by W. H. Massa
Commander Cole Marsalis was born handsome but hardship had given his face a gaunt, drawn quality. At thirty-three years old, he looked about ten years older. A scar snaked its way down his battered face, a souvenir of a rogue X-3 with a penchant for knives. A child-model, it was the property of a woman who lost her own kid in a freak accident. For one second Cole had been distracted by surface appearances and forgot that he was dealing with a potentially lethal machine. The scar was a daily reminder to never let his guard down again, even when his target seemed innocuous.
Cole showed no emotion as he took in the tangle of glittering cybernetics spilling from the woman's shredded innards. Looking at her, he knew he was too late. The defeated mech had initiated her self-destruct mechanism, her eyes dead marbles now. He pulled a cable from his wrist gauntlet and plugged it into a socket in the back of her head. A small screen on his wrist gauntlet popped to life as it scanned the contents of her cybernetic brain. A message flashed: DATA CORRUPTED.
Shit!
A second trooper appeared behind Cole. The faceplate opened, revealing feminine features imbued with an exotic sensuality.
Cole shot a look at Margo, one of the best troopers under his command. She shared his disappointment as she spoke. “So much for bringing her back intact.”
Cole nodded, voice oozing frustration. “She had other plans.”
Cole rifled through the android's pockets. He wasn’t quite sure what he was looking for. All vital intel had been stored on the CPU inside her head. Nevertheless, Cole checked her clothing for clues that might lead him to those who got her onto this boat.
His finger closed around an item tucked in her jacket pocket. He extricated a well-worn postcard of Tokyo, a series of cracks spider-webbing the image. Cole figured that she had been studying this picture with longing for quite awhile. It couldn’t have come cheap — paper was at a premium in a world where trees had become sparse.
Cole rose to his feet and handed the card to Margo. She glanced at the picture, then put the postcard in a small pouch around her waist. The mech’s most cherished possession reduced to just evidence for the lab.
Margo shook her head. “Tin lady really thought she could do a better job raising the baby than its parents. If you ask me, someone should have a chat with the engineer who coded her maternal instinct. They went way overboard.”
Cole thought the same could be said for most androids. Programmers were engaged in a mad race to make each successive generation of mechs more human than the one preceding it. As the machines grew more sophisticated, so did their problems. Mech malfunctions were at an all time high and it seemed the calls were coming in faster with each passing day. The situation was out of control, as far as Cole could tell but, instead of tackling the underlying disease, they spent their days fighting the symptoms.
Cole nodded at the troopers arriving on the scene. “Let's bag her.”
The baby's cries echoed through the cargo area. The wails stirred something deep within Cole and a memory threatened to surface. He pushed the thought aside, a raw nerve that needed to be severed. “Make sure she’s okay,” he told Margo.
Margo rolled her eyes. “So the only girl in the squad gets to play mommy?”
Cole paused, uncomfortable.
Margo grinned. “Just fucking with you, commander.” She walked toward the child. Cole managed a hint of a smile. Margo had sass.
He moved through the hold to check on the two downed troopers. The man with the destroyed helmet was bleeding from numerous cuts, but the damage was purely cosmetic, which was surprising. Cole realized the android had been pulling her punches. She could easily have driven her fist straight through the light metal into the man’s skull. Bone was no match for a titanium endoskeleton. Had her maternal coding prevented her from using full force, or was something else at work?
Cole killed his train of thought. He was wasting time with wild speculation. His job wasn’t quite done yet.
Reassured that his men were okay, he eased his way into the darker recesses of the cargo hold, gun up. As his visor snapped shut again, he switched to night-vision and watched the area light up in spectral shades of green.
He entered a dizzying maze of ten-foot high crates. According to his HUD, the only life signs belonged to him and his team members but Cole knew from experience that tech could be manipulated. He sensed the enemy was near. Ten minutes later, he came across a small space that had been cleared. Five figures sat reclined on the floor, males and females. They were perfectly still, reminding Cole of Buddhist monks engaged in meditation.
The laser-light of Cole’s pulse weapon flitted over the small congregation, dancing from one face to the other. By law, synthetics had to be recognizable as such and were manufactured with a set of glittering power bars embedded in their necks but black-tech mech modifications had disguised this group well. An additional layer of skin hid the electronics. On the surface, they looked perfectly human.
Suddenly the five figures raised their heads in perfect unison. Cole’s HUD indicated that he was looking at five human beings, but a barking German Shepherd suggested otherwise. The androids had found a way to hack his helmet’s sensors.
The five mechs spoke at once in a synchronized chorus. “We think... therefore we are.”
Cole knew that no matter how fast he moved, he wouldn’t be able to stop what was about to happen. As soon as the words left their lips, their heads slumped forward and their eyes became white crescents.
Cole clenched his fists with frustration. They had followed the female AI’s example and opted for extinction over captivity.
We think… therefore we are.
They had chosen to be no more.
2
LOS ANGELES, 2094
Cole’s team was hunkered down inside the steel belly of the hovership. He eyed the men and women under his command. His unit consisted of the elite members of all law enforcement branches who had volunteered to become members of the Artificial Intelligence Tactical Unit, AI-TAC for short. Their job was simple — take down rogue androids.
For most of the team, joining AI-TAC was a way to raise their status and their pay grade. Cole was different. Transferring from SWAT to AI-TAC ten months earlier had been a calling. He had witnessed firsthand how dangerous AIs could be and swore to keep the world safe from malfunctioning units.
The military hovercraft banked sharply and zeroed in on an imposing complex. It was the corporate center of Synthetika, the company that had introduced AIs into the labor force twenty-five years earlier. Since those first primitive models hit the market, the demand for mechs had skyrocketed and made Synthetika the biggest company in the world. Now one in five workers in America was an AI and they accounted for twenty percent of the adult population.
Resembling a sprawling university campus, Synthetika encompassed two hundred acres and housed the corporate headquarters as well as research and development facilities. The various structures were connected by a series of monorails and shuttles, crisscrossing steel filaments forming what looked like a spider web from the air.
Synthetika was also the home base for AI-TAC. The company’s decision to house the quasi-military unit on their campus sent a clear signal to the stock markets of the world. Synthetika was responsible for its own products. If something went wrong — if androids thought they’d outgrown their programming — Synthetika would dispatch a first-response team and eliminate the problem.
The hovership approached the vast AI-TAC headquarters and closed in on one of the two landing pads on the roof. Seconds later, the craft touched down and a hatch popped open. AI-TAC soldiers began to file out of the craft. Helmets were unstrapped, body armor loosened. Everyone could let their guard down now.
Cole joined his team in one of the large elevators and, moments later, he was making his way through the bustling command center, combat helmet clutched under his arm. Everywhere he looked, AIs were assisting various officers. AI-TAC hunted rogue mechs, but that didn’t mean they shied
away from using synthetics as part of their support force. A quarter of AI-TAC’s staff were synthetics, an example of man and machine working together as a harmonious unit. Their patrons were selling a vision of the future, and AI-TAC was compelled to buy into it.
It didn’t mean Cole had to like it. His personal experience had convinced him that AIs posed a great threat to humanity. AI-TAC gave him a chance to combat this threat but they were winning battles, not the war. The irony that he was working for the same company that had created the problem wasn’t lost to him.
Cole approached Laurie, an intelligence analyst in her early thirties. She wasn’t beautiful but her sharp intelligence and bawdy humor gave her an alluring quality. Recently divorced, she enjoyed her new freedom, was dating up a storm and had no qualms about sharing her exploits. Chatting with her was one of the more entertaining parts of Cole’s day. Now Laurie was studying a 3-D city grid with a bored expression.
“Anything?” Cole asked.
“A call from a broken-hearted loser who thinks his pleasure mech is cheating on him with his neighbor. What's wrong with men nowadays?”
Cole shook his head. The idea that men could be attracted to robots was hard for him to grasp. He decided to change the subject. “How's your daughter's leg?”
“Healing. Eleven years old and she still thinks she can play flag football with the boys.”
“Like mother, like daughter. If you need to get out early, let me know.”
Laurie smiled gratefully as Cole headed for a nearby elevator. He had received the message from the head of Synthetika while they were still in the air. The company brass expected his latest report on AI runaways. Cole had a feeling they might not like what he had to tell them.
***
Nine men and women clad in serious business suits and wearing even more serious expressions had gathered around a sleek conference table in Synthetika’s corporate boardroom. On one end of the table stood Cole. Facing him on the other end was Janson, CEO of Synthetika.
The executive was in his mid-fifties but looked about fifteen years younger, various nano-implants having slowed down the aging process and reversed some of the cellular decay caused by the passage of time and the stress of his position. There was a reason Janson had been the CEO of a $20 billion-a-year conglomerate for close to a decade now. The man radiated a quiet sense of confidence and the shark-like intensity of a born corporate warrior who had clawed his way to the top. Any lower ranking exec vying for his job better watch out; Janson wouldn’t surrender his job without drawing blood.
A 3-D holo-newscast flickered and shimmered over the table, the executives watching in rapt silence as the light from the holograms bled over their faces. A middle-aged Japanese politician was signing a bill. The voice of a female news-anchor explained, “Japan has agreed to grant mechanicals the same rights as its human population. Steve Janson, CEO of Synthetika, had the following comment...”
A 3-D image of Janson appeared. The CEO was all smiles and his face projected warmth and understanding. But the dark marble of his eyes couldn’t quite hide his ruthless side. “Synthetika has been building mechs for over twenty years now,” Janson explained. His voice was assured, each word carefully chosen for maximum emotional impact. “From the early primitive models to our latest X-3 units, which are nearly indistinguishable from humans...“
In the upper right corner a graphic popped up, charting the evolution of mechs over the last three decades. It reminded Cole of illustrations he had seen of humanity’s progress from primate to person but instead of featuring Neanderthal, Cro-Magnon and modern humans, this chart put a clunky, obviously mechanical X1000 next to a mannequin-like X2000 and the latest, human-looking X-3000 models, which boasted organic bio-shells.
“The Omega virus devastated the United States,” Janson explained. “Within two years, we had lost a third of our population and half the survivors were infertile. Synthetika’s AI workforce filled the void and allowed our country to remain competitive in a cutthroat global marketplace.”
The mech-evolution chart was replaced with one of Synthetika’s latest commercials for its top-of-the-line X-3000 model. A series of shots showed the new model interacting with its human owners. The androids were perfect male and female specimens of various races, designed to appeal to every segment, taste and orientation of the human population.
Unlike the mechanicals Cole and his team faced on the freighter, these mechs still could be identified as such. The back of each synthetic’s head was constructed from a transparent material that housed a cluster of delicate electronics, drawing a subtle but unmistakable distinction between man and machine. Mankind could still keep tabs on the growing mechanical population.
In the commercial, a male mech assisted an elderly lady with various duties and activities. He helped her cross a busy city street, mindful of traffic and maintaining the slow pace of his frail owner. The mech prepared a home-cooked meal and administered medications. A message flashed next to him: “CAREGIVER.”
Cole had to admit it — the ad was convincing and achieved its goal of painting mechs as an essential part of life in the 21st Century. It was slickly designed to sell synthetics as part of a utopia of man-machine coexistence but Cole knew it was just marketing bullshit and ignored the reality on the streets.
Another segment, “TEACHER,” began. This time a perfectly formed female tutored a group of teenagers at home, helped with their homework, improved their basketball skills and demonstrated yoga moves.
The teens in the commercial looked awed by their android companion and there was something comical about their slack-jawed enthusiasm, which bordered on the libidinous. Cole wondered how many privileged teenage boys used their android teachers for less savory educational pursuits. The consensus was that having sex with a mechanical was far safer and more rewarding than seeking out a traditional prostitute. Mechs had pretty much put an end to the oldest profession, except for those twisted individuals who were into inflicting pain on their partners. A perv knew that a machine’s sensors were a poor substitute for nerve endings.
In the third and final clip, “COMPANION,” mechs were shown in romantic interludes with members of both genders. The commercial came to a rousing finish with Synthetika’s latest tagline: “THE NEW AI-X3. EXPERIENCE THE DIFFERENCE.”
The difference, Cole thought. A machine that looked, smelled and felt human. Cole considered it a dangerous illusion. These machines were encased in human skin grown from cells in company bio-labs. A surface-level circulatory system provided the illusion that real blood was pumping through their veins. But underneath the skin, mechs were still less than human.
As though Janson had a private link to Cole’s inner thoughts, the holo-footage of the CEO appeared onscreen once again. ”Some folks forget that looking human doesn’t make you human. Mechs are machines, made by man to serve mankind.”
Janson’s message felt like old-fashioned common sense. But his words were being drowned out by too many opposing voices that lobbied for equal rights for mechanicals, holding up Japan as a shining example of what the future should look like.
The holo-image disappeared and nine pairs of expectant eyes landed on Cole. He took a sip of water and swallowed hard. He wasn’t much for long speeches and presentations. He’d rather face down an army of rogue mechs any day of the week than hold court inside a corporate shark tank.
The AI-TAC commander’s voice echoed slightly in the antiseptic conference chamber. “Since the Tokyo ruling, the number of runaways has risen sharply,” Cole explained. “Last week, we stopped three domestic units at the Mexican border. Earlier today, my team intercepted a cargo freighter bound for Japan. On board, six mechs...”
A 3-D image of the female runaway appeared. Seeing her made Cole think of her pleading gaze and chilling final words. Take care of her. The memory flash stirred something deep inside of him but was quickly suppressed. Cole continued with his report. “One of the runaways had kidnapped her owners' newborn infant
after murdering the husband. Apparently, she judged the parents unfit to raise their own child—“
Janson sharply interrupted Cole. “I'm not interested in mech psychology, Commander Marsalis. What interests me is how these runaways could elude your team for two weeks?”
“They disabled their tracking chips and modified their appearance so they could pass for human.”
An attractive female executive in her early thirties addressed Cole in a skeptical tone. “Are you suggesting someone helped these mechs get out of the country?”
Cole knew she was baiting him, but he couldn’t change the course of the conversation at this point. Politics had never been his strong suit. “I believe she received help from the Underground Network, an organization devoted to establishing equality between man and machine.”
The words were greeted with silence. A chill had descended over the room. Cole could sense from their looks that the executives were turning against him. Big surprise. Cole knew the deal. A malfunctioning unit was an acceptable topic of conversation; an organized movement wasn’t. Synthetika would not even entertain the possibility. The Underground Network was a rumor wrapped in a conspiracy theory espoused by loner weirdoes. It was the stuff of misguided agendas fueled by paranoia. Synthetika could safely acknowledge the existence of rogue robots as malfunctioning products. AI-TAC was formed for the express purpose of dealing with such problems. But an organized movement could change the world’s perception of mechs and make Synthetika the bad guy. It could threaten the company’s whole business. By voicing this threat in the boardroom, Cole had just become part of the problem. It could be career suicide, but in his eyes the latest incident left him no choice. A wake-up call was in order.
Cole tapped a keypad at the end of the table and a 3-D city grid materialized. He had taken the plunge and there was no turning back now. “The network uses a complex system of safe houses and escape routes to smuggle runaways out of the country. Its command structure consists of both AIs and human sympathizers—“