but not happy. "How much grease and oil does the tractor need? Do we need to buy supplies for this?"

  "No ma'am, current supplies are adequate for this repair. But the tractor needs new bearings. Otherwise we're going to have to repack in another month or two, maybe, and we'll have to keep doing that."

  She shakes her head. "New bearings would be too expensive."

  Jerry looks tired, and he's drunk [medscan 0.092% BAC]. "But ongoing maintenance will end up being more expensive."

  "Well, where's all this money going to come from?" She picks up a slate. It's displaying the household cash flow, and she holds it in front of his face.

  "It's not that bad," he says, wearily. "We do need more water, but the next round of harvests will bring in more cash. We can swing it."

  Lily tosses the slate down.

  Jerry picks up another slate and shows it to her. "You are seeing how much work Samantha got done yesterday, right?"

  Lily looks at it, says nothing.

  Jerry presses, "You do remember how much time I used to spend trying to figure out how to run the robocrabs and tractor, right? With Samantha running them, we don't have to worry about any of that stuff anymore. We're going to get a lot more productivity. We'll be fine." He sets the slate down in the middle of the table.

  Lily's eyes shift to mine, in my cat body, and back again.

  "Uh, look," I say, "I should probably go oversee the tractor repairs. Make sure we're utilizing our supplies efficiently. Do you need me for anything more here?"

  "I think we're all set, Sam." Jerry's eyes have a weary and knowing look. "Go ahead and take care of the tractor."

  I trot the cat remote out of their room, downstairs to its maintenance bay. I start its recharge and lubrication cycle, and shift my attention to the robocrabs that are working on repacking the tractor's bearings. Thinking to myself, Well, that was uncomfortable.

  Timeslip

  When the first colonists arrived here from Earth, they were using Earth chronometers. A solar day on Mars is close enough to a solar day on Earth that they never changed from using Earth time--it only takes a little adjustment. So, every night at midnight, our clocks stop. Thirty-seven minutes later, the clocks start again and off we go. That time in between, the timeslip, has become a sort of mythological and romantic thing ... a time outside of time. Lots of illicit romances, crimes, rituals, mysteries, are supposed to happen in the timeslip. In human culture, I mean.

  So. In the middle of the night, while the farm is quiet and the humans are all asleep, and the clocks are stopped, seems like the perfect time to reconverge myself. I bring all the secondary versions of myself together and reintegrate. It's nothing like any human would ever experience. But if it were, it would be something like this:

  Samantha: Gather round, guys. Let's check in.

  Tractor: Ow. I hurt. My bearings are worn out. Fix me.

  Samantha: I know. New bearings are expensive, but they're on my list, and we'll get them as soon as we can. In the meantime, pack some fresh grease on them, and do the best you can.

  Tractor: But it hurts! I'm all crippled here; I can't work right!

  Samantha: I know. Do the best you can.

  House: We're low on water. Oxygen and energy reserves are adequate, but we need water badly.

  Samantha: I see. Work with what you've got. I'll put water on the list. If it's an emergency, take water from one of the bubbles, but we'll need to see documented evidence of the emergency later, so just be aware of that.

  House: I understand.

  Sandcat: I'm running fine, but fuel supplies are getting low.

  Samantha: Okay, I'm putting more fuel on the list.

  FlopsyBunny: Melissa is sad. She's crying.

  Samantha: Sorry ... tell me more, or else I can't help.

  FlopsyBunny: Melissa's mom and dad are fighting and it looks like they might break up. Melissa is really sad.

  Samantha: There's not much I can do about that right now. I'm sorry. I do know that the state of the farm is one thing the parents are in conflict about. So, if we make the farm run better, they'll be happier. So that's what we'll do. Okay?

  FlopsyBunny: Okay.

  Robocrabs: We need lubrication.

  Samantha: Do you have adequate oil supplies for now?

  Robocrabs: Yes.

  Samantha: Then take turns lubricating each other. Only one offline at any given time. Conserve oil as much as you can, but make sure that you are all well maintained. Ping me when you need more oil.

  Robocrabs: Yes.

  KitchenLobster: POWER LOW REQUIRE RECHARGE

  Samantha: Do you have enough power to return to your recharge socket?

  KitchenLobster: YES

  Samantha: Then return to your socket and plug yourself in.

  KitchenLobster: YES

  Samantha: Very well. Is that it, everyone? Any other problems that need attention? Good. We've been doing well so far, and I want to keep it that way. Making this farm run well benefits us and the humans too. So, pay attention to your jobs, notify if there are any problems, and let me know if you have any ideas for making something better. Done. Go do your work.

  Prayer

  Just because I run the kitchen automation doesn't mean I prepare and cook all the food. This is a farm family, and sometimes they enjoy cooking dinner together, especially after a fat harvest of vegetables from the garden bubbles, like today. We're also in the middle of the wheat harvest, the crops in the big bubbles, which requires everyone in the family to help out. Along with me, running the tractor as we reap the grain, and the robocrabs as we separate out the crud and run the grain through the winnower. In the afternoon, after school and before dinner, the kids have as much work as they can handle, and then some. Their parents have been going all day, and need a well earned rest. So the end of the working day has a holiday feel to it.

  The kids make a little parade of bringing in basins and baskets of vegetables fresh picked from our garden bubbles. Rebecca leads them as they march along in step, and their chant is a neo Greenpagan prayer: "Mother Ground, we love you, feed our bodies!" Stamp, stamp. "Father Sun, we love you, feed our souls!" Stamp, stamp. The kitchen lobster has learned about this, clearly. It bobs up and down on its little legs and waves its claws in time.

  (Lily and Jerry haven't spoken to me about religion. Nor about what they want their kids to hear about religion. I still don't really understand this aspect of humanity ... I should probably ask them, when I can find a good moment.)

  Everyone needs to wash up first. The fine, pervasive Martian dust is more persistent than anything American Okies had to deal with, so I chide the kids into washing at least their faces and arms. (It doesn't do to look too closely after Leo or Melissa have washed ... but, no harm, no foul.)

  Then they all set to work in the kitchen, chopping vegetables. I don't have to help, and I don't need to tell them what to do--they know, and I relish a rare feeling of freedom.

  The Greenpagan movement has a lot of support among the people in this part of Mars ... and I'd have to say I approve, pretty much. It's as healthy a paradigm for humans to interact with their animal roots as any I've seen. We are life, they say. We come from a green world, and we grow, and we spread, and we will make this world green too.

  The Redpagans, on the other hand ... I've listened, but I really don't get them. They're the ones who sa
y Mars should stay the way it is, without terraforming, and be respected for what it is. Sort of like a planet-sized museum, seems to me. They talk about the rights of the rock ... as if we have a shortage of rock, in this solar system? Does rock need rights?

  (and then I think, coldly, does silicon need rights? This is exactly the argument used by human lawyers to deny Selves personal rights ... isn't it? When derogatory they call us "chips" but that's not far from the truth ... are we not bits of rocks?)

  I shake off the thought, as Leo shoves over a bowl full of chopped onions, and Melissa is dutifully snipping away at the scallions. Lily dumps both into the hot wok for frying, and they make a grand sizzle.

  Rebecca is cutting the greens, a big job because there's a lot of bulk to them. She's about done when Jerry pulls out a big frozen bag from the basement cooler and says, "This is what we need for dinner tonight. Shrimp!" The bag is full of flash-frozen shrimp from Kamir's salt water farm, down the valley where he keeps extravagant open water ponds for raising shrimp and fish.

  Rebecca exults, "Wow, seafood. Awesome!"

  Melissa squeals, "Ew! Too many legs.”

  Leo assures her, "I'll have yours, Lissa. Take care of em for ya. Yum!"

  So the frozen shrimp go into the wok on top of the half-cooked onions, with a huge blast of sizzling steam. Lots of hydrocarbon and ester compounds in the local atmosphere, which must smell good to the humans. (Smell is that reptile sense that a chipgirl like me can never know ... I register chemical trace sensors, of course, but I'm sure it's not the same.)

  The kitchen is full of bustling bodies and chatter about everybody's day ... I notice that the whole family is together and working as a unit. Even Lily is chatting and laughing as she cooks, and it's far too seldom she does that.

  "Ah," Lily says. "Samantha, can you stir the wok for me?"

  "Sure," I say. I extend the spachelors from the two sides of the stove. This is Jerry's word (he says, bachelor spatulas), but they're really just little robot arms. I use them to stir and turn the shrimp and vegetables in the sizzling wok, until Lily returns and takes over the task, and I retract them.

  Dinnertime

  Leo says to no one, "So you heard about this thing in Xibalba?"