Read Online How It Ends: Part 1 - The Evaluation by Scott C Lyerly - Free Book Online Page B

before.
Not in his presence. This is truly an act of kindness , he
thought. The old man is at the end of his life. At least he
could take control of his death. Die with a measure of dignity. Sidney thought he might be sick.
    Anita made notes as fast as she could
write.
    Kilgore stood motionless next to the bed
waiting for the flat line. Its holographic face was a look of
sorrow. But it didn’t actually feel that emotion , thought
Sidney. How can it offer such compassion without feelings?
    Anita scribbled maddeningly. The pencil
scratched across the paper. A foreign noise in the room. It carried
more than Sidney would have liked. He looked at Kilgore. Kilgore
had turned his head and was looking at Sidney. Sidney couldn’t read
the expression. It made the hairs on the back of his neck stand
up.
    Then came the final flat line.

    * * *

    Sidney was bent over his computer screen
with weary eyes and sad heart. His back ached. Hunched over his
computer typing his notes with his fingers pounding on undersized
keys. He had sent Anita home earlier. Home or wherever she wished
to go. He had an odd feeling that she was with Brian. There was
nothing for her to do now other than type up her notes. She’d need
her own computer. He typed his impressions of the day. There was
not enough space in here for both of them. The space he worked in
was tiny. A small nook in the back of the nurses’ station. It was
the only place in the ward where he could both get a communications
connection out and close the door. He clacked away on his computer,
cursing occasionally at his thick fingers and narrow keys.
    He checked his watch. After seven.
    He stopped typing. His fingers froze. They
didn’t hurt but he couldn’t move them. His head dropped into his
hands. His eye s were wet with tears. What have we come to? What
have we come to? He watched a robot end the life of a
terminally ill man. Death shiny and metal and meticulously dressed.
Death without conscience. Death without guilt. Death without
emotion. These were laid on top of him. These things that Kilgore
could not feel he felt. Empathy was not the right word. What was?
He was the only one that felt it. Kilgore did not. Mrs. Carroway
had her own grief to comfort her. Anita was too fascinated to feel
death. Too giddy with her position of assistant to feel beyond her
giddiness. Who was left to feel for the dead? Here in the corner is
a man uncluttered. Here is a man with a cup of emotion only half
full. He is the one to carry this burden. Someone must and everyone
is accounted for. Except him.
    Sidney held his head in his hands. He
sobbed.

    * * *

    Sidney was in the middle of cataloguing Mr.
Carroway’s symptoms. He had wiped his eyes and blown his nose. He
was back to work.
    A sharp knock rapped against the closed
door. It startled him.
    “Yes,” he called.
    The door swung open and framed the finely
dressed steel body of Dr. Kilgore.
    Fight or flight.
    Why is that in my head? Sidney
thought. Something about Kilgore standing between him and the only
way out of the office caused his heart to beat faster. Calm
down. It’s a robot. Nothing more. It has no feelings to hurt. It
has no emotive processor. It’s just a machine .
    “Dr. Kilgore,” he said. “What can I do for
you?”
    The robot floated into the room. The
spectral image of death. The door swung shut. An automatic hinge.
Snick. Sweat broke out on Sidney’s brow.
    “Do I make you nervous, Dr. Hermann?” asked
the robot.
    Why did it ask me that? How can it know
that? He began to sweat under his arms.
    “Excuse me?”
    “Do I make you nervous?”
    “Why do you ask?”
    “Because your heart rate increased when you
saw me standing in the doorway. You began to perspire when the door
swung shut behind me. Upon asking you about your level of comfort
when in my presence your body temperature increased and your
perspiration output increased.”
    Somehow I keep forgetting it’s a machine
designed to diagnose , thought