by J. S. Morin
“No.”
The door skidded open with an unpleasant shriek.
“Good Lord, James. What took you so long?” Evelyn38 bustled through, limping on a bad knee actuator and moving with audible whirs and pops from old servos. “And you, Eve dear, what’s wrong with your hands?”
“She didn’t come willingly,” James187 replied. “I used a cable tie to restrain her.”
Evelyn38 took custody of Eve14 and spun her around. “James, you ninny. If you’ve damaged her circulation, I’ll pitch you into this volcano. That’s what the foaming agent was for. I even brought the cutter to get her out of it.” She pulled a handheld reciprocating saw from her pocket and revved its high-pitched engine. With a flick of her wrist, she cut Eve14 free. “Come along, Eve.”
Evelyn38 retreated into her lab, but Eve14 stood her ground.
“You’re welcome,” James187 interjected, suddenly feeling left out of the matter.
“Oh, James, don’t be bothersome. I’ll keep my word. But you’ll just be underfoot in the meantime. I’ll contact you when it’s done.” She looked back, seeming to notice for the first time that Eve14 wasn’t accompanying her. “And you. What’s gotten into that head of yours?”
Evelyn38 reached into another pocket and withdrew a pen-shaped device. Pressing the button on one end caused a high-pitched tone that forced James187 to filter his audio inputs.
Eve wasn’t so fortunate. Her hands went instantly to the sides of her head. Inarticulate agony forced a scream from her throat. Still holding down the button, Evelyn38 grabbed Eve14 by the arm and dragged her inside. The door began to slide shut, separating James187 from Evelyn38 and Eve14.
James187 leaned to keep his line of sight to Evelyn38 as the opening narrowed. “You don’t have to do that to her! She’s just—”
“That will be all, James,” Evelyn38 replied just as the door boomed shut.
Chapter Sixty-Nine
The studs that began just outside her skull and burrowed deep inside rang like a fire alarm in Eve’s head. She struggled to keep both hands over her ears as Creator towed her along. It didn’t help.
In her panicked state, she tried to remember that it wasn’t the sound that hurt but the resonance. Every one of the forty-eight studs in Eve’s skull amplified the sonic vibration and transmitted it directly to the surrounding bone. With her one free hand, she pressed down on as many of the studs as possible to dampen the effect.
Even with both hands, it wouldn’t have been enough.
Eve’s breath came in gasps with little whimpers between. She kicked her feet and thrashed. Eve needed to get loose, needed to get away, needed to get Creator to take her thumb off the button on that awful little device.
“Stop being a crybaby,” Creator warned. “This is your own fault. You’ve forgotten the primary rule. Do you remember what that is?” She took her thumb off the button.
A wave of dizziness flooded in as the ringing stopped. “Do… what… told.”
“Oh, my. I hope I didn’t damage anything in there.” Creator patted her on the cheek. “Don’t worry, dear. The effect is well calibrated. You’re unharmed.”
“Not… for much longer.”
Creator hoisted the disoriented girl up onto a table. Eve’s senses slowly returned to clarity.
They were in a lab; that much was clear. The surroundings were all new—rock walls and ceiling with inset diode lighting—but the equipment was all familiar.
“Now just lie there and hold still,” Creator ordered. Her tone was the same as ever—proper, condescending, slightly amused.
Eve knew what was coming next. She’d done it herself enough times at Creator’s direction. Detailed encephalographic readings required her to be hooked up to the scanner and held firmly in place. Creator was going to restrain her.
If Eve was never going to move under her own power again, she couldn’t surrender without giving the very last of her efforts to resist.
Creator was on one side of the table. Eve tried to roll and drop off the other. But an unyielding robotic hand still had her by the wrist.
…and the other hand held the device.
With the push of a button, Creator reduced Eve to a quivering mass of blinding pain without a cogent thought in her head.
When the pain faded, Eve heard the familiar sound of a ratchet mechanism tightening the padded cuff around her right wrist. Eve threw her weight against the cuff, willing to tear her own hand off if that’s what it took to get free.
The blinding pain again. Then the sound of the ratchet. This time it was her left wrist held fast. The next repetition of the cycle and a strap tightened across her chest and upper arms, just above the elbow.
“We can’t keep on like this all day,” Creator said, leaving Eve for a moment and disappearing behind the head of the machine at the table’s end.
As much as the chest strap allowed, Eve forced her head around to watch what was happening. She tracked Creator by her irregular footsteps. When the robot reappeared, it was on the far side of the machine, and she held a needle on the end of a tube.
The intravenous port at the crook of Eve’s left elbow was exposed. She couldn’t move her arm enough to even inconvenience Creator as the needle went in. “Why are you doing this?”
“You see? Questions are fine. Shows that magnificent mind of yours is still working. Disobedience is not.” Creator paused to clear her throat. Eve wondered why since technically Creator didn’t have a throat to clear. “You see, I am in an old chassis no longer supported by Kanto. I’ve gotten by for years on begged and cobbled replacement parts, but I need a new one.”
“Why me?” Eve asked. A slow, seeping chill was spreading outward from her arm. Already she couldn’t feel the fingers of her left hand. “Why not a new robot chassis?”
“Because I need a new mind, as well. This crystalline matrix is degrading. Soon it will start losing bits and pieces of data. Not long after, a cascade failure will cost me everything.”
“Doesn’t answer the first question,” Eve clarified. She blinked as fatigue pressed down on her like a suffocating pillow.
“Oh, that. I’ve dreamed for centuries about having a human body again. I was an old lady when Evelyn Mengele’s mind was scanned. Not just to be human again but to be young. This dreary life is colorless. I can identify a million chromatic combinations, but not one of them seems like a color. I want human eyes, human taste buds, human ears. I want every sensation I can remember and each one I’ve forgotten, and I’m going to experience them all through you.” Creator reached down and tapped Eve on the tip of her nose.
Creator moved out of her field of vision, and Eve heard another ratchet tightening. There was no feeling to go along with it. Drowsiness was robbing her of her last seconds of conscious thought. Eve was running out of time to win a debate that could spare her life. “Same problem… fifty years.”
“Longer than that, I’d wager,” Creator replied amiably. “You’re very well manufactured. But your point is valid. However, once I have the process refined, it’s infinitely repeatable. I’ll simply prepare a new Eve, or…”
But the rest of Creator’s words faded to mush in Eve’s ears, indistinct and distant. She drifted off to drug-induced slumber to the sound of ratchets tightening.
Chapter Seventy
Charlie7 paced the room where Evelyn11’s chassis sat impassively. Plato stood in the doorway, gripping the sides of the frame like he was trying to tear it from the wall.
“We’re back to square one,” Charlie7 said. “There isn’t enough time or forensic evidence to find Eve before it’s too late.”
“You’re the big hero to robotkind,” Plato snapped. “Do something. Call in a favor. Threaten someone. Go ahead and announce her name to the world.”
Charlie7 tapped himself on the cranium as if he could spin his quantum magnetics faster. “Oh, maybe. Maybe. Last resort only. I know that if she sees the end coming, Eve is doomed. Her best chance is the element of surprise.”
Plato’s eyes shot wide. “I’ve got it! We’ll announce a contest, and say Evelyn38 won it. Then we—”
Charlie7’s hand snapped up and interposed itself between Plato’s idea and his audio receptors. “Just stop right there. What little I heard of that already took up data storage space I don’t want it occupying.”
“Better than anything you came up with…”
Charlie7 resumed his pacing. “Not if you believe in negative numbers.”
A thermite pistol appeared in Plato’s hand. That boy’s reflexes were unbelievable. “You say that again. I dare you. I double-dog dare you.”
But Charlie7 wasn’t interested in Plato’s tantrum just then. He had just received a message. The ID was anonymous, but he knew at once who had sent it.
NEW ARRANGEMENT. YOU GET EVE. MY NAME IS LEFT OUT OF ANY OFFICIAL REPORT. DEAL?
“Deal! Of course, deal. Where is she?” Charlie7 spoke the words directly into his internal computer, never giving them voice.
“Hey, look at me when I’m talking to you!” Plato shouted, taking a step closer and aiming the pistol at Charlie7’s mouth.
“Shut up!” Charlie7 snapped at him. Then a moment later, he had what he needed. “Let’s go. I figured out the coordinates. I know where Eve is being held.”
“Huh? How?”
“I think someone who wanted a human body remembered he still has a human soul.”
Chapter Seventy-One
Eve awoke. She hadn’t expected to.
“There you are, dear,” Creator cooed. “Hadn’t realized the kind of day you’d had. Your electrolytes and potassium levels had crashed. But I’ve got your vitals on the monitors now, and levels are coming back to normal.”
Eve couldn’t move. Her body was a lump of lead. There was no feeling from her neck down. Every few second there was an electric tingle in her skull as another lead was connected to one of the studs.
A cold chill that was entirely imagined ran the length of Eve’s spine. As for actual sensation, Eve’s body already felt dead around her.
“By the way, you’re also filthy. I don’t know where James found you, but what had you been doing, rolling around in a pasture?”
“Agrarian factory.”
“Hmph. Same thing, really. Then again, if all goes well, I’ll be eating the foods from there soon enough.” Creator giggled. “Can you imagine it? Me. Eating.” She pulled down Eve’s lower lip and peeked at her teeth. “Still took good care of them while you were gone?”
“No toothbrush.”
Creator tsked at her. “No fair abusing that body just before I move in.” She finished attaching probes and returned moments later with a toothbrush.
For the sake of obstinacy, Eve pursed her lips. If Creator was the least bit bothered, she didn’t show it. The robotic mad scientist merely jammed the toothbrush between Eve’s lips and activated it.
The merry-sounding little motor buzzed away as Creator ran the spinning head around Eve’s mouth. There were squirts of water and vacuum suction to remove the suds, and Creator pried open Eve’s jaw to get at the flat tops of the teeth.
Eve’s teeth were clean, even tasting vaguely of mint, but never had she felt so dirty. Nothing Eve could do was enough to fight off Creator’s control. Not even the inside of Eve’s mouth was her own.
“There. That’ll do for the time being. Now, open wide.”
Reluctantly, Eve complied. But Creator pushed her jaw closed. “Eyes. I’m done with your teeth.”
Eyes? Just what was Creator planning? “Where’s the screen?”
“With how you’ve been since you got back?” Creator asked in reply. She patted Eve’s cheek. “You’d never keep your eyes on the images.”
With one hand, Creator pried open the lids of Eve’s right eye. With the other, Creator maneuvered a device with four prongs into position millimeters from her iris. It held a clear hemispherical lens ringed with circuitry.
Eve tried to look away, but she couldn’t actually get her eyes out of their sockets. That seemed to be the only safe place for them.
Creator patiently tracked Eve’s twitching attempts to look away and finally pressed the lens to her eye. There was a puff of releasing air and a firm pressure against Eve’s eye, and then the pressure released.
Taking away her steel fingers, Creator let Eve close her eye.
Eve could see just fine, though her eyes were now both watering profusely. Blinking cleared it up, but her eyelid could feel the slight presence of the lens. She squeezed her eye shut and tried to crush the lens to stop it from clinging like a tick to her cornea.
“All that fuss over nothing,” Creator chided. She loaded another lens into the device and leaned across to perform the procedure a second time.
Eve barely bothered to resist. What was the point? What was one more violation she couldn't prevent?
This time, the lens locked onto her eye in just seconds.
“What did you just do? Where did you get that thing? You never used it before.”
“On the contrary,” Creator replied. “Eve12 was a wiggly one. Never kept her attention on what she was supposed to be looking at. Not sure what I did to put the wiggles in that one, but I didn’t make the same mistake with you. You managed to acquire some gumption. Those projection lenses are stapled to your cornea. ‘Stapled’ makes it sound worse than it really is. They’re really just two-millimeter hooked barbs that hold the lenses in position. They’re terribly useful little things. I don’t plan on removing them once I’m using that body. Here, watch.”
Suddenly Eve’s vital signs appeared in her field of view, hovering in mid-air between Eve and lights set into the lab’s stone ceiling. Her heart rate was twenty-five beats per minute. Her blood pressure read ninety over sixty-five. Eve’s attention wandered briefly to seeing just how she was faring. Then she remembered her imminent death, and the rest of the numbers seemed less relevant.
“Why me?” she asked softly. “Couldn’t you use someone else’s body? I think I was just starting to find out that I like being a human.”
Creator affected an exaggerated sigh. “And that, my dear, is why you were never supposed to know about them. You were a happy little lab rat until someone broke you out of here. You wouldn’t mind telling me who, I assume?”
There was a loud clunk and a familiar hum as the brain scanner switched on. Creator was peering into her mind, and Eve wasn’t being shown what she saw in there.
Could Creator read her memories like a data file?
Could she look up the information herself?
Eve squeezed her eyes shut and tried not to think at all. But the numbers hung there, impossibly giving the impression of floating a meter or so in front of her despite her closed eyes.
Creator’s voice grated like steel. “I asked you a question, Eve.”
The resonance device clicked to life, and Eve couldn’t even cringe against the pain. She cried out and could feel the tears streaming down the sides of her face. The numbers for her heart rate and blood pressure rose rapidly, broadcast directly onto her retinas.
“I won’t tell you,” Eve gasped out between waves of pain. “Find the data yourself.”
“You’re not an indexed database, my dear,” Creator replied. Her voice reverted to a gentle lullaby. “Despite my best efforts to mold your thoughts into a rigorous, regimented system, there’s still more chaos than order inside that skull of yours. Might as well start sorting out how much damage your little holiday has done.”
A test pattern filled Eve’s vision. Mismatched images blurred into focus, coalescing into an ever-shifting three-dimensional shape complete with the illusion of depth perception.
Despite her fear and horror, she couldn’t help trying to figure out the algorithm the lenses used to create the effect. The test pattern was replaced by an image of a fork and knife. A few seconds later, an illusion of a red ball lofted in a ballistic arc. Then an array of colorful cubes spun across Eve’s view.
The imag
es flashed past, and Eve looked at all of them for the prescribed interval. Her brain reacted to them involuntarily, assigning objects their proper names, calculating trajectories, identifying patterns.
Eve couldn’t stop her thoughts if she tried. And Eve did try. She threw every gram of mental energy into thinking about anything other than the images being injected into her eyes.
Creator needed data, and with limited options for rebellion left to her, denying her that data was all Eve could hope to accomplish.
Eve struggled to picture Plato’s face, but with her eyes processing so much visual data so quickly, his features washed away in a flash flood of imagery. Shifting tactics, Eve remembered apples—their taste, the slimy texture of the peels, the sweet smell. She rehearsed the melody to the songs from The Wizard of Oz and Plato’s silly munchkin voice as he sang along.
The images ceased abruptly.
Eve opened her eyes, and the lab ceiling stretched above her. Then Creator’s face loomed into view.
“You think you’re clever. Don’t you? The outside world has mucked up that noggin of yours, and I need to know exactly how. But you’re placing me in a quandary. Any harm I do you, I’ll end up feeling the aftereffects. Yet, I need you to comply. And I can’t just monitor your reaction to stress; I need the whole gamut of that brain of yours. So I’m going to make you a little promise. If you relax and let your mind wander through the lovely picture show, I swear that your last moments of conscious thought will be pleasant.” Creator’s voice was sweeter than factory-fresh strawberry jam.
“And if not?”
That sweet tone curdled in Eve’s ears. “Then I will bear whatever residual discomfort I must, but I will empirically determine the exact amount of pain you can withstand. With that knowledge, I will exceed that threshold for as long as it takes to gain your cooperation. I’d hoped to finish these scans in a few hours. But if need be, I’ll hook you up to feeding, breathing, and excretory tubes and keep you there for weeks, if that’s what it takes. The amount of time you spend suffering is entirely up to you. The amount of time you comply with my wishes will remain constant, and you will spend it.”