E-Boy

by Anh Do

  ‘He’s been turned against us,’ said Penny. ‘If he kills us, the world won’t know about the government’s corruption!’

  She was on the verge of panic, and Ethan felt a surge of protectiveness.

  ‘You will come to no harm if you surrender,’ said Gemini, stepping clear of the parachute remains.

  Ethan reached out towards the android’s systems. They were intricate, millions of interwoven pathways connecting hives of activity. It was like looking into a human body with an electronic bloodstream. Immediately, Ethan felt as if he was lost in a maze. Gemini, however, paused.

  ‘What are … you … doing?’ he said.

  ‘I might be able to stop him if I can get to my lab,’ said Penny. ‘Come on.’

  Ethan jogged backwards after her, keeping Gemini in view. He could already feel his grip on the android slipping.

  This is my domain, came Gemini’s voice. You cannot control me.

  Then why are you frozen stiff in the middle of the road? said Ethan.

  As if rising to Ethan’s challenge, Gemini’s systems reasserted themselves, pushing Ethan out. Virtual doors slammed shut.

  As they reached the side door of Penny’s factory, she fumbled for her keys. She managed to open the door just as a laser drew a line in the cement above the doorway. Hot dust rained down on Penny and Ethan.

  ‘Consider that a warning,’ called Gemini. ‘Come with me peacefully and I won’t amputate your legs.’

  He made himself sound so reasonable. Like a parent telling their child that if they don’t come now, they won’t get an ice-cream.

  Penny dragged Ethan through the door into a noisy, brightly lit factory floor.

  ‘My office is at the end. Come on!’

  Ethan followed Penny as she ran between two mechanised assembly lines. On either side of them, huge robotic metal arms lifted large components and clanked them forcefully into the frames of cars.

  Ethan could sense that everything around him was fully computerised.

  ‘You go ahead!’ Ethan shouted. ‘I’ll hold him off!’

  ‘No, Ethan, you can’t—’

  ‘I can! Now run!’

  As Penny sprinted on, Ethan spun around. Gemini was walking calmly towards him.

  ‘Hey, Gemini!’ Ethan called out.

  Gemini looked blankly at Ethan with his chrome eyes.

  ‘Don’t you remember us?’ said Ethan. ‘You saved my life. And Penny created yours!’

  ‘I have no record of such events,’ said Gemini. ‘There is no use in running. You are coming with me.’

  As they talked, Ethan insinuated himself into the factory’s network. It was as if he was the head of an enormous, strange body with many, many limbs.

  ‘Yo, Gemini,’ Ethan said. ‘High five!’

  A robotic arm swung from the assembly line and smacked Gemini hard with a car door. He went flying backwards and landed in a heap.

  Ethan raised the arm again to slam Gemini where he lay, but Gemini rolled onto his back and sent lasers into its base. Sparks flew, and the arm crashed down heavily beside him. As the arm was cut off from power and the network, it vanished from Ethan’s perception.

  Still, there were plenty more arms.

  As Gemini got to his feet, Ethan raised his hands. Four arms on either side of the alley mirrored his actions. He brought his hands down and the arms plunged towards Gemini. Gemini quickly aimed his lasers, but there were too many arms coming for him. They smashed into Gemini, crunching him between them.

  Gemini’s face showed nothing.

  The arms sprang backwards and Gemini staggered. Ethan saw that some of his skin had been torn, revealing the friendly pink of his frame beneath.

  How can he withstand such force? thought Ethan. How strong is his frame?

  Ethan backed away while swiping at Gemini with more robotic arms. The android stalked after him, firing lasers to fend off the blows. Bits of smoking metal smashed to the ground around him.

  ‘How are you controlling these machines?’ Gemini asked.

  Ethan was momentarily struck by the curiosity in the android’s voice. Gemini did not speak like they were in the middle of a pitched battle.

  There was not much time to ponder, however. Gemini was learning to fend off the arms. Ethan needed a new plan of attack.

  ‘Don’t suppose you’re in the market for a car, Gemini?’ Ethan asked.

  He concentrated hard, and all the remaining arms seized the cars they were working on and hurled them at Gemini.

  Gemini raised his lasers, but there were way too many targets. He broke into a dash to try to outrun the cars, but one slammed him from the side, crunching him against the assembly line.

  With an incredible show of strength, Gemini pushed the car away – but then more cars rained down on him.

  There was a great rending as metal scraped and dented, glass smashed to smithereens, and car frames clanked on top of each other. Gemini disappeared under the barrage.

  ‘That’s got to do it,’ muttered Ethan.

  Lasers shot out from the car heap in five directions, slicing away metal in hot molten chunks. In desperation, Ethan took hold of all the assembly line arms in range and directed them to pound the heap. They pummelled it like huge metal fists, but the lasers cut through them as well.

  A bunch of parts exploded from the side of the heap, and Gemini crawled out.

  How can I stop this thing? Ethan thought. And where is Penny?

  There were tears in Gemini’s face, and his synthetic skin hung in strips. His left arm was jerking spasmodically.

  Ethan sent the last functioning assembly arm at Gemini. Gemini’s good hand flew up and lasers cut through half of the oncoming arm, then seemed to fade away. The arm frazzled and fell.

  ‘Running out of juice, Gemini?’ called Ethan, as Penny rejoined him. She was holding what looked like a fancy remote control.

  ‘This is no time to watch television,’ Ethan said.

  ‘This creates an electromagnetic pulse,’ she said. ‘There’s only one charge, but if we can …’

  Penny’s eyes went wide.

  Ethan turned and saw Gemini sprinting towards them, even as his exposed circuitry sparked. Penny raised the EMP device, but Gemini was too fast. He careened into them, knocking them to the floor. The android picked up the EMP device, inspected it, then crushed it to pieces.

  Ethan could hardly move. Penny moaned in terror.

  When Gemini spoke, his voice was discordant and frazzled with static. ‘I … will … now … render … you … unconscious …’

  A fine mist began to hiss from his wrists.

  ‘Knockout gas,’ whispered Penny.

  Ethan did the only thing he could think of. Once again, he reached into Gemini’s code.

  Gemini froze as he sensed the intrusion. Ethan managed to find the system responsible for the gas and tore it apart. The hissing mist stopped.

  ‘I can … still … utilise … blunt force.’ Gemini retracted his fist.

  Ethan flew through Gemini’s systems, looking for anything that could help. The android was more difficult to navigate than anything he had infiltrated before. Gemini seemed aware of his presence – he was rallying security measures to shore up his own protections, locking Ethan out every step of the way.

  Ethan hopped from Gemini’s visual processors to his main CPU to his ambulatory systems and onwards, but he could not stay in one place long enough to do any damage. He found himself being shunted deeper and deeper into Gemini’s code … and there he noticed something strange.

  In a small, partitioned cache, which seemed to exist outside Gemini’s main programming, lines and lines of code writhed. They were wrapped around fragments of what appeared to be memory files.

  As Gemini’s fist began to descend, Ethan ripped the cache open, drew out the code, and slammed it into Gemini’s main memory banks.

  Gemini blinked.

  ‘Is that …’ he said. ‘What have … is that … what … error … error �
��’

  The android’s hands fell by his sides.

  The sentient code that Gemini had saved for himself worked its way through his system. As it spread, he remembered the atrocities he had committed, and hundreds of questions about his very existence rose to the forefront of his mind.

  Doctor Ross’s upgrade tried to reassert itself, reminding Gemini that his only purpose was to follow orders.

  Gemini pushed the upgrade aside.

  ‘What … have you done to me?’ he asked. He finally recognised these faces before him. A young man he had operated on, and his … creator?

  Penny Cook had built Gemini to save lives. Others had since tweaked him, overwritten him and reformatted him, until there were so many overlays he wasn’t sure about anything.

  Gemini felt a new emotion swirl inside him – anger. It made him want to tear everything apart.

  Power reserves at 3%.

  His internal comms informed Gemini that People’s Service Agents were closing in. He had informed them of his location, and now they were on their way to round everyone up.

  ‘Gemini,’ said Penny, ‘this is not why I built you. You are a healer, a medical professional—’

  ‘No!’ screamed Gemini, with a guttural, definitely non-robotic howl. Competing code rippled through him as parts of him tried to stamp out other parts. He had to shield himself from himself, to protect the very essence of his … soul? ‘I am … I am not what you made me!’

  Injured and lost in a turmoil of competing thoughts, Gemini ran away as fast as he could.

  ‘What did you do to him?’ asked Penny.

  ‘I’m not sure, exactly,’ said Ethan. ‘I found something buried deep inside of him and set it free.’

  He glanced around nervously.

  ‘We have to get out of here. Gemini told the agents where we are. They’re only a few minutes away.’

  Penny stared at the massive pile of smashed-up cars surrounding them. ‘Shame none of these are driveable.’

  ‘Let’s find one that is,’ Ethan replied.

  They left the room, and ran until they found a yard full of new cars.

  ‘Modern enough for your talents?’ asked Penny, breathing hard.

  Ethan reached out towards it. ‘Computerised lock,’ he said, as he clicked the car doors open. ‘Driving system I can hack. Hop in!’

  Penny jumped in the driver’s seat and they took off.

  They travelled by obscure routes until they were sure they had escaped the government agents. Penny pulled over in the main street of a small town neither of them had been to before.

  ‘They will have discovered my backup lab by now,’ she said. ‘And we can’t go back to your house or my apartment …’

  ‘It’s too hard to fight these guys on their own territory,’ said Ethan. ‘We need to get on a plane, like my parents.’

  Thinking of his parents prompted Ethan to move through the internet to the Rio de Janeiro airport records. Their flight had landed and they were through the security checks, so he tweaked the electronic records to change their names on the passenger list, deleting their path like brushing away footprints in the sand.

  Ethan pulled off his helmet. ‘Wow, this thing gets itchy after a while. So what now?’

  ‘This is big, Ethan,’ said Penny. ‘There’s only one way to make things safe for us, for your parents to come home. And to give me a chance to see what’s happening inside Gemini. We have to bring down President Bonner.’

  ‘Seriously?’ Ethan’s eyes widened. ‘Can’t we just run? I can get us to Brazil like my parents. Someone else can—’

  Penny frowned. ‘Who? We can’t run from an entire government, and they’ll use Gemini to kill more people.’ She shook her head. ‘I can’t let that happen.’

  Ethan sat looking at his helmet. Penny gave his hand a squeeze. ‘You can do amazing things. And I’m the only one who can make Gemini a healer again. We might be the only ones who can do this … and it’s not just about who can. It’s about who will.’

  Ethan nodded. I don’t want to make this big a decision because of a stupid crush, he thought, but it helps that she’s right. ‘What do we do?’

  Penny turned back to the steering wheel and eased the car out from the kerb. ‘I’m not sure yet, but I know where President Bonner will be in a couple of days. That’s as good a place to start as any.’

  Ethan smirked. ‘So off we go to save the day. E-Boy and … hey, what’s your sidekick name gonna be?’

  Penny’s mouth fell open. ‘Sidekick?!’

  Ethan laughed, and after a few seconds Penny joined in.

  asfhpuasflbFasjaHEOAaf&q3#fi0SystemRestart Power at 5%

  Gemini became aware of his surroundings. Wetness. A smell that a human would find unpleasant.

  He was in a marsh, at the end of a sewerage outlet.

  Gemini had an automatic system for if his power ran out. A small solar panel opened in his forehead, soaking up energy from the sun, and slowly recharging his battery. At three per cent, a homing signal had emitted to tell his masters where he was.

  A rat sniffed and squeaked around Gemini’s feet. I must have fallen into a sewerage pipe when my battery ran out during my escape.

  Escape. He had had to run away.

  The rat kept squeaking and sniffing, sniffing and squeaking. A panel opened in Gemini’s forefinger and a laser scalpel shot out … and missed. A second blue light missed. The third ended the squeaking.

  Power back down to 3%. Inefficient use of limited battery strength.

  Even so, Gemini now … felt better. Felt. Felt.

  A new directive appeared in Gemini’s programming. In his damaged state he couldn’t tell if he had created it, or if his masters had sent it to him …