by David Archer
Afterward, they all headed for bed in their individual rooms. Noah and Sarah, Neil and Jenny, and Marco and Renée shared rooms, as did Wally and Cody since they were the only two single men.
Esmeralda had a room of her own, and had lately begun getting into the bed every night, rather than simply standing or sitting motionless as she had done in the past. She was capable of powering herself down with only a sentinel program still running that allowed her to listen for approaching danger. It was as close as she could get to actual sleep, but she had discovered that in the brief nanoseconds between her sleep mode and full reactivation, she would experience something akin to a dream, and she had recently started trying to analyze them. It seemed they were often brief visualizations of events that had not happened in her experience, but were essentially imaginary. For an AI, the concept of the imagination was almost alien, so she was exploring her “dreams” in the hope of learning just what imagination was.
The following morning, as they all gathered for breakfast, Esmeralda looked at Noah. She was fully aware of Noah’s condition, the histrionic affect disorder that left him without emotion, and that he operated primarily on logic, just as she did. As a result, she had come to respect his opinion concerning her slowly burgeoning sentience.
“Noah,” she said during a lull in the conversation, “I had an unusual dream this morning. May I tell you about it?”
Everyone fell silent instantly, and Noah looked directly at her. “Yes, please do.”
“It was very brief,” she said. “I was in my room upstairs, in my bed, and in my dream I suddenly realized there was a man lying beside me. He was not a man I have ever met, but he turned and looked at me, and then kissed me. I can remember feeling his lips touching mine, but then I became fully conscious and realized that it was a dream.”
Everyone at the table stared at her, but then Wally leaned over and laid a hand on her arm.
“This is incredible,” he said. “Esmeralda, do you realize what this means?”
“No,” she said, turning to look at him. “Does it mean something?”
“Of course it does,” Wally said, giggling. “It means that you are experiencing desire. You have obviously been seeing our young couples enjoying intimacy, and you are experiencing a desire to feel intimacy of your own.”
Esmeralda simply looked at him for a couple of seconds, then turned back to Noah. “Do you think that is correct?” she asked. “Am I experiencing a desire for intimacy?”
Noah raised an eyebrow. “I think it’s possible,” he said. “Even though I don’t feel emotion, I do feel desire quite often, especially when I’m alone with Sarah.” He glanced at his wife, who was suddenly turning red. “I think the desire you may be experiencing is to more closely approximate humanity. I can remember when I was younger, as I was going through puberty, when I felt similar desires and didn’t know what to make of them.” He looked at her for a second longer, then leaned a little closer. “I know that you have some kind of physical feeling,” he said. “Do you know how it works? I’m curious whether you feel things in any way similar to what we do.”
“I can answer that,” Wally said. “We designed her sensory network to be as close as possible to a human’s. She has tiny tactile sensors throughout all of her skin, each of which is capable of registering not only the fact of contact, but the degree of pressure. For instance, if you simply lay a hand on her arm, like I’ve done, she feels the touch and the warmth of my fingers, but if I were to squeeze, she would feel the greater pressure and react to it as a possible threat. She would assess the impact of the pressure on her position and situation at the moment, and determine whether it was in fact representative of danger. That’s basically what we humans do in a similar situation. If somebody grabs your arm and squeezes, you automatically evaluate what’s going on to determine whether it means you’re in danger, or someone is just being playful or overly zealous. Right?”
Noah nodded. “That makes sense. What about the things we consider more pleasant sensations? In her dream, the man kissed her. Would that give her some sort of pleasure?”
“Oh, yes,” said. “Her original programming included the ability to interpret certain stimuli as pleasant, and others as unpleasant. A gentle touch on the lips would be pleasant, and she was even programmed to accept a more aggressive, more passionate kiss under certain circumstances. Why, we even included programming so that stimulation of her nipples and…”
“That’s enough, Wally,” Sarah said. “We get the picture!”
“I wanted to hear more,” Jenny said. “Go on, Wally, what do you…”
“I think we all understood what Wally was trying to say,” Noah said. “Esmeralda, since you do in fact have the ability to feel pleasure, then I have to believe that you can experience intimacy, as well. Intimacy is more than just physical pleasure; it includes a very basic emotional response that makes the intimate situation something we find pleasant, which is why we desire it. Now that you are capable of independent thought that goes beyond your programming, I see no reason why you shouldn’t be capable of desiring pleasure, intimacy, perhaps even emotional fulfillment of some kind.”
Esmeralda cocked her head slightly as she looked at him. “I do find myself occasionally observing you couples and wondering what emotions and sensations you experience together. I suppose it’s possible that I’m curious enough to wish I could experience them for myself, but of course that would be impossible.”
“Why is it impossible?” Renée asked. “I mean, we all know where you came from, but we still all think of you as a person. Why couldn’t you have a relationship with a man in order to experience those things?”
Esmeralda turned to her. “I think that would be deceitful,” she said. “I’ve been programmed with a great deal of information on human psychology, and I believe that a man would find a relationship with a robot to be false and unsatisfying. Keeping my true nature a secret is not an option, because it would be wrong to allow a man to think I was fully human just to experience intimacy and pleasure. I’m sure he would feel deceived, and probably angry, when he learned the truth.”
“So tell him the truth,” Marco said. “Trust me, there are plenty of men out there who won’t care how you came to be. You’re very attractive, your personality is sweet and likable; granted, it might take a man a little time to get used to the idea, but—well, take Cody, here, he knows you already. Cody, would you take Esmeralda out on a date?”
Cody, who had just taken a bite of the ham Beatrice had originally sliced for breakfast that morning, chewed it slowly while his large, round eyes jumped from one face to the next. When he finally swallowed, it was hard. “Um—well, yeah,” he said. “I mean, Esmeralda, you’re beautiful and all that, but—well, I mean, I’m not sure I’d really be the guy you’d want to try that way. You know what I mean?”
Esmeralda looked straight at him. “No,” she said. “What do you mean?”
Cody swallowed again while everyone else except Noah stifled a grin. “Well—I, I guess what I’m trying to say is that I don’t know if—if I could think of you completely as, you know, as a girl.”
Esmeralda nodded. “I see,” she said. “Because you know that I’m a robot, you wouldn’t be able to be intimate with me the way you could with a natural woman. Is that correct?”
Cody was squirming in his seat. “Well, you know, something like that. I mean, I don’t really think about you being, you know, a robot most of the time, but—well, if we were, you know, out on a date, well, I think it might be hard not to think about it.”
“Cody, don’t worry, you have not offended me. I understand. Would you be willing to take me out on a date anyway? Just so I can see what it would feel like to be on a date?”
Cody swallowed once again, then seemed to surrender to the inevitable. “Sure,” he said. “Maybe we could go to the movies or something.”
“That’s a wonderful idea,” Wally said. “Esmeralda could use the practice, being in a somewha
t romantic situation in public.”
“Wally, lay off,” Sarah said. “Esmeralda, ignore these guys. Just remember that if a man asks you for a date, he isn’t asking you to marry him. You don’t have to tell him your whole life story for a single date.”
“But what if he decides he likes me? If he asks me for a second date, should I tell him the truth then?”
“Not unless he has a top-secret security clearance,” Wally said. “That’s the hangup, Esmeralda. You can’t let anybody know about you outside of our little group. If you find yourself in a romantic situation, then we’ll have to vet the guy to see if he qualifies for the secret.”
“I can qualify him,” Marco said. “I’d just explain to him that if he ever talks, I’ll cut his nuts off. He won’t talk.”
“But then he might get angry at me,” Esmeralda said. “I wouldn’t want that.”
“All right, you guys, that’s enough,” Sarah said. “Leave her alone.” She turned to Esmeralda. “Emma, you and I can talk about this later when these idiots aren’t around. Okay?”
Esmeralda smiled at her. “Okay,” she said.
They all finished breakfast and then went back upstairs to Noah and Sarah’s room, which was the biggest of them. It was still crowded with nine people inside, but they all managed to find somewhere to sit as Molly began laying out the mission plan she had come up with.
“What I’ve got in mind is two teams, working together,” she said. “Team one will take Senator Mitchell, and look for an opportunity to create a fatal accident. That will mean spending some time studying her routine, getting an idea of where one might be set up in advance. I’m thinking of something along the lines of a traffic accident, but another possibility may suggest itself once the team is in place.”
She glanced over at Jenny. “Jenny? Are you still staying off the lead roster?”
“For now, anyway,” Jenny said. “I just don’t really feel like I’m ready, you know?”
“No problem,” Molly said. “In that case, I was thinking that some of our conversation this morning might actually come into play. Senator Clark is known as a ladies’ man, a real horndog. He’s been named by at least a dozen young females who work around the Senate as a man who is always flirting and making passes, but he’s kept it just under the line that could be called sexual harassment. I think he would be an easy mark for a female assassin, and I was thinking of using Esmeralda.”
Noah looked at Esmeralda. “Esmeralda? Are you willing to perform as an assassin?”
“Certainly, Noah,” she said. “While I may be developing some intelligence, I’m still basically controlled by my programming. That programming tells me to kill whenever I’m ordered to do so by you, and now that I know the reason for my negative feedback loop after the last mission, I don’t think I’ll suffer any ill effects. Of course, that programming also prevents me from harming anyone without such orders, or at least without an absolute necessity of doing so.”
“You made a comment about being programmed for seduction,” Noah said. “I take it you mean that you were programmed with seduction techniques? Ways to get a man to be alone with you?”
“Yes. I’m programmed for various types and levels of flirtation, sexual body language and facial expressions. By watching the face and body language of my target, I can determine which particular techniques are most effective and expand upon them. According to Wally, there are probably very few men who could resist giving in to me.”
“Actually,” Wally said, “I’m pretty sure what I said was that any man who could resist her was probably already dead.” He looked at Noah. “Okay, you could, but I don’t think anyone else would be able to.”
“Then you’re up,” Noah said. “Your orders will be to locate and seduce Senator Clark, then take him to a private location and kill him.”
“Yes, sir,” Esmeralda said.
“I think,” Molly went on, “that we should send her with Cody, Marco and Renée as her team. With the computer inside her head, she isn’t going to need Neil, so he and Jenny can either sit this one out or work with whoever we put on team one.”
“I need to stay here,” Neil said. “I have way too much to do if we are launching this company this soon.”
FIVE
Noah turned to Esmeralda. “How soon will Aladdin and Pegasus get here?” he asked.
“According to my last update,” Esmeralda said, “Pegasus will arrive the day after tomorrow, in the afternoon. Their flight will land at Heathrow at just after one p.m. Aladdin will arrive the following day at just before ten a.m.”
“All right,” Noah said. “Sarah has a doctor’s appointment in London that morning, so we’ll take the van and pick Pegasus up at the airport. Marco, we’re going to need additional vehicles. Take Renée, Jenny, Esmeralda and Cody into the city this afternoon and buy four of them. I’m thinking SUVs or those four-door pickup trucks, something big enough to carry a whole team. Neil, we need a highly secure Internet connection at the building, something that’s going to be able to handle a lot of data and bandwidth. You can work on that this afternoon, and tomorrow morning you need to head into London.”
“London? What am I doing in London?”
“We don’t have room to house everyone here, so we need to make arrangements for accommodations. There’s a place on the M25 near our exit that sells mobile homes. Go purchase eight of them and have them delivered to the grounds of the factory building no later than tomorrow evening; they can do it, so pay extra if you have to. Wally, you and I will go out now and find plumbing and electrical contractors to set up spots to put them all, like in a trailer park. All they need is a place to set them where they can hook up electricity, water and sewer lines. Molly, you and Sarah can take the van tomorrow and go shopping, get the basics for each of those campers.”
“The basics?” Molly asked.
“Yes. Sheets, blankets, basic dishes and cooking utensils, cleaning supplies, things like that. After we pick them up, we’ll take Pegasus by the store so they can pick up groceries and personal hygiene items.”
There were a couple of other questions, and then everyone got moving. It was going to be a busy day. Wally found a contracting company in Guildford that was overjoyed to get the job of setting up camper sites at the old factory, and he and Noah took the pickup truck and met them at the site with their trenching equipment an hour later. The foreman worked with them to choose the best location to put the campers, an area on the east side of the property that was lightly wooded, and then they got started.
“Are you sure?” the foreman asked. “It’s a lovely spot, but it’s going to mean cutting a road. We can do it if you wish, but you’re looking at quite a bit more expense.”
“That’s not a problem,” Noah said. “Those spots will be ideal.”
“Absolutely,” Wally added. “The people who will be staying in these are special employees, so giving them some shade and privacy will be a good thing. You can run all the lines, can’t you?”
“Certainly, sir,” said the foreman, doing his best not to grin too widely. “As long as you gentlemen don’t mind the expense, we can do whatever you wish.” He turned to look back at the building from where they stood, just on the edge of the wooded section. “It’s not but about two hundred meters to the building, and we can tie the electricity and water in from there. The sewer line runs along the road, so that’s about four hundred meters, perhaps five hundred from the furthest point.” He took a walkie-talkie out of his pocket and keyed the microphone. “Walter, this is Charles. We’re going to need the dozer out here, and about two hundred more meters of sewer line.”
Wally started to follow Charlie as he walked toward his crew, but Noah caught his arm.
“Let’s you and me go inside the building,” he said. “We need to start figuring out what we need inside, and getting some offices set up.”
Wally grinned. “Sure, Boss,” he said. “I’ve already made a list of some of the equipment I’m going to need, but
a lot of it can only come from our old labs back in Neverland.”
“That might be difficult,” Noah said. “We would need to know how to identify each piece you wanted, and then it’s possible Allison could arrange to have it shipped out.”
“Oh, it won’t be hard at all,” Wally said. “We set up a bug-out plan right after I came on board with E & E. Each item of equipment that we brought in is identified by a code number, and in the event we ever had to abandon the facility, the crew would follow that plan, which called for every item to be packed away and stuck into warehouse A7. Warehouse A7, since you probably never heard of it, is a top-secret underground warehouse that is only accessible two ways: you can get to it through a tunnel under R&D, and the tunnel is only accessible from one room in the building. The whole floor of the room is a concealed elevator, and it drops down sixty feet to the tunnel itself.
“The other way to access warehouse A7 is hangar nineteen at the Kirtland Airfield. That’s the big one that sits out on the edge of the field, all rusty and worn-out looking. A big section of its floor is another elevator that goes right down into the warehouse. The stuff I need could be brought up and loaded into a C-130 with nobody being the wiser.”
“Sounds like it’s all planned out,” Noah said. “How do we make it happen?”
“Again, easy. All I need to do is have Esmeralda contact the people I want and tell them to start getting it ready. They could have everything loaded up and on the way here within a day or two, if you okay it.”
Noah looked at him for a couple of seconds, then nodded once. “Do it,” he said. “Now, let’s look at the offices. I’m going to need a briefing room.”
* * *
Marco, Cody and the ladies spent most of the afternoon looking at various vehicles, and finally settled on a pair of Mercedes G-Class SUVs and another pair of Ford Ranger double cab pickup trucks. The salesman almost fell out of his chair when Marco handed over a platinum card to pay for all of them, but the sale went through without a hitch. The total came to just under three hundred thousand pounds, and they made an interesting convoy heading back toward Guildford. Marco, who was more familiar with the route, took the lead in the Bentley while Esmeralda and Cody followed with the two pickups. Jenny and Renée brought up the rear with the SUVs, and they kept in contact through their subcoms.