by J. S. Morin
“Wouldn’t’ve, if I’d thought half a second,” Plato growled through his teeth, just softly enough that Eve suspected that not everyone in the room had heard him.
“We can’t just ignore—” Jennifer81 tried to begin formulating an argument.
But this was Charlie7’s hearing now. It reminded Eve of her kung fu sparring with Phoebe, wondering why the smaller, weaker girl kept getting up.
“Sure you can,” Charlie7 cut her off. “I’ll personally vouch for Plato. I take responsibility for keeping him out of trouble.”
When Jennifer81 called the vote, Eve dared to raise her own voice among the “ayes” this time. There were fewer than for her own vote, but most of the rest merely abstained.
Abstaining was a “nay” without having to “nay” at Charlie7.
Eve rose from her seat. “Am I free to go?” she asked hurriedly.
Jennifer81 gave a gracious nod. “We can arrange for transport back to the—”
“Thanks,” Eve replied. The nod was good enough for her. She left her awkward high-heeled shoes behind and ran for the lift.
“She’s Evelyn11,” Plato shouted after her, guessing where Eve was heading.
The lift doors opened. Eve hopped in. “I know,” she hollered back, not caring if the whole Human Committee heard. “It doesn’t make sense to me either.”
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Eve watched from the doorway.
Some robot’s private office on a lower floor had been converted to a surgical theater, and Gemini lay across the desk, unconscious. Nora109 had taken on a subordinate role in the efforts to save the robot in human guise. Ashley70 was leading the team now, with Janet45 assisting.
“…external bleeding is under control,” Ashley70 said smartly. “Patient has lost a lot of blood. How long until the kits arrive?”
“Ten minutes,” Nora109 replied. “But we don’t have an emergency blood supply.”
The glossy sheen peeled from Eve’s eyes, and she blinked awake. “I’ll do it!” she volunteered. “Transfuse mine.”
Nora109 shook her head. “Stay out of the way, Eve dear. You have the wrong blood type.”
Plato’s arms encircled Eve from behind, wrapping around her like the two halves of a coat. Eve swallowed back her worries and closed her eyes. Warmth radiated from the metabolic inferno built by Charlie24’s genetic tinkering.
“You’re too good for her, you know,” Plato mumbled as if he didn’t care whether Eve heard him or the comment was just for his own peace of mind.
Janet45 held Gemini by the wrist. “My force-feedback sensors aren’t sensitive enough. I’m losing her pulse.”
Eve sprang forward, except she didn’t move. Arms larger than Eve’s legs kept her in place without a hint of effort. When they loosened at the first sign of struggle, she felt safe. Plato wasn’t holding her back; he was just holding her.
If Eve wanted to rush in, get in the way, and maybe get Gemini killed, he’d let her.
Ashley leaned over and rested her head on Gemini’s chest. “Eighteen beats per minute. Where is our medical kit?”
“It’s coming,” Nora109 snapped. Eve had never seen her flustered this badly.
A sinking pit of dread settled in Eve’s gut. Gemini wasn’t going to make it. Wouldn’t an antigen reaction from Eve’s blood still be better than dying of blood loss?
Just as she was about to make that suggestion, the most obvious thought in the world sprang to the fore of her mind.
Twisting in Plato’s arms, Eve looked up and met his eye. The smile that usually came like the moon breaking through a cloudy sky only managed a twitch.
“Your blood would work,” Eve pointed out. “Same genes, same blood type. Right? Right…?”
“Yeah,” Plato said flatly. “It’d work.”
Eve stepped back, parting Plato’s arms like a beaded curtain made of cement. “Well?” She pointed to Nora109. “Go tell her.”
“Don’t wanna.”
Eve blinked in shock. “She’s not a robot. She’s human. Evelyn11 was a horrible, nasty, mean-spirited old she-devil, but Gemini’s not like that. She deserves a chance.” Eve didn’t call it a second chance because she suspected that Evelyn11 was into triple digits, at the least, on chances over the course of a centuries-long life.
Plato stared at the limp body sprawled across an office table. He closed his eyes, swallowed, and gave a tiny shake of his head.
“Come on, Plato,” Eve cajoled. “You’re not a killer. Charlie7 just took responsibility for you. You going to prove all those committee robots right? That you are just a killer and not a protector of humanity?”
Plato squeezed his eyes shut tighter. The muscles in his jaw stood out.
“What would a hero do?”
“Fine!” Plato snapped. He stepped around Eve and entered the makeshift hospital room. He shrugged out of the suit that tried to make him look respectable and rolled up the sleeve of the shirt beneath. “Here, tap me. I got plenty of blood. She ain’t that big.”
As Plato settled into an office chair, Janet45 jabbed a needle into his vein. By Eve’s best assessment, they were using a spare piece of coolant line for a tube. Its translucent blue, rubbery walls showed the flow of red, life-giving blood from Plato to Gemini.
With a jerk of his head toward the comatose clone, Plato looked right into Eve’s eyes. “Let’s get one thing clear here. I’m only doing this ‘cause of you.”
Eve didn’t care. All that mattered was Plato was doing the right thing. Whatever else Gemini had been, for a brief time, the two of them had been friends. If there was more to discover, Eve wasn’t going to ever find out if Gemini bled to death.
The wait became a vigil. It wasn’t long before a courier arrived from the hovership with medical equipment intended to keep Eve and her sisters healthy.
Time wore on. Eve’s feet hurt from standing in one place. Eventually, someone brought her food.
The idea that Gemini was Evelyn11 warred with the memories she had of the girl who’d helped her restore Charlie7. She pictured Gemini’s face, so like Plato’s in basic form and features, and superimposed Evelyn11’s in her imagination.
Eve shuddered.
How could she? How was Evelyn11 even alive to have tried? Wasn’t dying once enough of a lesson? Would Evelyn11 keep popping up from backup copies and hidden caches for the rest of Eve’s life, trying to reclaim her?
The girl in the makeshift operating theater had the answers. Even if Eve had been coldblooded enough to wish Gemini dead, there would be no answers forthcoming if she died.
Dating back to the Human Era, history demanded that a criminal be brought to justice. Eve wanted to do her ancestors proud. But a kernel of hate in her heart told Eve to build a machine that would rip the answers from Gemini’s mind whether she gave them willingly or not.
But at the same time, Gemini had become Eve’s friend. It was an impossible paradox. The mighty and all-knowing Creator, giver of food, inflictor of pain, designer of puzzles and obstacle courses and machines that could copy a human mind… wasn’t in that room. Gemini was.
Somewhere in the process of putting herself in a human body, Gemini had evolved beyond Evelyn11. Less certain, less arrogant, and less godlike in her manner, but still remembering facts and robots from her earlier life. Yet Eve remembered holding Gemini as she cried.
Robots couldn’t cry.
And so Eve watched the surgical team work, seeing only their backs and infrequent flashes of bloody instruments as they worked to save the life of a girl Eve might never forgive but couldn’t bring herself to condemn.
So long as Eve never tore her gaze away from the scene, nothing bad could happen.
Chapter Seventy
From just outside the lift on level 239, Charlie7 stood with arms crossed, watching Eve watch the efforts to save Gemini. The cane that had skewered Marvin76’s impersonator rested against the wall beside him.
Charlie7 doubted that he’d need it as a weapon again.
The lift tube hummed. The doors parted. Jennifer81 stepped out.
“So what’s the—?” the Human Committee chairwoman blurted but paused when Charlie7 raised a finger to his lips. She switched to a whisper. “What’s the prognosis?”
Charlie7 shrugged. “It was touch and go there for a moment, but when Plato agreed to give blood, I think that was the end of real danger.”
“Did he agree?” Jennifer81 asked with a raised eyebrow. “Or did you harangue him into it the way you swayed those committee votes?”
Charlie7 raised a hand to cover a spot where a human heart should have beat. “Me? Convince a man to go against his conscience? Never!”
Incredulity never carried the same weight in a whisper, but then, smirking all the while didn’t help, either.
“Does he not believe that she’s Evelyn11 uploaded to a human body?”
Charlie7 tilted his head side to side. “Tough to say, but I imagine he’s accepted it as fact.”
“Is it that she’s one of his own clones?”
Charlie7 snorted softly. “If anything, that’s a strike against her.”
“Then why?” Jennifer81 asked.
The chatter from the surgical theater hinted at microsurgical repair of arteries. Ashley70 had lived over six hundred years and hadn’t touched a human patient. But the surgical skills that nestled deep in her crystal matrix must have come readily when called upon.
Charlie7 had to roll his eyes. For someone to call themselves a member of the Human Committee—let alone the committee chair—Jennifer81 had forgotten what it was like to be human.
“How much of Jennifer Saito do you really remember?” Charlie7 asked.
Jennifer81 shrugged. “Statistically speaking, 53 percent.”
Taking off his bowler hat, Charlie7 deposited it on Jennifer81’s head. Sized for the Version 70.2 chassis, it fell down over the chairwoman’s eyes. “You know what I mean.”
“I really don’t.”
“What was your—her—husband’s name?”
Jennifer81 paused.
“No fair searching the Earthwide,” Charlie7 scolded. “It was Greg. And the Greg that Charlie Truman remembered would have walked through fire if Jennifer asked him.”
“You’re saying Eve convinced him?” Jennifer81 asked.
“No, I’m saying that he’s doing it for her. Not for himself. Sure as Newton’s Second Law, it’s not for Gemini’s sake.”
Jennifer81 harrumphed softly. “So, he’s not reformed. He’s just trying to perpetuate the species.”
“Come off it, Jennifer. He’s proving a timeless axiom. People are what make us human. One by one, we’re savages. Relationships give us courage. They show us what we mean in this world. Plato wants to be a better man because that’s who he wants Eve to see. That’s why we can’t box them up in tiny, isolated cells and wait for them to behave the way they should.”
“You know, Charlie,” Jennifer81 replied with a wary scowl. “Being the oldest robot doesn’t give you any special insight or wisdom regarding the human condition. If anything, you’re less human than anyone, being the farthest removed. These kids aren’t a Socratic model of a society. They need to be controlled, guided, shaped.”
Charlie7 flicked a gesture that drew Jennifer81’s attention to the glossy white floor. Flecks and splotches of red marred the pristine surface. “They’re human. Chaos is inevitable. No matter how hard we try to keep things tidy and robotic, they’re always going to make the occasional mess.”
He lowered his voice even further. “And every now and then, it’s going to wind up bloody.”
Chapter Seventy-One
Evelyn11 paced her little laboratory. She couldn’t get the news feeds to appear on her own internal computer, but the lab’s read-only terminal was showing more than enough. More than Evelyn11 ever would have wanted, for that matter.
The refuge beneath Kanto had turned into a casket, buried beneath the Earth. Evelyn11 was buried alive, and any exhumation would only be a prelude to execution.
There was nowhere for her to run.
Search teams were already combing the factory. There would be no hole in the net cast by the General Ethics Oversight Committee. No injunction from the Privacy Committee would stave off the search. The whole proceeding had become too public to bribe or bargain her way out.
The door snapped open, and Charlie25 thundered in.
“Come with me,” the uploader ordered.
Evelyn11 followed, if only because she sniffed the faintest hint of a plan. “What was that Gemini thing talking about?” she demanded. “Why did a human know so much about our operations? And why was she under orders to claim she was me of all bloody ridiculous notions?”
Charlie25 didn’t slow his pace, just the genteel side of breaking into a jog. “Gemini was a mistake.”
“A mistake?” Evelyn11 scoffed. She was struggling now to keep up. Her own shabby chassis was a hindrance competing with the robust Version 64.4 of the uploader. “You’re going to have to do better than that, Charles. Didn’t you swear to me that you disposed of the failed human upload?”
“Gemini isn’t our problem at the moment,” Charlie25 replied brusquely. “We’ve got bigger—”
“You bastard!” Evelyn11 cursed. “She didn’t die in the upload rig, did she? That’s the same girl who was with Eve14, wasn’t she?”
They flew through passages and clanged across catwalks. All throughout Kanto, the production machinery lay silent. The drones stood motionless. Evelyn11 and Charlie25 ran across the rollers of inert conveyors.
“Silence won’t save you,” Evelyn11 warned.
“She was a mistake,” Charlie25 reiterated. “I turned her loose on Eve Fourteen with instructions to capture your pet human alive.”
“She’s not a pet,” Evelyn11 insisted. “Eve14 is an invaluable test subject. A pet would imply some minimal degree of affection.”
Charlie25 grabbed the handrails of the catwalks, coming to an immediate halt. Evelyn11 crashed into the larger robot, unable to catch herself in time. She stumbled backward, only catching hold of a handrail herself to keep from collapsing to the grated floor.
“Affection?” Charlie25 scoffed. “You love that girl.”
Evelyn11 shook her head in denial as she regained her footing. “Don’t be silly. I made that mistake once. Never again. She’s a collection of cells; my future human host—at least she was. Now we’ll both be lucky to escape with our lives. I do trust you have a plan.”
“Of course, I do.”
As they proceeded through Kanto, Evelyn11 realized they were making a loop.
“Charles, where are we heading?”
“Throwing off pursuit. We needed time.”
Evelyn11 laughed nervously. “Pursuit? How can you…”
But the answer was obvious. While her transmitters had been disabled, Charlie25 was no doubt in contact with the factory’s security systems. The idea that committee enforcers were that close raced her logic circuits in loops of worry.
“But… but…” Evelyn11 spluttered as they entered the upload chamber. “This is back where we began.”
“Get in,” Charlie25 ordered.
“What?” Evelyn11 backed away from the uploader as he prepped the rig to accept a robot for scan. “No. I’m not getting in that thing. I’m starting to get used to this chassis. Besides, no one even knows who I am in it.”
“Except for Charlie7,” Charlie25 countered. “You might slip by on Eve and Gemini since human memory is less than 80 percent reliable. But Charlie7’s seen you.”
“They’ll put two and two together,” Evelyn11 reasoned. She glanced around and assessed her options for escape. But without a tie in to the security feeds, she’d be running blind. “Two inert chassis and two sparkling new ones; it won’t be composing a symphony to figure out who we are.”
“We won’t be here at all,” Charlie25 said with a hint of a smirk.
For the first time, Evelyn11 saw a ray of sunlight pee
k through the gathering storm. She lowered her voice and hunched forward. “You’ve got another hideaway?”
“Beneath Antarctica. Completely isolated. Fully secure. A small production facility keeps it updated with current model chassis. I’d hoped it would never come to this, but we need a fresh start.”
A fresh start. Oh, how Evelyn11 desperately wanted that. She was sick of the castoff chassis and the laboratory filled with toys standing in place of modern genetic research equipment.
“Maybe a holiday is in order,” Evelyn11 mused aloud.
Charlie25 snorted. “That’s about our only option for the duration of Eve Fourteen’s lifetime. We’re taking the concept of lying low completely subterranean.” He patted the upload table with a quick double-tap of his palm. “No time to waste.”
Evelyn11 nodded. “Oh, I hate the idea of waking up not knowing whether I’m me or merely a copy.” She edged onto the table.
Charlie25 wasn’t so gentle, manhandling her into position and exposing the connection points in her skull. Cables plugged into places Evelyn11 hated even admitting she had. No other part of robotic life made her feel so much like a thing as having her mind scanned for upload to a new chassis.
“See you on the other side,” Charlie25 said with a reassuring smile.
Everything went dark.
Chapter Seventy-Two
Charlie25 unplugged the EMP-wiped chassis from the rig. There hadn’t been time in his plan to even go through the pretense of uploading Evelyn11’s consciousness for possible later use.
If Charlie25 ever needed her again, an older backup would have to do.
With a casual heave, he tossed the lighter chassis aside. It skidded to a crumpled tangle of limbs against a wall.
No time to waste.
Charlie25 moved brusquely though the lower levels of his own domain. Powering the EMP had already alerted his pursuers to his location. Their transit time back from the false trail would still take long enough for him to complete the series of tasks required.