“Nice work, Des, but you’re not in the clear yet,” Hazel said. “They will find another way up soon. You need to get to the top of the tower and secure the briefcase.”
Des walked toward the window. “No,” he said confidently.
“Des, you have to.”
“Not until I know who I’m talking to.”
“I told you. My name is—”
“Hazel, yes I know,” Des interrupted. “And you created me, sure. But how do I know it’s true?”
“My name is Hazel Hawthorn. I work for the Mainland government.”
“I need more than that.”
“Look me up in your archived memory.”
It only took Des a second to pull her up. His vision allowed for information to display semi-transparent in front of him—just enough to see the outside world, just enough to see the information he wanted.
A picture of a woman floated in front of him. She looked nice. Pretty. She had red hair that fell down past her shoulders. Her eyes were green and her skin, pale. The smile on her face seemed friendly but at the same time sad.
“I don’t have a lot of experience with smiles,” Des said, “but yours seems forced.”
“That picture was taken over a year ago,” Hazel said.
“You are younger than I expected.” He scrolled through the information quickly. “You are only twenty-six.”
“I am young for the position I have, but I’m qualified.”
“I never questioned your qualifications,” Des said. “Your reputation more than speaks for your capabilities.”
“I should hope so.” Hazel took a deep breath. “We’re out of time, Des. You need to figure out a way to the briefcase.”
“And what am I supposed to do with it once I reach it?”
“I will tell you when you get there.”
This was the game. He could only ask so much each time he accomplished something. First it was run. Then it was get to the city. Then the box. The tower. Now it was the mysterious briefcase at the top of the tower. But to what end?
Des looked back at the crumbled walls and wondered what the soldiers might try next. But as soon as he had the thought, he heard a crashing noise a floor or two below. He looked out the window and down. The same soldiers he had blocked off from the seventh floor had smashed through the fifth floor windows. He watched as they brought arms out, each hand holding clear disks. The first man reached high above his own head and pressed one of the disks against the glass. He then let his legs dangle out the window as he held onto the disk. With his other hand, the man reached higher with another disk as it suctioned against the glass. With a button, he released the first disk and began his slow climb toward the top of the tower. Des froze when he realized what was happening. More arms jutted out of the broken windows and more men dangled from this dangerous height, slowly climbing upward.
Des ran to the stairs, thinking if he took the rest of them up, he could outrun the others. But there was no running up the stairs. He had been successful in stopping the soldiers from going any further up the steps, but the blast had also blocked Des from ascending.
“I’m stuck,” Des said.
“Use your mind,” Hazel said. “You were built with a good one.”
“I don’t have the suction cups that they have,” Des argued. “I don’t have the ability to—”
“But you do, Des. You are stronger than any of these men. You have abilities you haven’t even discovered yet.”
“Then maybe you could clue me in.”
“Climb, Des. All the way to the top.”
He jogged to the window. The soldiers were almost on top of him now. He pulled his rifle from his shoulder and aimed. He could take a few of them out, dropping them back to the ground. His finger rested on the trigger as he thought about shooting them one-by-one. Could he just shoot the soldiers because they were after the briefcase? What if it belonged to them? What if Hazel wasn’t actually a friend and she was using him?
He slung the rifle back over his shoulder and stepped up onto the ledge of the window. He didn’t have suction cups like the soldiers, but Hazel was right. He didn’t need them. Holding onto the wall next to him, he leaned out the window and looked up. The next level was several feet above him. He bent his knees slightly and jumped upward and smashed a fist through the glass in the next level. His hand went through the glass as easily as it would water and his fingers gripped the ledge above him, his legs dangling over the side. The pane cracked like a spider web above him until it shattered into a million tiny pieces, showering him with sharp shards that would have pierced him if he had flesh. He pulled himself up to the next level. From the eighth floor he jumped and slammed his fist into the window of the ninth floor, continuously climbing upward. At the tenth floor, a large chunk of glass fell past Des and then he heard a scream. When he looked down he saw a man hanging on with one arm, the other limp at his side, blood streaming down his body. The glass must have hit him.
Des was going to start his ascent again, but something happened that he didn’t expect. The man let go of the suction cup and started a free-fall toward the ground. Des watched the man, zooming his vision to see him up close. When the man hit the ground, his head split open and blood shot up into the air. Des’ knowledge told him such a fall was fatal, but he had never thought about the prospect before.
He smashed a fist into the eleventh floor window and pulled himself up. He continued to go up, the man’s fall playing over and over in his mind. He was at the thirty-second floor when he looked down at the ground, almost surprised that he was so far up.
Falling meant death. Death meant the end. Des didn’t want to die. His fingers gripped the window ledge and he froze.
“Des, what’s wrong? Why have you stopped?”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t want to answer.
“The soldiers are gaining on you.”
He didn’t care. From this height, how many pieces would his metal body crumble to if he fell? Would his head crack open like the man he had just watched?
“Des, you have to get to that briefcase.”
“I can’t.” He didn’t know what it was. He couldn’t get his fingers to let go, to loosen his grip. He felt that if he moved then he would fall. The electronic receptors on his body shook him. His hands felt trembly as did his shoulders and chest.
“Don’t say you can’t.”
“I can’t move my fingers.”
“There’s nothing on my screen to indicate that you have a malfunction.”
“This isn’t a malfunction. I just can’t.”
“Are you afraid?”
“It’s so high.”
“Des, you’ve got to move. The soldiers are gaining on you.”
“I…I can’t…”
This was fear. He didn’t know where it came from. He didn’t know why it held onto him so tightly.
Hazel kept talking in his ear, but he didn’t hear her. Seconds went by, perhaps even minutes. He closed his eyes and tried to pretend that he wasn’t holding on to the outside of a sky-high tower. He thought about trying to crawl into one of the floors, but one slip was all it would take.
Loud popping noises and crashing glass brought him to attention. He braved a look below him and saw that the soldiers were not far away, taking shots with one hand, holding on with the other.
“Des, go!” Hazel shouted.
“I can’t,” he managed. “What if I—”
He couldn’t finish his words before his grip on the wall started to loosen. He looked at his hands in terror. It wasn’t his grip, rather the ledge he had grabbed that started to break away from the building. A few bullets sprayed the glass next to him and Des lifted a hand to try and move away. Holding on with one hand wasn’t enough. A piece of metal snapped and he suddenly felt himself falling through the air.
This was it. His life had just begun and now it was over. Within seconds he would hit the ground and there would be nothing left of him. He tried to accept death as
he fell, but he didn’t have time to accept what he did not know. He hadn’t had the chance to research what dying even meant.
The ground came closer and closer. Whatever death was, it waited for him at the surface of the red dirt below.
He didn’t hit the ground as hard as he thought he would. At such a speed, the impact should have been worse. He should have been in pieces all over the ground.
But there was no more red dirt. No more tower. No buildings. As he lay on his back, all he saw was white. Endless white. He sat up straight and looked in every direction. There was no beginning. There was no end.
Was this death? Perhaps he had hit the ground harder than he realized and he didn’t know that he was simply broken pieces on the ground. Maybe there was something wrong with his eyes and that was why he only saw white. But where his vision failed him, his hearing took over.
“Des,” a voice said in his ear. It was Hazel.
“Yes?”
“It’s time to come out.”
2
“It’s time to come out,” Hazel said. She pulled off her headset and tossed it on the desk in front of her. She raked her fingers through her red hair as she leaned back in the chair and let out a deep sigh.
“What was that supposed to be?” Roger asked. He rolled his chair next to hers and Hazel resisted the temptation to snarl.
“He froze,” Hazel said. The muscles in her jaw pulsed as she clenched her teeth.
“Well, I saw that clearly, you just better have a good reason why.”
“I don’t have to answer to you.”
“I never said you did.”
The answer was clear, but she didn’t want to say it. She didn’t want to give Roger the benefit of a victory, and she didn’t want to give Commander Bracken a reason to yell at her. But she had signed up for this job and working for Bracken apparently meant getting yelled at on an almost constant basis.
“You know he’s on his way right now.”
“No doubt,” Hazel said.
“You better come up with something.”
Hazel shook her head and looked at the screen in front of her. Des was confused. Scared. She glanced at a screen to her right and noticed that his fear levels were still far above any of his other emotions, hovering around seventy percent. It had nearly maxed out when he was gripping the side of the building. It was moments like these that made her question what she was doing here. Giving something emotions and then testing them and putting them through intense levels of stress was not what she had in mind when she created Soul.
The Soul Project got its name after a fellow student accused her of trying to give robots souls through consciousness. The comment was meant as a deterrent to her work, but she liked it so much that it became the title of her thesis, and so far, her life’s work. Of course, Hazel was only twenty-six now and hoped that there would be plenty more projects in her life. But if The Soul Project was the only endeavor she ever got to pursue, she thought she would be fine with that. Emotions in mechanical objects was a field that could be studied for decades to come. And with Soul programmed into new robots, new comparisons could be made about human nature. Hazel was confident that the difference between robotic emotions and human emotions would eventually become an entirely new field of study thanks to her flawless programming. Awards were handed out for Hazel’s work. Mainland News declared her a prodigy and one of the most important scientists of their time.
Hazel didn’t care about any of that. She shoved her awards into a drawer at home and she didn’t keep up with the news. All people in the office ever seemed to talk about was the endless fight against the Outlanders. Hazel knew more about the Outlanders than anyone from firsthand experience so she avoided the topic altogether. It was true, however, that she was doing what she was doing now because of the current conflict between the Mainlanders and Outlanders.
Barbarians. Savages. Outlanders were people who were once part of Mainland but rebelled against the government and were ultimately ostracized. But the Outlanders had grown in size over the years and were a constant threat to the lives of the decent people in Mainland. If the surviving world was a target, Mainland would be the bull’s eye and the Outland would be the circle surrounding it, though the highest concentration of Outlanders was to the south. Self-sustaining and rich in resources, Mainland had survived for many years encircled by enemies, but the threat was getting worse by the day. Dead and wounded soldiers came in from time-to-time as they defended the wall surrounding the city. They were involved in small skirmishes mostly, but it was enough of a problem to warrant a new solution.
That was why Hazel was here. That was why Prototype D was born.
A loud bang from the other side of the room interrupted her thoughts. A door slammed against the wall as a group of men rushed through it—at least five of them. Each wore camouflage from cap to combat boots. Four of them carried assault rifles in their hands and a pistol at their belts. In the middle of them was a man who stood taller than the rest, and he didn’t wear a cap and certainly didn’t carry an assault rifle, though a pistol was ready on his belt.
Commander Bracken made his way toward Hazel’s desk. Roger stood up quickly and nervously, knocking over a lamp and dropping a few folders in the process. Hazel remained in her seat, staring at the screen in front of her. She didn’t have to stand when Bracken entered because contrary to everyone else working on this project, Hazel was an independent contractor and wasn’t technically affiliated with the military.
“Sir!” Roger said as he stood with a salute.
Bracken ignored him. “What was that supposed to be?” he asked, standing just a few feet from Hazel. His voice was always gruff and sounded strained as if he had just finished screaming at a group of new recruits.
“I’m not sure, sir,” Roger said nervously. “All the readings are perfect.”
“What about the simulator?”
“Everything proceeded as it should have.”
“Hawthorn?”
Hazel kept her chair turned away from Bracken and his men, staring at the screen that showed Des sitting on the floor. She desperately hoped the commander wouldn’t look at the bottom right of the screen and notice the level of fear the robot felt which was now hovering around sixty percent.
“If what I just saw is what I think I saw, then I’d say you’re a lunatic, Hawthorn.”
“That’s a bit of a stretch,” Hazel said, turning to face him. “What is it you think you saw?”
“I’ve been on the battlefield many times. I know when a man is overcome with fear.”
“That’s what you think happened to Des?” Hazel asked.
“I do,” he said quickly. “This had better be a comm malfunction.”
“Prototype D is working perfectly,” Roger sputtered. “If there is a flaw then it’s in the programming not the mechanics of the robot.”
“Glad I can count on you for backup,” Hazel said under her breath.
Roger turned to her and stared with apologetic eyes.
Bracken spoke next. “This was supposed to run perfectly. Do you realize what kind of pressure I’m under to get a functioning, thinking robot out into a real-world scenario?”
“Of course I understand,” Hazel said. “But this is the first time we’ve used Soul in a functioning robot. Soul is perfect. It can’t be my programming.”
Bracken looked at Roger one more time. “You are certain it wasn’t a mechanical malfunction? What about basic programming? This is the fourth robot. I’ve already given my word to President Morris that this would be the last prototype.”
“Prototype D is structurally sound,” Roger said. “We’ve worked out all the bugs. And Hazel is in charge of basic programming as well as Soul.”
“Basic is fine,” she said.
Hazel couldn’t deny that Des had worked well mechanically. Especially when put up against the previous prototypes. Prototypes A, B, and C were all failures in the lab. They were bad enough that Hazel didn’t even get the
chance to program Soul into them. Instead, each of them had physical defects that prevented them from making it that far. Prototype A had a malfunctioning leg that caused it to run crookedly. If A had been ordered to run in a straight line, it would eventually make a big circle. B had improperly built optics. From the start it was running blind, having to rely on heat sensors and archived memory. B was a bust from the start. And C’s problem was difficult to figure out. In the pre-emotion field simulation, C couldn’t differentiate between enemies and allies. C was a terrific fighter up until it starting working in a simulated squad. It shot at anything and everything. Somehow, its basic programming had malfunctioned. That one was Hazel’s fault since she had created all of the programs for the robots. Hazel had been sure that the problem would fix itself once she installed Soul, but Bracken wouldn’t have it. He wanted a perfect robot from the start—before the Soul program could take effect.
Hazel knew what that meant. It meant that he wanted the option to scrap the Soul program altogether. He fell into the camp that thought mindless drones would be enough in the fight against the Outlanders. Humans would give the orders and the robots would obey. But Hazel’s Soul program offered the chance for the robots to truly think for themselves in battle. They could make sound decisions based on feelings rather than only logical numbers. The program could be successful enough so that eventually a human would never have to step foot in the Outland again. Even commanders could be replaced by robots. Perhaps Bracken feared for his job. No one in a position of power would want to be replaced by a robot. But couldn’t it mean a promotion instead of replacement? That depended on Commander Bracken, Hazel thought.
“Then it’s Soul,” Bracken said, looking at Hazel. His jaws clenched and he looked down at the floor. To Hazel it seemed that he was trying hard to keep himself from lashing out at her. “What would possess you to create a program that allowed fear?”
Prototype D (Prototype D Series Book 1) Page 2