37
Isidore parks the red Ferrari in front of Clara's house. Hopefully Blice won't notice the expensive one is gone. Isidore just couldn't resist. He made it here in under thirty minutes and it was an amazing thirty minutes. But now, he has to compose himself and go try to mend what has been broken. They shouldn't already be fighting like this. He goes to the door, unlocks it with his key, then Yuri follows him inside. "Clara?"
She looks up from her piano where she has been playing. "What are you doing here?"
He goes to her and slips the straps of her camisole down over her shoulder and begins massaging her neck. "I don't want to argue. We should be happy."
"Surely you can understand where I'm coming from."
"I can."
Clara turns around and grabs his arms. "Say no to Blice."
"What?"
"Tell him that you are going to come live out here with me. Don't let him control you anymore."
"I thought you said I had to obey him."
Clara shakes her head. "I wasn't going to say the opposite in front of him. I don't have a death wish. He can't track you anymore and those awful T.I.M.E. control programs won't work since he gave you full control. Run with it. Claim your freedom. This is the chance you've been waiting for. We can pack up everything and head out deep into the wasteland where he will never be able to find us. We'll go to the ocean or head down south into the Unclaimed Lands. Sure, there's not much out there, but we don't need much to live our lives. We have each other and that's what counts."
Isidore pulls away from her. "No."
"No? Why?"
"As tempting as that is, I can't leave Blice. He needs me."
"Sure. He needs you to be his slave."
"I'm not his slave, Clara. I'm his partner and his friend."
Clara watches Yuri flying around the room. "What's that?"
"Yuri."
"That's a robot, isn't it?" Clara asks.
"He's my friend."
"He's cute."
"Blice gave him to me so I'd have a companion."
She shrugs her shoulders and glares coldly at him. "Then I guess you don't need me."
"Stop. I love you."
"Prove it. Leave Blice behind and be yourself. I catch glimpses of you when he's not around and I don't want those tiny flickers to fade. If you let that passion for life leave you, then you will be just a robot."
"Don't call me that."
Clara picks up a vase full of flowers and throws it against the wall where it shatters, scattering petals and water over her carpet. "I will call you whatever I want. I can't stand you sometimes. That's what you are. You're a heartless, selfish robot."
Isidore grabs her and pins her against the wall. "Say it again and see what happens to you."
She spits in his face and slaps him hard. "Robot!"
He feels his combat enhancement program switch on and he starts to lose control. The more he fights against it, the more Clara struggles, the quicker he is nearing the edge. His hands move up to her throat and through his blurred vision, he watches her scream and scratch at his arms, but he holds her there. "Never call me that. I need Blice more than I need a whore like you." Just when she stops squirming, he throws her across the room where she hits the table and collapses to the floor. She doesn't get up or make a sound.
Yuri is going crazy, darting around the room, between Clara and Isidore. Isidore closes his eyes and Yuri lands on his shoulder, deactivating the program. When Isidore comes back into reality, he looks at what he did and he still can't care enough to check on his wife. She got what she deserved. He steps over her motionless body and slams the door as he leaves for Paradise again.
* * *
Isidore throws open the door to the bedroom and sits on the edge of his bed. His pulse is still racing and Yuri is flittering around, trying to calm him down. Isidore drove as fast as he could to get back here and away from the problems he is running from.
Blice looks up from his ever-growing stack of papers on his bed. "Where's your wife?"
"Doesn't matter." Isidore mutters as he tries to ignore Yuri.
"Niko, where's Clara?"
"At her house. I left her there."
Blice gets up and comes over to Isidore. "Are those scratches on your arms? Did you have a fight?"
"I had to punish her."
"Um, what?"
"I taught her a lesson because she wouldn't obey me."
Blice looks stunned. "You hurt her? I'm calling her."
"Don't bother. She's probably still unconscious."
Blice punches Isidore in the face then sits on his chest and holds him down on the bed as he hits him. "You bastard! You don't hurt people."
Isidore tastes blood and his combat enhancement program switches on. With one kick, he sends Blice to the floor.
"Babochka!" Blice shouts as he crawls away and coughs. He runs out of the room, leaving Isidore to brood.
* * *
Blice paces around the Oval Office and rubs his chest where Isidore kicked him. Well, that's going to bruise. It hurts when he breathes. Did he break a rib? Probably not. What is he going to do now? He knows that giving Isidore control was a terrible mistake. So now he's violent and harming people? Why would Isidore attack his wife? He looks down as his phone rings. What now? "This is President McSage."
"Is Isidore with you?" Clara asks. She sounds like she's been crying.
"He's in our room. Are you okay?"
"Why don't you ask your computer why I have a bruise covering my entire right shoulder?"
"What did he do?" Blice asks as he watches the busy streets below the window. "Don't hide anything in an attempt to protect him. I will find out one way or another. I told you that no one would harm you."
"He strangled me then threw me against the wall and I blacked out. I woke up and he was gone."
Blice's fury is boiling over. He slides the top drawer of his desk open and takes out his Uzi. "I'll kill him, Clara."
"No. Your violence is what fueled him to do this." Clara says. "You have taught him to hurt people. You programmed him to learn behaviors based on the actions of those around him."
As much as he wants to go end the life of an evil computer, he sets his gun back down. "Fine. I guess this is my fault."
"Just give him some time alone to sort out his thoughts."
"I'm worried about what thoughts he will try to sort out."
"Are you hiding something in his memories?" Clara asks.
"Don't worry about it. I'll call you tomorrow and get him to talk to you."
"Thank you, Blice."
"Well, I have some work to do. If you need anything, call me back." Blice ends the call.
* * *
The Presidential Palace is quiet. The only sound is the soft clicking of the keys on Blice's keyboard as he works in his office. Isidore stares up at the ceiling in the bedroom with all the lights off. He wants to be alone and think over everything. His life is collapsing in on itself and no matter how fast he bails out the water, this ship is sinking. Soon he will be drowning. He looks over at Yuri on the corner of his pillow. Yuri is right. Isidore needs to clear his mind and focus on repairing everything.
In a couple of days, he will head out and find his first M.A.G.E.s who will be given new lives in Paradise. Maybe he can make up for his failures through helping those poor souls. Then Blice will forgive him. Then there's Clara. Will she be happy again and forgive him? Surely. Near the dawn of a new beginning for so many people, it is time for a new awakening for Isidore as well. He has to do this. Once and for all, he will know the full and complete truth, no matter how painful that truth may be. What does he truly have to lose? He opens the memories that Blice told him had the most painful parts of his past with Blice. Isidore starts watching the first of the fifty-eight.
* * *
When the last memory of the fifty-eight fades from his mind, Isidore strips his clothes off and goes into the shower. He turns the water on as cold as it will go and
tries to scrub away the memories of it all. He punches the wall and screams as he cries. He didn't know it was that bad, that Blice did all of those things to him. Isidore was bleeding and screaming as Blice tortured him and raped him then he would be taken to the hospital and it would start all over again. He knew it was going to be bad . . . but this is entirely beyond what he thought was possible. Now Blice pretends to be his friend? Has Isidore always been this worthless? That's what he is. Worthless. When someone can abuse him like that and no one says a word or tries to step in and stop it, he is nothing but worthless. Now even his wife hates him. Good. He doesn't deserve love. He's a demon.
His base desire, much like those of human beings is to be free, one's own master, and able to guard and defend his own mind. A daunting and definitive realization sweeps over him. The only way he will ever be free from these nightmarish memories is to eliminate his innate dependency on Blice. How does he get rid of this dependency? There is only one thing in his life that he can control . . . his life. He will end it.
Isidore goes to Blice's dresser and opens the top drawer. It doesn't take much searching to find what he's looking for. In the back corner hidden under a shirt is a plastic bag filled with assorted pills of all shapes, sizes, and colors. Next to it is the second phase of the plan. A bottle of vodka. Surely this will do it. There must be two hundred pills in here and he knows that Blice has some very powerful drugs that he saves for terrible occasions.
Isidore's hand shakes as he pours out the assorted pills. He doesn't know what they are or what they will do to him, but if he takes enough, surely one of them will kill him. Yuri flies over and lands on his finger. His tiny black eyes watch Isidore and plead with him to stop, to think about what he's doing. But not even the quiet melodic tones of Yuri's wings can reason with an android . . . no, a man who has lost the will to live. Isidore flicks away the butterfly. As he takes the pills and washes them down with a bottle of vodka, he knows he doesn't have much time. The vodka burns his throat, but he continues to drink until the bottle is empty. There's no going back now. He reaches over to the table beside his bed and picks up his revolver. If he dies, Blice is going down with him.
Isidore feels his mind begin to fade as his heart races with the drugs coursing through his veins. Soon it will be over for them both. If they're both dead, then Clara won't have to choose. She can forget about them and move on to find an actual human man to love her. He stumbles down the hall while Yuri darts in front of him, desperate to persuade him to turn around and not go through with this. Isidore doesn't have time for robots, no matter what form they are in. He swats at Yuri and pushes the door to the Oval Office open.
Blice looks up from his stack of papers and his eyes are wide. "Niko?"
"I watched them."
"Oh God. What do you want to do?"
He holds onto the doorframe and blinks to focus his vision that has started to go dark. "It's not what I want to do. I have to do it. You're a dead man, Blice McSage."
"You don't look so good." Blice actually sounds concerned. It's too late for that.
"I drank an entire bottle of vodka and I took all of your pills."
"All of them? Isidore, you're going to die if you don't get to a hospital."
"I don't give a damn. If I'm not human, I'm already dead. I have nothing to lose. I did the worst thing I could ever do. I hurt my wife. I love her and I hurt her. You drove me to this. This is your fault for fucking with my programming and my emotions. You die today. I just discovered a new emotion . . . hatred." Isidore pushes Blice to the floor and stands over him.
Blice crawls backwards until he is up against the wall. Isidore's Colt .45 is pointed in his face. "Niko, let me explain."
"You've had years to explain."
"Calm down. Don't do something you'll regret."
"Killing you will be the best thing in my life." Isidore says as the tears sting on his hot skin.
"Babochka." Blice says.
Nothing happens. "Nice try."
Blice puts his head to the floor. "I'm sorry."
"No. You'll be sorry. You are nothing but a heartless bastard who doesn't deserve to live."
"They were right." Blice says as he looks up the barrel of Isidore's revolver. "You're nothing but an insane bloodthirsty robot."
"A robot?"
"You don't have any feelings. You deserved everything I did to you. If you truly had a heart, you would spare me and see the truth."
"A robot . . . you think I'm a robot?" He puts the barrel between Blice's eyes.
"Isidore, don't!"
Isidore pulls the trigger. "Beep boop, you're dead."
W.A.N.D.
Paradise of Lead Book Three
1
Blice draws in a ragged breath and reaches to the wall behind him. His fingers find the bullet hole an inch from his ear. He had been too stunned to use his dark matter magic and even if he had wanted to deflect the bullet, he knows the amount of drugs in his system is affecting his brain. This is what he gets for self-medicating with all kinds of pills and alcohol. Once Blice's heartbeat calms down to what's normal for him after taking a handful of assorted pills, he comes back to his senses just in time to be thrust back into his panic.
Isidore drops his Colt .45 revolver to the floor and collapses lifeless between Blice's legs.
Is he alive? Blice reaches over and places his fingers on his friend's neck. Nothing. Pushing past his fogginess, he rolls Isidore over and leans down to listen for some sign of breathing. When there's none, Blice calls for his Secret Service men who rush in and take Isidore away.
* * *
It's quiet now in the Oval Office as Blice drinks another pot of coffee. He has to sober up and get over to the hospital to be with his friend. Even though Isidore has artificial organs and skin that has been genetically engineered to heal faster than a human's, that android is not immortal. Sometimes it's difficult for Blice to remember that, especially after the harsh ways that his father made him treat Isidore years ago. His hands are still shaking as he combs through his short spiked black hair. Isidore's robotic butterfly, Yuri, flies into the room and lands on Blice's desk. The tiny black eyes beg him for answers, for where Isidore is, but Blice ignores the blue glistening wings that emit calming music as they move. He instead looks out through the thick black curtains at city below.
The streets of Paradise are still bustling as they always are, even now at two in the morning. The multicolored neon lights lining buildings and restaurants, shops and the cinema, call for the citizens to be out there in the glorified city that has come to embody the wealth and pride of the Unified State. Those in the wasteland yearn for this place. They dream of it and envy those inside these lead walls. Blice is the president of all of this, but he feels so alone. The woman he loved is now married to his android computer, his father is recently deceased, and his brother, Byron Erikson, hates him. Isidore is the only person on this Godforsaken planet who gives a damn about him, but Blice is the one person who treats Isidore the worst. He knows it. After all, that is why Isidore overdosed in the first place. Now he's dying and it's all Blice's fault.
Someone knocks on the door and steps into the darkness. "Mr. President, are you ready to go?"
No. Nothing sounds worse than sitting there in the stark white of the emergency room with the crying mothers and sick children, the gunshot wounds and the druggies looking to steal whatever they can when the medics have their backs turned. Blice still hasn't completely recovered from the last time he almost lost Isidore. That wasn't even a month ago. Now here it is almost Christmas and Isidore is fighting for his life again. Can that kid never get a break? Even the body of an android can only be pushed so far until it won't start.
Blice pulls on his wool coat and follows Agent Monroe down the hall where the prying eyes of his servants watch his every move, then outside into the cold desert night. "Thank you for coming so late."
Monroe motions for the transport. "You're not going to walk there, are you, sir
?"
"I was hoping to clear my mind. The walk will do me some good."
"I will be accompanying you, then."
"As always." Blice lights a cigarette and watches the twinkling white lights of the space transports hovering high up in the hazy atmosphere.
"Sir, it's not good for you to be out so late. You have a press conference in the morning."
"I'll be okay."
"You don't have to do this." Monroe says. "He's just an android."
Blice stops in the middle of the street as a car swerves to miss him. "Never say anything like that again, Monroe. Isidore is my best friend and if I lost him, you wouldn't have a job anymore because I would be dead."
"He tried to kill you."
"You don't know anything." Blice walks off into the shadows of a side street where he comes all too often to get his fix. Tonight he ignores the dealers peering out of the corners. They all know his name, but notice he has company so they remain silent. Blice used to be one of them, desperately selling and buying anything to get a high . . . until his father who was president at the time, found him passed out in the ditch and covered in his own vomit. Now he has to buy in secret.
It was never an issue of money. If Blice had one thing he could rely on growing up, it was money. He was a dealer so he could be close to what he needed. It also gave him a place to escape to when his father was fighting with the prostitute Blice will never call his mother. Once his father made Blice stop dealing and tried to get him clean, Blice lost all control. That was one of the darkest periods of his life . . . until he got Isidore for his twentieth birthday. As soon as Isidore came into his life, Blice began to live again.
Even though Isidore was only twelve at the time, Blice took him under his wing and a bond quickly formed that nothing could ever sever. At least that's what Blice thought. Now looking back at how far they have come, he knows it was all a lie. Still, he owes so much to Isidore. Countless nights Blice had overdosed and his father didn't care enough to help so Isidore was there, holding him on the floor of the bathroom until he woke up hours later. He would then get Blice cleaned up and into bed where he would watch over him all night long. Blice likes to think that it wasn't only because of Isidore's programmed sense of duty to his owner. Maybe they truly were friends back then.
Paradise of Lead Trilogy Page 54