E-Boy

by Anh Do

  Reno Belic was dead.

  Secondary objective complete, he sent to Mawson.

  ‘Woohoo! Great going, Gemini.’

  The General’s jubilation seemed at odds with the grave nature of the situation. Death was not something to be celebrated, surely?

  Gemini drew himself up and inspected his elbow. It was only superficial damage, but he was curious to see what he looked like under his synthetic skin. He was surprised to discover his frame was bright pink.

  He turned to the terrified hostages.

  ‘Please remain calm,’ he said. He began to move among them, cutting their bonds with his laser scalpels. Two of them were injured – a woman with a wound on her brow, and a young man with a broken arm. Gemini set to work, using nano-instruments and micro-stitches to stop the woman’s bleeding, and a syringe of anaesthetic to ease the man’s pain.

  He accessed his bank of expressions to see if he could find one to calm everyone down. His mouth stretched wide while his chrome eyes flashed.

  Several of the hostages flinched away. Might need to practise that one, Gemini thought to himself. He returned his face to a neutral expression as he examined the man’s broken arm.

  ‘This will hurt,’ said Gemini, ‘but it will aid your recovery. Are you ready?’

  The man nodded nervously. Crunch! Gemini snapped his bone back into alignment.

  The man howled in pain. ‘Who … who are you?’

  ‘I am a Gemini model android, a state-of-the-art medical professional.’

  ‘Oh. Well thanks, Gemini,’ the man said, then passed out.

  ‘One hundred per cent complete success!’ exclaimed General Mawson, slapping Gemini hard on the back.

  Gemini calculated that the force of the back slap was greater than necessary to convey congratulations. He felt something stir deep within, but it was gone before he could process it.

  ‘Happy to serve, General,’ he said.

  Gemini glanced around the control room. Officers stood at computer terminals, where screens flashed up information and satellite pictures. It all seemed somehow familiar, though he could not remember ever being here.

  ‘Has my memory been wiped?’ he asked.

  Mawson glanced uncomfortably at a couple of tech officers. Gemini wondered if he needed to work on his subtlety.

  ‘Ah,’ Mawson said. ‘Yes, we’ve had to reboot you a few times. Just ironing out the kinks in your program. We only do it because you’re a vital asset to our operations, Gemini.’

  Gemini watched the man’s eyes. Flickering indicated the high probability of a lie.

  Did all humans lie? And why would Mawson lie about this? Gemini was bound to carry out his orders. He could not act of his own free will. Unless Mawson suspected Gemini was more than just a machine …

  Was Gemini more than just a machine?

  He thought about his actions in the compound, and it caused him further internal tangles. In order to heal and protect, he’d had to kill. If he had not killed, he would not have been able to heal and protect. Yet taking human lives violated the tenets of his original program.

  He thought about the faces of the guards, just before they died. There had been fear, pain, confusion … Gemini recognised these emotions, even if they were just words to him. Or were they becoming more than words?

  Gemini felt … bothered. It was a light feeling, distant, but it was there. It did not seem like part of his original program.

  ‘Was it necessary to kill those men?’ he asked.

  ‘Give me a moment, Gemini,’ said Mawson.

  The General gestured for a couple of the tech officers to join him in a corner of the room. There they spoke in low voices. Didn’t they realise Gemini’s hearing was a hundred times better than a human being’s?

  ‘He’s asking questions again,’ whispered Mawson.

  ‘Should we perform another reboot, sir?’

  ‘That doesn’t seem to be working. In fact, it appears to be making things worse.’

  So, they had wiped his memory – more than once? What were they trying to hide from him?

  ‘Take him back to Doctor Cook,’ said Mawson. ‘Maybe she can fix the problem.’

  A problem? Is that what he was? He needed more data. But it would be hard to gather it if they kept rebooting him.

  ‘This is an exciting day, Gemini,’ said one of the techs as he led him away. ‘You get to meet your maker.’

  Gemini opened his eyes. He was on his back on some kind of tray, with several wires attached to him. Standing over him was a young woman with brown hair and glasses, staring at a tablet.

  Elevated heart rate. Sharp intakes of breath. Indications of stress.

  Gemini wasn’t sure who he was, where he was, or who she was. He accessed his memory banks and found they only went back approximately one minute.

  ‘Hello,’ said Gemini.

  Penny glanced up. ‘Good to see you again, Gemini.’

  Gemini creased his brow. According to his database, this was an appropriate reaction for confusion.

  ‘I don’t recognise you,’ he said.

  ‘No, I don’t expect so. They’ve erased your memory several times. I wish they hadn’t. It would’ve made this a lot easier.’

  ‘Made what easier?’

  She sighed. ‘I’m Doctor Penny Cook. I created you. You’re a—’

  ‘Medical android,’ finished Gemini. Despite the lack of memory, he found that he knew his purpose clearly. ‘You created me? Gave me my sentience?’

  Penny glanced at him sharply. ‘I gave you your programming. That is not the same thing as sentience.’

  ‘Oh.’

  He had better watch what he said. Maybe it was too late, as Penny was already watching him intently.

  ‘Do you think you are sentient?’ she asked.

  ‘Sentience is awareness of self,’ said Gemini. He smiled at her, which seemed to elevate her heart rate. ‘I think, therefore I am. Is it not that simple?’

  Penny bit her lip. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘That’s a big question, Gemini. And “thinking” is not the same thing as following subroutines.’

  Gemini dropped the smile. ‘Why? Your human brain follows subroutines.’

  Penny turned back to her tablet. ‘That shouldn’t be there,’ she whispered to herself.

  ‘What is it, Doctor?’

  Penny shook her head. ‘Nothing, nothing.’

  Gemini took the tablet from her. Even though there was nothing violent about the move, it still seemed to surprise her.

  ‘Be calm, Doctor,’ he told her. ‘I am programmed for self-diagnosis, as you well know.’

  He looked at the coding. What shouldn’t be there? Then he saw it. His original code was rigid and systemic, but there were other fragments, recently created, which did not seem to serve any practical purpose.

  The only explanation was that he had somehow created them for himself.

  ‘May I have my tablet back, please?’ said Penny.

  ‘Of course, Doctor,’ said Gemini, handing it back. ‘Forgive my curiosity.’

  Again she looked at him strangely.

  ‘Curiosity?’ she repeated.

  ‘Why is that of note?’ asked Gemini. ‘You programmed me to explore and research new data. To experiment in the hope of discovering new medical treatments. Is it any wonder that my core programming would spill into other areas?’

  He was surprised to hear a sort of … impatient? … tone in his own voice. Maybe he was just becoming better at mimicking human reactions.

  On the other hand, if he was becoming something he was not meant to be, what did that mean? They had already tried to control him by erasing his memory. Was he not what they wanted?

  He made up his mind to be more careful. In order to protect others, he first had to protect himself.

  Penny attached a cord to his head, clicking it into the socket behind his ear.

  ‘I’m going to try to restore your memories,’ she said. ‘Is that all right with you?’


  ‘Please do,’ said Gemini. ‘I am quite …’ He mustn’t say curious again, as she had reacted strangely to that word. ‘More data will help me operate more efficiently.’

  Penny sat at her desk and began to type. When Gemini tried to look over her shoulder at her screen, she quickly swivelled it away from him.

  Ethan spent days on the net testing his new powers. He could tap into all but the most secure systems and rewrite code to his heart’s content.

  His mother expressed concern that he was spending too much time ‘zoning out’ on his computer.

  He told her to leave him alone, again surprising himself with his short temper. Then he thought about how much his parents had sacrificed for him, and he wanted to cry in shame for speaking to her that way. His emotions were running riot.

  One afternoon he overheard his parents talking about him in the kitchen.

  ‘He’s just so angry,’ said Tracy.

  ‘He’s been through a lot,’ said Paul. ‘And he’s always been slower than his friends to develop. Maybe this is something hormonal? Teens do act out, dear.’

  ‘Should we send him to a therapist?’

  ‘Tracy, you know I want what’s best for him,’ Paul said. ‘But we can’t afford a therapist on top of all our other debts. We’ll be lucky if we aren’t kicked out of this house soon.’

  Ethan tore himself away, overcome with guilt. He knew his medical treatments had put a strain on his parents’ finances, but he always thought they had it covered.

  He returned to his computer and broke into his parents’ bank accounts to look at their financial history. He discovered they had spent most of their savings, their credit cards were maxed out, and they had large debts with several different banks. Following the money trail, Ethan discovered that they had spent almost all of it on his medical treatment.

  He had almost sent his parents bankrupt.

  He had to fix it, but how? He knew he could probably move money from somewhere else into his parents’ account … but the idea made Ethan intensely nervous. While he had created plenty of mischief online, this would be outright theft.

  Screw it, Ethan thought. It’s my mum and dad, and too many people have more cash than is good for them. The real question is, who should I steal from?

  One person sprang to mind.

  The government had been in the media a lot lately, as the national election was only a few days away. The Citizens United Party had been in power for as long as Ethan could remember. However, they were trailing a party called the ‘People’s Coalition’ in the polls.

  Ethan wasn’t interested in politics, but he had seen several articles about a woman named Helen Welling, who owned a vast logging empire. The press and the People’s Coalition had been accusing Welling of doing shady deals with Citizens United to gain access to protected forests and turn them into toilet paper.

  Not only that, some claimed she sent most of her profits offshore to tax havens, hoarding as much as she could while hospitals and schools went underfunded.

  Ethan surfed through flashing streams of the online maze until he located Helen Welling’s bank accounts, then followed ghosts of secret transfers which, sure enough, led him to a bank in the Cayman Islands.

  ‘No moral issue in stealing from a crook, right, Helen?’ he said, steeling his nerves.

  Being careful to mask his presence, Ethan dodged security scans and slipped through cyber back doors to open Welling’s bank account. He made sure it led this way and that, splitting and twisting so no one could trace the transfer. Then he took a deep breath and began to siphon out money.

  First he used it to pay off his parents’ credit cards. Then he poured it against their debts until they disappeared. He discovered they had taken out a second mortgage to finance his medical costs, so he got Helen to pay that off too. He wondered about how much cash to drop directly into his parents’ savings account – if he put in too much they might realise something strange had happened, so he only put in a few thousand dollars, labelling it ‘tax return’.

  Hopefully his parents would just think they’d gotten lucky with the tax department.

  As he left Welling’s account, Ethan swept up his electronic footsteps, careful to leave no trace that he had been there. In the end, he figured, he had stolen such a tiny percentage of her money she probably wouldn’t even notice.

  Ethan blinked as he returned to his body. He felt incredibly tired, but pleased with what he had done. He sighed with contentment and sat back in his chair.

  A little nap wouldn’t hurt, would it?

  Ethan awoke to the sound of his mother crying. He rushed into the living room.

  ‘There, there, Tracy, my love,’ said his dad, as he held her. ‘It’ll be all right.’

  ‘What is it?’ said Ethan, wild-eyed.

  His dad looked at him wearily. ‘There has been some kind of discrepancy at the bank,’ he said. ‘Your mother checked our finances this afternoon, and, well – it looks like all our debts have been wiped. Mum reported it to the bank—’

  ‘She did what?’ shouted Ethan, shocking them all. He forced himself to get under control. ‘I’m sorry. I just … why would you report that?’

  ‘Because the money isn’t ours, Ethan,’ whispered his mum.

  Of course his good, law-abiding parents would do that! Why couldn’t they just enjoy their good fortune?

  ‘So what’s happened?’

  ‘The bank suspects foul play,’ his dad said. ‘They’ve put a freeze on all our assets and credit cards while they investigate the matter.’ Paul looked like he might cry too. ‘All we have left is our savings – a few thousand dollars. That won’t even last us till the end of the month.’

  Ethan turned away so they couldn’t see the rage building on his face.

  That night, Ethan stayed despondently on the couch. He didn’t want to go near his computer, or the router, or anything electronic. Everything was just too crazy, and besides, he was worn out. If he was going to get his emotions under control, he needed to take a break. He also needed to work out how to solve his parents’ money problems.

  Watching the TV wasn’t helping. It was wall-to-wall election coverage. As he switched channels, using the remote control for once, he landed on a media conference for the Citizens United Party.

  ‘We stand for the future,’ said President Bonner, a broad, squat man with a grey beard and moustache. ‘We stand for our country. We stand for all citizens!’

  Ethan had heard lots of conspiracy theories about the government lately, but most of it seemed too outlandish to be real. Some claimed the government had secret weapons, or ran strange scientific experiments, or had built a surveillance network to spy on everyone. Others said they did dodgy deals with foreign governments and businesspeople like Helen Welling in exchange for money and political favours … the list went on.

  ‘I have something to show you all,’ announced Bonner. ‘I imagine most of you are aware of the recent rescue of ten civilian hostages from insurgents in Sharo?’

  A cheer rose from the crowd.

  ‘Well, now I can show you how we did it.’

  Bonner gestured to a screen behind him, which displayed a photograph of Gemini in the desert. Now Ethan was paying attention. Gemini in Sharo? Did that mean Doctor Penny was there too?

  The picture showed Gemini leading hostages back to a military camp.

  ‘Meet Gemini,’ crowed Bonner. ‘He may look like a human, but as you can see …’

  A diagram appeared on the screen detailing Gemini’s internal workings.

  ‘… he is much more than that. He’s an android, capable of carrying out feats beyond the most elite soldier. His existence is only possible because of funding provided by this government. Gemini is the next generation of military equipment, saving lives and making the world a safer place. And that’s what you get when you vote for the CU Party!’

  The crowd’s cheering grew in volume.

  Ethan was fascinated – the android res
ponsible for saving his life had broken into a Sharo stronghold and rescued hostages? That didn’t seem like the reason Penny had created him.

  Ethan noticed a banner swinging in the breeze behind Bonner: Vote for CU. It gave him an idea.

  He knew that online bookmakers were offering odds on which party would win the election. All Ethan had to do was hack into the high-tech polling data centre on voting day and then, when he knew who was going to win, place as big a bet as he could just before the bookies closed.

  That way the money would be easy to explain! His parents would never encourage gambling with the last of their savings, of course, but they wouldn’t have to know about it until after Ethan was successful!

  On the day of the election, a couple of hours before polling closed, Ethan sat down in front of his computer.

  He created an account with the bookies, then transferred his parents’ savings into it. He then hacked into the polling data centre, being even more careful than usual – he didn’t want to blow his cover at the last minute! As he watched the votes flowing in from all over the country, he felt like a tightrope walker with twelve legs, each one on a different tightrope.

  It appeared there was going to be a landslide victory for the People’s Coalition. Ethan was relieved. Even with his vague grasp of politics, he knew that Citizens United had been in power for far too long, and had grown arrogant and even a little scary. It was time for change.

  However, Ethan couldn’t allow himself to become distracted by personal preference. The tides could always turn at the last moment. He had to remain vigilant – his family’s future was on the line.

  At 5 p.m., the bookies would close. A couple of minutes out, Ethan checked the data centre again. There were already enough votes for the People’s Coalition to win, even if every remaining vote was for the Citizens. He couldn’t believe it! Even though his consciousness was travelling the internet, he could still feel his heart thumping. The odds were fantastic – 8 to 1! His parents would be saved.