Excerpt: The Silver City

“Alys,” said Essex, and Alys stopped talking because she couldn’t remember telling him her name. “You cannot give a name to something that is not meant to be named. Names are for things that are alive, that breathe and feel and live. To name an automaton is wrong.”

“You must be joking,” Alys said disbelievingly, pushing him roughly away. “You’re an automaton, and one that’s not even supposed to have a personality yet. Why are you telling me what’s wrong and what’s right?”

“Because if you do not understand then I must explain it.” Essex looked at her with his unfathomable dark eyes and she could not at all guess what impulses were traveling through the wires of his electronic brain.

“It’s you who doesn’t understand!” cried Alys, glaring back at him. “I cannot love something that is only a number!”

As soon as the words were out of her mouth they sounded instantly wrong, hanging awkwardly in the air between them like raindrops frozen suddenly solid. Alys was aghast. “I… I didn’t mean that,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean to say that.”

Essex reached towards her, then drew his hand back, then reached forward again and touched her face with what, in a human, would have been called hesitation. His hand was strong and warm against her skin. “You cannot love an automaton,” he said, very softly, and Alys wanted badly to fling herself into his arms, metal or not, and cry and cry and cry. “You cannot love something that is incapable of loving you back.”

“What are you talking about?” Alys said, choking a little, the tears starting in the corners of her eyes. “Of course you can love me. We’re in the new world now, and automata are more than machines, they’re people, they’re people…”

“Automata are computers,” Essex said, his voice quiet with an almost human quality of infinite sadness. “Computers clothed in the bodies of people, machines pretending to be people.” And after a long pause he said, very gently, “Emotions mean nothing to mechanical men.”