The entire field burst into a fireball, then blinked out. The crowd roared.
The people around him on the balcony began to chatter excitedly, pointing at the field, laughing, gesturing. The girl put her hand over his and smiled. “It’s animation, am I right?” he asked. “Like a cartoon?” The girl looked slightly confused, then nodded.
He’d seen somewhat the same principle at sporting events, decades ago. A group of people in the stands would turn over cards to say something a letter at a time, or to make a picture. But what he’d just seen involved dance and precise physical manipulation, a tight choreography. A thousand times more elaborate than what he’d seen at those old sporting events. It struck him then how all his years in Ubo had been as much a prison for him as it had been for the subjects. Life had gone on, people had loved and imaginations had evolved, and he’d had no idea. It was like putting on a new pair of glasses and discovering that your entire field of vision transformed. The sudden change in perspective was dizzying.
An old man nearby looked at him, put his hands to his head and made an exploding gesture. He laughed and Falstaff laughed with him. He didn’t deserve this, but he remembered that Danielbot had sent him here. He had permission to enjoy himself, to live. It was the only sane thing to do under the circumstances.
A resonating hum rose through the air, becoming rounder and more prayer-like as the mouths below gradually opened. Then the ground beneath the pickers appeared to be breaking apart to reveal the glowing coals underneath and the remaining ground turning black around them.
It was the pickers scuffling their feet, turning over the carefully-placed gray layers of trash to uncover the reddish layers and the black layers buried underneath.
A sharp-edged fissure appeared near the upper left corner of the field. It travelled down, widening, becoming a sword that crashed against another sword. Then there were fists and knives and a struggle of giant warring forms. The animation grew more violent as explosions of color were used to heighten the effect. A large bird escaped the center of the conflict but just as it almost achieved the impossible and left the boundaries of ground to soar up into the audience, a final slash severed its head.
The style of the animation was jittery and shaky, but the resulting energy was palpable. Every figure appeared electrified.
The field went to a mottled blue and black darkness except for one relatively small explosion of blood. But then that blood began to drip in linear horizontals and verticals as a geometric representation of a city rendered in red on a black canvas appeared, the details filling in until it might have been Boston or some other city on the old eastern seaboard. Falstaff could hear the girl’s small gasps and cries of excitement beside him.
The aural chorus had continued quite without his being aware of it, and then flames appeared scattered inside the lines of buildings and windows and within seconds another brightly animated fire had consumed it all with a resulting gasp from both audience and performers.
The dawn of pale yellows that next appeared was only an animation, a simulation laid over a skin above a nearly unlimited supply of waste, destruction, and loss, and yet no less thrilling for all that.
A small bird appeared above that yellow, flying jerkily from one side of the field to the other, as if battered by the wind. It disappeared off the far edge as the field turned so white it hurt the eyes. Years later surrounded by his friends Falstaff would still wonder if that bird had been real.
Afterwards they descended the stairs into the lobby. People seemed reluctant to leave. Falstaff understood this—they’d all seen something unique and magical, involving almost unimaginable cooperation. He wanted to stay close for a while, maybe meet the creator of the piece, see if any of the magic rubbed off on him.
There were tables of goods to trade—it appeared these vendors never missed an opportunity. Falstaff stopped abruptly. There on a table was one of the bot power packs.
“So you got out too. I’m glad. There are only two or three of us, far as I know.”
Falstaff stared into the stranger’s face, thinking he was familiar, but he couldn’t place him. His young companion gazed up at them, wide-eyed, but saying nothing. Then he saw the collar of the dark blue uniform under the gray parka he wore. “You were one of the guards, um …”
“Clemmons.”
“That’s right, Clemmons. We never talked, for some reason.”
“I kept to myself, pretty much. I never felt… comfortable there, doing what we did. No excuse of course, but still.”
“Well. Well.” Falstaff had no idea what to say.
“It’s better here. I wasn’t expecting that. This is my table. These people, they’re so generous.”
“Yes, yes they are,” Falstaff said. “They’ve found their answer, and generosity’s definitely part of it. Well, I hope to see you again.” He turned, feeling embarrassed, feeling caught, and hoping he never saw this man again.
“Wait! I have something for you.” The ex-guard held a battered pack out to him. Falstaff took it—it was heavy. He rested it gently on the table, loosened the top flap. It was the head of one of the bots. He felt himself recoil, but he didn’t let it go. He imagined how awful it would be if it slipped out and landed on the floor.
“I don’t know which one it was. I know I should, but I just don’t. It got pretty well blasted—the ID is heavily scarred over. I was going to trade it, figured I could get a great deal for it, but I just couldn’t. I hope you’ll take it, maybe you can wake it up somehow.”
Falstaff shook his head. “I don’t—”
“Please. We shouldn’t forget what happened there. Maybe some of that information, well, you should have this, you should keep it safe.”
Falstaff looked down. The girl was gazing into the bag. She reached into her pocket and pulled out half a burrito and put it into the man’s hand.
“Why, thank you,” the ex-guard said to the girl, then to Falstaff, “What is she doing? What does she want?”
“I think she wants the head, actually. She wants to trade you for it.”
“Surely you can’t—”
“If you’ll throw in the battery pack we’ll take both of them off your hands. For the burrito. Or rather, the half of the burrito.”
“But what would she do with it?”
“She’ll love it—that’s one of the things she does. And she’s curious, and very bright. I’ll help her—we’ll see what we can do, what we can salvage. I want to do that. I’d love to do that.”
Falstaff helped her carry it home.
“Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.”
Author’s Note:
A-7713, the serial number of the “Danielbot,” was the number tattooed at Auschwitz-Birkenau on the arm of Elie Wiesel in his Night, one of the most important documents written about the Holocaust.
Also from Solaris
Loxley Fiddleback can see the dead, but the problem is… the dead can see her.
Ghosts have always been cruel to Loxley Fiddleback, especially the spirit of her only friend, alive only hours before. Loxley isn’t equipped to solve a murder: she lives near the bottom of a cutthroat, strip-mined metropolis known as “The Hole,” suffers from crippling anxiety and doesn’t cotton to strangers. Worse still, she’s haunted.