The Laughing of Birds
“I’ll rip your balls off,” he hissed at the image of Memphis
When Somando woke up the sun was shining, and outside his window small brown and yellow birds were flitting onto and back off the sill. The direct nature of his aggression had shifted to a crafty pleasure in knowing that he could choose the time and place to kill the Mexican.
The thought calmed him. He wouldn’t move until everything was in his favor. Why should he take a chance on losing? He even imagined himself making friends with the Mexican, buying him a drink, waiting for the zen moment.
“You’re nothing but a bank account.”
The memory of the Mexican’s voice dropped into the gears of his thoughts like a wrench. “Get lost!” he stamped to scare away the birds. They didn’t seem to notice so he ran at them waving his arms. “Get outa here!” They flew away from the sill and then came back. Their chirping began to have the quality of laughter. He stood staring at the birds, uncomprehending, stupidly believing in his program instead of adapting to a rapidly shifting paradigm.
There was a shift and the coherent zero program crashed. Somando was entirely in coherent one, staring out into the sunny morning at birds that were laughing at him. Coherent zero automatically rebooted to the widest parameter’s allowed, so that Somando’s awareness of his process went like this:
“I am Somando. Birds are birds. Birds fly. Birds sing.”
A background program ran behind the dialogue. “Birds are born with a great many possible songs, each has its neural pathways. These pathways decrease, until, in maturity, there is one song.”
“One bird, one song,” Somando said to himself.
“There are birds however which defy this rule and follow it at the same time. It is a paradox that some birds imitate what they hear. That is their one song. These birds can also imitate laughter, or any other vocalization.”
“Must be some kind of parrots,” Somando thought.
He shrugged and turned away from the window.
His program began to balance again and he reconnected with the earlier pattern. He couldn’t make friends with the Mexican because the Mexican somehow realized he was a soma-corpse. He had the most elegant programming money can buy, and yet this hired muscle had spotted him. His inwardness shifted him toward priority zero and the basic command took on added prominence. “I’ll rip your balls off,” he hissed at the image of Memphis. He was pulled back to priority one by the sudden hysterical laughter of the birds. He whirled around. There were at least a dozen of them on the ledge now. They were all laughing.
Somando shifted. He walked to the windows and flung them wide open. The birds scattered into the soft blue sky. Now there was only one source of laughter. Somando focused on the street. Below him Memphis stood, looking up toward the window. He was wearing a large caliber pistol in a holster strapped low on his hip. The laughter stopped. “Did you know I have eyes in the back of my head?” Memphis spoke normally, but every word was audible to Somando. “I can turn away from you and still see you, so that if you try to shoot me in the back, I will know before you do.”
He turned around and began to walk away. Somando was going to say, “Why would I want to shoot you, my friend?” He didn’t have time. His last coherent one experience was the sound of the shot and the realization that the Mexican was not facing away, now. The bullet crashed into Somando’s circuit board and he lost any sense of identity.
“Oops,” Memphis said. “I didn’t wait for you to try and kill me, did I?”
The gunshot was an explosion and it drew attention. People began to walk out of stores and from the bank, looking around. They saw nothing. Memphis had seemingly vanished from the street into the hotel. He took the key from behind the desk without wasted effort and slipped like a cat up the stairs and into Somando’s room, pulled him back from the window.
“Stupid bastard,” he said. Somando was alive. He was just missing his circuit board.
A soma-corpse is a person merged with a financial body, in the form of a circuit board which replaces the frontal cortex. The expert shot by Memphis had blown away the board installed to program his choices and actions. Now that it was gone he was capable of only the most rudimentary calculations, such as:
“Thirsty me.”
He had no attitude toward the damage to the front of his head. The frontal area was a cavity, now exposed, and a circuit board.
“Thirsty me.”
Memphis found a glass and a pitcher of water. Somando drank greedily. He was a big animated doll, now. His programming was gone and only the most basic biological functioning remained.
There was a soft knock at the door. “Come in,” Memphis said.
A woman perhaps twenty years his senior slipped into the room. She and Memphis looked very much alike, the same Aztec face descended from eagles. She inspected Somando’s head. “You always were a crack shot,” she said. “When you were a baby you were a crack shot.