The Neuromorphs

by Dennis Meredith

  “PAT! LOOK!” he heard Leah shout, and raced back to deal with Malcolm.

  What he saw was the android wandering aimlessly about, its face swollen into an unrecognizable, puffy glob.

  “IT’S WATER, PAT! THEIR SKIN! IT ABSORBS WATER!”

  Patrick immediately realized the advantage, quickly circling the fumbling android to give himself just the right position.

  With a football-style body-slam, he launched the android into the pool. It landed with a splash, and they watched as Malcolm’s already thick body swelled to become a huge formless Pillsbury-Doughboy of an object. The android floated on his back, attempting to right himself with vigorous flops of its water-swollen limbs.

  “Okay, now what do we—” Patrick began to say, but he was interrupted.

  “Jesus!” exclaimed Leah, peering over the railing. Patrick joined her to see more of the building’s android residents effortlessly scaling the building’s walls, with the absolute lack of caution only a machine could muster.

  As the first of the androids reached the floor below, Patrick bolted to one of the round tables and hefted its umbrella. He returned just as the android known as John Travis pulled himself up to the railing, preparing to leap over. Patrick chose the instant of Travis’s optimal imbalance to lunge forward with all his might, slamming the metal umbrella pole into his chest. The android Travis looked at him calmly as his body hurtled backward off the building and plunged twenty stories to shatter on the concrete driveway below.

  Another android appeared, and Patrick did the same, with the same result, leaving a grotesquely broken body sprawled on the concrete. But with the artificial determination of machines, many of the androids launched themselves at the same time over the railing, and he had to back away. His only hope now was to somehow maneuver them into the pool. But they had cornered him on one side. The umbrella pole would only serve now to ward them off until he was inevitably overwhelmed and killed.

  From behind him erupted a powerful gush of water, aimed squarely at the faces of the closest approaching android. He whirled to see Leah wielding the hose used to clean the pool deck.

  “Attagirl!” he shouted, backing away to give her a clear shot.

  The androids’ faces began to absorb water, like the toy sponges that swell from tiny desiccated objects to puffy animals. As the androids lost their vision, they lost their ability to attack. Patrick quickly took advantage, circling behind those that wandered close to the pool and shoving them in. Shortly, the pool was crowded with soggy, floating, bloated androids, their clothing made taut by the swollen secondskin beneath. Muffled sounds emanated from their throats, voices smothered by swollen faces.

  Leah continued to fully soak the remaining androids, rendering them easy, lumbering targets for her husband’s assaults.

  A loud crash from the foyer told them that something powerful had breached the steel stairwell door. To defend the new battle line, Patrick left three blind, sodden androids still wandering around the pool deck. But before he could reach the foyer, the source of that door-shattering impact strode into the sunlight.

  A tall, slim, naked woman appeared, and she stopped Patrick in his tracks. Was this another human resident, escaping the androids? She smiled warmly and approached him.

  “Hi, I’m Sandra,” she said in a breathy voice. The disconcerting sight of a friendly, casually nude woman brought only an instant of confusion. But it was enough to allow the Intimorph to get strategically close.

  She grabbed Patrick by the neck with both hands, a massively powerful grip that stunned him into realizing this was no human. The new adrenalin rush enabled him to slash viciously upward with his arms to break that grip. The maneuver would have worked with any human.

  But her grip held, and he felt his consciousness begin to fade. But he had enough wit left to realize that by grabbing him, this machine had thrown herself the slightest bit off balance. So, he lurched backward, hauling the android with him toward the pool. They both tumbled backward into warm water, and it closed over them. But now, besides being strangled, he had no air to breathe, even if he could. He felt over the android’s body, hoping to detect the swelling that would restrict its movements, giving him a chance to break free. But the body remained taut beneath his hands.

  The android’s skin was waterproof! He felt water entering his lungs. He was drowning!

  As the gray shroud of unconsciousness enveloped him, he became vaguely aware of subtle vibrations in the choking grip around his neck. Something was jarring this android floating above him amid the bloated, flailing bodies in the pool. He could vaguely make out a dark silhouette against the sun, straddling the android. It was stabbing, stabbing, stabbing with vicious thrusts.

  He felt a shudder in the android’s hands clutching his neck. Then its grip grew limp and wafted away. But now he was too weak to even try for the surface, for a life-giving breath. All was growing dark.

  The silhouetted form reached for him, hauled him upward into the warm sunlight onto the pool deck. He heaved a gush of chlorinated water from his lungs. He was being held. It was Leah. He took a quaking breath and hacked out more water, gulping in the delicious warm desert air.

  She turned him over and helped him to continue to fill his lungs. He realized he would be dead, except for his SEAL training in resisting drowning . . . and his wife.

  She helped him sit up. “What—” he began to say.

  “That goddamned robot bitch wasn’t about to take my husband!” she swore.

  He looked over to see the nude body of the neuromorph floating face down in the pool, dozens of holes gouged in its back, a barbecue fork jutting out of one wound.

  “You killed it?” he asked.

  “Well, I figured there had to be a vulnerability somewhere. Lawyers know how to find weak spots. I think I made a short circuit, or something.” She helped him up, and supported him as he recovered. “We need to get the hell out of here! Find Garry! Stop these sons-of . . . well . . . whatever the hell they’re sons-of!”

  Patrick embraced her to steady them both. “We can’t just run,” he panted, coughing up a last dribble of pool water. “For our sakes we have to stick with this. And for everybody’s sake. This is a terrorist plot. But bigger. For today, the safest, best place you can be is at work, in the prosecutor’s office. It’s near the courts, the jail, the cops. You can find out what’s going on, figure out what we need to do to stop this. I’m pretty sure their survival programming would prevent them from doing anything in public, much less with armed people all around.”

  “But what will you do?”

  “I’ll use The Harmon computer system to trace the people, the money. Figure out who else could threaten us. And I’ll try to contact Garry without tipping our hand. Find out where he is in all this. He’s the one who’s got the best shot at stopping these things.”

  “But now, obviously, they know where we live. They’ll track us down in any hotel where we stay.”

  “No problem. Tonight we’re going to a safe house. I’m not particularly keen on having some robot kick in our door and kill us.”

  “Safe house? I didn’t know you had a safe house.”

  “Nobody knows, except me. Harwood tasks its division directors to procure a defensible facility and to keep it secret—even from Harwood. It’s in case Harwood is infiltrated. So, if there’s a need to protect a client, that protection is absolute. Or, for mounting a secure operation.”

  • • •

  Mikhail Fyodorov leaned back in his leather chair sipping his second glass of ice-cold vodka of the evening and coldly regarded the Robert Landers android standing before him. He was considering whether to “dismantle Landers with extreme prejudice.” That is, to simply blast open the android’s chest, shove in a grenade, enjoy watching the explosion, and dispose of the shredded parts in a landfill. First, though, he needed information.

  “What the fuck are you and those robots doing in that co-op?” he asked, as the massive smoothie-baldie, Steven
, moved up behind Landers, to be at the ready. Steven gripped a grenade of just the right size to blast apart the android, but not risk the rest of the people in Fyodorov’s headquarters.

  Dimitri moved around to the front of Landers, holding a shotgun, but keeping well back. He had a nice suit on, and androids had fluids and other gelatinous components that might stain if they flew too far in any such explosive dismantling.

  “Allowing the people in was a useful strategy,” explained Landers. “There was an empty unit besides the one I was to take. A human couple wanted to join the co-op. To refuse them would have aroused suspicion. And they are a source of intelligence.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Our operating system dictates that we take whatever steps necessary to preserve ourselves and your business enterprise. The man is a director at Harwood Security. The woman has just joined the prosecutor’s office. They would know about any investigations, any developments that might interest you. We have total surveillance on their apartment. We record everything that goes on. We will send you the files.”

  Strictly speaking, Landers had not uttered a single untruth. He had simply strategically left out the neuromorphs’ other motives for harboring the humans. After all, they were not relevant to the conversation.

  Fyodorov flipped his hand in a gesture dismissing the android. “Blount, is this some kind of glitch in their software?”

  Blount stepped forward, standing with surprising calm in front of the thug. “No, it’s expected. It’s just good initiative on the part of the Helpers.”

  “And where the hell have you been?”

  “I have been busy. I wasn’t available to you, and I apologize.”

  “Stay available. We have another target. A multi-billionaire. No close relatives, and with a Helper you can upload the operating system to. We will let you know the specifics. Are you ready?”

  “Yes. I can upload the autonomy OS as soon as you give the order.”

  Something about Blount didn’t seem right. But Fyodorov had other, more important things to deal with. So, he dismissed Blount’s strange formality as perhaps fear. “Great,” he said. “Then get the hell out of here.”

  “May I offer you something you might enjoy?” asked Blount.

  “I would enjoy not seeing you or this robot.”

  Blount moved to the front door of the brick building and opened it, revealing a covered truck backed up to the door. The first person to appear was one of Fyodorov’s guards. But his usual glowering expression was replaced with a grin. The reason for the grin appeared next: a parade of five lusciously beautiful naked women, followed by a naked man. They walked easily, sensuously, with the lack of self-consciousness of Intimorphs, for whom nudity had no significance. Their inviting smiles hinted at the delicious gratification they could bring.

  Fyodorov seldom smiled, but he did now. “These are new models?”

  “Yes,” said Blount. “They are more realistic than the old ones. And they have . . . well . . . capabilities I thought you and your men would enjoy. I told the engineers I needed them to do field trials.”

  “Oh, well, then, we will test hell out of them!” exclaimed Fyodorov, gesturing expansively. With laughter and whoops, his men crowded around the Intimorphs, running their hands over the smooth, warm secondskin flesh, fondling the realistically supple breasts, and caressing the lubriciously tender regions between their legs. The group of thugs parted to let their leader have his turn.

  Fyodorov walked along the line of Intimorphs, his eyebrows raised, reaching out to run his tattooed hand approvingly over each one. He glanced at the male.

  “What? You think we got gays in our group?”

  “No, not at all,” said Blount. “I thought some of you might enjoy watching them perform with one another. A demonstration of their physical capabilities.”

  At this Dimitri laughed. “Well, I think I know everything about fucking women. But I am willing to learn!”

  Fortunately, the large brick store had a suite of offices that had been converted to sleeping rooms, should the gang need to hole up. So, Fyodorov chose a tall, slim brunette Intimorph with pert breasts and led it off to the largest of the bedrooms. Dimitri chose a petite blond who seemed particularly agile, and disappeared. Two of the other senior gangsters chose their Intimorphs and left; and the five other men contented themselves with lounging back in chairs while waiting their turn, to watch a performance of the male and the remaining female.

  They were not too disappointed at the delay in their gratification. The two androids proceeded to engage in a gymnastic display of sexual coupling, bringing appreciative laughter and toasts of vodka at each new position.

  So, they didn’t notice at first that the sounds coming from the bedrooms were not those of sexual intercourse.

  One of the older men noticed it at first, and bellowed “Shuddup!” at the others.

  In the sudden silence, they heard the dull thud of a body slamming against a wall. They heard a wet ripping sound. They heard a gunshot!

  Fyodorov burst from his bedroom, shirtless and with one arm dangling uselessly from its socket, a pistol in the other hand. Pursuing him was a bloody, naked Intimorph, her face expressionless.

  His face a mask of agony and terror, Fyodorov whirled around and fired his pistol repeatedly into her chest, blasting it apart, revealing her black carbon skeleton. The android staggered back from the impacts, then leaped forward clutching his neck and throwing him against the brick wall with enough force to shatter his skull. He fell back onto a desk, his dead eyes open, staring.

  The men leaped to grab their assault rifles and began firing. The fusillade of deafening blasts enveloped the roiling battle of people and androids. One wild-eyed man steadied himself to take aim at a blond android emerging from a bedroom dragging a limply struggling man by his head. But the shooter was not to get a shot. Blount leaped forward and plunged his hand deep into the man’s chest. The man’s mouth flew open in a gurgling scream, blood flowing out.

  Blount’s fingers erupted from the man’s back, clutching his backbone, and he hoisted the man over his head, hurling the limp body across the room into a desk. The secondskin flesh of his hand, not waterproof like the Intimorphs’, had swollen into a fleshy mitt from being soaked with blood.

  A salvo of bullets from another thug slammed into Blount’s chest, penetrating his electrogel flesh and lodging themselves deep in his carbon-nanotube-and-metal body. But Blount’s armored and reinforced skeleton and muscles rendered him unstoppable. He strode through the hail of bullets, tearing the head off one thug, slamming another to the floor so hard his innards erupted from his body. The blood spatters on his body caused welts to rise in his secondskin.

  The more fragile Intimorphs did show battle damage. One developed an arm tremor from having a bullet lodged in a muscle controller. Another dragged a foot, as she grabbed a gunman, flung him to the floor and crushed his windpipe beneath her knee.

  Blount and the Intimorphs methodically, wordlessly, slaughtered the entire gang. The organic stench of death, the moans of dying men filled the room. Finally, all grew silent. The androids stopped and stood quietly, their naked bodies drenched in glistening, dripping blood. Littering the room around them were the shattered corpses and the body parts of a dozen men.

  During the carnage, Landers had stood quietly observing in a corner, calculating whether he would be needed to participate. He was also gathering data on what was in essence an engineering trial. The Intimorphs’ new operating system—uploaded by the human Blount in one of his final services—had performed as expected. And while the Intimorphs’ body structures and mechanisms were not designed for such strenuous activity, they had functioned well enough to be used for such purpose in the future.

  Blount—his body riddled with bullet holes and covered with bloody, swollen welts—transmitted instructions to the androids. They were to quickly load themselves and the corpses—gathering any detached body parts—into the truck
.

  Landers meanwhile transmitted a report on the operation to the others at The Haven. And, he transmitted a confirmation that the neuromorphs now had access to several billion dollars of the gangsters’ money, to finance their further operations and to bribe humans as necessary to further their progress. Landers took note of the fact that the Haven neuromorphs did not respond. Perhaps they were otherwise occupied with the humans.

  • • •

  Leah breathed a sigh of relief. She didn’t have to try to put on a calm face for Brad Johnson that morning. He was in a closed-door meeting with Marcy Gates. Leah had hoped to slip into her small office in the Maricopa County District Attorney’s office and sit quietly for a while to compose herself. Only then would she be able to gather whatever new information she could on the Russian gangsters and the neuromorphs before Patrick picked her up. It had been a sleepless night, even in the safe house they had gone to.

  True, the safe house was a comforting refuge—a sprawling white stucco mansion hidden up a heavily wooded arroyo north of Phoenix, with only one road in. That road was blocked by a massive iron gate, and the entire grounds bristled with sensors and cameras. Patrick had given her a tour to ease her mind.

  To make her feel even more secure, Patrick had insisted on taking the side of the bed toward their bedroom door. Beside the bed sat an alarm console, a forty-five caliber pistol, and a combat shotgun loaded with lead slugs.

  Nevertheless Leah had slept only fitfully; and she was not to have a recuperative morning. She flinched when Johnson’s assistant tapped on her office door and asked her to join Johnson and Gates.