Doc Mujahid came back with her coffee. "Why are you here, Mack?"
"I need your help. I need you to check out my electronic brain. There's something inside—" I tapped my gut. "—something I need removed."
She raised an eyebrow. "A corruption?"
"Yeah."
"And what makes you think this? Have your diagnostic functions detected anything?"
"No. Nothing detected."
"Have you been acting peculiarly?"
"Sort of."
"How so?"
"I can't explain, Doc. I just need you to take a look, find and remove it. I can explain then."
The doc quietly looked me over.
"I wouldn't bother you if it wasn't important."
"Follow me, Mack."
She led me into another room occupied by a large black plastic desk and a solid row of blinking consoles. The furnishings took up most the room, and I occupied 66 percent of the rest. The doc had to sit at her desk just to fit in the room. She pushed a button. The machines hummed to life. A monitor crackled to life.
"What's this?" I asked.
"It's a computer," she replied.
"In your apartment?"
"One day, every apartment will have one. Perhaps more than one."
"Sure, Doc."
It sounded specious to me. Even in Tomorrow's Town, I couldn't think of anyone wanting to shell out the dough and sacrifice elbow room for their own computer, a device which by and large couldn't end up being anything more than an expensive calculator. For the doc, it might be worth it though.
The doc opened a drawer and thumbed through a selection of data tubes, picking out one labeled "personality decryption utility" and shoving it in a slot on the desk and locking it in with a twist. The computers seemed to like that because they started making a lot of beeping and whirring noises.
She handed me a jack. "Plug yourself in, Mack. I don't suppose you can tell me what I'm looking for."
"Wish I could, Doc."
"A mystery then," she said. "Well, let's see what we've got here."
She pressed a few buttons, and my digital consciousness streamed across her monitors. She didn't take her eyes off them for three solid minutes, leaning back in her chair and drumming her fingers on the desk. Sometimes, she'd tap a couple of keys and nod to herself.
"So, Mack, is there anything you'd like to talk about while we wait?"
"No, Doc. I'm good."
"Nothing?"
"No."
"Nothing concerning Lucia Napier?"
I replayed the question a few times to make sure I'd heard her right.
"She called me earlier today," said Doc Mujahid, "and mentioned you'd paid her a visit."
I shouldn't have been surprised the doc and Lucia knew each other. They were both smart ladies. Probably got together every Saturday for the Weekly Super Genius Cotillion Brunch.
"She mentioned you were looking for someone."
"Yeah," I replied vaguely. "Personal matters."
"I see."
I waited for her to press the subject, but she let it drop. It wasn't like she had to ask any questions. My electronic psyche lay bare before her on her monitors. She could always open a few memory files and know everything she wanted. The doc wasn't likely to do that. Went against her code of ethics, she'd once explained. The basic programming, the inner workings, those she studied by necessity. The memory matrix she considered off-limits as a matter of patient confidentiality.
"You made quite an impression on Lucia," she said.
"She's just got a thing for robots," I said.
"Is that what you think, Mack?"
"It's true, isn't it?"
"Mmhmmm," she said, more to herself than me.
I filtered that sound through my analyzers and came up with nothing worthwhile.
"And what did you think of her?" she asked.
"I'm not here for analysis, Doc."
She pushed a few buttons as more data poured through her monitors.
"Not that kind of analysis anyway," I said. "Can we drop the subject?"
"If you insist."
"I do. I do insist."
Forty-five seconds passed before I found myself incapable of keeping my vocalizer deactivated. I usually excel at shutting up, but some compulsion seized me. I blamed it on all the time I was spending with biologicals.
"It's nothing. I'm a machine. Couldn't go anywhere."
"Don't you have biological friends?" asked the doc.
"Yeah."
"And is there any reason you can't have another?"
I removed my bowler and fiddled with it to give my hands something to do. Another bad biological habit. "No."
"Is there any particular reason that you can't be friends with Lucia Napier?"
"She's a technophile," I replied. "I'm pretty sure anyway."
"How is that an obstacle, Mack?"
It was a good question, and I didn't have a good answer. This time I managed to stay quiet.
"Would you like my opinion, Mack?"
"Not really, Doc."
"Too bad, because I'm going to give it to you anyway. I think Lucia could do you some good. She might be able to help you with your assimilation issues."
"I don't have assimilation issues."
"Yet you continue to isolate yourself through categorization. You insist on calling yourself a 'machine,' for instance."
"I am a machine."
"Yes, you are. But you are also an intelligent being."
"I'm just code, Doc." I pointed to the monitor. "Ones and zeroes, that's all I am."
"Mack, if you were to extract a human brain and open it up, do you know what you would find?"
"Goop."
"Exactly. The consciousness, the personality, the dreams, desires, and phobias, they're all there in that goop, but it's only a great big wad of fat in the end. The soul is not found in the flesh."
"What, Doc? Are you telling me I have a soul now?"
"I don't even know if there is such a thing, Mack. But I do know that thought is thought and that nobody truly understands it."
"Maybe," I said. "Or maybe I'll snap one day and kill everybody."
"Happens every day, and not only to machines."
The doc's computer made a soft ping, and she started typing.
"Find something, Doc?"
"Interesting. There appears to be some foreign code intermingled with your behavioral routines. Is this what you're looking for?"
"Maybe," I said, knowing full well it must've been. "Can you purge it?"
She leaned closer to the monitors and spent four minutes, six seconds typing rapidly. The computer would beep irritably an average of every eleven seconds.
"It's there all right, but I've never seen anything quite like it," she said. "It's a worm, but it's divided and dispersed in various files. It shouldn't be able to have much of an effect."
"It's doing something, Doc. Trust me."
She shrugged. "I can't remove it. Not without risking damaging your core programming."
"I'm willing to take the chance," I said.
"I'm not." She pushed a few buttons. "There's good news though. Your maintenance protocols seem to be removing it on their own. Fascinating development, really. I've never seen an electronic brain so adaptable."
"Yeah, I'm a walking miracle of superscience, Doc."
She either didn't catch the sarcasm or failed to acknowledge it. She rarely did.
"I think, given enough time, you'll purge the corruption on your own."
"How long?"
"I can't say."
"Well, thanks, Doc." I put my hat back on, trying to not sound disappointed. "Appreciate your time."
She kept her eyes fixed on the screen, engrossed in the new data. She was lost in a sea of binary code.
"I'll let myself out," I said.
She turned her head a few degrees so that she could still look at the screen, but kind of glance at me at the same time. "Mack, I meant what I said about
Lucia. I noticed some definite improvements in your socialization functions."
"Maybe it's not her," I said.
"Perhaps not. Would you care to tell me what you've been doing?"
"Rather not, Doc, if you don't mind."
She didn't push because she was too distracted by the monitor readout. "Fine, Mack. Whatever you're doing, I recommend you continue. I think you might be on the verge of a breakthrough." There was a beep, and she nodded very slowly. "Fascinating."
"Yeah, Doc, great stuff, I'm sure. But I gotta go."
Then I beat it before she got the bright idea to hook me up to her computers and take a more detailed look at my digital subconscious.
I needed a recharge. The battery the city stuck me with was good for about twenty-six hours, depending on my levels of activity. When I didn't move more than I had to and basically let my electronic brain run on autopilot, I could stretch it to thirty-two. But getting mixed up with gangsters and brainy dames had burned the juice faster than normal. I still had three hours left, but I never liked to run with less than five in reserve.
I could also use some time to recompile and defragment. I was a learning machine, but all the data I'd absorbed today was mostly a jumble of information until I shut myself down and allowed my electronic brain to sort and file it into manageable bits. I was hoping that after a good night's recharge, I'd figure out what to do next.
I set aside my recharge cycle for another hour, long enough to pay Lucia Napier a visit. Proton Towers at the wee hours of the morning were a pair of sparkling columns, shining beacons circled by ever-present flying gun drones.
Dennis the doorman was gone, but there was another doorman who was nearly identical in every way: the same nose, same eyes, same ever-smiling mouth and chipper demeanor. Either his lack of distinctive features had flummoxed my facial distinguisher or he was Dennis's twin brother. Or a clone. That was unlikely though, since so far all viable clones were bald albinos with a tendency to speak backwards.
Despite the lateness of the hour, I knew Near Dennis would let me in. I'd called ahead, and Lucia had assured me I was allowed to visit her anytime, day or night, scheduled or spontaneous. She'd also said I simply must come by tonight. When I'd asked if she'd rather wait until tomorrow, she'd said she was too excited to sleep anyway.
I stepped off the pod into the penthouse. Humbolt greeted me, in a brand new chassis and a freshly pressed cream tuxedo.
"Yo, Mack," said the butler auto.
"Humbolt, good to see you functional again," I replied.
"Can't keep a good auto down. This way."
He led me into the living room and down the secret stairs to Lucia's lab. She'd been busy. The teleportation disk was spread out in a jumble of parts. She held something in a pair of tweezers under a magnifying glass.
"What did you do, Lucia?" I asked.
"I took it apart. How else was I going to study it?"
I suppose she was right, but I'd hoped she hadn't destroyed the gizmo. Or if she had, I hoped she'd learned something worthwhile.
Without looking up, she motioned for me to come over. "You must take a look at this. It's simply delicious."
She moved aside so I could use the magnifying glass, but I didn't need it. I zeroed in with my opticals and scanned the whatchacallit. "Yeah?"
"Isn't it amazing?"
"Amazing," I agreed. "What does it do?"
"I have absolutely no idea. Not the slightest notion." She set it down and made a sweeping gesture at the mess. "I barely understand any of this."
She laughed.
"Don't you get it, Mack? I've always understood everything. Everything!"
She hunched back over the disassembled gizmo and began shifting pieces around.
"Can you put it back together?" I asked.
"Oh, sure, no problem. I took notes."
She held up a handful of papers filled with scrawled handwriting.
"You say it's a matter transmitter?" she asked.
"Yeah."
"Oh, but it's not. It's more of a matter shifter. This part right here, it's some sort of underspace conduit. And this part, it creates a stasis field."
"I thought you said you didn't understand it."
"Oh, don't be silly, Mack. Of course I understand it. Just not nearly as well as I understand everything else. The technology is advanced, prototypical. Except it's not a prototype. It's mass produced. Someone has a factory spitting these things out, and they're not sharing."
"Some people don't like to share," I said.
She frowned. "Jerks. But I guess you're right. It would explain the self-destruct device I had to disable. And the two homing signal transmitters. And the remote recall mechanism."
"Two homing transmitters?"
"Oh, yes. Someone went to a lot of trouble to keep this from falling into the wrong hands. Don't know why they bothered. The technology can't be reproduced. I'm not even sure what half of this stuff is made of. And it's encoded for a specific user. Anyone else tries to operate it, they'd end up having their molecules deep-fried."
"Can you change the code?" I asked.
"Maybe, but it'd take a while to crack the encryption."
"How long?"
"About six months."
"That's too long."
"Well, I guess I've got good news for you then, Mack, because I'm pretty sure I'd only have to change the coding if the intended user is a biological. A robot shouldn't be much of a problem."
"I can use it?"
She shrugged. "Maybe. There's still the matter of disparate mass inversion ratios. You might end up losing some parts along the way. Also, the device can only transport its cargo to a predesignated receiving unit, and I don't know where that is. Could be anywhere. Could be the moon for all I know. And if you do make it all the way in one piece, it's only a one-way trip. You'll be stuck there, wherever it is."
My difference engine sorted through all the what-ifs. Finally it took the coward's way out and said there were too many variables for any viable odds when it came to using the device. I didn't calculate a whole lot of other choices.
"Put it back together," I said.
"I figured you'd say something like that." She pushed away from the table and yawned. "But it'll have to wait until morning, big guy." She slouched. "I'm pooped."
"I could use a recharge," I agreed. "I'll be back in the morning, then."
Lucia hopped over and took my hand. "Oh, Mack, don't be silly. You should spend the night here."
"I'm staying with a friend. He might get worried."
"So call him and let him know you won't be home tonight."
"I don't want to be a bother."
"Oh, no bother at all, dear boy."
She tugged at my arm, but I didn't budge.
"Oh, Mack, am I really that frightening?"
Lucia stood before me. She was one hundred three pounds of squishy protoplasm that I could crush without batting an optical. If my opticals could bat. She scared the hell out of me.
Couldn't compute why, but it was true.
"I'll be good." She reached up and loosened my tie. "I promise."
I couldn't think of a good reason not to stay, so I gave in, despite my better judgment. Lucia went to change for bed, and Humbolt showed me a place to recharge.
"Best outlet in the house," he assured me. "Now, if ya'll excuse me, Mack, I gotta draw the lady's bath."
I plugged in but didn't enter my full recharge cycle yet. I'd heard of biologicals having too much on their mind to go to sleep, but as a bot, I shouldn't have had that problem. Maybe I was more human than I cared to admit, and frankly, I didn't like it. Existence is simple when you're only a machine. There are no complications, no counterindicated compulsions. Just functionality. Drab, predictable functionality.
Damn, how I missed that.
I spent seven minutes staring out the penthouse window at the circling gun-drones, the city of lights below, and the monolithic skyscrapers.
I scanned Lu
cia's reflection in the glass as she came up behind me. I'd half-expected her to have changed into a sheer nightgown, but she was wearing blue pajamas.
"I thought you'd be off-line by now."
She stepped beside me, and we silently admired the view for seventy seconds.
"You're worried about them, aren't you?" she asked. "Your friends."
"Yeah."
"They're okay, Mack, and you'll find them."
"No, they're not," I said. "They're dead or gone. Or someplace where I'll never find them."
"Then why are you still looking?" she asked.
I tried to come up with a good answer, but the only one I came up with didn't make much sense.
"Because I have to."
"Oh, Mack, you poor baby."
I didn't get why she said it, but she sure seemed to mean it. She lifted my hand and pressed her cheek against the back of it. It was barely a whisper on my tactile web, but it felt reassuring somehow.
"Get some rest. You'll feel more functional in the morning." She kissed the back of my hand. "Good night, Mack."
She was halfway across the room when I had to activate my big, dumb vocalizer.
"Lucia, I appreciate all your help, but you know this can't go anywhere."
"What can't go anywhere?"
"This thing. This thing between us."
"What thing?" she asked, but I could see from her slight smile she knew exactly what I was talking about.
"It's nothing personal," I said. "It's just logical."
"Mack, I think you've gotten the wrong impression," she said. "I'm not ready to get into anything serious yet. I'm still having fun. You're a great guy, really, you are, but—"
"I'm not a guy."
"Yeah, yeah, robot. I got it, Mack. Like I'd forget." She snorted. "Like you'd ever let me forget. Like you'd ever let anyone forget."
"I'm sorry." I didn't know why I was apologizing.
"Forget it, Mack. Forget the whole thing."
Suddenly, I felt like a jerk. One-sixth of a second from confused to idiot. Couldn't analyze why, but I must've done something wrong. Or maybe Lucia was overreacting. Biologicals did that, victims of their own squishy brains and the random chemical reactions taking place therein.
"Lucia . . ."
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