Robert J. Sawyer - Shed Skin

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2024-11-23 0 0 35.88KB 16 页 5.9玖币
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Shed Skin
Robert J. Sawyer
a Short Story from
Analog Science Fiction and Fact
January-February 2004
“I’m sorry,” said Mr. Shiozaki, as he leaned back in his swivel chair and looked at the
middle-aged white man with the graying temples, “but there’s nothing I can do for you.”
“But I’ve changed my mind,” said the man. He was getting red in the face as the conversation
went on. “I want out of this deal.”
“You can’t change your mind,” said Shiozaki. “You’ve moved your mind.”
The man’s voice had taken on a plaintive tone, although he was clearly trying to suppress it. “I
didn’t think it would be like this.”
Shiozaki sighed. “Our psychological counselors and our lawyers went over the entire procedure
and all the ramifications with Mr. Rathburn beforehand. It’s what he wanted.”
“But I don’t want it anymore.”
“You don’t have any say in the matter.”
The white man placed a hand on the table. The hand was flat, the fingers splayed, but it was
nonetheless full of tension. “Look,” he said, “I demand to see—to see the other me. I’ll explain it to him.
He’ll understand. He’ll agree that we should rescind the deal.”
Shiozaki shook his head. “We can’t do that. You know we can’t. That’s part of the agreement.”
“But—”
“No buts,” said Shiozaki. “That’s the way it has to be. No successor has ever come back here.
They can’t. Your successor has to do everything possible to shut your existence out of his mind, so he
can get on with his existence, and not worry about yours. Even if he wanted to come see you, we
wouldn’t allow the visit.”
“You can’t treat me like this. It’s inhuman.”
“Get this through your skull,” said Shiozaki. “You are not human.”
“Yes, I am, damn it. If you—”
“If I prick you, do you not bleed?” said Shiozaki.
“Exactly! I’m the one who is flesh and blood. I’m the one who grew in my mother’s womb. I’m
the one who is a descendant of thousands of generations of Homo sapiens and thousands of generations
of Homo erectus and Homo habilis before that. This—this other me is just a machine, a robot, an
android.”
“No, it’s not. It is George Rathburn. The one and only George Rathburn.”
“Then why do you call him ‘it’?”
“I’m not going to play semantic games with you,” said Shiozaki. “He is George Rathburn. You
aren’t—not anymore.”
The man lifted his hand from the table and clenched his fist. “Yes, I am. I am George Rathburn.”
“No, you’re not. You’re just a skin. Just a shed skin.”
#
George Rathburn was slowly getting used to his new body. He’d spent six months in counseling
preparing for the transference. They’d told him this replacement body wouldn’t feel like his old one, and
they’d been right. Most people didn’t transfer until they were old, until they’d enjoyed as much biological
physicality as they could—and until the ever-improving robotic technology was as good as it was going
to get during their natural lifetimes.
After all, although the current robot bodies were superior in many ways to the slab-of-flab
ones—how soon he’d adopted that term!—they still weren’t as physically sensitive.
Sex—the recreational act, if not the procreative one—was possible, but it wasn’t quite as good.
Synapses were fully reproduced in the nano-gel of the new brain, but hormonal responses were faked by
playing back memories of previous events. Oh, an orgasm was still an orgasm, still wonderful—but it
wasn’t the unique, unpredictable experience of a real sexual climax. There was no need to ask, “Was it
good for you?,” for it was always good, always predictable, always exactly the same.
Still, there were compensations. George could now walk—or run, if he wanted to—for hours on
end without feeling the slightest fatigue. And he’d dispensed with sleep. His daily memories were
organized and sorted in a six-minute packing session every twenty-four hours; that was his only
downtime.
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