"So how is... flashlight, these days?" Yuri G asked in his heavily accented, laboriously spoken words, his mouth sliding sideways into a half-smile. The evidence of nerve damage from the chemical weapons waved across his entire body.
Phil K coolly regarded the artificial side of his friend's face, although you really couldn't tell unless you knew, then carefully lit a cigarette.
"It's fine," he said. He looked around Yuri G's spare, UN-issued room and its white, easily-cleaned furniture, the bare white floor with its internal cushioning sensors. Vets were prone to falling in the home; until the introduction of the motion-sensing bathtub and reactive floor, falls had been the second leading cause of injuries and death in their grouping.
The other, of course, was suicide.
He exhaled a swirling pattern of smoke into the room. 'The flashlight'. He smiled a little, feeling the wire and microcircuits move under his artificial skin.
Yuri G extended a hand eagerly, and took a cigarette. He lit it for him, and Yuri G inhaled deeply, closing his eyes in satisfaction. He was a stocky man, with a round face and fat, stubby fingers; just a hint of Asian in his eyes. He squinted, showed one shining pupil, and trained it on Phil K.
"So, you dirty-talk flashlight?" He shifted awkwardly in his orthopedic chair, trying to get comfortable. Phil K watched as he finally gave up and tapped the pain aerator.
"Sometimes."
"Really? What does, does it, do? Does it..." He grinned lasciviously. "Does it like it?"
Phil K shrugged. "Sure. It reacts."
"I no, can see it. I cannot do it."
"That's your choice." Phil K stubbed out his cigarette. "I made mine."
They both involuntarily looked over at the 3D photograph of Yuri G's wife, the one taken on the honeymoon in Baku. Her face shined and her breasts swelled in the side-shift dress. She was beautiful;
but she was long dead. Yuri G wouldn't move on, and he knew it would shorten his life, but he didn't care. Then they sat silently for far too long.
Phil K tried to get up to leave, but Yuri G waved his hand imperiously. "Stay, a bit. Is good to, to see you. Have drink. Drink? Drink." It wasn't a question; Phil K had to stay. Yuri G was lonely.
"Sure." He carefully lowered himself back down, shifting his feet in the electronic shoes.
Yuri G poked the 'UP' button on his orthopedic chair and tottered vertical. He shambled into the kit-unit and retrieved a bottle filled with clear liquid. He poured two safety glasses and handed one over.
"To flashlight!" He smiled broadly.
Phil K humored him. "To the flashlight."
Yuri G sipped his vodka, then tilted his head curiously. "Have you, you name it?"
Phil K nodded. He wasn't supposed to; it was frowned upon by the therapy board, and by naming it he risked having it reset, but he couldn't help himself. That was a huge rule: don't get too attached, it's a machine, a unit, no different than an exoskeleton or a cybernetic chair. Its official designation was HA-2734XQ, but he'd privately named it 'Claire'. To fool the psychiatrists he'd randomly chosen a name out of a baby-name book at the library, then told them he was anthropomorphizing objects in his home to help his socialization. He'd named his food preparation cube 'John', and went so far as to put a name tag on it, for the inspection.
"How does, it feel?" Yuri G drained his glass, refilled it, then leaned forward to refill Phil K's. The liquid rolled around in the safety glasses, captured by the electronic surface tension. Phil K felt a spike of fury at the board not even trusting them with so much as a child's sippy cup. No, they had to have special glasses that you couldn't spill onto the reactive floors of the UN-issued living cubicles. He let the spike go into his brain, then deliberately thought of Claire, his 'flashlight', and felt it dissipate.
"It feels real. As real as anything." He let his mood equalize.
Yuri G raised his eyebrows over the rim of the safety glass, making the audible sucking sound you had to make to actually drink out of the damn things. "Well, what you know, anyway? You, you, we, hardly organic. It probably, likes better anyway." A smile appeared around the edges of the cup.
Phil K waited, let it sink in, and thought about what he would do if anyone else had said it. Then he burst out in amusement, and so did Yuri G. They sat in the issue cubicle, two half-men laughing.
On the surface tube back to his own city, his own cubicle unit, Phil K watched the wreckage of the Terran War pass by the window, the radioactive cities. Lifeless hulks and smoking dust. He remembered scrambling through the ash in the armored life suit, blind with hate and pain, clutching weapons, after they, and the Soviets, had used up their C-bombs and everything had degenerated to hand-to-hand killing over blasted, smoking, hot rocks. He shook his head and touched his psych packet.
They'd built all transportation on the surface; the real estate was worthless, now. Underground and in the cleansed places was where everyone lived. The surface was used for sealed transport; it wasn't good for anything else. He watched out the inches-thick lead glass window at the black ash.
Thousands of miles of black, swirling ash.
He was fortunate to live on the surface, in a dome. It was for psych reasons. The Board had gone to some lengths to control the placement of Vets, matched to psychological states. Some couldn't live on the surface; some couldn't live below. It all depended on the individual. They had to visit each other, too; it was the law.
Not too close together, because limited travel was psychologically positive; enough reminder of the War to make sure their sacrifices hadn't been forgotten; public transportation to make sure they kept their social skills and ability to navigate social situations. Placements and social recognition to equalize their emotional and psychological impulses. Pairing former enemies to confuse hatreds and encourage emotional bondings. It's how he'd ended up with Yuri G as his prescription 'friend'; but he liked the man. They got along well.
And the social unit, his 'flashlight'. Yuri G had named it that, after an antique sex toy for men that looked like a flashlight with a sex organ in one end. When he'd seen it he roared with laughter and announced, "That's fanciest flashlight I ever see!"
The 'flashlight', Claire, had merely smiled. It had been new, then, almost blank; but the interactive programming had improved that a lot, quite a lot. In limited situations it was impossible to tell it wasn't real.
Phil K walked very slowly through the covered streets to his housing unit, passing young people. Strapping young men in their Folio Jackets, lithe young girls in their holo-dresses, slim bodies moving, breasts thrusting in the multi-colored creations. Some looked at his designated clothing, some didn't. He sighed. He didn't know which was better, or worse; right after the end of the War his designation had guaranteed social status; now, not so much. He felt tired, and stressed, and wanted to get back. As his stress grew he had to touch his psych packet again, but it still couldn't stop him from being hyper-vigilant. His eyes darted around and he felt his hands clenching, anticipating attack. His synapses were overloading again. He needed to get home, to Claire.
He knew exactly why they'd issued him the unit: because of his hyper-vigilance, and the consequent potential for social violence. It was part of the desperate program the UN had developed to cope with the Vets. After the Nairobi Block Massacre, when a Vet had somehow acquired a flame tube and slaughtered more than a hundred citizens, they'd created the Committee For Stress to deal with the rest of them in a more creative way. It was obvious that trying to re-integrate soldiers with Terran War history back into a peacetime society wasn't something that could be left to chance.
