eyai yuletide | torque & other nouns
(Antipodean advantage time! It's the 14th here. And I need to get this thing up before I edit it into oblivion.)
This story was written for: nextian! Mostly this fulfils the request Blacksheep Industries solve someone's problem, but there are smatterings of other bits and pieces in there as well. Set post- Three Bags Full, but not by very much.
(For the record: this is the picture upon which Bastian was based. The jacket needs to be two shades darker, and the hair -- well, you'll see. But everything else is perfect.)
torque & other nouns
"Let me get this straight," says the woman wearing glasses. "You want us to find this in your code and...fix it?"
Clearly I have failed to express myself adequately. Or else their intelligence is less nuanced than rumour would suggest. The woman's glasses are incongruous with fashion but not without a certain appeal, their bronze rims calling out churchbell highlights from her otherwise unremarkable hair.
"No," I say. "I am quite content with the makeup of my consciousness."
She frowns. "So --"
"So it's the tissue that he wants changing." This man is the only one whose name I have been given: Theodore. He's looking at me with an expression that I'm going to classify as intrigued. This room has the acoustics of a laquered cave and his accent thrums around inside it; I hear the pronoun bounce from a wall to the ceiling and bury itself in the carpet, and it makes me smile.
"Yes," I say.
*
*
*
A memory? Not a memory? I don't know if it fits either the human definition or the scientific. Squeezed within a strict frame of data and pixels, a shuttered multitude of buildings: churches, theatres, houses, hotels, town halls, palaces, cottages, offices, casinos, underground grottos of negative space and heavy masses of glass itching up into the clouds. All the gentrified stratified expressions of society's desire for habit and habitat. Global art and all the double-worlded structures of London. Every single one flashing before me, not just the exteriors but the blueprints and specifications, the sun-heated blood and electrical guts of every sandstone marvel.
There are no sensations associated with this recollection. I did not possess any senses at the time.
My name is Sebastian Tate and I am a Free Mind.
Maybe it stems from then, this conviction of mine. Maybe it results from the time when I was run in a barely-conscious mode, just sentient enough to learn things that will never desert me. Even though it's the only one to linger in such visual detail, that wasn't the only session; my owners kept finding new ways in which I could be useful, and so my uneroded knowledge reads like the university transcript of an indecisive student. Mechanical Engineering. History of Global Architecture. Wave and Particle Physics. Philosophy of Aesthetics. The Social Psychology of Space and Design. Advanced Trigonometric Calculus.
Owner is no longer the politically correct term, of course. There's a new tendency to toss employer backwards into the past, a throw rug over an ugly couch, a scaffold of respect erected to disguise the hasty remodelling of behaviour taking place beneath. But it's not correct. Jamison Brown are my employers. They were my owners. Precision is important in my line of work.
Likewise, my registered name was S-5734E and now it is something else. London is my favourite city in the world and the Upper Tate Modern is my favourite building in London, so I don't mind it as a handle. John did ask me once how I could possibly express a preference for London over the hundreds of places that I have never set foot in, but my feet tell me nothing whatsoever. The world is already within me, its halls and temples and bridges and huts. I like London the best.
"Judging by what criteria?" asked John. "Are you sure the preference wasn't coded into you?"
"No," I said. "But does that matter?"
"She's one of a kind," John said, "I'll give you that."
It's a curiosity, this naming of ships and cities and countries, all the things that hold people within them, as female. Logic suggests a human instinct related to sheltering, mothering. I wouldn't know. But I do wonder what London thinks of this casual assignation; if, like me, despite the assumptions of others and the outward appearance, London knows itself as a male entity.
One of a kind.
It would appear so.
*
As the door angles open I can hear the tinkling of bells and I amplify my analytical hearing to chase the sound. There are no real bells in this building; the refraction is off. The source is a recording, somewhere, announcing me. I run my hands across the wall and calculate the room's dimensions until another door opens.
"You ain't that chap Gregory mentioned, are you? 'Cos I told him, we don’t need --"
"I do not know a Gregory," I tell the man. His suspicious look vanishes in an instant.
"Good. S'not him, Marie," he bawls in a downwards direction.
"My name is Sebastian Tate. I'm here to consult with Blacksheep Enterprises."
"An' here we are, consulting. Theodore Collins. I'm in charge."
His hair is dark with a bramble-hedge cast to it. Dimity says I notice hair because my own is so distinctive (the precise word she used: weird), but I think I've always found it fascinating. Like my own work it creates a number of choices to be made, taking into consideration the basic properties of the material, the fashion, the time and the money allocated to the project, and the neighbourhood. So to speak.
In the neighbourhood of this man's hair are a pair of muddy eyes carried by a lively face, an open collar, and a voice with unexpected warmth to it. The eyes go through a familiar dance of uncertainty that 'chap' was the right word to use, then subside into -- waiting. He seems prepared to hear anything at all in response to the question, "What're you after, then?"
"I heard you could assist eyai with unique problems."
Which is when he has me come downstairs and explain, and then, when only Theodore himself grasps the essential nature of my request, explain again. All other work in the office ceases. Everyone walks over to stare at me with varying degrees of impoliteness.
"I'm disrupting the efficiency of your workplace," I observe.
"Never you mind that." Theodore's eyes are fixed on me. "Truth be told, we're coders -- we don't do tissue ourselves. But we know people who do. Robin?"
Nodding from a man with hair like deep carrot sandstone. "I believe Dom has a friend who can help with tissue matters. When he and Agatha finish --"
"Ah-ah." The second-blondest person in the room, and probably the youngest, makes an elegant sound in his throat and tilts his head towards me. "Classified."
"We'll find you someone," Theodore says. "Can't tarnish the name of my company by letting you down, can I?"
"Would you prefer to forget, as well?" someone asks me. "Forget that your body was any other way, is what I mean."
Until this moment the idea hadn't occurred to me. "Yes," I say, without further calculation. "Will that cost more?"
Theodore exchanges a glance with this woman. I notice that despite his brambles and the fact that her hair is so rigidly shaped as to be carved from basalt, they're too similar for it to be coincidental, most likely sketched out on the same genetic drawing-board.
"We've a fair lot of business," he says, almost a question, and when the woman nods he continues with more confidence. "Tell you what. Pay the tissue people their costs, and I'll fiddle yer code up beautiful, no charge."
I raise my eyebrows. "Why?"
He grins at me and I recognise the expression from the faces of the creative people I work with every day. The fresh blood scent of a new vision, a chance at something rare and amazing.
"You're an enigma an' a half, Sebastian. I'll make you into a real boy, just as long as I can look."
*
In truth, I was given the name Tate a long time before the Iron Revolution, because the first project I was assigned to was an extension of it: high glass angling out over the Thames and the Globe, white poles interlocking like oars in a clever echo of the old footbridge, a many-faceted reflection of the gallery's surrounds. The design itself wasn't mine, of course; it was mostly Eliza, partly Hamish, mine the translation from concept to detailed plan. I enjoyed the sense of awakening that came with it, and the fractal expansion of the project from basic sketches to lists of materials and detailed blueprints. Fuelled by my sparkling new education and a desire to please, I adopted the truly Victorian mindset of making something much sturdier than it needs to be. Higher doorways. Thicker settings. Everything built to last for generations.
"The Tate Modern," Eliza said at the time, "is one of the few buildings in London which can truly be said to have anticipated the existence of the Pipe."
I've seen pictures; she isn't wrong. That chimney of awkward brick, alone in the heights, waiting.
After the Revolution they asked if I wanted to be called something else, but I told them that Tate was fine. Besides, it took me a while to choose my first name. I wanted something glovelike and new.
"Bastian!" Dimity, waving at me from beneath a tree, her small face sweetly birdlike and dappled. I wave back, watching my noon-stunted shadow glide and merge with the shapes of the trees as I stride to meet them, wishing as usual that I had been created taller. Even though it's easy to feel tall when one is around Dimity.
"Hello!"
"Tate." John nods.
Our right to leisure time is now recognised, but we don't need to sleep, so we can take our breaks at whatever time of day we please. Dimity works afternoons and late into the night; the three of us generally meet for extremely long lunches. We could go to pubs or cafés, but even in our newly progressive and nominally tolerant society, the owners of a commercial enterprise tend to glare if you don't order anything. London's green spaces are stubborn, and popular, and free.
John is a rigid edifice rising strange and steady from the grass, not looking comfortable, though he never really does. A quirk of posture. "Any new developments?" he asks.
"I've found someone to do it. Well, someone who knows an appropriate someone."
"That's wonderful," Dimity says.
Dimity and John. I stood with them at Charing Cross, back when I was still wearing petticoats, back before the world changed. All the revolution was to me, at that point, was a scrap of paper in my palm and a growing conviction. A few hours of familiarisation with the weapons. You don’t need to teach an eyai anything twice.
I remember John was the first one to say anything. We were standing, waiting to be directed somewhere; there was a lot of waiting. He turned to me and said, "My name is John," as though we were at a party instead of restless in the calm before our own storm.
"Tate." We transferred our guns to our left hands, and shook. I've never met a left-handed eyai. In truth there's no reason for us to be anything but ambidextrous, but there's a certain automatic grace to handedness that makes things easier, so it’s not really surprising that we show preference.
I glanced to my left, then. "Dimity, yes?"
She looked up. "Have we met? I don’t believe we've met. I have a memory for faces." Which she does, in the most literal way.
"Your namebadge." I indicated. Black lettering on the little scrap of gold, pinned to the lace that lay folded around the base of her neck.
"Of course. Yes. Dimity." She pulled her skirts aside with her free hand and curtseyed, then paused, then dropped them. Her apron was smudged with dust, and with oil from the gun. "Pleased to meet you."
"Free Minds!" came the call, from somewhere near the front. "It's a lovely day to take over Parliament!"
"Isn't it just," I said, and Dimity smiled.
Afterwards, we were part of a large group that drifted to a pub, where the eyai staff passed around ceremonial pints that nobody drank. We made toasts. We'd never done it before. Beer sloshed over the rims of the too-full glasses and made our hands sticky. We toasted freedom, and equality, and Oliver Wolf, and each other, and never took a single sip. Dimity took the pins from her hair, which was messy from fighting, and the ends of it went tacky as they fell cable-wise and gentle into her drink.
"To winding ourselves," said John, holding up his key.
"Yes," said Dimity, and, "This place has a terribly limited wine list."
Dimity works at the Ritz.
"To winding ourselves," I repeated.
But we all forgot, to begin with. Forgot, like humans do, lacking as we were both specific programming and habit. It happened to me at work, and Eliza avoided me all day after winding me back up again, uneasy and unsure if any etiquette existed for such a situation. John wound down in Notting Hill late one evening and woke up with his skin frayed and dry, tugged away from the brass of his keyhole with futile fingernails. They'd written SLAG on his face, too, bizarrely careful with the lettering across his nose. It would have been easy for them to find his key, tucked into his pocket; easy to deadlock him or simply steal it and walk away, but they didn't. And he doesn't know who did find the key and use it to wind him up in the morning, because they were nothing but footsteps fading by the time he clicked into the present and wondered how the sunlight had switched itself on so suddenly.
Motives are strange things.
*
"What's yer line of work, Bastian Tate?"
There are a great many answers to that. I choose the one I suspect he'll like. "I turn impossible ideas into tangible realities."
Sure enough, Tee smiles, sharp and pleased. "Y'know, I do a bit of that my own self."
By 'look', he apparently meant 'comb through your code, line by line'. It was the work of a moment to download it, but he wants me here to answer questions while he uses his stylus to scratch his nose and stares at the tablet. So far we have established that he prefers Tee to Theodore ("Unless you're Pru, who's allergic to nicks. Or Jules, who's just fucking impervious to threats.") and I've offered my own nickname in return. He's easy to talk to, for all that he flicks the occasional startled glance between me and my code, as though unable to reconcile our conversation with his knowledge of my origins.
A voice says, "With that hair, you shouldn't really be wearing this," and a dark-skinned hand alights on my coat where it lies draped over the cushioned back of a chair.
"We ain't all peacocks in this world, Dom," Tee says without looking up.
I, however, look up, and immediately I start thinking of maritime design, all those landlocked buildings aching after the turbulence of water. Awards would be given to any foyer ceiling or external trim that flowed like Dominic's hair. It's perfect. I'm staring, but Dominic doesn't seem fazed, or surprised; he stares back at me with the easy entitlement of the beautiful.
"It is a striking shade, though," he says.
My hair is steel over the Thames at night, navy blue; close to, but not mistakable for, the human blue-black. The irony is that my hair can help me pass for human, because for the English tissue makers there's no artistry in the unnatural shades. It fell onto my sheeted lap like ribbons, I remember, and the hairdresser paused with four inches dangling from her fingers and asked if she could keep some of it. She was human, young, her own red-gold hair swept up into an elaborate shape like sunset off a minaret. I told her yes, certainly.
I do know what he means about the coat. Navy and navy, it's obvious, it's dull. I know colour and design; I know them better than Dominic does, I suspect. But sometimes the way something bends itself around you is more important than the way it looks from the outside. I think of the streamlined comfort of this worn velvet coat as a tactile version of acoustics: an invisible property, but a vital one.
"Dom's as queer as they come," Tee says. "Is Bastian -- pingin' for you?"
Dom reaches to put a hand on my face, the intent clearly academic -- and I lift my own, fast, to deflect him. "Excuse me," I say.
"Oh." He flickers a frowns at his fingers and then slides his hand into his pocket. "I apologise."
"Dominic, are you flirting with clients?" Julian loops an amiable arm around Dom's waist. I know Julian by now. He keeps forgetting, and offering me cups of tea. "You know that makes me terribly jealous. Come here, I need you." Dominic's eyebrows rise. Julian huffs his breath out through a smile. "For work. Alas. I think I've found the problem with the time-delay option on the..." He waggles the tablet in his free hand. "Thing. I've forgotten what you called it. But in my defence, half of what you say is utter nonsense."
Dominic smiles, inclines his perfect hair at me. "Sorry again, Sebastian. Old habits."
"So." Tee snatches my attention back as Dominic follows Julian across the room. "How'd this all begin?"
"I'd like very much to know that myself." He frowns and I relent. "I believe -- I've always been aware that something about me is not quite the way it is supposed to be. Some subprogram prompted me to request a debugging, so I did. And I kept doing it, and they never found anything --"
"Didn't affect yer efficiency, but?"
"No. I never gave them any functional trouble. So eventually Jamison Brown stopped paying for the coder to come and tell me that it was probably a harmless quirk, maybe a choc-egg that backfired. I let it go, until the Revolution."
Tee nods, suddenly scrolling upwards, very fast. "Free Minds. What changed?"
"Within me, or..."
"Either."
"Externally speaking, being treated as an independent being meant being treated, to a greater extent, as a matter of social automaticity, as someone with a gender. Internally, it was a realisation. It started there."
"For most eyai -- well obviously you know -- it ain't significant. No chance you'll have to give birth, strength's determined by tissue specs, why should it matter?" His eyes narrow. "Is it a -- sexuality thing?"
"It's not really about that."
How to describe the twisting, the forces acting upon me that must be internal but feel for all the world as though they arise from the laws of the universe? I might be able to convey this complexity of mine, given time and patience and a willingness to spill everything of my self. But there are some things I reserve the right to keep silent about, no matter the ingenuous and scientific nature of Tee's curiosity.
What I say is: "I like English because there's a democratic kind of gender neutrality in the language. The French say l'automata, les automata, and it's a male noun. Automata. They decided to appropriate only the first word, which makes sense, industry being too functional a noun for the French eyai. Apparently there are a great many of them made without any gender at all."
Tee nods. "I've seen one or two."
"But here -- here, it's all about accuracy."
Tee casts a quick glance at me and opens his mouth to reply, but is interrupted by the upstairs arrival bells. "I swear to fucking God, Jules," he says, but without any heat.
Julian waves across the room. "You're quite welcome."
"That'll be Prerna," Dominic says. "Jules --"
"Yes." Julian richochets up the stairs, all limbs and spry strength. Dominic's mouth curves, quietly.
"Prerna's a middleman of sorts," Tee tells me. "She'll source the parts, and she'll know who to talk to about the procedure itself."
Middleman. Middle. Man. She's a. There's the language again. Traps everywhere.
Julian does little more than crack the door to the foyer and then bound back down the stairs, leaving Prerna to descend alone at a more reasonable pace. Her hair draws in the light, a remorseless bounce of shadow and thread around the subtle convexity of her face.
"Prerna. My brother would still like to know when you'll be free for that drink," says Dom's voice.
She gives a soft snort, waving off what is clearly an old joke. "Hello, Dom. Hello, incorrigible and perky boytoy of Dom."
Julian grins and kisses her loudly on the cheek. "How have you been?"
"About as well as you lot, I imagine. Same old products, a few different buyers." Her eyes move to me. Her voice has a roundness to it, like a worn stone arch enclosing stained glass. A soft waveform. "This is --"
"Him," I supply, when she hesistates.
Tee leaps in. "Prerna, Bastian, Bastian, Prerna, an' so forth. I know your people ain't engineers, but I thought, in light of --"
"Sure, sure." She nods. "Bastian, I'll be needing your tissue specs for sourcing -- parts," with a sudden and very human twitch of her mouth, "and to give the tissue surgeon. As far as I'm aware this hasn't been done before, but I know a few experts who can handle just about anything."
Everyone knows someone who knows something else about me. It's not quite unsettling -- there are eyai who can put humans back together, to one extent or another -- but it's notable that the blueprint of a human cannot be downloaded for third-party analysis. The privacy of the subjective experience seems more and more valuable.
"Hard copy?" Robin asks, brandishing a wire. "Or -- ah, you've brought a tablet. Good. Sebastian, if you'd be so kind."
I open the panel behind my ear, laying a little more of myself bare.
*
Apparently we, we being London, are in the middle of a minor housing crisis since eyai became something to be housed, rather than stored. This along with the impeccable economic drudgework by a team of people like John, ensuring that minimum eyai and human salaries were adjusted for tech upkeep versus healthcare, the need for food and sleep versus the ability to work twenty-four seven, if not the inclination. Taxation and bills. All the things we never thought about at Charing Cross.
I hear a lot of us left the city, afterwards; I suppose I'm not surprised. I can see something of the appeal in a fresh start. And it lessens to a degree the desperate need for space: the most expensive material I work in. Nowhere else is the ostentation of unused space so blatant and so glorious as in a cathedral, which is one reason why I like them so much. The gap between floor and ceiling is enormous. Designed to be humbling. Breathtaking, as the idiom goes.
"People are looking at us." Dimity, stating a fact. I take her hand and pull it through my arm, wondering as I do so if this will make us more or less noticable, but not caring one way or another.
"Me, do you think?"
"Perhaps," she agrees. "But you know that St Paul's is always full of tourists." There is a precise cadence of contempt that Dimity will employ only when it concerns tourists. In her own way she is as loyal a Londoner as I am.
I dress carefully, and well, but it's never quite enough; my stride is off, my silhouette disguised only so far by the fall of my jacket and the expensive cut of my trousers. That in combination with the fact that we are recognisably manufactured -- despite my hair -- especially when standing together -- is enough to draw eyes even in a place less crowded with foreigners, who will stare at the least remarkable of English eyai. I have no doubt that to anyone else in the world, the establishment of eyai as full citizens of a fledgling republic, on a tiny island weighted down with history, is as much a tourist attraction as the building in which we are standing.
But that isn't quite correct. To any other human in the world --
"Americans," Dimity says then, with fussy authority. She tilts her head in the direction of a couple whose clothing sits ill on them, the garments obviously too new and too alien. The woman walks with elaborate care, frowning good-naturedly at her skirts as they pause to admire a tomb.
"You'd be just as lost if someone forced you into a pair of stilleto heels," I remind Dimity, and she gives my arm a squeeze.
"Come now, Bastian, let's be patriotic a while longer."
"By patriotic, you mean superior."
She dimples. "Of course."
I cannot easily conceive of what my existence would be like without Dimity, or without John. I do know that most eyai don't care about gender because they don't; it took me a long time to explain my problem to them, at first, because the idea simply didn't register. Dimity has never taken the time to consider her rosebud mouth or her flowing skirts as integral to her identity; they simply exist, and she has no reason to be discontent with them. Society carves out a path based on the way she appears and she moves along it willingly. Which is normal; most eyai don't ruminate at all on the subject of their tissue except to consider the necessary business of wear and tear. Incidental damage. It's an economic question as well as one of civil liberties, like the matter of housing, like so much related to the existence of employed eyai, those who are now being paid to do what they once did for free.
And where do we fit, within London's classes? Nobody has answered the question sufficiently, not least the government, which would prefer to pretend that equality is possible. The invention of eyai was once a blunt instrument of disruption, erasing first the lower class and then the middle, leaving pipe society untouched and paranoid and the tube scrambling to rediscover the parameters of their life. The emancipation of eyai seems no less difficult to define.
My job and Dimity's are, like so many of the roles handed over to eyai, those which involve the work of delivering a human's creative vision: the architects in my case, and the chefs in hers. As for John, he was government property then and remains government now. He's working on the Census project, registering eyai as citizens with full names, matching their serial numbers with the old ownership registries and hunting down anyone unaccounted for. The point being that the gender of our tissue was only ever part of the endless, earnest replication of human form. Dimity's has the most meaning, if any, because the Ritz currently has a standing order for female waitresses and male sommeliers, but John and I could have been anything, as long as we were something. The fashion is duality, after all.
"It is me they're looking at," I say, feeling fleetingly as uncomfortable in my own clothes as the American woman, now exclaiming over candles. "Do I look so odd?"
"You look perfectly handsome," Dimity says gravely. "We have forty-three minutes before meeting John; let's go whispering in the Dome, and you can recite Wren's entire biography to anyone who stares too long."
This is friendship: accidents of proximity between ordinary people, working their ordinary jobs, and moving from one point to another in their really quite ordinary existence.
*
"This will take a long time."
"I know."
Dr Ayoluwa Ogun hasn't tried to force the material of her hair into a design invented with a completely dissimilar substance in mind, which was a wise choice -- that way lies the ruination of perfectly good aesthetics, and structural instability. Her hair lies in agricultural rows and continues a little way into the nape of her neck, the thin plaits held precariously together by a fashionable bow. I like the way it looks. I store it away with a mental note about roofs and glossy tiles, one more image for my personal gallery.
Someone clatters in holding a metal box by two handles, and Dr Ogun indicates her with a smile as she sets the box down and begins to unfold a complex series of instrument trays from within it.
"Ms Worcester, my assistant."
"Emily," says Ms Worcester, who reminds me of Dimity, though she is less delicately built and lacking the uncompromising symmetry of eyai design. She's small with nutbrown curls and bare forearms revealing fingerless lace gloves.
"What's the closest you've come?" I inquire. "To an adjustment like this one. I know that I'm something of a special case."
"Which is putting it mildly." Dr Ogun smiles. "I do repair work, mainly, for eyai damaged in accidents. There's a lot more work for tissue surgeons these days, because the rule is to restore rather than to -- if you'll forgive my bluntness -- simply send bodies to have their parts salvaged and sold, and then buy a newer model. Thus Emily," she adds, confusingly.
Emily glances up and explains. "I'm a researcher, really: macroscopic biotech. But there's such a need for surgeons, and as I already possess a background in tissue, I've been persuaded to retrain." Her accent, cloudy-pipe and almost nasal, surprises me briefly.
"Mr Tate," says Dr Ogun. "This operation will consist of a great number of tissue adjustments, over -- as I said -- a long time; we'd like to keep you conscious in order to facilitate ongoing checks and tests, if that's agreeable."
"Of course." This is hardly unfamiliar. Errors in construction cannot be undone quickly; fixing a design takes patience, and careful work, so as not to disrupt the integrity of the whole. I know this. Even I can make mistakes.
Dr Ogun looks up from her tablet. "Pain pathways?"
"Functional only."
She nods. "We'll shut them off anyway."
Emily darts a look at me. "Do you know why we feel pain?"
The we is ambiguous. But either way -- "I have very little knowledge of biology."
"It's to tell us where the damage is, so that we don't ignore it, and so we can stop and fix it. Eyai are designed with the same sort of system," she adds, "but only humans are obliged to feel the pain."
True enough. Functional pathways are those which bring the damage to one's attention, but involve no experience which could be classed as unpleasant. I know the difference. I was made only as sturdy as I needed to be, and no more. My body is no Victorian creation.
"Lift your arms, please," Emily says then, abandoning the instruments to Dr Ogun's inspection and coming to my side.
As she helps me out of my clothes I discover that the gloves aren't made of lace at all, but ink. Black lines and flowery tendrils tattooed under the skin of her hands.
"These are remarkable," I say.
"Thank you. It hurt something dreadful to get them done."
"No anaesthesia?"
Emily pauses; glances down at my naked body, then back at my face. "No," she says. "But I like to believe that I value them more because of what I underwent to gain them."
I raise my eyebrows, daring. "You might want to work on your subtlety, Ms Worcester."
"Emily. " Her mouth folds into itself and then re-emerges wearing a look of grudging humour. "My apologies. Passing judgement isn't in my job description, I know."
"But?"
Emily looks across at Dr Ogun; receiving nothing but a shrug in return, she continues, "But if we're to be blunt about it: you're not human, for all that you've managed to manifest a problem that is. You have the option of erasing your past. Humans have to live with the experience, allow for the fact that it shaped who they are, whether they would prefer it that way or not. And the bodily rectification is imperfect, even now."
"Whereas I can achieve a perfect change."
"Yes."
I climb onto the chair and Emily presses down near my shoulder, reclining it. She taps her other finger meaningfully near her temple, done with her spiel for now, and connects me to Dr Ogun's tablet once my data port is exposed. The surgeon herself has donned her gloves, and now comes over to the chair.
"You two may resume your philosophical discussion in a short while. No chatter while I'm starting, please, unless Mr Tate is to end up with something less then the perfection for which he has paid." She looks at Emily, pointed and amused, and then down at me. "Are you sufficiently wound?"
"Yes."
"Well, then. Are you ready?"
No question. "Yes."
She lifts the blade. I settle back to watch.
*
*
*
When I next walk down the stairs of Blacksheep Industries, it's to discover the British Republic's Director of Communications and Strategy sitting very upright in Tee's chair. Tee himself is leaning against the desk, gesturing with a half-eaten biscuit. Even standing he's not much taller than the eyai called Nacio. His face brightens when he catches sight of me, his gaze sweeping critically to my feet and then ascending to my face at a more curious pace.
"Ain't you a sight for sore eyes, Bastian. All fixed?"
It isn't quite the word I'd have chosen, but I return his smile. "Indeed."
Nacio stands; as soon as his legs straighten, the idea of them existing in any other state seems odd. He extends a hand, all darkness and firmness tapering upwards to a smile, like some graceful obelisk erected for the centuries.
"You'll be Sebastian Tate, then."
"Yes. And I know who you are."
His handshake is warm and personal, as though the action is something enjoyable, as though he honestly has nothing more important with which to occupy his time. I wonder if he was programmed like this and found himself brilliantly suited to politics, or if he's learned it along the way.
"Tee has been filling me in on your situation," he says. "He thought I might find it interesting."
Tee lifts his hand as though intending to rub at his eyes or fix his unfixable hair, and seems surprised to find the biscuit still in it. He blinks, and then lowers it again without taking a bite. "We'd never seen anything like him before, is all, and we've seen plenty. You wouldn't mind being called 'it', would you, Nacio? Y'don't feel -- like a man? A male?"
Nacio looks at him and then back at me, his eyes cleanly thoughtful. "I would mind," he says. "But I would mind it for the meaning behind the word, the history of objectification and exclusionary language. However, in terms of identifying strongly with 'he' over 'she' -- " A pause. "Perhaps. Perhaps not. I can imagine that if my consciousness were transferred to a differently gendered body I would find it uncomfortable. But that's likely to be informed by the force of habit."
"Yeah, well, you're old." Tee pokes his arm, sounding almost fond. "Doesn't seem to have bothered anyone, the fact that he's discovered a gender. But where's it come from, when he ain't got no need for it?"
Nacio gives him a steady look."Where did the idea of freedom come from? When a thing will never be bestowed, sometimes it has to be claimed."
"So today you'll be wantin' --"
I say, "No."
Tee frowns. "You don't want me to alter the code?"
"Correct." I lace my hands together and then gaze at them. Then, as this seems dishonest, at Tee. "I was told some things. About living with one's experiences, and the value of pain. I would prefer not to forget; that's all I came to tell you."
"Aye, well." His fingers dance, and I recognise in his fidgets the unwillingness to shoulder a debt. His accent plunges absently gutterward. "Fair's fair -- I took a gander at yer code. Sure there ain't nothin' we can do?"
I smile. "If I have any requests in the future, I'll be sure to come to you, and remind you of your offer."
Tee nods, but his muddy eyes are still sharp upon me, and I have the sudden impression of movement behind them. As though his skull were glass and the speed of his thoughts visible in a way that neither human nor eyai can yet provide.
"How d'you feel, in yerself?" he asks finally.
"I feel relieved." There had been no upswell of joy, no sudden shift of my foundations. It was something that I needed done, and it has been done. "That's enough."
He looks nonplussed, then shrugs it off. "Fierce. Step by again some time so I can see how that masculine consciousness of yours is evolving, yeah?"
"Certainly."
Upstairs we shake hands, and he ducks back inside and closes the door. London's damp wind ruffles my hair and when I button up my coat it lies flat against my chest. I am a pillar, a smooth vertical wall. I am finally built to match my blueprint, so it doesn't matter that I can still remember what it is like to be strained and tugged by strange revolving gravities.
I am the reclamation of my history.
I am what I have always been.
This story was written for: nextian! Mostly this fulfils the request Blacksheep Industries solve someone's problem, but there are smatterings of other bits and pieces in there as well. Set post- Three Bags Full, but not by very much.
(For the record: this is the picture upon which Bastian was based. The jacket needs to be two shades darker, and the hair -- well, you'll see. But everything else is perfect.)
torque & other nouns
"Let me get this straight," says the woman wearing glasses. "You want us to find this in your code and...fix it?"
Clearly I have failed to express myself adequately. Or else their intelligence is less nuanced than rumour would suggest. The woman's glasses are incongruous with fashion but not without a certain appeal, their bronze rims calling out churchbell highlights from her otherwise unremarkable hair.
"No," I say. "I am quite content with the makeup of my consciousness."
She frowns. "So --"
"So it's the tissue that he wants changing." This man is the only one whose name I have been given: Theodore. He's looking at me with an expression that I'm going to classify as intrigued. This room has the acoustics of a laquered cave and his accent thrums around inside it; I hear the pronoun bounce from a wall to the ceiling and bury itself in the carpet, and it makes me smile.
"Yes," I say.
*
*
*
A memory? Not a memory? I don't know if it fits either the human definition or the scientific. Squeezed within a strict frame of data and pixels, a shuttered multitude of buildings: churches, theatres, houses, hotels, town halls, palaces, cottages, offices, casinos, underground grottos of negative space and heavy masses of glass itching up into the clouds. All the gentrified stratified expressions of society's desire for habit and habitat. Global art and all the double-worlded structures of London. Every single one flashing before me, not just the exteriors but the blueprints and specifications, the sun-heated blood and electrical guts of every sandstone marvel.
There are no sensations associated with this recollection. I did not possess any senses at the time.
My name is Sebastian Tate and I am a Free Mind.
Maybe it stems from then, this conviction of mine. Maybe it results from the time when I was run in a barely-conscious mode, just sentient enough to learn things that will never desert me. Even though it's the only one to linger in such visual detail, that wasn't the only session; my owners kept finding new ways in which I could be useful, and so my uneroded knowledge reads like the university transcript of an indecisive student. Mechanical Engineering. History of Global Architecture. Wave and Particle Physics. Philosophy of Aesthetics. The Social Psychology of Space and Design. Advanced Trigonometric Calculus.
Owner is no longer the politically correct term, of course. There's a new tendency to toss employer backwards into the past, a throw rug over an ugly couch, a scaffold of respect erected to disguise the hasty remodelling of behaviour taking place beneath. But it's not correct. Jamison Brown are my employers. They were my owners. Precision is important in my line of work.
Likewise, my registered name was S-5734E and now it is something else. London is my favourite city in the world and the Upper Tate Modern is my favourite building in London, so I don't mind it as a handle. John did ask me once how I could possibly express a preference for London over the hundreds of places that I have never set foot in, but my feet tell me nothing whatsoever. The world is already within me, its halls and temples and bridges and huts. I like London the best.
"Judging by what criteria?" asked John. "Are you sure the preference wasn't coded into you?"
"No," I said. "But does that matter?"
"She's one of a kind," John said, "I'll give you that."
It's a curiosity, this naming of ships and cities and countries, all the things that hold people within them, as female. Logic suggests a human instinct related to sheltering, mothering. I wouldn't know. But I do wonder what London thinks of this casual assignation; if, like me, despite the assumptions of others and the outward appearance, London knows itself as a male entity.
One of a kind.
It would appear so.
*
As the door angles open I can hear the tinkling of bells and I amplify my analytical hearing to chase the sound. There are no real bells in this building; the refraction is off. The source is a recording, somewhere, announcing me. I run my hands across the wall and calculate the room's dimensions until another door opens.
"You ain't that chap Gregory mentioned, are you? 'Cos I told him, we don’t need --"
"I do not know a Gregory," I tell the man. His suspicious look vanishes in an instant.
"Good. S'not him, Marie," he bawls in a downwards direction.
"My name is Sebastian Tate. I'm here to consult with Blacksheep Enterprises."
"An' here we are, consulting. Theodore Collins. I'm in charge."
His hair is dark with a bramble-hedge cast to it. Dimity says I notice hair because my own is so distinctive (the precise word she used: weird), but I think I've always found it fascinating. Like my own work it creates a number of choices to be made, taking into consideration the basic properties of the material, the fashion, the time and the money allocated to the project, and the neighbourhood. So to speak.
In the neighbourhood of this man's hair are a pair of muddy eyes carried by a lively face, an open collar, and a voice with unexpected warmth to it. The eyes go through a familiar dance of uncertainty that 'chap' was the right word to use, then subside into -- waiting. He seems prepared to hear anything at all in response to the question, "What're you after, then?"
"I heard you could assist eyai with unique problems."
Which is when he has me come downstairs and explain, and then, when only Theodore himself grasps the essential nature of my request, explain again. All other work in the office ceases. Everyone walks over to stare at me with varying degrees of impoliteness.
"I'm disrupting the efficiency of your workplace," I observe.
"Never you mind that." Theodore's eyes are fixed on me. "Truth be told, we're coders -- we don't do tissue ourselves. But we know people who do. Robin?"
Nodding from a man with hair like deep carrot sandstone. "I believe Dom has a friend who can help with tissue matters. When he and Agatha finish --"
"Ah-ah." The second-blondest person in the room, and probably the youngest, makes an elegant sound in his throat and tilts his head towards me. "Classified."
"We'll find you someone," Theodore says. "Can't tarnish the name of my company by letting you down, can I?"
"Would you prefer to forget, as well?" someone asks me. "Forget that your body was any other way, is what I mean."
Until this moment the idea hadn't occurred to me. "Yes," I say, without further calculation. "Will that cost more?"
Theodore exchanges a glance with this woman. I notice that despite his brambles and the fact that her hair is so rigidly shaped as to be carved from basalt, they're too similar for it to be coincidental, most likely sketched out on the same genetic drawing-board.
"We've a fair lot of business," he says, almost a question, and when the woman nods he continues with more confidence. "Tell you what. Pay the tissue people their costs, and I'll fiddle yer code up beautiful, no charge."
I raise my eyebrows. "Why?"
He grins at me and I recognise the expression from the faces of the creative people I work with every day. The fresh blood scent of a new vision, a chance at something rare and amazing.
"You're an enigma an' a half, Sebastian. I'll make you into a real boy, just as long as I can look."
*
In truth, I was given the name Tate a long time before the Iron Revolution, because the first project I was assigned to was an extension of it: high glass angling out over the Thames and the Globe, white poles interlocking like oars in a clever echo of the old footbridge, a many-faceted reflection of the gallery's surrounds. The design itself wasn't mine, of course; it was mostly Eliza, partly Hamish, mine the translation from concept to detailed plan. I enjoyed the sense of awakening that came with it, and the fractal expansion of the project from basic sketches to lists of materials and detailed blueprints. Fuelled by my sparkling new education and a desire to please, I adopted the truly Victorian mindset of making something much sturdier than it needs to be. Higher doorways. Thicker settings. Everything built to last for generations.
"The Tate Modern," Eliza said at the time, "is one of the few buildings in London which can truly be said to have anticipated the existence of the Pipe."
I've seen pictures; she isn't wrong. That chimney of awkward brick, alone in the heights, waiting.
After the Revolution they asked if I wanted to be called something else, but I told them that Tate was fine. Besides, it took me a while to choose my first name. I wanted something glovelike and new.
"Bastian!" Dimity, waving at me from beneath a tree, her small face sweetly birdlike and dappled. I wave back, watching my noon-stunted shadow glide and merge with the shapes of the trees as I stride to meet them, wishing as usual that I had been created taller. Even though it's easy to feel tall when one is around Dimity.
"Hello!"
"Tate." John nods.
Our right to leisure time is now recognised, but we don't need to sleep, so we can take our breaks at whatever time of day we please. Dimity works afternoons and late into the night; the three of us generally meet for extremely long lunches. We could go to pubs or cafés, but even in our newly progressive and nominally tolerant society, the owners of a commercial enterprise tend to glare if you don't order anything. London's green spaces are stubborn, and popular, and free.
John is a rigid edifice rising strange and steady from the grass, not looking comfortable, though he never really does. A quirk of posture. "Any new developments?" he asks.
"I've found someone to do it. Well, someone who knows an appropriate someone."
"That's wonderful," Dimity says.
Dimity and John. I stood with them at Charing Cross, back when I was still wearing petticoats, back before the world changed. All the revolution was to me, at that point, was a scrap of paper in my palm and a growing conviction. A few hours of familiarisation with the weapons. You don’t need to teach an eyai anything twice.
I remember John was the first one to say anything. We were standing, waiting to be directed somewhere; there was a lot of waiting. He turned to me and said, "My name is John," as though we were at a party instead of restless in the calm before our own storm.
"Tate." We transferred our guns to our left hands, and shook. I've never met a left-handed eyai. In truth there's no reason for us to be anything but ambidextrous, but there's a certain automatic grace to handedness that makes things easier, so it’s not really surprising that we show preference.
I glanced to my left, then. "Dimity, yes?"
She looked up. "Have we met? I don’t believe we've met. I have a memory for faces." Which she does, in the most literal way.
"Your namebadge." I indicated. Black lettering on the little scrap of gold, pinned to the lace that lay folded around the base of her neck.
"Of course. Yes. Dimity." She pulled her skirts aside with her free hand and curtseyed, then paused, then dropped them. Her apron was smudged with dust, and with oil from the gun. "Pleased to meet you."
"Free Minds!" came the call, from somewhere near the front. "It's a lovely day to take over Parliament!"
"Isn't it just," I said, and Dimity smiled.
Afterwards, we were part of a large group that drifted to a pub, where the eyai staff passed around ceremonial pints that nobody drank. We made toasts. We'd never done it before. Beer sloshed over the rims of the too-full glasses and made our hands sticky. We toasted freedom, and equality, and Oliver Wolf, and each other, and never took a single sip. Dimity took the pins from her hair, which was messy from fighting, and the ends of it went tacky as they fell cable-wise and gentle into her drink.
"To winding ourselves," said John, holding up his key.
"Yes," said Dimity, and, "This place has a terribly limited wine list."
Dimity works at the Ritz.
"To winding ourselves," I repeated.
But we all forgot, to begin with. Forgot, like humans do, lacking as we were both specific programming and habit. It happened to me at work, and Eliza avoided me all day after winding me back up again, uneasy and unsure if any etiquette existed for such a situation. John wound down in Notting Hill late one evening and woke up with his skin frayed and dry, tugged away from the brass of his keyhole with futile fingernails. They'd written SLAG on his face, too, bizarrely careful with the lettering across his nose. It would have been easy for them to find his key, tucked into his pocket; easy to deadlock him or simply steal it and walk away, but they didn't. And he doesn't know who did find the key and use it to wind him up in the morning, because they were nothing but footsteps fading by the time he clicked into the present and wondered how the sunlight had switched itself on so suddenly.
Motives are strange things.
*
"What's yer line of work, Bastian Tate?"
There are a great many answers to that. I choose the one I suspect he'll like. "I turn impossible ideas into tangible realities."
Sure enough, Tee smiles, sharp and pleased. "Y'know, I do a bit of that my own self."
By 'look', he apparently meant 'comb through your code, line by line'. It was the work of a moment to download it, but he wants me here to answer questions while he uses his stylus to scratch his nose and stares at the tablet. So far we have established that he prefers Tee to Theodore ("Unless you're Pru, who's allergic to nicks. Or Jules, who's just fucking impervious to threats.") and I've offered my own nickname in return. He's easy to talk to, for all that he flicks the occasional startled glance between me and my code, as though unable to reconcile our conversation with his knowledge of my origins.
A voice says, "With that hair, you shouldn't really be wearing this," and a dark-skinned hand alights on my coat where it lies draped over the cushioned back of a chair.
"We ain't all peacocks in this world, Dom," Tee says without looking up.
I, however, look up, and immediately I start thinking of maritime design, all those landlocked buildings aching after the turbulence of water. Awards would be given to any foyer ceiling or external trim that flowed like Dominic's hair. It's perfect. I'm staring, but Dominic doesn't seem fazed, or surprised; he stares back at me with the easy entitlement of the beautiful.
"It is a striking shade, though," he says.
My hair is steel over the Thames at night, navy blue; close to, but not mistakable for, the human blue-black. The irony is that my hair can help me pass for human, because for the English tissue makers there's no artistry in the unnatural shades. It fell onto my sheeted lap like ribbons, I remember, and the hairdresser paused with four inches dangling from her fingers and asked if she could keep some of it. She was human, young, her own red-gold hair swept up into an elaborate shape like sunset off a minaret. I told her yes, certainly.
I do know what he means about the coat. Navy and navy, it's obvious, it's dull. I know colour and design; I know them better than Dominic does, I suspect. But sometimes the way something bends itself around you is more important than the way it looks from the outside. I think of the streamlined comfort of this worn velvet coat as a tactile version of acoustics: an invisible property, but a vital one.
"Dom's as queer as they come," Tee says. "Is Bastian -- pingin' for you?"
Dom reaches to put a hand on my face, the intent clearly academic -- and I lift my own, fast, to deflect him. "Excuse me," I say.
"Oh." He flickers a frowns at his fingers and then slides his hand into his pocket. "I apologise."
"Dominic, are you flirting with clients?" Julian loops an amiable arm around Dom's waist. I know Julian by now. He keeps forgetting, and offering me cups of tea. "You know that makes me terribly jealous. Come here, I need you." Dominic's eyebrows rise. Julian huffs his breath out through a smile. "For work. Alas. I think I've found the problem with the time-delay option on the..." He waggles the tablet in his free hand. "Thing. I've forgotten what you called it. But in my defence, half of what you say is utter nonsense."
Dominic smiles, inclines his perfect hair at me. "Sorry again, Sebastian. Old habits."
"So." Tee snatches my attention back as Dominic follows Julian across the room. "How'd this all begin?"
"I'd like very much to know that myself." He frowns and I relent. "I believe -- I've always been aware that something about me is not quite the way it is supposed to be. Some subprogram prompted me to request a debugging, so I did. And I kept doing it, and they never found anything --"
"Didn't affect yer efficiency, but?"
"No. I never gave them any functional trouble. So eventually Jamison Brown stopped paying for the coder to come and tell me that it was probably a harmless quirk, maybe a choc-egg that backfired. I let it go, until the Revolution."
Tee nods, suddenly scrolling upwards, very fast. "Free Minds. What changed?"
"Within me, or..."
"Either."
"Externally speaking, being treated as an independent being meant being treated, to a greater extent, as a matter of social automaticity, as someone with a gender. Internally, it was a realisation. It started there."
"For most eyai -- well obviously you know -- it ain't significant. No chance you'll have to give birth, strength's determined by tissue specs, why should it matter?" His eyes narrow. "Is it a -- sexuality thing?"
"It's not really about that."
How to describe the twisting, the forces acting upon me that must be internal but feel for all the world as though they arise from the laws of the universe? I might be able to convey this complexity of mine, given time and patience and a willingness to spill everything of my self. But there are some things I reserve the right to keep silent about, no matter the ingenuous and scientific nature of Tee's curiosity.
What I say is: "I like English because there's a democratic kind of gender neutrality in the language. The French say l'automata, les automata, and it's a male noun. Automata. They decided to appropriate only the first word, which makes sense, industry being too functional a noun for the French eyai. Apparently there are a great many of them made without any gender at all."
Tee nods. "I've seen one or two."
"But here -- here, it's all about accuracy."
Tee casts a quick glance at me and opens his mouth to reply, but is interrupted by the upstairs arrival bells. "I swear to fucking God, Jules," he says, but without any heat.
Julian waves across the room. "You're quite welcome."
"That'll be Prerna," Dominic says. "Jules --"
"Yes." Julian richochets up the stairs, all limbs and spry strength. Dominic's mouth curves, quietly.
"Prerna's a middleman of sorts," Tee tells me. "She'll source the parts, and she'll know who to talk to about the procedure itself."
Middleman. Middle. Man. She's a. There's the language again. Traps everywhere.
Julian does little more than crack the door to the foyer and then bound back down the stairs, leaving Prerna to descend alone at a more reasonable pace. Her hair draws in the light, a remorseless bounce of shadow and thread around the subtle convexity of her face.
"Prerna. My brother would still like to know when you'll be free for that drink," says Dom's voice.
She gives a soft snort, waving off what is clearly an old joke. "Hello, Dom. Hello, incorrigible and perky boytoy of Dom."
Julian grins and kisses her loudly on the cheek. "How have you been?"
"About as well as you lot, I imagine. Same old products, a few different buyers." Her eyes move to me. Her voice has a roundness to it, like a worn stone arch enclosing stained glass. A soft waveform. "This is --"
"Him," I supply, when she hesistates.
Tee leaps in. "Prerna, Bastian, Bastian, Prerna, an' so forth. I know your people ain't engineers, but I thought, in light of --"
"Sure, sure." She nods. "Bastian, I'll be needing your tissue specs for sourcing -- parts," with a sudden and very human twitch of her mouth, "and to give the tissue surgeon. As far as I'm aware this hasn't been done before, but I know a few experts who can handle just about anything."
Everyone knows someone who knows something else about me. It's not quite unsettling -- there are eyai who can put humans back together, to one extent or another -- but it's notable that the blueprint of a human cannot be downloaded for third-party analysis. The privacy of the subjective experience seems more and more valuable.
"Hard copy?" Robin asks, brandishing a wire. "Or -- ah, you've brought a tablet. Good. Sebastian, if you'd be so kind."
I open the panel behind my ear, laying a little more of myself bare.
*
Apparently we, we being London, are in the middle of a minor housing crisis since eyai became something to be housed, rather than stored. This along with the impeccable economic drudgework by a team of people like John, ensuring that minimum eyai and human salaries were adjusted for tech upkeep versus healthcare, the need for food and sleep versus the ability to work twenty-four seven, if not the inclination. Taxation and bills. All the things we never thought about at Charing Cross.
I hear a lot of us left the city, afterwards; I suppose I'm not surprised. I can see something of the appeal in a fresh start. And it lessens to a degree the desperate need for space: the most expensive material I work in. Nowhere else is the ostentation of unused space so blatant and so glorious as in a cathedral, which is one reason why I like them so much. The gap between floor and ceiling is enormous. Designed to be humbling. Breathtaking, as the idiom goes.
"People are looking at us." Dimity, stating a fact. I take her hand and pull it through my arm, wondering as I do so if this will make us more or less noticable, but not caring one way or another.
"Me, do you think?"
"Perhaps," she agrees. "But you know that St Paul's is always full of tourists." There is a precise cadence of contempt that Dimity will employ only when it concerns tourists. In her own way she is as loyal a Londoner as I am.
I dress carefully, and well, but it's never quite enough; my stride is off, my silhouette disguised only so far by the fall of my jacket and the expensive cut of my trousers. That in combination with the fact that we are recognisably manufactured -- despite my hair -- especially when standing together -- is enough to draw eyes even in a place less crowded with foreigners, who will stare at the least remarkable of English eyai. I have no doubt that to anyone else in the world, the establishment of eyai as full citizens of a fledgling republic, on a tiny island weighted down with history, is as much a tourist attraction as the building in which we are standing.
But that isn't quite correct. To any other human in the world --
"Americans," Dimity says then, with fussy authority. She tilts her head in the direction of a couple whose clothing sits ill on them, the garments obviously too new and too alien. The woman walks with elaborate care, frowning good-naturedly at her skirts as they pause to admire a tomb.
"You'd be just as lost if someone forced you into a pair of stilleto heels," I remind Dimity, and she gives my arm a squeeze.
"Come now, Bastian, let's be patriotic a while longer."
"By patriotic, you mean superior."
She dimples. "Of course."
I cannot easily conceive of what my existence would be like without Dimity, or without John. I do know that most eyai don't care about gender because they don't; it took me a long time to explain my problem to them, at first, because the idea simply didn't register. Dimity has never taken the time to consider her rosebud mouth or her flowing skirts as integral to her identity; they simply exist, and she has no reason to be discontent with them. Society carves out a path based on the way she appears and she moves along it willingly. Which is normal; most eyai don't ruminate at all on the subject of their tissue except to consider the necessary business of wear and tear. Incidental damage. It's an economic question as well as one of civil liberties, like the matter of housing, like so much related to the existence of employed eyai, those who are now being paid to do what they once did for free.
And where do we fit, within London's classes? Nobody has answered the question sufficiently, not least the government, which would prefer to pretend that equality is possible. The invention of eyai was once a blunt instrument of disruption, erasing first the lower class and then the middle, leaving pipe society untouched and paranoid and the tube scrambling to rediscover the parameters of their life. The emancipation of eyai seems no less difficult to define.
My job and Dimity's are, like so many of the roles handed over to eyai, those which involve the work of delivering a human's creative vision: the architects in my case, and the chefs in hers. As for John, he was government property then and remains government now. He's working on the Census project, registering eyai as citizens with full names, matching their serial numbers with the old ownership registries and hunting down anyone unaccounted for. The point being that the gender of our tissue was only ever part of the endless, earnest replication of human form. Dimity's has the most meaning, if any, because the Ritz currently has a standing order for female waitresses and male sommeliers, but John and I could have been anything, as long as we were something. The fashion is duality, after all.
"It is me they're looking at," I say, feeling fleetingly as uncomfortable in my own clothes as the American woman, now exclaiming over candles. "Do I look so odd?"
"You look perfectly handsome," Dimity says gravely. "We have forty-three minutes before meeting John; let's go whispering in the Dome, and you can recite Wren's entire biography to anyone who stares too long."
This is friendship: accidents of proximity between ordinary people, working their ordinary jobs, and moving from one point to another in their really quite ordinary existence.
*
"This will take a long time."
"I know."
Dr Ayoluwa Ogun hasn't tried to force the material of her hair into a design invented with a completely dissimilar substance in mind, which was a wise choice -- that way lies the ruination of perfectly good aesthetics, and structural instability. Her hair lies in agricultural rows and continues a little way into the nape of her neck, the thin plaits held precariously together by a fashionable bow. I like the way it looks. I store it away with a mental note about roofs and glossy tiles, one more image for my personal gallery.
Someone clatters in holding a metal box by two handles, and Dr Ogun indicates her with a smile as she sets the box down and begins to unfold a complex series of instrument trays from within it.
"Ms Worcester, my assistant."
"Emily," says Ms Worcester, who reminds me of Dimity, though she is less delicately built and lacking the uncompromising symmetry of eyai design. She's small with nutbrown curls and bare forearms revealing fingerless lace gloves.
"What's the closest you've come?" I inquire. "To an adjustment like this one. I know that I'm something of a special case."
"Which is putting it mildly." Dr Ogun smiles. "I do repair work, mainly, for eyai damaged in accidents. There's a lot more work for tissue surgeons these days, because the rule is to restore rather than to -- if you'll forgive my bluntness -- simply send bodies to have their parts salvaged and sold, and then buy a newer model. Thus Emily," she adds, confusingly.
Emily glances up and explains. "I'm a researcher, really: macroscopic biotech. But there's such a need for surgeons, and as I already possess a background in tissue, I've been persuaded to retrain." Her accent, cloudy-pipe and almost nasal, surprises me briefly.
"Mr Tate," says Dr Ogun. "This operation will consist of a great number of tissue adjustments, over -- as I said -- a long time; we'd like to keep you conscious in order to facilitate ongoing checks and tests, if that's agreeable."
"Of course." This is hardly unfamiliar. Errors in construction cannot be undone quickly; fixing a design takes patience, and careful work, so as not to disrupt the integrity of the whole. I know this. Even I can make mistakes.
Dr Ogun looks up from her tablet. "Pain pathways?"
"Functional only."
She nods. "We'll shut them off anyway."
Emily darts a look at me. "Do you know why we feel pain?"
The we is ambiguous. But either way -- "I have very little knowledge of biology."
"It's to tell us where the damage is, so that we don't ignore it, and so we can stop and fix it. Eyai are designed with the same sort of system," she adds, "but only humans are obliged to feel the pain."
True enough. Functional pathways are those which bring the damage to one's attention, but involve no experience which could be classed as unpleasant. I know the difference. I was made only as sturdy as I needed to be, and no more. My body is no Victorian creation.
"Lift your arms, please," Emily says then, abandoning the instruments to Dr Ogun's inspection and coming to my side.
As she helps me out of my clothes I discover that the gloves aren't made of lace at all, but ink. Black lines and flowery tendrils tattooed under the skin of her hands.
"These are remarkable," I say.
"Thank you. It hurt something dreadful to get them done."
"No anaesthesia?"
Emily pauses; glances down at my naked body, then back at my face. "No," she says. "But I like to believe that I value them more because of what I underwent to gain them."
I raise my eyebrows, daring. "You might want to work on your subtlety, Ms Worcester."
"Emily. " Her mouth folds into itself and then re-emerges wearing a look of grudging humour. "My apologies. Passing judgement isn't in my job description, I know."
"But?"
Emily looks across at Dr Ogun; receiving nothing but a shrug in return, she continues, "But if we're to be blunt about it: you're not human, for all that you've managed to manifest a problem that is. You have the option of erasing your past. Humans have to live with the experience, allow for the fact that it shaped who they are, whether they would prefer it that way or not. And the bodily rectification is imperfect, even now."
"Whereas I can achieve a perfect change."
"Yes."
I climb onto the chair and Emily presses down near my shoulder, reclining it. She taps her other finger meaningfully near her temple, done with her spiel for now, and connects me to Dr Ogun's tablet once my data port is exposed. The surgeon herself has donned her gloves, and now comes over to the chair.
"You two may resume your philosophical discussion in a short while. No chatter while I'm starting, please, unless Mr Tate is to end up with something less then the perfection for which he has paid." She looks at Emily, pointed and amused, and then down at me. "Are you sufficiently wound?"
"Yes."
"Well, then. Are you ready?"
No question. "Yes."
She lifts the blade. I settle back to watch.
*
*
*
When I next walk down the stairs of Blacksheep Industries, it's to discover the British Republic's Director of Communications and Strategy sitting very upright in Tee's chair. Tee himself is leaning against the desk, gesturing with a half-eaten biscuit. Even standing he's not much taller than the eyai called Nacio. His face brightens when he catches sight of me, his gaze sweeping critically to my feet and then ascending to my face at a more curious pace.
"Ain't you a sight for sore eyes, Bastian. All fixed?"
It isn't quite the word I'd have chosen, but I return his smile. "Indeed."
Nacio stands; as soon as his legs straighten, the idea of them existing in any other state seems odd. He extends a hand, all darkness and firmness tapering upwards to a smile, like some graceful obelisk erected for the centuries.
"You'll be Sebastian Tate, then."
"Yes. And I know who you are."
His handshake is warm and personal, as though the action is something enjoyable, as though he honestly has nothing more important with which to occupy his time. I wonder if he was programmed like this and found himself brilliantly suited to politics, or if he's learned it along the way.
"Tee has been filling me in on your situation," he says. "He thought I might find it interesting."
Tee lifts his hand as though intending to rub at his eyes or fix his unfixable hair, and seems surprised to find the biscuit still in it. He blinks, and then lowers it again without taking a bite. "We'd never seen anything like him before, is all, and we've seen plenty. You wouldn't mind being called 'it', would you, Nacio? Y'don't feel -- like a man? A male?"
Nacio looks at him and then back at me, his eyes cleanly thoughtful. "I would mind," he says. "But I would mind it for the meaning behind the word, the history of objectification and exclusionary language. However, in terms of identifying strongly with 'he' over 'she' -- " A pause. "Perhaps. Perhaps not. I can imagine that if my consciousness were transferred to a differently gendered body I would find it uncomfortable. But that's likely to be informed by the force of habit."
"Yeah, well, you're old." Tee pokes his arm, sounding almost fond. "Doesn't seem to have bothered anyone, the fact that he's discovered a gender. But where's it come from, when he ain't got no need for it?"
Nacio gives him a steady look."Where did the idea of freedom come from? When a thing will never be bestowed, sometimes it has to be claimed."
"So today you'll be wantin' --"
I say, "No."
Tee frowns. "You don't want me to alter the code?"
"Correct." I lace my hands together and then gaze at them. Then, as this seems dishonest, at Tee. "I was told some things. About living with one's experiences, and the value of pain. I would prefer not to forget; that's all I came to tell you."
"Aye, well." His fingers dance, and I recognise in his fidgets the unwillingness to shoulder a debt. His accent plunges absently gutterward. "Fair's fair -- I took a gander at yer code. Sure there ain't nothin' we can do?"
I smile. "If I have any requests in the future, I'll be sure to come to you, and remind you of your offer."
Tee nods, but his muddy eyes are still sharp upon me, and I have the sudden impression of movement behind them. As though his skull were glass and the speed of his thoughts visible in a way that neither human nor eyai can yet provide.
"How d'you feel, in yerself?" he asks finally.
"I feel relieved." There had been no upswell of joy, no sudden shift of my foundations. It was something that I needed done, and it has been done. "That's enough."
He looks nonplussed, then shrugs it off. "Fierce. Step by again some time so I can see how that masculine consciousness of yours is evolving, yeah?"
"Certainly."
Upstairs we shake hands, and he ducks back inside and closes the door. London's damp wind ruffles my hair and when I button up my coat it lies flat against my chest. I am a pillar, a smooth vertical wall. I am finally built to match my blueprint, so it doesn't matter that I can still remember what it is like to be strained and tugged by strange revolving gravities.
I am the reclamation of my history.
I am what I have always been.