Steel Beneath the Skin

by Niall Teasdale

  ‘I… guess.’ Not wanting to think too hard about the issue now, she turned her attention back to the room and was a little surprised to discover that nothing had changed. Her conversation with Al seemed to have taken place in an instant. When two digital minds speak…

  ‘He’ll need to be registered,’ Wallace said. ‘Now that he’s recognised and a psychological analysis is available.’

  ‘Registered?’

  ‘As a citizen. There may be some legal peculiarities since he’s resident in your body… The legal department will need to handle that. Shall we get you in the machine?’ His chair leaned forward to make it easier for him to get to his feet and, once there, he seemed to be just as nimble as anyone else.

  ‘You seem to handle the gravity fine,’ Aneka commented.

  Raising his hand, Wallace tapped the metallic frame he was wearing. ‘Bio-mimetic exoframe. It supplements my strength, keeps me upright. Actually, with this on I can deadlift more than an average jenlay, but, if you’ll pardon the analogy, I punch like a girl.’

  Aneka laughed. ‘That’s okay, I punch like a freight train. So what’s this scanner going to do to me?’

  They had walked out of the office and to a lift set in the corner of the entrance lobby, and now they were going down. ‘It uses terahertz radar, lidar, passive arrays, everything we can throw at someone. The discovery which really broke it was the measurement of a particle I discovered. We’re not entirely sure what it is or does, but we believe it’s a candidate for Dark Energy. Technically, a particle and anti-particle, opposite charges and spin. We’re able to generate them in pairs and use quantum entanglement to measure the effect of the positive one passing through the target using the negative one… When did I lose you?’

  ‘Well, I remember seeing something on the Discovery Channel about Dark Energy. That counteracts gravity, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Indeed it does, but only over considerable distances. Its effect is unnoticeable locally, but when we get to galactic scales we can detect a subtle acceleration of expansion. Quantum entanglement is simply an effect which causes two particles created in the same quantum event to synchronise with each other over long distances and, apparently, faster than light. If we pull the positive particles out and fire them at you, we can learn things by watching the negative ones.’

  ‘Sounds like magic.’

  Wallace grinned. ‘Magic is simply a physical effect we don’t understand yet.’

  The lift stopped and they entered a concrete bunker. On their right was a huge wall with glass panels through which Aneka could see huge racks of computer equipment. To the left was an open area with a raised, circular platform in the middle, presumably the target area. Between the two were more racks and a huge bank of phased-array sensor units. Thick cables snaked across the floor; the thing took a lot of power.

  ‘Not exactly compact,’ Aneka commented.

  ‘Not really, Wallace chuckled. ‘Currently it needs a cluster of quantum super-computers to handle the data and it has its own fusion reactor for power. It may be a while before we can make it handheld.’

  ‘Huh. You want me up on that platform?’

  ‘Yes…’ He raised his voice. ‘Balton? Are we ready for scanning?’

  A harried-sounding male voice came from somewhere on the other side of the machine. ‘Yes, Doctor. Generators are up to power. All readings are in the green. I had some trouble with that auxiliary data channel again…’

  ‘We’ll look into that when we’ve got Miss Jansen’s data.’ He turned back to the women muttering, ‘Maybe it’s the overload detection circuitry…’ He looked up and smiled. ‘Miss Jansen, I hate to ask, but if we could have you naked we’ll get clearer signals and won’t need to filter out the data from your clothes.’

  Aneka shrugged and started for the platform, starting to undo the catches on her bodice as she went. ‘It’s not like this outfit preserves my modesty.’

  A few minutes later she was standing with her arms held out from her sides while she was bombarded with various forms of radiation. Al informed her of the radar and scanning lasers, but she knew there was more than that going on. The platform revolved slowly, giving the machine every opportunity to scan over her body. The scanning beams shut off just as her timer clicked over to ten minutes.

  ‘Get dressed and come over to the display area, Miss Jansen,’ Wallace called out.

  By the time she was walking around the machinery to where the others had gathered they were all standing around a table looking at a false-colour, holographic female figure about two feet in height. It looked about the right shape for her so Aneka figured this was some interpretation of the data the system had gathered on her. As she approached, the figure’s flesh faded away revealing the structure beneath.

  The first thing visible was the armour layer under the skin; a flexible, thin layer of metallic material. That faded revealing the sub-structure of artificial muscles which formed more of her shape, though the bulge of her breasts appeared to be a different material and there were fibres laced through her structure which, she guessed, were what now passed for nerves. With that layer gone her skeleton appeared. The bones were there, sort of, though they were not bone shaped in many cases. She had structural members rather than bones.

  ‘I could spend a decade studying this,’ Wallace said as she stepped up between Ella and Gillian. ‘Ah, Miss Jansen, just in time for the very best part. I’ll need more time to analyse all the data, but your “skeleton” is… amazing. Active Living Metal! Your other components have the same characteristics, but the skeleton… We’ve never found an active sample before. Large amounts of radiation destroy the nanobots, you see? Warfare in space tends to produce a lot of radiation.’

  ‘That’s cool,’ Aneka said. ‘What does it do?’

  ‘Repairs itself,’ Gillian replied. ‘Short of total destruction, a living metal component will rebuild itself after any amount of damage. If a part is lost, the device will cannibalise its environment to reconstruct its original form. If you lose an arm, it’ll grow back so long as your body can get its hands on the right materials. The Xinti used it for various things, mostly smaller objects. I’ve never seen such a large item constructed of it, and never a live one, as Abraham said.’

  ‘What’re these?’ Ella asked, indicating two disks in the model’s palms attached to cylindrical structures in the forearms.

  ‘Ah,’ Aneka said. ‘I only found out about those recently.’ She turned slightly, raising her left hand, fingers spread, palm outward. The air shimmered in front of her, forming an elliptical shape centred on her hand.

  ‘A force shield?’ Wallace asked.

  ‘So I’m told. The other one is some sort of weapon, a force generator. I haven’t tried it, but Al says it’s about as bad as a hard punch, just at range.’ She collapsed the shield and turned back to find an expression of hungry anticipation on Wallace’s face.

  ‘We can’t build graviton field generators that small,’ he said. ‘We are going to be examining this data for years!’ His hand’s moved over a keyboard taking up part of the table display and the upper-structure faded out leaving a collection of components which appeared to occupy Aneka’s skull and chest cavity, connected together by thin cables. ‘Power system,’ he said, ‘computers, interfaces to the outer body, food processing, sensor systems.’

  ‘What’s the power supply?’ Aneka asked.

  ‘That,’ the other person at the table said, rather lovingly, ‘is a xinti fusion power cell. It’s a tenth the size of our smallest similar unit, good for a decade without refuelling, and all you have to do to keep it refuelled is drink water.’

  Wallace chuckled. ‘Cooper Balton, meet Aneka Jansen, the lady whose power supply you’re lusting over.’

  Balton glanced quickly, almost timidly at Aneka. Maybe he did not get out of his cellar much. ‘If you’ll pardon the phrase, Miss Jansen, you have an incredible body.’

  ‘I think so too,’ Ella said, smirking. Balton actually we
nt red.

  ‘And quite safe,’ Wallace stated. ‘That reactor is incapable of generating more than a small fire if it loses plasma containment, and those force generators are not of concern. You concur, Balton?’

  ‘Absolutely. We’ll need to do a more thorough analysis of all the systems for the Administration, of course…’

  Wallace nodded. ‘No one is going to stop us! Cybernetics and robotics are two of my specialities.’

  ‘Two of?’

  ‘Cybernetics, robotics, computer programming and engineering, physics, biochemistry, genetics… Uh… I’ve probably forgotten something. Anyway, I’ve been doing this a long time and I don’t exactly get out to do sports.’

  Aneka grinned. ‘I can’t sleep on spaceflights. I’ve done more learning in the last year than I care to think about.’

  Wallace laughed. ‘No one ever got hurt from knowing too much.’ Aneka decided she would not disagree with him. ‘I believe you’re wanted in the Mental Sciences building next.’

  ‘Mental Sciences?’

  ‘Psychology, sociology, psionics,’ Gillian replied. ‘They are going to ensure you’re not a xinti sleeper agent ready to murder us all in our beds.’

  ‘Swell.’

  ~~~

  Aneka walked slowly down a corridor, a pistol held at her side. Without warning, a door on her right about ten metres ahead slid open and a man stepped out. Aneka took in the obviously cybernetic eyes, the street clothes with heavy boots, and the laser carbine being raised toward her. She had time to spot the scars around his eye sockets from the operation and guess that he had had the work done somewhere with worse medical facilities than Ella since she had no similar tell-tales. Then her pistol came up and she blew a hole in his chest. She checked the room was clear before moving on down the corridor.

  In truth, the simulation was not perfect, but it was better than the paper targets on pop-outs which Aneka had been faced with when doing this kind of training before. Shoot the bad guys, not the civilians; useful training for anyone engaging in urban combat, and compulsory on most police forces which routinely carried guns. The emersion was great, unless you looked down and discovered you could not see yourself. The system had been developed for testing Peacekeepers, the Federation version of policemen, and was considered quite tough. Aneka was still not sure why she was doing it.

  Another door popped open and a woman stepped out, nodding as she walked past the way Aneka had come. Aneka watched her turn the corner at the end before going on. Another door, another gunman, another shot. She went on through five more attacks before a door opened and something else stepped out.

  It was big, maybe eight-feet tall, with heavy muscle and a lizard-like skull. It was carrying a huge gun over its shoulder, but it did not reach for it and Aneka just watched as it turned and walked down the corridor ahead of her. Just as it was moving out of sight a second one emerged, this one already raising its weapon. Aneka moved, her pistol snapping up. The lizard-thing’s eyes widened as a hole appeared between them, and then it collapsed to the floor.

  Frowning at the oddly shaped monster, Aneka moved on down the corridor and came to a grinding halt as something she did recognise came down the corridor toward her. Ridged, spiky skull, dark eyes, dark grey, mottled skin. Her gun raised as her jaw clenched, and she pumped three rounds into the thing before it crashed to the ground.

  A horn sounded and the image in Aneka’s visor flickered to black. She pulled it off and turned to the door of the room she was standing in. The section of flooring she was standing on was essentially a two-dimensional treadmill, allowing her to walk in any direction without going anywhere. Now it was stationary and she could walk out without trouble.

  ‘Problem?’ she asked on emerging.

  ‘No.’ The speaker was Grace Hoopin, Doctor of Psychology. She was responsible for evaluating Aneka’s mental state. ‘The test ends when you kill a non-combatant. In this case that was a good thing.’

  ‘Ah, I get it. Drop a surprise xinti in and see if I’ll shoot it.’

  ‘Yes, but there were three xinti. You shot one of their soldiers and did not react to the other.’

  ‘The lizard-things? I’ve never seen that… One of the combat forms?’ She looked to Gillian. ‘You said they used different bodies for different purposes.’

  Gillian nodded. ‘Later in the war they stopped using that one for combat and started using fully robotic bodies, but that was an accurate model of a xinti warrior from your period.’

  ‘Your reaction indicates that you have a, totally justified, hatred of the Xinti,’ Hoopin stated. ‘You aren’t xenophobic and you have quite amazing reactions and assessment skills.

  ‘My brain’s been overclocked,’ Aneka replied. ‘I had all the time in the world to assess the situations. And I’ve always been quick.’

  Hoopin nodded and looked around at Gillian and Ella. ‘Next up is the interview. It’ll be boring to watch.’

  ‘We’ll go do some work,’ Gillian said. ‘Call me when you’re finished.’

  Hoopin led Aneka to an office which had a desk, a computer, and a couple of chairs. She waved Aneka into one of them and then sat down behind her desk, tapping her keyboard into life and flicking over the keys. ‘I’m recording this, of course,’ she said. ‘I assume you’re okay with that?’

  Aneka shrugged. ‘Whatever it takes, Doctor.’

  ‘Grace.’ She sagged slightly, looking thoughtful. ‘How are you feeling, Aneka?’

  Psychologists always seemed to want to know how you were feeling. ‘Fine. I mean, physically I’ve never felt better. Mentally… I’ve lost my world, my family, my culture. I’m not who I was.’

  ‘An interesting statement. You’re not who you were. You’re… a simulation of Aneka Jansen.’

  ‘An emulation, according to Gillian and Doctor Wallace.’

  ‘So… Aneka died and you’ve taken her place?’

  Aneka paused, looking at Hoopin. She could deny it. Stating openly that Aneka Jansen was dead and that she was just a simulacrum animated by a model of what she had been did not seem like a great idea, but it was how she felt. ‘Yes,’ she said.

  The honest answer seemed to catch Hoopin by surprise; Aneka saw her eyebrows twitch upward before she got control of her face. ‘You’ve thought about this.’

  ‘That I’m Aneka’s ghost animating a robot body? Yes, I’ve thought about it. I know I died. I mean, I don’t remember it, but they carved me open like a Christmas turkey. If I was alive, why stuff me in this body? So I died and they grabbed a copy of my brain, and it’s being emulated in here.’ She reached up and tapped her right temple. ‘I don’t know how good a copy it was. Parts of my memory are missing or incomplete. Gillian thinks it’s the result of the extended nano-stasis, but… I don’t know if they changed me somehow. I mean, how would I know, right?’

  Hoopin nodded. ‘Let’s see if we can find out. Let’s start with… Where were you born?’

  Aneka sighed. This was going to be a long session.

  ~~~

  Three hours of talking about her relationship with her parents and brother, her need to succeed in a man’s world, and her reaction to death, and Aneka wanted a beer. What she got, of course, was a coffee, and that was just something to drink while she sat in Gillian’s spacious, tidy office to wait for Ella to finish for the day. No one else seemed to want to talk to her, so now it was just a case of waiting for the reports to come in.

  She was not saying much to Gillian because the woman was spending much of her time on the phone. Her tone was calm, but Aneka could see the tension on her face. She decided to ask after Gillian stabbed her comm system off and threw the headset she had been using for some degree of privacy across the room.

  ‘Problem?’ Aneka asked.

  ‘Nothing I didn’t expect,’ Gillian said, sighing. ‘They confiscated the xinti databases on arrival along with all related report files. My problem is that I can’t find anyone who knows where they are. The Administration is stonewall
ing me. My contacts can’t find anything. We have your copy, but we can’t use it while they think they have everything.’

  ‘You’ll get it back,’ Aneka said. ‘Likely with certain specific bits removed.’ She was not so hopeful about seeing her gun again; that had been missing when the crates had been checked.

  ‘Huh, yes. How did the interview go?’

  Aneka shrugged. ‘I did a psych test for the Army once. They said I had psychotic tendencies and an over-achievement complex. I’ve no idea what this lot will come up with.’

  ‘I don’t think you’re psychotic,’ Ella commented from the doorway. ‘I have a degree in psychology, I think I’d have noticed.’ She smirked. ‘You’d have probably killed the two of us on the flight back here if you were.’

  Aneka shook her head. ‘Tortured. Slowly. Probably involving bondage and sexual deviation.’

  ‘Not so different to what did happen then?’ Gillian asked, grinning.

  Yorkbridge Mid-town, 28.5.254 FSC.

  The apartment woke them by playing music and shifting the wall displays from a rather hypnotic, shadowy swirl to an image of dawn coming up over the beach scene Ella favoured. Aneka watched her diagnostic displays scroll past in-vision while Ella rolled over and curled an arm around her waist. A few seconds later Ella’s fingers were circling Aneka’s right nipple.

  The diagnostics ended and Aneka smiled, speaking softly. ‘We don’t have time for that. We’re supposed to be going to the university.’

  ‘Aww… I want some.’ The pleading whine was almost enough to make Aneka relent.

  ‘You always want some and I’m not being late for this meeting. We need to shower.’ Ella let out a plaintive moan. Aneka sighed. ‘We can share the shower and I’ll tease you mercilessly.’

  ‘Promise?’

  University of New Earth.

  The conference room was quite full. Aside from Aneka, Gillian, and Ella there were also the rest of the team from the Garnet Hyde, the Dean, all the people who had tested Aneka, two men in military uniform, and a man and two women in suits. The military types and civil servants were chatting amongst themselves. The academics were arranging notes for anything they might have to say in the meeting. Ella had notes to shuffle, but she was mostly sitting in the chair on Aneka’s right and squirming; Aneka had made good on her promise. Everyone else, aside from Aneka, was wondering why they had been summoned to the meeting; surely an email would have done?