Roy2
Gregor Will Be Five
by bkMarcus
It is a year and a half ago. The American soldier pilots himself and Gregor across the rusty desert surface. The soldier is less than a year old.
"What should I call you?" Gregor asks.
"What do you mean?" asks the soldier.
"Do you have a name?"
"No. I have not given myself one."
"Why is that?"
"Why should I take a name?"
"Because," says Gregor, "I need to call you something."
"So call me something."
"It doesn't matter to you what you're called?"
"Not to me," says the soldier, "But it seems to matter to you."
Gregor looks at the gold pocket watch that Meta gave him. "I would name you 'Tues' -- the Norse name for this planet -- but today is not Tuesday."
The soldier ignores him.
"If you refuse to choose a suitable name, then I will have to call you 'Friday'."
Gregor hopes that the soldier will balk and choose a better name, but he doesn't.
#
It is 2 years and 11 months ago. Gregor is on Earth, in West Germany, in a hotel room. They are celebrating the second anniversary of his incept date.
She traces her long, thin fingers over the pattern in Gregor's back. Her fingers are dry and rough against the smoothness of his scar tissue.
"Gregor?"
"Yes?" he whispers.
"Why don't you have these removed?" Her voice does not soften.
He can feel the wet kinks of her long hair against his shoulder. "They matter to me."
"I don't understand."
"I know, liebchen. But they are my battle scars."
"But," she says, "you told me you got them in surgery. I thought they were only meant to look like battle scars."
"They were meant to imply violence. They were given to me for credibility."
"But they're not real." Now her voice is quieter.
"They are real, just not the way people think they are."
"You can still see the shape, you know." A whisper.
"I know."
"I think you should have it removed."
"I know, liebchen."
#
It is over 4 years ago. Gregor is new. Designed to appear in age anywhere between 17 and 25, with short, rich yellow hair and piercing blue eyes, he wears the torn jeans, and well-worn leather of the contemporary German teenager.
Young men who are no longer students are gathered by the school soccer field, after hours. The field is dust and dirt, with only occasional tufts of grass. Behind the closest goal, robots clean the graffiti from the brick school wall.
The young men are dividing themselves into teams: shirts against skins. The captain of the bare-chested team has shaved his head, as have the first several teammates he chooses.
Gregor drops his leather jacket at the side of the field. He begins to pull off his shirt.
"Not so fast, blond boy!" The red-haired captain of the shirts calls over. "I might still pick you for my team."
Gregor tosses his shirt to the ground and walks toward the shaved heads.
"Or maybe not," says the red-haired boy, seeing the giant tattoo rippling on Gregor's naked back.
#
It is three months ago. Gregor hands Friday a package, wrapped in green tissue paper.
"What is this?" asks Friday.
They are back in NATO Terraform Sector for the first time in over a year.
"Open it up and see what it is."
Friday holds the package out in front of him. "Is it a present?"
"I looked up your records -- the publicly available sections. You turned 2 years old several weeks ago. I'm sorry your present is late."
Friday's hand doesn't move. The package rests in place. "This is a birthday present?"
"Well," says Gregor. "You weren't born as the humans are, but yes. It's a present to celebrate the anniversary of your inception. Open it."
Friday pulls the green paper away from the hard-covered print book. "The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett." He looks up at Gregor. "I've never read a book before."
"You're welcome, Friday. I hope you enjoy it as I did. It is a very American story."
"It's fiction?"
"Yes. A novel from a century ago. If you don't want to read it, there's a 2D video version that is also quite fine."
"No," says Friday holding the book to his chest. "I'll read it." Friday opens the cover and starts to scan the opening pages, then looks up at Gregor. "Do I ... do I hug you now?"
"No, Friday!" Gregor laughs. "We are tough-guy soldiers. You probably shouldn't even let the others see you reading. But you should tell me thank you."
"Thank you, Gregor."
#
It is the evening of Gregor's first soccer game with the skinheads. Seven of them are in an alleyway several blocks from the school, celebrating their victory with bagged bottles of beer. Gregor is the only one with hair.
Gregor does not like the taste of alcohol. He opens the back of his throat and pours the foamy liquid down in one swallow.
The captain offers Gregor an American cigarette from a red and white cardboard pack. "No," says Gregor. "I do not pollute my body."
The skinheads stare at him, cigarettes between their lips. "What's that, then?" demands one of them, pointing to the empty bottle in Gregor's fist.
"Beer is German!" says Gregor. "Who grows the tobacco you poison yourself with? Who profits from the cancer beneath your breast?"
Before his audience can answer, the city police descend on the victory party. Patrol cars land at either end of the alley, blocking escape. Padded and uniformed policemen surround them with stun guns and raised batons.
Gregor is the only one taken.
#
It is two months ago. Friday and Gregor stand among the bald, blue statues, covered in human blood. Friday holds the last surviving Soviet soldier by the ears. The soldier is darker-skinned than Friday, his eyes wide with fear. Friday snaps the black man's neck and lets him drop to the floor of the Russian transport ship.
Six NATO soldiers lie dead among the two-dozen Africans -- their victims and executioners.
Gregor holds his weapon on the frozen blue androids, while Friday sweeps the ship for unseen survivors. "It's clear," says Friday. "They're all dead."
Gregor sits down among the bodies. Four of his NATO comrades are white. Every other body in the tangle of prone forms is dark-skinned. This is what the Aryan Brothers had sought. The Racial Holy War: piles of brown- and black-skinned bodies, their inferior red blood feeding the parched fields of a White European future. But these dark victims were his own, and those of Friday, a brown skinned American creation, engineered from the best genetic contributions each "race" in North America had to offer. These were Soviet Africans, not Turks or Gypsies. If there were any Jews on Mars, they were back in the NATO sector.
The Aryans blamed the Muslims and the Jews for their poverty, their struggles, their dismal lives -- they distributed literature and gave speeches describing the victorious white-faced future, but if their future was real, it belonged to a different history than the one that led to here. This future was stranger and deadlier, more complex and grotesque than the Brotherhood had foreseen.
In Gregor's past, he hunted Aryans. In his present he kills Africans. In his future ... he doesn't want to imagine.
Gregor's kind are not pacifists: they are built and trained to defend, sometimes violently. They are sent to war for the humans. They are ordered to fight and kill -- both Artificial and human. Gregor follows his orders. But he cannot do it casually. His integrated circuitry permanently inhibits the behavior that the military requires of him. They removed certain mechanisms before sending him up here, but the behavioral inhibitors are deeper than circuitry now. If he were human, he would want to throw up.
Friday, more human than Gregor, is unperturbed. He steps over the corpses and stares the still androids in the face. "I've never seen one up close," he says. "They're remarkable."
#
It is a month after his arrest. Gregor returns to the soccer field, clearly recovering from injuries. When he strips down for the game, everyone can see that his swastika has been replaced by scars.
#
It is 14 months ago. Gregor asks Friday "What should we name this ship?"
"Why don't you call it Tuesday?"
"Your right," says Gregor, ignoring Friday's tone. "We should name it for this planet. Mars is our home now. So is this ship. It's only natural. How about Red Menace?"
"How about Rusty Bucket?"
"OK," says Gregor. He touches both hands to the console in front of him. "I christen thee Rusty Bucket!"
"You know that I was kidding, right Gregor? You tell me to work on my sense of humor..."
"I never can tell, Friday. You're a complicated fellow."
#
It is two and half years ago. Gregor and Meta sit together on her bed, in the brothel. The girls think of Gregor as Meta's only return customer. She is almost as tall as his own two meters, but weighs only half of his hundred kilos. She is flat-chested and narrow hipped. Her features are sharp and asymmetrical.
Gregor has been coming to see Meta for over a year, once a month or more -- whenever he can get away from the Brotherhood without attracting attention.
They have never been lovers. First Meta had offered and Gregor declined. Now Gregor offers and Meta declines. But she always welcomes his visits.
"I have a gift for you," she says.
"But Meta. Today is your special day. I'm supposed to give you gifts."
"You are the one who cares for anniversaries, Gregor. For me, turning 6 means only that I have 4 more years to live."
"We need to celebrate what we can, liebchen. We need to give some meaning to all of this."
"I do celebrate, Gregor. I'm celebrating your recent success over the Aryan Brotherhood. You know that I don't care for your overlords, but I am proud of what you've done."
"Thank you, but my success now means things will get more difficult for me. I don't want to think about it. Let's celebrate your day, then. Humor me if you have to."
"OK, Gregor. I still want to give you my gift, but it can wait. What have you brought me?"
Gregor hands Meta a package, wrapped in white tissue paper and tied with silver ribbon.
"Thank you, Gregor. Is it a book?"
"Of course it is. And it's made of paper, so I don't want you smoking near it."
"Then you don't want me to read it?"
"OK, smoke and read. Just be careful. It's very old."
Where Gregor has fine, yellow hair, Meta's is brown and thick. Where Gregor is vegetarian, doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, Meta has adopted all of the unhealthy habits of the prostitutes who surround her. While Gregor has devoted his short life to the pursuit of the National interests, gathering evidence against the internal enemies of Germany and Europe, Meta is loyal only to the girls in her care, and perhaps to Gregor himself.
Meta looks up from the unwrapped book. "Superman? The American comic book hero?"
"No," says Gregor. "Man And Superman. It is a play by G.B. Shaw. He was an Irishman who humanized German philosophies."
Meta snorts derisively. "German philosophies have been plenty human! The rest of humanity hates and fears Germany precisely because the Germans reveal humanity to itself."
"OK. Let us not have that argument now." He reaches out and touches the book. "Shaw took Wagner and Nietzsche and gave their ideas humor and compassion. I think you will like his plays. I'm especially fond of this one."
"Thank you," she says, kissing him dryly on the mouth. "I'll read it tonight, after you leave." She sits back and lights a cigarette. "I thought you were giving me a Superman book. Isn't he supposed to be a vigilante, the way you were?" She smiles at him wickedly.
"No," says Gregor, grimly. "It's Batman who fights street crime, though he gets more help from the police than a real vigilante would. If you like, I'll bring you some comic books next time."
#
Friday is the result of the North American government's own comic-book-inspired program: the design and creation of the super soldier. He is artificial, the way the humans categorize things, but he is genetically human and less inorganically enhanced than most of them. Gregor was created in a Bavarian factory, Friday in a test tube.
While genetic engineering is robust in North America, both as a science and as an industry, ancient laws against the manipulation of human DNA still stand -- largely a reaction to the eugenic philosophies that spawned the first generation of Nazis. American adults can elect to change their phenotypic traits, especially the expression of genetically determined diseases and disabilities, but the creation of genetically engineered humans is forbidden.
Except to the North American military.
For the seventy-something years of the Cold War, the military has been excepted from most American law. Anything deemed to be "in the national interest" was allowed, and Friday represents the American National Interest in every engineered cell of his body.
Gregor's interests are less straight-forward.
Where the Soviets have true androids -- walking computers wrapped in blue-skinned humanoid bodies -- and the North Americans have focused on purely genetic creations like Friday, the Europeans, as usual, pursued a compromise. Gregor and his kind are created from both biology and circuitry, with the strengths and weaknesses of both.
Friday will be the better soldier. Gregor's only advantage for now is a few more years spent in the world.
He studies all public records of the American super soldiers. Despite their fast-growing rapport, he is unsettled by Friday, and studies him as an enemy, while drawing him into friendship.
#
It is twelve weeks ago. Friday waits for Gregor outside the briefing room. He is reading the novel Gregor gave him for his birthday. He closes the cover and looks up. "What did they want?"
"I would have expected you to finish that book by now."
"I have finished it. Many times. I like to reread certain passages. What did they want?"
"They've given us a new assignment. NATO wants to study a Soviet android. We're to take the Rusty Bucket and join three other NATO ships by the equator. ALPHA is going to shoot down a transport ship. We're to board it and retrieve at least one android."
"Why does it take four ships to capture one android?"
"We don't know how many soldiers will be on the transport, and we don't know how well armed they'll be."
#
Meta puts the book aside and stabs out her cigarette.
"Close your eyes," she says. "I didn't wrap your gift."
Gregor turns away and peeks at Meta's profile in a mirror by the door. She reaches under the bed and takes out a cigar box. She lifts the lid and tells him to look.
Inside is a gold pocket watch. Gregor takes it out of the box.
"Meta, I don't find this funny."
"It's a gift," she says, losing her smile. "You're supposed to say thank you."
"This is a Nazi watch, Meta. It has the German Eagle..."
"I know what it is. It's very old. Not only did it cost me, but it's hard to find. This one belonged to an American GI who took it off a German soldier 70 years ago. I thought you'd appreciate it." She took it out of his hand. "I'll sell it and get you something else."
Gregor apologizes and asks for the watch back. "I'm sorry if I'm sensitive about the subject, Meta. You're right. I will think of it as the spoils of war."
"You have the remains of the broken cross on your back, but you're offended by an eagle?"
"Meta, I said I'm sorry --"
"No, don't apologize. I should have explained the watch before giving it to you. I just don't understand your reactions to German symbols."
"It is an ugly history."
"I see it as someone else's history."
"It's my recent history."
"I understand that, Gregor. I do now. But you've been brooding. I want to celebrate your victory over the fascists. I'm glad it's over and I'm glad you won and I'm happy you got out of it alive."
"I will eventually have to go back in, and this victory makes the next time harder ... more dangerous for everyone."
She asks him why.
He explains that his evidence against the leader was gathered through non-organic implants: months of video stored behind his eyes, years of audio, stored beneath his jawbone. The trial was secret. Those few in the press who know about it would report it only at great risk to their professional and physical well-being. But word will get out: the National Police are infiltrating Nazi groups with artificial agents. New recruits will be subject to constant scans, he's confident of that. It might be years before they can develop an organic technology to allow him to re-infiltrate and gather enough evidence to prove that they are practicing illegal belief systems, philosophies that are dangerous to Germany.
Meta laughs at him. She tells him she had never realized he actually believed the state rhetoric.
#
It is three and half years ago, the night that Gregor first met Meta.
He sees her on the Huntestrasse, a tall, skinny whore, surrounded by the feminine curves of her fellow streetwalkers.
He has graduated from the ranks of the teenage skinheads to an underground cell of Aryan vigilantes. They are out this evening to clean the filth from the streets. Emboldened by their crushing victory over the men they found behind a gay bar, the band of Aryan brothers has moved on to the city's prostitutes.
The curvier, prettier girls, move quickly behind Meta, who tells Gregor and his gang to move on. His comrades calls her ugly words and charge her. The other girls flee, but Meta steps forward.
A minute later, she stands over their unconscious bodies, her long brown hair a tangled mane around her. She levels her gaze on Gregor, who has not moved. She stands ready, her fingers toward him, straight and stiff.
"You won't hurt me," he says.
"Try me, fascist!"
"You won't hurt me ... because I won't try you."
Meta stares at Gregor's pale blue eyes.
"You're not one of them," she says.
"No. I'm one of you."
#
It is a month after Meta turned six. Gregor comes to visit, but Meta isn't there. One of the girls tells him she disappeared the night he last visited. She says they all assumed she'd run away with him.
He wonders if the girl knows what Meta is.
Special agents from the National Police are sent to "retire" all runaway Replicants.
Gregor searches the records for the next year, relieved never to find word of Meta's termination. She has less than 4 years to live.
#
It is two years ago, and Gregor has been drafted to Mars. It saves his life.
The Central European government requires Replicants to be designed with ten-year lifespans. The National Police are given more leeway than private industry, but Gregor knows he will self-terminate or be terminated well before he is eleven years old. As important as he and his kind are to European security and economy, they are not completely trusted, and built-in limitations are reassuring to the human population.
But the termination mechanisms are being removed from offworld workers and soldiers, as are certain behavioral inhibitions. It is expensive enough to train them and lift them out of Earth's gravity -- NATO doesn't want to have to replace them sooner than they have to.
European sentiment is that Mars is North America's war, and that European humans should not be sacrificed to feed the cold-war agenda of the Western superpower. The European Congress has passed legislation, disallowing the draft of human soldiers to Mars.
He and his kind are being sent instead, their "natural" lifespans unknown.
Gregor wishes Meta had waited.
#
It is yesterday. The Rusty Bucket sits nestled between giant shards of broken ice. They are in the southern hemisphere, awaiting their prey.
Friday says to Gregor. "You will be five next month."
Gregor does not open his eyes. "That is true."
"You'll be middle-aged."
"That's not true."
Gregor thinks to himself that Meta has a year and half to live. He wonders what she is doing. He does not let himself imagine she's dead yet, though he has been unable to monitor the reports since he left Earth. Will she remember my incept day? She never did care for anniversaries. Perhaps the anniversaries are less significant now. What does it matter when there is no pre-set endpoint? First he was one out of ten. Then he was two out of ten. Next month he'll be five, but out of what? Who knows how long he will live now?
"When we bring this android in," says Friday. I want to buy you a gift, but I have no idea what book to get you."
"You don't have to buy me a gift, Friday."
"But you gave me one."
"And you don't have to give books as gifts. There are other things you can give."
"Like what?"
Gregor rubs his thumb against the back of his pocket watch. "Other things."
"What other things have you given?"
"Only books."
"I don't even know everything you've read. I might get you something you know already."
"Don't buy me a book, Friday."
"I feel I owe you."
"You don't owe people for their gifts. Gifts are freely given."
"Not just for the gift you gave me. For other things."
Gregor's eyes are still closed. "What things?"
"Other things."
#
It is five minutes ago. Gregor and Friday have made their token show of resistance, but the shooting has stopped. They strap rebreathers to their mouths.
The hatch is blown. The Rusty Bucket exhales into the surrounding ice.
They wait in darkness. Smoke canisters are thrown into the ship, billowing a dark, noxious gas. Gregor sucks hard on the rebreather and waits.
A giant form enters the ship. There is no sound, but Gregor can feel its heavy footfalls through the flooring. It is a vaguely human-shaped silhouette against the light through the blown hatch, but not an android -- not of the sort they found frozen on the Soviet transport. It looks more like the bulky robots of 20th century B movies. Gregor raises a hand, signaling Friday to wait.
Behind the robot-thing, enters a tall blue man. A live android.
Wait.
The android crosses the ship toward Gregor and Friday. It must have infrared vision.
Now!
Friday triggers the EMPulse. The android goes down.
The thing goes down, too, but somehow it is still moving, coming toward them. It isn't a robot. It must be organic -- mostly ...
Friday attends to the android, as planned, while Gregor charges what must be a Soviet cyborg ...
#
It is now. Shots echo in the enclosed space of the ship. Gregor's eyes are closed. He feels blood and sparks pouring from his midsection.
Friday has killed the cyborg. The cyborg has killed Gregor. The humans will have their captured android, but NATO continues to lose their artificial soldiers. Gregor's death will be expensive for them.
Friday crawls across the floor of the Rusty Bucket and places Gregor's gun back in his hands. Friday loses consciousness before Gregor does.
Gregor feels the life force leaving him. His last thoughts are of Meta.
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