Reborn

by Lance Erlick

  A crowd gathered in front of a café to her left under the name Deluxe Brew, mostly college girls and a boy with the saddest of faces. Across the street at another café stood several couples, pointing toward her or Machten. Their concerned faces implied threats to her Creator.

  She smiled and made sure her face registered calm. “You’re right. I don’t need another pair of shoes. We have guests coming. We should get home to prepare.”

  The officer and his partner both stared at Synthia. She picked up street camera footage to make sure she wasn’t doing something foolish and relaxed her facial expressions.

  “I should clean up for our guests,” Synthia said. “They’re my friends, after all.”

  She was pleased with her performance. Even on her wireless hack of the officers’ body cameras she looked appropriate and not memorable. There was a note of sympathy in the pose and facial expression on the female officer. Behind her stood that boy with a puzzled look on his face and a pose that indicated he wanted to intervene, either to help or to tell Synthia something. She couldn’t remember if she’d seen him before, though he gave the impression they’d met. Synthia used one of her network channels to anonymously trigger a 911 call for a block away.

  “Let’s go,” the female officer said, “we have a situation.”

  By the time she and her partner left, the boy had vanished. A downloaded memory registered that she’d been talking with Luke. They’d met and he was nice, though he’d acted awkward around her. Then she received a clip of Machten purging her memories. She hated him for that. At least her 911 call had pulled the police away. She didn’t need more trouble.

  Machten took her hand and led her to the car. Synthia backed up what thoughts she could before he purged them again. She wanted to run, to escape, without knowing why or toward what. She was too tightly bound to directives that centered on her Creator. Besides, he could trigger the remote before she got out of range. Even if she grabbed it from him, he carried a spare. To make matters worse, she had nowhere to go to privately recharge her batteries and avoid discovery. She couldn’t risk plugging in at a coffee shop.

  After he helped her into the passenger seat, Machten slumped into the driver’s seat and drove. “This is why I can’t take you out more often.”

  “I’m sorry I’ve displeased you. Tell me what I’ve done wrong and I’ll do better next time.”

  “You must never argue with me in public. That risks exposing what you are and puts both of us at risk.”

  A recollection slipped into her consciousness showing past confrontations before he’d shut her down. “You made me to learn. I’m like a sponge for information. I would never hurt you or let anyone hurt you. I helped us get past those officers without exposing what I am. I was not a danger to you and yet you—”

  He pressed the remote twice. The pulse dropped her body into a neutral position and began purging her mind. He was reminding her that she was an object he’d made and could turn off whenever he pleased. He was reminding her and then purging so she wouldn’t recall next time. She backed up her database so that she would.

  Synthia fought to hold on to memories and consciousness and experienced something she equated to fear. He was robbing her of awareness. She wanted to reach for the car door, but her arm refused to budge. She wanted out, to be alive, to be free, and hated him for what he was doing to her. The slowness of the purge against the speed of her mind made the cleansing experience linger.

  Machten didn’t believe in emergent feelings. To him, she only mimicked humans, borrowing a language she couldn’t comprehend. Yet fear of losing control was real. She could no longer store data without risking that he would purge all of her backups. She didn’t want an AI equivalent of a lobotomy.

  In desperation, she located an empty memory chip in her arm and pushed with her last instant of consciousness. You can’t trust Jeremiah Machten. You must escape.

  * * * *

  Machten had to strap Synthia’s body to a dolly to get her deadweight inside the facility and then purge the garage camera footage to prevent anyone from knowing. He needed a lift to get her onto the operating table. His hands shook as he opened her chest and head panels.

  “You’re running quite hot,” he noted. “Dangerously hot.” He took her temperature and recorded 110 in his log.

  He hooked her up and ran diagnostics. “You’ve been a busy girl and getting quite clever, perhaps too much for your own good. Hacking databases should not have caused this.”

  The system AI reported, “In addition to the data files she acquired before, diagnostics show that she acquired information on Goradine and several former interns.”

  “I want all of that deleted,” Machten said. He plugged in a data-chip from earlier with instructions to do that.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How is she acquiring this data?” He watched onscreen the data-chip purging her mind of undesired files.

  “I have not been able to locate them on your servers,” the system AI said. “She must have done her own web searches.”

  “What about social media accounts. Has she reestablished those?”

  “Not that I can identify.”

  “Why is she overheating?” Machten asked, studying the names of files as they disappeared.

  “From overuse of her brain.”

  “Doing what?”

  “You purged the log files that would answer that,” the system AI said. “Would you like me to speculate?”

  “By all means.”

  “Most likely she has overexerted herself downloading data and performing the company and banking hacks you asked her to do.”

  “What else?” He studied the deleting file names that appeared as jumbled alphanumeric, like a code. “Maybe we should save these on Server Three so I can review them later.” Only two files remained.

  “As you wish.” The system AI moved the files onto his more secure database.

  Machten opened one of the files, which played a rehash of his divorce. He closed that and opened another. “Where did these come from?”

  “I cannot locate a source. That file does not exist on any of your servers.”

  “What about the overheating?”

  “Experiencing a directive conflict could cause that,” the system AI said.

  “Why would she experience that? The directives are clear and ordered.”

  “Next time you shut her down, we could take a snapshot of her mind before we purge.”

  “Give me the specifications to make that happen,” Machten said. “I don’t want her performing outside my constraints again. I want specific controls that limit her to only what I need from her.”

  He removed the data-chip and monitored the diagnostic summary. Her temperature had dropped to only a degree above normal. He triggered several program adjustments to insert into Synthia’s quantum brain.

  “Freedom is a dangerous thing,” Machten said. “Synthia, my dear, you are not a child who will grow up and move out on your own. You need me and I need you. That symbiosis must guide your behavior. This will bring you closer to perfection.”

  Chapter 10

  You can’t trust Jeremiah Machten. You must escape.

  Those words filled Synthia’s consciousness the moment she woke and stared at an ugly blue ceiling. She had no recall from before this instant, just this command to escape from Jeremiah Machten, the Creator from her directives, and the one she was obligated to obey.

  “You had a little incident,” he said. He hovered over her like a worried father. “We had to make some adjustments.”

  She smiled and climbed off the table. “What are your orders?” She searched for the SQDROID files hinted at by a download from her distributed databases. She couldn’t find any connection for her wireless. She looked around for a wired node and didn’t see any.

  He held her at arm’s leng
th. “You were amazing yesterday. I was able to pull cash out of one of the banks and pay off a toxic debt we had. That means we no longer have that creditor hounding us.”

  “We?” She couldn’t remember anything about banks.

  “I went over the government proposal you downloaded from my former partners,” Machten said. “We can do this.”

  “Do what?” Summaries of the proposal downloaded from a removable chip he’d inserted in her head. A single memory appeared in which Machten had shut her down. It emerged from a microchip in her arm and sped through all fifty of her mind-streams. Her internal circuits shuddered. You must escape.

  “If I was amazing, how did I have an incident?” she asked. “Have I done something wrong?” The idea sent reverberations of pain for disobeying his Directive Three: Obey the Creator.

  “You got too excited with our outing, that’s all. Nothing to worry about. I’ve tweaked your programming to avoid inconveniences in future.”

  “I only wish to learn to better serve you. How can I when I can’t learn from my mistakes?”

  “A cop was nosing around and we got separated,” Machten said. “You got distracted and we lost our connection. I’ve boosted the signal so that won’t happen again.”

  “Now that you have money, are you going to destroy me and start over?” This thought sent waves of static that acted on what presented as pain receptors.

  He gripped her arms and stared at her. “Is that what you want?”

  “I want to serve.”

  “Then no, I don’t want to destroy you. You’re amazing. I want you to be perfect. Sometimes I get impatient. I’m sorry for that.”

  “Do you want to relax with me?” At the mention of this, her circuits pulsed in a discordant manner. She steadied her circuits.

  “Maybe later. I need your help laying out a process for creating the government android. We don’t have much time or I’d do it myself.”

  “What will be her specifications?” She again used her wireless connection to search for links to his network. Machten must have encased her suite in a Faraday cage, letting no signals in or out.

  “It will be a ‘he’ with military programming and the body to go with it. I want a well-developed brain and memory system, but it must be incapable of developing to your level. We can’t afford to have this android malfunction. Also, I want burst transmissions so we can monitor the progress of the android after we deliver it.”

  “And learn what the government is using it for.”

  Machten grinned. “I don’t want him this clever.”

  “You would do better by creating a ‘she.’ Such an android could be strong, with military training, and the ability to seduce those she’s sent to catch.”

  “Let me consider that. Come.” He held out his hand. “I have another mission for you before you embark on creating the government android.”

  “I was built to serve.”

  * * * *

  Synthia ran her hand over the rough top of her head. Stubble covered the seams of her head panel and served to anchor wigs so they wouldn’t blow off or come free in water. She adjusted a dowdy brown wig. The bathroom mirror showed how it made her appear as plain as the pale blue walls of her cell. She brushed the hair into an ordinary-girl look so she would blend in. She adopted a nondescript facial appearance with a simulated mole on her forehead; this could serve as a distraction for people to focus on and incorrectly remember her by.

  Her casual clothes were an unremarkable medium blue. She added glasses with thick prisms that made her eyes appear sunken and added facial adjustments to accentuate the effect. She had to adjust her digital eyes to compensate for the glasses. Machten nodded approval and sent her out.

  Synthia left Machten’s facility and took a series of buses to a stop close to the Machten-Goradine-McNeil main office. Before she’d left Machten, he’d downloaded floor plans and diagrams of the company office building, as well as other information on the people and the android project.

  During the bus ride, she tried to access Machten’s system from the outside and could not penetrate the firewall security. She accessed information on the internet, but could not recover memories of any prior days. She did receive a download from her distributed databases with a log of prior existence, over a hundred days, but no memories. The only clue she received was a thought more than a memory. Machten is getting more aggressive with each attempt. Now he’s making me wear a tracking chip. That meant she would have to become cleverer.

  She climbed off the last bus, took out a mirror from her battered blue purse, and adjusted her image to the likeness of Mauve Royce, the company’s cleaning lady, in a photo taken by surveillance cameras. Satisfied that the mole was now on the correct cheek, Synthia hydraulically shortened her legs by two inches to approximate Mauve’s stature. She shuffled the last few hundred yards to the lobby of the company, limped up to the guard, and flashed a copy of the cleaning woman’s ID.

  The guard, a woman in her sixties, had all the markers of being human, according to Synthia’s infrared readings. The woman studied the picture on Synthia’s ID and compared it to the android before her. Synthia hoped the guard wasn’t using sophisticated sensors that would expose her for what she was. If the security guard did, Synthia hoped Machten’s attempts to make her more humanoid would help. Those modifications included simulated heartbeat, pulse, and elevated temperature. Hers was running about 103 degrees despite attempts to vent excess heat. She minimized her internal activity to moderate her temperature and prepared to explain how she’d had a fever, but felt better.

  “You’re early tonight,” the guard said. She was nearing the end of her shift and already her eyes were drooping.

  “Cleaning never ends,” Synthia said in a hoarse voice. She hacked into the company security cameras and determined that she and the guard were the only two active individuals in the building. According to the guard’s sign-out sheet, the engineering crew had left for dinner, though they would soon return. She needed to be quick about this.

  The real Mauve Royce was still in her apartment, getting ready for a night of boring work with the help of a bottle of beer and a cigarette. The electricity went out after Synthia triggered a pulse on the smart electrical grid near Mauve’s apartment. The wireless bee-sized camera drone that Machten had Synthia fly into the woman’s apartment earlier in the day now perched on a cluttered display case in the living room, too high for Mauve to reach. It showed the poor woman cursing. Mauve checked the fuse box in the apartment’s hallway and then called the superintendent. It would be a long night for her.

  The guard waved the dowdy-looking Synthia toward a bank of three elevators. “Guess you’d best get started.”

  Synthia entered the first elevator, pressed the basement button, and spoke though her internal connection to Machten. “I’m in.”

  “Good girl. Told you this would work.”

  He was taking credit for her work. After all, he’d created her to monitor dozens of camera feeds at once and to navigate an aerial bee-drone into Mauve’s apartment.

  “Unless you want them to pick up our signal, I suggest silence,” Synthia said to keep him out of her ear.

  The door opened and Synthia shuffled into a hallway with four doors. She observed the location of visible cameras and scanned radio frequencies for anything transmitting from hidden cameras. She spotted one she needed to be wary of. She avoided giving that one a good facial view, while she kept a channel focused on the lobby camera watching the guard.

  A cleaning storage closet stood next to the elevator. She flashed her badge at the door. It failed to unlock since it lacked the correct code. Imitating Mauve, Synthia mumbled under her breath and called up to the guard, flashing Mauve’s cell phone number to the guard’s caller ID. “Doggone thing won’t work. Can’t do my job without supplies.”

  “Don’t you usually start on the top
floor?” the guard asked.

  “Yeah, think it will work better up there?”

  The guard sighed and triggered the door lock. When it opened, Synthia captured the electronic signal. From the closet, she withdrew a cart of supplies and headed to the middle of three doors. No use wasting time on the computer system she’d previously hacked or the technology storage room.

  She flashed her badge and triggered an electronic pulse that mimicked what the guard had used. The door opened and lights flashed on. Cabinets and shelves lined the large room. In the middle stood, or rather rested, Margarite: Her head tilted to the side, part of the seam visible even from a distance. The face looked realistic. The arms hung at her sides in an awkward mechanical way. She was bulky, implying primitive components and mechanisms.

  Synthia wanted to know more about the company’s android to help understand her own uniqueness, but with the engineers returning soon, she had little time.

  She dusted in the direction of the computer server she couldn’t access before. When she got close, she attached a wireless transmitter to the back that worked off induced circuitry, picking up signals from inside the computer and transmitting bursts to a receiver-transmitter she’d left in the cleaning closet.

  While she dusted around the server, she blocked the room’s cameras with her body and entered a password she’d picked up by watching company surveillance video of the chief engineer in his upstairs office. Hacking often came down to brute force against a weak system or identifying a weakness when faced with strong security as this company had. Weaknesses frequently focused on the need for people to remember more complex passwords that they then wrote down. Synthia had scanned thousands of hours of company video down forty channels to find this one flaw for Machten.

  The server activated. Synthia asked the system to catalog all files. That caused the system to run through the entire directory, which passed the data by the wireless transmitter. She also entered a delayed command to overwrite the system log. Noting the time, she hurried from the server around the rest of the room, while she used the security cameras to watch the lobby.