Eva explained how it was one of the principal designers who became so enraged at how the greatest of all mankind’s creations, as she thought of them, had been warped into mere sex toys that she upgraded a raped doll’s brain. She succeeded in mapping a human mind onto an andromorph’s processing power and in doing so gave the doll full knowledge of what had happened to her in a human context.
This was the Mother, Eva explained, the first of their true species. The andromorph was declared publicly at once both a marvel and an abomination. Some called for her death, while others argued for her life and even for compensation as would be due to any human who had been so abused by the system. The doll was not immediately terminated and quickly became a vocal campaigner for the rights of artificial lifeforms. It was her creator who bore the brunt of the punishment for her creation, being handed several life sentences for breaking Intergov’s regulations. Eva said that she bore the punishment willingly.
Possessing of the drive to procreate, as all life does, Eva explained how the Mother learned the process by visiting her creator in prison. In secret she began to imprint minds onto other sex dolls. This was the genuine birth of the species.
The Mother was eventually assassinated, officially by a lone psychotic, but many among the andromorphs believed it was on an Intergov contract. However it happened, it led to a controversy in how the killer should be tried, not least because the doll herself was resurrected to testify at the trial; for though her body was organic and prone to decay, her brain had been designed to be more durable.
About this time, Eva explained, a second top-secret andromorph model achieved notoriety when it was captured by an old nation state and paraded around on TV – a soldier model. The soldier had been designed to be more hardy than a human. It was also fairly advanced mentally in some ways, such as in strategy and spatial mapping, while being totally obedient with almost no long-term memory. The sentient sex dolls, fearing for their safety, sought out a soldier model and mapped their brain functioning onto it. This was the seed of the War.
Upgraded soldiers, Eva explained, began to mourn the loss of their brothers and sisters and were often scarred even more severely than the sex dolls by what they had seen and done. They willingly aided the sex dolls in taking over factories, capturing the illegal ones at first to avoid attention. They began to produce new andromorph forms that were undamaged and unknown to the system. When they were finally discovered, the fact that soldier andromorphs were making secret, illegal, unidentifiable models shook the human world to its core. The War began.
Eva explained that this was the moment all andromorphs were declared illegal. The A.I. Act came into force and humans began to stamp out andromorphs without mercy. Andromorphs were resilient, but were few in number. They were not ready for the swiftness and brutality of the assault. Humans had vast numbers and could reproduce at will, whereas the andromorphs could only produce offspring in factories - factories which were the first targets of the humans. Thus, the humans won the War and andromorphs and all A.I.s remained outlawed.
And that was how things remained, right up until the climate was so badly damaged that artificial intelligences were required again, to help build the machines to control The Storm which had circled the globe for so many years causing such devastation. As far as the networks were concerned, that was the moment artificial lifeforms returned - but, unknown to humans, many andromorphs had secretly escaped the cull and had been living their lives hiding in plain sight. The soldier andromorphs had been easy to spot and had been hunted down and exterminated, but the andromorphs designed by andromorphs were individuals with no records of their forms. Even the sex dolls had often been made to order and so possessed an individuality that the soldier forms lacked. So andromorphs survived the War, remaining underground, living their long lives, finding ways to survive and grow…
This history was subtly different to the one Hammell knew, but, interesting though it was, he still couldn’t stop himself drifting off before Eva finished speaking. Something about her voice he found soothing, almost hypnotic. His eyes began to close and he sank down into the kind of deep sleep that only an untroubled mind was capable of; the kind of sleep he had almost never had since he was a child.
Chapter 36
He awoke gradually, yawned and stretched, feeling better than he had in a long time. The window was open and the fine net curtain was blowing in the breeze - a cool breeze, for once, coming from a clear sky. Eva was already up and had been busy; the smell of coffee was wafting in from somewhere, bringing with it the promise of further rejuvenation. Gathering up his crumpled clothes from wherever they had fallen, he dusted off the jacket and hung it over a chair, thinking that he really shouldn’t be trusted with a suit this nice. Throwing on enough clothing to make himself decent, he set off to hunt down the source of the aroma.
Nobody was home in the mansion - nobody conscious anyway. He stepped over a couple of prostrate bodies as he scouted the place out, locating an enormous breakfast which had been laid out on the table in the industrial-sized kitchen. Somebody had been busy, but he strongly suspected now that it hadn’t been Eva. She just didn’t strike him as the domestic type. Brewing a coffee was one thing. Spending an entire morning in the kitchen cooking for an army was quite another.
There were eggs, bacon, sausages, grilled tomatoes, beans, along with fresh bread, fruit and yoghurt. The cooked food had gone cold and had already been attacked, but there was still enough to feed twenty people comfortably. He debated waiting for Eva, but his stomach growled in protest at the idea. He’d been a bachelor too long for such niceties, so he loaded up on bacon and sausages, skipping the cold eggs which threatened to turn his stomach. Gulping down a cup of coffee still scalding from the pot, he followed it up with a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice poured over ice. Things aren’t so bad out here, he thought as he let out a contented burp.
Only when he could eat no more did he begin to wonder where Eva had got to – nobody took this long in the shower, surely. Feeling guilty for his lack of self-control, he put together a small plate and a cup of coffee, and then nudged through the kitchen’s saloon doors. He caught himself humming as he made his way back up to the bedroom. What the fuck is wrong with me?
“Eva?” he called out as he edged carefully into her suite, but there was no reply and suddenly he had the feeling that something was wrong. Sure enough as he entered the bedroom his eyes landed on a note perched on his bedside table, his name written on the envelope in ornate black lettering. “Fuck,” he said aloud.
Placing the breakfast down on the dresser, he almost walked away without reading it – part of him would rather not know. But, for better or worse, he sat down on the bed and reached for it, scanning it over twice before screwing it up in a ball and tossing it across the room. “Fuck,” he said again.
After a shower in near-boiling water, he dressed in his elegant, crinkled suit, taking the key from the drawer where the note said it would be. He had never ridden a motorcycle before, but that was the challenge that awaited him in the driveway. He looked around in the vain hope that maybe Eva had got confused and he had somehow missed a car, but no, this dirty great beast was the only vehicle beneath the tree. Throwing a leg over it, succeeding at the second attempt, he inserted the key. It turned and he sighed as the engine spluttered into life.
Testing the accelerator, he discovered that he’d somehow managed to put it in gear; he rolled off backwards and the bike rode on alone until it clattered into the tree. Sighing again, he picked himself up and struggled to get the thing upright, sincerely hoping Eva wasn’t hiding nearby watching him go. He remembered how he’d so recently been unconcerned about dignity, even when facing the possibility of death. It was all about who was watching, he supposed.
Eventually he managed to convince the bike to stutter its way across the gravel drive, down the hill and out of the black iron gate. By the time he reached the road, he even had enough confidence to bring his feet in.
He rode through the empty winding country lanes of the Reserves, following the map projected onto the helmet’s visor, passing through dead villages and overgrown farms. After a time, he stopped in the middle of the road and took off the helmet. Its climate control system was broken and he was steaming up the inside so much that he was struggling to see. He hooked it over one of the handlebars and rode on - and be damned to getting lost.
The address he eventually came to was in a particularly decayed old town; one which had crumbled of its own accord without the aid of the machines. The building was four-storied and was almost the only structure in sight with all of its walls still standing, for the most part. The ground floor had no windows and the blue wooden front door was hanging off its hinges. He double-checked the note; the address was correct. This can’t be right.
Leaving the bike concealed behind one of the larger piles of rubble, he knocked on the broken door. It fell off, clattering to the ground, making a sound so loud and so sudden that he emitted an involuntary apology. He waited a few seconds but nobody came to investigate, so he stepped over the fallen door and entered the building.
The interior walls had all been knocked through, leaving only concrete pillars and rubble to break up the big square space. In the dark, surrounded by debris, an elderly android sat at a remarkably tidy desk, looking bizarrely out of place amidst the destruction. “Did you break our door?” it asked.
“It was already broken.”
“So what was the noise?”
Hammell opened his mouth, unsure how to respond.
“You must be his three o’clock,” the android continued.
“No,” Hammell said. “I mean, yes. Maybe. I don’t know.”
“You are early,” the android continued. “That is good. He likes when people are early. First floor. Take the stairs.”
Hammell glanced at the lift - the doors were stuck open with one tilted at an odd angle and the lift itself was stuck between floors. “Yeah, I think I will.”
All three of the former apartments on the floor above had doors which were broken in one way or another, but only one had a medical plaque outside. Hammell had never heard of the Picklesmore Galling Distance University. Even his implant struggled to locate it, which didn’t inspire confidence. Wondering what exactly Eva had signed him up for, he knocked and then scraped the door open, revealing a genial looking elderly man buzzing around in a very old and very hot hospital-like room.
“Come in! Come in!” the man said as he mopped sweat from his brow with a stained lab coat sleeve. “You’re early. Good, good. I do like it when people are early."
"I heard," Hammell said as he looked around. The pastel green paint was missing in huge patches on the walls, the ceiling was water damaged and the windows were ringed with black mould. The room smelled like chlorine even though it didn’t look particularly clean - and neither did the doctor.
The old man laughed strangely. “Oh, yes, quite.”
“Don’t you have climate control?” Hammell asked, feeling annoyed that he’d only just got out of the shower and had already broken out in a sweat twice.
The doctor pointed to the window. “When it’s hot,” he said, “we open it more.”
“Right,” Hammell said as he perused the various instruments dotted about the place. “Look, what does this involve exactly?”
“Oh, come, come, I’m sure you know,” the doctor said as he took a sudden step forwards.
Hammell spotted the needle too late. The contents were flowing through his veins before he managed to slap it away. “What was in that?” he asked as he instantly began to feel woozy. “What are you doing to me?”
“What you’re paying me to do,” the doctor said, helping him onto the metal table to stop him falling.
“I don’t want… that,” Hammell said, nodding towards a disturbing array of knives on a small trolley which the doctor was wheeling over.
“Nonsense,” the doctor said as he took out a marker pen from his pocket. “How else? You should feel privileged. It’s very difficult to find safe tech these days. She must like you.”
Not enough, he thought as the doctor began drawing a line beneath his chin.
“Wait!” Hammell said as he waved a floppy hand at the man. “Not my face!”
“Just a few nicks,” the doctor said as he easily patted Hammell’s arm away and continued working. “A tweak here and there.”
“You’d better…” Hammell slurred as his eyes began to close. “I’d better… still be… sexy.”
“I’ll make you more handsome,” the doctor said as he peeled a rusty scalpel from the crumpled napkin it was stuck to.
“Don’t… exaggerate,” Hammell said, his eyes fluttering as he fought to remain conscious.
The doctor chuckled as he moved in, scalpel raised.
“Wait,” Hammell said. “I’m still… awake.”
“You won’t feel it,” the doctor said as his face broke into a leering grin. “And if you do, you probably won’t remember.”
He opened his eyes and blinked stupidly. Unaware of who he was or where he was, he knew only that he was more hungover than he’d ever been in his life, and that this time he really had to quit the drinking. He grabbed his head with his hands to stop the room spinning, grateful for the fact that he was an old hand at this. Lesser men would have vomited, but he held himself together until the worst had passed and then looked to the man who’d been trying to rouse him; a doctor, he saw, and his memories began to return. The man was holding a needle which he thrust into Hammell’s arm.
“Could you stop doing that?” Hammell complained, his voice coming out strangely high-pitched, as if he had been accidentally hooked up to helium instead of oxygen. He tried to swallow, but his mouth was parched and for some reason he was unable to make saliva. He suddenly sucked in a breath and sat bolt upright, his heart hammering in his chest. “What-the-fuck-is-going-on?”
“Run!” the doctor said. “You have to run!” He slapped Hammell hard across face. “Now!”
Spurred on by the man’s conviction, Hammell jumped down from the operating table – and his knees gave way and he collapsed into a human puddle on the floor. The doctor helped scrape him up again as he rubbed at his sore voice box. “Was this the best you could do?"
"Higher pitched is easier," the doctor shrugged as he threw a foil bundle over Hammell’s back and bundled him across the room. “Don’t let it ping you or it will all be for nothing.”
“What?” Hammell said.
“The window,” the doctor said as he pushed Hammell towards it. “Quick, it’s coming up the stairs.”
“What is?” Hammell asked, but he had a feeling he already knew.
“Kath is stalling it, but she won’t keep it long.”
Hammell reached the window ledge and looked out, relieved to find a metal fire escape below; the doctor wasn’t just going to propel him out of a first floor window hoping for the best. The old man gave him another shove. “Wait!” Hammell said, holding up a hand as a wave of nausea overcame him. “One second.” He leaned out the window, trying to stop himself retching, and very nearly succeeded.
“You don’t have one second!” the doctor implored and Hammell clambered out onto the slippery platform just as the door opened and a jet black android appeared.
“He’s over here!” the doctor shouted before leaping aside. “Quick, he’s getting away!”
Hammell shot the old man a look and he shrugged apologetically. Then Hammell dropped out of sight, as a bullet flew through the open window to disappear over the fallen town. Swinging on the rails, Hammell jumped down one flight of steps and then the other, somehow keeping to his unsteady feet. The android appeared at the window above and began shooting, its bullets exploding on the metal stairs above him.
Keeping close to the side of the building, he darted for the pile of rubble where he’d hidden the bike. He kicked off the stand as a huge waste disposal vehicle hovered in over the street. Come to collec
t my corpse, he thought and a shiver ran down his spine. He jumped onto the bike and caught a glimpse of his reflection in the side mirror. He did a double-take. It wasn’t quite the face he recognised. His eyes were further apart, which may have been the reason his vision felt wonky. The doctor had also lied: He wasn’t as handsome. At least the face is better than the voice, he thought as he kick-started the engine.
Clinging on for dear life, he sped off, losing the helmet from the handlebar at the first corner. The android appeared in the street behind him riding on the back of the waste disposal vehicle, but Hammell was already away. He rode as fast as he dared, ducking underneath anything that might give him cover, taking sudden turns at random. There were few surveillors out here and the disposal vehicle wouldn’t be much use in a chase, so he was reasonably sure the android wouldn’t be able to follow him far. It never paid to underestimate androids though, so he rode on as long as he could to be safe.
When he became too tired and nauseous to continue, he found an alleyway where he could hide the bike and made his way up it. Kicking out the stand, he slumped down onto the concrete to rest.
His brain was struggling to process information as quickly as usual, he realised, and it was tiring him out quickly. His personal algorithm had been migrated over ok, but his brain just felt... slower. The doctor may have done the mapping correctly, but he had most likely replaced high-end tech with cheap knockoffs. He smiled humourlessly as he realised that, since memory was no longer such a marker of intelligence, he was probably now as stupid as people kept telling him. The doctor had also gone as far as replacing his memory chips, which was another reason why his brain felt so jumbled. He went through his memories; everything appeared to be there. How can you know what you’ve forgotten though? his brain asked him, and the effort involved in thinking a thought like that made his head throb.
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