The administrator entered the room, a concerned expression on his face. “How are you feeling, Mr. Jackson?”
“How do I feel? Your machine was going to cut off my—!”
“A regrettable error. I take full responsibility for it. Fortunately, it was caught in time.”
He paused. “At least in your case. I just came from William ‘N.-as-in-Nathaniel’ Jackson’s room. Luckily, the other Mr. Jackson happened to have hemorrhoids too along with his, ah, other condition. We’ve put him back on the schedule for the procedure he was supposed to have. He seemed satisfied he’ll now get two operations for the price of one. Of course, we’ve re-scheduled your surgery too.”
“If you think I’m going to let one of those machines near me with a knife again, you’re crazy! I’d rather keep my hemorrhoids and get out of this hellhole you call a hospital!”
The administrator looked hurt. “I’m sorry you feel that way, Mr. Jackson. I realize our accommodations aren’t luxurious, and the services we provide our patients aren’t as personalized or perfect as you and I would wish them to be. But providing health care to every American consumes trillions of newdollars annually. As people live longer and expensive new medical treatments and technologies are developed, costs keep rising. Without fiscally responsible measures to manage and contain those costs, there wouldn’t be enough money to give everyone basic medical care.”
He smiled sadly. “Our oldest patients complain the current system is-n’t like the ‘good old days.’ ‘We had our own private doctors then,’ they say. ‘Dedicated people who really cared about us. If we got sick they’d treat us or admit us to a hospital immediately—without months on a waiting list. The doctor made sure we got the best care possible, and let us stay in the hospital as long as we needed!’ ”
Jackson glared at the administrator, remembering the TV program he’d seen. “Well, wasn’t it like that?”
“Yes—for the few people wealthy or lucky enough to get that treatment. But there were also millions of people without health insurance or enough money to pay for medical care. Any doctors they managed to get were usually poorly trained or inexperienced. And I could tell you horror stories about private hospitals turning away suffering, seriously ill people or transferring them to tenth-rate government-supported medical centers because they had a ‘negative wallet biopsy.’ The situation became critical when the federal government finally went bankrupt a decade ago, and over a hundred million more people—the ones who’d relied on programs like Medicare and Medicaid—suddenly found themselves without affordable health care.”
The administrator shook his head. “Our new system isn’t perfect. But at least now everyone has access to health care, and is treated equally. If we must cut corners here and there to save money—well, that’s a necessary sacrifice.”
Jackson grumbled, “Well, you could at least try to show a little compassion for people. Your machines make you feel like a slab of meat in a processing plant!”
A trace of anger flickered across the administrator’s smooth, perfect features. “I assure you, the well-being of our patients is foremost in our minds. It’d have been more economical to have only MUs here—with no human presence whatsoever. Just machines and patients. The fact I’m here, checking personally to ensure your stay is as pleasant as possible, proves this hospital’s commitment to giving our patients that essential ‘human touch.’ Despite their technological sophistication and medical expertise, MUs look like, and are, machines—incapable of human emotions like compassion. It’s understandable people feel uncomfortable trusting them with their lives.
“My primary function is to reassure patients that someone does care about what happens to them. Someone they can relate too, who looks just like them—flesh and blood, not just metal. Someone they think understands their anxiety, fear, and pain—and who’ll share that burden with them.”
The administrator folded his arms. “You don’t think of me as a machine, but as a human being. Don’t you?”
“Yes, but—.”
Suddenly Jackson realized where this conversation was leading. He fearfully examined the figure standing before him. The perfectly coifed hair—each strand as fine and identical as polyester fibers. The pale forehead—smooth as tinted plastic. The curiously glassy blue eyes. The ivory teeth gleaming between delicately sculpted lips.
He wasn’t fooled by the administrator’s slick, reassuring words. No human being could be so devoid of conscience they’d dare tell him the hospital’s “cost containment measures” were really meant to help him or other patients. No person who’d ever been sick himself could be so lacking in human sympathy he could blatantly lie like that for whoever was lining their pockets with the money the hospital was saving.
Only an inhuman, state-of-the-art AI—an unfeeling silicon shill inside the new humanoid robots Cybergates was rumored to have developed—could be so utterly amoral!
“You—you’re a machine too, aren’t you!”
The administrator’s hand moved toward “his” face—and Jackson had a nightmarish premonition. He imagined a thin flesh-colored mask being stripped away—revealing a hideous skull of silvery steel. The bare white globes of its eyes held steady by microservos, staring pitilessly at him. A mouth formed of porcelain teeth and naked metal grinning sardonically—.
The administrator brushed beads of sweat from his forehead. “No, I’m quite—human.”
Jackson sat dumbstruck as the full horror and audacity of that admission dawned on him. The administrator continued, “If you’ll excuse me, I have other duties. I hope we can talk again after your operation.”
By the time Jackson regained his senses the room was empty. He leapt from the bed and glanced up and down the hallway outside, fighting an urge to panic. From far away came the muffled voices and faint whirring of MUs—but none were in sight. Moving quietly, Jackson raced down the corridor, listening. The only sound he heard was his bare feet slapping against the floor, crunching an occasional cockroach.
Not daring to trust the elevator—odds were MUs would be on it, and he couldn’t outrun them—he sighed in relief when he discovered a sign marked “Stairs.” At least he had that advantage over those mechanical monsters—steps were made for legs, not wheels.
Down one flight, then two—if he was right, what he was searching for was on this floor. The door by the stairwell was solid and thick—no way to tell if there were MUs waiting on the other side.
Panting, Jackson opened the door a crack and peeked out. Still in luck. The elevator he’d been on when he’d spotted the AI interface here on the second floor was several meters away. He threw the door open and made a desperate dash down the empty hallway towards the interface—.
Suddenly an MU appeared, blocking his path. “I’m sorry, sir. Patients must remain in their rooms until called for.”
Ignoring the machine, Jackson redoubled his efforts and ran by it. But he got only another meter before being jerked to an abrupt halt as slithering appendages grabbed him around the mid-section.
“Come with me, sir.”
As the MU’s tightening tentacles began yanking him back, Jackson strained one last time to link with the device so tantalizingly close at the end of the corridor—.
Then he felt it. The familiar buzz inside his brain as his implant made contact with the AI interface. Digging in with his heels, locked in a life-or-death tug of war as the MU dragged him centimeter by centimeter in the opposite direction, he absorbed the data pouring into his brain from the hospital’s central AI—and groaned. Security codes barred access to the main control programs. If he couldn’t override them in another few seconds the MU would have him out of range—!