Table of Contents
1 Alainn
2 Lorccan
3 Alainn
4 Alainn
5 Alainn
6 Alainn
7 Connor
8 Alainn
9 Alainn
10 Alainn
11 Alainn
12 Alainn
13 Greg
14 Alainn
15 Alainn
16 Connor
17 Alainn
18 Alainn
19 Alainn
20 Alainn
21 Alainn
22 Alainn
23 Alainn
24 Alainn
25 Alainn
26 Colby
27 Alainn
28 Alainn
29 Alainn
30 Alainn
31 Shelly
32 Alainn
33 Alainn
34 Alainn
35 Lorccan
36 Alainn
37 Alainn
38 Alainn
39 Colby
40 Lorccan
41 Alainn
42 Colby
43 Alainn
44 Rose
45 Alainn
Acknowledgments
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
No part of this work may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.
Published by Kindle Press, Seattle, 2017
Amazon, the Amazon logo, Kindle Scout, and Kindle Press are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
Copyright © 2017 by Rita Stradling.
Edited by Monique Fischer
Cover by Victoria Cooper Art
Contents
1 Alainn
2 Lorccan
3 Alainn
4 Alainn
5 Alainn
6 Alainn
7 Connor
8 Alainn
9 Alainn
10 Alainn
11 Alainn
12 Alainn
13 Greg
14 Alainn
15 Alainn
16 Connor
17 Alainn
18 Alainn
19 Alainn
20 Alainn
21 Alainn
22 Alainn
23 Alainn
24 Alainn
25 Alainn
26 Colby
27 Alainn
28 Alainn
29 Alainn
30 Alainn
31 Shelly
32 Alainn
33 Alainn
34 Alainn
35 Lorccan
36 Alainn
37 Alainn
38 Alainn
39 Colby
40 Lorccan
41 Alainn
42 Colby
43 Alainn
44 Rose
45 Alainn
Acknowledgments
1
San Francisco
December 1, 2026
Alainn stepped on the brake pedal of her vintage convertible and hoped, this time, it would listen to her.
Vintage. That was what the used-car-sales automaton had called the little white car. Three hours later, she was learning that “vintage” meant “death trap.”
The convertible jolted to a stop inches from the intimidating steel door that blocked off the underground parking garage. The building itself rose up in a sleek square column. Its glass exterior reflected nothing. No sheen or glare ran across its surface—as if light was anathema to the tower.
The electronic screen that almost spanned the length of her car lit up. A soothing monotonous voice called, “Please state your purpose.” In perfect sync with the voice, the same words scrolled across the screen in crisp, black letters.
Alainn’s window made a god-awful screech and creak as it slowly rolled down. Screech, creak, repeat. Halfway down, it stuck.
“Ugh.”
The convertible tried to slip downhill, so she shifted it into park and pulled up on the emergency brake.
The engine immediately died.
“Crap,” she mumbled, jiggling the key in the ignition.
The car made not a whisper of a stutter.
“Do not use profanity. State your purpose directly.”
“Okay.” Climbing to her knees, Alainn leaned out over the half-open window. “Um, hi. My name is Alainn Murphy. I’m here to talk to Mr. Garbhan, if he’s available?”
“Please type your e-mail address into the screen, and then leave your message.”
“Can I actually talk to him in person?”
“I’m sorry, he is unavailable at the moment. If you leave a message for him here, someone will be sure to get back to you.” A keyboard surfaced on the screen.
“Actually, well . . . The thing is, I’m Connor Murphy’s daughter. I’ve been trying to call and e-mail for a while now, and I’m not getting any response. Can I just talk to him over you—I mean over the monitoring system? Or, could I come in? It would just take a second. Please?”
“The answer is no, Miss Murphy. Please leave a message.”
“Fine,” she grumbled as she extended her arm to type in her e-mail address.
“Please record your message now,” the voice said. Then there was an almost-melodic beep.
“Okay. As I said, my name is Alainn Murphy, Connor Murphy’s daughter. The Rose 76GF is ready, but my father needs to put the finishing touches on her. It’s taking a little longer than expected. And the probation department said if you’re willing to defer the restitution, it’s okay with them. Please, he just needs a little more time. Ideally a month, but any amount would be greatly appreciated—”
The soft white of the screen blurred, and the image of a man appeared. More exactly, the vision of a suit appeared. All that showed of the man himself was his torso. It was a nice suit, dark blue and a little gleaming, as if direct light shone on him.
“Hello? Are you Mr. Garbhan? I think maybe your camera is tipped down?”
“Miss Murphy—”
“Please, call me Alainn.”
“The answer, Miss Murphy, is no.” His voice was a jagged shard of ice—cold, hard, and sharp. It cut straight through Alainn.
She closed her eyes. “Mr. Garbhan, I get why you’re angry. You’ve been more than generous with us. He’s not a bad person. He pled guilty. He’s following all the terms of his probation . . . This isn’t like six months ago. He can fix her programming—”
“The answer, Miss Murphy, is no.”
The screen dissolved back to soft white. Crisp, black letters and a soft, dispassionate voice told her, “Please remove your vehicle from the premises. Now.”
“Ugh!” Alainn cried out. “Really? Really? You couldn’t treat me like a human being for one damn second?”
She tried the key again. Nothing. Turning it hard in the ignition, she slammed her foot on the gas pedal. She had no idea why she thought it might help, but it didn’t do anything. Neither did pumping the gas.
Vintage obviously also meant “scrap metal.”
“Please remove your vehicle from the premises now, before a tow truck is called. You will be charged for the tow, or your car will be impounded.”
“Wow. Just wow.”
No matter how hard Alainn turned the key, the car refused to start. Finally, the convertible spoke to her: click, click, click. The starter.
“The tow truck has been called and will be arriving in ten minutes.”
Alainn had already grown t
o despise that soothing, disembodied voice.
There was one way to start a car with a busted starter, a method Alainn used when she and her coworker Cherry found abandoned cars. Unfortunately, it took two people. Pulling out a bobby pin, she let her messy dark hair fall into her face. Using her teeth, she bent the bobby pin. A metallic tang filled her mouth. Her molars complained, but they bent the metal into the right shape. She hooked the bobby pin through the hole in the head of the key, stuck the end of it under the plastic dashboard, and, by some miracle, it stayed.
As the engine tittered with a rhythmic clicking, she tried the reluctant handle to the car’s trunk. It opened.
“Thank all that’s holy!”
Glancing inside, she hooked a finger under the dirty carpet liner—only to find that the car had no spare. It did, however, have a rusty, chipped tire iron. Wrapping a fist around it, she moved to the front of the car.
“You have three minutes until the tow truck arrives. Please remove your vehicle.”
“Got it!”
Yanking up the hood until it stuck open, Alainn hefted up the tire iron with both hands and hit the starter as hard as she could. When nothing happened, she rammed it several more times.
The engine turned over.
Slamming down the hood, she jumped into her car, threw it in reverse, and shut the door as she pushed her foot on the gas pedal. In the rearview mirror, the trunk swung up and down.
Her car made a loud, screeching protest. A black cloud of smoke fired from the tailpipe as Alainn reversed into the private-inlet alley. A large yellow tow truck turned into the alley right as she drove out of it. The automaton driver pulled to the side, letting her pass.
“No need for a tow truck!” Alainn yelled.
With another black cloud backfiring its farewell, her piece of scrap metal turned back onto the city street.
2
December 1, 2026
Lorccan Garbhan’s desk stretched before him as he watched his computer screen. The machine, which might have once been considered a car, belched a cloud of black smoke as Alainn Murphy screeched down his road. Two skid marks remained from her hasty retreat from his home.
Lorccan pursed his lips as he looked down at the screen. “She definitely knows how to make an exit.” He clicked a button to switch cameras, so he could watch Ms. Murphy barreling out of his access road, leaving a confused tow-truck automaton behind, before screeching toward the main road. He wondered whether the vehicle she drove would manage the drive to Connor Murphy’s home.
His mother would have said that Alainn’s dirty mouth was an indicator of a loose, disease-prone woman. “Women like that carry more than common bacteria and viruses,” he could remember her saying.
He shook his head, hoping to dislodge the thought. Accurate or not, Lorccan knew his mother had always taken a very disparaging view of her own sex.
Sitting back in his chair, he reflected on his decision to hire Connor Murphy. He realized he should have known better. He had known better. Yet, despite foresight and misgivings, Lorccan had gone to Connor. Desperation had driven him to seek out a man whose sickness had well and truly drowned his entire family.
“Pull up the latest update from Connor Murphy,” Lorccan told his household system as he folded his hands together on his desk.
A moment later, his screen filled with images of two identical-looking women, Alainn Murphy and Rose 76GF. To be accurate, one was a woman, one a robot. Thick, dark, messy hair was piled on Alainn’s head. Visible dirt crusted her knees and ringed her forearms. Thick plastic gloves flopped in her hand. Her arms were crossed over her chest.
The echoes of his mother’s words whispered through his head again. He pushed the unwanted thought away.
In contrast to her human counterpart, Rose 76GF looked preternaturally clean and groomed. She sat poised in Connor Murphy’s workshop, a line of lit computer screens her backdrop.
Alainn reached down and brushed dirt from her knees. “Do I really have to do this, Dad?”
“Uh, yeah, honey. You’re live,” Connor Murphy’s voice said. “Mr. Garbhan wants proof of progress.”
Alainn shot the camera a half-annoyed, half-amused expression that made her face very hard to look away from. “All right, Rose, what do you want to talk about?”
Rose 76GF shook her head. “I don’t actually feel much like making another video. I have a lot to do here.”
Alainn rolled her eyes. “Well, neither do I, but obviously Mr. Garbhan wants more proof or something.”
They kept up a steady stream of conversation for a few minutes. Alainn Murphy was in her early twenties, if that. While she talked, she looked everywhere but at Rose 76GF. Her unease was obvious. She smiled often, though the tilt of her lips seemed more wry than happy. Three minutes into the video, Lorccan remembered that he had originally intended to watch it for proof of Rose 76GF’s progress.
Lorccan laughed a little at himself and called out, “Would you mind playing that again?”
A moment later, the video restarted.
3
December 1, 2026
“I thought you bought a car?” Alainn’s older brother, Colby, asked as she leaned a bike against the side of the garage. Colby, his head bent over a map, didn’t look up. His neck tattoo peeked out of his high collar.
Alainn held her sides and attempted to drag oxygen back into her burning lungs. Sweat dripped from her forehead down her cheeks and neck. Her gaze passed over the familiar surroundings as she waited for her heartbeat to slow.
Her father’s garage-turned-workshop looked nothing like the high-tech place she had just fled. Most of the equipment in there was Alainn’s—kayaks, skis, two broken snowboards, and some scuba equipment. A line of monitors shone out from one wall—that was where most of her father’s work was conducted, next to his personal microchip-imprinting station. Papers covered long benches—piles and piles of papers covered with a thousand forgotten drawings. Tucked away in the drawers lining the walls waited her father’s true tools of trade: robotics equipment and computer chips, prototyping boards, surface mount equipment, silica, carving knives, and every color and shape of wire.
“Where did you get a bike?” Colby asked, though his attention was still fixed on the table before him.
“That car I bought broke down on Second Street. I had to rent a bike from one of those stations,” she said through labored breaths.
“Hmm.”
Kicking a paper wad out of the way, she crossed the garage. “Aren’t you going to ask how it went?”
He wrote something onto a pad of yellow paper. “I told you how it was going to go before you bought the car.”
She shook her head while blowing out a breath. “Where’s Dad?”
“Inside.” Colby finally looked up, but not at Alainn. Instead, he focused through his thick, black-rimmed glasses on the only other person present—Rose 76GF. “Okay, I have it: twenty-six degrees west.”
Rose looked at the ceiling, dreamily. Something in the workshop’s ceiling beams must have been fascinating, because she was extremely fond of gazing there.
As Alainn walked up to the pair, neither Rose nor Colby looked over; they were both obviously in the la-la land they called “being smarter than everyone else.”
Stopping in front of Rose, Alainn stared at a moving, breathing, mirror image of her own body.
Steeling herself, she stepped directly into Rose’s line of sight. “Rose, can you make me some tea?”
Rose tipped her chin up farther, her gaze still focused just above Alainn’s head.
Stepping in even closer, Alainn repeated loudly, “Rose, can you go make me some tea?”
“We’re in the middle of something important for my doctorate, Alainn,” Colby mumbled, but he needn’t have bothered. Rose wasn’t paying any attention to Alainn.
“Rose, please, can you make me some tea?” she nearly yelled.
Finally, Rose’s gaze came down to meet Alainn’s. A shiver rippled through Ala
inn as the most inhuman detail about Rose focused on her. Those eyes. Her father had nearly perfected them. He’d spent weeks staring into Alainn’s own eyes and drawing models, but every time Rose made eye contact, the shiver still came.
“Alainn, you already know I am potentially capable of making you tea.” Rose’s voice was an exact echo of Alainn’s.
“Will you make me tea, please?”
Rose shook her head. “I am busy right now. I have almost calculated the exact position of theoretical planet nine at your brother’s request, and this takes most of my computation power. Even talking to you right now is straining my capabilities.”
“Give us a couple hours, yeah, Alainn?” Colby mumbled as he used a triangle to draw a line with a pencil. “This could be a real breakthrough in my research—”
“No!” Alainn smacked the table.
They both looked up at her. Two human eyes, two inhuman, wide with shock.
She lowered her voice. “Rose, you need to start reprogramming yourself.”
Rose almost managed a sympathetic expression. “I do not wish to cause you distress, Alainn. However, I was created with the potential to compute the solution to world hunger, and the ethical code to know that this is more of a priority than living a life of menial service. I could even create a weapon to end all wars.”
“Yes, I know that . . . but you know what’s going to happen if you don’t go. They said we need to make restitution. We need to give either you or the money over by tomorrow, or his probation is revoked.”
“Father will only serve a five-year sentence. In that time, I could save more than one million lives.”
Every time Alainn heard the robot call her dad “Father,” something in her died a little.
“She’s right,” Colby said.
“You can’t be serious, Colby. You want Dad to go to prison? I can understand it from Rose, she doesn’t have feelings, but you—you’re supposed to.”
He ignored her.
Rose tucked in her chin and stared up through her heavy lashes. “I will continue my research, no matter the cost.”
Alainn took a small step away. “Rose, I understand that your calculations are important—except for the weapon one. That’s really scary. That should be against your ethical coding. You need to listen to me. You were created by Dad for Mr. Garbhan. That is your purpose for existing. Please reprogram yourself. I’m going to deliver you to him no matter what. He’ll probably reboot you and wipe your personality anyway, and then you’ll have to recreate it.”
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