The wake protocols roused Laemmle as his auto pulled into a vast parking structure. It rose thirty stories in the air, concrete shelf after concrete shelf holding autos of all ilk. Laemmle’s vehicle rolled into an entry lane.
Welcome to the USC Medical Center. A professional female voice greeted him inside his head. He wondered what characteristics they had gleaned about him to generate her.
We recommend our fully integrated bot package, including valet, navigation, and consolation services. As this is your first time with us, we’ll furnish you with this package completely free.
The voice paused, as if expecting him to respond.
This package requires nanonet integration. Do you accept?
The hospital was massive, a complex of twenty-story buildings all connected by a network of mechanized catwalks.
That sounds fine.
Excellent! My name is Cassette. I’ll take human form after I direct your auto to the right place.
The vehicle climbed several floors of the structure. Other cars pulled in and out of spots and buzzed around traffic lanes, but Laemmle barely felt a complete stop. The power of connexion: all the autos talking, individual software protocols minimizing decelerations and maximizing velocity for everyone all at once.
They stopped at a glass entry to the hospital. Laemmle’s door opened. Greeting him was Cassette, a prim and dainty blond dressed as some sort of flight attendant/nurse hybrid.
Mr Crawford, your auto will take it from here. If you’d like to follow me, I’ll show you to the Disorders of Consciousness ward.
* * *
Sing.
Sting. Kingpin, mama, he caused trauma, wrote a comma carved in karma, verse and chapter after all was said and done, we threaded supple tongues—
Sing, she breathes.
I’m seeing things I don’t believe in things increasingly
I’m seeing things I don’t believe in—
Sing, she breathes.
* * *
Whether the journey through the hospital was long or short, convoluted or straightforward, Laemmle couldn’t say. His mind spun, exhausted and confused. With his nanonet’s help, he played a clip of Braxton’s crooning voice, his young soprano on the verge of turning tenor. Would he hear Braxton sing again, with his actual ears? Yesterday, his answer was a despondent but emphatic no. But now…
A passing clock read 4:38. Still a couple hours until dawn. White LED light permeated the corridors, bright and pleasant but far from comforting. The abject sterility recalled his kitchen at home – white and chrome, an antiseptic palette Capella had insisted was perfect, even homey. Laemmle despised that kitchen.
There were other people around, milling about, following bots he couldn’t see. An entire family approached from the other direction. They passed in soundless unison, maybe bantering with their valet bot through a shared nanonet stream.
Others slouched in metal chairs, waiting with hospital posture – nervous and bleary.
After a series of elevators and long walkways, they passed under an LED sign tucked away in some corner of the massive compound.
DISORDERS OF CONCIOUSNESS
Stepping onto the ward, intermittent hums and beeps and whirs filled the air space around him, the only real sound hitting his ear drums. He didn’t hear any voices, realizing the last person he had interacted with was the nurse, pinging him what seemed so long ago.
A clean-cut man with olive skin appeared down the hall and started toward Laemmle. Laemmle’s nanonet identified him as Joaquin Gutierrez. The man requested a nanostream – odd for another human to initiate a stream protocol, but Laemmle accepted. Maybe standard practice at hospitals.
Mr Crawford. Pleased to meet you. That full, baritone voice filled Laemmle’s head despite Gutierrez still being ten feet down the hall. A wave of relief washed over him. He would see his son again. Hear him again. They would talk, with their mouths, like humans had done for tens of thousands of years.
Thank you, Cassette. If you’d like to sleep, we’ll call you as needed. So he could see Laemmle’s bot.
Cassette vanished.
Hello, Mr Gutierrez. Laemmle reached out a hand to shake. Gutierrez smiled, a hint of smugness at the corners of his lips.
I suppose I could send you some sensory inputs, but your hand would pass right through mine. Please, call me Joaquin.
Laemmle briefly felt a firm, warm grip on his outstretched hand. It disappeared, but his hand remained hanging awkwardly in the air until he processed what happened.
Joaquin was a bot.
The fear and jittery anxiety pinballing through Laemmle’s emotional space mutated into a more familiar feeling: anger.
Ah hell. You said I would see a psychiatrist.
I… apologize, sir Joaquin replied, off guard. I’m not human, but I can assure you that you and your son will receive the best care possible – I just came from his room.
I was told I’d see a doctor. A real one. Is that you or not?
Laemmle’s intensity increased, however muted by the sterility of 1’s and 0’s transmitting his thought to computer servers, which processed his words, formulated a response, and sent them back to Jaoquin.
Jaoquin paused. We have a team of outstanding physician-advisors who will arrive by 7 A.M. Entirely human crew. Unfortunately, time is of the essence in Braxton’s case, so if you’d like to—
And they don’t have a night shift?
In the past, Laemmle had taken pride in launching the perfect amount of spittle from his shouting lips, getting his hot breath right in some poor fucker’s face. A depth his anger now lacked.
Sir, night shiftwork is outlawed in LA County. It’s a known carcinogen.
Laemmle scoffed. Guess we don’t have that law in the boonies.
Mr Crawford, if we may discuss your son. Braxton was admitted by Pathways of Hope goodwill shelter. They found him on a humanitarian robo-trawl. Your son has been street dwelling.
A vague sense of the world liquefying around Laemmle’s body overtook him, extinguishing his heat. Street dwellers were— their lives transpired beyond the margins of society. No one touched the streets after autos came to rule them exclusively, after the teeming cities dismantled their sidewalks bit by bit to make room for extra lanes.
The auto-ridden streets had become conduits for the masses to hurtle around in complete individualized comfort. Travel throughout the great cities had never been so convenient.
Laemmle imagined Braxton, thin young body no match for the street denizens’ rough world. How had he survived? Just thirteen – why didn’t anyone help him? It was nearly impossible to envision, Brax among the unclean characters who sidled into the cities’ receding nooks and corners – the ill, the ostracized, the people trapped in lonely sprawls of addiction. Those who society quite contentedly… forgot.
How can you know that? Impossible. Braxton was kidnapped.
He may very well have been—
There’s no “may very well.” That’s what happened. He sure as hell didn’t run away at thirteen to live on the fucking streets!
Confusion whipping across his mind, Laemmle snapped to, snapped out of his naive dependence on these stupid bots. There was something bigger going on, bigger than the abstract intelligences enveloping his world. He started down the hall, determined to find Braxton’s room and present himself to his son: father, protector, guardian, in the flesh.
Stepping through Jaoquin’s vapid body, he strode toward the room the fake nurse had come from. Nobody stopped him. There was no one to stop him. Only bots and their suggestions and their simulated human forms.
A burst of energy flooded his body as he reached the right room, a pulse of pure physical human emotion, body and all, soul and all.
Pushing through the door, he slowed to avoid startling his infirmed son.
Braxton reclined on a thin nanofoam mattress, white sheet covering his lower half, upper half shrouded in a light gown. He was sitting up, the bed supporting his back, eyes open and staring, head topped by a tangle of dark curls. Laemmle could immediately tell his skin tone wasn’t right – it was grayed out, deadened, almost matte. He looked cold.
“Hey Brax,” Laemmle said with a crackle in his neglected vocal chords.
Cracks ringed Braxton’s eyelids, skin rough and soiled. He had his mother’s eyes. Laemmle knew it the day Brax was born. It always itched him.
Before him now, those eyes were frozen and unknowing. Vacant.
Laemmle reached the bed. Brax hadn’t budged. His eyes remained glued on empty space, mouth agape. Was he breathing? Laemmle couldn’t see a rise or fall in his son’s diminutive chest. He stretched out a hand, yearning for a physical connection with his son. It had been so long…
The instant Laemmle’s fingers made contact, Braxton’s body exploded into a herky jerk of contractions, mouth opening wide as if he were screaming. But no sound came out. His torso swung into the air, stiff and straight, then crashed down on the bed, bouncing off the mattress and flying back into the air again. He hammered the mattress a few times, then suddenly froze, mid-air, torso overcome by tiny stutters instead of violent swings. Like a program failing to execute. Stalling out and terminating. Like the VEB in the car, frozen before him.
And then Braxton collapsed, body going limp. His head hung awkwardly on his shoulder, eyes still open, unaltered through the entire ordeal.
Don’t worry, sir. It was Jaoquin. We’ve delivered a tranquilizing protocol to his motor outputs. He won’t be able to hurt himself accidentally. What do you say we step into the hall and have a conversation?
Terrified he might startle his son again, Laemmle treaded back on eggshells. Braxton remained propped up on the mattress, neck wilted.
Staring.
Laemmle gazed into the faded black holes punctuating the whites of his son’s eyes, enormous pupils opened wide but seeing nothing. And before he knew what was happening, a burning sensation blasted through Laemmle’s chest. His blood was on fire, waves of emotion pulsing through his body, a building tsunami of raw, unfettered feeling. He threatened to burst, lip quivering, face hardened and braced against the internal torment, a last meager defense before the breaking of the dam…
An anguished cry escaped from Laemmle’s throat. His cheeks burned, throat burned, eyes burned. Hot tears streamed recklessly down his face. A touch landed on his shoulder, Jaoquin’s attempt at consolation.
Falling to the floor, Laemmle’s rough vocal chords made noises he had never heard escape his lips. They echoed off the ward’s sanitized walls. It was all too much, to be confronted with such authentic horror in a reality that so rarely seemed real.
Braxton was still, his eyes held wide.
