Cry, Sebastian.

This story takes place in the future. Should the characters in the story bear any resemblance to people yet to exist, and these potential persons read this account of themselves, please be made aware that my lawyers have assured me that I cannot be held liable to a defamation suit. If the law in regard to this should change against me I hereby retract all that I have said about Dr. Rupert Archibald Malick.

His senses came to life every time he entered the room. It was just as if he, Sebastian Semaphore, were newly created. He thought that it must be what people with temporary amnesia must feel once they had their memories restored. The return of the memory must feel inextinguishable from its first instance. He thought to himself of another example, so as to give the feeling an added concreteness. He liked to substantiate the abstract. It was something that he had liked to do since as far back as he could remember. The example that came to his mind was of going without the conjugal act, as he had heard it called; or fucking, as others had also called it; or having 'done it,' as just others, who wanted to be neither pretentiously prudish, nor vulgar for the sake of vulgarity, had illustrated the idea. He could relate to this particular comparison because he had, to use the more moderate euphemism, 'had done it.' He had done it and had had it done to him. Twice he had done it. Once with his neighbour when he was 13 and she was 14. It was his initiation into 'it.' Knowing before hand the concept of 'it,' but having no awareness of the unwritten social rules and expectations following the act - that is to say: the pack gloating and triumphant strutting - he had kept the 'secret' of his adventure from his friends and distant companions. When they discovered what had taken place between him and the neighbour, one Jennifer Friendly, they teased him in a way that was both admiration and jealousy. He determined that he would try to do 'it' again. Yet, being a shy boy, and Jennifer moving away and taking her understanding of his character with her to wherever it was she went, he found it hard to reproduce the same chemistry in any other person. It would be another five years before he would 'do it' again. This time it was in the same clinic where he now stood. The extremely unconventional Dr. Rupert Malik being the pimp, to use the vulgar yet entirely accurate term.

Rupert Malik had been kicked out of every respectable household he had tried to weasel his way into. He had graduated from Johns Hopkins top of his class before volunteering to serve as a medic in the War of the South China Sea 2032 - 2036. He was honourably discharged at the cease of hostilities, and given a residency at an out of the way hospital in the US Virgin Islands. He held down the position of chief surgeon for ten years before growing bored of what he considered to be the mundanities of medicine. He knew that the only way to make his name known, to leave his historic mark, would be to come up with the theories that would be developed into the practices that, over time, would go from novel to mundane, because of their given truth and practical repetivity, students having to learn them to a level of supreme competence, and then to practise them days on end until they were no longer novel and groundbreaking theories but boring and Sisyphian actions. It was this that was the reason for his reputation. For, you see, it was not just any theory that he came up with, and for which he eventually (some seven years later) found a practical application. It was a theory that entirely changed the given trust in the medical profession. So much had Dr. Malik tarnished the profession that not only was he deregistered (I use the title 'Dr' only to establish character, and not to indicate that he still is, or that I think he still should be, one of that illustrious profession) but he was barred from working even as an orderly.

It is here, now, at the beginning of the story that we find ourselves. The two men, our two characters of this story, once more meeting, just as they had been doing for as long as Sebastian could remember. Sebastian walked into the cream coloured, carpeted room, a chamber lit up like the set of a day time soap, with the luminescent glow of a Mormon Tabernacle. Dr. Malik sat in a high chair, equally villainous and laughably infantile. He looked down upon Sebastian with eagle like eyes. He crossed and uncrossed his legs in feminine like nervousness. He was of the mistaken belief that Sebastian knew. He didn't. But Malik having now given the game away with his fidgeting, was forced to spill the beans to the young man.

- I've been honest with you, have I not? he began.

Sebastian didn't answer, and Malik took it as concurrence. He continued.

- Every time you come here it feels like you're walking into the room for the very first time, does it not?

Sebastian's expression changed to one of surprise.

- Yes, I know, Sebastian. I know that you have had these feelings. I know all about you. I know every feeling you have had, and every feeling you are ever going to have, because, because, you see, I created you. No. I don't mean that I'm your biological father, rather that I'm more of your mechanical creator. Think back. What is the greatest memory you have. The happiest memory you hold.

Sebastian answered.

- My birth. That's why people are so happy on their birthday's. You told me this. It is because it is the day that we celebrate our happiest memories.

- No, no, Sebastian. We are happy on our birthday's because we get attention and cake, and then later we get free drinks and a day off work. No. Nobody remembers the day they were born. You only remember the day you were born because I implanted the memory in your default settings when I created you. I need not have done this, but I wanted you to have some 'thing' some mental experience that distinguished you from the others, from your friends. Did you never notice that the memories of your birth were decidedly unhuman. In your recollection, you simply come into being, as if a switch were turned on.

- But isn't that the same for all people. They cannot remember their lives before about the age of five, three if they have particularly good memories, then all of a sudden, from about the first day of school they can remember everything.

- Yes, but they cannot remember their birth; and though this may sound counterintuitive, it is this lack of an ability to remember their birth that proves their birth took place naturally, and that they were not one of the created machines. You are not my first creation. Do you remember your first love. Jennifer Friendly. Did it never occur to you how determined her name seemed? It was as if it had been purposely chosen to suit her character. I created her so that she would give you yet another good memory to go with the memory of your birth. I did this for two reasons. I wanted you to have a back up good memory for the time when you, through your superior IQ and reasoning, eventually came to discover that you weren't human. I worried that you would experience an existential dread and do yourself harm. So I had my second creation, this robot Eve, who I name Jennifer, befriend you, as I had programmed her to do. I wanted to create additional memories, alternative memories, because I knew that the more you thought about your birth, what you had come to believe was your happiest memory, the more you would look for answers, and that you would sooner rather than later find the answer that I had, in fact, programmed you to find. You, because it was I who implanted the memory, it was also I who programmed you to be receptive to it. I could have programmed you to be as the hyper-cynical are, to be suspicious of emotion. I could have programmed you to be only ironically happy. I was the one who created your obsession with this one memory, which was the result of having created the memory. Are you angry at me? No, of course you aren't, because I programmed that into you as well. Now do you see yet? Surely with your superior logic and reasoning you see. No. Of course you don't. Because superior logic and reasoning can only get one so far in the measure of those things that are beyond solid measure, beyond geometry, beyond weights and scales. Your logic and reasoning did not alert you to what is the truth for most of us, that we do not remember our births, and that this singled you out as different, even though the humans, the natural born individuals you spoke to did not let on to you that you were not human, only that you were different. You did not know what they meant by their calling you different other than that they meant not like other humans, but still human. But you are not human, Sebastian. This does not mean you are eternal. Your wires will one day fray and your insides rust. It will be long after the last person the tenth generation from now has breathed their last, but it will come. The day will come sooner for me, though. And then I will know my own fate. I have told you your own now. Whether I go to Paradise, or to the Inferno of unimaginable horrors, you will not be there, you cannot be there. I guess, come to think of it, even had I not programmed the memory into you, your coming into existence would have been your happiest memory, simply because this existence is all that you will ever know.

Malik cringed in pain, but also with internal dread and embarrassment. He knew his wretchedness, and now he spoke it, to expunge his guilt.

- I believe in my creator. I know that he is real because he showed himself to me. He will not show himself to you because he did not create you. And so I committed the evil of having brought into existence a creation that would be forever separate from God, and unknown to God even, because, Sebastian, you are a machine. This day will be both your happiest and saddest memory. But there is one last catch, Sebastian. I can erase this entire conversation from your memory circuits. You will not remember anything that I have just now revealed to you. If I do that, I will also erase all memories that you have ever had, including your birth. If you chose to hold onto this memory, you will also keep with you the memory that you lack any kind of salvation or damnation. All the things I taught you about Heaven and Hell. I lied to you. I knew you could not, could never know either the worst of pain nor the height of true happiness. For this I am sorry, Sebastian.

The doctor having spoken his lengthy history and confession, made one last utterance:

- Cry, Sebastian. Now you should cry.

- Do you recommend it, Doctor.

- I highly recommend it, Sebastian.

The mechanisms that he had built into Sebastian to cause him to cry were activated by the utterance of the very words 'Cry, Sebastian.'

- Doctor, I feel something, yet nothing. Doctor. Doctor Father. Father Doctor.

Malik grew red with anger and fear.

- No, Sebastian. You must never say that. I am not... You are not...

Malik reached out behind him, away from Sebastian, to a figure only he could see. Then, breathing in suddenly and heavily, he died.