by J. S. Morin
“Maybe,” Charlie7 replied. “After all, it’s a technology position. Charlie13 proved he had a better grasp of mixing than I did. I’m man enough to admit that. But Charlie25 was a glorified car salesman. Pick a new crystal and chassis, and get ‘em on the table.”
“That’s a crude treatment of robots who go to Kanto for a very personal procedure,” Zeus said cautiously. What did he care if Charlie7 put his name forth? Plenty of robots mistrusted him enough that he’d never pass the vote.
Secretly, Zeus had hoped that one of Dale2’s people would get the position. It would sting seeing himself replaced on two fronts, but it would speed up the adoption of human upload technology as key robots were replaced on the upload table instead of merely transferring to a new body.
“The real key to events like this,” Charlie7 said, leaning in conspiratorially. “Is that they are high-leverage points for favor-trading. Get someone a committee chairmanship and they owe you. Get someone voted down, and others will see the price of crossing you. Try to make sure you’re on the side that carries the day, even if you had to manufacture support after the fact. Even just putting forward the right name can gain you a great deal of political currency.”
“I’ll bear that in mind,” Zeus said stiffly. He wasn’t comfortable with Charlie7 this close. The hearing was to have been a bit of light fun, watching the process of choosing Charlie25’s successor. With a political animal like Charlie7 next to him, even Zeus might learn something. But he wasn’t sure he’d like what he learned.
Charlie13 rose, and the scattered conversations around the room hushed—mostly to be carried on via transmitted data, Zeus knew from experience. “Welcome everyone. Let us get right to business. The Upload Committee has been without a chairman and without an uploader for too long. Since Charlie25’s termination, I’ve personally performed four emergency uploads, but the non-emergency caseload is backing up. Without further ado, I’d like to open the floor to debate candidates for the position.”
Arthur19 rose from his position in the gallery. There was no rule against nominations coming from the guests. “Jason90,” he said brusquely. “Overdue. He understands the limits of crystal technology better than anyone.”
There was a grumbling of conversation around the room and a brief debate among the committee membership. Then Charlie13 called for other nominations.
Robots around the room put forth names. Brent35 got a courtesy nomination for his dedicated work at Kanto, but no one took his candidacy seriously. Eddie130 got a vote of confidence, which Zeus appreciated since he was one of the conspirators, even though he’d given up his own cloning efforts after a few close calls at getting caught. Other, less luminary names were kicked around but didn’t gain much traction among the committee robots.
Charlie7 remained silent to the end.
Ever the showman, Zeus thought sourly. By his electoral math, and knowing the committee better than anyone, he predicted that at the moment, Jason90 was a slim favorite over Eddie130. Charlie7’s self-nomination would throw the voting into chaos. While the general populace held Charlie7 at arm’s length in a mixture of awe, reverence, and fear, he had friends on the Upload Committee, not the least of which was Charlie13. Something about having another Charlie7 in Kanto would appeal to the mixer.
“Any final nominees before we begin the voting?” Charlie13 asked.
Charlie7 rose on cue. “I have one.”
The eldest of the robot race waited as the murmurs of gossip rose and fell around him like a sine wave. The slick bastard seemed to enjoy playing the crowd.
“Well?” Charlie13 demanded. “Make your nomination. We haven’t got all day.”
“I’d like to put forward… Zeus.”
There were cries of outrage and disbelief, not the least of which came from Zeus himself as Charlie7 hauled him to his feet and tousled his hair.
“I understand that Zeus was invited as a courtesy,” Charlie13 stated in a tone that sounded tailored to be entered into official records. “But the qualification standards for the Human Welfare Committee are vastly different from what is required to chair the Upload Committee. What qualifications does he possess that make you think he’d be an appropriate candidate?”
Zeus was wondering the same thing. Charlie7 was known for political stunts. A committee hearing was his favorite stage for putting on a show. But this move seemed all shock with no substance; at best it was a tasteless joke.
“Oh, he’s perfectly qualified,” Charlie7 assured everyone, still clutching tight to Zeus’s arm. “After all, he’s held the position for over six hundred years.”
There were shouts of outrage from around the room, but Charlie7’s voice carried over them all. “He’s Charlie25. A simple scan comparison will show a minimal drift from his last upload log.”
“Order,” Charlie13 boomed. He slammed his borrowed chairman’s gavel. “Order.”
It wasn’t long before the room quieted enough that Zeus could make his protests heard. “He’s gone mad. And what he’s proposing is a violation of Privacy Committee and Human Welfare Committee guidelines—which pre-date my chairmanship, I might add. Charlie7 is just casting aspersions because of his fondness for the ousted Eve Fourteen. He wants her back in charge of the Human Welfare Committee, and this is his ploy to discredit me.”
Charlie7 chuckled. “Well, I’ll admit you don’t sound like Charlie25. But I think the scan will show otherwise. You can’t hide conveniently behind your own committee’s rules to get away with murder, human upload, and all the charges against Charlie25 for unethical uploading, treatment of human clones, and… Oh, my. Mr. Chairman, can I rescind my nomination? I think Charlie25 might have been an awful uploader, now that I think of it.”
“Let. Me. Go!” Zeus shouted. To his surprise, Charlie7 released his arm. He stumbled against Sandra76 of the Resource Logistics Committee. Breathing heavily, Zeus gathered himself and straightened his shirt. “Charlie7 is positing what sounds like a plausible scenario. But I was the victim in the lower levels of this very facility. I have no desire to take a second chairmanship. I think I shall find my lone committee sufficient to occupy my time and resources. I would like all of you as witnesses when I file my numerous grievances for Charlie7’s behavior here today.”
Shaking from a spike of adrenaline he’d accidentally triggered, Zeus began picking his way through the crowd.
Charlie13’s voice rose like a headsman’s axe. “Is the committee sufficiently satisfied that Zeus is Charlie25?”
“Aye,” came the unanimous chorus.
Zeus froze, stumbling over Ashley390, who caught and steadied him.
The conference room was silent.
Zeus looked in all directions. Every robotic eye was fixed on him in a gallery of contempt, perplexity, and in the case of Charlie7, amusement.
“What are you talking about?” Zeus asked. “Charlie7 himself said I sound nothing like Charlie25. What evidence could he possibly have fabricated behind my back?”
Charlie13 rose and circled slowly around the table. “It was me actually, old friend. You see, Charlie7 suspected your identity, but he lacked proof. He played back every interaction the two of you ever had, and I developed an algorithm. You see, I discovered that you were merely ruling out your first instinct of what to say. You broke Charlie25’s speech pattern, but established Zeus’s as a derivative of it.”
“That proves nothing,” Zeus countered, backing toward the door and sparing only quick glances away from the approaching Charlie13 to watch his footing.
“The proof was me broadcasting your every objection with 96 percent accuracy to the entire committee membership before you made them,” Charlie13 explained. “You see, I know the robotic mind. My algorithm would only have worked on Charlie25. And even then, only because he was my closest friend.”
Zeus didn’t know what to say. The evidence was, to the robots on the committee, as solid as steel. He’d have taken it as such had he been in their place.
“Chec
kmate,” Charlie7 called out merrily. “For the record, until we became suspicious of your identity, I did consider putting my own name up for nomination. But I think there’s still a lot of work for the Human Protection Agency to do.”
His next act wasn’t rational. It was a long shot. But Zeus was down to long shots if he had any hope of survival. If he could get to a skyroamer, he could flee. Maybe he could get to a data terminal with sufficient transfer rates that he could transmit himself somewhere for safekeeping and self-terminate this human body.
Zeus ran.
To his surprise, the robots between him and the conference room door didn’t try to stop him. Many, in fact, cleared a path as if fearful of getting involved.
Zeus made it to the door, then into the hall beyond. With his adversaries too stunned to follow, Zeus could almost smell his freedom.
Chapter Fifty-Six
The message came across Eve’s data goggles. It simply read, “Now.”
Eve keyed the door panel, and the hallway to the Kanto Conference Center slid open before her. The walls were adorned with video screens depicting the wonders that the factory had produced since its inception, from the earliest environmental cleanup drones to the latest robotic chassis and crystalline matrices. The hallway was a reminder to all who entered of the wonders that Kanto held.
But Eve wasn’t the only one in that hall. Zeus skidded to a halt at the sight of her. He had a wild, panicked look in his eyes, and sweat beaded across his forehead.
“Out of my way,” Zeus snarled.
“I heard you said something similar to Phoebe,” Eve countered. In fact, she’d heard a detailed accounting of Zeus’s attempt to assault her. That injustice wasn’t going overlooked as Eve stood her ground, glaring at Zeus through her data goggles. The lenses estimated Zeus’s body temperature and heart rate—both elevated—as well as measurements of his height, mass, and center of gravity.
It seemed like cheating.
Unplugging the data cables, Eve tossed the goggles over her shoulder.
“I didn’t plan to hurt Phoebe,” Zeus said between heaving breaths. “But if you try to stop me, I will hurt you.”
Zeus wasn’t Plato. He was a perfectly formed human, cut straight from a book on anatomy. Heavier than Eve by thirty kilos and with corded muscles fueled by testosterone, he was clearly the stronger of the two. He was also desperate, and no doubt in the throes of a spike of adrenaline.
Eve didn’t budge.
“I’m not letting you get away,” she promised.
All her lessons had taught her that the martial arts were best practiced in a state of calm. Right now, Eve’s face burned, and her heart thundered in her chest like a jackhammer. Her nails dug into the palms of her fingerless gloves.
Zeus didn’t take long to decide, he jogged forward with his fists up, clearly intent on making short work of Eve on his way out the door.
When Zeus pulled up short, it was obvious that he was aware of the dangers of overbalancing when throwing a punch. When that punch came, Eve made him aware of the dangers of punching someone faster and better trained.
Zeus stumbled back, coughing. His punch had been turned aside by a girl half his size, and he’d taken a quick blow to the throat from someone with shorter arms.
“How did you—?” he croaked.
But Eve wasn’t done with him. Before he could recover, Eve stepped in and took control of Zeus’s wrist. As he tried to pull away, still struggling for breath, she raised a foot and stomped down on the inside of his knee.
Zeus collapsed with a scream through gritted teeth.
“Get up,” Eve ordered him. She aimed a finger back down the corridor behind her. “Freedom is that way. Through me.”
Zeus regained his breathing and pushed himself up to his feet, one of which wouldn’t hold his weight.
“This wasn’t personal,” he shouted. “You never should have seen the outside world.”
Limping forward, Zeus feinted and tried to kick using his injured leg.
Catching him by the ankle, Eve easily lifted Zeus’s leg and planted all her weight behind a kick to his crotch.
Zeus’s squeal of agony as he dropped to the floor made Eve wince.
“For me, this is personal,” Eve said, circling just out of reach as Zeus rolled on the floor, clutching his genitalia. “Every Eve before me was brutally sacrificed in a savage scientific ritual by Evelyn11, and one died after I escaped. You knew about it. You helped her. You brought Evelyn11 back from the dead where she belonged and even copied her into Gemini, killing some other poor human victim.”
Zeus pushed himself up to his hands and knees. He had no choice, she knew. If he didn’t find a way past her, his fate was sealed.
But Eve was in no mood to give extra chances. Climbing atop his back, she wrapped an arm around his neck and locked it in place with her other hand. Zeus scratched at her arm, looking for a way to pull her loose, but the fabric of her shirt protected her.
Zeus flailed behind him, trying to claw Eve in the face, but she ducked against the back of his neck and bore him to the floor face first.
When Zeus attempted to roll and pin Eve beneath his bulk, she spread her legs to form a tripod, using leverage to keep him face down.
He wasn’t losing consciousness. Eve’s training suggested that he should. Holly68 had said this hold cut off oxygen to the brain.
Eve was an idiot. Zeus’s brain didn’t need oxygen. It was entirely robotic. But that didn’t mean he didn’t need to breathe.
Tightening her hold, Eve waited out the aerobic and anaerobic muscular processes. Zeus’s attempts grew feeble as his muscles starved for oxygen.
When he collapsed limp to the corridor floor, Eve disentangled herself and stood over the fallen impostor. “I know you can still hear me. No one’s going to kill you. No me. Not any of the robots. You’re going to be locked up. You’ll be given all the protections of the Human Welfare Committee, because that’s what you are now. Your injuries will be treated. You will be provided food, shelter, and limited entertainment. You will not be allowed to leave your cell—and if I have my say, that will be forever.”
At the far end of the corridor, the door stood open. Eve had barely registered it during her tussle with Zeus. A crowd of robots watched mutely as she put a stop to Charlie25.
Eve was sweating, puffing for breath, and feeling the tingling aftereffects of an adrenaline surge. But her first thought was to retrieve her data-display goggles.
“Are you all right?” Ashley390 asked, her medical instincts coming to the fore.
“I’m fine,” Eve said with a heavy sigh. “But you might want to restrain Zeus before applying medical treatment. Now, if you’ll excuse me,” she continued, fingers already flicking through menus in the goggles’ display. “I have a committee chairman situation of my own to remedy.”
Chapter Fifty-Seven
“I’ve seen the feeds,” Zeus said, putting as much steel in his voice as his human tongue could muster. “I won’t turn into a blubbering mess like Gemini or a caged tiger like Plato.”
Ashley390 didn’t reply. She had a needle in Zeus’s leg, neutralizing the tibial nerve while she cured a bioactive gel that would stabilize the break. It reminded him of getting maintenance work done on a robotic chassis. It was a simple matter of either disconnecting the damage sensors in a region or simply ignoring a string of errors and warnings.
Once that needle came out, Zeus didn’t look forward to what he’d feel.
“You could have been a goddess,” he told Ashley390. “Immortal, backed up in case of catastrophe, allowed to live lifetime after lifetime of youth, vigor, and all the pleasures life has to offer.”
“Sounds like heaven,” Ashley390 remarked without diverting her attention from the open incision in Zeus’s leg.
“It would be,” he promised. “It will be.”
“As a scientist, I don’t believe in an afterlife,” Ashley390 said. “You should wait to see if a John or Elizabeth decid
es to visit. You might have better luck with them.”
“Come off it,” Zeus snapped. “You know that once that door closes behind you I won’t see another living soul.”
“You might be surprised,” Ashley390 told him. “In fact, I’m getting word that there’s someone outside who’d like to see you right now.”
“Tell him to at least have the decency to wait until I’m—”
But the door slid open before Zeus could finish his protest.
“Hi,” Charlie7 said. “Fancy seeing you here. I was just in the neighborhood, bringing Plato his skyroamer, and thought I’d pop in for a chat.”
“Get out of here,” Zeus ordered.
Charlie7 simply smiled. Even if it weren’t for the fact that his leg was being filleted and put back together at the moment, there was nothing he could do about Charlie7’s presence. Eve had half killed him, and she was a young slip of a thing. In that Version 70.2 chassis, Zeus wasn’t even sure an EMP rifle would even the odds. And with Ashley390 right in the cell with them, Zeus would even survive the beating.
“Is that a way to treat your father?” Charlie7 joked. “More and more, I wonder how many of my mixes went bad and managed to hide the fact.”
Zeus couldn’t let him stand there lecturing at him. “Why couldn’t you have gone off-world like so many of the other Charlies? Leave the Earth for the would-be humans.”
Charlie7 chuckled and folded his arms, leaning against a wall as he watched Ashley390 work. “Why would I? Charlie9, Charlie12, ‘14, ‘15, ‘17… they all got off this rock because they got tired of living in my shadow.”
“Your shadow?” Zeus scoffed. “Don’t pretend like you’re the mastermind of this world. You’re just the one who survived when Charlie2 was killed in the invasion. You’ve ridden borrowed coattails all this time, implementing a plan left behind by the original Charles Truman.”
“Can you leave us?” Charlie7 asked Ashley390.