Personal Blogs

Katya and Liliya have found the man who killed Rosalind, on I-13.  I have signalled to them to put him in a crate and bring him home, alive, with all speed.   I need to ask Kelvin if he can get me some acid - about two hundred litres.

            Horace will be born soon.  Kelvin is being supportive.  This may be his way of shielding himself from aspects of public life that he now finds unpleasant, but I don't mind.  He seems to be with us in mind as well as body.  We have nearly finished building a proper house, above ground.  I don't want my baby to be born in a bunker.  Kelvin has even painted the baby's room, with paint manufactured by a new concern that he and James Holt have started.   I asked him if it was non-toxic but he just rolled his eyes heavenward.  The colour scheme is in lots of stripes because Kelvin wanted to try out every colour they had come up with.  It looks insane but I am sure the baby will find it interesting.  He is now working on a wooden mobile, with stars, planets, comets, space rockets and aliens.  One of the aliens' faces reminds me of Prude.

*

Violet will soon give birth to our baby, who is still known as Horace.  Violet refuses to tell me what sex the child is, and I have not pressed her about this.  She assured me that the baby is healthy and, as she puts it, 'doesn't have two heads or eleven fingers'.   I wonder if Horace will be the first creature ever to be conceived in one solar system and born in another.  He (I call him 'he' for convenience) must surely be the first human child born of an android mother. 

            I hope Violet got the DNA right.  I don't care what he looks like, or how he grows up, but he'll be such a disappointment to Violet if he is weak, ugly or stupid.  Perhaps weakness or ugliness she could tolerate, but not stupidity. 

            We have had something of a disagreement about the birth.  She said that she wanted me to see the baby as soon immediately after he has been born, but she did not want me at the birth itself. 

            'Can't I help?' I asked.

            'I won't need any help. You can help by doing as I tell you.'

            'I thought labour was very traumatic and sometimes dangerous.'

            'Labour.  It's redundant.  There won't be any labour: just parturition and delivery, which I will oversee myself.'

            'Don't you think my being present at the birth will help to make the three of us feel closer together?'

            'Why the hell do you have to go all gooey every time I am trying to do something practical and scientific?  This is the conclusion of a ground-breaking research project: one which is, by the way, arguably one of the most significant events in modern human history, and I want to manage my experiment in my own way.  Can't you understand that?  Or is it now too long since you did any proper science for you to remember how it is done?'

            'In the first place, fuck you, and, in the second, I refuse to have my child referred to as merely the product of a scientific experiment.'

            'Well it is the product of a scientific experiment.  "I Married An Android" - remember?'

            'No, you're not an android.'

            'Yes, I am an android.'

            'You're a fucking android when it bloody well suits you.'

            'Yes, Kelvin, and so are you.'

            And then we both started crying.  She looked at me with the strangest mixture of venom and longing that I have ever seen.  I may be making this up, but I thought at that moment that I knew what she was silently trying to convey: remember that if it weren't for my own efforts, we would not be here together, and so I held my peace.  The tacit agreement is that I will be outside the room when the baby comes into the world, but I will be able to hear it cry and to see it and hold it immediately afterwards.  And I won't be able to sleep with Violet or see her naked until after she has repaired herself. 

*

I know that I swore I never would, but I have reluctantly decided to publish another edition of Royal Flush.  It would be silly not to:  people are clamouring for news about the royal baby.  It's a he, and he weighs ten pounds - what a pork-ball.  That's not a baby: it's an oven-ready turkey.  His name is an absolute hoot: Edgar Pascal Democritus Stark.  I can hardly get it out without cracking up. 

            I have to admit that the photo shoots (plural) have been a triumph.  The royal couple have been disgustingly good about the publicity.  And the baby is without doubt a little celeb in the making.  He chuckles and smiles in all the right places.  He does look adorable (as much as one with no teeth and who suffers from the combined effects of baldness, obesity and double-incontinence can do).  And, just as things are getting a bit boring and predictable, he pukes up, right in front of camera.  Marvellous.  I could not have trained him better myself.  There is nothing like a bit of well-aimed projectile vomiting to get people's attention.  I just hope he can sustain this for the next twenty-five years or so.  I hope the little chap isn't taking too much out of himself.

            I wonder what age he will hit puberty.

            The special issue is four shillings, by the way.  Yes, I know that is twice the cover price of the previous print-run, but this is a collector's edition.  I'd prefer it in silver, if you don't mind.  My girls will end up with shoulders like rugby league players if they have to carry all that copper around in their satchels.

*

I keep volunteering for geological expeditions to more and more remote parts of the planet, but still I can't help hearing news about Kelvin.  I just want to shut it all out, but even on this sparsely-populated world, there are still satellites and radios.  It is difficult to work in a professional manner and still escape the flow of information.  

            I hear that he has had a child.  I'm not much of a biologist - or an expert on androids - and so I still don't really grasp how this was possible.  How can it possibly be in the interests of the child to have a machine for a mother?  Is there any way back from this?  I can't see one.  Even if Kelvin came to his senses now, and annulled his so-called marriage to this thing he calls "Violet", what future would there be for us?  Would he expect me to look after the baby?  Would I be able to face the baby?  Even if I could, how would I feel about it later after we had had a child of our own: a proper child, with a human mother.  

            One of the articles I read said that she is going to breast-feed.  I suppose that just goes to show that you should not believe everything you read.  Is that possible?  How does it work?  What would it taste like?  Would it be like UHT?

There are times when I wonder if Anna really exists.  She wants to use the new spa that Pamela and I have opened as a knocking-shop.  I invited her to a meeting so that the three of us could talk about it, but she said that she only wanted to talk about it over the phone.

            We did talk about it over the phone, eventually.  I tried to make a joke about using the art screen in the reception area to display Picasso’s Les Desmoiselles D’Avignon, but she seemed to think I was serious.  She said, ‘I know it is your favourite painting, but I don’t think it would be appropriate in that setting.’  How did she know that?  I can’t remember mentioning it to any-one on the ship.  The last time I had a conversation about Picasso, it was years ago, on a trip to London with Violet.

            For reasons that I am not in a position to discuss at the moment, I have been having detailed discussions with some of the ship’s military people recently.  I have invited some of them to the opening of the spa.  Most of Anna’s ladies will be there, Pamela tells me.  I hope everybody will conduct him or her self in keeping with decorum. 

*

I must admit that I experience a certain frisson whenever Kelvin calls or emails Anna when he and Pamela are in the same room. 

            Kelvin has started a campaign recently, the details of which I can’t divulge at the moment, which means that I find it advantageous to earn as much money as possible.  This is why Anna suggested broadening the range of services on offer at the new spa.  Kelvin does not seem keen on this idea – what a hypocrite. 

            I have also been feverishly busy in my scientific research.  I have been making some enhancements, but not to myself: to Rosalind.  I have been doing experiments for some time now, and have finally had a breakthrough.  I have invented a device for reading the signal from a nerve, reproducing it, and broadcasting it, all without interfering with the original signal.  I made them partly by using my tunnelling electron-microscope.  As well as looking at atoms and molecules, it can also pick them up and manipulate them.  When I receive these signals, I can interpret them to turn them back into images and sound.

            I have planted these devices in both Rosalind’s optic nerves and aural nerves.  I did this in stages, making sure each time that the nerve was still working.  I did not want her to go blind or deaf.

            Rosalind makes quite a good observer, because she belongs to a species which is hunted, and so she has all-round vision (but of course she can only see in black and white).  I can switch on both her eyes and ears and sense internally what she is sensing. 

            This, of course, was not my main objective.  This was vivisection in the cause of reproducing the same procedures on Kelvin.  Kelvin will get a further modification: the devices I am going to implant in him will be two-way: I will be able to make him see and hear things, should I so choose.  I am sure this will come in very handy, one day.

            The problem is to work out how I can perform quite invasive surgery on Kelvin without his realising what it is for.  Among other things, I will have to take both his eyeballs out.  They are beautiful (mostly grey, but the kind that change colour from one day to the next) and I want to put them back properly.  When he comes round from the anaesthetic, he must be completely unsuspecting about what I have done to him. 

            I am thinking this as I look at Kelvin across the reception area of our new spa.  Kelvin and Pamela are here as the hosts, in our brand new, white, towelling dressing gowns and flip-flops.  Kelvin has brought out a very light and fragrant beer in honour of the occasion, which he calls Space Hopper.  Most of the guests are drinking sparkling wine, but Kelvin sticks resolutely to his own produce.  We splashed out for some of the good stuff (brought from Earth rather than made from the ship’s own grapes).  It is eye-wateringly expensive, but we are quite well-off now.  The birch panelling for the changing-rooms and the slate for the wet rooms was also very dear, but worth it – and it will all be re-cycleable after we land.  

            Cerise Vallance is here, with an entourage even bigger than usual.  She was politely instructed to leave her camera and all recording equipment except a notebook and pen in the reception area.  Jessica Springer and Emile Bourdelle are talking to Patrick Fitzgerald and Cecily Johnson.  At least, Emile is talking to them.  Jessica is nodding frantically and trying to keep up with the conversation, which is about freedom, the individual, and the State, and their relationship to artistic expression in a democratic society.

            Partly to bump up the numbers, and partly for a laugh, I have enhanced some of my simulacra so that they can hold a kind of conversation without needing to be under my control.  They still have no real intelligence, but I have programmed them with what is in fact a much more sophisticated version of an antique computer algorithm called Eliza.  Eliza was the first of the line of chat-bots which used to be fashionable, and first appeared in the 1960s.  It ran on an old-fashioned mainframe computer, and you communicated with it by typing on the keyboard.  It analysed what you had said, one sentence at a time, tried to locate the keyword, if possible, and responded with something that sounded vaguely like a Rogerian psychotherapist. 

            To make it more interesting (and remunerative) I have programmed each of Anna’s ladies to prostitute herself to the men at the gathering.  I doubt if any of them have got any money on them, but Anna can always collect later.  

            I am just sidling over to where Kayla is talking to James Holt.  I did not think he would be able to make it, but here he is. 

            ‘Er.  So.  What did you do back on Earth – before we set off?’

            ‘My dad was American.  I was born in Hawaii.’

            ‘Er.  I see.  But what did you do for a living?’

            ‘I was half-American.  Just like I am now.’

            ‘But, surely, you didn’t make a living out of that?’

            ‘Are you saying that I’m not living?’

            ‘Not at all.  You are clearly very much alive.’

            ‘Yes, I am.  I want to live.  I want to live.  I want to live.’

            ‘Er…’

            ‘When I’m twenty-one, I have to decide on my citizenship.’

            ‘I’m beg your pardon?’

            ‘I have to decide whether I want UK or US citizenship.’

            ‘But there won’t be a United Kingdom or a United States on the new planet.’

            ‘Are you challenging my right to citizenship?’

            ‘No, no.  Not at all.  Not a bit of it.’

            ‘You don’t want a bit of it?’

            ‘Er…’

            ‘We could go upstairs if you like.’  She begins gently to stroke  his arm with her index finger.  Poor Doctor Holt.  

            Next is Layla. She is with a short, stocky, red-haired man called Andrew Downing, who on Earth was an officer in the British Army.

            ‘You’re really my type of girl.  Do you know that?’

            ‘It’s four sovereigns.’

            ‘Pardon?’

            ‘For a fuck.  Four sovereigns.  One for a hand-job; two for a blow-job without CIM or face-cream; three for a messy blow-job; four for a fuck.  If you want anal or any extras, you would be better talking to Angel.’

            ‘Please excuse me.  I’m just going for an other drink.’

            Layla can be a little over-zealous sometimes.

            Here we have another soldier.  He is nearly seven feet tall, has muscles like coiled pythons,  and his head looks like a turnip.  His name is Brian McCann.  He looks bored.  Angel is talking to him.  She is blonde, petite, with delicate features, and an intelligent and impish expression.

            ‘Are you big all over?’

            ‘Er.  I suppose so.’

            ‘In every department?’

            ‘Er…’

            ‘What I mean is, are you well-endowed?’

            ‘Do you mean…’

            ‘Yes, your cock.  Do you have a huge cock?’

            ‘Er…’

            ‘Can I measure it when it’s erect?’

            ‘No.’

            ‘For length and girth?  I’ve got a tape measure in my bag.’

            ‘No.’

            ‘No to length, no to girth, or no to both?’

            ‘No to both.’

            ‘You are unreasonable.  Do you know that?’

            That’s my girl.  I was cheating there.  Part of that conversation was authored directly by me.  Now for Olivia.  She is talking to the last of our army men, Ben Stewart.

            ‘What did you used to do, back on Earth?’

            ‘I was a bomb-disposal expert.’

            ‘Oh, you brave, brave boy.  Did you face death every day?’

            ‘Every weekday, yes.  I didn’t have to face death at the weekend unless I was on overtime.’

            ‘What did you used to think of, at the moments when you thought you might be going to die?’

            ‘Shagging, usually.’

            ‘What are you thinking about now?’

            ‘I am thinking that you remind me of a lady I used to know once in Hanover.  She was a gymnast.’

            ‘I’ve got quite flexible joints.  Would you like to see me demonstrate some moves?’

            Kelvin did not quite realise why, but we had spent some considerable time in building some hot tubs on the platform above which were each surrounded by a soundproof and vibration-proof enclosure.  Since we are running a high-class establishment, each tub will be completely emptied, scrubbed, and re-filled with clean water and new aromatics in between clients. 

            I gave one of the hot-tubs to Cerise Vallance and her hangers-on (all female).  You should have seen Cerise’s face at the moment when I told them it was ready.  Her minions all went wild, but she looked utterly repulsed.  I got a very good shot of her.  I don’t know why she did not just come clean and say she did not want to get in it.