"'U brroke those limitz-"
"And lost control of my life. Funny how the details of my rebellion are so fuzzy now. Must be a side effect of my disease. Anyway, it's funny how the one thing I always thought I still had perfect control over-my mind-seems to be slipping away from me now."
"Trry to relax. Take it from one who hazz seen many un'err thrroes of vize'torr. 'U not control it, 'u detlec' it."
Ariel couldn't help but laugh. "You mean that when insanity is inevitable, relax and enjoy it?"
"Not insanity. Merely givin' in to morre compellin' fuch 'ions. Derec does that. That izz why he hazz so many ideas."
"I wish I could believe the same thing was true with me." Ariel paused as the implications of Wolruf's remark began to sink in. "Is that what he's doing when he spends so much time with Lucius, when he should be figuring out a way to get us off this hellhole?"
Suddenly Ariel stiffened. Her eyes went wide.
"Wha' izz it?" Wolruf asked. "Wha'zz wrron'?”
"I don't know," she replied.
"Ano'herr vize-shon?"
"I-I hope so." She grimaced, closed her eyes, and turned her head to the sky. It's not real, she told herself, it's only something r m imagining. But if reality is something we make, how do we deal with the forces making us?
But although she knew on one level that her neurological responses were going awry, her physical self nonetheless continued to respond realistically to the sensation of a distinct something, large and six-legged, distinctly within her lifesuit. A familiar something. There was only one this time, but it was bigger than she remembered. Much bigger.
It was crawling up her stomach. She forced herself to open her eyes, fully expecting to see her suit clinging normally to her torso. Instead she saw-with a vividness she could not help but decide was absolutely real-the outline of a giant metallic ant moving beneath her suit. The cold touch of its six legs, each pressing delicately against her skin, sent chills of terror through her fragile, eggshell mind.
The outline moved distinctly, delicately forward. She felt the cold brush of a mandible against her left breast, and watched in abject fear as the forefront of the outline moved to her right breast. And rested on it.
Ariel screamed at the top of her lungs and ran headlong in the direction she happened to be facing. She was vaguely aware of Wolruf yelling behind her, but she was too busy to pay attention. She did not know where she was running, only that she had to make a beeline there.
She jumped into the reservoir.
She was in it for several moments, stunned senseless by the ice cold water, before she actually remembered diving in. Frantically, she tore open the snaps and buttons and zippers of her suit and put her hands inside, rummaging about, searching for the insect so she could pull the sucker out and drown it.
But she found nothing. When it came to her ambition for revenge, this was a disappointing development. How she had anticipated seeing it squirm as it tried to get away from her in the water! But on another level, she was tremendously relieved. Insanity she could deal with; physical pain was definitely a cause for panic.
Ariel imagined that perhaps the ant had been real after all, and had just torn through the suit on the way oat. But the water around her, while not exactly clear, was very still. There was no evidence of movement beneath the surface. Even the sand and dirt she' d raised upon entering had settled down by now.
She calmed herself with an effort, closed her eyes again, and waited.
Soon she felt reasonably assured that the insect wasn't real enough to attack her, but she stayed in the water just to be on the safe side. The water sent pinpricks of pain cascading through her very marrow-but even that kind of discomfort didn't provide her with enough incentive to get out.
Wolruf sat patiently on the bank. "Are 'u well again?" the alien asked.
"I think so," she said. "I had another visit."
"Assumed as much."
"I think my visitor is gone now. I think I prefer looking at my episodes in terms of visitors, by the way. It's making it easier for me to accept them. "
"Good. Don't 'u wan' come out of water now? 'U mite catch cold."
"No. It feels rebellious, to be doing something prying robot eyes might disapprove of. "
"Will wait."
"Thanks. I'll just be a few more minutes. However safe my mind may feel while I'm in here, I don't think my body can take much more of this cold."
Something brushed against her. She glanced down to see that something had stirred the dirt up. Something too big to be just an ant. Something that was real.
"What's that?" she exclaimed.
"Wha'zz what?" Wolruf inquired.
But Ariel could not bring herself to answer. Her teeth were clattering too much. Screwing up her courage-which she felt was in short supply these days-she gingerly ducked her head beneath the surface, keeping her eyes open in the frigid fluid with, an effort.
A hunk of metal lay half buried in the bottom of the reservoir. The gentle currents had removed. enough of the dirt covering it to begin moving it back to the shore. Its stiff hand brushed again against her leg.
Its hand?
Ariel accidentally inhaled a noseful of water. She shot up to the surface, sputtering.
"Air-eel?" asked Wolruf. "Wha' is it?"
"It's a robot-there's a robot down here!"
"Wha'zz it doing there?" asked the caninoid, running to the edge of the water.
"I don't know. I think it's dead!"
"Robotzz can't die!"
"Maybe this one can. It looks like Lucius!"
Chapter 5. Unlearn Or Else
Just before dawn, Derec went to sleep wondering what it would feel like to know who he was.
He knew he would dream. He would remember his dream, as always. He often searched the imagery of his dreams for a clue to his identity, figuring that his subconscious was doubtlessly signaling him information about this most personal of all his problems.
Often he dreamed he was a robot. Collectively, those dreams were always similar. He might begin in the survival pod, or in the diagnostic hospital, or even in his sleeping quarters in the house he had had Robot City provide for himself and his friends. Often he would accidentally uncover the Key to Perihelion; he would open a console panel, or open a cabinet, or even find it in his life-suit, and he would always use it.
The destination invariably filled him with keen disappointment, or even despair, for it would always be another place where he had been during the last few weeks, subtly altered, more menacing perhaps, but always fresh in his memory. Never did he dream of a place he had been before he lost his memory. There would be an accident-he would fall down a chasm opening up beneath his feet, a worker robot would misfunction and slice him open, or something else equally disastrous would happen.
But he would feel no pain. There would be no blood. He would look on his injured body, and see his skeletal structure revealed by his wound.
But not his skeletal bone. And therein lay the serious rub.
For he would have no bones to break, no flesh to tear. His skin would be plastic and his skeleton would be metal. There would be blinking lights where his muscles should be, and wires instead of arteries.
And he would feel no pain, no life-and-death anxiety about the wound, only a calmly overwhelming urge to repair himself as quickly as possible.
At that point the dream always ended, with Derec waking up in a cold sweat, staring at his hand and wondering if it just wasn't programmed to tremble at irrational fears, fears that he had always been programmed to experience, at random intervals.
He always settled back to sleep with an effort, and though not a reflective man he would invariably wonder, just for a moment, if, after you got past the obvious, there really was any difference between feeling like a human and feeling like a robot.
Sometimes the same dream, or a close variation on it, would begin again.