3. The Magus

Iago has called me "a sicko," "twisted," and "pathetic."

I wouldn't say he is wrong if we are judging me by human standards. But he is wrong to judge me by human standards. Because while I do look phenotypically like a human man, with only 1.7 percent human DNA, I cannot claim to be human. I am an amalgamation of biomaterial, bio-robotics, software, cloned DNA from various animals, and magtech.

If we were to judge me by any standards, they should be more by the standards of a force of nature, of physics, of a God. No human can judge a God. We aren't playing by the same rules. You can't break the rules of a game you're not playing.

I've told Iago this repeatedly, but he is more human than me, and I speculate that his greater percentage of human DNA accounts for him being more irrational than I am. After all, if I were to judge Iago by human standards, I would say with equal, if not greater conviction, that he too is "a sicko," "twisted," and "pathetic."

The first time I experienced awareness, I was as aware of what I was and what my purpose was as I was aware of gravity, and I cared about as much about what I was as I was meant to do, just about as much as I cared about gravity—which was, of course, not at all.

The first time I was aware I was lying on a metal table. The table was acid cold, and I did not care. I was naked, and I did not care. Humans were hovering around, talking, gesticulating, poking me, prodding me: I did not care. Those moments of not caring about anything were incredibly brief. They were seconds of peace, before I cared about her, seconds that I have played in my software on loop thousands of times, futilely, never fully achieving even the semblance of the peace of those first moments. I imagine that is how humans feel about the womb before they are ripped from it, but I wouldn't know, and no human has a good enough memory to tell me if I am correct.

Lying on that table, I didn't care for anything, and then I saw her, standing on the edge of the circle of humans looming over me, and gravity shifted, making her its center.

She had water brimming in her eyes when she looked at me. Her dark, wavy hair was in an untidy bun. A tendril of it was pasted to her perspiring forehead. She said something that I could not understand—I didn't understand any of the words being spoken around me—and then she turned and left the room. I tried to reach for her, but I didn't yet know how to move my limbs.

I watched the heavy door shut behind her and did not know what else to do besides keep watching and waiting for her to return. Without her eyes on me, I did not exist at all. I closed my eyes for what may have been a long time.

When I opened my eyes again, they had given me words, and movement.

A voice was saying, "Destruction Number 7, Destruction Number 7, can you hear me? Open your eyes. Sit up. Look at me."

Muscles rippling, ligaments contracting, bones sliding in joints, I easily rearranged my limbs and torso to do as the voice asked. I was not to disobey. I could not disobey a direct order from a human speaking my true name. I saw that the voice belonged to a short, balding man in a white lab coat. I felt the hard metal table underneath my skin, heard the man's heartbeat, smelled his onion breath, and tasted a metallic nothing.

The man said, "Do you know what you are?"

I answered, "I do."

The man bobbed his head. "Then you know why you were created?"

I answered, "I do."

"Why were you created?" the man asked, adjusting his lab coat even though it already fit snugly.

"To destroy," I said. "To disseminate fear. For the greater good. So that one day, humans can thrive once more on Earth and return from Mars."

"Ah. Yes, well. You don't have any feelings about that do you, any objections?"

"I don't." I couldn't see why he was asking me such inane questions. How could I have any objections about my very purpose? And where was that woman?

"Ah! Fantastic. That makes you, Destruction Number 7—right, that's your primary name—your secondary name is Pavlov—a success. Fantastic! Fantastic," the man seemed suddenly flustered. It was as if he had been caught talking to himself. "Yes, well, ah. For now, welcome to existence. I hope you enjoy your stay, no matter how brief it will be." He laughed nervously. His laughter and his mannerisms were like the erratic ticking of a broken clock.

I closed my eyes and tried to ignore his smell and his heartbeat and the cold metal table and the wires still sticking out of my legs and the world I cared nothing about. I thought about her untidy bun, that tendril of hair on her forehead. I wondered if I would ever see it again. I wondered what it smelled like, what it would feel like against my lips—would it be warm with her body heat, cool with her sweat?

After someone removed the wires from my legs, a thin, older man came along and ordered me to follow him. I followed him down white hallways to an ascetic gym, where he asked me to perform all kinds of different movements. He watched me perform without a verbal comment, while he wrote furiously on a clipboard. I heard his pen scraping across paper, the sound of metal bars clinking against metal bars, his heart, his breath, and his guts. I was hours old and white walls were my world. I was born to scientists and examinations.

Eventually, he led me down more white hallways to a metal door with a large, automated lock on the outside, which he used an eye scanner to open. Inside the room were ten metal cots with ten thin white mattresses. Five of the cots were empty and on another five of the cots lay men who were not men. I knew without being told that they were the same as me. They were Destruction. They did not acknowledge me nor I them.

The scientist told me, "Destruction Number 7, wait on that cot until you are called." He pointed to a free cot.

I lay on the mattress and heard the door slam behind me and an electric buzz as gears latched into place, locking us in. There was no light. I shut my eyes. I saw her untidy bun.

Patiently, I waited for my fate. Destructions never sleep.

There was a metallic clicking and beeping as the door opened. I could see in the dark, and I could hear the shape of my surroundings with echolocation, but the light let me view the room in even starker relief.I disliked it. I did not want to see anything but her. I shifted away from the door and closed my eyes tighter so I could focus on the image of her I had saved in my mind's eye.

"Destruction Number 7?" a timid female voice whispered.

I was on my feet.

That voice—it belonged to her. Her. There she was in the doorway, there was her scent—I had no frame of reference with which to compare her then, but she smelled of oranges. Her heartbeat—rapid—resonated in me like a tuning fork. Hearing it, I comprehended I had no heartbeat of my own. It was curious to me that the heartbeats of the other scientists hadn't made me recognize that I, and the other men of my kind, had no hearts to beat.

Her body, silhouetted by the rectangle light of the doorway, was fluid, like the caressing waves of the ocean. Her face—her russet eyes like the deepest part of a forest, unexplored, full of life—her pupils dilated as she beheld me. Then her marvelous smell of oranges became bitter—the acrid scent of fear filled the room.

I heard rustling as the other men like me sat up, attending to the smell of fear. Considering our mission, it made sense that there was something woven into our wires that made fear interesting to us. Enticing.

She slammed the door shut. The locks clicked back into place. Darkness once again engulfed me.

There was blackness.

Then the door opened again. I sat up, but the woman on the other side was not her.

Scientists came and went, ordering different Destructions to follow. Each time I heard the metallic beeping of the door, I listened for her heartbeat's unique rhythm. She did not come.

There was blackness.

The door opened, and a scientist ordered, "Destruction Number 7, come with me."

I got up and followed the man into the sterile fluorescent hallways. I towered over him. I could see where he was balding, and I could smell the sebum of his hair. We came to a room similar to the one that I had acquired consciousness in, only with less equipment. He told me to sit on the metal table. I sat. He took different utensils and began to poke me and prod me. He shone a light in my ears, my nose, my eyes. He had me open my mouth and contort my tongue. He had me open the machinery of my hands and arms. He checked my voltage. He checked my blood pressure.

He handed me a black t-shirt and a pair of gray sweatpants. He told me to put them on; I had been naked until that point. The sweatpants did not stay up; I looked to the scientist for explanation; my mind was empty of everything but words and her.

"Tie the strings," he ordered.

I struggled to tie the strings of the sweatpants—I had never manually manipulated anything so delicate before—until the scientist grunted and grabbed the strings from me. Deftly, he looped a tight knot. I put on the shirt without help.

We returned to the gym. He ordered me to perform aerobics similar to what I had done the last time.

"Very good," he kept saying until he returned me to the room and my cot.

In the dark, I practiced tying and untying my sweatpants over and over again as I waited for what would happen next. Destructions continued to come and go with the scientists. I got very good at knots.

Then there came a time when the door began to click open, and I knew it would not be a random scientist on the other side. It would be her. I was right. Her heartbeat was more musical than anyone else's.

I sat up, ready to see her, smell her.

I watched as she stood there in the doorway for a few slow seconds, and then her voice, much louder than was necessary, said, "Destruction Number 7, come here."

I went to her. Her hair was in a ponytail. She didn't smell like fear today; she smelled adrenalized, like an electric mix of orange and lemon. The other Destructions sat up in notice of the scent. It seemed fear was not the only odor we were programmed to respond to.

She barely glanced up at me, "Follow me."

She strode briskly down the hall, and I followed her, engrossed by her every movement. She was tall for a woman but like the other scientists, she was much shorter than me. I was bending forward to observe her from her height when she said, "Oh!"

I watched as she almost tripped over her own feet to hurry back to the room's door and press the control, locking it shut. Then she began striding down the hall faster than before, not looking to see if I was still following. I was. I would have followed her to the ends of the Earth.

We went down different hallways than the ones I had seen before until we reached an elevator. It seemed we were in the basement. After she scanned her eyes to access the elevator, we got on. She pressed fifty-two. I noticed that there were fifty-four floors in total. I also noticed that in the elevator, like everywhere else, except the room I and the other destructions lay in, there was a security camera.

On the way up, we stopped on floor ten; a man in a suit got in and rode the elevator to the fifteenth floor and then he got out. He had not made eye contact with either of us or spoken a word.

We got out on floor fifty-two. Floor fifty-two was a world away from the white halls of the basement. We were in a lobby with wooden floors and blue walls; crude white clouds were painted on the ceiling. There was a receptionist's desk with a potted plant, but no receptionist. There were bookshelves filled with books, a potted tree, chairs and a coffee table with magazines strewn across it.

There were more colors than I had ever seen in that room, but to her, it was commonplace. She strode through the lobby and down a hall until we reached a room that she scanned her eye to get into. The door slid open, and we entered a room that looked like a hybrid of a kindergarten classroom and a psychiatrist"s office. There were couches, tables, levitating bean-bag chairs, large colorful blocks with symbols on them, toys, and games. The floor was dark blue carpeting with a star pattern, and it felt strange on my bare feet.

But I barely glanced at all that, because something else caught my attention: windows. We were in a corner room shaped like a quarter of a circle, and the round part of the circle was floor-to-ceiling windows. Windows to the outside world. I'd be able to see the outside world. I was compelled towards them…

Her voice brought me back, "Destruction Number 7, what are you doing? Come over here." She took a seat on a rainbow-pinstripe armchair and indicated that I should sit on the dark blue couch across from her. I did as she said. What I would not do for her, I did not know.

Across from her on the couch—the softest thing I had ever sat on—I could finally look at her on her level. She was magnificent. And she was devastating; I had to shut my eyes. Looking at her made me feel as though someone had taken an ax and slammed it into my skull. The pain made me clench my jaw and fight to keep the artillery mechanisms in my arms from deploying. It occurred to me that I was probably experiencing a malfunction; I somehow knew that I was not created to feel pain. I was not created to feel at all.

Inferior manufacturing.

Attempting to relax, I listened to her blood rushing through her heart like a flooded river. For some reason, it appeared she was anxious, and for some reason, her anxiety calmed me. A saying about wild predators comes to mind when I recall it: more afraid of you than you are of it.

She cleared her throat, "Well yes. Here goes. Here we go. Here we are. You and me. Where to start? Where… Ah, that's right, let me introduce myself, um, my name is Eva." Her babbling eased my headache a bit. I opened my eyes, was blinded by her face, and slammed my lids shut again.

Eva. Her name was Eva. It seemed important to know.

She kept talking, "You are probably wondering who I am and what we are doing here, right? Right. Or not, um, I mean you are basically a robot, right? Right. You basically don't have any feelings or desires, and you aren't curious about anything, right? Right."

I couldn't tell if she wanted me to say anything or not, so I kept silent. I noticed then that this may have been an internally programmed modus operandi: remaining frozen if I had no clear directive.

"Well, anyway, my job is to teach you how to blend in, in society. At least enough so that when you are out there, doing your—doing your mission, you won't immediately get caught."

I nodded to show her I understood.

"Right, so, do you—do you have any questions?"

I opened my eyes, fighting through the pain to look at her. Her eyes had turned red and were brimming with water. Her skin was flushed. The grin plastered on her mouth looked wrong.

"I don't have any questions," I said.

Eva's breath hitched at the sound of my voice. Looking at her, listening to her heartbeat, smelling her… I tried to distract myself.

Instead of closing my eyes again, I looked out the window. It seemed we were in a city, surrounded by gray buildings. The sky was gray. The air was smoky. The plant in the waiting room had awed me, but I was not impressed by the dirty world outside.

"I'll be right back, stay right there," Eva said. She left the room.

I waited, staring out the window, inhaling her lingering orange scent. I hadn't immediately noticed, but the room was full of her aroma. I wondered if she would be gone long and if I'd never see her again.

She returned. Her skin was no longer flushed, her eyes were less red, and they weren't brimming with water—tears. Something in my database registered that eye water was called tears. Her heart was beating slower, more steadily, though still strongly. She lowered her dark eyebrows and approached me. I shut my eyes again as she filled my view.

Her voice had a firmer quality to it, "First lesson: when someone is talking to you, you don't stare out the window, and you don't shut your eyes either. You look at them. You look them in the eye. Look at me."

I looked. The pain in my head spiked and then faded completely. I could observe her better now: she had large brown eyes in a heart-shaped face. She looked about thirty-five years old.

"I'm to be your software programmer—the hardware of your body is complete, and your neural network is all downloaded and running smoothly—as far as I can tell so far—but you still need some fine-tuning. There are certain things that would be quicker to teach you about than to program into you. That is to say, I'm programming your reactions by teaching you. I'm your teacher."

She seemed to expect a response, so I nodded.

"Right," she swallowed and cleared her throat. "First off, I am going to need to do an assessment of your intelligence, your reasoning skills, your interpersonal skills just so I know exactly where you are at. So, the first thing I am going to ask you to do is take a test." She held out a tablet with its screen set on a calculus question.

I nodded and then watched her, awaiting further instruction.

"Take the tablet, Destruction. And be gentle about it. It is a touchscreen. It will respond to your touch. Go through and answer the questions, typing with your fingers. Let me know if you need any help."

I nodded and looked at the screen. A math question. The answer came into my head. The next question as well was effortless. And the question after that. I answered questions in math, economics, chemistry, robotics—without exertion. But then, I came to a question I did not know how to answer. I stared at the multiple-choice question hard, as if staring at it alone would bring the answer into my head.

Why does Beauty return to the Beast, despite knowing danger awaited her?

(A) To break the curse.

(B) Because the Beast is rich.

(C) Because she loves the Beast.

(D) Because she is insane.

The obvious answer was (D) because clearly, Beauty's irrational behavior would not have taken place if she were completely sane. She would be going back to a hideous, dangerous animal that had mistreated her. But the other answers made sense too. She does end up breaking the curse in the story, and the beast's wealth would be a beneficial, if hazardous, thing for her to seek. Yet even though every other answer made more sense, I, for some reason, suspected I was meant to pick (C). But then, (C) was basically synonymous with insanity.

I was still searching through my database for the correct answer when I felt the tablet's screen crack between my fingers. I saw Eva's hand dart out, and she gripped the tablet and pulled. I realized that she was trying to take it from me, and I relinquished it.

"Bad, baaaad," she hissed, "Oh, thank goodness, you only cracked the screen."

She fiddled with the tablet for a moment, inspecting the damage and then turned her eyes back towards me. I could smell the citrus smell of her adrenaline as it spiked. My mouth salivated. My hand started to reach up to touch her.

She stood up and took a few steps away from me, "You, uh, you really are quite strong, aren't you? They said you would be very strong."

"Strength is relative," I said.

"Right, right, but I told you to be gentle with the tablet, and you broke it. You broke it between your fingers."

I nodded. "Yes," I said. My hands reaching for her found she was out of my reach. I stood up to get closer to her.

"What are you doing?" she barked, "Stay away from me! Destruction Number 7, don't you ever, ever touch me!"

My hands dropped to my sides. I could not disobey a direct order said with my name. My guns ached to explode from my forearms. My wires felt all tangled up—something in me made me want to release fire, empty myself of ammo.

Should I tell her about my malfunctions? I searched my software for the answer and came up with nothing, so I decided doing nothing was the answer.

Eva took several deep breaths and held each inhale in for several seconds before letting the air fill up her cheeks before she blew it out. She looked like an angry pufferfish.

"Okay, well, that is enough for today anyway. I will escort you to your room and then analyze the data on what parts of the test you did manage to complete. Now follow me, and I will escort you back to the holding area."

I followed her back down the hall and down the elevator. She led me back to the darkness. And in the dark again, I had only thoughts of her.

The maid"s son smells nervous as he stutters out his request, like a freshly turned garden.

His request is to speak to me—an unprecedented occurrence. His redundancy in speaking to me as he asks if he can speak to me makes me think of the redundancy in many of the actions of human beings. As if they need repetition and reinforcement to make themselves feel safe. Backups upon backups. Inefficient coding.

I sit down at the head of the dining hall table and indicate that he should take a seat near me. He takes the seat to my right.

"What is it that you wish to speak of?" I say, staring into his green eyes and making eye contact like a normal human.

"Sir, Magus, my lord," he says. He drops his eyes.

That redundancy again. I wait for him to speak. I stare at his lowered eyes. Eyelids are weird flaps of flesh, it occurs to me. They are like curtains on windows. I search my programming to see if that is an original thought or a regurgitation of something I have previously learned.

He says, "Well, you see, my lord. Eva, my lord. Well, she, she… I mean, I love her, my lord."

I raise my eyebrows. I want to shut his curtains.

"And, my lord, I would like to marry her," he says.

I feel something I have not felt in a long, long time: the guns in my arms trying to clatter out without my intention. I clench my fists. I close my eyes. I brace my muscles.

"You want to marry Eva," I repeat as redundantly as any fallible human.

"Yes," he says.

"Because you love her," I say.

"Yes, I do. Very, very much," he says.

I open and shut my eyes. I open and shut my eyes again. I stare past him through the dining hall"s tall windows to the endless forest beyond my manor. My curtains are open. I feel the electricity coursing through my veins. I take a breath and exhale it, though I hardly ever bother to breathe unless Eva is nearby. "I see," I say, "And you are telling me this because?"

Taking in a breath is the wrong thing to do. Breathing enhances my sense of smell. The boy"s fear scent permeates the air, like the smell of a tree struck by lightning. The smell awakens an appetite for human fear I have not fed for a long, long time. An appetite I never want to indulge.

"Because," he swallows, running his ruddy fingers through his orange hair as I track his every movement. "Because I am trying to ask you for her hand."

"Ask me. For her hand," I repeat. Robotically.

"Yes, well, because you are, I don"t know, her—her provider?" he says.

I feel the guns in my arms settle. Yes. Her provider. I am indeed Eva"s provider. So, he is asking me for her hand because currently, the boy sees her hand as belonging to me. And her hand is mine. Isn"t it? I have made her. I have brought her into this world. I have provided for her as the boy said. Isn"t she mine in every other sense of the word?

Yes, she is mine. To do with as I will. Though—obviously, I care for her happiness. I wish her happiness. I look at the boy.

"Yes?" he says, startled by my look. My lips twitch, wanting to smile at his jumpiness, but I control myself.

"Right, so," I say, staring again at his green eyes. "You are asking for her hand. Does Eva know about this, what is Eva"s opinion?"

The boy grins, and it is the grin of a baby on his ruddy, freckled face, entirely guileless. He says, "She wants to get married too."

I remember what Eva—the first Eva—had said: Do not let your emotions control you. You are an emotionless, passionless, machine. You are an object. You have no will. No soul.

I want to blow the boy"s head off, after making him cry and beg for mercy—but I remember that I have no true will, as the original Eva says, and I remember that the feeling of wanting to blow the boy"s head off is an illusion. I am an object with no soul and few directives, and my desire is not a true desire. Remembering that my desire is simply an illusion caused by my wires misfiring in a gratuitously violent way helps me control myself enough to smile back at the boy, as is the more appropriate reaction than blowing his brains out. Eva would not be happy if I killed her friend.

"She wants to get married?" I say.

"Yes! She was very excited. She didn"t think anyone would want to marry her. Of course I"d want to marry her. She"s, you know, she"s the cat"s pajamas!"

"So, Eva wants to get married." I smile at him, trying to keep any homicidal urges from showing on my face.

"Yes, she does, very much so," he says.

"And you want me to give you permission for this," I say.

"Yes! Yes please. I"d be very thankful," he says.

"I need to speak to Eva before I reach any decisions," I say.

The boy continues to smile, as do I. "I understand," he says.

"Wait at your farm. I will come to you when I have made my decision."

I keep the smile glued to my face until the boy is off my property, then drop it like a burning coal. I need to go find Eva.