by J. S. Morin
There was a clatter in the distance. In an instant, Plato quit his self-pitying and clamped his lips shut. He continued panting through his nose, muffling the sound with one hand as the other tightened on the grip of his EMP rifle.
The clatter resolved itself into a steady drumbeat of metallic footsteps.
No. Just partially metallic. It was a hard leather sole on factory flooring.
A long, drawn out conflict wasn’t in Plato’s favor just then. Ambush. That was the plan. Still muffling his breathing, he drew a long, full breath and held it, then leaped from cover, rifle barrel swinging around to draw a bead on his target.
“Whoa!” the robot shouted, throwing his arms in the air. “Plato, it’s me!”
Plato hesitated. The robot was wearing mechanic’s coveralls and didn’t appear armed. He allowed himself a second to consider whether or not to pull the trigger. “Who are you?”
“You dimwit, it’s me, Jason90,” the robotic mechanic shouted, still holding perfectly still. “Put that thing down if you ever want help tuning Betty-Lou again.”
Plato lowered the barrel just a hair, enough that an accidental discharge wouldn’t blank the robot but not so much he couldn’t still snap a shot off if the guy decided to reach for a gun.
“Betty-Lou’s public knowledge,” Plato challenged. “How do I know it’s really you?” He wasn’t sure what exactly he was fishing for, but it wasn’t his crystal on the line if this guy couldn’t convince him.
To be fair, while Plato had blanked his share of robots back in the day, none of them had been quite as notable as Jason90. Even Charlie24, bastard that he was, was a bit of a black sheep among Charlies. Erring on the side of pulling the trigger sounded like a bad bet.
Still, human lives were on the line. Rachel for sure, then who knew about the rest of them if Dale2’s dog-and-pony show got off the ground. Plato could be the scapegoat if mankind needed him to be.
After all, how much living did Plato have left in him, anyway?
That realization hurt. He hoped Jason90 came up with something quick to take his mind off the thought of Abbigail growing up without her dad.
The robot claiming to be Jason90 extended an “aha” finger. “Rumor has it, Spartacus has been hanging around Oxford, pestering the preschoolers.”
Plato raised the rifle. “Why would Jason90 know that?”
“Dammit, Plato, quit being the tough guy for five seconds and think. Why would I be running away, solo and unarmed, claiming to be someone Charlie25 is after? The teams fanning out through the factory had been working in pairs just so hero-complex idiots like you or Charlie7 don’t get the drop on them.”
“Charlie7’s here?”
Plato hadn’t heard any such thing, but radio silence resulted in odd surprises now and then. He wouldn’t mind the backup if that old rascal was knocking around here somewhere.
“Damned if I know,” the robot who was probably Jason90 replied. “Although, if he was, I’d expect more system failures and power surges.”
“I got an idea,” Plato said. “You and me are finding a console. You’re gonna log in as Jason90.”
The robot paused to consider. “Done.”
“Um… one sec,” Plato said, juggling the rifle as he flipped down his headband’s computer display.
“Great da Vinci’s ghost, Plato. If I couldn’t find a terminal with my eyes closed, how would you ever believe I was Jason90?” asked the robot who was making an increasingly solid case for being who he claimed.
Plato followed the prospective Jason90 through a quality-control station and into an adjoining office, noting that the access panels on the doors allowed him entry with minimal fuss.
“You know they can track that, right?” Plato asked after the second door.
“Local override code. Doesn’t report back to the main system. Unless someone’s got a high opinion of their forensic power usage mapping, they won’t even notice we were here.”
That… sounded fishy. Plato tensed up, ready to line up an EMP blast with the possible impostor’s skull.
“If you’re playing me, you’re as good as a paperweight, you know.”
The robot applying for the job of Jason90 tapped his way through a login screen faster than Plato could track. In seconds, the system acknowledged the factory’s chief chassis designer.
Plato relaxed. “It really is you.”
“Now can I continue fleeing for someplace offsite to wait out this hostage crisis?” Jason90 asked in exasperation, spreading his arms.
Plato slung the EMP rifle over his shoulder in a show of goodwill. But that was as far as goodwill went. “C’mon. Really? You’re one of the captains of this ship, and you’re heading for the lifeboats?”
“Individual action isn’t advisable here. We need to get out from under this jamming signal, convene some committee meetings, and come up with a road map to reestablishing dominion over Kanto.”
Plato’s brain shook that gibberish like a sieve until only one nugget of real information was left. “You’re a coward.”
“There are at least a dozen converted humans and an unknown number of robotic collaborators in the factory. They were armed and prepared. I find it unlikely they have not already ruled out the defensive capabilities for the factory’s permanent residents to—”
“Shut up,” Plato snapped. “I don’t wanna hear your excuses. So, you’re a coward. This world’s full of ‘em.”
“You’ve contributed,” Jason90 pointed out with a nod toward Plato’s EMP rifle. “Loss of the data self is an existential dread for most of us. You might as well walk around in a black robe with a scythe as tote that thing around.”
“I could use the backup.”
“Maybe you should have talked that over with someone before heading here.”
“You’ll feel like a jerk once this is over if anything happens to Rachel and you did nothing.”
“I don’t relish the thought of what might happen to Rachel, but if she has access to secret files buried by Charlie7, her best bet is probably to just play along and hand them over. Plato… I know you’re friends with Charlie7 and all, but… well, he’s not exactly Mr. Scrupulous. I can’t condone Charlie25’s actions, and I didn’t know Dale2 was alive until this morning, but you can’t dismiss the possibility that they’re right.”
“I can dismiss anything I want,” Plato replied, jabbing a thumb to his chest. “I’m not programmed. I got free will and a gun, which is a lot better than just having free will. And if you’re not going to help me, I’ve got just one thing to do with you.”
Jason90 backed away as Plato advanced toward him.
Plato reached for a coil pistol.
“Please, don’t—” Jason90 pleaded.
Plato flipped the coil gun around and offered it grip-first to the robotic mechanic. “Get outta here. You see any robot but Charlie7 on your way to the skyroamer lots, drop ‘em. I don’t got time for dead weight where I’m headed.”
Jason90 took the weapon and tucked it into one of the many pockets of his coveralls. “You’re an odd bird, Plato.”
As the robot headed out of the quality-control office, Plato called after him. “Speaking of odd birds, thanks for the tip on finding Spartacus. Abbigail would love that little bastard.”
Chapter Forty-Four
By the time the robots came back for her, Rachel had calmed herself. She turned her thoughts inward, ignoring the sounds that accompanied the video and keeping her eyes closed and relaxed. The illusion that she had blocked out the outside world completely shattered when the door opened and her eyes did so as well.
Scenarios that played out a hundred times during the wait collapsed into a singular instance of what came to pass. In a way, it was an excellent metaphor for quantum mechanics and probability. In a very different way, it illustrated the discrepancy between imagination and reality.
Rachel’s plans and schemes, her gambits and ploys, all came to naught as a pair of robots grabbed her by the arms and
lifted her from her feet before she could react.
She had no leverage. She had no tech. Flailing feet and every filthy word she could dredge up were insufficient to get her captors to free her.
“Spunky one,” one of the robots commented. He sounded like a Fred.
The other sighed as a foot glanced off his hip. “Must be buried in the genome. First sign of liberation and they turn from lab hamster to rabid dog.”
“I am not rabid,” Rachel snarled. “I’m furious. You have no right to—”
“No, you have no right,” the Fred-sounding robot snapped. “You’re an escaped experiment. You don’t belong outside a lab.”
“You’re all as good as deleted,” Rachel promised. “If I don’t get loose and fry your crystals, someone else will do it for me.”
They were carrying her toward Charlie13’s office, and Rachel realized that by the time she arrived at her destination, threats would be of little use.
With a final, futile thrash, Rachel went limp and took a long breath. “Let me go, and I’ll get you both pardoned.”
“We don’t want pardons,” the second robot said. Rachel wracked her brain for who it might be, but the voice was off, possibly a vocal filter for disguise. “We want what you have.”
“You don’t deserve that body,” the one who sounded like a Fred added.
How could Rachel reason with them? These were zealots. They were throwing in their lot with Dale2 in the hopes of returning to biological life. Even the pale imitation that Zeus experienced was enough to get them to abandon all sense of compassion and empathy.
As the door to Charlie13’s office drew near, Rachel steeled herself for another round of threats, bargaining, and bribes from Charlie25.
When the door opened, Rachel’s blood turned to ice. Her thoughts froze in time, eyes fixated on the new centerpiece in the room.
Evelyn11’s old upload rig.
“No!” Rachel screamed. She struggled anew, fear and adrenaline lending her strength and burning away her nagging lesser worries.
She threw her weight back and forth. If she tore her arms from their sockets, it would have been a small price to pay for the chance to drop to the floor and run.
Let Ashley390 install robotic arms for her. Limbs were replaceable. That monstrous machine could steal the essence of her very being—her mind.
Rachel’s body was strong and fit, made of tight, corded muscle and sturdy tendons. She was neither strong enough nor fragile enough to rip off her own arms. It had been a ludicrous notion, born of terror.
Kicking, screaming, and cursing, Rachel was carried across the office as robots and human-looking hybrids looked on.
“Where are those brave, arrogant arguments now?” Charlie25 asked as the two robots held her against the inclined bed. “Run out of pithy philosophical observations and flip-a-day calendar psychoanalysis?”
Rachel knew this process. One by one, her limbs were held to the table while straps secured them in place. Back in the lab, when Evelyn11 had still been Creator to her, Rachel had been trained and conditioned to secure herself to the table. Looking back, it had been both a time-saving method for a busy robot and mental programming to make the Eves ever more compliant—making them complicit in their own captivity.
This time, there was no implied end to her time in the restraints. Rachel could meet her end with one of the robots watching from the periphery of the office inhabiting her skull.
She fought. She snarled and struggled and strained. She made the robots fight her every millimeter of the way.
But they were so strong. Rachel could quantify mathematically just how much force those chassis could apply. Every servo motor. Every model and variant. But none of that matched the frightening reality of just how irresistible those forces could be.
In the end, Rachel couldn’t budge. Her chest heaved as she tried to catch her breath. But all the straps had been ratcheted one or two clicks too tight, even the one across her chest that restricted her diaphragm. Rachel had been restrained enough times that she knew exactly what it ought to feel like.
She hated having retained that knowledge.
As her extremities tingled, Rachel tried to relax. She recited the mantra against fear in the privacy of her own skull.
She snapped her eyes wide at the tearing of fabric. Unable to lift her head to look down, all she saw was a blinding overhead light. She squeezed her eyes shut and felt by the cool air on her arm that a sleeve had been torn from her shirt.
She felt a pinch at the crook of her elbow and the sting as a needle was pushed into her median cubital vein.
Rachel could feel when something interposed itself between the lights and her closed eyelids. “Well, you’ve gotten quiet,” Charlie25 remarked casually. He sounded so perfectly at ease. Rachel wanted to tear free from her straps and strangle him.
As it was, it was all Rachel could do to gain enough oxygen to keep from getting lightheaded.
One of the assistant robots reached beneath Rachel’s clothing. Light pressure. Something tacky left behind. The tickle of snaking wires. She was being monitored.
“Blood oxygen is low,” a Nora voice said. Rachel considered trying to track what voices she heard, but aside from the bold and brazen Charlie25, the other robots could have been anyone.
A mask pressed over Rachel’s nose and mouth. She peeked to see a robotic hand holding it in place. Instinctively, Rachel held her breath.
“You can’t do that, dear,” the Nora scolded her. “We’ll wake you right back up. We’ve brought so many fun chemicals along, and I can inject them directly into your bloodstream. This is nothing but an oxygen-rich mix, so breathe.”
Rachel reluctantly complied. The mask smelled of protofab, but the air was easier to breathe than the office atmosphere had been. She relaxed and calmed her screaming, oxygen-starved muscles.
The Nora fixed the mask in place with adhesive and left Rachel’s side.
She was dizzy. The world was changing too fast. She had given birth to a new Toby. Rachel had been having the best day of her life to that point. Now, she was a girl again in Creator’s lab.
“So… any interest in helping us?” Charlie25 asked. “There’s still plenty of time to resolve this amicably. Why, we might look back on this day and laugh about how silly this whole disagreement was.”
Rachel felt a tingle on her scalp. Then a tickle. Someone was brushing loose hair away. With the mask on, she couldn’t smell the burning keratin, but she knew what was happening. They were shaving her head with a laser, just as Creator had done.
Tears welled in Rachel’s eyes, making Charlie25’s face blurry. “I can’t help you,” she said weakly.
It was a moral statement, not an expression of fact.
“Did you know that there hasn’t been a new robotic personality created in the past millennium?” Charlie25 asked. He beckoned to the side of the room. “Not one. We have six that have been lost all that time but not a single solitary new human brain map suitable to upload. Evelyn11 might have scanned you girls a million times, but she wasn’t recording them as personality profiles. That’s what we’re going to do.”
One robot was attaching probes to Rachel’s smooth scalp as cool air blew across it. Another stuck something to the corners of Rachel’s eyes—little tubes, perhaps. Within seconds, the watery blur cleared, and fresh tears were sucked away.
“I know what you’re trying to do,” Rachel said, voice muffled by the oxygen mask. “It won’t work. If there’s a sub-root lockout on the archives, uploading my brain to a crystal matrix will install that lockout there, as well. You won’t be able to filter it out. Even Charlie13 won’t be able to.”
Charlie25’s face came right down to Rachel’s. His vestigial, decorative nose bumped against the hose running into Rachel’s mask, adhesive pulling at her skin but not coming loose. “Don’t you think I know that? It doesn’t mean I won’t try. I might just upload you to a disembodied crystal and only allow pain inputs. How would you l
ike that, huh? A world with no outside stimuli, just artificially induced agony that you have no means to resist.”
“That wouldn’t do you any good.” Rachel tried to remain brave, but she could barely comprehend the monstrosity of what Charlie25 was proposing. It sounded worse than the descriptions of hell.
“No. But it might make me feel a little better, knowing that a snotty little knot of meat was getting what’s coming to her for prolonging the torment of all robotkind,” Charlie25 said with such venom that Rachel believed he just might do it.
“Her vitals are spiking,” the heartless Nora reported. How could anyone who shared an archetype with Nora109 be so sadistic as to aid in this cruelty?
Charlie25 rose, looming over as the brilliant overhead light again forced Rachel to shut her eyes. “Fine. I’ll stop badgering her. But you see, Rachel, that’s not my plan at all. There are other humans out there who haven’t tried logging into Kanto’s systems with full access. I can grant them that access and get one of them to do it.”
“None of them will help you,” Rachel swore.
“Obstinacy,” Charlie25 countered. “Sheer obstinacy. There’s no reason to continue thwarting the release of the truth. You can’t all be slaves of Charlie7—not like we are. You have free will. You can choose. And one of you is going to decide that cooperating is preferable to the consequences.”
“None of my sisters will do it,” Rachel promised. “They know the cost of giving in to ultimatums. It’s all in the archives.”
“Abbigail doesn’t know all that rubbish,” Charlie25 countered. “We could train her, condition her. She’d do as she’s told… especially if Eve or Plato’s lives were on the line.”
Rachel could see the inexorability of this plan. She was the lowest of the hanging fruits in their orchard. If not her, then Rachel would be plucked and tossed aside in favor of the next.
Charlie25 leaned in again. He tapped a finger to Rachel’s forehead. “I’ll give you a little time to think. If you decide to help, we’ll bring you an optical interface. You’re not leaving that rig until we have the archive. But my question is this: Do you know how long the waiting list is for Eve clones?”