What Lies Behind: A New Adult Dark Science Fiction Romance

by Travis Simmons

  She picked up all the things Natalia had left all over the place. She deposited the deodorant in the drawer, the dirty clothes lying on the floor into the hamper. She went to the closet to pick up what Natalia had strewn over the floor there as well. Cass wasn’t sure why some of the clothes were on the floor. Natalia never had to go through her own closet, Cass did that for her. Why she always left her closet a mess was beyond her. Cass placed the clothes by color and shades on hangers around the closet. It was as though Natalia had gone around and randomly pulled garments out of place and tossed them on the floor.

  Her hand hesitated on the pair of white shorts. Her fingers quivered against the material. They were rough…whatever that meant. Her visual overlay would tell her when something was soft or rough, but they both felt the same to her flesh. Maybe felt was the wrong word. She couldn’t specifically feel them. There weren’t senses in her skin like there were for humans. She could determine hot and cold, and she could determine density and wetness. She couldn’t feel the cool rush of water, or what coarse material felt like slipping over her skin. She tried to imagine what rough would feel like on her.

  What would these look like on me? She wondered. To wear something other than the ugly blue pants she’d been given hadn’t been a thought to her before yesterday, when all of those other programs started coming online.

  Cass’s gaze darted to the closet door. She stilled herself and listened for any noise within the apartment. She didn’t hear any, but still she was worried. What if Natalia returned?

  She would make it quick. Cass shucked off her blue pants and pulled on the white shorts. Her fingers were shaking, but she managed to get them buttoned. She and Natalia were about the same size, though Natalia was taller than Cass. The shorts fit her well.

  It was so strange seeing her legs. How long had it been? She couldn’t remember. She wore the same clothes day in and day out. Her legs were long and slender and looked a perfect shade of tan against the white shorts.

  Once she’d changed her pants, Cass was emboldened. She pulled her shirt off as well. She ran her hands over the different shirts in the collection, finding one she thought was perfect. It was a white shirt with short, puffy sleeves. There was blue embroidery around the top and a blue decorative string laced through the collar. This was more flowing than the shorts. The shirt must be softer than the shorts.

  She yelped when a knock sounded at the door. Cass tugged the shirt on and padded, barefoot, out through the living room and to the front door. At first she was worried that it was Natalia, but why would she knock?

  Cass peaked through the peephole and saw that it was Brandon.

  She’d almost forgotten about the surprise he planned today. In fact, she had been planning on investigating the doctor more before Brandon knocked on the door. She frowned. It wasn’t that Cass didn’t want to spend time with him today, it was that she’d rather spend time investigating what was changing about her. Why was she suddenly so different? Was it really because of all the abuse she’d been facing?

  Cass opened the door and smiled at Brandon, pushing the thoughts aside.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked as she closed the door behind him. He stepped closer to her and felt at her head. His face creased in a frown, his eyebrows pulling down.

  “Fine,” she said, letting him feel where she’d been struck before.

  “And everything is alright? Your programming is okay?” he asked.

  She nodded, crossing her hands before her.

  “Hey, new clothes!” he said. A smile spread across his face, showing a straight line of white teeth. “Did you do something special to warrant such kind treatment?”

  Cass chuckled. “No, Natalia’s at work. She doesn’t know I’m playing dress up.”

  “Well, then it’s our secret. What about your hair? You’re not going to leave it like that, are you?” he asked, steering her toward the couch.

  “Well, I wasn’t really going to stay like this,” she said, trying to pull away from him. “Let me go change and you can show me what you have in mind for a surprise.”

  “Not that fast,” Brandon said and laughed. He took her shoulders in his hands and steered her toward the couch. “If you’re going to get all dolled up, you need the hair to match, don’t you?”

  She let Brandon set her on the couch and he went looking for a comb. She studied the hover cars as they meandered along outside. What if someone saw them through the patio door? But the people weren’t looking at the apartment complex. Or if they were, they weren’t studying the windows.

  What did it really matter? Natalia had never given Cass anything other than damage that needed repairing and treating her like dirt. Brandon made her feel good. Should she feel bad for that? Should she be scared of Natalia because of how another person decided to treat her?

  What’s happening to you? She wondered. Why was she suddenly having these thoughts? What did it mean? She had always been a good servant before.

  “Cass, what are you doing? Let me out!”

  The memory came and went so fast she couldn’t be sure if she’d experienced it or not.

  I have to see Gerard, Cass thought. Something isn’t right with me. He’s wrong. He needs to fix me. Did she really want to be fixed though? Didn’t she like what was happening to her? Everything had been so much simpler before, she thought.

  Cass was staring at the floor in disbelief when Brandon returned.

  “Alright, since your hair looks like it’s going to be long when we get it all untangled, I found a hair clip for you.”

  “Thanks,” Cass said.

  “And here,” Brandon said, placing a pair of leathery sandals on the floor before her. “Put these on.”

  They were dainty and showed of the gentle arch of her feet and the narrowness of her ankles.

  Brandon positioned himself behind her, moved her around slightly so he could get a good angle, and started combing out the tangles that had become of her hair. He was gentle and slow, making sure he didn’t tug more than necessary.

  “I don’t know how people like her get away with doing this,” Brandon said.

  “Like who, and doing what?” Cass wondered.

  “People like Natalia and how they treat robots.”

  Cass shrugged. “I’ve never really thought about it. Do they treat us bad?” That was a lie. She had thought about it. Part of her, no matter how comfortable she felt around Brandon, still couldn’t trust him completely. She didn’t want him to know what she was thinking, not after how he looked at her yesterday at the doctor’s office.

  “Some people do,” Brandon said. “You were bought used, don’t you remember your family before Natalia?”

  “A little bit here and there,” Cass said. She looked at her hands in her lap and started picking at her nails. She didn’t really like where this was going.

  “Did they treat you better?” Brandon asked.

  “They treated me different, that’s for sure,” Cass said. How different I need to talk to the doctor to find out. If only Brandon had forgotten their meeting today. If only he’d forgotten his surprise. What could it be? If it didn’t take too long maybe she could sneak off to Gerard before Natalia got home.

  But he said she was working late today and that means whatever he’s planning is going to take some time.

  “No beatings, no closet?” Brandon asked.

  “No beatings,” she said with a shake of her head.

  “You know why she does it right?” Brandon asked.

  “No,” Cass said.

  “Her father left her mother for a robot,” he told her.

  “Is that normal?” Cass wondered. She remembered the news broadcast from earlier and wondered if that was something that commonly happened. As far as she knew, she was just programs and wires, nothing much to love, unless you programmed the robot for such a thing. She toyed with the hem of her shirt.

  “It happens from time to time,” Brandon said. He pulled her hair back and twisted it
up. She felt the clip go in place in her hair.

  “Isn’t that strange?” Cass asked.

  “Why would it be strange?” Brandon shrugged.

  “A robot with a human?”

  “What’s so different?” he wondered.

  Cass frowned. She shook her head, there was no point in getting into it with him. “So what’s this surprise?” Cass asked. She turned to Brandon with a genuine smile on her face. Doctor Gerard would have to wait. Right now she was getting to spend time with someone who didn’t make her feel like a robot. Even if their interaction wasn’t genuine as she feared, at least Cass could enjoy how it felt to be treated as Brandon’s equal for a time.

  “You’re killing me,” Brandon said.

  “What did I do?” Cass asked. She turned to him and placed his hand on his arm. She looked him over, but there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with him.

  “Just an expression.” Brandon laughed at the look on her face and took her by the hand. “This time I’m driving, my plans don’t include us going several miles away from our destination to some strange place that makes you faint.”

  “Power off,” Cass said. “Automatons don’t faint.”

  “Isn’t it still kind of the same thing?” Brandon wondered, tugging her toward the door. She followed him out the door and to the elevator.

  “I don’t know, is it?” Cass asked. She fingered the delicate flower clip he’d placed in her hair. She could see it in the reflection: thin and transparent with pink petals that seemed like they were spun out of the very air itself.

  “Well, technically I guess not. You power down and everything stops running. That can’t happen for humans, when it does we’re dead.” He said it as if she didn’t already know that. The elevator whisked them up to the roof and she followed him out into the overcast day. “But really, something happened that frustrated you or disturbed you and you sorta passed out. That’s a reaction with humans.”

  “Huh,” Cass said. She opened the car door and got in. Remembering what he’d said the day before, she latched the seatbelt secure and tried not to get sick as the car spiraled up into the air and merged with traffic.

  They were going in the opposite direction as the day before. Hover cars whirred by on either side of them and shadows cast down on Cass from hover cars that were up higher than they were. If there was any reasoning to how the flow of traffic worked, Cass couldn’t tell. It all looked like a mess to her. Cars above them and below them and beside them. She watched as a green car merged with a lane above it and then circled the top of a towering building.

  “If I could get sick, I think watching these hover cars would do it to me,” Cass told him. “I don’t understand how you can drive in this.”

  “If I’m correct, you can drive in this too, you just don’t remember.” Brandon looked over at Cass to catch her frowning. “Don’t you think that’s odd?” he asked.

  “That I can fly but don’t remember having flown before?” she asked.

  “No, that you’re feeling emotion all of a sudden,” he said. “You were just frowning. Automatons don’t frown. I’m not even sure automatons are programmed to frown.”

  She wanted to argue that robots didn’t have emotions, except she knew that was a lie. She was experiencing emotions. She got frustrated, she felt pitiful, and she had been embarrassed. Over the last day she had felt more emotion than she’d thought possible for an automaton.

  “Kinda,” she mumbled. “But then aren’t some automatons programmed to be lovers? Wouldn’t they need a range of emotions?”

  Brandon shrugged and nodded. “It’s not something that’s been with you all this time,” he commented. “Another little secret of ours.” He smiled over at her, and Cass returned the smile, but it was hollow. She didn’t feel like smiling. She felt like getting sick, and this time not because of the hover cars. This time she felt the uneasiness because he’d pointed out something she’d been trying to forget: how she was different.

  “Ready for the surprise?” Brandon asked, easing the hover car out of traffic and to the right between two tall buildings.

  “Do I have a choice?” Cass asked him.

  “Nope. You’re my hostage today, and you’re going to have fun dammit.”

  The car parked toward the end of a large parking lot. Cass could see a bulky building through which people were streaming.

  “World Zoo,” she read the large sign hanging above the entrance doors. “You brought me to the zoo?”

  “Yea, isn’t that fun?” Brandon asked.

  “Sure.” Cass smiled at him.

  The entrance was a stone reception room with several people behind windows taking money and allowing people through. Brandon paid for them, and before long they were stepping into an open air courtyard. There were buildings here and there for different features. Trails led off from the main path and to other exhibits, some marked “Outback” which she assumed was for Australian animals. Another “Safari” and so on.

  “Where do we start?” Brandon asked her.

  “Why don’t we follow this path?” she asked.

  “Well, that’s all farm animals like goats and cows and stuff. There’s nothing that interesting about them.”

  “Really?” Cass asked. “Did you know that cows have a huge stomach with four different chambers in it? And they have to drink an obscene amount of water a day. Or that they can climb stairs but can’t come back down?”

  “Well I doubt we will get to see them climbing stairs or get to see their stomach chambers,” Brandon told her.

  “And goats. Their eyes are really rectangular. And in Scotland there are feral goats!”

  “Can you even imagine that?” Brandon asked around a laugh. “What would you do if you met a feral goat?”

  Cass tried to picture it and started laughing.

  “Now that would bring something interesting to their exhibit,” Brandon told her. “Do you want to go see the goats?”

  “Nah,” she told him. “I doubt we will get to see someone attacked. Better to just go somewhere else. Maybe the reptile house?”

  Brandon shivered.

  “Alright, you pick,” Cass said tossing her hands in the air.

  “No, reptile house is fine,” Brandon said, itching his arm. “I hate snakes.”

  “Well, there will likely be a lot more reptiles there than just snakes,” Cass told him as they set off down one fork in the path that indicated the reptiles’ house was ahead. She started running down a list of known reptiles to exist in zoos but stopped when Brandon started snickering.

  “What?” she asked him.

  “Turn the encyclopedia off today, huh?” he asked her.

  Cass frowned at him. “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing.” He smiled at her. “Continue.”

  “I get the feeling you don’t like my lecture.”

  “Whatever gave you that idea?” he asked in mock seriousness, splaying his hand innocently over his chest.

  “Be careful or I will throw you into a snake pit,” Cass poked him in the side.

  “Bruce will save me,” Brandon told her.

  She held the door open for him and followed him inside. They followed a hall toward the central exhibit. Along the walls were various snakes that could be found in their area. When the hall opened up into the main room there were more exotic kinds of snakes. She didn’t bother reading the names, she enjoyed looking at the colors. Reds and greens and oranges.

  At the end of the house was a large tank several people were gathered in front of. Cass joined them, but Brandon stayed behind her, his hands tucked into his pockets, a sick look on his face.

  The tank was full of cobras, and there was a guy inside cleaning the tank.

  “Oh my God!” Cass said.

  “What?” Brandon asked, stepping forward, suddenly interested like maybe the guy was being attacked.

  “Watch him,” Cass said.

  The cleaner bent down, grabbed a cobra by the tail and tossed it to
the side of the tank.

  “Holy crap!” Brandon exclaimed. “He must have brass balls or something.”

  The man continued tossing snakes aside as if they weren’t deadly and hissing at him.

  “Alright, I’m ready to go,” Brandon told her and tugged her toward the exit. She smiled at him, but didn’t argue because he was looking pretty green around the gills.

  It was her turn to squirm next when Brandon steered her toward the aquarium. He insisted that they take the conveyor belt through a huge tank with a tunnel built through it.

  “Ow!” Brandon yipped when Cass squeezed his hand as a shark glided overtop. “Be careful, you’re stronger than me.” He chuckled as he pried her hand loose. “Why are you so uppity around water?”

  “Robot, remember?” she asked. “Water doesn’t really mix well with electronics.”

  “Well this much water cascading down on anyone wouldn’t be too good for them.” Brandon smirked at her, but took her hand again. He went through names of the fish that they were seeing, all salt water and all of them as amazing as the snakes had been. It was hard for Cass to settle down with that much water around her, but at least she was able to enjoy the fish.

  “And you really don’t need me to name them, do you?” Brandon asked her. “You’ve probably got some kind of internet connection, right?”

  “Cortical nodule,” Cass nodded. “Please continue. I’ve shut it off so I won’t be able to identify the fish.”

  She could have seen any number of the fish through her cortical implant, but that was through videos. This was better. Seeing the fish and the sea life first-hand wasn’t something she was likely to forget.

  But I forgot Olivia, she thought.

  Brandon led her out of the tunnel and to another tank where she could see an octopus swimming around. Cass didn’t really pay as much attention to the octopus as she’d normally have because Brandon hadn’t removed his hand from hers yet.

  “There is a reason I brought you here,” he told her, sitting her down a few hours later. “But I have to use the bathroom right now. I will show you when I get back, okay?”

  Cass nodded and as he walked away she connected to the internet. A stream of information flooded into her mind and all she had to do was think about a name or a topic for a list of results to populate on her visual overlay.