The Life of the World to Come (Company) Read online

  In one corner, though, there was a cozy little Alec-sized table and chair, and on the table was an enormous bright yellow flower, bigger than Alec’s head. It was all folded up, the way flowers are in the early morning, so you couldn’t tell what sort of flower it was. Protruding from the top was a little card with letters inscribed on it: A-L-E-C.

  “Now, who d’you suppose that’s from, eh?” wondered Lewin, though in fact he had purchased it for Alec himself, without consulting Roger.

  Alec was speechless.

  “Think your daddy sent it, eh?” Where was the harm in a kind lie?

  “Go on, dear, take the card.” Mrs. Lewin prodded him gently. “It’s for you, after all.”

  Alec walked forward and pulled the card loose. There was nothing written on it except his name, but at the moment he took it the flower began to open, slowly, just like a real flower. The big bright petals unfolded and spread out to reveal what had been hidden in its heart.

  It looked like a silver egg, or perhaps a very fat little rocket. Its gleaming surface looked so smooth Alec felt compelled to put out his hand and stroke it.

  The moment he did so, a pleasant bell tone sounded.

  “Good morning,” said an even more pleasant voice. “Pembroke Technologies extends its congratulations to the thoughtful parent who has selected this Pembroke Playfriend for his or her small child. Our Playfriend is designed to encourage creativity and socialization as well as provide hours of entertainment, but will also stimulate cerebrocortical development during these critical first years of the child’s life. If needed, the Playfriend is also qualified to serve as an individual tutor in all standard educational systems. Customizing for specialized educational systems is available.

  “The Playfriend offers the following unique features:

  “An interface identity template that may be customized to the parent’s preferences and the child’s individual needs.

  “Cyberenvironment capability with use of the Playfriend Optics, included in Models Four, Five, and Six and available for all other models by special order.

  “Direct nerve stimulus interface with use of the attractive Empowerment Ring, included in all models.

  “Universal access port for parallel processing with any other cyber-system.

  “In addition, the Playfriend will maintain around-the-clock surveillance of the child’s unique health parameters and social behavior. Warning systems are in place and fully operational. Corrective counseling will be administered in the event of psychologically detrimental social encounters, and positive emotional growth will be encouraged. Aptitude evaluation is another feature of the Playfriend, with appropriate guidance. Intellectual challenges in a noncompetitive context will promote the child’s self-esteem and success potential.

  “The interface identity template will continually adjust and grow more complex to complement the child’s emerging personality, growing as it grows, until both are ready for, and may be upgraded to, the Pembroke Young Person’s Companion.

  “Interaction with the Pembroke Playfriend during the developmental years virtually guarantees a lifetime of self-fulfillment and positive achievement!”

  The voice fell silent. Mrs. Lewin gave an embarrassed little laugh that ended in a cough. The air in London didn’t agree with her.

  “My goodness, I don’t think I understood one word in ten of all that! Did you, Alec dear?”

  “Nope,” said Alec solemnly.

  “That’s all right,” said Lewin, advancing on the silver egg. “All it meant was that Alec’s gonna have a wonderful time with this thing! Now, you just sit here and let’s have a closer look at it, shall we?”

  “Okay,” said Alec, but he sat down reluctantly. He was a little intimidated by the adult voice that had spoken out of nowhere. Lewin tousled his hair.

  “Don’t be scared. Look here, what’s this?” He tapped the side of the egg and a slot opened in it, and something rolled out.

  It was a ring. It appeared to be made of glass or high-impact polymer, and was a vivid blue. As Lewin picked it up it began to change. By the time he had presented it to Alec it was a deep ruby red.

  “Cool,” said Alec, smiling at it involuntarily.

  “D’you suppose it fits you? Go on then, try it on.”

  Alec was game; he put on the ring. It seemed to him that it tightened uncomfortably for a moment and then eased up, until he barely knew it was there.

  “Hello, Alec!” said a funny little voice. “Pleased to meet you! We’re going to be best friends, you and I!”

  Alec looked, panic-stricken, at Lewin and Mrs. Lewin. Was he supposed to talk to it? But what was it? They smiled encouragingly at him, and he could tell they did so want him to like this, so he said: “Er—hello. What’s your name?”

  “Well, I haven’t got one yet,” said the little voice. “Will you give me a name?”

  “What?”

  “Will you give me a name?”

  “We’ll just leave the two of you to have a nice chat, shall we?” said Lewin, and he and Mrs. Lewin backed out of the schoolroom and closed the door.

  “But—but I don’t know what you are,” said Alec, a bit desperately. “Can’t I see you?”

  “Certainly you can! I’m your Playfriend, after all. What would you like me to look like? I might be nearly anybody.” There was a click and a blur of light appeared in front of the table, formless, woven of fire, gradually assuming a human shape. “What do you like? Do you like space exploration? Do you like dinosaurs? Do you like animals? I could be a fireperson or a policeperson if you’d like, or a transport driver, or a scientist.”

  “Could you be a pirate?” Alec said cautiously.

  Incorrect and unsuitable role model! thought the machine. Out loud it said, “I can be a jolly sea captain. Here I am!”

  Pop! The human shape became detailed, was an old man with a blue Navy coat and white trousers and big black sea boots. He wore a white yachting cap rather like the one Alec’s daddy had owned, but seldom worn, and he had a neatly groomed white beard. “Now then, Alec, what about me?” The voice had changed to a kindly baritone with a Devon accent. “Will I do?”

  Alec was so astonished it took him a moment to reply. “Um—sure,” he said at last. Then he remembered his manners and added, “Won’t you sit down?”

  Optimum response! thought the Playfriend, rather pleased, and it smiled encouragingly. “What a polite little fellow you are, Alec! Thank you, I will sit down.” A bigger version of Alec’s chair appeared and the Sea Captain settled back in it. “There! Have you thought of a name for me yet, Alec?”

  “No.” Alec shook his head.

  “Well, that’s all right. Perhaps as we get to know each other you’ll think of a good one. After all, I’m your special friend, just for you.” Alec wrinkled his brow worriedly. “You don’t have to decide on a name all at once,” the Playfriend hastened to assure him. “We have plenty of time.”

  “But don’t you want to be yourself?” Alec asked it.

  “Oh, yes! But I won’t really be myself until you decide what I ought to be,” the machine said. “I’m your Playfriend.”

  “But,” Alec said, “people don’t belong to other people.”

  In the brief silence that followed, the Playfriend thought: Possible low self-esteem. It made a little tick against its evaluation of Alec. Negative: insufficient creativity, insufficient imagination, failure to grasp initiative. Positive: developing social consciousness, consideration of others, good citizenship . It filed that away. As it did so its eyes, which had been the gray of the North Sea, turned blue as the Caribbean.

  “Oh!” Alec smiled.

  “You like this color better?” The Sea Captain smiled, too.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Good.” The machine experimented with a mild subliminal sound effect, a distant crash of breakers and a faint crying of gulls. Its sensors observed some of the tension going out of the little boy and activated the system of relays that provided it wit
h an analog of self-satisfaction. Initiate self-image analysis. “Why don’t you tell me about yourself, Alec? Are you happy?”

  “Yes,” Alec said dutifully, and because of the neural linkup it had formed with Alec through the Empowerment Ring, the Playfriend knew at once that he was lying. It became very alert. It scanned him for evidence of physical abuse.

  “You seem to have bumped your nose once,” the Sea Captain said casually, focusing on a healed injury to the cartilage of Alec’s septum.

  “No,” said Alec, and the machine saw that he was telling the truth so far as he knew. But the trauma had healed long ago, probably in infancy when the cartilage was soft. Since Alec had no other injuries at all, past or present, the machine pushed on.

  “What do you think makes people unhappy?” the Sea Captain said.

  “Living in London,” said Alec at once.

  “Anything else?”

  Alec thought about it. “Babies making noise and mess and little boys running around and getting into everything. Divorces.”

  “Ah,” said the Playfriend, coordinating this response with the data Lewin had input when he’d set up its program. The subroutine that had been called up to probe discreetly for, and report evidence of, child abuse went back on standby. “What else can you tell me about yourself, Alec?”

  “I’m five years old,” Alec said. “My daddy is a gentleman, but he isn’t here now. I’m going to go to St. Stephen’s Primary next year after Lewin buys me a tie. I have to always be a good boy to make up for making Daddy sad. And I used to live on the Foxy Lady. And I used to have Sarah with me. And I go out sometimes.”

  The machine analyzed this meticulously and noticed what was missing.

  “Can you tell me anything about your mummy?”

  What was there to say? “She was very smart and could read. And she didn’t want to have children,” said Alec at last.

  Like Lewin, the Playfriend decided that Alec had had quite enough unhappy memories for one day.

  “Well, let’s do something else!” it said, filing the selfimage profile for further analysis at a later time. “What would you like to do, Alec?”

  “Why don’t you tell me about you?” said Alec, because he thought that would be polite. People always like to talk about themselves.

  Positive! Further evidence of advanced social skills. “Why, certainly,” said the Playfriend heartily. “I’m a wise old sea captain. I sail about delivering cargo and passengers to distant lands. I help scientists do marine research, and I help protect endangered sea creatures!”

  “That’s nice,” said Alec. “But you aren’t really a sea captain, are you? You’re a Pembroke Playfriend.” He pointed at the silver egg. “Is that where you really are?”

  Negative! Insufficient imagination. “Why, this is where I am, of course, Alec.” The machine smiled and made a wide gesture. “But I’m in there, too, and in a way your whole world is in there. Look here, would you like to see how a Pembroke Playfriend works?”

  “Yes, please,” Alec said.

  Possible aptitude for cyber-science? Initiate investigation.

  “Well then!” The machine pointed and a little drawer opened near the base of the egg. “Just take hold of these Playfriend Optics and put them on, and we’ll have a jolly adventure into cyberspace!”

  The Playfriend Optics were made of the same fascinating red/blue jewel substance as the Empowerment Ring. Alec reached for them readily enough and put them on.

  “Er … everything’s black,” he said, not wanting to seem rude.

  Everything was black because the machine was experiencing certain unexpected difficulties. The moment the Optics had come into contact with Alec’s skin, a system of neural connections began to be established, microscopic pathways directly into his brain, just as had happened with the Empowerment Ring but far more direct and complex. This was a perfectly safe procedure. Lots of happy children all over the world went into cyberspace with their Playfriends every day. Each Playfriend knew exactly how to take a child into its world, because it had a precise and detailed road map of the human brain that showed it exactly where to link up.

  However, Alec’s Playfriend was discovering that its map seemed to be somewhat inaccurate as regarded Alec’s brain.

  This was because Alec’s brain was not, technically, human.

  “Not a problem,” the Playfriend assured him. “We’re just adjusting to each other.” Abnormality! Functional? Disability? Parameters? Organic? Specify? Define? Hello? “My goodness, Alec, what an unusual boy you are!”

  Alec knew that. Privately he thought everybody was wrong about him being special; he’d never noticed anything out of the ordinary about himself. On the other hand, he knew no other children, so he had no basis for comparison. He sighed and waited patiently for the machine to sort itself out.

  The machine paused in its desperate attempt to analyze what it had encountered. It activated relays that would alert Lewin to its recommendation that Alec be hospitalized for immediate evaluation of his cerebral anomaly as soon as he ended his session with the Playfriend. But one should never pause during a race.

  It had no idea it was in a race, that all the while it was trying to make sense of Alec’s brain, Alec’s brain was trying to make sense of it, with the same speed that had enabled him to count all the houses on a hillside at a glance. Even if the Playfriend had realized that the race was going on, it would have laughingly rejected as impossible the idea that it might lose. But Alec was beginning to notice that there was something there in the darkness to look at, something he could almost make out, and if he only tried a bit harder—

  “Ooooo,” Alec said happily, as he decrypted the Playfriend’s site defense. Lots of winking lights in lovely colors, great visual pleasure after all that blackness. After a moment his brain took charge and put it all in context for him. He stood on the quarterdeck of a ship, not all that different from the quarterdeck of the Foxy Lady, and the Sea Captain stood there with him.

  The Sea Captain looked rather worried, but kept smiling. It had no idea where this cybersite was. It couldn’t really have brought Alec into its own defended inner space. It was impossible for any child to break in, so Alec couldn’t have done so (though in fact Alec had); therefore this must be some sort of visual analog of its own space, summoned up as a teaching tool only. As its higher functions grappled desperately with the fact that it had encountered a situation for which it had no protocols, it was continuing to run its standard aptitude evaluation program to see if Alec ought to be trained for a career in cyberscience.

  “Controls!” said Alec, running along the bank of gleaming lights. “Are these your controls?” The Sea Captain hurried after him.

  “Yes. Would you like to learn about cybernetics?”

  “Yes, please. What’s that do?” Alec pointed at a vast panel lit up with every imaginable shade of blue.

  “That’s the memory for my identity template,” the Sea Captain told him. “That’s what makes me look the way I do, and that’s what makes me learn and grow with you. Here! I’ll show you an example.” It reached out and pressed one of the lights, causing it to deepen from a pale blue to turquoise. As it did so its beard changed in color from white to black.

  “Cool,” Alec said. “Can I do that?”

  “Well, of course!” the Sea Captain said in the friendliest possible way, noting that at least it finally seemed to have activated its subject’s creativity and imagination. “Just select a light on the console and see what it does.”

  Alec reached up and pushed a light. It flickered, and the Sea Captain’s coat was no longer blue but bright yellow.

  “You see? This is what I meant when I told you that I can look like anything you want me to—” Sea Captain told him, but Alec had already grasped the concept perfectly. Gleefully he pushed again, and again. The Sea Captain’s coat turned green, then purple, then scarlet.

  Discourage! Scarlet/military context/violence/unsuitable! “Alec—”

&nbs
p; “So all these lights can make you look different?” Alec looked up at them speculatively.

  “That’s right. Think of it as the biggest, best paintbox in the world!” said the Sea Captain, dutifully shelving its discouragement directive for the encouragement one, as it was programmed to let positive feedback take precedence whenever possible.

  “Wow,” said Alec, his eyes glazing slightly as the whole business began to make sense to him.

  The Playfriend was pleased with itself. Score! Guidance in creative play accepted! In spite of the fact that it was being hampered by that damned anomaly, which simply refused to be analyzed. Self-congratulation seemed to be in order.

  But there were lots of other glowing lights on the quarterdeck.

  “What do these do?” Alec ran farther down the console, where a small bank of lights glowed deep red.

  “Ah! That’s my information on you, Alec. That’s how I see you,” the Sea Captain said. “Everything I know about you is there, all I was told and everything I’m learning as we play together. You see how few lights there are yet? But the longer we know each other, the more I learn, the more there’ll be of those red lights.” One of them was flashing in a panicky sort of way, but the machine wasn’t about to mention the anomaly it was still failing to solve. “Think of it as a picture I’m painting.”

  And in midair before Alec appeared a boy. He was tall for a five-year-old, very solid-looking, and Alec hadn’t seen enough other children yet to know that there was something subtly different about this boy. He hadn’t noticed the effect he had on people, though Derek and Lulu had. When they went places in London, strangers who chanced to observe Alec for any length of time usually got the most puzzled looks on their faces. What was so different about Alec?

  He wasn’t exactly pretty, though he had lovely skin and high color in his face. His nose was a little long, his mouth a little wide. His head was, perhaps, slightly unusual in shape but only slightly. His hair was sort of lank and naturally tousled, a dun color you might call fair for lack of a better word. His eyes were very pale blue, like chips of crystal. Their stare seemed to unsettle people, sometimes.