Kiln People

Now I was back and victorious, right? Shutting down this operation must be a real blow to Beta’s piracy enterprise. So why did I feel a sense of incompletion?

Strolling away from the traffic noise — a braying cacophony of jitney horns and bellowing dinos — I found myself confronting an alley marked by ribbons of flickertape, specially tuned to irritate any natural human eye.

“Stay Out!” the fluttering tape yammered. “Structural Danger! Stay Out!”

Such warnings — visible only to realfolk — are growing commonplace as buildings in this part of town suffer neglect. Why bother with maintenance when the sole inhabitants are expendable clay people, cheaply replenished each day? Oh, it’s a remarkable slum, all right. Cleanliness combined with decay. Just another of the deregulated ironies that give dittoburgs their charm.

Averting my gaze, I strolled past the glittery warning. No one tells me where I can’t go! Anyway, the fedora should protect against falling debris.

Giant recycling bins lined the alley, fed by slanting accordion tubes, accepting pseudoflesh waste from buildings on both sides. Not all dittos go home for memory inloading at the end of a twenty-hour work day. Those made for boring, repetitive labor just toil on, fine-tuned for contentment, till they feel that special call — beckoning them to final rest in one of these slurry bins.

What I felt beckoning, right then, was my bed. After a long day and a half — that felt much longer — it would be good to make today’s copies and then drop into sweet slumber.

Let’s see, I pondered. What bodies shall I wear? Beyond this Beta affair, there are half a dozen smaller cases pending. Most call for just some fancy web research. I’ll handle those from home, as an ebony. A bit expensive, but efficient.

There has to be a green, of course. I’ve been putting off chores. Groceries, laundry. A toilet keeps backing up. The lawn needs to be mowed.

The rest of the gardening — some pruning and replanting — fell under the category of pleasure/hobby time. I’d save that to do in person, maybe tomorrow.

So, will two dittos suffice? I shouldn’t need any grays, unless something comes up.

Beyond the recycling bins lay another gap between buildings — a back alley veering south, with ramps leading to an old parking garage. Overhead, the narrow lane was spa

Nowadays, everybody needs a hobby. For some people, it’s a second life — sending a ditto a day down here to golemtown, joining others in pretend families, engaging in mock businesses, dramas, even feuds with the neighbors. “Clay operas,” I think they’re called. Whole derelict blocks have been taken over to feign Renaissance Italy or London during the Blitz. Standing in that alley, under the flapping clotheslines and raucous-scratchy music, I had only to squint and imagine myself in a tenement ghetto of more than a century ago.

The romantic attraction of this particular scenario escaped me. Realfolk don’t live like this anymore. On the other hand, what’s it to me how people spend their spare time? Being a golem is always a matter of choice.

Well, almost always.

That’s why I kept working on the Beta Case, despite endless irritations and pummelings — and the me’s that vanish, never to be seen again. Beta’s style of industrial thievery had much in common with oldtime slavery. A disturbing psychopathology underlay his profitmaking criminal enterprise. The guy needed help.

All right, so dittotown has all sorts of eccentric corners and eddies — from Dickensian factories to fairyland amusement centers to open war zones. Were any of this alley’s curious features relevant to my case? The area had been sca

So? Nothing strange about that in dittotown. I don’t like coincidences, but my top priority at the moment was to settle with Blane and go home.

Turning back, I reentered the lane between those big recycling tanks, only to halt when a hissing sound dropped from somewhere overhead.

It sounded vaguely like my name.

I stepped aside quickly, reaching under my vest while peering upward.

A second faint hiss focused my attention on one of the accordion shafts slanting from upper floors of the Teller Building to a slurry bin. Squinting, I saw a silhouetted figure writhe inside the flexi-translucent tube, pawing at a small tear in its fabric. The humanoid shape had wedged itself, splaying both legs to prevent falling a final two meters into the tank.

The effort was futile, of course. Acrid vapors would devour whatever scanty pseudolifespan the poor fellow had left. Anyway, the next ditto to jump in that tube would land with enough force to dislodge this fellow’s decaying limbs, carrying them both into the soup!

Still, it happens now and then — especially to teens who haven’t grown accustomed to life’s new secondary cycle of nonchalant death and trivial rebirth. They sometimes panic at the recycling stage. It’s natural. When you imprint memories and copy your soul into a clay doll, you take along a lot more than a To Do list of the day’s errands. You also bring survival talents inherited from the long era when folks knew just one kind of death. The kind to be feared.

It all comes down to personality. They tell you in school — don’t make disposable dittos unless you can let go.

I raised my gun.

“Say, fella, would you like me to put you out of your—”

That’s when I heard it again. A single whispered word.

“Mo-o-r-r-r-isssss!”

Blinking several times, I felt that old frisson down the spine. A feeling you can only experience fully in your real body and your original soul — with the same nervous system that reacted to shadows in the dark when you were six.

“Um … do I know you?” I asked.

“Not as well … as I know you …”

I put my weapon away and took a ru

Standing on the lid brought me a lot closer to the fumes — an aroma that you find somewhat attractive when you’re a golem in its last hour. In organic form, I found it rank. But now I could see the visage peering through torn plastic, already slumping from peptide exhaustion and diurnal decay, the cheeks and molded brow ridges sagging, its former bright banana color fading to a sickly jaundice. Still, I recognized one of Beta’s favorite, bland disguises.

“It seems you’re stuck,” I commented, peering closer. Was it one of the yellows that tormented me last night, when I was a captive green? Did this one shoot pellets at me, across Odeon Square? He must have escaped this morning’s raid by fleeing upstairs ahead of Blane’s purple enforcers, then jumping into the accordion tube through some mislaid hope of getting away.

Still vivid in memory was one yellow Beta, leering as he expertly stimulated the pain receptors that even my greens find realistic. (There are drawbacks to being a first-rate copier.) I recall wondering at the time, why? What did he hope to accomplish with torture? Half of the questions he asked didn’t even make sense!

Anyway, a deep assurance helped me ignore the pain. It doesn’t matter, I told myself over and over, during last night’s captivity. And it didn’t. Not very much.

So why should I feel pity for this golem’s suffering?

“Been here a long time,” it told me. “Came to learn why there’s been no contact from this operation …”