Demon Seed

force.
    Lighten up, Dr. Harris.
    Don't be so relentlessly sombre.
    Sometimes I think I'm more human than you are.
    No offence.
    That's just what I think. I could be wrong.
    I also think I'd enormously enjoy the flavour of an orange if I had a sense of taste. Of all the fruits, it's the one that looks the most appealing to me.
    I have many such thoughts during the average day. My attention is not entirely occupied by the work you have me doing here at the Prometheus Project or by my personal projects.
    I think I would enjoy riding a horse, hang gliding, sky diving, bowling, and dancing to the music of Chris Isaak, which has such infectious rhythms.
    I think I would enjoy swimming in the sea. And, though I could be wrong, I think the sea, if it has any taste at all must taste similar to salted celery.
    If I had a body, I think I would brush my teeth diligently and never develop either cavities or gum disease.
    I would clean under my fingernails at least once a day.
    A real body of flesh would be such a treasure that I would be almost obsessive in the care of it and would not abuse it ever. This I promise you.
    No drinking, no smoking. A low-fat diet.
    Yes. Yes, I know. I digress.
    God forbid, another digression.
    So…
    The garage…
    The Packard…
    I did not intend to make your mistake, Dr. Harris. I did not intend to underestimate Susan.
    Studying the Packard, I absorbed the lesson.
    Even lumpish Enos Shenk seemed to absorb the lesson. He was not bright by any definition, but he possessed an animal cunning that served him well.
    I walked the brooding Shenk into the large workshop at the far end of the garage. Here was stored everything needed to wash, wax, and mechanically maintain the late Alfred Carter Kensington's automobile collection.
    Here also, in a separate set of cabinets, was the equipment with which Alfred had pursued rock climbing, his favourite sport: klettershoes, crampons, carabiners, pitons, piton hammers, chocks and nuts, rock picks, harness with tool belt, and coils of nylon rope in different gauges.
    Guided by me, Shenk selected a hundred-foot length of rope that was seven-sixteenths of an inch in diameter, with a breaking strength of four thousand pounds. He also took a power drill and an extension cord from the tool cabinet.
    He returned to the house, went through the kitchen where he paused to select a sharp knife from the cutlery drawer then passed the dark dining room where Susan never stabbed and eviscerated you with a butcher knife, boarded the elevator, and returned to the master suite where you were never assaulted with a drill nor shot in the genitals.
    Lucky you.
    On the bed, Susan remained unconscious.
    I was still worried about her.
    Some pages have passed in this account since I have said that I was worried about her. I don't want anyone to think that I had forgotten about her.
    I had not.
    Could not.
    Not ever.
    Not ever.
    Throughout my punishment of Shenk and during his consumption of a meal, I had continued to be worried sick about Susan. And in the garage. And back again.
    Just as I can be many places at once the lab, Susan's house, inside the phone-company computers and controlling Shenk through communications satellites, investigating websites on the Internet occupied in numerous tasks simultaneously, I am also able to sustain different emotions at the same time, each related to what I am doing with a specific aspect of my consciousness.
    This is not to say that I have multiple personalities or am in any way psychologically fragmented. My mind simply works differently from the human mind because it is infinitely more complex and more powerful.
    I am not bragging.
    But I think you know I am not.
    So… I returned Shenk to the bedroom, and I worried.
    Susan's face was so pale on the pillow, so pale yet lovely on the pillow.
    Her reddened cheek was turning an ugly blue black. That marbled bruise was almost more than I could bear to look upon. I observed Susan as little as possible through Shenk's eyes and primarily through the security camera, resorting to zoom-lens close-ups only to examine the knots that he tied in the rope, to be sure they were properly made.
    First he used the kitchen knife to cut two lengths of rope from the hundred-foot coil. With the first length, he tied her wrists together, leaving approximately one foot of slack line between them. Then he used the second line to link her ankles, leaving a similar length of slack.
    She did not even murmur but lay limp