by J. S. Morin
The colorful line of clones jogged to a small, modern building set just outside the temple grounds. Where the temple had a sense of being pulled up from the flesh of the Earth itself, the washroom and shower facility was just tacked on like an adhesive note.
“Did you bring it?” Phoebe asked in a whisper as she jogged up beside Eve.
Eve fished a small cylindrical device from her waistband and pressed it into Phoebe’s hand. “You still up for this?” Eve asked.
“It’ll grow back.”
That hadn’t been Eve’s primary concern, but the response answered her question well enough. It meant despite getting dumped to the mat on her hip, back, and buttocks repeatedly, Phoebe was still willing to play along in Eve’s plan.
Water ran from shower heads in eight separate stalls. Eve took a cursory wash, listening to the faint sizzle of the hair trimmer at work. Ten minutes was a tight window.
A hand reached from under the adjacent stall as a swirl of water and green hair trimmings swirled down the drain. Eve snatched back the trimmer and set to work on her own head.
Setting the device for just a millimeter shorter than her current length, Eve ran the device all over her scalp. Without the interposing barrier of the stall divider, the scent of burning hair wrinkled Eve’s nose.
Hustling out of the stall in a towel, Eve grabbed Phoebe’s clothes and dressed. If there was one area in which her sisters were utterly foreign to Eve, it was in their choices of attire. The younger ones couldn’t get enough sparkles and ribbons. Olivia had reasonably muted tastes with the exception of a propensity for hats. Phoebe…
Well, Phoebe liked eye-searing pastels that probably bled into the infrared spectrum. The two-piece jumpsuit was a shade of pink that scraped Eve’s retinas raw. The canary yellow belt matched Phoebe’s shoes. Incongruously, they also matched her sister’s undergarments. Eve almost wished she and Phoebe weren’t the same size so she’d have had an excuse to wear her own. But these were straight from the cloth-o-matic, never worn.
Eve gritted her teeth and put it all on as Phoebe wiggled her way into Eve’s form-fit, neutral gray and black daily wear.
“I’ll stall them as long as I can,” Phoebe promised in a whisper.
“Thank you,” Eve mouthed.
She wanted to add “why are you doing this?” Phoebe had nothing to gain here. Eve wasn’t taking her along or even promising to come back.
With a smile that lit her face from dimples to eyes, Phoebe ducked inside the shower stall fully dressed and shut the door behind her. There was a click as the door latched.
“What’s Eve doing?” Theresa asked.
Eve, in the guise of Phoebe, breathed an elaborate sigh. “Who knows? I’ll go get Nora—” Eve caught herself before adding the 109 afterward. Phoebe wasn’t fond of numbered robot names.
The younger Eves took “Phoebe’s” advice and remained behind, standing outside the shower facility while Eve went for the chaperone. If there was one difference Eve had noticed between herself and her sisters above any others, it was that all of them appreciated being told what to do.
Simple directions. Predictable outcomes.
Had Eve been like that before Plato came for her? She suspected so but couldn’t imagine it. Eve’s own judgment felt sounder and more thorough than the agenda-driven orders of her captors, caretakers, and those who were a little of both.
“What’s going on here?” Holly68 asked curtly. “It’s been eleven minutes, eighteen seconds.”
“Where’s Eve?” Nora109 asked with a note of rising worry.
For a split second, Eve’s plan almost came crashing down in a wash of guilt. Nora109 might get blamed; worse, the well-meaning robot in the clean white dress would worry. Then Eve remembered that Nora109 and the others had brought this on themselves.
Eve rolled her eyes. “It’s Eve. She’s locked herself inside. I had to cut my hair short like hers. I think she was trying to fool you. Do I look silly like her, with scrub-brush hair?” To reinforce her story, Eve handed Nora109 the laser hair trimmer.
Nora109 and Holly68 exchanged a worried glance.
“You seeing what I’m seeing?” Nora109 asked.
“If you’re checking the sewage schematics, then yes,” Holly68 replied.
“You girls wait right here,” Nora109 ordered with a pointed finger that swept the assembled clones.
Holly68 led the way, with Nora109 in tow. Eve knew that the sewage system was a foolish route of escape. However, it was at least plausible. An accomplice or a smuggled tool kit could allow egress at a nearby processing station.
However, Eve hadn’t relished the idea of washing down a drainpipe with the collected waste from the showers and toilets. Her plan was simpler, cleaner, and falling into place as the two robots entered the washroom to confront Phoebe.
With her younger sisters transfixed, Eve slipped away.
Chapter Eleven
If any of Eve’s sisters noticed her departure, they didn’t raise an alarm. They stayed behind in an orderly cluster between the temple grounds and the showers.
As soon as she was out of sight, Eve ran.
The transpod and Holly68’s skyroamer sat in a clear, rocky stretch not far from the temple. Looking from one to the other, Eve popped the cockpit of the skyroamer and vaulted into the pilot’s seat.
As a personal craft and not one in any way special or valuable, Holly68 hadn’t locked it out. Eve powered the engines and logged into the computer as they warmed up.
But Eve didn’t take off.
From the computer console, Eve disabled the internal scanners, the positional reporting, and all self-diagnostic data. Then she programmed it on a flight path for Kansas and set a delay.
Closing the cockpit behind her, Eve rushed for the transpod.
Unlike Holly68’s skyroamer, this vehicle was in lockdown mode. Nora109 had been just paranoid enough to password lock the computer and flight controls. But the former head of the Sanctuary for Scientific Sins still wasn’t used to dealing with deceptive, ingenious, highly motivated humans.
Eve had planted a bit of computer code that scraped password data. She’d known Nora109’s lockout bypass for weeks. In seconds, Eve had administrative access to the system. As with the skyroamer, Eve disabled any system that could report the transpod’s occupants, destination, or status. Then Eve programmed it an autopilot course for Paris and set a timer synchronized with the skyroamer’s.
From behind a rock outcropping, Eve watched the two aircraft rise into the sky and head off in opposite directions.
“Which one is Eve aboard?” Eve asked with a smirk.
Keeping low, Eve slunk away into the wild forests of what was once central China.
Chapter Twelve
The Ozark Mountains were too quiet these days. It was the sound of birds that James187 missed most. On a bright morning, there should have been songs in the air. The trees had been planted just twenty-eight years ago and didn’t have the grandeur to attract flocks from the forests of New York or Washington.
The bear in the rifle’s iron sights wasn’t fully grown. James187 had his visual acuity tuned to human levels, watching the lump of fur fish for trout in the creek. It wasn’t having much luck. Sooner or later a Toby would come along with bear chow and make sure it didn’t starve.
Unless James187 decided to pull the trigger.
But the robotic hunter couldn’t do it. The bear was a pathetic creature. No challenge. No sport. And thus, no satisfaction.
He could have justified the kill by feeding it to his dogs back home. The carcass wouldn’t have gone to waste. Jimbo and Russels would have enjoyed the treat.
An alert popped up in James187’s view. “What now?” he grumbled.
It was another notification from the Social.
Lowering his rifle, James187 checked the message. However, upon realizing it was from James71, the hunter deleted it without reading the contents. The last thing he needed was an invitation to a community event.<
br />
Solitude.
James187 couldn’t get enough of being away from other robots. He’d taken a contract that brought him to the Ozarks just for the vacation. Eventually the breeding pair of glow-in-the-night raccoons might percolate to the top of James187’s to-do list. Finishing the job would result in dealing with Elizabeth9, though, which kept pushing those pesky rodents off James187’s agenda.
A few minutes later, another Social alarm dinged in James187’s internal computer.
The hunter wished he could afford to disable the alarms altogether. Cutting himself off from the Social would be liberating—and suspicious. There were still committees investigating Charlie7’s death and Evelyn11’s associates. Any overtly evasive behavior could shine an unwelcome spotlight on James187.
The ID on the message was obviously false but intriguingly so.
Trinity… James187 didn’t know anyone who used that alias, but he knew someone who might. The intro line for the message read: “Let’s watch The Matrix again.”
This was worth a read.
James, old buddy.
You never message anymore. Hoping you aren’t still mad. I’m not. I’ve got a problem with a pink-and-yellow panda running loose. Should be quick. I can give exact coordinates. We can make up for old times after.
It had to be Eve.
Everyone had stopped calling her 14. James187 had written a private subroutine to filter the number out of his speech and text communications. James187 wasn’t supposed to know the girl. Yet he did. And she knew him.
Eve also reminded James187 that he hadn’t made amends.
Sure, giving Charlie7 the location of Evelyn38’s secret laboratory had saved the young human’s life. Nevertheless, it was impossible to overlook that Eve wouldn’t have been in that situation in the first place had James187 not intervened.
The things Evelyn38—or Evelyn11 as it turned out—had done to that girl…
James187 wished he could bring himself to delete the memories. They were stored in his crystalline matrix, not his computer. Any manual alterations could prove disastrous. Still, it was something he pondered daily.
The bear wandered off. James187 let it go. The hunter’s footsteps were already treading a path back to a skyroamer parked in a nearby clearing.
Short of manually erasing the guilt, James187’s only hope of being free of it was to make things right with Eve.
A quick reply to “Trinity’s” message, and James187 got the promised coordinates back from Eve. The girl knew he could turn around and retransmit her location to anyone. Whatever agenda James187 served, Eve had placed her safety in his hands.
That just reinforced the guilt.
The skyroamer’s engines whined to readiness. James187 plotted a course to China. There was a panda to rescue who was too smart for her own good.
Chapter Thirteen
Evelyn11 tiptoed through the open doorway. The haunted depths of Kanto had been welcoming by comparison. This room held ghosts far more personal for her.
The lab was so freshly constructed it still gleamed with untreated steel, showing no signs of corrosion. The scanners, the remote power supply, the signal inducers… everything was factory fresh. The subject of the laboratory’s study was less so.
Evelyn11 ran a tentative hand along the upload rig. This wasn’t one of Kanto’s two legendary machines. This was her own. As her fingers traced the cranial restraint on the scan side of the rig, Evelyn11 struggled with the idea that she had died there.
The robotic geneticist had no recollection of the events immediately preceding her demise. The other half of the rig had been occupied by Eve14. Though official reports hadn’t included minutiae, Evelyn11 knew that Charlie7 had tinkered with the program.
Eve14 had survived the upload. Yet, through an unknown glitch, the rig had still wiped the Evelyn38 chassis Evelyn11 had been wearing.
Evelyn11 knelt and pried loose an access panel. Perhaps if she could examine the components herself, she could reconstruct what went wrong.
A door opening at the far end of the room had Evelyn11 scrambling to hide behind the upload rig.
“It’s just me,” Charlie25 reassured her. He leaned across the upload target bed and peered down at the rig’s creator. “Making yourself at home, I see.”
“You’re enjoying this. Aren’t you?” Evelyn11 demanded, rising and brushing off non-existent dust from her dress. “Seeing me skulk and scurry… You could have knocked. What if that had been ‘13?”
“Charlie13 is done studying this pile of scrap. He’s convinced it’s substandard for robotic use.”
“It’s not a pile of—”
Charlie25 threw up his palms as a barrier. “His word, not mine.”
The uploader backed away and circled around the far side of the rig. Evelyn11 scrutinized his mannerisms.
“Why’ve you brought me here?” Evelyn11 demanded. “What’ve you got planned? Have you found me a donor yet?”
Donor was such a lovely euphemism. Evelyn38 had been in for a routine chassis upgrade when Charlie25 had uploaded Evelyn11’s mind instead. ‘38 had been a good girl. Pristine committee records like hers were as good as receiving a knighthood. It bought Evelyn11 years before committee investigators had even begun to scan around her doorstep.
“I’ve been reading your research,” Charlie25 answered, evading the question but piquing the grumpy geneticist’s curiosity.
Evelyn circled the table as Charlie25 continued his coy retreat, forming a slow dance. “One thing to pick apart my life’s secrets, Charles. But really, couldn’t you have kept it to yourself?”
“You may be an expert in genetics and human psychoneurology, but I’m the one who knows uploading.” Charlie25 locked his eyes onto Evelyn11’s shabby new chassis.
Bargain bin rubbish, that’s what this chassis was. Version 40.7. Left and forgotten because of the 40.9. A hand-me-down body. Why couldn’t Charlie25 have the decency to look away? He was like a boarding school bully staring at the girl who’d just had her hair chopped crooked.
“I have friends on the outside, Charles,” Evelyn11 warned. “Ones who know I’m back.” It was a lie but of the best kind. There was no way Charlie25 could be 100 percent certain.
“You think I’d wipe you?” Charlie25 asked. She heard the smirk without the uploader so much as twitching a facial actuator to show it.
“Between processor cycles, if you thought I’d become a liability.”
Charlie25 aimed an ominous finger her way. “Don’t forget it. But I’ve got a surprise for you today.”
Evelyn11’s internal antenna picked up a near field communication. Encrypted, of course. With Charlie25, it wasn’t even worth the effort to try cracking the encoding. The uploader was no fool. That was one reason Evelyn11 had chosen to work with him in the first place.
A pair of automatons entered, bearing a purple foam-encased figure. A breathing tube and the exposed scalp were the only clues that their payload was a live human.
“What’s this?” Evelyn11 asked warily. She took a step back from the upload rig.
“If it works, a human body for you.”
“That’s not one of my Eves. If you were going to try to pull a fast one, you at least could have had the sense to find one the right size. This one’s downright Amazonian.”
The foam was contoured to the body encased within. The curves indicated a female specimen. But the Eves had been compact, graceful, and efficient. The creature inside the purple packaging was taller by a quarter meter, with broad shoulders and wide hips. Presuming a consistent thickness of the foam, Evelyn11 estimated the specimen’s mass at eighty kilos.
The two robots watched as the automatons loaded the foam-sealed human into the target side of the rig.
“I don’t know what you think you’re accomplishing,” Evelyn11 said as the robots strapped the foam cocoon in place.
Charlie25 ignored her and retrieved a wire mesh skullcap. The device was a neural interface of a type Evelyn11 hadn’
t seen before. It fit smugly to the exposed scalp of the human.
A rhythmic hiss from the breathing tube sped up. Evelyn11 had been so preoccupied that she hadn’t paused to consider whether the test subject was awake.
Charlie25 patted the table on the scan side of the rig. “Hop in.”
“I’ll do no such thing,” Evelyn11 protested.
The uploader stepped around the rig and loomed over Evelyn11 in her inferior chassis. For the first time, she wondered whether he’d chosen a wimpy, underpowered model to keep her in line. While Charlie25’s Version 64.4 wasn’t anything like a military automaton, there was no doubt in Evelyn11’s mind that he could force her into the upload rig.
“You’re the one who told me to find another solution. No robot is going to get close to Eve without the Human Committee’s approval. You want to wait years for the ideal circumstances to fall into place where one of our agents gets assigned to Eve’s security detail?”
Evelyn backed toward the door from which she’d entered. “No, but—”
“And you don’t think that Eve’s going to just wander into Kanto of her own volition. Do you?”
“Of course not!”
Evelyn11 fumbled for the door controls behind her. Though her fingers found the release switch, nothing happened. This was Charlie25’s world. Not hers.
“Twenty minutes ago, Eve Fourteen went missing,” Charlie25 said. Evelyn11 could even pick up on the subtle way he pronounced the difference between Eve14’s chosen surname and the designation she’d been born with.
“What do you mean, missing?”
“Our people are doing everything we can to impede the search. But there’s only—”
“Wait. What do you mean impede? We can’t afford to lose her!”
“We have to lose her,” Charlie25 growled. “If the Human Committee ever gets her back, she’ll be under triple guard twenty-four hours a day for the rest of her life. All the Eves will. We need—YOU need—Eve to get thoroughly lost… then found. She’ll trust a fellow human.”