The Complete Roderick by John Sladek

living on stale peanut butter sandwiches over there, acting like a goddamned penitent or something.’
    ‘Penitent? No, I just, I have to be there, that’s all.’
    ‘For the tests, sure.’
    ‘Not just the tests.’ He picked up a styrene fork and looked at it. ‘I can’t explain it but – Roderick’s there, his mind is right there and I – have to be inside it. I mean, I have to make up his thoughts, and at the same time – I
am
a thought.’
    ‘Think for him, you can’t even think for yourself, sitting there starving in front of a hot meal – how much do you weigh now, hundred and twenty? Hundred and fifteen? Take that fork in your hand and use it, how’s that for thinking?’
    Dan’s hand obeyed, scooping up a forkful of mashed potato. ‘See, it’s just that it’s gone too far to stop now. They can’t stop us now, can they? No, because it would be, it’s almost murder.’
    ‘Just eat, will you?’
    ‘No, but it’s gone too far. He’s alive, Ben. Roderick’s alive. I know he’s nothing, not even a body, just content-addressable memory. I could erase him in a minute – but he’s alive. He’s as real as I am, Ben. He’s realer. I’m just one of his thoughts.’
    ‘You said that.’
    ‘I did? A thought repeating itself.’ Dan’s hands finally seized the knife and fork and started feeding him with regular automatic motions. Franklin watched him eat, the tendons moving in his cheeks, one hand pausing now and then to flick back the hairfrom his eyes. The grubby spiral notebook remained pinned down under his left elbow.
    ‘Oh, happy birthday, by the way. What are you, twenty-three?’
    ‘Yem.’
    ‘Ha ha, have to watch it, getting almost too old there Dan – I mean, it’s a young man’s game: Turing was only twenty-four when he –’
    ‘Yem.’ The dot of mashed potato on Dan’s chin stopped moving for a moment. ‘Twenty-four, huh?’
    ‘Of course I’m, I’m thirty-six myself …’ And from this bleak perspective, Ben Franklin looked over the field (to which he had as yet made no contribution): there was A. M. Turing, twenty-four when he conceived of mechanizing states of mind. There was Claude Shannon, twenty-two when he discovered the spirit of Aristotle in a handful of switches and wiring. There was – hell, there was Frankenstein, completing his creation at nineteen (the age at which Mary Shelley completed hers). And there was Pascal, inventing the first calculating machine at the age of eighteen – time is, time was, and death approaches, intruding on our calculations.
    If the Buddhists have it right, the world is completely destroyed 75,231 times per second, and each time completely restored. In all the worlds of Ben’s 38 years, there was nothing worth saving; he could die now, saying with the dying Frankenstein: ‘Farewell, Walton! Seek happiness in tranquillity and avoid ambition, even if it be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science and discoveries. Yet why do I say this! I myself have been blasted in these hopes, yet another may succeed.’ The other being Dan, damn him! Caught in the invisible flicker at Buddhist worlds (in the VHF band), Ben stared at his future.
    ‘Turing took cyanide,’ he almost said, but changed it to: ‘See? You were hungry.’
    ‘Yes, I guess I – thanks.’ Dan wiped his narrow chin, belched, flicked back the lock of hair that fell again over his eyes. ‘Thanks.’
    ‘Least I can do. Fong thinks you’re Roderick’s guiding genius, and he should know. The dark figure of Sidonia behind the –’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Nothing. What I want to know is, how can I help?’
    ‘But you are helping. You’re writing program –’
    ‘Sure, pieces of test crap, you call that help, anybody could do that. I don’t even know what’s being tested, you won’t let me handle anything in the lab. Christ, what good is my degree? A master’s in Cybernetic Humanities, my whole thesis on learning systems and what do I get