Shiny

e is carrying his umbrella, because it is raining. It's always raining. In a way it's no wonder so many of the city's inhabitants are so unhappy, considering that they only see the sun every ten days or so. But he doesn't mind the rain. With the umbrella, and wearing his black suit, he can hardly feel it, though he can tell from the steadily sliding temperature that he is becoming a little damp despite all the protection, deflected droplets and upward splashes from the deeper puddles grabbing onto the cuffs of his pant legs and making their way upward.

He is walking steadily, not exactly eager but certainly looking forward to the door of his apartment, the gentle light, the soft give of the bed under him. There is no one waiting for him, and this does not really bother him. It is late, after all, and the only people on the street are running home from the rain now, holding coats or plastic bags of cereal and batteries over their heads, or else just straightening their damp collars and giving themselves shamelessly to the weather. Every now and then he passes a police officer in glistening bad-weather gear, the streetlights reflecting blue and starry off their coats and hats and leaving the rest of them in shadow.

He rarely ever sees police-programmed androids in this town, though they could certainly use them. It's hard to tell why. Possibly it's the rain again, so adept at forcing its way into the kind of miniscule cracks and hinges the human body learned to move without. Certainly it would seem a little unnecessary to churn out all those regulation waterproof uniforms only to put them on rows of tin soldiers instead of men, and there is the fact that what can make a man seem stolid and indestructible can do exactly the opposite to a machine. It would be a shame, he admits to himself, to cover all those gleaming, symmetrical steel bodies with wet, creased oilcloth and canvas, not to mention the faint undertones of deceit. Even he, in his wet cotton suit, cannot help to think of it like that—computers masquerading as men, as if the public wouldn't know the difference.

And that brings him to the next possible reason, which rears its head just so as he passes under the shallow ledge of a convenience shop, sidestepping a few figures silhouetted against a window.

"Hey," one of the figures calls sharply. "Watch your space."

"Sorry," he says. He lowers his head and tries to get by quickly, knowing it's all up to luck, but still hoping a little, maybe futilely. And for a moment it looks as if luck has taken the ball, but there is a fumble, then, and the man, no longer a silhouette, has stepped in front of him.

He is tall. He is wearing a white nylon jacket, with the skin of a smoker and a fine layer of the kind of grime you get in cities only. His face has the thinness of someone who spent the last of his paycheck a few days ago and the remains of yesterdays unshaven beard, and he smiles a humorless smile. "Hey," he says again. "Look at this. Found ourselves a shiny."

Devon does not run. To run would be to abandon even luck, and so instead he stands as still as he can, holds his head down, waits for an opportunity. Hopes for one. He gives the response he has been taught: “I’m not looking for any trouble.”

The man smiles down at him. “Not lookin’ for trouble? Heh. Not the kind of thing you go lookin’ for, is it?” He looks first to one side and then the other, and the other two silhouettes have appeared around him, now the sorry shapes of people, shadowed black and blue in the streetlight and watching with the alertness that comes from waiting too long to sleep. They are smiling grimly—not laughing at him, just watching, just enjoying the suspense of the moment.

“Hey,” says the tall one, a third time. He tilts his head as if he’s speaking to a child, and puts on a mocking imitation of civility. “Whose’re you, anyway? Who d’you belong to, huh?” He waits for a response, and when nothing comes he tries again, a dangerous note in his voice this time. “Where you come from, shiny?”

Devon thinks of lying. It wouldn’t help, and he can’t do it anyway, so he hesitates for a second more and decides to tell the truth. “I’m-“

And this is when the bottle hits his head, swinging, from the left and into his temple, sending a jolt through him and snapping his neck to the side. He does not lose his balance, but the vision in his left eye goes rapidly bright and then dark, the other eye brightening to compensate so that the whole picture in front of him flickers like a broken projection, a little sideways and reeling when the second hit sends him to his knees.

The tall man is still smiling, just a little, but he loses this in a second or two, pulls back his foot and sends out a kick that catches Devon in the soft space where his hip hits the front of his body. Someone else aims a blow at a point on his back that makes him let out an involuntary noise like a stuck typewriter, and someone snickers. “Call for your mother,” says a flat voice, devoid even of the emotion to really tease him, and a boot presses down, hard and abrupt, on his shoulder, wrenching it away from his body with such force that above the sound of his shirt ripping he can hear the wires ripping inside him.

And then there is a new voice. It comes out of the darkness with a sureness that stops all of them, and it says, “Excuse me.”

In the ensuing pause Devon is able to turn his head enough to look up, to see the tall figure of a man in a hat and a long raincoat standing over him. His unnamed assailants back up warily, and the voice comes again from the seemingly empty space under the brim of the newcomer’s hat. “I believe you have something of mine,” it says. “And you appear to have broken it.”

There is a moment, as the four men on the other side of Devon seem to weigh their options, and then one of them spits a stilted “Sorry,” less in resignation than disdain, and they turn and go. Devon waits for a second, allows himself to regain a little equilibrium, and when a thin white hand comes into his field of vision from above he lets go of his umbrella and takes it, letting it pull him into an unsteady standing position. “Thanks,” he says. “I would’ve been in some trouble if you hadn’t shown up like that.”

“No problem,” says the man in the long coat, and when he tilts back his hat to let Devon see his face, there is the shock of finding not the face of a man but the flat white mask and empty eyes of something that sounds like one but is fundamentally not. “I’m Kay,” he says.

“You’re-“ says Devon, and a second later after the realization has fully set in, “I thought you were human. They thought you were... Well. My name’s Devon.”

“No offense taken,” says Kay. “You’re actually the first mec I’ve seen here. I suppose I see why, now. Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” says Devon. “One of them got my arm pretty hard, though.” He tries, experimentally, to lift it, but it remains as lifeless as a doll’s. “I think it’s disconnected.”

“I can fix that if you want,” says Kay. “Your left eye’s still flickering a little too. Is there somewhere we can go around here to get out of the rain? A bridge, maybe?”

“Yeah,” Devon says again. “I know somewhere.”

And this is how, after a short walk, they find themselves in the shelter of an overpass, Devon’s torn shirt and jacket set aside as Kay works over the exposed machinery of his shoulder, filaments and wires fraying out of the open seam between metal and thin black plastic. “This is some clever work,” says Kay. “I take it you’re pretty new?”

Devon nods, indicates the lettering etched into his chest: DEV1. “For the International Robotics Summit,” he says. “I’m team D’s experimental version one.”

“Emancipated, I assume.”

“Yes. I’ve got an apartment on thirty-third and a job in data entry for Seisma Manufacturing.”

Kay slides a few connectors into place, and the arm comes back to life with a twitch. Devon looks down at it and flexes his fingers gently. “Thanks again. I really owe you. You know, that was a real risk you took, lying for me back there. If they’d seen you…”

“Oh, I doubt I would have had any problems with them,” says Kay, and though there is nothing in his voice that should indicate more than what he has said, Devon is struck with the uncomfortable feeling that there are things not being said.

“Why not?”

Kay does a subtle tilt of his head, one that turns the light on his maskish face and makes it almost look as if he’s smiling. “I’ve had a few modifications done,” he says. “You could say I can take care of myself.”

Devon is no good at figurative language, at implications, but this has a kind of finality that can only be one thing. “Your hippocratics,” he says quietly. “You had your hippocratics removed?” The thought makes him feel weak, deeply, vitally wrong. “That’s illegal. They could have you burned out for that.”

“Only if they catch me,” says Kay. “Hey, your patterns are reading strange. Are you okay? Hey, it’s not like I’ve done anything. It’s just a precaution.”

And this is true, even if Devon has seen him lie before, but the thought of breaking that first rule—the impossible option of fighting back—feels like ending some deep-seated law of reality. But he overrides the feeling, holds himself steady, and stands up. “Yes, I’m all right,” he says. “Listen, Kay, if you need somewhere to stay, you’re welcome to come with me for the night. I’ve got room.” He picks up his shirt and jacket from the cool ground, puts them on as one, and shakes his battered umbrella back into shape.

“Thanks,” says Kay. “That sounds good.”

They walk out, into the rain again, into the lamplight and the reflections off the surface of the canal and the puddles still draining out of the cracks in the sidewalk. It is later now, and most of those who were running home from the weather have gotten there by now. Devon holds his umbrella. It is seven blocks until his apartment, and though now he can feel the resistance and the reaction of the water seeping between the plates of his side, and though the left edge of his vision still sometimes goes momentarily pixilated when he comes down too hard on his feet, he is glad to be headed home.

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An oldish one. Some of you have seen this one already, I think, but I figured I'd put it up.