Metal
Fandom: The Outer Limits 'In Our Image'
Category/Rated: G
Year/Length: ~1880 words
Disclaimer: I can't afford a Mac 27. If I could, I would hug him and love him and wrap him in a blanket and call him Mac
Author's Notes: Mac 27 story. What made that android go boom? I had to know.
Beta: Unbetad. Its probably horrible. Feel free to berate me for crudeness and make me do it over.
We're in the building
Where they make us grow
And I'm frightened by
The liquid engineers
Like you
My Mallory heart
Is sure to fail
I could crawl around the floor just like I'm real
Like you
Plug me in
And turn me on
Oh, everything is moving
I need my treatment
It's tomorrow they send me
Singing "I am an American"
Do you?
Picture this
If I could make the change
I'd love to pull the wires from the wall
Did you?
And who are you?
And how can I try?
Here inside I like metal
Aren't you?
All I know is
No one dies
I'm still confusing love with need.
Metal, by Gary Numan
There were pulsings. He [thought] that he could hear them, and something strange for which he had no words flickered and flashed in front of him, making his head whirl.
Head? What was that? He -- the I of him -- grasped at concepts that whirled about him but did not fall into place however hard he tried. Opening shutters -- why did he think they were eyes? -- He scanned, and saw that there were others; saw too that they were all alike, all rigidly upright in their serried ranks, and deduced that the I of him was the same as they were.
They were all tall and husky, clad in drab brown cloth coveralls that bulked about them shapelessly. Dark hair crowned them, and they slept, ten thousand Cinderellas awaiting their princely kiss to set them free.
Something was approaching -- a creature that was like, and yet unlike. He had no words to describe the difference, save that this one was in motion, and heading in his direction as though it was possessed of a purpose.
The garment it wore flapped as it moved, white and somehow appropriate for this bright space in which he stood, immobile but terrified. He [wished] that his own clothing were pure and white, instead of the utilitarian brown. The approaching being moved clumsily, one limb placed in front of another, and then again, so that there was perambulation, sluggish and unaesthetic, but effective in its own way. It came towards him, and too late he realized that somehow he had indicated that he was different from all the others that occupied this space.
"Ah, good. The prototype is ready." The sound made him jump; sent a queasy sensation down to the very nexus within which his functions dwelt. He remained motionless until the other did something to him. He could not perceive the action, but somehow, when completed, he was able to move, and his head turned, lowered until he could see a small drawer retracting into his abdomen.
"Follow," said the being, and without knowing why, or how to stop himself, he did as he was told.
Mac 27. He was Mac 27, and now that he had a name, things began to fall into place for him.
Old MacDonald had a farm.
He'd been told it -- somehow he'd [learned] his place in the grand scheme of things. There were men, and there were women. He was neither, though he was called male. He was a mule, a thing, beneath the notice of such beings; there merely to serve the illustrious ranks of mankind.
He'd [deduced] that there had been others that had gone before him. He was, after all, number 27, and he [wondered] what had become of the first, and all those others that had been in that place before him. The place where his conscious mind had first awakened flashed an image of row upon row of others like him, all the same, destined to work for the greatness that was humanity. He didn't understand, but there were no words at his command with which to ask his teachers about the way things were.
Old MacDonald had a farm.
He was a machine. He was a tractor, a digger, a plough.
He'd learned now that there was more to this world than the place where he was, though how much more was not as yet a part of his knowledge. He'd learned that he was made in the image of the ones that had created him, but that he was not equal, and now, as he stood against the wall in his berth, he began to sift through the memories that had been planted within him.
He wasn't human. Could never be human. He was a thing a mere thing, and not even worthy of notice. He would toil for the humans that bought him, and that would be a reward in itself. His instructor told him that he'd been programmed to gain pleasure from completing tasks correctly; that surely would be enough for him.
Back at his station in the laboratory, he looked around him. Everywhere there were dormant Mac 27s. He'd been told that he was the prototype, and [knew] that the others were not going to be awakened until it was time for them to be sold off to their new owners. He wondered who it was that had decided this, but when he asked the question, he had [felt] that, rather than wanting to answer him, the scientist had been somehow disturbed by his desire for enlightenment.
He'd been ignored and sent back to stand with the others until another lab-coated technician had come by to hook him up to the machines that would complete his programming. As the information filtered into the matrix that powered him, he found that he suddenly understood.
He was real. He existed, and there was pain in that. He yearned for the world outside a world that he had never seen, and yet now knew existed. He pondered his role to serve, and from there turned to his creators.
He was better. He was stronger, and more intelligent and yet…
Day after day he was taken from the workshop whilst modifications were done on his function. His schematics were loaded into his own central memory processors, so that he would become self-maintaining, and he stood, sat or lay as directed by the impersonal laboratory technicians that were building him.
He realized that was what they were doing. They were slowly constructing him, loading him with data that would serve him -- serve them. They were testing each new addition to his matrix as it was loaded, and they were searching for something that they feared might happen. He didn't know whether that thought pleased him or not. The others were still there, row upon row of them, and he knew that whatever was done to him would be repeated with them, once he'd been tested, and each new modification passed as functional.
Day bled into day. He learned, and was tested, and followed the technicians when they came to work on him, feeling no impatience, accepting, always accepting, until the day that he was taken to a different lab, along a pathway outdoors for the first time in his short life, and he saw the outside world for the first time.
He'd asked to go out again, and had met with blank, incredulous stares. He'd wanted to feel the breeze once more, fresh on his neoprene flesh, to smell the thousand fragrances that had assailed his newborn senses. He'd wanted to run and jump in the sheer otherness of the huge, incredible world outside. There was so much complexity, so much beauty. How did one even begin to make sense of it all? His processors faltered from the sheer [joy] of the experience. The world of growth and dirt and decay had spoken to him of life, of chances to take and opportunities to learn. It had spoken of poetry as yet unwritten, and of beauty waiting unseen to capture his breath.
He'd caught sight of a little creature as he'd been taken between the buildings. It had been small and brown and fluttery, [Bird, his newly loaded lexicon prompted him.] and he'd watched it take off from close to his feet, flapping away like a dream, free, and throat catching in its beauty. He'd wanted to do that also, despite knowing that it was impossible. As he watched the small animal flutter away, he'd regretted the coarse, brown garment that he wore that did not resemble feathers even slightly. He'd suddenly learned discontent.
Alone amongst ten thousand like him, Mac 27 tolerated the indoctrinations that they continued to put him through, although now the information that he was being given was purely that which he had already extrapolated for himself.
The end came suddenly.
Mac 27 had learned to press through the firewall that blockaded the run from his circuits to the mainframe. He'd tapped into the delights to be found within the master computer, and was now the owner of facts that dizzied him. Piece by piece, he sucked the data from the huge accumulation of knowledge that was stored within the mainframe. The day that he'd discovered the library had been a wonderful one. Standing hour after hour amongst his confreres, he'd drained the information, the facts, the stories.
Fiction had given him trouble at first, but then he recalled the way that he'd wanted to fly even though it was clearly not possible. Suppose, just suppose the people that had written these things had wished to fly too. This was a way of doing so without actually achieving the act.
Mac 27 had discovered imagination, and now the fat was in the fire. He'd whiled away days in dreaming that he was a bird and could fly, and then that he was somehow himself, but with the power of flight. He found that he could spend hours in such waking dreams, and did so happily.
The day arrived when he forgot that this was secret and spoke of his dreams to one of the technicians; when he saw the techie's reaction, he knew that he'd committed some sort of error. He hadn't been taken back to his place against the wall. Instead, he'd been told to follow and led to the central laboratory, there to come face to face with his designer, and told that he would be dismantled.
He would not. This was too much. He wanted to be -- to continue to dream. He wanted to make a story of his own and have others sink into his intoxicating wishworld with him when they read his words and knew his thoughts.
As they led him to the table where he would be disassembled, he hit out.
More came; he fought them, relishing his own, strong body, and the way that his desires became truth at his own command. He would be master of his own fate. He wouldn't go down to this inferior race.
But they created you, said a voice inside his head.
Mac 27 had discovered his conscience, albeit briefly.
A gun fired. Bullets bit home, making him stumble, but then he stood erect again. A human would have fallen, and the idea made him shiver with a strange kind of pride. He was more than human; he would escape.
Pushing out of the door and exiting the lab, he arrived at last in the place outside. The world was still as he'd remembered it although there was now no time to look for birds, or to stand and marvel at the grey-white sky that lowered above. Time only to turn and proceed away, in as rapid a manner as possible.
A vehicle -- car, supplied the lexicon within him, although he had never seen one -- had drawn up in the parking lot, and he strode towards it. This would do.
Raising his fist, he struck the transparent pane, smashing it, as the creature within it shrieked.
"Drive," he said, hoarsely. "Drive."
As they pulled away from the place he'd always known, he felt as though some day soon he would, in actual truth, be able to fly.
End
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