by J. S. Morin
Strapped securely into the pilot’s chair, Charlie25 watched the vessel’s projected time of arrival count down. It would be good to see Charlie13 again. He doubted his old friend would be as happy to see him and not the least bit pleased to meet the human chassis that would make him obsolete.
Chapter Eight
Charlie13 had a standing policy that Rachel was able to see him at any time. This was the first time she could recall a feeling of unease when she pressed the door alarm on her boss’s office.
The door slid open an instant later. Per usual, Charlie13 hadn’t wasted words for a greeting.
Rachel crept in, not quite on tiptoe but with as little noise as possible otherwise. She reached Charlie13’s desk without him looking up from his console.
He said nothing.
Rachel said nothing right back.
Was he rubbing off on her? If Rachel didn’t take the initiative, she had no doubt that Charlie13 would continue working as if she weren’t there. But the idea of softening a conversation seemed pointless, not just in the general sense, but with Charlie13 in particular. He placed no value on social niceties; why should Rachel?
“There are thirty-three personalities, not twenty-seven,” Rachel said.
Normally, Charlie13 could carry on with all but the most painstaking of work while he conversed with his human apprentice. But Charlie13 wasn’t working on details of a mix or inspecting a crystalline matrix. On his primary work console were technical specs and diagrams of Jason90’s latest chassis design.
Nevertheless, at Rachel’s pronouncement, Charlie13 stopped everything he was doing and fixed his orange glowing gaze directly on her. “Upon what do you base this assertion?”
“I saw them,” Rachel replied. “They’re available in the factory archive, just not in the publicly available section. Also, they’re not in any of the upload, mixing, or simulation subsystems. I don’t have access to all the factory’s backup vaults, but there seems to only be one copy of each. But there are six more personalities.”
Charlie13 was silent for a moment. Rachel allowed him time to process.
Try as she might, Rachel had never figured out how to read Charlie13’s emotional state. Her basic assumption was that his was the null state. Of all the robots she’d ever met, he was the least human. Nora109, whether intentionally or not, was straightforward in her emoting. Ashley390 didn’t seem to hide her feelings. Jennifer81 looked perturbed most of the time, but that seemed to be an accurate measure of her mood.
Charlie13 seemed to operate on an emotional microscale, with readings lost to the noise of observation.
“Who else have you told?” he asked finally.
Rachel swallowed past a lump in her throat. “Just Toby521. He was the one who suggested twenty-seven wasn’t right. So I went digging. I’m… sorry?”
The mixing chief held up a hand. “No apology required.” He tapped a button on his console. “Toby, come see me in my office.”
“Sure… who are you? Wait… I see it now… sorry. Still not getting used to—never mind that. Where do you want to meet?”
Rachel knew that holding the conversation verbally was for her benefit. The accommodations Charlie13 made for her were often subtle, but she appreciated them when she noticed.
“My office,” Charlie13 replied. His eyes shut down briefly in a resigned gesture Rachel saw all too infrequently. “Transmitting directions.”
“I won’t tell anyone else,” Rachel promised as soon as she heard the background noise from the transmission cease. Toby521 had been watching some old movie with car chases. “Do you… um… mind telling me what’s wrong with there being thirty-three personalities?”
Charlie13 fixed his eyes on Rachel with the intensity of lasers. “There are twenty-seven personalities that make up every robot in the world and beyond. That is all I see when I access Kanto’s systems. That’s all anyone sees. I’ll settle the matter with Toby521.”
“So… six of them don’t matter?” Rachel ventured out onto the thin ice of this conversation, hoping the footing remained solid beneath her.
“Six of them don’t exist,” Charlie13 replied. “They are ghosts. Old data. Corrupt files. Forget you ever saw them.”
Rachel opened her mouth to press her questions, but one look at Charlie13 made her think better of it.
Hard as he was to read, Rachel felt some budding understanding of her superior. Right now, the veneer of aloofness was peeling back. Rachel could peek beneath enough to see the original color. Charlie13 wasn’t annoyed or angry with her.
Charlie13 was scared.
Chapter Nine
Charlie7’s skyroamer sped over the Arctic Circle. Patchy tundra and lakes disappeared beneath him as he reached the limits of the vehicle’s thrust. Vibrations that normally would have barely registered now shook the craft to the point where it would be in need of a good maintenance regimen before he took it out under less pressing circumstances.
Why New York? Why did Charlie have to be halfway around the world when Kanto’s security had been breached? Had it been planned? Was Heracles’s performance at Radio City just a diversion to keep Charlie7 at bay?
He could always call ahead.
The temptation ticked at his circuits. If security were his only concern, Charlie7 might have done just that. But there were deeper layers at play here. No general would lay out his troop dispositions for the enemy to inspect, hoping that the show of force might spur an easy surrender.
Maybe it had been a false alarm.
It wouldn’t be the first time Kanto’s thousand-year-old systems had exhibited aberrant behavior. This was a rather specific and dire warning, but there was a chance it had been mere coincidence.
Charlie7 muttered to himself as he flew. “Wouldn’t buy that if it came with a free skyroamer.”
Rushing back to Kanto was going to look strange. He had just been there in the morning—or yesterday, locally. Charlie7 was in and out of Kanto often enough that his mere presence wouldn’t arouse suspicion. As for the timing… who really questioned him in detail these days?
Maybe it was just Rachel exhibiting that insatiable human curiosity that showed no bounds. The girl might not even realize the gravity of her discovery. Certainly, Rachel had the sense not to blurt it on the news feeds like an archaeological discovery. It was all the academics among robotkind who had that first-to-publish hunger so ingrained in them.
If it had been Eve there in Kanto, Charlie7 wouldn’t have worried. That one knew the game. To some extent, all the Eve clones were wary—at least Evelyn11’s original brood. But none had the next-level deep thinking that Eve showed. She would hoard information like pirate’s gold, burying it away for when she needed it.
What would Rachel do with her discovery? Tell Charlie13?
Charlie7 sneered. That would be an unpleasant conversation, but at least ‘13 had a stake in the world remaining as it was. The information would go no further past him.
Yes, that was his best-case scenario. Rachel had stumbled upon the archives, told Charlie13, and the two of them had hushed up the whole matter.
Charlie7 began running scenarios through his computer, determining worse scenarios and how he might deal with them. Nothing… nothing in his 1,000-year lifespan went according to best-case scenarios.
Chapter Ten
Madagascar was one of robotkind’s great success stories. Lush, green, and populated with a staggering variety of lab-grown animals—and even some who’d reproduced in the wild—it was a testament to the genetics programs rebuilding Earth.
Eve landed at a lab she’d certified some months ago. It had once been solely dedicated to great ape cloning and research. Now, a new section housed production facilities that promised to swell the burgeoning ranks of Earth’s new fad species: humans.
The main building of the Homo sapiens campus had the look of a theme park gift shop. It was only thanks to Plato and his taste for old-world nostalgia that Eve knew to draw the analogy. The exterior was
stylized in faux stone block and decorated with logs and vines to give an air of lost civilization to the place. From inspecting the blueprints as part of her sanctioning tour, Eve knew the stone was formed concrete slabs over a steel support structure and the logs and vines were all engineered plastic.
The sign over the door read “PRAETERITIS FUTURA EST.”
The past is the future.
Eve left her skyroamer parked on the plaza concourse between buildings and ascended the steps to the entrance.
Waiting for her in the atrium was Elizabeth55, dressed in a white lab coat and black slacks. She was the very image of a Human Era scientist, right down to the microscope goggles pushed up onto her chrome scalp. “Thank you for coming so quickly. I…” She took a look at Eve’s attire, making no effort to hide her inspection. “I hope I didn’t interrupt anything.”
“You did,” Eve stated bluntly. “But I’d rather that than delay a decision. Let’s go have a look.”
Eve hated her job at times. Reportedly, everyone did. There was no occupation that was utterly fulfilling, devoid of tedium, and barren of responsibility. But Eve’s had the distasteful honor of deciding the life and death of the unborn.
There weren’t many votes Eve lost on the Human Welfare Committee, but this duty falling on her shoulders was one of them.
She followed Elizabeth55 through the showpiece section of the facility with its looping documentaries of important discoveries and its roadmap to full population. They went behind the scenes through the door marked Researchers Only.
A few geneticists offered perfunctory greetings as Eve and Elizabeth55 strode through the laboratories and onto the production floor. Row upon row of gestation chambers lined the main factory—and Eve could think of no other term for the place. Elizabeth55 stopped at one of the fetal humans whose chamber was labeled 0042.
Eve scanned the monitors beside gestation chamber 0042, logging the information to her implanted computer in case she needed to reference it later. “Genetic markers for Callanse Syndrome.”
Having grown up with no knowledge of mankind, Eve had been forced into a crash course in every possible genetic anomaly in the development process from fertilization from egg to birth.
“Indeed,” Elizabeth55 said crisply. “You’ve been informed per section 14.1, paragraph 6 of the Human Welfare Committee guidelines on handling human embryos. I await disposition.”
Eve tried not to think Plato’s colorful cuss words at the geneticist. It seemed like she relished deferring to Eve for the hard choices. At thirteen weeks, Eve had three options available to her per committee guidelines that she’d approved personally.
The fetus could be allowed to develop as-is. He’d likely end up a resident of the Sanctuary for Scientific Sins, but Callanse Syndrome wasn’t a death sentence.
Another option was to simply terminate gestation. Eve had been given purview to determine what constituted a life worth living. So far, she had never exercised that authority. She wasn’t sure that today was the day to begin.
Finally, and the option Eve knew Elizabeth55 was angling for, was genetic splicing. Simply remove the defective section of genome and replace it with healthy genetic material from a donor sibling. There was no risk to the donor, but the fate of the recipient was a matter for scientific journals more than a hospital.
Elizabeth55 said nothing. If robots shared one trait in abundance, it was patience. It might have been urgent to get Eve on site before cellular division carried on much longer without a decision, but the matter was now on Eve’s timetable.
Slow, steady breaths. The tiny young life was Eve’s to steer. Down one path lay a life of promise unfulfilled. Down another, no life at all. The third held the best and worst of possibilities—complete recovery or a fate worse than the developmental disorder already diagnosed.
Eve investigated deeper.
While she was no geneticist herself, by necessity of her position, she’d learned more than a layman’s education in the matter. Really, it should have been Sally on these calls—Eve’s sister was the best genetics mind humanity offered. But Eve muddled through color-coded molecular models and electron photography of the damaged chromosomes. She inspected older entries and compared the damage to the genome’s current state.
Eve’s breath caught in her throat.
She said nothing but forced her lungs to expand and her hands to resume working the controls of the factory’s computers. The robot watching over Eve’s shoulder had something to hide and thus far didn’t appear to be aware Eve knew that.
The fetus in gestation chamber 0042 had been fine just this morning.
Someone had induced Callanse Syndrome just minutes before calling Eve.
Chapter Eleven
Automated systems accepted Mining Vessel 77405 at the docking port at Kanto. The factory did only a minimal amount of its own refining, preferring to rely on volume ore processing stations around the globe. Its smelters and furnaces were a throwback to an earlier era, kept in service for just in case and only rarely taxed.
“Whoever’s flying that thing better be half-inert or damaged past the point of crawling,” Fred62 warned as the boarding ramp extended toward the crew cabin. The ground shook under a real load of actual ore, though far less than a ship that size should have been carrying.
Charlie25 shut off the cockpit speakers and checked his messages. He had a checklist of confirmations, arrival times, and status updates.
It was time to say hello.
Ducking into the mobile lab, Charlie25 watched as the specimens stirred. Heads shook. Hands pressed against the cylinder walls. Frantic bubbles belched forth from rebreathers. Green gel was sucked out of the cylinders from ports in the bottom.
As the fluid levels sank below head height, a few of the specimens tore off their breathing filters.
“Might want to hang onto those,” Charlie25 advised. But he doubted they could hear him through the transparent metal of their prisons.
As the last of the green slime swirled sluggishly down the drain, spray nozzles blasted the occupants with jets of water. The specimens yelped and ducked and generally acted like fools who’d never known an existence in flesh and blood before.
Once the rinse was finished, the cylinders lifted away. Sopping and shivering, the twelve humans climbed down to the laboratory floor, leaving trails of faintly greenish runoff in their wake.
“Hurry up,” Charlie25 chided them. He took a stack of towels from a cabinet and passed them out hastily. “No time for vanity. Wipe off, and get dressed.”
He left them a pile of uniforms, each bearing a robotic designation.
Marvin44, Joshua172, Arthur39…
One by one, the humans picked through the black ensembles and found their own.
“Not the way I planned to wake up,” James56 groused as he buttoned his shirt.
Jason220 shot him a glare. “The ‘how’ can take a back seat. Focus on the ‘why.’”
Charlie25 smiled. A go-getter. He’d been ensconced at Kanto so long that he’d rarely worked with any of the newer robots, and the old ones had only come to see him when they were on edge about needing a chassis upgrade. This newer Jason was one to keep an eye on.
“Remember to keep chatter under control,” Charlie25 warned. “We have Fred62 outside. Don’t damage his crystal, but I want him out of the picture.”
From a crate still secured to the floor for transit, Charlie25 handed out coil rifles, one per soldier.
As the line filed past him, Charlie25 caught Joshua172 gazing back at Sandra29, who was still half-dressed and lagging at the end of the procession.
Human bodies. Crystalline brains. Charlie25 well remembered the odd file access calls those nerve endings fired. Dormant neural pathways flared to life in simulated lust, responding to subtle sensory cues. He remembered, but he could no longer replicate the effect.
No half measures.
Dale2 had offered Charlie25 a chance to partake in this batch. He had declined.
He spoke the same order aloud, simultaneously, to his human hybrids. “Go.”
Chapter Twelve
“I never knew I was made up of so many pieces.”
Rachel had spent the past hour trying to explain to Toby521 how his brain worked. As one of the scientists of Project Transhuman, Tobias Greene held memories that should have better prepared him to see his consciousness mapped out in a three-dimensional lattice that had been pieced back together from three separate minds like a broken vase.
“The process is more sophisticated than what was originally conceived,” Rachel explained. “We use data gathered from hundreds of prior mixes to refine and optimize the outcome personality.”
“In this case… me.”
It wasn’t that Toby521 was a slow learner. Far from it. His dilemma ran along the existential axis. The idea that he was an amalgam of personalities pieced together like a mental Frankenstein’s monster sat ill with him.
Rachel had ceased trying to perform actual work. As an educator, Charlie13 had never adhered to a strict curriculum, so she wasn’t concerned with whiling away hours trying to help Toby521 come to grips with the new reality in which he found himself. So long as she learned from the experience, that would be enough.
But at the same time, Rachel couldn’t ignore thoughts of the six extra personalities she had discovered. It was as if she’d unearthed a new continent or discovered a hidden planet in the solar system.
And she wasn’t allowed to tell anyone.
“How did you know?” Rachel asked.
“How did I what? Oh, you mean those extra scans?” Toby521 asked. If nothing else, his mental faculties seemed to be in order. Rachel had intentionally left her query vague to see whether he’d sort out her intent without help. The new robot merely shrugged. “How do you know your birthday or what you had for dinner last night? What if I counted months and skipped June? Something just sounded wrong, and I knew the answer.”