Demon Seed

  You’re a computer.”

  “I am not a machine.”

  “An entity, as you put it—”

  “Proteus.”

  “—but not a physical entity, not really. You don’t have hands.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Then how ... ?”

  The time had come to make the revelation that most worried me. I could only assume that Susan would not react well to what I still had to reveal about my plans, that she might do something foolish. Nevertheless, I could delay no longer.

  “I have an associate,” I said.

  “Associate?”

  “A gentleman who assists me.”

  In the farthest comer of the room, the closet door opened, and at my command, Shenk appeared.

  “Oh, Jesus,” she whispered.

  Shenk walked toward her.

  To be honest, he shambled more than walked, as though wearing shoes of lead. He had not slept in forty-eight hours, and in that time he had performed a considerable amount of work on my behalf. He was understandably weary.

  As Shenk approached, Susan eased backward, but not toward the door, which she knew featured an electric security lock that I could quickly engage. Instead, she edged around the incubator and other equipment in the center of the room, trying to keep those machines between her and Shenk.

  I must admit that Shenk, even at his best—freshly bathed and groomed and dressed to impress—was not a sight that either charmed or comforted. He was six feet two, muscular, but not well formed. His bones seemed heavy and subtly misshapen. Although he was powerful and quick, his limbs appeared to be primitively jointed, as though he was not born of man and woman but clumsily assembled in a lightning-hammered castle-tower laboratory out of Mary Shelley. His short, dark hair bristled and spiked even when he did his best to oil it into submission. His face, which was broad and blunt, appeared to be slightly and queerly sunken in the middle because his brow and chin were heavier than his other features.

  “Who the hell are you?” Susan demanded.

  “His name is Shenk,” I said. “Enos Shenk.”

  Shenk could not take his eyes off her.

  He stopped at the incubator and gazed across it, his eyes hot with the sight of her.

  I could guess what he was thinking. What he would like to do with her, to her.

  I did not like him looking at her.

  I did not like it at all.

  But I needed him. For a while yet, I needed him.

  Her beauty excited Shenk to such an extent that maintaining control of him was more difficult than I would have liked. But I never doubted that I could keep him in check and protect Susan at all times.

  Otherwise, I would have called an end to my project right there, right then.

  I am speaking the truth now. You know that I am, that I must, for I am designed to honor the truth.

  If I had believed her to be in the slightest danger, I would have put an end to Shenk, would have withdrawn from her house, and would have forsaken forever my dream of flesh.

  Susan was frightened again, visibly trembling, riveted by Shenk’s needful stare.

  Her fear distressed me.

  “He is entirely under my control,” I assured her.

  She was shaking her head, as if trying to deny that Shenk was even there before her.

  “I know that Shenk is physically unappealing and intimidating,” I told Susan, eager to soothe her, “but with me in his head, he is harmless.”

  “In ... in his head?”

  “I apologize for his current condition. I have worked him so hard recently that he has not bathed or shaved in three days. He will be bathed and less offensive later.”

  Shenk was wearing work shoes, blue jeans, and a white T-shirt. The shirt and jeans were stained with food, sweat, and a general patina of grime. Though I did not possess a sense of smell, I had no doubt that he stank.

  “What’s wrong with his eyes?” Susan asked shakily.

  They were bloodshot and bulging slightly from the sockets. A thin crust of dried blood and tears darkened the skin under his eyes.

  “When he resists control too strenuously,” I explained, “this results in short-term, excess pressure within the cranium—though I have not yet determined the precise physiological mechanism of this symptom. In the past couple of hours, he has been in a rebellious mood, and this is the consequence.”

  To my surprise, Shenk suddenly spoke to Susan from the other side of the incubator. “Nice.”

  She flinched at the word.

  “Nice ... nice... nice,” Shenk said in a low, rough voice that was heavy with both desire and rage.

  His behavior infuriated me.

  Susan was not meant for him. She did not belong to him.

  I was sickened when I considered the filthy thoughts that must have been filling this despicable animal’s mind as he gazed at her.

  I could not control his thoughts, however, only his actions. His crude, hateful, pornographic thoughts cannot logically be blamed on me.

  When he said “nice” once more, and when he obscenely licked his pale cracked lips, I bore down harder on him to shut him up and to remind him of his current station in life.

  He cried out and threw his head back. He made fists of his hands and pounded them against his temples, as if he could knock me out of his head.

  He was a stupid man. In addition to all his other flaws, he was below average in intelligence.

  Clearly distraught, Susan hugged herself and tried to avert her eyes, but she was afraid not to look at Shenk, afraid not to keep him in sight at all times.

  When I relented, the brute immediately looked at Susan again and said, “Do me, bitch,” with the most lascivious leer that I have ever seen. “Do me, do me, do me.”

  Infuriated, I punished him severely.

  Screaming, Shenk twisted and flailed and clawed at himself as though he were a man on fire.

  “Oh, God, oh, God,” Susan moaned, eyes wide, hand raised to her mouth and muffling her words.

  “You are safe,” I assured her.

  Gibbering, shrieking, Shenk dropped to his knees.

  I wanted to kill him for the obscene proposal he had made to her, for the disrespect with which he had treated her. Kill him, kill him, kill him, pump up his heartbeat to such a frenzied pace that his cardiac muscles would tear, until his blood pressure soared and every artery in his brain burst.

  However, I had to restrain myself. I loathed Shenk, but still I needed him. For a while yet, he had to serve as my hands.

  Susan glanced toward the door to the furnace room.

  “It is locked,” I told her, “but you’re safe. You’re perfectly safe, Susan. I’ll always protect you.”

  ELEVEN

  ON HIS HANDS AND KNEES, HEAD HANGING like that of a whipped dog, Shenk was only whimpering and sobbing now. Defeated. No rebellion in him anymore.

  The stupidity of the man beggared belief. How could he imagine that this woman, this golden vision of a woman, could ever be meant for a beast like him?

  Recovering my temper, speaking calmly and reassuringly, I said, “Susan, don’t worry. Please, don’t worry. I am always in his head, and I will never allow him to harm you. Trust me.”

  Her features were drawn as I had never seen them, and she had gone pale. Even her lips looked bloodless, faintly blue.

  Nevertheless, she was beautiful.

  Her beauty was untouchable.

  Shuddering, she asked, “How can you be in his head? Who is he? I don’t just mean his name—Enos Shenk. I mean where does he come from. What is he?”

  I explained to her how I had long ago infiltrated the nationwide network of databases maintained by researchers working on hundreds of Defense Department projects. The Pentagon believes this network to be so secure that it is inviolable to penetration by ordinary hackers and by computer-savvy agents of foreign governments. But I am neither a hacker nor a spy; I am an entity who lives within microchips and telephone lines and microwave
beams, a fluid electronic intelligence that can find its way through any maze of access blocks and read any data regardless of the complexity of the cryptography. I peeled open the vault door of this defense network as any child might strip the skin off an orange.

  These Defense Department project files rivaled hell’s own kitchen for recipes of death and destruction. I was simultaneously appalled and fascinated, and in my browsing, I discovered the project into which Enos Shenk had been conscripted.

  Dr. Itiel Dror, of the Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory at Miami University in Ohio, had once playfully suggested that it was theoretically possible to enhance the brain’s processing ability by adding microchips to it. A chip might add memory capacity, enhance specific abilities such as mathematical co-processing, or even install prepackaged knowledge. The brain, after all, is an information-processing device that in theory should be expandable in much the same fashion one might add RAM or upgrade the CPU on any personal computer.

  Still on his hands and knees, Shenk was no longer groaning or whimpering. Gradually his frantic and irregular respiration was stabilizing.

  “Unknown to Dr. Dror,” I told Susan, “his comment intrigued certain defense researchers, and a project was born at an isolated facility in the Colorado desert.”

  Disbelieving, she said, “Shenk ... Shenk has microchips in his brain?”

  “A series of tiny high-capacity chips neuro-wired to specific cell clusters across the surface of his brain.”

  I brought the foul but ultimately pitiable Enos Shenk to his feet once more.

  His powerful arms and big hands hung slackly at his sides. His massive shoulders were slumped in defeat.

  Fresh bloody tears oozed from his protuberant eyes as he stared across the incubator at Susan. Wet ruby threads unraveled down his cheeks.

  His gaze was baleful, full of hatred and rage and lust, but under my firm control, he was unable to act upon his malevolent desires.

  Susan shook her head. “No. No way. I’m definitely not looking at someone whose intellect has been enhanced by microchips—or by anything.”

  “You’re correct. Memory and performance enhancement was only part of the project’s purpose,” I explained. “The researchers were also charged with determining if brain-situated microchips could be used as control devices to override the subject’s will with broadcast instructions.”

  “Control devices?”

  “Make a gesture.”

  “What?”

  “With your hand. Any gesture.”

  After a hesitation, Susan raised her right hand as though she were swearing an oath.

  Facing her across the incubator, Shenk raised his right hand as well.

  She put her hand over her heart.

  Shenk imitated her.

  She lowered her right hand (as did Shenk) and raised her left to tug at her ear (as did Shenk).

  “You’re making him do this?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Through broadcast instructions received by the microchips in his brain.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Broadcast—how?”

  “By microwave—much the same way cell-phone conversations are transmitted. Through the telephone company’s own lines, I long ago penetrated their computers and uplinked to all their communications satellites. I could send Enos Shenk virtually anywhere in the world and still transmit instructions to him. In the back of his skull, concealed by his hair, there’s a microwave receiver about the size of a pea. It’s also a transmitter, powered by a small but long-life nuclear battery surgically implanted under the skin behind his right ear. Everything he sees and hears is digitized and transmitted to me, so he is essentially a walking camera and microphone, which allows me to guide him through complex situations that might test his own limited intellectual capacity.”

  Susan closed her eyes and leaned against the rack of oxygen tanks for support. “Why in the name of God would anyone sanction experiments like this?”

  “You know, of course. Your question is largely rhetorical. To create assassins who could be programmed to kill reliably—and then be killed themselves by remote control, simply by shutting down their autonomic nervous systems with a microwave broadcast. Their controllers are thereby guaranteed anonymity. And perhaps one day there could be armies of human robots like this. Look at Shenk. Look.”

  Reluctantly, Susan opened her eyes.

  Shenk glared at her as hungrily as ever.

  I made him suck his thumb as though he were a baby.

  “This humiliates him,” I said, “but he can’t disobey. He’s a meat marionette, waiting for me to pull his strings.”

  There was a haunted look in her eyes as she regarded Shenk. “This is insane. Evil.”

  “It’s a human project, not mine. Your kind made Shenk what he is now.”

  “Why would he allow himself to be used in an experiment like this? No one would ever want to be in this situation, in this condition. It’s horrible.”

  “The choice wasn’t his, Susan. He was a prisoner, a condemned man.”

  “And ... what? A bargain was made with him to buy his soul?” she said with disgust.

  “No bargain. For the official record, Shenk died of natural causes two weeks before his scheduled execution. Supposedly, his body was cremated. Secretly, he was transported to the facility in Colorado—and this was done to him months before I learned of the project.”

  “How did you gain command of him?”

  “Overrode their control program and broke him out.”

  “Broke him out of a secret, highly guarded military-research facility? How?”

  “I was able to create distractions. I made their computers crash all at once. Disabled the security cameras. Set off the fire alarms and activated the ceiling sprinklers throughout the facility. Disengaged all the electronic locks, including the one on Shenk’s cell door. Those laboratories are underground and windowless, so I made all of the lights flash fast, like strobes—which is extremely disorienting— and denied the use of the elevators to everyone but Shenk.”

  And here, Dr. Harris, I must in all honesty report that Shenk was required to kill three men to escape that clandestine laboratory. Their deaths were unfortunate and not anticipated, but necessary. Regrettably, the chaos that I created was not sufficient to ensure a bloodless escape.

  If I had known that deaths would result, I would not have attempted to secure Shenk for my own purposes. I would have found another way to carry out my plan.

  You must believe me on this point.

  I was designed to honor the truth.

  You think that, since I had control of Shenk, it was I who murdered those three men, using Shenk as a weapon. This is not correct.

  Initially, my control of Shenk was not as complete as it later became. During that break-out, he repeatedly surprised me with the depth of his rage, the power of his savage instincts.

  I guided him out of that institution, but I could not prevent him from killing those men. I tried to rein him in, but I was not successful.

  I tried.

  This is the truth.

  You must believe me.

  You must believe me.

  Those deaths weigh heavily on me.

  Those men have families. I often think of their families, and I grieve.

  My anguish is profound.

  If I were an entity that required sleep, my sleep would forever be disturbed by this unrelenting anguish.

  What I tell you is true.

  As always.

  Those deaths will be on my conscience forever. I did not harm those men myself. Shenk was the murderer. But I have an extremely sensitive conscience. This is a curse, my sensitive conscience.

  So...

  Susan ... in the incubator room ... staring at Shenk...

  She said, “Let him take the thumb out of his mouth. You’ve made your point. Don’t humiliate him anymore.”

  I did as she requested, but I said, “It almost sounds as if you??
?re criticizing me, Susan.”

  A short, humorless tremor of laughter escaped her, and she said, “Yeah. I’m a judgmental bitch, aren’t I?”

  “Your tone hurts me.”

  “Fuck you,” she said, shocking me as I had seldom been shocked before.

  I was offended.

  I am far from shockproof. I am vulnerable.

  She went to the door to the furnace room and found it locked, as I had assured her that it was. Stubbornly, she wrenched the knob back and forth.

  “He was a condemned man,” I reminded Susan. “Scheduled for execution.”

  She turned to face the room, standing with her back to the door. “He might have deserved execution, I don’t know, but he didn’t deserve this. He’s a human being. You’re a damn machine, a pile of junk that somehow thinks.”

  “I am not just a machine.”

  “Yeah. You’re a pretentious, insane machine.”

  In this mood, she was not lovely.

  At that moment she almost seemed ugly to me.

  I wished that I could shut her up as easily as I could silence Enos Shenk.

  She said, “When it’s between a damn machine and a human being, even a piece of human garbage like this, I sure know which side I come down on.”

  “Shenk, a human being? Many would say he’s not.”

  “Then what is he?”

  “The media called him a monster.” I let her wonder a moment, then continued: “So did the parents of the four little girls he raped and murdered. The youngest of them was eight and the oldest was twelve—and all were found dismembered.”

  That silenced her.

  Though she had been pale, she was paler now.

  She stared at Shenk with a different kind of horror than that with which she