by J. S. Morin
James187 saw no harm in playing along. If he could start a dialogue, he could use the sound to narrow down the human’s location. “I am. There’s no escaping. If you give yourself up, I promise you’ll come to no harm. We just can’t have humans running loose, killing refinery workers and kidnapping humans from their parents’ homes.”
The voice came from a different direction. The human was on the move and rather quieter now than James187 had first credited him with. “So, you Machiavelli99 or something? You expect me to buy that load?”
“Still got the same tranq darts from our first meeting. Maybe a bit more juice in them this time. I had expected to find a lost little girl who needed her mother, not a big, strapping lad like you. And I’m James187. Who might you be?”
“Well, Jimmy. I think I’m going to have to refuse your offer. I can’t let you get Eve. You’ll have to kill me to take her.”
The human was somewhere else now. James187 was beginning to get a feel for his movements. He was dodging around the supports and molten vats with stealth and quickness, but a pattern was emerging.
“Come now, human—wait, I can’t do this. I understand we won’t be friends, but we can hardly even be enemies if I don’t know your name.”
“Bothers you that much, huh? Well, go suck lemons, pal.”
James187 paused for a frown.
Where on Earth was this human picking up such clunky, ineffectual slang? Was he going to stick his tongue out next?
“A real hero never hides who he is. I suppose I’d thought better of you, but you’re just after Eve for your own purposes. You’re not ‘saving’ her for anything but your own vulgar desires.”
“I won’t let you get me riled up with that psychology garbage. I’m Plato. You happy? But I’m not going to come charging out at you to get tranqed in the face because you make stuff up about me and Eve.”
This Plato character was running out of room to maneuver. Vast as it was, the refinery wasn’t without its corners and blind alleys.
If only this poor human hadn’t gone and dropped his computer. Otherwise, Plato might have known that he had painted himself into a corner.
“You have my word,” James187 called out. “You won’t be harmed. Truth be told, I’m a little in awe of you. I’ve been to the Sanctuary for Scientific Sins. I think everyone’s gone at least once, just out of morbid curiosity. You’re nothing like them.”
“Half those poor humans are there because of me. They were places lots worse than that.”
There! Behind that pillar!
James187 slowed. Each footstep touched the concrete floor as gently as a feather’s touch. He aimed his dart gun where he might expect to find a crouching Plato’s chest. One quick burst and he’d be—
An arm wrapped around James187’s neck. Before he could react, it had constricted beneath his chin. The cervical actuators in James187’s neck weren’t able to overpower the fleshy vise. His head was forced back.
“Hi, Jimmy. You like my decoy?”
Instantly, error codes blared warnings that nearly drowned out James187’s conscious thoughts. The strain on his cervical actuators, data connections, and coolant lines was approaching critical.
James187 had been a fool.
The audio was a broadcast. Of course. Multiple small speakers scattered during his flight. The human could transmit despite his own jammers because he knew the exact frequency they would allow through. For all the credit he’d given this Plato, James187 had still underestimated him.
The dart gun. James still clutched the weapon. But as he tried to fire over his shoulder at the human, a firm tug at his neck brought on a sudden panic.
“Drop it!” Plato ordered. “Drop it, or I exert the thirty-five hundred Newtons it’ll take to snap the neural fibers in your neck and turn you into a steel rag doll.”
The fact that Plato knew the exact break strength of the cluster of fibers that carried signals throughout James187’s robotic body was disturbing enough. The ever more dire warnings flashing across his vision showing just how close those fibers were to breaking lent credence to Plato’s threat.
Upgrade to the Version 68.9, they’d said. You’ll love the efficiency, the battery life, the longevity. No one had thought to mention that this chassis could be overpowered by a renegade human if it caught him in a vulnerable moment.
James187 dropped the dart gun. Plato kicked it away.
“You have me. Now, what? Obviously, you want something, or you’d have killed me already.”
“Well, I’ve got particular rules about this whole killing business. And I can’t overlook the fact you’re just carrying a tranq gun.” A sweaty hand patted James187 on the skull. “You earn a reprieve, so long as you play ball.”
Mercy? After all the two of them had been through?
James187 had been assigned to bring Eve14 back for Evelyn38 to overwrite. He was only concerned about preserving Plato’s life because he rather fancied having that monstrous body for himself.
Plato couldn’t know any of that. Otherwise, James187 would be getting dragged, limp and helpless, over to the vats of molten ore to join the smelting process.
“I acquiesce.”
There was a jerk at his neck. “Don’t go getting all smart on me, Jimmy. I know what that word means. Now, you tell me the exact frequency you need to call off those drones, and I’ll give you access. After that, we’re going up to the roof where both of us are parked. I’m going to take my skyroamer. You’re going to take yours. We roam off our separate ways and never see each other again. Got it?”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. Oh, except that you’re never going to see Eve again, either. Or any other human for that matter. You’re going to forget our species exists. Go back to hunting rabbits or whatever it is you do for a living.”
James187 had no choice but to comply. He provided the frequency for the ore refinery drones. When Plato stopped jamming that one frequency, James187 canceled the capture-and-contain order.
Jason266 would receive notification and assume the “bears” had been taken care of. Plato then marched them out without so much as a wrong turn on the way up. He never imagined the human could have memorized the facility layout.
“Eve wasn’t even here with you, was she?” James187 dared to ask.
If James187 had been a living creature, being carried by the neck would have prevented any conversation, but he didn’t draw breath. At least not today. If Plato were good to his word, maybe someday he’d still have a chance at a human body.
“Sorry, Jimmy,” Plato said as they approached his skyroamer. “I’m just the decoy. But I’d like you to do one last thing before I let you go.”
“What’s that?” If James187 were going to live out the next few minutes, he’d gladly hear Plato out.
“Deliver a message to Evelyn38. Tell her she’d better not dare turn herself in. I don’t want some committee sending her off to mine asteroids or grow algae on Mars. She’s mine, and I’m coming for her.”
Plato released him suddenly and shoved James187 away. Then the human tossed a grenade to him. The robot caught it without thinking. For a shining second, James187 expected his world to end in a sudden electromagnetic pulse.
“Hold tight,” Plato warned, wagging a finger. “It’s live. You let that thing go, you’re blanked. Smart guy like you can disarm it once I’m out of range. But if I catch you trying it while I can see you, I’ll trigger it manually.”
The human’s ship lifted off, and James187 watched until it vanished over the horizon heading east.
It only took a short while after that to pry open the grenade and find that there was no circuitry to perform any of the feats Plato had promised in his threat. It was just like the first he’d taken apart, except that the leads weren’t connected to the supercapacitor.
It was a dud, and James187 had been too scared to call Plato’s bluff.
Chapter Fifty-Three
As Charlie7 walked through an old far
mhouse-style door, he set down the basket filled with Eve’s supply of apples. It would have been a waste leaving them to bake in the Kansas heat out in the skyroamer.
Eve followed close behind, using Charlie7 as a shield. Her wariness was unfounded. The sprawling ranch house was vacant. Everything was just the way the old robot remembered it, from the dusty fireplace to the racks along the wall filled with tiny figurines.
Well, not everything had remained untouched. Someone had pushed the couch aside—probably one of the clean-up crews.
Eve wrinkled her nose. “It smells in here.”
Charlie7 just smiled. “You couldn’t have said that fifty years ago.”
“I wasn’t born yet.”
“Yes, yes. But if you had been, you still couldn’t have said it. There wasn’t enough mildew to give that dank smell you’re noticing. Progress isn’t always shiny and electronic. Sometimes it’s the small, smelly, crucial building blocks that pour the foundations of real advances.”
Eve explored as much with her hands as with her eyes. She ran her fingers along the wooden walls—a real luxury in this age of plastic and steel. The cushioned seats each beckoned for her to sit upon them. She picked up several of the figurines and examined them before returning them to their spot along the wall, carefully oriented just as they had been. Crawling on hands and knees, she ducked her head inside the fireplace and looked up the chimney.
“Does someone live here?” Eve asked. “What if they come back and find us?”
“No one lives here anymore,” Charlie7 replied gently.
“Was it the smell?” Eve asked, dusting off her pants. The white fabric would never stay clean the way the girl interacted with everything she encountered.
Charlie7 saw no point lying to her. “No. The previous occupant self-terminated last year.”
“Oh,” Eve said. “Did you know him?”
“Her,” Charlie clarified. “Alison3 and I were friends for nearly nine hundred years.”
Odd when he phrased it that way. The time line of Charlie7’s existence stretched back to the horizon behind him, and he couldn’t even make out the tiny blip of it before Alison3 was uploaded. Their friendship had lasted longer than the Holy Roman Empire.
“What happened?”
Charlie7 sat, not even worrying about the dust getting all over his suit pants and the back of his jacket. With a wave of his hand, he indicated a seat opposite himself for Eve. She plopped down and pulled her knees up to her chest.
“Alison3 was one of the rebuilders. Not all the early robots wanted humans back. A lot of them wanted to progress, to explore the universe without the limitations of flesh and mortal lifespans. But Alison3 spearheaded the efforts to restore the biome.”
Eve tilted her head. “Wouldn’t she be happy? There’s food growing, and the atmosphere is breathable. Robots are making people now.”
“That was it, actually. Robots making people. Can you even imagine what it’s like to hold a dream in your heart for centuries? And then, time and again, you see that dream misshapen and exploited.”
Eve’s eyes widened. “She saw the Sanctuary for Scientific Sins.”
“No. She committed one. I believe you met Emily?”
Eve nodded.
“Well, Emily was the daughter of the Alison Prime. Where she’d gotten a sample of the DNA or how she’d preserved it in secret all these years, I couldn’t say. But she partnered with a geneticist to bring Emily back.”
“It worked,” Eve said, nodding along with the story.
“Did it?” Charlie7 asked. “I suppose. But like many wishes, it wasn’t granted the way Alison3 had imagined. However, that’s not why we’re here.”
Shaking loose from his maudlin interlude, Charlie7 brushed the dust off his suit—a lost cause by this point. “This place is plenty large for our purposes. I can customize you a kitchen and bedroom. For now, a blanket and the couch should do once we clean it up.”
“What should I do?” Eve asked, slipping down from the chair and following Charlie7 as he swept through the house.
“Do you remember the clothing measurements from the sanctuary?”
Eve nodded. Of course, she did. Asking was simply a matter of politeness.
“Well, your assignment is to input those values into Alison3’s cloth-o-matic. Then, you’ll have it make you three full sets of clothing. But there are three rules. First, you can’t make them like the ones you’re wearing. Second, no two outfits can be identical. Third, no using any of the presets Alison3 saved including the fact that by altering the size they’d technically be different. Think you can do that?”
The girl stared at him, still as a mannequin. He might as well have asked her to compose a symphony or launch an orbital probe. Strike that. She probably would have enjoyed orbital mechanics. Nevertheless, faced with the prospect of a mildly creative endeavor, Eve was dumbstruck.
“How?”
Charlie7 tapped a finger to his lips as he considered. “You can consider whatever factors you like, but the choice has to be yours. Creator may have taught you any number of useful skills, but she didn’t seem concerned about you learning to be human.” He flashed a quick, stainless steel smile. “That job falls to me.”
Whether his explanation made any sense to Eve, Charlie7 couldn’t say. Parenting was a skill lost to the mists of time. It would require rediscovery and study by the same set of twenty-seven scientific minds that had to figure out genetics, architecture, space exploration, and climatology.
There were probably books on child-rearing somewhere in the archive. Maybe one day they’d be worth a look.
For now, Charlie7 had other matters to look into.
While Alison3’s home occupied one level aboveground, like Charlie7’s, it hid several below. All the low-numbered robotic IDs came with a lingering paranoia about exposure to open sky.
In the catacombs beneath Alison3’s home, Charlie7 discovered her lab equipment. She’d never gone into genetics. In life, Dr. Alison Francoeur had been a robotics professor, specializing in the theoretical aspects critical to Project Transhuman’s earliest days.
Charles Truman had always been the hands-on sort, despite his advanced degrees. But while Charlie7 kept his original vocation mostly intact, Alison3 had found a world where robotic theory was almost a quaint notion. When she searched her soul for another career, she became robotkind’s first environmental scientist.
Alison3 had spearheaded the cleanup of Earth, from eradicating the remaining viral and bacterial agents from the war to salvaging untainted genetic samples for the eventual rebuild.
Most of the lab was a museum to the tools that had cleansed the Earth so long ago. In one room, the prototype of the first autonomous bulldozer sat on a pedestal, just 1:10 the scale of the production units. In another, an array of handheld scanners took up an entire wall, vacuum-sealed behind glass; each was an improvement over the previous version. Charlie7 remembered operating one of the original BioScan-Alpha toxin screeners right alongside Alison3. Back then, there weren’t enough robots for anyone to specialize too finely—not even Charlie7.
In the bowels of the facility, Charlie7 reactivated the local generator. Alison3’s place was low on fuel, but it had a deep-well geothermal backup that would more than suffice.
Next, Charlie7 began sorting through the functioning equipment and taking note of what would need to be scrapped. Alison3 was gone, and her museum was more a hazard to Eve than a fitting monument to one of Earth’s founding robots.
While Charlie7 was halfway inside a soil sifter trying to figure out if the engine was worth repairing, soft footsteps padded down the stairs.
“Why are you naked?” Eve asked.
Pushing off with his hands, Charlie7 slid out from beneath the machine. “Don’t get any ideas,” he said. “It’s not the same for humans as it is for a robot. I just didn’t want to do any further damage to my suit—it’s in sorry enough shape already. Your chassis isn’t scuff-proof. Mine is.”
&n
bsp; As he angled his head up, Charlie7 caught sight of Eve. He shut down his optic sensors for a few seconds to let the image clear his visual buffers.
Of course, Eve had found the loophole in his instructions.
The girl hadn’t copied the clothes from the sanctuary or anything Alison3 was liable to have had saved in the cloth-o-matic’s memory. Instead, she wore a copy of the outfit she’d had on beneath Toby22’s oversized and borrowed clothes.
It made sense, of course. This was what the girl knew best. Having grown up in what amounted to a gymnasium, it was even perfectly practical for Creator’s lab.
In total, the outfit consisted of a top that covered her from her second rib to her armpits with thin straps over her shoulders, leggings that clung to her like a second skin, and a pair of athletic shoes with some sort of fabric liner that functioned as a sock. All but the soles of the shoes were made from the same breathable synthetic fiber from the cloth-o-matic’s standard list. All of it was black.
Charlie7 realized the flaw in his instructions when he saw that she carried the other two outfits bundled in her arms. They were the same thing, but in white and a shade of gray he suspected was the exact middle ground between the other two.
“I’ve completed my task.”
“Yes. Yes, I suppose you have,” Charlie7 replied in monotone.
She’d done as he asked. And, while it wasn’t ideal, it was at least good enough that he didn’t feel the need to send her straight back to the cloth-o-matic to try again. The gray, at least, showed a bit of initiative and decision-making, even if it was only of the blandest sort imaginable. A child who never grew up with crayons couldn’t be expected to become the next Salvador Dali.
“What are you doing?”
“Thinking.”
“I mean with the machine,” Eve clarified, crossing her arms and fixing Charlie7 with a stern scowl.
For a moment, the old robot tried to envision that same look on each of his five suspects. After all, one of them had to be Creator, and Eve certainly hadn’t learned that look from either Plato or Toby22.