by J. S. Morin
“I’ll keep it in mind for next time I escape.”
James187 laughed. When he looked over and saw Eve14’s tear-stained face, his mirth faded. “I’m sorry. If it were all the same, I’d tranquilize you. But Evelyn wanted you awake and alert if at all possible.”
“How much trouble would I have to cause?”
James187 pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers and shut off his optical inputs. “How about you sit there quietly and just don’t think about it?”
Eve14 pursed her lips. James187 set a timer. At five minutes, eighteen seconds, the silence broke. “Not working. It’s a pretty insistent topic. I can either think about getting my brain erased, or think about not thinking about it, which pretty much boils down to the same thing.”
“What if I put on a movie?”
“Do you have The Wizard of Oz? Plato had that one. It was nice, except for the parts that weren’t.”
“No place like home, huh? That got you in enough trouble for one day, I think. And no, I don’t keep the entire planetary archive on board. We’re not broadcasting anything, either. Not even a request to the database for an old movie. But I’ve got one you might like. Might give you some perspective.”
James187 punched up an old favorite of his, a classic from the early age of digital effects. They didn’t make them like that even in his heyday, let alone the modern wasteland of imitation entertainment. Nothing past the Human Age was worth the time it took to watch.
“What sort of matrix is this about? Will there be vector mathematics?” Eve14 perked up at the prospect. Weird kid.
James187 smirked at his own joke even before he told it. “No one can explain it to you. You’ll have to watch it yourself.”
Eve14 took his advice to heart and in moments was watching, transfixed. James187 let the skyroamer fly along on autopilot and watched the girl’s reactions rather than the movie itself. He’d seen it a thousand times, but through her eyes, everything was new.
Chapter Sixty-Five
Charlie7 arrived at the tram station beneath Alison3’s house to find Plato crouched behind the cabinet of a control console. The boy had a pistol in his hand, aimed at Charlie7’s head.
“Not this again. Put that thing away,” Charlie7 snapped.
Navigating the agrarian factory to the ground floor had taken embarrassingly long. Without an internal map of the facility, Charlie7 had to rely on visual orientation. Without dynamic physics calculations, he couldn’t safely jump down multiple levels at a time. And with his own native coordination and navigation skills, he’d spent half an hour stumbling into oblivious automatons, backtracking out of dead-end walkways and losing track of his north and south.
Now here Charlie7 was, arriving back somewhere he could scavenge a data cable, and the first thing he ran into was a trigger-happy genetic mutant.
Plato sprang to his feet, and the pistol aimed away from Charlie7’s cranium. “It’s you! Where’s Eve?”
“James187 took her. He’s on his way back to Creator now. I have her narrowed down to two robots. If we split up, we can—”
“It’s Evelyn38,” Plato said. “She’s based out of a lab in Rome.”
Charlie7 glitched and froze, one foot halfway to the ground. “Wait. You knew? All this time? Of course, you did… Why not tell me? Why not tell Eve?”
“Slow down, cowboy. First off, we’re not friends. I still don’t like you, but you’re trying to help Eve, so you get a pass. Second, I don’t want her getting her credentials pulled and seeing her shipped off to supervise an asteroid miner. She’s due for a little ‘self’ termination, courtesy of yours truly. Now, if you want to help, fine. But no more yapping. Let’s move.”
Plato was good as his word. Without waiting for Charlie7, he burst through the door and up the stairs on his way to the outside.
“Wait a minute,” Charlie7 shouted after him. “That James made me pull my data cable. I just need to—”
“Got spares in Betty-Lou,” Plato said. “Tools too. I do a lot of… work… on the side.”
“But I’ll just—”
“Not a discussion,” Plato snapped. “I’m flying. My ride’s almost invisible. Plus, I don’t need some smartass robot snapping my neck with twenty-G maneuvers.”
Chapter Sixty-Six
“I need that to fly,” Plato griped as he watched Charlie7 unplug one end of a data cable from his skyroamer’s internal computer.
“No, you need it to navigate, and I can help you with that part. But you’re going to need me for what’s coming up next.”
It wasn’t as if Rome was some mysterious Shangri-La or even remotely difficult to locate. Even blundering about with just the sun and coastlines, Charlie7 was certain he could get them there. And once he’d plugged into the computer, he’d be able to see so much more.
“I didn’t say you could tear Betty-Lou apart.”
“Which do you care more about, Eve or this silly glider?”
In fairness, it was a nice ride, well maintained and upgraded to Plato’s preferences. The seat was set back farther than a stock skyroamer, and the skyroamer had both pressure and temperature controls for the cockpit. Charlie7 even suspected that he had overrides for black-out level g-forces.
“I like both,” Plato replied, casting Charlie7 a look from the pop-up book of nasty scowls.
Knowing the boy’s real age had cast Plato in an entirely new light. He had a simplistic view of right and wrong, selfish petulance with regards to possessions, and an entire lack of understanding of his feelings regarding Eve. His body had blown past puberty with no time for his mind to adjust, and no one to guide him.
“Well,” Charlie7 said. With a quick jerk, he yanked the computer console out of the cockpit’s dashboard. “Eve represents more to me than you can possibly comprehend; certainly a lot more than this hunk of aluminum and glass. And when we find Evelyn38, we’re going to need to be ready for her.”
“I got in just fine last time,” Plato countered. “I’ll do it again. And this time…” He pantomimed a gun with his fingers.
“That pea-shooter isn’t going to do much. If the round doesn’t penetrate, the thermite will just burn on the floor. James187 took your EMP rifle, remember?”
Reaching into the back, Plato patted a duffel bag. “Still got my grenades.”
“They’re in the tall grasses, back in Kansas.”
“What?” Plato shouted. The skyroamer wobbled as he took his hands from the steering yoke and unbuckled his harness. Twisting in his seat, Plato rummaged through the contents of his bag. “They’re gone. Why would you…? HOW did you…?”
Charlie7 cleared his throat and copied Plato’s voice. “‘One sec. Gotta take a leak first.’ That was when I removed and discarded the EMP grenades. Saving Eve is a noble goal, but I’m not letting you blast me blank in the process.”
“You think I’d—?”
“In a heartbeat,” Charlie7 answered without allowing him to finish. “You’ve still got ideas cooped up in that giant skull of yours that you can put this genie back in its bottle. Kill off every robot who’s seen you or heard of you except the staff at the Scrapyard.”
“Don’t call it that,” Plato said with a clenched fist aimed at Charlie7.
“You go back to rescuing captive human guinea pigs, and you and Eve live happily ever after. Sound about right?”
“If you can keep your mouth shut,” Plato countered. “There’s no reason to arrange a self-termination.”
Charlie7 shook his head. “You think an ongoing epidemic of robots supposedly ending their own existences will go unnoticed? Committees are already meeting about it privately. No. When we save Eve and stop Evelyn38, it’ll be time to tell the world. I’ll set up a commission to root out the geneticists working on humans. We’ll regulate the industry. We’ll—”
“Wait. Industry?” Plato’s eyes were shrewd and narrow, boring into Charlie7’s optics.
“Fine. Call it what you like. But there is genetic divers
ity split up among God-only-knows how many labs, and until the population genetics support sexual reproduction as the only means of birth, yes, there will continue to be a need to manufacture humans from scratch.”
“You’re not telling anyone about us.”
Charlie7 let his shoulders rise and fall. He hung his head. “Very well. I need your help, so I’ll have to respect your wishes. But at least consider the benefits. Can you promise me that?”
Plato snorted. “Sure. I’ll consider it.”
They flew on toward Rome with a tentative agreement in place. Plato had no intention of considering the matter, Charlie7 knew. That was all right with him because he hadn’t the slightest intention of keeping the matter secret to begin with. The world deserved to know what was going on, and humanity deserved the protection the committees could provide.
Charlie7 just needed to keep that to himself long enough to secure Plato’s help.
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Rome looked as it always had. A thousand years? Three thousand? The city shrugged away time like a rain slicker in a storm. The Colosseum had withstood Carthage, Visigoths, a world war, and an otherworldly war. Maintenance and restoration efforts deserved some of the credit, but few places on Earth could boast so much intact Human Era architecture.
One of the newer structures, a baby at some fifteen hundred years, was their destination.
“I hate this place,” Charlie7 muttered as he followed Plato through the door of the Sistine Chapel. “They should have walled it off in glass and left it alone.”
Plato craned his neck and watched the ceiling as he walked. “I was in a little more of a rush last time. It’s not half bad in here. It’s like walking into a painting that someone folded into a building. You know, like one of those origami cranes?”
“This was a place for appointing emissaries of God, not for playing at it,” Charlie7 said, careful to keep his voice down. The echoes reminded him that if the walls could hear, so could any number of surveillance devices. “Evelyn11 lived here for ages. After her sanctions, the Genetic Ethics Committee sent a team in to clear it out. Everyone thought this place was empty. I mean, who’d want to live in a place with a history like that?”
“Evelyn38,” Plato answered, stating the obvious.
There were scuff marks on the floor, consistent with the unshod feet of automatons. Charlie7 traced them until the marks ended abruptly. “This must be where the elevator is,” he said, pointing to the faint outline that marked its perimeter. “Give me a minute, and I’ll—”
“Way ahead of you,” Plato replied. He held the makeshift computer Charlie7 had ripped out of his skyroamer. The elevator lurched with a grinding of gears and began to rise from the floor.
“Not bad, kid. I figured the codes would have changed.”
“They had,” Plato said. “I cracked through again.”
“But I didn’t show you how to use the universal decryptor.”
Plato shrugged. “You didn’t teach me how to fly here, build an EMP rifle, or shave either.”
Point taken. Charlie7 gave Plato a curt nod and followed him down into the secret laboratory of Evelyn38.
In his head, Charlie7 rehearsed his speech. He’d tell Evelyn that her game was over, that she was as good as exposed. She would protest, bargain, plead. Charlie7 would remain impassive through her ranting, then make her an offer. He would intercede and ask for clemency on the part of the dozen or so ethics committees she’d contravened. In return, she’d release Eve14 unharmed, along with any other humans she had squirreled away. The only trick would be to get Plato to shut up and not shoot her before they accounted for all the Eves she might have created.
They bypassed the upper levels where legitimate research had once been performed on orangutan embryos and stem cells. Nothing found there would be incriminating, even if Evelyn38 had reopened it for her own research.
The elevator stopped. Plato had his thermite pistol at the ready. Charlie7 steeled himself for horrors they might discover beyond.
The doors opened to reveal nothing at all.
The corridors were empty.
Doors stood wide. Laboratory after laboratory lay open to view, numbered and vacant.
“Where’d it all go?” Plato asked.
Charlie7 studied the floor. More of the same scuff marks. “Who keeps a personal army of automatons? There must have been six or eight of them. I could have automatons of my own, but I borrow them when I need work done. Pairs, mostly. Four at the most. She must have moved her entire operation out of here since you rescued Eve.”
“That’s why I usually kill first, save second,” Plato said, grabbing a doorframe and leaning inside to peer around. “But Eve freaked me out. Besides, Evelyn38 wasn’t here that day.”
“Where was she?”
“How would I know? If I had a tracker on her, I’d have made sure to come when she was. But I was just—hey, wait up. One of these doors is sealed.”
Charlie7 followed around the bend that Plato had taken and confirmed that there was, in fact, a single door that wasn’t wide open. “Stand aside,” Charlie7 said.
“Oh, come on,” Plato replied, angling to block Charlie from getting to the door first. Hooking the emergency slider handhold with his fingertips, Plato grunted and pulled. Muscles ripples and veins bulged in those gorilla arms of his, but the door didn’t care.
Charlie7 scooped up the portable computer Plato had ignored and punched in a few commands. Plato stumbled backward as the door slid free and retracted into the adjoining wall.
“See?” Plato boasted. He glared at the computer when Charlie7 handed it back.
Beyond was an office. At least, it was staged to look like an office. Charlie7 had been in enough of them to know real from phony, and this office looked as phony as a Hollywood set. There were just a desk and a chair. The desk was empty, and the chair’s occupant was inanimate.
“Is that her?” Plato asked.
The automaton was a female chassis of archaic design. It was a remake of an early model that a few elderly robots preferred, to the point where there had been dozens of iterations over the centuries that kept the same basic structure and aesthetic.
The silent robot behind the desk wore a white lab coat turned brown with dust. The eyes were dead, without any hint of glow.
Tuning his auditory sensors to maximum, Charlie7 couldn’t detect the slightest hum to indicate there was live power in the robot. He had his suspicions already, but he circled around the desk to be sure. Pulling down the back of the collar, he read off the engraved designation. “No. This is—or should I say, was—Evelyn11.”
Plato came around to see for himself. “It says Evelyn oh-one-one.”
“The leading zeroes aren’t pronounced. It’s not Toby oh-two-two, or Alison double-oh-three,” Charlie7 said. “This was once Evelyn11, and now we know what happened to her.”
Plato nodded along in agreement. “Yup. Evelyn38 killed her or at least covered up her death. She’s got to be stopped.” As Plato turned to leave, Charlie7 caught him by the arm.
“No, you idiot,” Charlie scolded him. “If you kill someone you hide the body—or chassis, in this case. You don’t build them a memorial halfway between your office and your lab.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that Eve isn’t the first attempt to find a new body for Evelyn11. She murdered Evelyn38 and took her place.”
Chapter Sixty-Eight
James187 marched Eve 14 along by the upper arm. The bindings at her wrists kept her arms behind her back and prevented her from doing much of anything to try to pull loose. The stone walls were a smooth three-quarter circle through the volcanic rock, with only the floor cutting the chord to ruin the geometric perfection.
“Is it geologically safe down here?” Eve14 asked. Even in its final moments, the girl’s brain couldn’t help filling itself with new information.
“Kilauea erupts regularly. Hasn’t hurt this place yet. Besides, wha
t’s it matter?” James187 asked. “You won’t be around to notice.”
“I’d be willing to help program a big simulation where everyone thinks they’re human,” Eve14 suggested with a hopeful smile. “Wouldn’t that be better for everyone? I mean, if Evelyn gets bored with my body, she has to grow a new one. But if it’s all a simulation, she could be anyone she wants, whenever she wants.”
James187 shook his head and kept Eve14 moving forward. “Can you please forget the movie? Dang it. Wish I’d just tranqed you like you asked.”
“Go ahead,” Eve14 replied. “Best part of this life is over already. Nothing left I want to see.”
James187’s next footstep faltered, but he recovered. Had to have been a flaw in the freshly carved floor. Automaton work. Couldn’t trust it. “Don’t say that. Every minute’s a gift from Evelyn, you know.”
“My life wasn’t a gift. It’s not a gift if you plan to take it back. I just got to borrow me for a few days.”
“More like stole.”
Eve14 twisted in James178’s grasp to look him in the eye. “Whose life was it in the first place?”
James187 jerked the girl around to face forward. “Keep quiet.”
The tunnel continued down for a hundred or so more meters before branching left and right. Both directions ended in heavy steel doors after two meters. James187 took a right and pressed a button on the console beside it. He bent to speak into it.
“I’ve got her.”
“What’s behind that one?” Eve14 asked, indicating the other door with a jerk of her head.
Curious to the last. What could it hurt to indulge? “Geothermal generator and the behind-the-scenes stuff to run this place. It’s dull as corn flakes. I’m sure you’d love it.”
She tried to turn for a better look. “Could we just—?”