Extinction Reversed (Robot Geneticists Book 1)

by J. S. Morin

“But this way is for the better. No point harming yourself. If you come quietly, I won’t need to sedate you for the trip.”

  Eve took a deep breath. “I think I’d rather you did. I’m done with all this. Running, hiding, running some more. Just… end it.”

  Drones and automatons continued their labors, oblivious to Eve and James187. It was clockwork without gears. Everything reacted to everything else. Eve had done all the reacting she had in her, and it hadn’t been enough.

  Eve was a gear that didn’t mesh, and the clockmaker was coming to pluck her out of the works.

  The clockwork patterns made a certain degree of sense even without understanding the mathematics behind them. An underlying order was part and parcel to their existence. An aberration crept into view like a splotch of color in a black-and-white world. Eve had expected one: James187. But instead, a different robot perched on a distant opening high overhead like a hawk surveying its domain.

  Charlie had come to help her.

  Maybe this wasn’t over after all. Eve grunted and let the half-eaten apple fall back into the trough with its companions.

  Charlie was gesturing with his hands. An escape route? Eve wished he’d brought Plato’s rifle along instead, but the weapon was still slung over James187’s shoulder.

  This wasn’t a fight, though, not if Eve was going to be the victor. This was an escape, and if she was going to take her chances on Charlie7’s plan, she had to act now. Charlie had yet to lead her astray.

  Besides, what did she have to lose, anyway? A little pain was a small price to pay for hope.

  Eve rolled onto her stomach atop the pile of apples. Bracing her hands on the side of the trough, she pulled herself over the edge and dropped to one knee on the floor beside it.

  “Just stay right there,” James187 said. The voice was calm, reassuring. Easy when he thought he’d already won. But this wasn’t over yet.

  There was a space beneath the trough, just half a meter high. Eve dropped flat to the floor and rolled until she came out the other side.

  “What part of stay put was that?” James187 demanded. His footsteps quickened. “I thought we’d gotten over playing games.”

  “Your game. My life,” Eve shouted without looking back.

  Charlie had indicated she should circle around the massive central tower that several of the vertical conveyors shared. A dart flew past, and Eve knew she had to get somewhere high—and fast.

  But Charlie had a plan. She had to trust that he knew how to guide her out.

  Glancing up, he made a “hurry up” gesture, waving a hand in tight circles. But he also pointed to another of the vertical conveyors, and Eve followed his direction. The trough at the bottom of this one was filled with potatoes. Eve climbed in and evicted a handful of the starchy root vegetables from one of the rubber buckets and used it for a handhold. As it pulled her up, she kicked a few more potatoes out to make space for her feet to rest.

  “Not this again,” James187 groused. “Those drones fly automated routes. If you get to ground outside, there’s nowhere to run. I won’t lose track of you, and sooner or later, you’ll just drop from exhaustion. Either kill yourself or don’t, but let’s not waste each other’s time here.”

  Eve pressed herself as flat as she could against the conveyor, potatoes digging into her stomach and filling her face with a pungent, earthy scent.

  Her frustration with James187 reached its boiling point. Eve couldn’t contain herself. “I’m sixteen years old, and I’ve been free for three whole days. You’ve got no right talking about how I spend the rest of my life.”

  James187 had climbed aboard one of the other conveyors and was riding up toward a common destination at the top of the tower. Eve was still higher up, but James187 was climbing the buckets of his conveyor to arrive there first. If she lay there passively, the conveyor would deliver her right to him.

  Charlie was no help. From her vantage, Eve couldn’t see him. She wouldn’t until she crested the top of the tower.

  But if James187 could climb, so could she.

  Eve pulled herself up one bucket at a time, pushing potatoes off the side of the conveyor to create solid handholds. She was slower than James187, but she had a head start. By her estimate, Eve might make it to the top first but not by a wide margin. One of the potatoes just fit so well in her hand that the impulse took her to hurl it in James187’s direction. It struck him in the arm, and his hand slipped as he reached for the next handhold.

  “It’ll take more than a potato to dislodge me,” he shouted across to her.

  This would have been the appropriate time to have a more dangerous weapon than a potato, Eve knew. A small explosive charge would have been nice. A large explosive charge would have been even better. But all she had were more potatoes. And while the first hadn’t been particularly effective, Eve wasn’t feeling particularly rational.

  Eve pelted James187 with one potato after another. At one point she had to climb to the next bucket for lack of ammunition. Some potatoes were big and awkward, others hardly worth the effort to throw. All of them flew toward the nasty robot anyway.

  James187 calmly batted the projectiles away with one free hand, but they were distraction enough that he stopped trying to climb any higher.

  All his decisions, Eve realized, were predicated on conservatism. No risk. No chances. At least none that he could help.

  James187 viewed his victory as inevitable and was taking long-term odds every time. Why risk letting Eve dislodge him? Why risk tranquilizing Eve when she was balanced precariously?

  Eve needed to keep forcing James187 to make long-term decisions until he ran out of time.

  As they approached the top, Eve craned her neck to peer over the top of the tower.

  There he was! Charlie was only a few meters overhead. A couple stairways and a long catwalk run were all that separated her from freedom.

  The top of the tower poured foodstuffs into a vast wash cycle of sprayers and gratings. Eve grabbed hold of a maintenance walkway and pulled herself to stable ground. James187 was almost to the top as well, so Eve had no time to waste.

  Feet clanging with every step, she reached the first of the stairways. Eve grabbed the railing to swing herself around the corner and onto the third step.

  An automaton coming down at the same time had the awareness to alter course and step around her as Eve flew past.

  “You’re not going to—oh, ho!” James187 called out, switching mid-threat to a cheery voice. “Well, hello Charlie7! Didn’t see you up there.”

  “Call it off, James187,” Charlie shot back. “Eve’s coming with me, or I broadcast your designation and my optical feed from this chase planet-wide.”

  Eve continued running. James187 was up the first set of stairs, gaining ground on her. Her estimate said she had enough head start to make it. The second flight was all clear, and she sprang up them two at a time.

  At the top of the last stairs, she had a clear path to Charlie. She could see a skyroamer, hovering at the ready just outside the opening. Its door was wide open, inviting her inside.

  James187 was on the second set of stairs. Eve hopped onto the railing in case he decided to hit her with a dart at the last minute. She had the time to spare, but not if she were unconscious.

  “Put that thing down, James!” Charlie shouted. “It’s a 50/50 chance she’ll fall to her death.”

  Eve’s eyes went wide, and she hurried, feet moving as fast as she dared along the railing.

  “You think I’m some kind of amateur?” James187 replied calmly.

  Eve heard the click, followed instantly by the whoosh of a dart in flight.

  She felt nothing, but her right leg went numb. Eve’s foot missed the railing. She overbalanced, struggling in vain to stay on course. The catwalk rushed up to greet Eve as every muscle in her body went limp.

  A shockwave of pain went through her skull as one of the metal studs cracked against the floor. But the agony ended quickly as Eve’s world went dark
.

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Charlie7 watched Eve fall.

  He cringed when she hit the steel meshwork floor.

  When James187 aimed the EMP rifle in his direction, Charlie7 froze.

  “Hold it right there, hero,” James187 warned. The hunter approached slowly, the tip of the rifle’s barrel never wavering. By the dishevelment of his forest camouflage jacket, Eve had given him hell to get this far. “I didn’t expect you to circle back on me.”

  “We had a deal. I didn’t transmit a thing.”

  James187 threw his head back and laughed. The barrel still didn’t move. “I’ll give you this, for an old-timer, you’ve still got a lot of nerve. I expected you to be halfway back to Paris by now. Maybe forget this whole business ever happened; maybe you don’t, and you plug the ends of a primary power conduit into your ears like Alison3 did.”

  “I couldn’t abandon Eve. I had to try,” Charlie7 said. “Sorry.” The old robot offered a perfunctory shrug.

  James187 took a step forward.

  “I don’t rightly know what to do with you, Charlie7,” James said. “You’re right about being too notorious to disappear. But you’re not too big to drag in front of a committee for scientific theft, destruction of research data, and interfering with a long-term experiment.”

  “None of that applies to unsanctioned research,” Charlie7 protested. There were times when he wished he was slightly more automated. He could have used a subroutine that monitored his vocal output and allowed a few extra cycles of thinking before he spoke his mind.

  “Maybe tomorrow… perhaps the day after… but sooner than you can plan for, the world’s about to change. Humans are back,” James187 said. He nudged Eve’s limp form with a toe. “And we’re going to be them.”

  “That’s abhorrent!”

  Charlie made himself a mental note that if he lived out the next few minutes, he was going to sit down and write that subroutine, even if he had to route his vocal emitter through his computer brain.

  “It’s ugly and new, like a newborn still covered in that goo they come out with,” James187 said, flicking one hand as if to shake it clean. “Crying shame what the incompetents have done along the way. But this is the real deal. The inflection point. From here, it’ll get clean. Sad thing what’s gonna happen to this girl. One day the bodies won’t ever need a mind to wake up inside them. Just fresh, clean, guilt-free humans grown to order. But today I’m taking this girl, and I’m gonna have to live with what comes next.”

  “For science?” Charlie asked.

  It was a venerable old motto but an empty one. It proclaimed righteousness in the name of a nebulous concept. It abdicated ethics and morality in the service of an abstract notion that had neither wants nor needs. It was the scientist’s cop out.

  “Exactly!” James187 tucked away his dart gun and stabbed a finger at Charlie7 again and again as if he’d made a profound revelation. “Science saved mankind. We’ve been pupae, in a manner of speaking. Now, it’s time to emerge in a form of our own choosing.”

  Charlie7 glanced down at Eve. “I can’t picture you in a skirt.”

  James187 kept careful aim at Charlie7 as he scooped Eve up and hoisted her over a shoulder. With a deft snap of his wrist, he tugged the dart out of her thigh and flicked it out into the empty air. A few seconds later, Charlie7 heard the faint clink of it hitting the floor.

  The hunter patted Eve on the rump. “This one is spoken for. I’m hoping to bring in that big fellow. Wouldn’t mind a body like that one.”

  “Careful what you wish for,” Charlie7 replied. “That ‘fellow’ is only twelve. He’ll be dead inside of ten years. Twenty, tops.”

  “Hmph. Oh well. Better to wait and get a proper body. Good enough for the lad. Gave me one helluva scare. Listen, Charlie—may I call you Charlie? We’re not getting anywhere here. I can’t risk killing you. You can’t risk being exposed. I’ll make you a deal. Rumor has it you love to haggle.”

  “Go on…”

  This might be Charlie7’s best chance of getting out of this with a shot to still save Eve. Saving himself was just a crucial step along the way. After all, what good was he dead?

  “That boy Plato’s going to be along any time now. You convince him to let bygones be bygones, and I’ll look past the committee hearings for you. I’ll be a big deal myself, soon enough. Committee chairmen are going to be lined up for human bodies of their own, and I’ll be on the side that’s offering them. Keep a low profile for a few months, and no one ever has to know you were on the wrong side of history this time.”

  This was Charlie7’s last chance to stop James187 from putting Eve in that skyroamer and flying off with her. Nothing he could broadcast would stop him in time. There was nothing he could do if James187 decided to pull the trigger on that EMP rifle.

  This time, Charlie7 took the microseconds he needed to plan. “Deal.”

  “Good. Now tear out your primary data transfer cable and toss it into that wheat mill.”

  “What!” Charlie exclaimed.

  “There’s a chance that you might change your mind once I’m gone. I’d just like the reassurance that it’ll take you some time to find a replacement.” He aimed the EMP rifle at Charlie7’s torso. “Or I can take my chances using this thing. Might not be surgical precision, but—”

  “Fine,” Charlie7 snapped. He had little choice in the matter.

  Opening his ventral thoracic access panel, Charlie7 worked loose the primary data connection between his crystalline matrix and the workhorse computer that lived in his chest. Taking careful aim over the railing, he did as instructed and tossed the cable into the industrial wheat mill.

  As he watched the cable disappear beneath the surface of the churning grain, Charlie7 struggled to maintain his humor. James187 had to think he was resigned; that Charlie7 could ever possibly stop trying to save Eve. “That’s going to ruin a batch.”

  James187 pushed past Charlie7, shoving the barrel of the EMP rifle against his cranium on the way by. Movies had told Charlie7 that anyone who put a gun within arm’s reach was begging to get it ripped from their hands and used against them. Physics, pragmatism, and the specification on James187’s Version 68.9 chassis told him otherwise. He’d be wiped clean before he put a hand on the rifle’s barrel.

  James187 loaded Eve inside the skyroamer. “How the hell did you get my ‘roamer up here, anyway?” he asked, just before closing the cockpit door, shaking his head all the while. The skyroamer edged away and took off into the night sky.

  The oldest robot watched two pinpoint lights from the skyroamer’s ion engines until they disappeared over the horizon. “I’m Charlie7. I used to be a hero.”

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  The girl stirred in her seat. James187 watched the fluttering eyelids as Eve struggled to shake off the effects of the tranquilizer. She was strapped into her safety harness, so there was no risk of her going anywhere, and her wrists were bound behind her with cable-ties, so she wouldn’t be unbuckling herself.

  “Plato? Where are we?” Eve14 asked. Her voice was groggy, and she slurred the words.

  Evelyn38’s advice on the dose hadn’t come with a warning of how quickly it would wear off. A doe that took a similar amount to knock out would have been asleep for six to eight hours. Eve14 hadn’t been out for two.

  “I’m not Plato.”

  There was no point in lying to the girl. She’d figure it out on her own soon enough. And there might well have been things he didn’t want to hear if he had played along.

  Eve14 squeezed her eyes shut harder, then fought to open them.

  So young. James187 had never been young like that. He’d been born a middle-aged man from the memories of three scientists who barely remembered puberty existed, let alone what it was like. Eve14 was a little older than that but not by a lot. Sixteen, she’d said?

  James187 couldn’t imagine how Evelyn38 dealt with her for so long without growing attached. Experience, he guessed. Kill enough
of the same girl, and it probably got easier thinking of the next ones as rodents.

  The cunning rodent in the seat beside him had worked one of her shoes off and was trying to reach for the control console barefoot. James187 slapped the foot away. “Quit that. You don’t behave, I’ll tranq you again.”

  Eve14 squirmed in her seat, struggling to get loose from her harness. After a few minutes of fruitless effort, she gave up with a sigh. “Might be better. I don’t think I’m going to like the rest of my life much.”

  James187 kept his eyes on the controls. There was nothing the least bit interesting or unusual going on there, but at least it kept him from looking Eve14 in the eye. “You’ve had it better than any human in a thousand years.”

  “Not saying much,” Eve said with a grunt as she resumed straining against the harness. “Since there haven’t been any.”

  “Sure there have,” James187 replied, trying to keep the tone light. “There’s a whole island for them.”

  “They’re not like me,” Eve14 replied, slamming her head against the headrest in frustration. “Most of them are happy. They don’t understand the world that made them. I do.”

  James187 adjusted their course three degrees north. He checked the wind speed. An indignant message arrived from Evelyn38 asking what was taking him so long; he deleted it. “Plato understands. And he hasn’t got much longer on this Earth than you do.”

  “You’ll never get Plato,” Eve14 shot back. “Once he finds out what you’ve done to me, he won’t rest until he makes you pay.”

  James187 reached back behind Eve14’s seat and pulled the EMP rifle into her field of view. “Actually, Plato helped quite a lot. I doubt I could have dealt with Charlie7 on my own without it. Factory full of automatons; heavy industrial machinery; drones overhead everywhere. Not a good recipe for taking on an adversary who cuts through data security like butter. Did you get a chance to taste butter while you were taking your little holiday?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, I miss the taste of butter. I can’t even remember what it tastes like, exactly. I just remember the feeling of downing a plate of chicken with fresh biscuits oozing over the sides with melted butter.”