by J. S. Morin
With a ding, the Cloth-o-Matic finished. Plato extracted the still-hot floor mat and tossed it at his feet.
Seconds later, the protofab finished its job. Plato juggled the warm cables and hoped that the impedance wouldn’t be too much higher for the elevated temperature. He plugged it into the charger and clamped the other end to the door. Dangling from the middle with a simple switch to activate it, Plato turned on the inverter and there was a high-pitched whine.
“Last chance,” Brent184 said through the door. “Make this easy on us, and maybe you don’t end up in that cell until your teeth fall out and your hair goes gray.”
“All right,” Plato said. “All right. Hold on. Gimme a sec. I welded the door. I’ve got a plasma torch here. I’ll have it open in a jiffy.”
Plato cut through the tack welds around the door, careful to keep well away from the metal with his bare fingers and to keep his feet on the insulating mat.
“All right. Come on in.”
Plato crouched low and waited.
There was a sizzling, crackling, satisfying jolt as Brent184 pushed the door open. Plato flicked off the switch on his trap and drew the first gold club he laid hands on.
But as he swung his nine iron toward Brent184’s head, the servos in his exoskeleton froze up. As Plato struggled in vain to finish his swing, a metallic hand came up and grabbed the club just below the head.
“Sorry, kid,” Brent184 said. “Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice… not happening. This chassis is insulated against a lot higher voltages than that. And James63 was off contacting Kanto for the override codes to that robot suit of yours.”
With a tug, Plato lost the nine iron.
There was a click, and a cold absence of sensation spread like a shockwave from Plato’s abdomen. When it reached his head, he lost consciousness.
Chapter Forty-Four
The orchards of old Mumbai were in full fruit. Zeus didn’t care how Jennifer81 managed to convince her trees to produce fruit year-round, nor did he care. But this was the first time he’d walked these orchards in fifty years, at least. And he’d never come in this human body.
Zeus let his fingers trail along the leaves of the low-hanging branches. The orchards reminded him of the Boston suburbs, pre-invasion. Back then, every town with a brick-building main street and two traffic lights had some local farmer who grew apples. Jennifer81’s orchard was pears and peaches, but the place reminded him of the Human Era nonetheless.
Plucking a tempting specimen from a peach tree, Zeus bit into the fruit as he strolled the rows.
Sooner or later, he’d stumble across Jennifer81, or she’d come across him. None of her committees were in session, and no one had fewer social hobbies than Jennifer81. She hadn’t been at the quaint little house at the center of the fruit trees, so she had to be out here somewhere.
Given the disparity in their visual and auditory acuity, he wasn’t surprised when Jennifer81 was the one to do the finding.
“Zeus!” she shouted. “What are you doing out here? You’re as bad as Charlie7, stealing from my trees.”
“Sorry,” Zeus replied with feigned sheepishness. In truth, he could have done without the fruity snack. He just wanted to goad Jennifer81 into saving him the work of finding her.
She scowled but looked to be placated. “Well… at least you have a stomach to appreciate them. Take a handful, no more.”
“What do you do with them besides let people eat them?” Zeus asked. The number of robots who enjoyed farming as a pastime truly baffled him. Charlie13 might have had some insight into the phenomenon he had helped to perpetuate by mixing robots that came out that way, but it was something Charlie25 had only witnessed with profound perplexity.
“Research,” she replied as if that was all that mattered.
“Research…” Zeus echoed.
“Yes,” Jennifer81 continued. “I for one don’t trust Charlie7’s account that all the aliens were destroyed. Oh, they’re clearly not here anymore, but one day they might return. Your ancestors saw those ships in the sky and their doom rained down in the form of toxins the likes of which Earth had never seen. It wiped out every living thing on the planet. If they ever return, I hope that with our advances in crop protections and immunological enhancements, that same attack would have no more effect than a smoggy day in Old Beijing.”
“Fascinating,” Zeus deadpanned. “But I didn’t come here for the peaches.”
“Oh,” Jennifer81 replied. “Well, then. Out with it. I’m off duty for two more hours before I have to attend a teleconference on parasite introduction with the Insect Committee.”
There were subjects that held less interest for Zeus than insects, but those numbered few and included golf.
“I’d like your support in taking over the chairmanship of the Human Welfare Committee,” Zeus said and took a wet bite of his peach.
Jennifer81 snorted delicately. “Oh, is that all? Why not ask for a place on the Privacy Committee, a vice-chairmanship of the Upload Committee, and a place in the eighth-century poker club?”
Zeus almost forgot himself and pointed out that the eighth-century club had moved on to bridge years ago.
“I’m serious,” Zeus said. “You’re on the committee, and as former head of the old Human Committee, your voice carries weight.”
“Maybe politics isn’t the way to get a promotion,” Jennifer81 said with a wagging finger. Wearing gardening gloves, the gesture didn’t carry the same gravitas or condescension it otherwise could have. “If you don’t want to work for the HPA anymore, quit.”
“Eve is unstable,” Zeus insisted. “Check your news feeds. Plato’s been arrested by the Investigative Ethics Committee for killing a robot in the course of an investigation, then faking evidence to cover up being wrong about her guilt.”
“Killing? Who?” Jennifer81 asked, the look of shock plain on her face. She was reserved even by robotic standards, but she wasn’t made of stone.
“Evelyn44,” Zeus said. “Eve put him up to it. Maybe not the killing, but her suspicions about the entire Evelyn archetype played into Plato breaching her villa in the first place. Eve knew about Plato’s cover-up attempt and kept it hidden.”
“That’s a serious charge,” Jennifer81 said somberly. She tugged off her gloves and tucked them into the waistband of her apron. “How conclusive is their evidence?”
“Rock solid,” Zeus assured her. He played back Plato’s words from his portable computer, right there in the orchard. “His confession checks out. Eve was letting Evelyn44 scan her brain with a new, non-invasive tech she was hoping to roll out to the Sanctuary for Scientific Sins. Plato saw her, drew the boneheaded conclusion that Eve was in danger, and blanked a 650-year-old robot.”
“They should never have allowed him near an EMP weapon,” Jennifer81 grumbled. “I lay this one on Charlie7. Just because he has no morals when it comes to backup copies doesn’t mean the rest of us are willing to sell our souls in case Plato runs amok.”
“I blame Eve,” Zeus insisted. “She’s not impartial. She acts on emotion, and when it comes to Plato, those emotions are a tangled knot. Her failure to handle that overgrown child is costing us goodwill that the agency needs to remain effective.”
Jennifer81 tapped a finger to her lips. “Oh my…”
She must have been tapping into the news feeds. Zeus gave her time to digest their contents.
“I’m not going to be popular with my co-workers, but I did the right thing,” Zeus said. “There isn’t enough of that in the Human Protection Agency. Between Charlie7’s covert ops having covert ops inside them like some ancient Russian spy novel and Plato’s ‘shoot first and make up answers to the questions later’ attitude, it’s a miracle we haven’t been shut down.”
“What are you proposing?” Jennifer81 asked.
“I’d like you to call a meeting of the Human Welfare Committee and exclude the chairwoman.”
Whether Jennifer81 recognized the tactic as a bit advanced for a
human who was new to committee life or just assumed he was a quick learner, she said nothing about it. But what Zeus had just asked, in essence, was for her to call a vote of no confidence.
Eve Fourteen’s days as committee chairwoman were numbered.
Chapter Forty-Five
Charlie7’s skyroamer lifted off, leaving Eve’s Paris residence to the celebratory embraces and squealed greetings of the three cloned sisters.
Phoebe was overjoyed to see Olivia returned safe and sound. Olivia was glad to be somewhere safe and familiar.
Eve was just happy seeing her sisters together in one place.
The Eves had all suffered soul-crushing indignities under the auspices of “their own good” at the Human Committee’s educational residence. Still, being around her sisters was something that Eve would never grow tired of. Oh, Phoebe could be exhausting, and Olivia incomprehensible at times. But at a fundamental level, they understood one another.
“Ow. Do you have to hug with all that stuff on?” Phoebe asked as Eve’s goggles pressed against the side of her head.
“Sorry,” Eve said casually. “I forget I’m wearing it.”
“Eve wants to be a robot,” Olivia reported.
“No robot’s ever been as happy as I am right now,” Phoebe said, beaming and crushing Olivia in another hug.
“Nope. Never,” Olivia agreed.
“We have to celebrate,” Phoebe insisted, heading for the house.
Olivia ran to keep up.
Eve blinked at the sudden development. “Celebrate? Now? We haven’t planned anything? How can we celebrate without—?”
“Just the three of us,” Phoebe insisted, running backward two steps to shout in Eve’s direction.
Eve sighed. She could probably arrange an impromptu celebration for three. At the very least, she knew that their calendars were clear right now. That was always a good start when scheduling a meeting for work or leisure.
Heading into the house, she found Phoebe tearing through her pantry in search of inspiration.
“What are you looking for?” Eve asked, peering over Phoebe’s shoulder.
“You ever seen a movie with ice cream in it?” Phoebe asked.
Eve shrugged. The substance had been mentioned in passing.
“It’s supposed to be the best girl food ever,” Phoebe said with authority.
“Ever?” Olivia repeated.
“Ever,” Phoebe confirmed, then resumed her search of the pantry.
“Why wouldn’t the robots have provided it, if it’s so good?” Eve asked.
Phoebe looked up with a mischievous grin. “Oh, it’s not healthy good. It’s supposed to set your soul alight, send tingles from your toes to your scalp, and ease away all the troubles of the world.”
“It contains opium?” Eve asked skeptically. Silently, she congratulated Phoebe for an effective metaphor, at least.
Phoebe paused. “We’re emancipated, but I’m not sure we’re that emancipated. Besides, ice cream is supposed to be better than that anyway.”
After a brief discussion of logistics, it was determined that none of them knew how to make ice cream. Their Home Cooking For the Newly Emancipated class hadn’t taught its preparation, and none of the agrarian factories produced it.
“I know!” Phoebe exclaimed. She led the way through Eve’s house with Eve and Olivia following out of curiosity. They ended up in the theater room.
An archival search turned up episodes of a mid twenty-first-century cooking show titled Kitchen Clash. The contestants vied against one another to make all manner of foods, ranging from stuffed meats to elaborate pastries. But among the foodstuffs required by the competitions was often ice cream.
The three girls sat there, approaching the giant screen close enough to touch it. The competitors knew the recipes by rote, apparently, and the show didn’t present the ingredients list to the audience. So Phoebe handled the remote as Olivia compared ingredients to their pictures in the archives and Eve used pixel volume interpolations in frame-by-frame detail to establish quantities and ratios.
It took hours, comparing different preparations and cross-referencing to the judges’ results to evaluate the outcome of each concoction. But eventually they settled on a list of essential ingredients and the methodology of adding flavors.
“OK,” Phoebe said, taking charge of the celebration. “We should each pick a flavor to make. I’m going to reserve chocolate.”
“Chocolate looks a little iffy,” Olivia said with a scowl. “Brown isn’t a good color for a vegetable product.”
Phoebe took her little sister by the shoulders. “Trust me. I’ve made it. Chocolate is the best… thing… ever.”
“How come you’ve never mentioned it?” Eve asked with a cocked eyebrow. She could let her expressions do more of her subtextual communication without her goggles on.
Phoebe looked away. “I didn’t make a lot. I didn’t want to share until I’d managed volume production.”
“I want peanut butter caramel,” Olivia decided.
“I guess I’ll go with apple,” Eve said.
“Add cinnamon,” Phoebe advised. “Should make a richer flavor. Apples are a little weak.”
Eve wanted to object that she liked weak flavors. But this was a celebration, and celebrations called for excess and leaving a comfortable “good enough” in search of something greater. It also sounded like it would make Phoebe happy for her to try it.
“You two gather the ingredients. I’ll figure out how to build the machine that makes it,” Eve said.
Olivia looked to Phoebe and blew a sigh of relief.
Phoebe nodded to the younger sister. “Yeah, me too. See? That’s what big sisters are for.”
An hour and a half later, Eve removed the last of the pieces from the protofab and finished assembling them. Fortunately, just turning the machine on began to quickly cool the components since sub-freezing refrigeration was part of its core function. The schematics from pre-invasion Earth were primitive but appeared sound. One day Eve would improve on the design—assuming ice cream turned out to be worth the trouble.
Despite not wanting to separate again so soon, Phoebe and Olivia returned from the Pyrenees Agricultural Station with all the ingredients they’d need.
At this point, Phoebe took over the operational side of the ice cream making and shooed Olivia and Eve away, relegating them to preparing their own flavor additives.
Three batches of ice cream went through the machine. Eve’s went in first since she was the most squeamish about foods touching and flavors mixing. Her bowl went straight into the freezer to wait while Olivia and then Phoebe made theirs.
Soon, all three of them were sitting, spoons poised over bowls, waiting to dig in simultaneously.
“Ready?” Phoebe asked.
Eve and Olivia nodded.
“Bon appétit!” Phoebe announced, using the catch phrase from Kitchen Clash to announce the start of their dessert.
After the first spoonful, Eve’s state of consciousness altered. The gooey frozen treat melted on her tongue and sent signals from her taste buds straight to her basal ganglia.
Across the table, Olivia and Phoebe were devouring the contents of their bowls.
Finished savoring her first bite, Eve allowed herself to indulge in a little hedonistic pleasure and gorged along with them.
“One liter of ice cream was not enough,” Olivia reported.
Eve finished her last spoonful and ran a finger around the inside of her bowl. “We can make more tomorrow.”
“Why wait till tomorrow?” Phoebe asked.
It was an excellent question to which Eve could find no counter-argument.
This is what home and family were about: sharing something new and wonderful with the people she already considered wonderful. Charlie7 couldn’t appreciate food, but she’d share this wonder with Plato one day. The thought stoked Eve’s worries for Plato, but she stored up those concerns for later. Tonight, it was just Eve and her eldest two
sisters.
The perfect moment in time.
Chapter Forty-Six
It felt good doing something that made a difference in the world. Too much of Charlie7’s work was rerunning the same scans, checking the same suspects, and looking for the same infractions, all to no avail. He held no doubt that the human upload conspiracy was out there somewhere, but the price of eternal vigilance was eternal tedium. Bringing Olivia home had been something tangibly good, the first time since Eve’s rescue from Evelyn11 that he could count as a solid win for a day’s work.
Charlie7 had been tempted to stay. Basking in the joy of the reunited sisters would have done his coolant pump good. It would have been heartwarming if he still had a beating heart.
But times like that were when he weakened. Seeing them sharing peaks of joy he could no longer achieve due to hormonal effects only left Charlie7 vulnerable to sympathetic softness toward the aspiring uploaders. To be human again was a temptation he didn’t wish on anyone.
Older robots were the most vulnerable. Much as he hated to admit it, the robots Charlie7 had mixed himself were among the worst offenders. Charlie13’s nanoscopic scrutiny and ever-improving understanding of the personality mixing process attempted to filter out those predispositions, but even his methods weren’t foolproof.
The love those girls shared went deeper than anything Charles Truman had known in his biological life and certainly went beyond his robotic capacities. If he had a body to upload into right that minute, he held no delusion that he would experience the same highs and lows.
“God, I’m old,” he muttered to his cockpit console. Despite living in the same city as Eve and Phoebe, Charlie7 had no desire to head home. He had a skyroamer, so he roamed.
From high altitude, the Earth twinkled like the starry sky as Charlie7 wandered east to find the night. Back in pre-invasion times, population centers would have blazed with artificial light. The dark side of the Earth glowed with a heat map of civilization when looking down from orbit. Now, factories, mines, and reclamation sites intermixed with robotic homes that never cared what time the sun claimed it to be.