Ex Machina III
Chapter One
This Old Man
The old man walked slowly from his bedroom into the kitchen of his old, comfortable house. He was very old, but his slow walk was mostly due to his lack of hurry rather than any inability to move about. With a moment's concentration, he could be anywhere in his in a split-second, but he usually preferred comfort to quickness.
In the kitchen, the first thing he did was take a glass from a cabinet and draw some cold water from the icebox, then slowly drank it. The chill liquid was refreshing on this warm morning. A warm shower had removed a few dull aches from his bones, but he didn't really feel ready to face the day until he'd something to drink and a hearty breakfast. Normally, at his age, a filling breakfast would be a chore, but…
He stepped over to the Clarke, his one concession to the advances of technology. Well, he reminded himself, his biggest concession — he was actually living in a house that virtually ran itself. The Clarke was a rectangular-shaped box with two doors in it; the top one fronted an enclosure the size of a large microwave, roughly eighteen inches wide by fifteen inches deep and tall. The lower area was taller, perhaps thirty inches in height. Its instruction manual had said that it could fabricate anything, given the proper raw materials and instructions. It was a handy device, Harry had to admit, though he only used it for meals.
"Good morning, Harry," Clarke said when he stepped up to it, rubbing his chin as he pondered what to eat that morning. His fingers felt a bit of stubble; he'd forgotten to shave that morning. Well, no matter, it was not like he had anywhere to go today. Or tomorrow, or the next day…
"Morning," Harry mumbled. He was not usually in a talkative mood this early in the morning, but the Clarke was a chatty little device, and if he seemed unusually laconic or uncooperative it got very fussy over him, so he tried to put on a veneer of cheerfulness around it. "How are you today?" You big steel worrywart.
"I'm operating quite well today, thank you for asking!" Clarke replied, cheerfully. Harry shrugged, having expected exactly that response. "Is there anything I can do for you, Harry? I notice it is nearly your usual breakfast time."
"Yes, I'm hungry this morning," Harry told it, and this was the truth: he was feeling a bit empty. "I could probably eat a hippogriff!"
"I'm afraid I don't have any recipes that require a hippogriff as one of the ingredients," Clarke said apologetically, making Harry smile. It didn't quite get certain nuances of humor. "Perhaps you could try something else today, and I will check with the central database to see if there any recipes I can download."
"Don't bother," Harry said. "There aren't any hippogriff anymore — at least, none on Earth." Most magical creatures had been transplanted from this world decades ago, during a period of high tension between several countries that had each claimed exclusive ownership of species of magical creatures found primarily within their borders. It had taken the president of the International Confederation for Magical Creature Preservation, Luna Scamander, to come up with a solution — she and a group of wizard naturalists had devised a plan to move all magical creatures to several planets in star systems near earth. Each planet's new ecology was carefully planned to balance the different magical creatures placed there, and no world was the sole haven of any particular species. Human populations on each of these worlds was minimal, staying there primarily to monitor conditions for the animals, and doubled as guides and lecturers for visitors wishing to observe the creatures living there. If she was still alive, Harry knew, Luna would still be giving lectures and tours on the world she was on, and her children with her…
Harry sighed. He hadn't thought of any of the old crowd in some time. He couldn't remember the last time he thought of Luna, or Neville Longbottom, who'd come close to marrying her but ended up marrying Hannah Abbott some years later. He hadn't thought of Ron Weasley, his "partner in crime," and fellow Auror, whom he'd partnered with for many years, or his twin brothers Fred and George. He hadn't even thought of Ginny, their only sister, and the woman who'd given him many happy years of marriage. But he had thought of one person…
Harry turned, looking into the front room, to the chair he sat in every day, and the small , spindly table that sat next to it with a single framed photograph placed in its center. A smiling woman with brown hair and brown eyes that he looked at every day, a non-magical picture that did not move or speak because Harry did not think he could bear it if she did. He missed her terribly.
Hermione.
Harry looked away, trying not to let his emotions get carried away with him again. It was too easy to pine for her, too easy to slip into tears and depression, and then he did nothing but wander aimlessly around the house, thinking about her and their times together, until he became too sad to do anything but lie in his bed until Clarke pested him to get up. In fact, he could almost hear its artificial voice now.
"Harry, did you hear me?"
Harry started. He had heard Clarke's voice! "Uh, sorry, Clarke, I was thinking," he said, trying to cover his mental lapse. "What did you say?"
"I asked what you would like for breakfast."
"Um." At least he was still hungry. "Some eggs, I guess — scrambled. And some bacon, some bangers, some oatmeal, and some toast."
"Would you like me to proportion items those for your standard breakfast calorie allotment, sir?"
"Since you're going to anyway," Harry said flatly, "yes."
"You know me so well, sir."
"I should — I programmed you."
"Actually, your great-grandson George last programmed me, sir."
"He did?" Harry exclaimed, surprised. "When did he do that?"
"My last program update occurred twenty-five years, seven months and twelve days ago, on —"
"Never mind, I remember," Harry grumbled. "Let me know when that's ready." Three, two, one…
"It's ready now, sir," Clarke said, and the top compartment's interior light came on, showing a tray containing a plate of steaming eggs, bacon, sausage, slices of butter-toasted bread, and a bowl of piping hot oatmeal. Also on the tray was a set of silverware and a cloth napkin.
"Of course," Harry said, but he smiled as he took the food out, inhaling the aroma of the eggs and sausages, his mouth already watering. "Thanks, Clarke."
"You're welcome, sir," it said, and Harry placed the tray on the table, then took his empty water glass back to the icebox. He put the glass in the dispenser enclosure and said, "Pumpkin juice, ice cold," and the dispenser filled the glass with orange liquid. Harry placed the glass of juice on the tray with his breakfast and sat down to eat.
He went through the meal almost mechanically, scooping up eggs, then oatmeal, then having a bite of sausage or bacon and a nibble at the toast and continuing that pattern, chewing his food and swallowing. It tasted good, but Harry was quite used to his breakfasts, and didn't think much about them anymore. He remembered days long past, when he and Ron would pile their plates high with food and wolf it down like ravenous beasts, as Hermione looked on, an eyebrow raised in incredulity at the amount of food they were able to put away, especially Ron, who always seemed to be hungry. But these days…
Harry pushed the plate away. It still held about half the eggs he'd gotten, though most of the bacon and all of the sausages were gone, as well as the toast. The oatmeal bowl was still mostly full — he hadn't really had an appetite for it this morning. He picked up the tray and walked over to the Clarke and put the tray in the bottom compartment. The Clarke would recycle the materials for later reuse.
"How was your breakfast, sir?" the Clarke asked him, as he closed the bottom compartment door.
"Good, good," Harry murmured. "I wasn't as hungry as I thought, though."
"If you know what you'd like for lunch, sir," the Clarke suggested, "I can have it prepared for you by your usual time."
But Harry shook his head. "Too full to think about food again right now. I'll get back to you later, okay?"
"That would be most excellent, sir."
Harry grunted and walked into the living room, moving over to the chair he always sat in to read. The book he'd been reading was on the small table next to Hermione's picture. He picked up the book and opened it, then realized he'd forgotten to put on his glasses this morning. "Oh, bother! Now where did I leave those things?" If they weren't in his pocket (he checked; they weren't) and they weren't on the table next to the book, then… he had no idea. Harry sighed gustily. He didn't fancy spending time searching the house for his spectacles — besides, they'd only be in the last place he looked. Harry smiled at the old joke. Of course they'd be there because, after you found something, you stopped looking for it! Fortunately, there was an easier solution.
Reaching into a pocket, Harry pulled out his wand and said, "Accio glasses!" Within a few moments a pair of glasses came speeding through the air, and he caught them clumsily in his free hand. Fortunately, experience had taught him, and the Unbreakable Charm he'd placed on them kept the glasses from breaking as he caught them. Unlike his round frames, which he hadn't needed in some time, these were reading glasses; ironically the lenses were in the shape of half-moons, like the glasses Professor Dumbledore had used, long ago.
Another person Harry hadn't thought of in a long time: Professor Dumbledore, his headmaster at Hogwarts for his first four years there. The last he'd seen of the professor was shortly after the defeat of Lord Voldemort, when he and the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Professor James Monroe, had decided to take a summer trip together. It had been a happy time for Harry — Hermione, whom he thought had been killed by Voldemort at the end of the Triwizard Tournament during the last task, had only been mostly dead; Monroe found a way to revive her, and they'd planned a celebratory trip to Paris, with Hermione's parents. But when they returned to Hogwarts the following September, they found Professor McGonagall installed as the new Headmistress, with Remus Lupin the new DADA teacher. Also, amazingly, Lupin's lycanthropy was in remission, cured by improvements to the Wolfsbane Potion, which had been introduced by none other than Professor Snape! Lupin spent several years teaching at Hogwarts, and while he and Snape never became friends, they both held a tolerant respect for each other's abilities.
Sighing at the number of old memories that had been sparked in him this morning, Harry tried to settle down and read, but had no sooner opened the book than there was a knock at his door. Who could that be? Harry thought, annoyed. There were very few people living in Godric's Hollow these days — the few people he still knew understood they should call or text Clarke before coming over. He considered simply not answering the door. Bu no — Clarke would start asking questions about how he felt and whether he felt depressed or isolated, and Harry didn't want to be psychoanalyzed by a bloody home appliance! "Coming!" he called out, then hove himself out of his chair with a grunt and slouched over to the front door. He opened it and groaned inwardly.
Two young men stood outside his door, both in slacks, white shirts and dark ties, and both smiling genially at him. Harry'd had young men like this at his door before, trying to get him to listen to stories about their religion. "Sorry, boys," he said, before either of them could speak. "I'm not really interested in hearing about the Bible or the book of whatever it is you want to talk about, so if you'll excuse me —"
"Sorry, sir," one of them interrupted. "We're not here to preach to you. We work for NanoCasts, an independent and user-run vee-cast site on the Webnet. We recently learned that the famous Harry Potter —"
Oh, no, here we go again! Harry thought disgustedly. Will they never leave me alone, even after all these years?
"— was living in Godric's Hollow, and we wanted to do a vee-cast on you, as a retrospective of your victory over the Dark wizard Lord Voldemort, and recognition of your 140th birthday."
Harry blinked. "Is that how old I am? I guess I stopped counting at 98."
The young men both smiled. "It's today, in fact. Happy birthday, Mr. Potter!"
"Hmph. Thanks," Harry grunted. "But I don't know about all this —"
"Oh, it won't take long," the other young man said. "We'll just do a short interview, ask you some questions about what you've been doing since your epic battle with Lord Voldemort, and use some archive trideo for the rest of the piece."
Harry dithered. "I don't think anyone's gonna want to see a broken down old wizard knocking around his house in his dotage."
"Well," the first young man said, trying to coax him, "we will be publishing this on the Webnet, so it will be going out on GalaxyNet as well. If you have friends, relatives or descendants anywhere in the galaxy, they'll be able to pick up this story."
Harry didn't answer immediately, but stood looking into the distance, seemingly lost in thought. Perhaps it's time, he pondered, to set the record straight. After one hundred and twenty-five years, I suppose I've lived the lie long enough.
"Uh, sir?" One of the young men touched him on the shoulder, in concern. "Are you all right?"
Harry blinked and looked at them. "Tell you what," he suggested. "If you want, I'll give you the whole story of my life. Including what really happened with Voldemort, if you'll record it with your vee-thingy and put it out for everyone to see."
"Really?" Both young men seemed excited by this offer. "We'd love that!" the second young man continued. "I'm a real fan of yours, Mr. Potter!"
"Me, too!" the first one agreed. "It would be absolutely gluonic to hear your story!" Harry didn't know what that meant, but it sounded positive.
"Come on in, then," he said, waving them into the house. They stepped inside, looking around his living room. "Where do you want to do this?"
"Wherever you feel comfortable, sir," the first one said. "Do you use this chair here? We can have you sit — oh!" He was staring at the picture of Hermione. "I see you have a photograph of Hermione Granger-Weasley there!"
"Yeah," Harry said, gruffly. He wished he'd moved it before letting them in!
"It's an old-style picture, too," the young man went on looking at it until Harry reached over and laid it flat. "Uh, sorry — did I do something wrong?"
"No," Harry lied. "It's just a picture of a friend I keep for old time's sake." It wasn't as if he didn't want to talk about Hermione, but he also didn't want to talk too much about her — there were some things in his life he'd prefer to keep to himself, even if he did plan to reveal his big secret about the defeat of Voldemort.
"I'll sit in the chair," Harry said, nodding at it. "But before we do anything, I have some questions I'd like answered."
"Of course," the first young man replied. "Anything you want to know." He looked around, but the only other furniture in the living room was a divan. "Do you mind if we find some chairs?"
"I can make a couple," Harry offered, reaching for his wand. "I am a wizard, you know."
"Thank you, sir," the second young man said, politely. "But don't trouble yourself — we can manage." Drawing a wand of his own, the young man flourished it twice, causing two plush recliners to appear. Harry nodded approvingly, impressed with the young man's ability. Both young men sat down facing Harry. "You said you had some questions for us," the young man prompted.
"Yes," Harry nodded, rubbing his stubbly chin. "Just a few, to get a feel for who I'll be telling my story to. For instance, how many people are currently living on Earth?"
The first one answered. "I think the current estimates are about two million humans. The number has been steadily decreasing for the past forty years, as more and more people opt to upload to the Web."
That was a fact Harry could attest to, as a number of his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, some of whom he'd never met in the flesh, had done so over the past half-century. Even Fred and George Weasley had gone into the Web several decades ago, just as they had turned 100. Harry remembered his last face-to-face conversation with them, when they told him they'd had one hundred years in the flesh, now they wanted to see what electronic life was like. "D'you know how many people are in the Web now?" Harry asked.
"That's harder to estimate," the second one answered. "But the most reliable number is about fifteen trillion. Of that, the estimated number of people who have uploaded is about 35 billion. The rest are Arts." Arts was the most accepted term for a person whose mind had been artificially constructed from models of optimized human brain structures.
"That's a pretty big audience," Harry muttered. "I don't think I can get my head around a number that big."
"Well, if it helps," the first young man offered, "fifteen trillion miles is about 2.5 light-years, which is not even as far as it is from here to Proxima Centauri, which is about four and a quarter light-years away."
Harry laughed. "That didn't help," he said. The young man smiled wryly.
"What other questions do you have, Mr. Potter?" the other young man asked.
"Well, you might tell me your names," Harry suggested. "So I don't have to call you 'Hey' and 'You'."
Both young men chuckled. "Sorry," the first one said. "I'm Jim." Jim was a bit shorter than the other young man, Harry had noticed, with hazel eyes. Unlike the current trend in both men and women, he did not shave his head, but had dark brown hair, cut above the ears, and short in the back.
"And I'm Al," the second one added. He had hair, like Jim, though it was reddish-brown, with deep blue eyes. He had a goatee and, above it, a long nose. "Sorry we didn't introduce ourselves earlier, sir! I guess we were just too caught up in meeting you."
"No problem," Harry demurred. "I suppose I've forgotten my manners as well — would either of you like something to drink?"
They glanced at one another. "Sure," Jim said. "That would be finest! What do you have?"
"I can get anything you want," Harry offered. "Water, tea, butterbeer, pumpkin juice, soda…"
"I'd like a soda," Jim said. "Any kind of cola is fine."
"Tea would be nice," Al decided. "Iced, if you don't mind — it's a warm day."
Nodding, Harry produced his wand and flicked it in front of them. A small table appeared with three glasses on it. Next to Jim's ice-filled glass was an ice-cold packet of Pepsi Ultimate, while Al's glass was already filled with ice cubes and amber liquid, a slice of lemon set on the rim. His own glass was filled with cold pumpkin juice. While Jim emptied the packet into his glass Harry and Al both tasted their drinks.
"Ahhh," Al sighed, after tasting the tea. "It's been a while since I had a glass of really good tea." He looked over as Jim sipped at his cola. "Much better than that 'soft drink' rubbish — there are much better ways to partake of sugar."
Jim chuckled into his glass. "This is the nectar of the gods, dude. I think you need to give it another chance."
Al lifted his glass. "I'll stay with tea, thank you very much."
"Why don't we get started?" Harry suggested, not caring to hear idle banter between the two young men. "Where are the cameras, or whatever you use for recording pictures?"
"Oh, it's a little more sophisticated than that, sir," Jim said, taking out a small cylinder. "We use a foglet vee-deo array to record from a surround perspective. The audience will be able to experience your interview from any angle they choose, or multiple angles at once, depending on their viewing device." He clicked a button on the side of the cylinder and a fine mist seemed to spray out of it, quickly dispersing into the air. "Okay, we're ready. If you want to say something off the record, just let us know and we'll stop recording," he told Harry.
Harry looked around. He could see nothing in the air around him, but there were supposedly thousands of tiny "foglets," or miniature robots, that could record images and construct a virtual three-dimensional views of whatever they recorded. While he could create realistic three-dimensional illusions with magic, and even transfigure inanimate objects to make them act as if alive, concepts such as uploading and objects like foglets mystified him. "Before we get started, I have another question," he said.
"What is it?" Al asked.
"You said earlier there were about two million humans on Earth today," Harry recalled. "When you first showed up at my door I didn't think either of you were wizards, but at least one of you —" he gestured toward Al "— has a wand. I wanted to know about how many of that two million are wizards."
Al and Jim exchanged surprised glances. "Uh, they all are," Jim said.
Harry looked shocked. "But what about Squibs?" Some wizards in his day were born without magic — he remembered Mrs. Figg, his batty old neighbor from when he lived on Privet Drive, who'd turned out to be one, as well as Mr. Filch, the caretaker at Hogwarts.
"They found a cure for that not long after the gene therapies that allowed normal humans to become magical were developed," Jim replied. "In fact, the current therapies now allow witches and wizards to perform wandless magic at the same level as with a wand."
Harry shook his head. "Magic without a wand? I hadn't thought about that in a long time. I remember the first magic I learned was from a book on wandless magic."
"I —" Jim stopped, then asked, "Really?"
"Yeah," Harry nodded, remembering. He looked around at a bookcase standing nearby. "I still have that book. I wonder…" He extended his hand, trying to remember the techniques he'd learned so long ago. One of the books in the bookcase wobbled, then floated over to him. He held it so Jim and Al could see it.
"A History of British Birdwatching," Al read off the cover. 'That doesn't seem very magic-related."
"You have to concentrate," Harry told them, "as if you're trying to see just below the cover." Al and Jim concentrated on the cover, then both of them smiled.
"Ah! I see it now," Al said. "A Young Wizard's Guide to Wandless Magic! How long have you had that book, Mr. Potter?"
"It was given to me when I was eight years old," Harry said, turning the book around to look at its cover as well. "On my eighth birthday, in fact."
"Who gave it to you?" Al asked.
"Professor James Monroe," Harry replied at once.
"Wasn't he the Hogwarts teacher who broke the curse Lord Voldemort placed on the position when Professor Dumbledore refused to hire him for the job?" Jim asked. "How did you know him when you were only eight years old?"
"He lived in my neighborhood in Little Whinging when I was a kid," Harry replied. "I never knew why back then, but he wanted to help me learn magic. He got me this book, let me read a lot of other books on magic at his house. He got me my first wand, even before I was supposed to have one. When he left Hogwarts, he also left me his house, which had a library in its basement that had books even the Hogwarts library didn't have! By the time I left Hogwarts I'd read every one of those books, all thirteen thousand, nine hundred and sixty-two of them."
"Sufferin' succotash!" exclaimed Jim. "That's a lot of books to read!"
"It was," Harry agreed. "But he was my mentor and when he left, his books and his house were all I had to remember him by. I wanted to do something to honor him, as well as Professor Dumbledore. Since both of them read a great number of books, I thought reading all of Professor Monroe's books would be a fitting tribute to him."
"So, is Professor Monroe the one who trained you to defeat Lord Voldemort?" Jim asked, shrewdly.
Harry looked at him a long moment. Finally, he said, "I suppose we ought to start the interview, so I can answer that question."
"Okay," Jim said. He pressed a control on the cylinder that had released the foglets. "We're rolling. Al, you want to do the intro?"
"Certainly," Al said. He cleared his throat, then began. "Hello! We're here in the quiet little town of Godric's Hollow, population about fifty — including the legendary Harry Potter, long-renowned as the person who defeated Lord Voldemort in June 1995. Now, one hundred and twenty-five years later, we are here with Mr. Potter on his 140th birthday to reveal to you the exciting details of that epic battle between the Boy-Who-Lived and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named."
Turning to Harry, Al said, "Good morning, Mr. Potter."
"Good morning, Al," Harry replied.
"Thank you for taking the time to talk to us on your birthday," Al went on, conversationally. "I'm sure you have a lot of activities planned for today!"
"Sure," Harry said evenly. "A lot of reading, a lot of farting, and a lot of sleeping."
Al laughed nervously and looked over at Jim. "Keep going," Jim said, prompting him. "We can deal with the outtakes later."
Al nodded and looked back at Harry. "What can you tell us about that historic day, Mr. Potter?"
Harry had put on a very serious face. "I'm glad to have this opportunity to clear the air, Al. For over one hundred years the world has known that Harry Potter defeated Lord Voldemort, ending the greatest threat to wizard and Muggle freedom since the defeat of Grindelwald fifty years earlier.
"But today I'd like to tell you what really happened on that day at Malfoy Manor, when I and six other wizards found Voldemort and a small group of Death Eaters holed up there. History has recorded that Voldemort and I dueled, and that I killed him. But that was all a lie. I did not kill Lord Voldemort."
Jim and Al looked at one another, amazement on their faces. "But — but — if you didn't kill Voldemort," Jim sputtered, "who did?"
"My Aunt Petunia."
Author's Note: Now that 140-year old Harry Potter has owned up to his awful secret — he never actually defeated Voldemort — what will happen next?