“So what did happen to Old Handeltown?”
The pretty blonde at the window looked surprised for a moment, then laughed. Dr. Doucette was covering for Landers today. She wasn’t nearly as chatty as he was, though. I’d been trying to get her talking, so far with minimal success.
Dr. Doucette was a looker. I was happy to discover that I hadn’t lost my appreciation for beauty with the, uh, change in my lifestyle. Although my appreciation wasn’t as urgent now, so to speak.
She spoke with the standard 22nd century accent, so I was using my translation routine. I’d integrated it to the point where I didn’t even notice the different speech patterns. I knew that Dr. Landers was specially trained to deal with replicants, and had studied my era. Which included getting his patois under control. Dr. Doucette either had skipped that class, or wasn’t normally supposed to be talking to me.
It wasn’t an issue as far as I was concerned, and if Dr. Landers was okay with her, then I didn’t see a problem. Hopefully, the State wouldn’t have a cow.
Anyway, today I was coordinating a team of roamers to assemble ship components, assembly-line style. It was routine work. By now, I had written scripts for so many roamer activities that I rarely had to do more than show up. But, the good folks at Applied Synergetics had a checklist to run through, so I had to humor them.
Dr. Doucette looked down at her tablet—yeah, everyone came with tablets—then, satisfied that the status was still quo, answered my question. “Original Handeltown was Handel’s birthplace—Salem, Oregon. When he died, the city changed the name and set up a large memorial in his honor. Someone objected and decided to take it out with a pocket nuke.”
“Nuke? On American soil?”
She wagged a finger at me. “Uh uh. Hasn’t been American soil for a hundred years now. But to answer your question, itwasand still is the only nuclear weapon ever deployed in North America.”
She nodded.
“A lot of people died?”
She shook her head. “Not like you’d think. We learned a lot about radiation treatments from the Middle-East feud. Lots of opportunity to try out different medical procedures. For all the death and horror that the Middle East war generated, it advanced medical knowledge greatly.”
“Like reviving replicants?”
“Like reviving replicants.”
I was silent for a few moments as I concentrated on guiding the roamers through a particularly tricky bit of assembly. As soon as they were able to continue on their own, I turned back to Dr. Doucette. “So what’s it like, living in a theocracy? Do you have daily prayers?”
Dr. Doucette held up one finger in a universal waitaminnit gesture. She poked at her tablet a few times, then looked up at me. “Sorry, just checking the location of the security patrols. Some of them might be Piety Monitors.”
I was blank for a moment, then I laughed. “So you’re monitoring the monitors. What are you doing, tracking their security card locations?”
Dr. Doucette smiled in return. “The government doesn’t really care what we do as long as we give the appearance of piety. But jabber-jiving them will get you a session with the Ministry of Proper Thought that you’ll never forget.”
“Mmm, yeah. Dr. Landers mentioned something about that. So while we’ve got some privacy, let me ask you this—how do you know I’ll do what you want instead of just heading off in some random direction, once you release me into the wild? Understand, I love this whole idea, and I can’t see myself not cooperating, but you couldn’t know that when you revived me.”
The doctor gazed down at her tablet for a few seconds, a thoughtful look on her face. “There are safeguards, Bob. Your software will ensure mission objectives are met. That’s all I’m going to say. But as you pointed out, it’s probably not an issue with you.”
Safeguards. There’s my word of the day not to like.
It was an interesting philosophical issue. How are you supposed to feel if you are forced to do what you would have done anyway? I wondered how it would work. Would I be a marionette on strings, unable to help myself? Or would I think the decisions were mine? I shuddered at the possibility I might find out.