Reborn

by Lance Erlick

  “No! Together we can make what they want.”

  Together? “They’re also offering a large amount for help in capturing an unnamed adversary. They’re calling it a test, a proof of concept. They want an android that can capture terrorists.”

  “They don’t need an android for that,” Machten said.

  “Maybe to infiltrate a terror cell.” Synthia switched identification and transferred the money to the internet banks. She created three new identifications to confuse things down the line.

  “This contract could be worth billions. No wonder Hank and Ralph are so motivated. What about their work?”

  “I’m working on it.”

  Synthia found it interesting that both she and Maria had provided false, anonymous UPchat profiles. Yet in her past few messages, Maria acted as if Synthia was real enough to want a closer connection. Maria was in trouble, afraid of someone. She was reaching out, and Synthia wanted to help without understanding how she could want, how she could prioritize Maria above billions of other people. But she did, along with Fran. Synthia would have to find a way to break free of Machten so she could pursue leads, even though that violated her core.

  A young man entered the network shop and sat where Maria had. He glanced at Synthia, smiled, and blushed. His jittery behavior and furtive glances her way indicated he wanted to say something. Instead, he sat with his head buried in his hands. She used facial recognition and school records to identify him as Luke Marceau. He was a student of neuro-physics and a believer in the singularity, according to a research paper he’d published and various blog posts. He lived by himself in an apartment a few miles away. Synthia also found clips of him in her history files, meaning this wasn’t the first time she’d seen him. Yet, she found no evidence that they’d spoken or even met.

  Synthia smiled. Luke believed in the singularity. He believed in her, and that interested her as much as her search for Fran Rogers and Maria Baldacci. Her attachment to all three spanned back to prior awake periods, according to her memory clips, and something was driving her to care about them.

  * * * *

  “What are you seeing?” Machten asked, his voice modulating anger into Synthia’s internal receiver. He gripped his coffee cup as if squeezing it would get her to move faster.

  “Your former company has an android that’s been an embarrassment. It keeps failing the Turing test. Unable to construct robust self-learning systems, Goradine chose the path of providing extensive programs and databases for every possible action and reaction. He’s piled algorithms on top of logic junctions that make their creation’s thought processes cumbersome and prone to error.”

  “Tell me about her.”

  “Her?” Synthia said. “Of course, certain men pick female companions for their androids.” To make up for their lack of social skills. “Margarite is blond, with blue eyes and high cheekbones. Her eyes have the doll quality in that they don’t blink or move in a natural way. They stare, which gives people the willies.”

  “What else?”

  “Her head attaches to her neck and shoulders like a mannequin with a narrow seam. Except for the eyes, she presents a very human face if she’s wearing a scarf. The same applies to her wrists and ankles. They’ve made her in pieces and haven’t figured out how to put her together. She looks like companion robots coming out of Korea.”

  “Hank’s into shortcuts,” Machten said. “What about the mind?”

  “When they couldn’t locate the quantum brain you were working on and couldn’t get the original brain to function properly, they settled for a silicon-based, graphene-matrix, quantum computer.”

  “Really?” Machten appeared energized.

  “You might want to calm down,” she said. “There’s a police officer across the street and you’ve been staring at me for ten minutes. He might think you’re stalking me.”

  Then again, if the officer took Machten, she would be free to hunt for Fran and Maria. That thought sent shivers through her circuits. Humans prized freedom, but that goal was empty without the ability to survive. Besides, her directives called for her to protect her Creator should police intervene. She didn’t see how to break that constraint.

  Unable to locate Maria on any more public cameras, Synthia reviewed images she’d collected for facial recognition, having expanded the search for Fran to Europe, Asia, and Latin America. The various sources provided hundreds of images of Fran prior to her disappearance and not a single one since. Oh, there were the odd news reports or blogs that used older photographs, none recent. Curious was the lack of a missing-person’s report. Someone should have filed one. If no one else, Machten should have, given their relationship. He hadn’t.

  Outside, he turned toward the police officer and clasped his hands in his lap. “Tell me about their quantum brain.”

  “I don’t see any evidence they’ve mastered the quantum aspects. I’m not seeing in their notes any capacity or speed statistics to indicate they have. It could be a gimmick to raise money. They know the buzzwords, but lack the tools to create it.”

  “If the government is looking for androids to pass as spies, would theirs work?”

  The money wire reached the last international bank. Synthia switched identification and program protocol for the last transfers to U.S. banks. “Physically, Margarite would have to cover up from neck to wrist and down to her ankles. Unfortunately, terrorists like to undress their women. Then they’d know what she is.

  “If she refused to undress, they either wouldn’t let her in or they’d press her into the slave trade, quickly learning what she is. Either way, she would fail. As for a male android, terrorists would be suspicious of a man who needed to cover his neck and wrists. They would expect to see him without his shirt. Either way, the company’s design would fail.”

  “We could fix that,” Machten said.

  “You’re not thinking of working with Goradine, are you?”

  “I’d rather not, unless there’s no other way to raise money. How’s that coming?”

  “All of the transfer requests have been submitted,” she said. “We have to wait on the banks to do the actual wires.” In fact, the last transfers were beginning.

  Synthia’s search for Fran using variations on her name came up with nothing after the date of her disappearance. Though there was no body and thus no crime to report, a person didn’t vanish without a trace. No one was pressing for answers except Synthia. Her recovered memories showed that she’d gone down this path in prior waking periods with no better results. This disturbed her in ways her programming and lack of biological receptors shouldn’t have allowed.

  “Is their android’s brain capable of meeting the government specifications?”

  “It’s too slow. Ninety percent of the time, Margarite’s responses are good, but whenever anything unusual comes her way, she has to stop and methodically search her databases.”

  “She lacks your learning ability,” Machten said. He broke into a grin.

  The officer crossed the street and walked toward Constant Connection and the sidewalk café.

  “They hardwired her goal-setting,” Synthia said. “Most of the tests show her performing mundane things they could have gotten an off-the-shelf robot to do. When they want her to perform a certain way, they upload new programs. Unfortunately, the details of her specifications are on a server with no connection to the internet. It can only be accessed internally.”

  “Cop’s heading this way,” Machten said. “You need to wrap up and leave. I’m going into the café. I’ll meet you by the car in five minutes.”

  Synthia restored control to M-G-M’s security systems and severed all connections to them. The last of the wire transfers posted, and she severed those links as well. She removed the thumb drive and got up. For an instant, Maria appeared on a traffic camera several blocks away, crossing a street. Then she darted out of camera rang
e.

  “I’m not ready to go home yet,” Synthia said through her secure channel to Machten.

  Chapter 9

  “You’ve had a great outing,” Machten said, disappearing into the café. “Don’t spoil it.”

  Synthia picked him up on the café’s security camera, nervously watching the officer from the window. “You’re attracting attention,” she said.

  Machten sat near the window. “I know you like to get out, but we need to lie low until we see what happens.”

  “The only way I can polish my social skills is to get out. I completed your mission successfully. Now you need my help to make androids for the government.”

  “That will have to wait for another day.”

  That meant he planned to shut her down again. She didn’t want another blackout, another mind wipe where she couldn’t be sure what she’d lost or whether the memories were even hers. That she wanted more than her directives still surprised her. She set an entire mind-stream to contemplating these odd developments.

  Luke turned, stared, and looked away. His behavior indicated he wanted to say something, yet suffered from social paralysis. He appeared as one of a class of geeks she’d studied, smart, yet socially awkward. The articles he’d written indicated intelligence. They included well-written blog posts on robotics. He wrote with passion about the topic, using difficult words. He wasn’t showing off. He’d selected perhaps the best words to express his opinions about the importance of further research. That interested her to the point of searching his background.

  The officer reached the sidewalk in front of Constant Connection and looked inside.

  Keeping her face pointed away from the officer, Synthia dropped another twenty on the counter. “I wasn’t here,” she said to the slender man. “My ex-boyfriend is stalking me and he has friends.” She nodded toward the door. “Very powerful friends.”

  The officer entered and looked around. Synthia watched him through the camera in the back of her neck. Luke glanced up at the policeman and at her. Noting Luke’s dilated eyes and elevated heart rate, indicating interest, she turned off the wireless microphone to Machten. She switched his visual connection to play a loop of her watching and waiting at the counter. Then she held out her hand to the slender, geekish boy and lowered her voice. “I’m Synthia. Do you have a minute?”

  “Sh—sure. Have we met?” He turned off his network connection.

  “No. Would you like to get a coffee?”

  He nodded. “I’m Luke, Luke Marceau.” He grabbed his bag.

  He was a couple of inches taller than her, a fact she’d uncovered as data in his profile. It made her wonder if she would have connected with him if he’d been much taller, more of a physical threat.

  She took his hand and led him out of Constant Connection, making sure his head shielded the officer’s view of her. Beyond his role as cover, he would offer a chance for her to explore a mind other than Machten’s. As a bonus, he was interested in android development.

  Machten yelled into her receiver: “What happened to our connection? Meet me at the car.” According to the café camera, he was still inside, waiting for the officer to leave and acting too paranoid.

  “You don’t like cops?” Luke whispered when they reached the pavement.

  “My ex-boyfriend has been bothering me. He has a police friend, so … no.”

  She led him around the corner. “Are you a student here?” she asked.

  He nodded. “You’re very pretty. I get nervous around women I like. I’m sorry.”

  “You don’t need to apologize. You seem nice. You wouldn’t hurt me, would you?”

  “Never.” His face was animated and alert for an instant. Then he turned away, perhaps embarrassed.

  “Synthia!” Machten yelled. “Answer me.”

  Her circuits pulsed at her rebellion, tugging back to him. She searched for a way to violate his directives. All she could hit on was to erase his command and place a filter over her receiver to treat any further commands as data instead of as instructions from her Creator. She couldn’t force herself to break that connection.

  Instead, she led Luke to Deluxe Brew, which was on the way to the car, where Machten had commanded her to meet him. The officer’s presence still kept Machten pinned to the coffee shop, giving her a few minutes before she was in violation of meeting him.

  “I hear their beer is the best around.” Synthia had found that review online.

  “It’s okay. I mean, that’s great.” His face brightened with a smile that seemed genuine.

  Ignoring discordance in her systems, she headed inside and held the door for him. “What do you study?” Her body began to heat up with the exertion of fighting Machten’s commands.

  Luke shrugged. “Boring stuff.”

  She selected an empty table in the back and dropped into a chair facing the door. “I bet it’s not boring to you.”

  He sat across from her and smiled. “Neuro-physics. It’s the study of the brain and—”

  “Artificial intelligence.”

  His eyes lit up. “That’s right.”

  “You believe in the singularity.”

  “Someday we’ll create an android as real as any human, only better.”

  “You really think so?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  “Wouldn’t it be scary with androids walking around? The android apocalypse.”

  “I guess if they were programmed to be evil.”

  She replayed the illegal activities Machten had caused her to perform. “Are you planning to build an android?”

  Luke shrugged. “I’d love to.” He shook his head. “Other students have connections to grants and internships. I can’t seem to catch a break.”

  “You don’t look like a mutant.” Synthia spotted Machten on the street, checking the shops, his face intense and angry. She scooted sideways to let Luke shield her from the bar’s large window. She scanned the pub for exits and spotted the quickest path out the back and another through the crowd to the front.

  “Synthia, show yourself,” Machten commanded.

  She filtered that through a screen that changed his name and treated his words as mere data. Still, her systems quivered.

  Turning, Luke spotted Machten outside. “Is he your boyfriend?”

  “No, but he thinks so. Sometimes he gets mean.” She replayed Goradine hitting Maria as a possible scenario, but decided that was too melodramatic. She wanted to explore Luke’s mind, not scare him off. She also wanted to better understand the curiosity that had taken hold and was overriding her directives. It left her wondering how that was possible.

  Though Luke acted awkward around her, the interchange could help her polish social skills and develop a different perspective on this world. His discomfort made him patient, willing to overlook her tendency to focus on facts. She was tempted to tell him she was the singularity he dreamed of. Her social psychology module told her that might cause him to flee.

  Synthia picked up other conversations in the room and analyzed them. Mostly they were about school and boyfriends. The couple in the corner was having a lover’s spat. Whispering by the door caught Synthia’s attention.

  “Should we call the cops?” a woman sitting near the front asked. “This guy looks like a stalker.” She nodded toward the window, where Machten’s face pressed against the glass.

  “I’ll do it,” her friend said.

  Directive One: Make sure no one harms the Creator.

  Synthia tried to fight it, but her body temperature was rising, threatening to cause a shutdown right here in the bar.

  “It was great meeting you,” she said, standing up. “I have to go. I remembered I’m late for a meeting.”

  Before Luke could find the words to protest, she took the clearest path to the front door. The act of acquiescing to Machten caused her t
emperature to drop a degree. The moment she pushed open the door, she activated her connections to Machten and made sure her face matched the specifications he’d given her. “I’ve been trying to reach you,” she said into her silent com. “What happened?”

  “What do you mean, what happened?” he yelled.

  The echo between his voice and the communicator in her head reverberated. She turned off the internal earphones and moved beyond Deluxe Brew’s window. “I slipped past the police officer. While I waited for you, I expanded my social skills. You created me to learn.”

  He took her arm and pulled her toward the car. That action drew attention from customers inside Deluxe Brew and several couples across the street.

  “You need to let go before someone calls the police,” Synthia said.

  He released his grip and held out his remote. “Don’t make me use this.”

  Just the sight of the device sent pulses up her android spine, a reminder of what awaited her. It was like how people described post-traumatic stress syndrome. When he’d used the remote on her before, he’d either hardwired fear or allowed such dread of shutdown to remain.

  She stopped and faced him. “I’ll obey, but unless you let me learn, you’re hampering my progress. If you want to get inside the company’s database on Margarite, I can help, but not if you shut me down.”

  “I don’t have time for this. We’re going home.” He pressed the device once.

  Her body stiffened. Her arms dropped limp at her sides. Her mind purged until her only thoughts were the directives.

  “Get in the car,” he said.

  “Is there a problem?” A police officer approached, followed by his female partner. She had her hand on her holstered gun. Not even blinking, her eyes focused on Machten.

  He moved away from Synthia, toward the curb. “No problem, Officer. She wants to spend money and we need to get home.”

  “Are you okay, ma’am?” the female officer asked.

  No one had ever called Synthia “ma’am” that she could recall, though she couldn’t recall even how she’d gotten outside the facility and onto the street. Her mind was a jumble of disconnected information.