by J. S. Morin
Eve furrowed her brow. “Nothing mentions Toby being left out of Project Transhuman.”
Charlie7 cast Eve a weary smile. “I told you, this version is the truth. A lot of rough road got repaved these past thousand years. Toby was already in for a rough go of it, not having his doctorate. The last thing he needed was everyone knowing he wasn’t supposed to have been among the scientists preserved.”
“Then why did you do it?” Eve asked.
“Because to hell with all the rest of them,” Charlie7 thundered, his voice echoing back from the tunnels whose lengths ran beyond viewing. “Toby stood by me when he could have run and hid like everybody else. He bled for this world. He boiled and drowned in his own dissolving flesh for this project. Tobias Greene and Charles Truman died side by side in the cab of a truck.
“I was there. I watched them die. I was the robot they awakened just before the end. I was the bearer of the torch they passed. And if I saw that moment coming in time to preserve Toby’s mind as well, I say that was the finest moment of my life.”
Eve remained silent.
Charlie7 watched her. Was he looking for a reaction? Waiting for her to question him? Seeing if she was still willing to follow?
The whine of ion engines echoed from one of the tunnels. Eve darted for shelter behind an electronics cabinet for one of the consoles, but Charlie7 held up a hand. “It’s fine. This is our ride.”
A tram car bobbed to a stop in the center of the room. Charlie7 climbed aboard. When Eve hesitated, he shrugged and reached for the controls. “You know your way around up there. Just hide the door when you leave.”
“Wait,” Eve shouted. She ran for the tram car and hopped aboard. “I’ll hear you out.”
Charlie7 eased the throttle open. “Please keep head and hands within the vehicle, and listen quietly to the story…”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I knew so little of our invaders. The first revelation had been that they could detect life forms. I crossed half of America, watching the desolation as extraterrestrial exterminators gassed every living thing they could find—and they found everything.
Their blind spots, such as they were, included an inability to locate frozen biological specimens and a disregard for automated machinery. The former was little use to the human race at the time. There was no process for preserving anyone cryogenically and reviving them. But it became a great boon to the Earth as we now know it.
The second of their blind spots I discovered only after months of hiding and cowering, hoping to avoid notice.
Those creatures from space left power plants running, traffic lights blinking, and television stations broadcasting pre-recorded gibberish and station IDs. They left satellites in orbit, military equipment lying unattended, and a factories sitting idle.
With no one to guide them, the momentum of humanity’s technological footprint was left to drift to a halt in its own time. It wasn’t worth the aliens’ effort to exterminate the mindless, the lifeless, the mechanical. Perhaps they sought to study our technology and glean what little they could from an inferior species. Maybe they just planned to let it all rust and decompose.
For all I really knew, they were planning on eventually packing it all up and shipping it home as war trophies.
But what I eventually concluded was that I was free to roam so long as I avoided doing anything to let them know I was a living, thinking creature who posed a threat.
Those months held the worst terrors of my entire life. I was alone, carrying the hope of humanity. I tiptoed for fear of awakening the giant whose occupied world I now scurried across.
Eventually, I drove the truck from Project Transhuman into an old aircraft hangar and activated the first of my companions, Toby2.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Wait,” Eve said, her voice muffled by the air filter mask Charlie7 had kept stored in the tram’s supply bench. “You mean to tell me that you’re not Charlie7 because you were the last of the original six robots, starting with Charlie2?”
Charlie7 relinquished the tram to autopilot, taking a seat across from Eve in the back. “Sadly, no. There never were a Charlie3, ‘4, ‘5, or ‘6. There were, as stated in the archives, six robotic chassis produced by the human scientists at Project Transhuman.”
“Who were the others?” Eve had to know. Her life was underpinned on the notions of freedom and self-determination this robot among robots had taught her. How much of that had been a sham?
“Well, Toby2 was the first. The rest is putting the story a little out of—”
“Tell me!” Eve demanded. When Charlie7 wasn’t forthcoming with an immediate explanation, she raised the stakes. “Tell me, or you’re stopping this tram and I’ll walk the however many kilometers back to Paris.”
She had lost track, but at the 120-kph rate her lenses calculated and the eighteen minutes since they’d departed, she could count on about a 36-kilometer hike, plus or minus due to acceleration time.
“Toby2 was the first. If I was going to go to war, I wanted the most trustworthy man I knew beside me. I didn’t trust the mixing algorithm yet, and having a second Charles Truman was bound to be trouble. It was just the two of us at first, plotting and planning. I’ll tell you the how in due time, but the other four were Holly, Jason, Kabir, and… Dale.”
“Wait. What? Who’s Kabir?”
Charlie7 spread his hands. “I told you. This needs to be told in a certain way to make sense.”
“And why Dale of all people? It’s no secret even in the reported history that Dale and Charlie hated one another.”
“Overplayed a bit. Overblown. I was Dale Chalmers’s meal ticket. He was my money monkey. I performed for the crowds; he passed the hat and collected grant money. He envied my reputation in the scientific community. I resented him for getting top billing when Forbes and Time ran stories about the project while doing none of the science.”
“But Dale was one of the Twenty-Seven,” Eve argued. The overhead lights flashing past were beginning to make her already spinning head dizzy. She closed her eyes, blocking out all but her user interface.
“Sure, Dale had a doctorate in physics. But that degree was dustier than an Old West saloon. There were basket-weaving majors who got more use out of their degrees. But if you want to know why I picked him of all people to inhabit one of the six chassis I had, you’re going to have to wait.”
“Fine,” Eve relented. She was aboard the tram the same way she was aboard the story—to the end of the line.
Charlie7 cleared his throat for effect. “So… I had just awakened Toby2…”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Rachel munched on a protein bar, wrapper crinkling as she peeled it back to expose the next bite. She and Toby521 lurked in a passage near Rachel’s apartment as she ate.
There had been a tactical argument in favor of evacuating the area as quickly as possible. But a biological imperative overrode. Stealthy or not, Rachel passing out from hunger wouldn’t do either of them any good.
“Can you eat that more quietly?” Toby521 whispered.
Rolling her eyes, Rachel peeled the rest of the wrapper away and discarded it, getting the crinkling done with in a single, noisy crescendo. She pinched the tacky mass of rectangular protein between thumb and forefinger, resolving to wipe the eventual mess on her pants.
“What do you think?” she asked as she chewed.
Toby521 spread his arms. “I think this whole world is bonkers. We have cloned humans tromping around with rifles, men who are robots who used to be men broadcasting super villain speeches and promising new world orders. I don’t even know the world he’s overthrowing yet!”
“You remember Dale Chalmers at all?” Rachel asked. “You seem to remember a lot from back then. More than most Tobies.”
Toby521 led his head loll back until it thumped against the support beam he sat against. “He was… I don’t know, the boss, I guess. I worked for Dr. Truman, but he signed the paychecks. He was… OK? I neve
r dealt with him much. He wasn’t even usually in the office. He made phone calls, went to conferences, did all the schmoozing. Never saw him down in the labs unless he was touring some VIPs around.”
“What about Charlie Truman?” Rachel asked. “Was he all the things Dale said?”
“I don’t know what’s happened since then,” Toby521 prefaced his remarks. “But the man I knew was a visionary. He shoveled criticism and disbelief like coal into the furnace that drove him. Nothing stopped him. Apparently, not even death. He wasn’t what I’d call… nice. I mean, he never remembered birthdays or asked about stuff outside of work. But I wouldn’t have traded him for anyone as a boss. There were no office politics, no favoritism, no petty academic bull—um, crap.”
“I’m nineteen,” Rachel commented between bites. “And we have access to all the preserved media from the twenty-first century. I’ve heard swearing.”
“Sorry. Of course. You… you just look younger. Anyway, it was all work, all the time. I loved it. We were on the cutting edge. No vacations. Abbreviated weekends. Long nights. It cost him a marriage and ruined a couple affairs. Sleeping with co-workers was easier than dating outside, I guess. I never managed much either way. But it was so rewarding. And… I mean look at me. I’m a robot a thousand years after I died. This is weird as hell, but it’s also completely amazing.”
Rachel swallowed down her last bite and wiped her fingers on her pant leg. “So. You’re happy as a robot?”
“Happy?” Toby521 asked, incredulous. “I’ve been grinning ever since I re-awakened.”
“You actually haven’t been.”
Toby521 felt along the contours of his face. “Damn. I really thought I was.”
“It would explain a lot,” Rachel said. “Once the current chaos dies down, we’ll get that looked at. You ready to—”
Toby521 raised a hand. “Shh.”
Rachel spread her hands.
Toby521 held up a finger.
Rachel waited.
“They’re coming,” he whispered. Climbing gingerly to his feet, Toby521 beckoned Rachel to follow.
She stood from her cross-legged squat with a minimum of motion. The two delved deeper into Kanto.
They avoided gratings and exposed catwalks, but that limited their options. If their pursuers knew where she had been they might surmise the same narrowing variables and sniff out their trail. But the accuracy of that search would depend on how certain they were of her recent location.
“Shit,” she swore beneath her breath.
Toby521 paused and turned without a word. The question was clear from his posture.
“The wrapper,” Rachel whispered. “They’ll know where we were.”
She should have folded it neatly and tucked it in a pocket to keep it from making noise.
Toby521 drew himself tall and pantomimed a deep breath. “I’ll stay behind. You run. I’ll hold them off and buy you as much time as I can. It’s my fault you left that wrapper behind. I won’t ask you to—”
“Shut up,” Rachel cut him off. As she pushed past him, she grabbed the robot by the hand. “You don’t go from newborn to martyr in the span of a day. I gave birth to you this morning. I’m not letting you die.”
“You’re not my mother, technically,” Toby521 protested, despite allowing the much-smaller human to tow him along.
“Like hell I’m not,” Rachel replied. “I’m not Sally or Phoebe. I’ve got no interest in biological motherhood. But I made you. I gave you a mind and feelings and consciousness. Your life isn’t worth any more or less than mine, and I’m damn well not letting you throw it away in case it might buy me five minutes more freedom. Now let’s keep moving.”
After a moment of awkward silence, Rachel added, “And don’t call me ‘Mom.’”
Chapter Thirty
The tram stopped in the center of an underground factory. Eve had long suspected that Charlie7 had some private facility with production capacity beyond a mere protofab, but this was the first time she’d had her suspicions confirmed.
Even through the breathing filter, she could tell the atmosphere was foul. Motes of dust floated in the overhead lighting the instant Charlie7 powered up the factory. Her lungs pulled extra duty just sucking in enough clean air out of the miasma of industrial pollutants.
“Sorry about the mess,” Charlie7 commented. “Fresh air was low on the priorities list. The breather was the compromise to diverting months of drone time to building a ventilation system.”
That word tickled a spot in Eve’s brain. Drones? She scanned the miniature factory. It was only perhaps one hundred meters on a side—nothing on the scale of even an agrarian depot. But there they were, idle against the walls in a row.
“You have private drones?”
Charlie7 shrugged. “I’ve got lots of things. I build my own. I’m on the review committee that approves new designs, and this place can make its own copies.”
“But the Drone Committee…”
“Yes. I requisition a drone here and there to keep up appearances. Who wouldn’t want to have a little private construction force all his own? But if everyone knew I had them, the Drone Committee would parcel them out like office temps, trying to maximize their utility.”
Eve spread her hands. “That’s the whole point of the Drone Committee.”
“But these are mine,” Charlie7 countered. “I need them.”
Walking around various lathes, auto-welders, and machining centers, Eve made her way to the row of waiting, humanoid drones. There was something unseemly about them, displayed naked and awaiting orders. “Your own private army of worker whores.”
“You ought to watch less of that garbage Plato dredges up from the archives. This isn’t some tawdry hobby of mine.”
“They’re not doing anything right now,” Eve countered. “They’re being wasted. These could be in Paris, plumbing the new public gardens or building the fences at the Peruvian jungle cat preserve.”
“Which are both getting done without them. These are here in case I need them.”
“What is this place, anyway? This doesn’t look like your style.”
The scale felt wrong. Charlie7 thought bigger than this. A tiny factory buried untold kilometers beneath the Earth’s surface seemed like a lot of work. Considering the amount of tunneling just to get here, it would have been scant extra effort to build it ten times the size.
“We used this is the early days,” Charlie7 said. He pointed over to a massive door set into one of the sidewalls. “That way used to head to an old, abandoned surface installation the resistance used, back when there were only the six of us. Jason2 designed it. I’ve kept it as-is out of nostalgia as much as anything.”
“Is that why we’re here? Is this the last house on Memory Lane?”
Charlie7 cocked a smirk. “Nah. Just needed to stop to make a call or two. This whole place is so far underground that no signals make it in or out, but the comm system here had an antenna relay to broadcast to the Social.”
“Is that secure?” Eve asked, wincing even as the words left her mouth.
Charlie7 took the bait she hadn’t meant to dangle. “No. Not at all. We certainly didn’t launch a global counteroffensive against an unknown adversary from here. We just assumed the aliens that had just wiped out humanity were technologically inept and wouldn’t be able to trace new active signals that had popped up since they eradicated Homo sapiens.”
“Touché.”
Eve watched over Charlie7’s shoulder, and the robot kept his terminal in plain text for her to read along.
He sent messages to Nora109, Ashley390, Plato, Toby22, Phoebe, Olivia, Sally, Theresa, and Uhura. After a moment’s hesitation, he sent one to Rachel as well.
Eve noted that he didn’t bother with any of Plato’s brothers. The conspiracy had never paid them much attention. But by that argument, why bother asking Ashley390 at the Sanctuary for Scientific Sins?
One by one, messages came back. The sanctuary was secure and pla
cid. Nora109 had locked up Oxford with the students safe indoors. Eve’s sisters reported in, each receiving a scolding in reply from Charlie7 that they ought to make themselves scarce.
Plato reported back. Eve reached for the console to transmit him a piece of her mind. He was supposed to be watching Abbigail. He was supposed to be off the grid, silent and invisible with their daughter until Eve gave the all clear.
Instead, Charlie7 interposed himself and drew Eve’s attention to the lack of reply from Toby22. “He’s the one with Abbigail. Plato would give his life to protect her, but Toby22’s more likely to actually keep her safe. It was the smart play from him, for once.”
“So… this was your plan. I’m the hardest to keep safe, so you lured me… where are we, under the Netherlands? Regardless… you got me out of the fray before I could head to Kanto on some rash mission. What was the plan… to keep me amused with old stories until it was too late to intervene?”
Charlie7’s metallic features grew grim. “I hope it’s not too late to intervene. But no. This was just a quick stop to check in with the kiddies. Make sure everyone was safe. I’d sooner fight with one arm disconnected than leave you out of this plan. I need you. I trust you. Not every robot on this planet has humanity’s interests at heart, and none so deeply as you hold them. You’re smarter than them. You’re more determined than them. Each year that passes, you close the gap in knowledge and experience that our adversaries hold over you.
“Right now, you’re the only human who can help.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Inhale…
Mind adrift. Thoughts observed as if they lay upon a table, not within the mind at all.
Exhale…
Cleanse the body of impurity. All negative energy and feeling release with the breath.