Chapter 4: CHAPTER THREE (Part 2)

Peterson placed the testicle gently on the table. “They’re beyond saving, Mr. Gilbert. Even if we could do something it would take decades, maybe longer before the thoroughbreds return to a point where they can compete successfully on a racetrack.”

“You do realize that horse racing has gone into a decline since the ‘80’s. Not as popular as it was in the 1940’s... ‘50’s. People nowadays buy the lottery, step into a casino...”

“Now you sound like a pessimist, Mr. Gilbert. As long as there are people willing to place a bet there will always be racing. Because of the virus a lot of tracks have closed, but the major ones are still open, still doing business.”

Thanks to the artificial horses, he wanted to say, but didn’t bother.

They walked past a table with about a dozen tails. An olive-skinned girl with black hair tied back into a ponytail was brushing one of the chestnut tails. It reminded him of Dawny Lee’s tail, long, thick, and chestnut, just like her coat.

“Do you make horses to specifications?” he asked. “What I mean, does someone... an owner, come to you and say, “I want a colt with a white left fore and... lots of speed?”

“We’re not allowed by the Jockey Club. It’d give some people an advantage.”

“But you’ve been asked.”

“Of course. You wouldn’t believe what some people are willing to pay for the perfect thoroughbred.”

He’d believe it. There were no limits to what people would do in order to achieve their goals. And if parting with a huge chunk of money was no problem ,goals could be reached much easier.

What was the perfect thoroughbred? That thought settled in his mind as he followed Peterson to the door.

As they headed down another walkway, Peterson said. “I’ll take you to Building C, and let Forster explain the programming.”

He was in no mood to have someone explain microchips and data processing. Even though computers ran everything theses days, it took him a while to admit he needed one. He had told Lisa he didn’t need a computer to tell him when to buy or sell a horse, when to clean the stalls, when to enter his horse in a race. Until he realized that was exactly what he needed. Computers could take you from Aqueduct to Santa Anita in the blink of an eye, could find you buyers for your horse, could give you a list of thoroughbreds you might be interested in purchasing, could put you in touch with other owners, trainers, jockeys, and so much more. Dawn told him that in the latter half of the twenty-first century owning a computer was vital, and everybody had a computer and one or even two cell phones, and the world was even more advanced than seventy, eighty years ago. She tried to show him how easy it was, and he watched and listened, finally admitting that the computer was an essential tool for his business.

When he still had all his horses, when the deadly equine virus was still far from everyone’s mind, he set up his own website with the help of Dawn. ‘Gilbert Thoroughbreds.’ A section for selling thoroughbreds, a section for purchasing them, a section for communicating with other horse people. He agreed with Dawn on a Facebook page, said no to Twitter. The majority of photographs featured on the website were taken by Dawn, although he and Lisa contributed their share.

The virus took it all away.

Brian Forster, a stout balding man, stood about half a head shorter than Gilbert. When Gilbert shook his hand he noticed short, stubby fingers. He thought it rather unusual for a man working with computers.

“Welcome to the Brain Department,” Forster said, an Irish lilt in his voice. “Let me show you what we have here.”

“I’ll leave you in capable hands, Mr. Gilbert,” Peterson said. “Forster is far more knowledgeable in this department.”

Forster lead him to a wide aisle. On both sides, desks were arranged in an orderly manner, and on these desks, computers, multiple hard drives, keyboards, printers. Men and women, maybe androids sat at their stations, hands busy at the keyboards.

“What we do here,” Forster said, “is program each horse after it has been built, but each program is different. Let’s look at what we have here.” He leaned over a blonde woman who, if she was an android, must have been built to someone’s specification. “This horse will be a three-year-old colt.”

“How can manufactured horses be aged?”

“We give the horse an age that’s needed,” Forster said. “If a track needs, let’s say, older horses, we’ll build older horses, four and up. If another track needs two-year-olds we give them two-year-olds. Once we establish their ages they can’t be changed. A horse that’s five years old this year will be six come January the first next year.”

“Why don’t you just dispense with giving ages to horses? The public doesn’t give a damn about the age of the horse, especially artificial horses. They just want something to bet on.”

“Jockey Club rules.” Forster glanced at the screen, full of words and numbers and symbols meaningless to Gilbert. “Now this colt here will win his fair share of races.”

“You mean you have his racing career all mapped out?”

“It’s totally random. While we do put in a certain percentage of wins into the program we do not put in when the horse will win. This horse, for example, might win three in a row, then lose the next five, or he might lose his first six races before he finally gets a win.”

“I get the picture.” He followed Forster to another terminal. More words, more numbers.

“Two-year-old filly, good potential, possible stakes material.”

He gave the screen a cursory look. More information he didn’t understand, more words, more numbers, flitting up and out of sight, replaced by more of the same. Might as well be Greek. “Couldn’t someone come in here and reprogram a horse or a number of horses? Aren’t the workers here... you know, tempted?”

“Two things, Mr. Gilbert. First, security is very tight. If someone tries to tamper with the program an alarm will sound, this area will shut down, and the person responsible will be questioned. Second, once these programs have been entered into the computer, they are locked, and the only one who can open them and examine them to make sure everything is on the up-and-up, as if were, is the inspector. And in order to be an inspector at Equine Electronics you have to go through quite a bit of rigorous training. Once the inspector is satisfied that someone hasn’t programmed a horse to win every race, he... or she locks the program.”

“Can the program be changed? I mean, prior to locking?”

“No. Once the programmer has entered all the data, he.. or she types a company-assigned password, and that password locks out the programmer, but not the inspector. You can see on the board over here that Programmer 24C has just locked herself out, and is waiting for the inspector who may come shortly or if she’s busy, later on, or maybe the next day.”

“But these programmers here,” he said, “wouldn’t they have an advantage over someone like me. They know everything about the horses they program.”

“I told you, all the programs are random. Each program only tells you that Horse A will win 65% of his races while Horse B will win 10% of his. Now, realistically, Horse A should beat Horse B most of the time but the programs are written in such a way that Horse B could beat Horse A, let’s say... four out of the five times they meet. There is a lot of... randomness here, which is what I think the public wants.”

“So these programmers are as much in the dark as the rest of us.”

“That’s right. And you won’t find a horse like Ruffian from the 1970’s, winning ten out of ten races.”

“How about someone like Secretariat?”

Forster shrugged. “Might happen, might not. But if it does, that horse will still lose his fair share of races. Come with me. I’ll show you a finished product.”

A finished product. Visions of brand-new cars in a huge lot, ready to be sold, floated into his mind.

He followed Forster down another long hall. It terminated five hundred feet later at a large double door. Forster pushed the left one, held it open for him.

The first thing he saw was a large stable with half a dozen stalls. Scrupulously mean, no odor of urine of feces. No sign of hay or straw, no sign of any tools usually associated with a horse farm.

The second thing he noticed was half a dozen artificial horses standing in the spacious stalls. They did not move, as if someone had turned them off.

Horses with an on-off switch. He had to smile at that thought.

The third was Paul Brenner, standing near one of the stalls.

“I’ll leave you with Brenner,” Forster said. “I know computers, he knows horses. He’ll tell you what you want to know.”

“We’re all specialists here,” Brenner said as he watched Forster head back to the doors.

“And what do you know?”

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“Over here,” Brenner said, ignoring the question. He opened one of the stall doors, walked into a stall occupied by a bay horse.

He followed Brenner into the stall, staying close to the door.

“Meet Random Sid,” Brenner announced. “Two years old, should be ready to race late this summer.”

“Did you name him?”

“No. That was the idea of one of the secretaries. She said her father’s name was Sid.”

He looked at the horse, checked underneath. A colt, he decided, even though that designation should be left to the real colts of the world.

The colt turned its head, regarded him with lifelike eyes.

“Touch his skin,” Brenner said. “It’s so realistic you won’t be able to tell the difference between this and a real horse.”

He touched the colt’s neck, expecting to feel something cold and hard, something... metallic? All he felt was the warm soft hairs of a sleek bay thoroughbred.

The horse did not react to his touch.

“It’s... it’s almost as if he were alive,” he said. Almost, he emphasized in his mind.

“Realism, Dave,” Brenner said. “When you look at one of our horses you’d swear they were breathing.”

Breathing? Not by a long shot. Right now, this horse reminded him of a specimen at the Westover Museum of Nature.

“Notice how clean his stall is?” Brenner said.

“I’ve noticed.”

“That’s one advantage our horses have over the real ones. They don’t piss and they don’t crap. No mucking out stalls.”

“Why does he need a cock... and balls if he doesn’t take a leak and he can’t reproduce?”

“Realism,” Brenner repeated. “The public wants nostalgia. We give it to them.” He reached under, poked his hand into the colt’s sheath. “As dry as the rest of the horse. No smegma, no semen, no urine. Don’t you wish your filly was this clean?” He gave Gilbert a smirk, but it disappeared when Gilbert glared at him.

“That’s not realism.”

“People don’t care about that. They care what’s on the outside. If the track advertises colts and geldings in a race they'd better be a sheath where it’s supposed to be. And no balls for the geldings.”

Random Sid had dropped his penis, now dangling between his hind legs. Totally useless. Someone had this bright idea to hang something totally unnecessary on these artificial male horses, something that made no sense.

“Who decides how long it’ll be?” he asked.

Brenner chuckled. “It was decided right at the beginning that a 20-inch cock should be the norm, although some wanted longer... three feet, four feet. Not realistic. I remember one time Lawson – he worked on male genitalia – made a cock four feet long and had it attached to this rather small colt. He thought it was hilarious until Peterson told him everything we do here is serious business and fired him.”

“Do you like working here?”

“As opposed to your place?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“It’s a lot easier here, Dave. The horses have everything programmed into them. There is no problem with horny colts or hot fillies. They’ll keep their minds on running.”

“They’re not horses, they’re just machines built to look like horses.”

“They’ll last longer than your horse. No, let me rephrase that. They can last longer, but of course for the sake of realism some of our horses occasionally break down.”

“You arrange these breakdowns?”

“Of course not.” The anger in Brenner’s voice was obvious. “I’ve told you, it’s random. Everything related to how a horse runs is random. I’m sure Forster told you all about it.”

“Why have them break down at all? Why bother with realism when people know these are artificial horses. You could have these... horses run for years and years.”

“It’s what the Jockey Club wants. Come on, Dave, there’s one more horse I want to show you. If you want to check her... equipment.” He chuckled again, as if remembering some private joke.

He followed Brenner to another stall occupied by a black horse. “This is The Tigress. Two years old. Been racing already, but taking a break right now.”

“She? You mean she has...”

Brenner lifted the horse’s tail. Anus, vulva. Female. Alleged female.

“More realism, I guess. Are you her trainer?”

“In a way,” Brenner says. “Actually, she’s owned by Duncan Reynolds, and he’s listed as the... official trainer. But while she’s here, you might say I’m her trainer. I’m responsible for all the horses that will soon set foot on the various tracks in North America that are still open.” He patted the horse’s rump, walked out of the stall. “I have about twenty people working for me.”

Human, android, or both? “What made you decide to give up training real horses?”

“I looked at the future,” Brenner replied.

“It was the money, wasn’t it?”

“That wasn’t the major reason.”

“Equine Electronics dangled a bigger carrot under your nose.

“It wasn’t like that at all.”

“Whatever you say, Paul.”

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