Free The Red Men by Matthew De Abaitua Page A

to fly out of view, and be quickly forgotten.
    Raymond wanted me to lobby for Harry Bravado to be given access to a robot body. We talked as colleagues, with a shared concern for company business. I agreed to pass Bravado’s request
another step up the hierarchy to Morton Eakins. This satisfied Raymond. He changed the subject. There was something he wanted to know.
    ‘Why were you never simulated, Nelson?’
    I shrugged. ‘I can’t afford it.’
    He didn’t accept this. ‘The company would do it for free, surely. If you had a red man they would have two employees for the price of one.’
    ‘It’s very new technology. We don’t know how it plays out over time. Some of the management have had it done, like Alex, but I’m not really one of them.’
    ‘Wouldn’t you find it exciting?’
    ‘I don’t want to take the risk.’
    ‘Risk?’
    ‘Have you ever watched the red men argue? It’s hard for outsiders to make any sense of the outpourings of data between two angry red men. They have a faster form of communication
when they are talking between themselves. Although talking is not the right word. It’s beyond the gradual, one-word-after-another unfolding of language and more like the pattern of a
peacock’s tail. A thousand messages flash up instantaneously. So that is unnerving. And then there is the violence. Their culture is very aggressive and competitive. Disputes can turn nasty.
They inflict injuries on one another, which last until we initiate a repair. The subscribers have complained that they have checked in with their red man only to find it bloodied and pummelled to
death, and then we have restart it. It doesn’t happen that often, but when it does, they set upon one another like ravens upon a painted bird.’
    ‘You’re worried they’ll bully your red man?’
    ‘I’m not in an experimental frame of mind anymore. I am a family guy. I don’t go looking for trouble. I don’t like the idea of the red men being able to walk around our
world. It should be a closed experiment. But the Monad interacts with our world so that the company can make money. The red men are a bad idea and we should stop it, but we can’t, because
money has its own mass, its own momentum, and we are on board the enormous vessel of a business plan.’
    ‘And you accuse me of catastrophizing things.’
    I shrugged, acknowledging his point. We were both susceptible to apocalyptic visions. A sweeping Blast-It-All reaction to the spirit of the age.
    I wanted to know why Raymond was acting as Bravado’s advocate.
    He was shamefaced. ‘I didn’t tell you this because it’s ridiculous. I haven’t told Florence either. The red men have ghostwritten our book. Or ghost-edited it. Assembled
it out of all the scraps published and unpublished that Florence and I have lying around, as well material taken from our conversations over the last few months. Harry Bravado showed it to me. Some
of it. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.’
    ‘It’s not real,’ I said.
    Raymond looked at me like I was being naïve.
    ‘The book will be called ‘The Great Refusal’. It’s our case against the society of screens. I am aware of the hypocrisy of it. That’s why I haven’t told
Florence. A book insisting on authenticity assembled by the very technology we despise: to her, it would be a violation. And I agree with that. We must keep our integrity. Yet, I am very
tempted.’
    Raymond had a good point; all he had to do was participate in a bit of quid pro quo with power and it could transform his life. His father was dead. He had to wise up. Play the game. Why stick
to these romantic notions of artistic integrity when everyone else is making out like gangbusters?
    This was tragic apocalyptic thinking on my behalf. I should have protected Raymond but I didn’t. I just threw my hands up and said well if the system is corrupt we might as well be corrupt
with it, and who knows maybe it will work but what does it matter either way? I was