“Then consider yourself forewarned, Chancellor. We’re going to be taking a look at all the work camps. You can avoid the extreme extraction methods completely if the UCN will willingly send the cyborgs our way,” Kyra suggested, staring at the man on the screen.
Chancellor Owens nodded. “I think your request is quite reasonable given what we’ve learned can accidentally happen. I’ll make sure it’s on the next meeting docket, Dr. Winters. Now if there is nothing else, I’ve postponed a conference to speak with you and really must move on to them at this time. Have a blessed a day, Doctor…and Gentlemen.”
When the screen went black, King walked away. He walked to the nearest door and plowed a fist through it. Breathing hard from his actions, he pulled his hand out of the hole. Seeing all the way through to the other side, he leaned his head against what remained of the door, appalled at his loss of temper.
Having grown accustomed to seeing cyborgs get angry and destroy things, Kyra walked away from her husband’s restraining hand. “Chancellor Owens is lying, King. We know that. It wasn’t accidental your former wife was being relocated the very day you showed up to rescue her. Somehow they were monitoring our rescue plans, probably using info gleaned from Norton’s data banks to do it.”
“Seetha said the cyborg was going to kill her and I believe her.”
Kyra nodded. “I believe her too. And I know what happened to Seetha Harrington is not any more fair than what happened to you. Some good did come from her suffering though. The UCN is going to give us the cyborgs out of all the other camps. Her suffering has indirectly liberated more cyborgs. At least that’s some small concession.”
King turned and looked at the woman who had changed him from a stoic cyborg back into a feeling man. Sometimes he wished she’d left him unaware.
“I’d rather not care about her suffering, but I do. In fact, I can’t stop the emotions from tearing through me. I don’t know how to fix this, Doc. I feel so helpless to help her or myself. What the hell can I do?”
Kyra placed a hand on his arm, knowing it was finally safe to touch him. “Make peace with her about the past if you can. You’ll feel better then.”
“I still want to know why they erased her from my memory,” King said.
“Sure. Nero is almost done researching what happened. If you want, we can include Seetha in our meeting when we go over it. I’ll let it be your call.”
King nodded, feeling numb…and severely embarrassed…which was an uncomfortable human emotion to have to experience again. Feeling the need to restore balance to his actions, he purposely closed the busted up door very gently as he left the room.
***
Seetha sighed at her clothes hanging in her mother’s guest room closet. Apparently her domicile had reverted back to the mortgage company during her absence. The furniture and appliances had been sold along with the house. Her mother had only managed to salvage a fraction of her former possessions. Most of what was saved was now in a storage facility Seetha hadn’t visited yet.
She was thirty-four, nearly destitute, and definitely very disillusioned-with life. Going directly from her work camp cell to staying in a shrine where a young girl’s toys held places of honor on every available surface was not really helpful. She wondered how upset her mother would get if she asked to move all the signs of her idealistic youth to storage too. They were just constant reminders of a version of herself which would never exist again.
She sighed and tried not to indulge any more of the crippling self-pity as she flipped hangers. After five passes, she was thoroughly convinced finding anything wearable among her old belongings was a lost cause. Two years ago when having gained too much weight had been her only problem in the world, she would have been ecstatic to find nothing in her closet fit a body as skinny as hers. Now she only felt irritated when she looked down at the baggy dress she wore. It had looked much smaller on the hanger, but in actuality, it needed two of her to fill it out the way it was meant to look when worn. She would put some of her lost weight back on eventually, but couldn’t imagine ever again wearing the huge size of everything hanging in front of her.
Frustrated by how much her life had changed, Seetha tore the loose dress off over her head. She turned and picked up the borrowed t-shirt and yoga crops her mother had insisted she wear until she felt like shopping. Dressed once more in her mother’s clothes, which at least were a little tighter, Seetha sat on the edge of her bed and contemplated the rest of her bleak future.
She was going to have to accept and use the blood money the UCN was offering her. There was no other choice. The amount wasn’t enough to buy another domicile, but it would at least provide clothes that fit and the technological necessities she would need to find another job. Hopefully her employment would be one which paid a decent salary. Maybe with the UCN payment on her record, her value as an employee would go up, even if her employment was a big fat lie only a few souls would ever know was the true case.
She’d thought briefly about going public with her story, but had decided nothing good would come of it. Besides, she couldn’t do that to her mother…or to King. All three of them deserved for the whole ordeal to be over, so they could get on with their lives.
A knock on the door sent her gaze to the woman she’d been thinking about who was now smiling kindly at her. The love on her mother’s face made her set her self-pity aside. She badly wanted to once again deserve the devotion of the woman who had adopted her.
“Well, it’s official. Nothing in my closet fits anymore. Given the size of them, I suppose I should be happier about it,” Seetha complained, sticking her full bottom lip out in a mock pout to entertain her mother.
Annalise nodded. “I knew that would be the case when I saw how much weight you’d lost. How many more times are you going to go through it and check, Seetha? Let’s just donate it all to charity and go shopping for everything new. Let’s start your life over with a brand new wardrobe.”
Seetha snorted at the female drama, wanting to laugh at her mother’s exuberance. Shopping was a task she dreaded worse than having to see King again for “closure” as her mother’s high-paid therapist insisted she must do. The one at Norton didn’t seem to care what she felt about King. He just wanted her to not to publicly voice her anger over what she’d suffered.
“I guess I have no choice. I can’t keep wearing my mother’s underwear,” Seetha declared.
“Seetha—it won’t be so bad to start over.”
“Says the woman who loves to shop.”
Seetha smiled at her mother’s shrug. Annalise Harrington had always been big on maintaining a proper appearance. More than half of the clothes she owned had come from her mother—definitely all the beautiful, impractical ones.
Seetha crossed her arms as she stared. Her mother was generous, but had a strict moral code that would have made any religious leader wince in shame.
“Why aren’t you mad at me for what I did? A normal mother would be ranting about what a fool I was to go tearing off just because I got my heart broken. You can go ahead and say it if you feel that way about what I did. I deserve to hear how upset you are and I will listen completely before I apologize for the millionth time.”
Annalise laughed wryly and shook her head. “Don’t you know every woman makes mistakes when she falls in love? I’ve certainly made romantic errors blindly, but I’ve also made some with my eyes wide open. It’s just a part of life. How can I blame you for your heartache when I watched it happen? I hate this too…and darling, King forgetting you wasn’t your fault.”
Seetha tilted her head and gave her mother a disbelieving look as she got up and paced. Compared to her cell at the work camp, the small bedroom was spacious.
“What mistakes did you ever make with a man? Daddy was great. Lane was great. You managed to marry two great men, Mother. Not me though—I married a logic-driven cyborg whose every memory of me got erased out of existence. I was dumb, dumb, and more dumb to think I could control who and w
hat Norton did to King. First, I spent over a decade’s worth of savings to buy him. Then I spent the rest of my money, and some of yours, to keep Norton from updating him. Did it do me or him any good? No. All I did was postpone the inevitable, which eventually happened anyway. He wasn’t even harmed by it. He came right back, all programmed and ready to be my walking, talking man toy again. I should have been dating plain, old human males, instead of trying to convert the unconvertible. No sane woman falls in love with a cyborg’s damn picture and buys him because of it.”
“Seetha…”
“Sorry for the bad language—I picked up the habit of swearing at the guard bot.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself.” Annalise sighed, lifted her daughter’s hand, and clutched it tightly to her chest. “Listen to me, Seetha Harrington. You were just following your heart every step you took with Kingston. And it may shock you to hear this, but after you left, I married a cyborg myself.”
Seetha snorted. “I can’t believe you married a cyborg after seeing the hell I went through. Mother, you really are a die-hard optimist.”
“Our relationship was just platonic. You bought a cyborg for love, but I bought one to save him from a worse fate. The man remains very special to me even though he’s no longer a real part of my life. And I’ll tell you the same thing I told him—I’m glad Dr. Winters liberated him. He deserves to be free to live as he pleases.”
Seetha sighed heavily and hugged her mother. “I’m sorry you lost another big bunch of money reacting to my freak-out. I’m as sorry for you as I am for myself.”
Annalise shook her head. She swallowed hard, accepting the time to confess was now.
“Seetha, I purposely let your house go back to the mortgage company because I needed the money to buy Kingston back from Norton. I knew when you returned him that you were making the biggest mistake of your life. You were hurting so bad you couldn’t see his suffering or how unfair it was for him to just have his life taken away. I couldn’t stop you from sending him back, but I did manage to undo it.”
Seetha pulled her hand from her mother’s and walked a short distance away. “Are you saying that you bought…King? That he was with you the whole time I was gone?”
Annalise bit her lip and nodded. “Yes. I couldn’t stand the idea of some strange woman making him do things to her. It seemed so wrong after seeing the two of you together. Plus, I simply couldn’t bear to lose both of you. While we waited for you to come home, he tended the tomatoes and cooked. I know it was a very boring life for him, but I sincerely believed one day you’d come back and wish you had kept him.”
Seetha shook her head as she tried to come to terms with what she was hearing. Tears threatened. What her mother did…all the money—the millions—she must have spent to save King…it boggled the mind.
“I am so sorry…so very, very sorry…that I put us both through what I did. I swear I just wanted to get away from my failed relationship for a while. I wasn’t planning the break to last more than a few weeks.”
Annalise walked to put her arms around her child, refusing to be pushed away again.
“You were just trying to survive the pain of losing someone you loved. I know well what that feels like, Seetha. I loved your father…and I loved Lane. I figured King was going to be a captive one way or the other, no matter who had him. At least with me, he was relatively safe…and not being taken advantage of sexually. I don’t know what he’s done with women since he’s been restored, but there was no one the whole time you were gone. He was being faithful to you, even though he didn’t know it.”
Seetha let the tears leak out. “I have no words of gratitude big enough, but thank you, Mother.”
Annalise hugged her hurting daughter tightly. “You’re welcome. He’s welcome too…though I’m not sure he completely understands I had his best interests in mind when I bought his contract.”
Seetha shook her head again. “King may never figure it out. He’s…strange now. I’m still the invisible woman to him though—I saw it for myself. He’s nice and polite, but there’s nothing there, just like when Norton returned him.”
Annalise petted her daughter’s hair. “I’m sorry then. I hear the hurt in your voice. I promise you one day you’ll love again and this loss will fade to something you can manage. Life has a way of going on even when you don’t want it to.”
Seetha nodded and felt her mother tip her chin up.
“King may be very different, but some of the man you loved lives on in who and what he’s become. After Kingston was restored, he opened a restaurant.”
“He did? Good,” Seetha declared, honestly pleased. It was like hearing the news about his human decision making being restored. All she could feel was elation and relief that no one would ever take his life from him again.
“Yes, I thought it was good too.” Annalise squeezed hard. “Then one day I went to see him at his new restaurant and told him the truth about why I had bought him. He was very kind…just like you saw. When I told him you were missing, Kingston promised he would find you and bring you home to me. And he did just exactly what he said he would, even though he didn’t remember his time with you. Though I will miss him being a real part of our lives, I will always be grateful to him for bringing you home.”
Seetha nodded. “Yes. So will I. He came just when I needed him most. I guess I should count my blessings instead of mourning for what I’ve lost.”
She hadn’t shared the fact she’d almost been killed with her mother. No charges would be made against Norton’s negligence, or the UCN’s faulty database, so there was no need to pass along to her mother the same nightmares she kept having over and over. What she had endured in the work camp was a burden she would bear alone. She would consider it penance for all the pain she’d caused the woman who raised her.
“So…how is the food at King’s restaurant?” Seetha asked, trying to shift her mind to the positive.
Annalise laughed. “Actually…I don’t know. I didn’t stay to eat anything after I talked to him. The bread is good and the wine is excellent. Kingston sources locally so most items on the menu are very healthy and cost worthy. Maybe we can break in your new wardrobe and go try the food together.”
“Sure,” Seetha declared, but the idea depressed her. She didn’t know if she had enough emotional fortitude to watch King being happy in a life that was never going to include her.
Chapter 6
“Play the next vid,” King ordered, staring at the display which had just finished playing back one of his many erased files. “I want to see all of the recordings.”
“Are you sure, King? We’ve been at this for hours now. What I’ve shown you so far is just a random sampling of what was captured in long term storage. It took me nearly a full work week to look through all the material. You can read the data files on a handheld, but the videos have to be watched at the same speed they were recorded for the language to be properly heard. And keep in mind—these are not really your memories—not in the normal sense. They are short recordings of what your processor sporadically deduced was significant enough to collect through your vision and hearing implants. We didn’t know you had those until we saw these vids. Now it turns out your entire team got both even if those weren’t part of the official records. Only Peyton’s implants are official. He has nearly everything Norton ever put into a cyborg.”
King was numb…and somewhat in shock...over Nero’s reduction of what he was seeing and hearing. Was it just data? Fuck no, it wasn’t. It was his damn life. It was his past. And what he was seeing and hearing was exactly what Annalise had described.
He had been cyborg…and yet not a cyborg…or at least not completely one. Whatever he had been had smiled and laughed at everything Seetha Harrington said and did. Each recording was like watching an entertainment vid—fascinating but surreal—even though he and Seetha were the actors.
“Does Norton consider the information they took from me to be theirs, Nero?” King knew it was a
dumb question when he asked, but he just wanted to hear someone be logical when they explained it to him.
Nero nodded as he shrugged. “Yes. A cyborg’s collection of data from long term storage was routinely removed and scrubbed during yearly maintenance. Usually the storage area was wiped clean to allow for new information to be recorded and stored. Your collection from all those years you weren’t upgraded was atypically large. By the time Norton finally got you away from your engineer wife, your storage area was likely on the brink of being at full capacity. They cite in their work logs your data pull took an entire day. It was one of the primary reasons they kept it all. No one wanted to take the time to go through it. Then afterward, Seetha’s complaints about your personality change brought up questions they probably planned to investigate at some point. Hence the lockdown on it.”
King’s mind said Nero’s explanation made perfect sense, but his gut was not in agreement. There was something missing there, some story about his situation, Nero was not capturing with his logical deductions.
“What would have happened to me if I’d filled up the storage area completely? Would my processor have shut down or rebooted me on its own?”
Nero shrugged. “Hard to say. To the best of my knowledge, filling up a storage area has never happened in recorded cyborg history. Yearly maintenance prevented it. I do find it strange Norton let your contract wife hold them off for so long.”
“I was thinking the same thing—and that maybe they wanted to see what might happen,” King stated.
“When Kyra restored Peyton, she blocked his storage off temporarily, which is what I think your processor would have tried to do if long term storage had gotten too full. She said Peyton acted almost completely human after she did that. She also said his sense of time reverted instantly to his last recorded human memory. That state of being lasted the whole time the long term cybernetic data was inaccessible.”
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