Page 4 - Unlikely Stories 2

Hitch MacGuffin’s Last Role

skin crawl and raise goose bumps. After the third take the effect
would lessen and the luckless performer would require warmth and
comfort, if not medical attention. So nothing was on file to match
what was called for in the script: the response of exposed human
epidermis to an unexpected advance upon it of dozens of tiny robotic
machines, each one sprouting hooked, bladed and snapping
appendages. The point of the shot was to show me coming to life,
from the outside in. They had one chance to get an unmediated,
realistic effect. I had been instructed to lie still, with no knowledge or
warning of what I would subjectively experience.”
“Even von Stroheim was never that cruel!” Helen exclaimed.
“Well, I freaked out, twitching like Frankenstein’s monster getting
a megavolt in the solar plexus instead of squirming slightly like
Sleeping Beauty after a princely kiss. That got me kicked off the set.
No doubt Logical will spend a bit more to get the programming done
for some fancy fractal version of me to finish the scene. Perhaps they
captured a millisecond of pores in trauma for that purpose.”
The others expressed their sympathy and dismay, or concealed
their schadenfreude, at this turn of events. So little hope, so easily
dashed! Then it was back to the dull daily routine of perfunctory
cybernetic servicing of their basic needs and rehashing of anecdotes
barely burnished by the lapses in memory of those telling and hearing
them. Months passed.
Then the call came again one morning, this time for MacGuffin.
He sent back a reply asking for the shooting script. It appeared, and
all crowded around him to get a look. No surprises in this one.
“Blocks off the Old Chip” was an almost predictable historical
dreadlaugh. Its scary premise involved unknown unknowns, the
nemesis of expert systems, threatening the homeostasis of critical
infrastructure; the genre’s resolution demanded illogical ventures into
what remained of uncharted territory. The hero was a flawed
software project, some defect in its circuitry relegating it to a minor
role in society. It is not very reliable or terribly intelligent, yet it will
save the day by its inability to think within the box. First it had to
endure an Augean stable of hilarious humiliations and bungled
opportunities; they provided comic relief from the apocalyptic
menace. In the denouement, order is re-established, the outcast
returns to its menial task or is burned out self-sacrificially, and

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