Look I’m sorry to keep interrupting the flow of the narrative like this, but there is an emergency. I promise you this will be the last time. I realize it’s not particularly cool, that all these interjections by the narrator may be rather irritating, but I’m a scientist, not a novelist. I don’t know anything about story or maintaining the through-line. I just wanted to make a few notes about the history of Carlton and how he came to make his great discovery, and instead it’s become this whole drama. The worst of it is it’s changing into a confessional. But as I’m reading through and correcting, I need to update you. Things keep happening and I want you to know what’s going on. Think of it as post-Heisenberg narrative. The observer is part of the story too. The Nobel adjudicators have just acknowledged receipt of my thesis. Rhea University is anxious for me to announce at their next convocation (they have all but promised me an honorary doctorate), and Mehta & Asher are keen to issue a large printing of my book. I have not been idle. So I promise I won’t interrupt the flow again. But you see, I have startling news. I’m gob-smacked.
Carlton is still alive.
NOW. In my time. Eighty years later. How foolish of me. I had of course forgotten the most important element of robots. They don’t die. Even so, I could hardly have expected them to keep him around so long past his sell-by date. I mean thanks to the technological growth curve most machines are outdated within two years of manufacture and are broken down for reuse. At best you find these old ’bots opening bridges or taking tolls in third-world backwaters. I had no inkling that wouldn’t have happened with Carlton. But no! He lives. The little tintellectual has been preserved. He is in an old computers home. A kind of sanatorium. Wouldn’t you know it? Sod’s law in action. The spirit of fuck-up in the universe prevails once again.
I went to the PDHQ with very mixed feelings, but after a fruitless morning of being passed around from computer to computer and referred back and forth between various departments, I was finally rewarded with the great news that there was no trace of De Rerum Comoedia on police files. I breathed a sigh of relief, and it was only some stupid sixth sense that made me enter Carlton’s name and coordinates to make sure there wasn’t a reference to his work anywhere else. After all, a potential Nobel Prize winner and honorary doctorate and best-selling author (not to mention a triumphant avenger of a deserting mistress) does not wish to be embarrassed publicly by some sleazy tabloid story that he has plagiarized the entire thing. So, yes I checked. And to my utter surprise, shock, and horror, up popped a number, a picture, and a current address.
Now what do I do? I’m well and truly hoist. I don’t care how much metal fatigue he has, he’s hardly gonna miss the publication of his thesis. I mean we’re talking massive publicity here. He isn’t about to sit by and watch me nick his life’s work. He’s not going to send me flowers when he sees me up there modestly thanking the Nobel Committee. And I can’t turn back. It’s too late. I’m committed. Apart from Messrs. Mehta and Asher, who are preparing to publish in simply massive quantities, and who are knocked out, ecstatic, over the moon, thrilled as parrots, etc., etc., by the cleaning-up potential of my book, there’s the interview schedule, there’s a press conference booked for Monday, there’s the Nobel Committee who have asked to see me, and there’s two-timing Molly the bitch from biology. What else can I do but go forward?
So I am going to see him. I spoke to some semi-demented nurse—a prim little woman with her hair drawn back and loose teeth—who gave me visiting hours and directions. It’s a very out-of-the-way place. Not many inmates. It should be perfect for my purpose. Naturally I’m nervous. What a moment it’s going to be, face-to-face with my subject. I feel like a fan. Too bad it has to be this way. I know you’ll think the worse of me, but really, what choice do I have? I’m not going to interrupt the narrative flow any more. I am going to see him for the first and last time. Because, gentle reader, I have to kill him.