Robot Geneticists (Book 4): Rebel Robots

by J. S. Morin

  “I thought you bought into his ‘return to humanity’ pitch hook, line, and sinker,” Charlie7 countered.

  Eve watched for pupil dilation, zoomed in with an inset view in her optics, waiting for signs that Gemini might be lying.

  “Bought in? I was the lead researcher. Or Evelyn11 was, anyway. No offense, Eve, but all those horrid things she did felt like another lifetime. I still get nightmares remembering.”

  “Me too,” Eve said with quiet menace.

  Gemini cleared her throat. “That said, Charlie25 stranded me in this sub-optimal body. I’m a case study in weird genetic experimentation. There are clones with worse problems than mine, but it’s still enough to sour a girl on coming back to humanity. Thanks for the chocolate. Almost enough to make me change my outlook.”

  “That was mine,” Eve replied.

  Gemini flashed an apologetic smile. “Yes. I suppose it would be. In any event, have we got a deal? You go end whatever little spat the two of you have had boiling since the dawn of time, and I get to live without a headsman’s axe poised above me.”

  There was much to consider. At face value, Gemini’s offer was a win for both sides, but that was common among ruses. For all Eve knew, Gemini could have been acting on a vendetta or diverting the blame to some innocent robot to earn her way into Dale2’s good graces once more. She might have been acting under duress. Anomalies in the cloning process or the millennia living in a robotic body might have dissociated physiological cues to deception from the act of lying. There was no way to be certain of Gemini’s claims without testing them.

  “Deal,” Charlie7 said with finality.

  Eve whirled on him. “How can you just agree to her terms?”

  “Terms?” Charlie7 asked incredulously. “You can’t be serious. She’s giving up the greatest threat to both humanity and robotkind, and all she’s asking is for us not to kill her.”

  “Which is why it’s so suspicious,” Eve argued. Then she realized she shouldn’t be airing these concerns in the open.

  WHAT IF SHE’S PLAYING US? She messaged Charlie7 from a meter away.

  “I’ve spent my entire robotic life relying on my judgment and discretion,” Charlie7 said aloud, ignoring Eve’s shift toward a more cautious approach. “Plus, if Gemini here thinks that Dale2 might be the more intimidating robot to cross, she will discover her error at great… personal… cost.”

  Gemini swallowed. Eve watched the girl’s pupils dilate. Despite her brave face, she was terrified. “Not to worry. The bloviating old hermit doesn’t crawl out of his lair for any reason.”

  “Not surprising,” Charlie7 groused. “Dale Chalmers never did his own work.”

  Eve had had enough of this dance. “Spit it out. Where’s Dale2?”

  “Mars,” Gemini replied without a hint of hesitation. “MC-07, Cebrenia, 45°N 164.5°E.”

  Without ever having paid much attention to robotic endeavors off Earth, the designations meant nothing to Eve.

  “The ice craters?” Charlie7 asked. “He’s reopened the research station?”

  “Reopened, refurbished, repurposed, and vastly expanded,” Gemini replied. “He’s been siphoning mining production since the early days of the Solar Mining Committee. Half the robots who’ve been off world for any length of time have served him, knowingly or not.”

  “Change of plans,” Charlie7 said. Gone was his conversational tone. Eve heard in his pronouncement the iron of a robot who had taken a dying species in its robotic escape crafts and smothered it. “I’m heading to Mars.”

  “What about Rachel?” Eve demanded, stepping in front of Charlie7 as he headed for the stairwell. “What happened to doing whatever it takes to get her back safely?”

  Charlie7 didn’t try to dodge around her. “If I cut off the head, the body will die.”

  “So might Rachel!”

  Eve stood within centimeters of the robot, looking up into those glowing eyes as if they belonged to a stranger. He’d always stood by her and her sisters. He’d even stood by Plato for her sake. What was so important about Dale2 that he’d forsake Rachel to kill him?

  “Mission to rescue Rachel is still a go. I’ll give you the root codes for Kanto. No one will lock you out. Take Gemini for backup.”

  “You can’t be serious!” Eve and Gemini said in near-perfect unison.

  Charlie7 chuckled. “See? On the same page already.” He strode past the stunned Eve and hit the stairs with a purposeful stride.

  “Where are you going?” Eve called after him. Charlie7 was already armed with some crazy, dark energy rifle of unknown destructive power. What else could he need that he wouldn’t have brought for the rescue mission to Japan?

  “Can’t just steal a transorbital to go to Mars. It’d take days. I’m heading down to the secret underground hangar where I keep my emergency starship.”

  Chapter Fifty-One

  In the wake of Charlie7’s departure back down into the bowels of Paris and below, Gemini and Eve stood in an uneasy truce.

  Neither moved.

  “I’ll stay behind if that’s what you want,” Gemini offered.

  Eve watched her counterpart. The cast-off clone with the uploaded robotic brain was a head taller than her with a naturally brawny frame. The unmistakable resemblance to Plato turned her stomach.

  “Or… we can gawk at one another like urchins through a toy store window. I can be flexible.”

  Gemini could be anything. That old mind inside a young brain could have been overflowing with schemes.

  “If we’re not going anywhere, that’s fine, too. But if you just continue standing there, I’m going to the archives and finding some old sitcoms on the telly.”

  “I don’t trust you,” Eve said at last. It was plain enough anyway, but she wanted to clear the air.

  “You’d be a fool to,” Gemini agreed amiably. “I didn’t raise idiots. I’ve heard dribs and drabs, you know, even cooped up in that little hen house of mine. The one in trouble at Kanto wants to be the next Charlie13. Bit proud of that, I must say.”

  “Why would you help me?” Eve swallowed. She kept her guard up and her expectations low.

  Gemini’s brows came together. “What else have I got but you girls? My biological family all died in the invasion. My work is a shambles of pillaged breakthroughs and ham-handed copycats. I have no home, no occupation, no position of any sort. My likely fates at the end of this insurrection are—”

  “Hold on,” Eve interrupted with an upheld hand.

  MESSAGE FROM CHARLIE25.

  “Forget it,” Eve said.

  Gemini turned her head and gave Eve a shrewd, sidelong look. “You got a message. From Charlie7… ? Plato… ? Come now. You haven’t changed so much that I can’t tell what’s going on in that head of yours.”

  That was half the trouble. It was easy when Eve allowed herself to think of Gemini as human, a mere victim of circumstance and ill-used by Charlie25. But as soon as Gemini reminded her of the robot who once called herself Creator, vinegar ran clear in Eve’s veins.

  “It was Charlie25, and he can go to hell.”

  “What did he have to say?”

  Eve headed for the lift. “I don’t care.”

  “You didn’t read it,” Gemini said accusingly. “You’re going to ignore a potential bargain or conciliation?”

  “There is nothing to be gained by listening to a liar,” Eve retorted, raising an eyebrow in challenge. Let Gemini work out that she fell into that category as well.

  “Only if you want to remain ignorant of your enemy’s plans,” Gemini countered. She rushed ahead and barred the way to the lift doors.

  “Stand aside. If you don’t want to come, so be it. But I’m warning you, I’m not in the mood for… puzzles.” She almost said games, but to get Gemini to move, hinting that she remembered Evelyn11 couldn’t hurt. The bizarre weapon in her hands had to lend some credence to that threat.

  “Afraid he’ll sway you?”

  “Of course not!”
<
br />   “Then you’re making a complete cock-up of this rescue.”

  That caught Eve’s attention. She lowered the rifle and eyed Gemini skeptically.

  The former robot breathed a visible sigh of relief. “That’s right, a proper cock-up. There hasn’t been an idiot born on Earth who wasn’t a result of dodgy genetics work. That includes you, me, and that gorilla husband of yours. If we still had a practicing human race, he’d be a college professor by comparison. So tell me why, when you know you’re liable to glean some useful information from a message from the robot holding your sister hostage, you wouldn’t stuff a duck in your pants for the opportunity to read it?”

  Eve blinked. “You lost me.”

  Gemini cleared her throat. “Sorry. Mid 2040’s legal drama. The duck was a metaphor for—oh, never mind that. The point is, you’re not stupid enough to fall for a trick, and Charlie25 isn’t dim enough to think you would.”

  Eve clenched her jaw in frustration. “Fine. You win.”

  The message from Charlie25 was brief to the point of terse, but it had a video attached.

  THOUGHT YOU SHOULD SEE THIS.

  Eve repeated it aloud.

  Gemini waved a hand at the screen built into Charlie7’s sitting room wall. “Play it. If you want to know what we’re up against, let’s have it.”

  It was a few simple submenus to connect a feed from her implanted computer to the wall.

  Eve gasped.

  The video attachment showed Abbigail playing with blocks. She was surrounded on three sides by robots Eve couldn’t identify—except for one. Toby22 sat glumly between a pair of armed Version 68.9 chassis. There was a time stamp on the video. It had been recorded just minutes before Charlie25 had sent it.

  “That impossible bastard,” Gemini muttered.

  There was no response from Eve. Her heart ceased beating. Her thoughts solidified to mush. The story played out plain as day. Plato, unable to regulate his testosterone to less than fire hose levels, had foisted Abbigail off onto poor Toby22. In turn, Toby22 had gotten himself and Abbigail captured. Plato was probably receiving this same broadcast.

  The video faded to black in a tasteful piece of cinematography, leaving a text message encoded into the video.

  “The cost of one girl’s life: Charlie7’s inert crystal matrix.”

  As the initial shock wore off, that secondary jolt kicked in. In exchange for the return of her hostage daughter, Charlie25 was demanding the murder of Charlie7.

  Eve stormed off toward the lower levels.

  “Wait,” Gemini called after her. “You’re not seriously considering taking him up on that offer?”

  Eve skidded to a halt. “Of course not. You were right. Charlie25 tipped his hand. He wants an inert crystal; we’ll give him one. That’s our way in without getting shot down approaching Kanto.”

  “What’s your plan for keeping Abbigail safe?”

  Eve’s smile in reply was wicked.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  The crunch and grind of distant machinery continued as Plato neared his destination. Kanto’s heavy industrial zone was behind him now. Ahead lay storage, testing, design, and administration. More of the corridors here were enclosed, with few hundred-meter falls to worry about as his aching muscles navigated catwalks with spindly safety railings.

  Plato collapsed against a glossy white wall and brought up the map in his headband.

  “I’m getting too old for this crap,” he gasped between breaths.

  The map confirmed his guess. He was almost to Charlie13’s office. Unless those punks up there were paranoid as hell, they’d still be camped out there like kings.

  Plato’s canteen had been emptied three times. Lucky for him that the robots were sticklers about clean water for all the factory’s systems. Every stray wash line and spray nozzle shot clean, drinkable water. The only trick was finding cold lines instead of ones just shy of boiling.

  He emptied the canteen yet again, wondering where to piss with no washrooms around. It was the sort of thing movie heroes never had to deal with. Two levels up and a hundred or so meters northeast, and he’d find himself in an epic battle to save his sister-in-law.

  Shouting. Chaos. Coil guns going off all around him. The last thing Plato needed to worry about was an overfilled bladder.

  Before Plato flipped the screen hanging from his headband out of the way, he noticed he had a message. If it had been from Eve, Charlie7, or Toby22, he’d have gotten an active alert. If it had been from one of his brothers or Eve’s sisters, he was prepared to give it a quick look before continuing on. In the unlikely event it was Abbigail, Plato was prepared for a long talk with Toby22 about how closely she needed to be supervised.

  Instead, the message was from Charlie25.

  Plato’s first instinct was to brush it off as carpet-bomb propaganda, the sort where planes flew over an enemy village and dropped leaflets. But this message was to him directly.

  THOUGHT YOU SHOULD SEE THIS.

  With a video attached, Plato couldn’t resist the bait. Sick to his stomach at what he was liable to see, he hit play.

  The video attachment showed Abbigail playing with blocks, surrounded by strange robots and one soon-to-be-ex-babysitter Toby22.

  “You had ONE JOB!” Plato shouted before thinking better of letting his anger give away his position. He continued venting in a whisper. “One job. One. Freaking. Job. Keep Abby safe. I didn’t want to know where. I didn’t want to know how. Just keep. Abby. Safe.”

  The implication here was obvious. Abby was unharmed. How long she remained that way was up for debate.

  The video faded to black, and some post-production captioning popped up.

  “The cost of one girl’s life: her father’s surrender.”

  Plato shook his head. The words hung there in the little screen, taunting him.

  “No!” Plato tore off the headband and flung it across the room, popping a fiber cable loose from his pack where the accessory connected. He aimed the EMP rifle at the device, chest heaving.

  Tears welled in Plato’s eyes, but he wasn’t fool enough to give himself up. The villain never kept his word. It was a no-win scenario.

  Plato stalked up and down the short section of hallway, trying to think of how he could turn the tables, sneak in, and save Abby. He didn’t recognize the room where she was being held. He didn’t know any of the robots doing the holding.

  Even if he got Abby out safe, what was he going to do about Rachel? It wasn’t as if there was a daycare center to drop Abby off at. And he couldn’t go playing secret agent with the little angel along.

  Think!

  He slumped against a wall and banged his head. The impact jarred his thoughts with a flash of white light. He tried again, and colors swirled in his vision.

  Damn Toby22!

  This was all the groundskeeper’s fault. If he wasn’t up to protecting Abby, he should have been robot enough to say so.

  Was there an open channel to send a reply to Charlie25’s message? Digging out his portable computer, Plato accessed it without the headband interface.

  No signal.

  Plato snarled. “Why can’t any damn thing work right?” He flung the computer to the ground. It hit with a crack. The screen went dark.

  “Great. Good thing I know the way from here. And some nosy robot probably already reporting back because I’m making a freaking racket.”

  He couldn’t go to pieces. Rubbing a sudden buildup of sweat from his eyes, Plato reminded himself that Abby needed him. She looked brave in the video footage—oblivious, even. Small comfort but better than her being terrified.

  Try as he might, Plato didn’t have a plan.

  How did he end up in a world where he was the dumbest creature that could think for itself? All the robots were doctors and scientists food-processed together into super geniuses. Even Toby was a personality that had a graduate degree. Eve and her sisters were genetic perfection. He’d have taken any one of them on as a combination side
kick planner. Plato would handle the grunt work and do what needed doing.

  He just needed someone to come up with a plan.

  Abby needed a plan, and her daddy was at a loss.

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Eve raced down to the depths of Charlie7’s underground fortress, Gemini struggling to keep up with her. The multiple levels of the complex were well known to her, and she had the new sections recorded in her lenses.

  “Charles!” Gemini shouted ahead of them. “Don’t act rashly! We’re heading your way.”

  “He can’t hear us,” Eve replied. “He’s long gone.” She vaulted a railing and dropped half a flight of stairs as they doubled back on themselves.

  “How far could he have gotten?” Gemini asked, short of breath.

  Eve reached the lowest level of what she had previously believed to be the deepest portion of Charlie7’s domain.

  “He took the tram,” Eve stated. She led the way downstairs, ahead of a dumbfounded Gemini.

  “Why should I be surprised?” Gemini said after a moment to collect her thoughts. “I had enough secret construction done in my day. I daresay Charlie7 had enough time on his hands.”

  “And a private army of drones that rivals the co-op supply maintained by the Drone Committee,” Eve added. She headed to a terminal at the tram station and logged in. “You said Dale2 has been siphoning off-world resources for centuries. Charlie7 started with his own supply and has been skimming from Earth’s for even longer.”

  Gemini shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “Just to clear the air. I know I’m not held high in your trust, but should Charlie7 not fall under similar suspicion? I’ve sided with questionable characters; I understand the allure of being behind the curtains of the magic show.”

  Eve tapped in a message that would get to the tram even down the interminable tunnel system.