Specimen Days

They went outside and crossed the farmyard, where the children were engaged in some sort of noisy and contentious game that the horse watched with blank-eyed, somnolent attention, twitching its tail. Beyond the children, the spaceship stood like a titanic silver clam, delicately balanced on the slender legstalks that had proved insufficiently stable in three out of five landings.

"Twyla loves that horse," Emory said as they passed the children. "She keeps insisting we can take it with us."

"Paumanok," Simon said.

"Seemed like as good a name as any."

"Starting from fish-shape Paumanok where I was born… solitary, singing in the West, I strike up for a New World."

"Yes, yes."

They walked past the barn, into a field scattered with purple clover.

"Why the poetry chip?" Simon asked. "Everybody loves poetry." "Come on."

"All right. Well. I let myself get carried away when I designed you. You were supposed to be sturdy and reliable. Obedient. And harmless. And without emotional responses."

"Got that."

"The first few tries were seriously flawed."

"So I've heard."

"Certain qualities stowed away in the cell lines. It surprised everyone. There were, as it turned out, some very difficult-to-detect dark spots on the genome, little indicators and determiners that produced, well… unexpected results. The first experimental simulos were suicidal. Despairing. We tried to override that with a survival chip. Then the second batch turned out to be these sort of wildly happy murderers. They were ecstatic all the time. They were so very very happy they got violent. As if their happiness couldn't tolerate any lesser outlet. One of them tore a lab technician to pieces, laughing and babbling on about how much he loved the kid. Ate his liver. This was hushed up."

"Naturally."

"We were hubristic. We underestimated the complexity of the genome. We kept finding that if you tried to eliminate one quality, some other quality that seemed entirely unrelated would pop up at ten times its normal intensity. Frankly, if we'd adequately anticipated the difficulties, I suspect we'd never have made you at all. But once we'd started, we couldn't stop. No, / couldn't stop. Others had the good sense to just cancel the experiments and call the whole thing an interesting idea that didn't work out."

"You think of me as an experiment," Simon said. "I don't mean to offend you."

"Go on."

"All right. In the third protocol, I gave you poetry."

"Why?"

"To regulate you. To eliminate the extremes. I could put a cap on your aggressive capabilities, I could program you to be helpful and kind, but I wanted to give you some moral sense as well. To help you cope with events I couldn't foresee. I thought that if you were programmed with the work of great poets, you'd be better able to appreciate the consequences of your actions."

"You programmed each of us with a particular poet."

"I did. I thought it might be less confusing for you that way. Somewhere out there, there's a Shelley, a Keats, a Yeats. Or there was. I wonder what's become of them."

"There was an Emily Dickinson, too," Simon said. "Yes. There was."

Simon said, "I have"

"What do you have, son?"

"I'm not your son."

"Sorry. Figure of speech. What do you have? Tell me."

"I have this sense of a missing part. Some sort of, I don't know. Engagement. Aliveness. Catareen calls it stroth."

"Go on."

"I feel like biologicals just wallow in it. I mean it falls over them like rain, and I'm walking through the world in a space suit. I can see everything perfectly, but I don't quite connect with it."

"That's very interesting."

"Frankly, I was hoping for a little more from you than that."

"It's the poetry, isn't it? All those conjurings and all that praise roiling around in your circuits. Your poor synapses aren't quite up to it, I don't suppose."

The seizing up started again. No, it was the new sensation, the floaty, sleeplike electrified thing.

Simon said, "I am exposed… cut by bitter and poisoned hail."

"Are you all right?" Emory asked. "No. Something's happening to me." "What?"

"Lately I have these strange sensations. Like when my antiaggression override kicks in but different. Softer or something."

"I've always wondered if actual emotions might start springing up in you. If your connections might start firing, given the proper stimuli."

Simon said, "I am large, I contain multitudes."

"You know," Emory said, "I could probably do a little more work on you. If you and the others want to come with us, I could do some tinkering en route. There's no time now, but there'll be plenty of time during the trip. There'll be lots and lots of time."

"You think you could modify me?" Simon asked. "I'd be glad to give it a shot." "What do you think you could do?"