Page 21 of Even Robots Die
Fuck you, handsome psycho.
13
Brice
Ican see that was not the way to convince Florentine.
But am I disappointed?
Not even a bit. I know I should be. Something in my mind tells me I should indeed be very disappointed. I already contacted dozens of doctors and surgeons. The clinical part doesn’t seem to be problematic for them. For the proper amount of money, they will open my skull and then what? They have the material to send shocks into a brain and they could probably read the documents left by Michaël, but what they’re used to working with isn’t to change one’s behavior. The shock therapy’s programming is made to make people walk again, to make people talk again. It’s not made to alter one’s reaction to someone. The calibration is different.
Here the machine hasn’t been destroyed, but they wouldn’t be able to use it either. It’s programmed to damage, not to heal.
And maybe I’m an idiot for not telling Florentine that she doesn’t need to open my head and that her only job is to reprogram the machine we have here so that it heals what’s been damaged, but a part of me doesn’t care.
This part of me is a lunatic.
This part of me only cares that I got her flustered and that the lovely crimson blush I saw yesterday when she was mad is back.
No wonder she thinks I’m crazy.
“You only need to reprogram the machine,” I tell her, pointing at the box with probes attached to it. It’s also linked to a holo-puter on its own network.
She looks up at me, and suddenly I feel like I’m a kid and she’s the adult about to berate me.
“Just reprogram the machine? Do you think that’s all that is needed? Didn’t you learn anything from what happened to Léandre? You can’t heal the brain the same way you damage it. What makes you think sending electro shocks through your brain won’t fry it more?”
Low blow for that one.
She walks in my direction and she points a finger at my torso as she looks me in the eye.
“Do you think it won’t keep me up at night, knowing that I built the code of something that will be hooked into your brain? That I built the code that might destroy it some more? You think it’s as easy as reversing what was done, but you forget one thing: I’m not a damn doctor. I have no clue what part of your brain to activate to counter the damage they made.”
She pauses.
“Shut up, Milton.”
I wasn’t really listening to her until those last three words.
Stupid? Nah. I know she can do it. She just has to believe she can do it, too.
“Is your AI on you?” I ask.
I remember her dropping a box on the ground when she came to give us a scan of Léandre’s brain. I thought the box was her AI. Was I wrong?
“Where do you think the AI is?” she asks me, irritated that I cut her off mid-monologue.
“Well, you had a box last time,” I start to say, but she doesn’t let me finish.
Her eyes roll to the ceiling, before she adds, “It was a projector. Milton is programmed on my holo-puter and I uploaded it on the interweb. As long as I have a holo, it’s with me.
“Good,” I tell her. “Then why did you tell it to shut up?”
14
Florentine
Why did I say that out loud?
