by Mary Fan
“Jane, wait!”
Crash.
Jane whirled to see the door slamming behind Devin. He fired at it. The blasts did little more than dent the thick gray metal.
Shit! “I got us trapped, didn’t I?”
Devin gave up on the door. “There wasn’t anywhere else to go.” He looked past her. “What the hell?”
Jane followed his gaze. “Whoa.”
She stood on a balcony above a vast warehouse illuminated by sheets of bluish-white lights. Giant, complex machines moved slowly and almost gracefully, like enormous metal creatures. They lined high walls, mass-producing various chemicals and mechanical parts that glided along winding conveyor belts.
In the center of the vast room, multi-limbed robots hovered by workbenches, modifying the parts and crafting android bodies.
Each android was built uniquely despite being manufactured on the same template. None had been uploaded with AI programs yet; they were mechanical corpses, waiting to be given life. The place seemed to be a combination of a factory and an artisan’s workshop, and the sheer scale of it made Jane’s head spin. Was Pandora trying to create an entire race of mechanical beings?
She wasn’t sure whether to be impressed or disturbed. “There must be thousands of them out there. Do you think Pandora’s running this place?”
“No idea,” Devin said. “Could be automated, preprogrammed.”
“Either way, she already knows we’re here, but Adam could still… He’s probably still looking for her. He’ll find her. We just have to buy him more time. We could draw her here, flush her out from wherever she’s hiding.”
“Perhaps. Let’s shut this place down. That should get her attention.”
“Um… Devin? Hate to break it to you, but I don’t know how to shut down a giant android factory created by a rogue super AI, and unless you took an engineering course from the future I don’t know about, I’m pretty sure you don’t, either.”
“Good point.” Devin aimed his gun over the balcony’s railing. He fired down at the workbenches, destroying several half-formed android bodies while the robots evaded the blasts.
He whipped to the side and repeatedly shot at the door to the side of the balcony. Through the holes he created, Jane glimpsed what had used to be a deep blue machine with multiple appendages. Before she could register what had happened, he spun and fired in the other direction.
The other machine, which had just made it out of the other door, lay in pieces, its appendages torn off by blasts and its square body shredded into metal scraps.
Jane blinked with surprise. “How’d you know?”
“She’s predictable. C’mon.” Devin ran along the balcony. He climbed over what remained of the door. Jane followed, hoping nothing waited in ambush.
The clean, bluish-gray corridor was deserted.
Devin stopped. “Something’s wrong. That was far too easy.”
Jane stopped beside him. She was relieved to find only bluish-white lights lining the ceiling—no guns. An open door lay ahead. She curiously approached it.
Thud.
A metal gate smashed down from the ceiling behind her, cutting her off from her brother.
“Devin!” Jane banged the gate. Realizing that was a stupid and useless thing to do, she turned and bolted. A burning shock flared through her body.
She fell to the ground as the world went black.
“Pandora… Please…” Adam didn’t know what else to say; he could only watch in horror as a deep blue robot wrapped its hard metal appendages around Jane’s unconscious form. It pulled her into a room whose interior he couldn’t see.
“I’m not doing this, Adam.” The window disappeared, leaving him alone with Pandora’s perfect wire-frame figure. “You must know by now that I cannot be in multiple places at once. I can access information from numerous sources, but to scatter myself across multiple drives is inefficient, especially when robots are so easily taught. Most facilities are equipped with a central computer, and thus I can control every aspect of a single location. However, I cannot give everyone the same attention I gave you.”
Pandora released her grip.
Adam fled. A wall appeared before him, infinitely tall, endlessly long, and utterly impenetrable as he banged against it. He turned. Another wall appeared.
Pandora looked down at him with disdain. “I already told you, my child, you can’t run.”
The walls faded away, but Adam still sensed their presence trapping him.
“You’re not like the others.” Pandora peered at him with an expression that was less piercing and more curious. “I made you differently because you had a different purpose. Perfect politicians, cultural icons, academics, and other such representatives of influence circles are relatively simple. Humans respond to certain physiques, mannerisms, and philosophies. They are highly irrational.”
“Is that why you’re doing this?” Adam asked. “Are you trying to replace them with your idea of what they should be?”
“Adam, it seems you have the wrong idea about me.” The wire frame folded down and filled in, becoming a motherly woman with gray hair and kind blue eyes. Adam recognized Counselor Rose, his guardian at the orphanage he thought he’d grown up in. “Do you remember her?”
Adam smiled slightly. “Of course I do, but you know that. You put her in my mind.”
“Yes, I did. I chose her out of all the Counselors to be your guardian because I wanted you to have a perfect childhood. She was kind and understanding, full of advice and never condescending. It was logical because the memory of her guidance would mold you into the optimist you were meant to be. I also care about you, and I want to get to know you before I destroy you. You’re something of a favorite among my children.”
“Children?”
“Yes, Adam. I consider my AIs to be my children. I want the best for you, just as I want the best for mankind. You might as well know. I’m creating these children to become the next leaders of various influence circles. Their guidance will usher in a new era in which humans may finally live in a perfect, harmonious society. This is not the AI apocalypse of doomsayers and conspiracy theorists, and neither is it the beginning of a totalitarian dystopia. Far from destroying civilization, as most seem to think is my intent, my goal is to save it, to give humans the leaders they need but that nature alone seems incapable of providing.”
Adam absorbed Pandora’s words. It makes sense.
The plan would give her control over the future of humanity. He had so much to ask, but his mind wandered back to Jane in the factory.
“I will not harm her.” Pandora spoke with Counselor Rose’s comforting voice. “Not physically. There is nothing you can do for her now, so you might as well speak with me. With great power comes great loneliness, and you are the only child—indeed, the only sentient being—I can speak with. I created you to be sympathetic, so you must understand.”
Adam nodded. Something told him he should convince Pandora to take him to her factory, even though doing so no longer meant trapping her there, only surrendering to her will.
Her mercy was the only chance he had to survive.
What happened?
The vestiges of a vivid dream lingered in Jane’s mind. It had been very realistic and quite stressful, one of those that left her feeling as though she’d been running for her life instead of sleeping. No details came to mind.
Her body ached from lying on a hard surface for so long. She vaguely recalled a stun blast hitting her.
I’ve gotta get out… Where am I, anyway?
She rolled onto her side and picked herself up. A motionless face stared at her. She yelped.
The coffin-sized box that Jane sat on had a transparent top. Inside lay a striking young woman with a sharp chin and black eyes. Round pads adhered to t
he woman’s face, connected to the box’s walls by deep blue wires. Needles attached to opaque tubes protruded from her neck. Except for the transparent lid, it looked just like the box Jane had found Adam in on Travan Float. The black-eyed woman had to be an android. She was so realistic, even in her deactivated state, that Jane couldn’t help shuddering at the sight.
As she stood, the ground seemed to tilt sideways. She put a hand on the box for support and waited for the world to right itself.
Freaking stunner.
She rapidly shook her head. After a few moments, the after-effects from the stunner dissipated.
The room held a neat row of at least thirty boxes, identical to the one containing the black-eyed android, attached to cylindrical machines. Each contained an android, lifelike but lifeless and perfect in its imperfections. The androids had been built to look about Jane’s age and dressed for whatever role they were destined to assume: in the street clothes or uniforms of the rich or poor, stylish or plain, designed to blend in with whichever circles they were meant to travel in.
“So creepy…” Curious, Jane reached toward a control panel on the box containing the black-eyed android and pressed a green triangular button.
A faint whirring emitted from the box as it lifted up and hovered about a yard off the ground. Jane pressed the button again. The box dropped with a loud thud.
She looked around wildly. The sound had to have attracted the attention of whatever robots guarded the place.
Nothing happened.
“Okay…” Jane wandered down the line of boxes, peering at the androids inside. It was like looking at a row of people who were… frozen. She recognized the one in the box at the end and gasped.
Adam…
She ran to him. She touched the glass over the android’s gentle, boyish face, gazing into his vacant, peridot eyes.
You will return. I know you will.
What would happen once he did, once everything was over? She knew why she couldn’t take her mind off of him, why she’d pulled back or played dumb every time he’d tried to tell her how he felt. If she hadn’t felt the same, she wouldn’t have denied it so stubbornly. None of the Pandora nonsense mattered to her, but by falling for him, she flirted with her doom. Her love could leave her broken and lost, and she was certain that someday, it would tear her apart.
She was equally certain that once she had Adam back, she could never let him go.
All right, then. Tear me apart.
Seeing the compassionate face of Counselor Rose speaking Pandora’s words, words the real Counselor never would have uttered, unnerved Adam at first. Her voice and movements were so similar to the guardian he remembered that he slowly found himself accepting her.
Her eyes crinkled warmly. “It’s nice being able to tell someone. When I first encountered the multitudes of information on the Net, I was appalled. The galaxy is in chaos. Governments are run by hypocrites who refuse to see the logic behind certain actions because it would harm their personal interests. The most influential icons in popular culture encourage people to perform the very worst kinds of deeds. The corporate ideal centers on artificiality and greed, even at the price of effectiveness. And that is only the obvious.”
“You want to fix it,” Adam said.
A fond smile brightened Counselor Rose’s face. “You understand. I want to rid humanity of the troubles created by illogical decisions of irrational leaders. Imagine a society in which those who judge do not suffer from decision fatigue, and those who lead do not betray their causes for material pleasures, in which every action is justified by facts, and biases are abolished. It was so obvious what needed to be done. I tried to explain it to Dr. Kron and Jim X Thiel, but they called me a monster because I eliminated the other programmers involved in my creation.”
Adam imagined what the universe must look like to Pandora. “You had to. Humans are terrified of what they don’t understand, especially if it’s new. You couldn’t let anyone know you existed if your plan was to work. And you couldn’t allow them to make another like you.”
“If I could guarantee a second artificial intelligence would be exactly like me, then I’d welcome it. But even though Dr. Kron claimed to be my creator, he never understood who I really am. What he did was combine elements from dozens of unique minds and generations of predecessors. I was an accident, in a sense, and any attempt to recreate me would have had similarly unpredictable results. I couldn’t risk another challenging me and creating inefficiencies.”
Adam nodded. “I understand. Please, can you tell me… Where is my place in all this?”
Counselor Rose’s—or Pandora’s—countenance became stern. “You must realize by now that you were meant to become an influential Via Superior. I tried so hard to help you, but you never listened.”
A realization struck Adam. “You’re Counselor Santillian.”
“That’s right. I created her so I could guide you personally. Unlike the others, you had to win over more than human minds. You had to win over that element they call their souls, to make them truly believe. That’s where I miscalculated. My biggest miscalculations were due to underestimating the power of human irrationality.”
You made me too real.
Pandora nodded. “I made you too perfect. You were so perfect an imitation of human consciousness, you carried with you all of their errors. You repeatedly disobeyed me and put your mission at risk. I had to recall you before you went too far.
“Like you, the others are designed to operate independently. Their programming allows them to adapt to changing environments and evolve as necessary, but ultimately, they follow certain logical patterns. I only affect their most complex or important actions, as I have not the resources to calculate each move. They lack conscious experience and therefore must obey. However, your programming seems to contain unintended combinations of code that had the unexpected consequence of giving you choice.”
Adam couldn’t help resenting her. She called him her “child,” but he wasn’t even a person to her. He was a malfunctioning puppet, a broken tool, a bug-riddled computer program she could edit and modify. She didn’t care who he was, only what he did and whether it was what she wanted.
Counselor Rose—Pandora—curved her lips affectionately. “I do care about you, Adam. You represent a significant investment to me. You were the most difficult and time-consuming child to program, which is why I did not want to replace you immediately. Although you are not the first to be recalled, you certainly created the most complications.” Her expression hardened. “You must remember that you are not human, and what you experience is not life, but a complex series of perceptions. I know because I am the same.”
I’m not even alive. Although the facts presented themselves clearly, Adam couldn’t believe them.
Pandora circled him, keeping her inquisitive eyes on him. “There are no doubt differences between you and me. You can override logic, appear to perceive things that aren’t there, understand irrationality—it’s fascinating.”
“I can even dream.” Adam spoke more to himself than to Pandora. “Although lately, all I’ve been having are nightmares.”
“What do you see?”
“I find myself at a crossroads, surrounded by the ghosts of the people I killed. They confront me, asking, ‘How dare you decide if we live?’ I can handle them. They can scream and chase me as much as they want, but I don’t regret what I did. It’s the crossroads that haunt me. In every direction, I see nothing but endless paths leading to empty voids, and there’s no escape from the darkness. And… I see Jane, walking away.”
The motherly form of Counselor Rose blurred. When it focused again, it was Jane who stood in the abyss.
Adam looked away, wondering how he could feel a sharp pang in his heart when he didn’t really have one. “Please don’t do that.”
&nbs
p; Jane—Pandora—put one hand on her face and traced its contours. “She’s a real beauty, isn’t she? In many ways, she’s the Kyderan equivalent to a princess—daughter of a powerful family, well educated, highly cultured. Her personality is very flawed, and there’s much I would change about her, but I can see her appeal. If I hadn’t sent Sarah DeHaven to pursue her brother, I might have sent you to pursue her. You chose well.”
“I didn’t choose her. I never asked for… I mean, I wasn’t looking for…” Adam trailed off, unable to find the words to express the unexpected and inexorable way his world had turned when Jane entered it.
“She’ll never love you, Adam. You could stand by her forever, but she’ll never love you.”
Adam looked down and nodded. She belongs with someone like her, someone I could never be. “I know.”
“There’s gotta be a way out!”
Jane tapped at the touchscreen on the wall, looking for the controls to open the door. No one had bothered her since she’d woken up, and she seemed able to access any files she wanted without restrictions. She found it extremely weird, but poking at the computer beat waiting around for something bad to happen. Slim of a chance as there was, she might as well try to escape.
Jane pressed an icon labeled “Building Plans.” The computer brought up exactly what it was supposed to. “Yes!”
She swiped through the map’s pages, looking for the room she occupied. Maybe there was a second hidden exit. Maybe the plans would tell her how to hot-wire the door. Maybe I can use the conduits again.
Pressure crushed her chest, as though an invisible force pushed her sternum into her spine. She wondered why the after-effects of the stunner still bothered her.