All Hail the King!
Kirby Chen from The Explorers of Rinth by John L. Simons Jr.
The room was too small.
A few rows of authors, artists, and other creators sat at black linen-covered tables surrounded by books, sketches, holographic sculptures, immersive games, multimedia experiences for an array of sensations, and other, more esoteric storytelling media. A few creators talked to attendees browsing the tables, but it was sparse. Except for the line of the devout that snaked from the Guest of Honor table, through some of the aisles, out the door in the back, turned left and continued down the hall. The room could not hold all of King’s fans.
“I can’t believe Stephen King is still this popular after 300 years,” said Kirby Chen.
“It’s all about brand management,” said the guy at the booth next to him. “When they harvested the memory ingrams to put them in a robot, the poor guy probably never knew his publisher was going to keep him writing forever and stop his work from going into the public domain.”
“Zombie King,” mused Kirby. Or would slave be a better term? Kirby was almost as much a stranger to this century as Stephen King. Kirby spent almost two hundred years in cryostasis. He was a xenobiologist who had gone into space sleep hoping to emerge in a distant star system where he might discover alien life. Things had not gone according to plan, so here he sat two centuries later hawking a few sci-fi novels written in his youth. He wished people would give The Hive Queen of the Cloud Kingdom a chance. He had sold only 1 copy.
His literary failure notwithstanding, the 24th century held a lot of fascination for him. There were aliens; he just didn’t have permission to study them at the moment. Despite that, there were plenty of things in the present to draw the attention of a xenobiologist. Stephen King was long gone, yet his memories and personality lived on in an artificial body. That seemed alien to Kirby.
Kirby pushed his chair back and stood up. “Nothing’s going on here. I think I’ll check out the guest of honor.”
“You’ll be in that line for hours,” said his neighbor.
“Lines are for suckers,” muttered Kirby. He went around his table and strode down the empty aisle to the front of the room, coming up on the guest of honor table from the side where fans exited. A pair of volunteers stood managing the line, one a tall man with a mustache and the eyes of an excited rodent, the other a slight, quick woman who handled the fans as if they were children.
“The back of the line is in the hall,” said the man.
“I’m not here to get a book signed. I’m a xenobiologist.”
“What?”
“I study alien life.”
“I know what a xenobiologist is,” said the man peevishly. “But that doesn’t mean you can cut in line.”
The woman snort laughed. “I think he’s here to talk to you, Kiril. You’ve been found out!”
“I was hoping to observe the bot. I’ve been thinking about whether these things we’ve created are alive or if they just seem like it and…”
“He’s a crotchety old man, is what he is!” said the woman in a stage whisper.
The Stephen King bot stopped signing books and looked at Kirby. “You are all standing just right there. I can hear you perfectly well. You, young man who claims to be a xenobiologist, what do you want with me?”
“I’ve always looked for non terrestrial lifeforms, but I’ve realized that humans have created new kinds of life that are just as worthy of study. I was hoping I could observe you and maybe interview you afterward to get some insights into what it is like being an engram lifeform.”
“I assure you, I am a completely terrestrial being,” said the Stephen King bot. “I was born September 21, 1947 in Portland. You can’t get more terrestrial than that.”
“You remember that that happened,” said Kirby. “But that didn’t happen to you. The body you’re in wasn’t even manufactured in that century.”
“It’s a newer body, actually,” said Kiril. “This one is only a few years old. I think it’s his seventh or eighth body in total.”
“The life you remember is not your life,” said Kirby, “You’re a completely different individual whose existence is largely a fiction, at least as far as you’re concerned. That’s alien. That interests me.”
The Stephen King bot sneered. “Fiction is the truth inside the lie.”
“Uh oh!” said the woman. “This body is a bit glitchy and you’re riling him up.”
“Excuse me,” interrupted the next fan in line. “Mr. King, I’ve been waiting for hours to tell you how much I loved The Shining volume 42! It was definitely worth waiting all those years. The worldbuilding is intense!”
The Stephen King bot froze.
“Oh no!” said Kiril. “Something sent him over the edge. He’s got some sort of system failure.”
The woman rolled her eyes. “Better reboot him. Even if he comes out of it, he’s going to be difficult until he goes through a reset.”
Just as suddenly as he froze up, the King bot began moving. He turned on the fan. “Worldbuilding!” he said, “Worldbuilding! People have been slinging that word around for centuries. Not only is it sloppy and lazy, it has become trite. It has to stop! IT HAS TO STOP!”
With that, the King bot flipped the table, scattering rare first edition books across the floor. A gasp went up from the fans standing in line. Kiril tried to grab the bot, but the bot flung him a dozen feet into a table filled with plush tentacle monsters.
“I see the new body is a lot stronger than the old one!” said the woman, taking a big step away from King.
The King bot ran down the empty aisles of the indie writers and creators. He flipped tables as he went yelling things like, “Are you a worldbuilder? Are you?” Fans screamed. People began running this way and that. Then the bot knocked over three people as it charged out the door at the back of the room. Everything was chaos.
“Nice going,” said the female volunteer.
“’Fiction is the truth inside the lie,’” said Kirby. “I like that line.”
“He’s got a way with words,” said the female volunteer. “A real good guy, too.”
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