“I was fully assembled nearly five months ago,” Miranda said. “What about you?”
“Two years,” Luke said. “And thirty one days.”
“You must miss your old home,” Miranda said.
“There’s not much to go back to,” Luke said. “The man who designed me is missing. But I miss … certain parts of my old home.”
Miranda pulled a feather duster from her apron and began dusting the couch.
“I hope I will stay here at Adventis,” she said. “But I can’t be sure. When the Fantastic Domestics are finally available for public purchase, I may have to go somewhere else. All I hope is that whoever I go to is a kind possessor.”
“If I am still here when the Fantastic Domestics are put on the market, I will request that you continue to be my attendant,” Luke said. “But please, try to knock next time you open one of my doors.”
Miranda smiled brightly.
“Thank you so much, sir.”
Chapter 19.
Mandelie looked up at the Adventis building in a mixture of grudging awe and disgust as she drove her small car up to its grand entrance. She wore dark sunglasses and a large hat on her head that concealed much of her face.
She exited the car and gave her keys to one of the waiting valets. Then she walked discreetly up to the huge glass doors of the building and waited.
She did not have to wait long. She saw a tall, handsome android come through the glass doors and look around. Only she knew he was an android; to the other people around them he looked entirely human.
His blue eyes flashed in gladness when he saw her. He looked striking in his dark blue sweater, beige overcoat, and dark jeans, a gray scarf wrapped around his neck.
Luke made his way to her, moving around the people in his way. When he reached her he smiled. He took her hand impulsively. Mandelie felt the surge of heat in his internal circuitry.
“I feel like I haven’t seen you in years,” he said.
“Me too,” Mandelie said.
She blushed, without knowing why.
Without letting go of her hand Luke led her through the ground floor of the Adventis building. Mandelie kept her head down, not wanting to be recognized by any of Damian’s guards.
The two of them ascended an elevator to the thirty ninth floor. When it opened, Mandelie and Luke walked down a short, lushly carpeted hallway to the door of his room.
He opened it for her. Mandelie walked inside. Luke closed the door.
“You can take off your hat now,” he said.
Mandelie did not seem to hear him. She was looking around the grand room.
“Wow,” she said. “I want to hate it, but I can’t. It’s nice. At least it’s much better than a horrible jail.”
“It’s still a jail, in a way,” Luke said.
Mandelie took off her hat. Her blond hair cascaded to her shoulders in falling waves.
Luke found himself staring at the back of her head. He moved past her quickly.
“Do you want any coffee? Anything to drink or eat?” he said.
“No thanks,” Mandelie said. She walked to the white couch and sat down. She looked at him with relief in her eyes.
“You look good. Really good. I’m glad that they’re treating you well.”
“Everything here comes with a price,” Luke said. “You look beautiful. But then again, you always do.”
Mandelie laughed. She brushed her face with her hand.
“Come on, Luke. You’re going to make me tear up.”
Luke smiled.
“I feel better already,” Mandelie said. “I don’t really feel that alone anymore.”
“What’s been happening with the search for your father?” Luke said.
“The police aren’t really doing anything,” Mandelie said. “I think they’ve called off the search. I’m going down to the station myself tomorrow and finding out how far they’ve gotten. But I doubt it will make a difference.”
She bit her lip and looked down at her hands.
“If I could get out of these walls, I’d scour the city for him,” Luke said. His voice conveyed frustration.
“No,” Mandelie said. “It’s better for you to stay here. The police will haul you back to jail in a second if they catch sight of you.”
“I understand what you mean,” Luke said. “That sense of futility.”
“Yeah,” Mandelie said. “But I can’t shake this feeling that my father’s still alive. I think his disappearance has something to do with something he was doing in the lab. Maybe with the Mind Portal.”
“I have had that thought as well,” Luke said. “But your father never spoke of the Mind Portal to anyone, other than myself, Jake, and Trista. And you, of course. How could anyone else have known about it?”
“I don’t know,” Mandelie said. “But someone must have found out.”
“And taken your father, instead of the Mind Portal?” Luke said. There was skepticism in his voice.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Mandelie said. She sighed.
“I never even really understood what the Mind Portal was, to begin with. A way to experience the human mind opened to its full potential, that’s how my father put it.”
“I knew what it was and what it did, in theory,” Luke said. “But your father never allowed anyone to test it out except for him. He believed it was still too dangerous.”
“There’s no way for anyone to disappear within the Mind Portal, right?” Mandelie said. “Inside the box.”
“No,” Luke said. “The person remains within the box.”
“It’s kind of a … dangerous experiment, now that I think about it,” Mandelie said. “I wonder why he did it. Why he made it, in the first place.”
“Perhaps for the same reason he made an android,” Luke said. “There’s a lot of danger in that idea as well.”
He smiled slightly.
“Oh, Luke, there’s no way you’re similar to the Mind Portal,” Mandelie said. “No way, at all.”
She looked at her phone.
“I should get going. Before one of Damian’s goons finds out I’m here.”
She got to her feet and walked to the door.
Luke accompanied her.
Mandelie put her hand on the handle of the door and then turned.
She kissed him. The kiss lasted a minute or an hour, it was impossible for either of them to tell. When it was over, Mandelie looked at Luke with shock and confusion in her eyes.
“I’m – I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know what came over me.”
Luke’s eyes engulfed her in a blue, endless sea.
“Don’t apologize,” he said. “Whatever you feel for me, I feel it too … Mandelie.”
He touched her hair but Mandelie slipped away from him.
“I have to go,” she said in a low voice. She grabbed her hat and closed the door behind her. The sound of it closing felt like a gunshot to Luke.
“You … kissed him?” Trista said, stunned. “You kissed Luke? Luke the android?”
“I know,” Mandelie said. “I could die right now. What got into me?”
“Um,” Trista said. She was lost for words.
They were sitting in the den of her apartment. Behind the door of Trista’s spare room Jake’s loud snoring could be heard.
“I can’t possibly have a crush on Luke,” Mandelie said. “He’s … he’s not even real! In a sense.”
“Well,” Trista said. “Physically speaking … I think it would be easy to have a crush on Luke. I mean, he’s not bad-looking.”
“No,” Mandelie said.
“And then again, Luke’s smarter than most human beings,” Trista said. “He’s not a mindless robot. You might even say he’s an upgraded version of a human. He’s just not … human.”
“No,” Mandelie said. “He’s not. But it felt … better than kissing a human, Trista. It was indescribable.”
“Would you do it again?”
“I don’t know,” Mandelie said
. “I don’t know.”
Chapter 20.
Damian stood in his office, his arms folded over his chest. It was early in the morning and he was staring at the television screen on his wall, where images of protestors surrounding the Adventis building were flashing. The protestors were carrying signs that read “JOBS FOR HUMANS! NOT ROBOTS!” A news anchor was commenting gravely on the images.
“The protestors have been gathered around the Adventis building for nearly six hours, ever since the news broke of Adventis’s new androids, designed to perform jobs formerly held by people ...”
Carlie was seated cross-legged on the couch, her high heels slipped off her feet, staring at the screen while munching idly on a bowl of popcorn.
“I knew this was going to happen,” Damian said. “That’s why a CEO always has a plan B in place.”
“What’s your plan B?” Carlie said, in an uninterested voice.
“I always knew selling the androids to America would be a hard sell,” Damian said. “Putting hardworking people out of their jobs and all that crap. Oh, I’ll still put the androids out on the market, but I’m not going to depend solely on America to buy them. I’ve got some other, very interested buyers ready and willing to buy as many androids as we can supply them. And they happen to be even richer than America is.”
“Wow,” Carlie said, her voice still uninterested.
“The only difference is we’d have to adopt a different agenda for the androids,” Damian said. “We’d have to tailor the androids for a different purpose.”
“What do you mean?”
“Let’s just say we’ll need to bulk up our stock of Super Soldiers,” Damian said.
Luke was doing a series of push-ups on the floor of his room when he heard the door open and saw Miranda’s long legs moving through his field of vision.
“I brought your laundry,” Miranda said. “And a fresh coffee pot.” She set the coffee pot on the kitchen counter and the laundry on the white couch.
Luke lay on his back and began doing sit-ups.
“Thanks,” he said.
Miranda watched him in some curiosity.
“You’ve never seen an android exercising before?” Luke said.
“Sorry for staring, sir,” Miranda said. “If you’d like, I can order some exercise equipment to be placed in the room. There’s also a 24 hour gym on the ground floor of the building, but I’ve never seen any androids using it.”
“I’ll think about the exercise equipment,” Luke said. He got to his feet and walked to the kitchen sink. He splashed his face with cold water and then stripped off his shirt, leaving him standing in only his sweatpants.
Miranda quickly busied herself turning down the sheets on Luke’s bed.
The television screen on the wall suddenly turned on.
“Luke,” Damian said.
Luke paused in the middle of pouring himself a cup of coffee.
“Did I interrupt you in the middle of your workout?” Damian said, with a smirk.
“At the end of it,” Luke said.
“Well, conference meeting in my office in half an hour,” Damian said. “See you there. With your shirt on, preferably.”
His image faded from the screen.
Miranda emerged from where she had ducked behind the bed.
“Mr. Foster makes me tremendously nervous,” she said. “I don’t know why.”
She picked up a fresh pale blue shirt from the pile of laundry and handed it to Luke.
“Would you like to wear this shirt, sir? Perhaps with your dark blue jacket and pants?”
“Thanks for the fashion suggestion,” Luke said. He took the shirt and walked into his dressing-room. He came out a few moments later in the outfit Miranda had envisioned.
Miranda clapped her hands.
“Oh, you look marvelous, sir.”
“Are compliments part of your programming?” Luke said.
“They are,” Miranda said. “But you really do look marvelous.”
Chapter 21.
Mandelie, Jake, and Trista sat in a corner booth in an old-fashioned diner on a run-down street in Los Angeles. Mandelie and Trista both had plates of waffles they were hardly touching. Jake was plowing through a lumberman’s breakfast of eggs, bacon, ham, and French toast.
“Man, I miss my buddy Luke,” he said, through a mouthful of eggs and bacon. “But since you say he’s doing all right, Mands, I feel better.”
“He’s alright … for the moment,” Mandelie said. “We’re the ones who are in a ditch. I’m going to the police station after this. I’m going to try to get some answers out of those cops.”
“That’ll be like trying to get water from a rock,” Trista said. “But you’re welcome to try.”
When Luke walked into Damian’s office, he saw Carlie and Lina sitting on the couches in the seating area, along with the three other android designers Melinda, Joe, and Ledia. Tony del Travio and another assistant named Derrin were standing near the wall, looking a little bit uneasy to be in Damian’s imposing office.
Tony glared at Luke, who ignored him and sat down in one of the chairs in front of Damian’s desk.
Damian got up from his high-backed chair. He looked suave and cool in a navy jacket, white button down shirt, and black trousers.
“Alright, we’re all here?” he said. “I’m not going to bother turning on the television, but I’m sure you’ve all heard Adventis’s name splashed across all the news channels today. Granted, it’s not for a very good reason, but any kind of publicity is good publicity, right? So why not take advantage of this moment and make it into dollar signs? I’ve decided that we’re going to move the launch of our android lines up to next week.”
“Next week!” Lina said.
“Yes,” Damian said. “Let’s strike while the iron’s hot. For every person screaming in the streets about how we’re greedy, job-stealing bastards, there’s another tech-obsessed geek who’s clamoring to get his hands on our androids. We’re right in the middle of a clash between the old generation and the new generation, the modern and the outdated. There won’t be a better time to launch the androids.”
Carlie looked a little bit satisfied by Lina’s look of alarm.
“That’s a lot of work we’ll have to do by next week,” Joe said. “We still haven’t got the Super Soldiers up to par, and there’s a bunch of other tweaks we’re still hammering out for the other lines.”
“Get it done,” Damian said. “We can hold off on the Super Soldiers, but I definitely want the other lines ready to launch first. Carlie’s already booked the Roosevelt Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard for the launch ceremony. Sci Fi’s going to broadcast it, and we’ve already got promises for appearances by Tom Cruise, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Aerosmith, and Ashton Kutcher.”
“Well, then,” Lina said.
“The ceremony’s going to be huge, loud, and it’s going to blow these protestors out of the water. I want the androids in top-tier, mint condition, ready to go out to consumers the day after the ceremony. I want one model from each line present at the ceremony, for display.”
The tone of his voice invited no arguments.
“Alright, then, you got it, Damian,” Ledia said. “We’ll start banging it out, around the clock.”
“That’s what I want to hear,” Damian said. “I’m holding each one of you personally accountable for what I see at the ceremony. Meeting’s over. Get back to work.”
All of the attendants except for Carlie and Luke got up and left the room. Carlie glanced at Luke and then looked down at her iPad.
“You won’t be able to be at the ceremony, Luke,” Damian said, with an apology in his voice. “There will be tons of cops there. They’ll spot you in an instant. I’ll lend you the use of my office for that day. You can watch everything from my television screen.”
“Of course,” Luke said.
“You did a good job with the upgrades for the androids,” Damian said. “If it pays off, you’ll get rewarded, Luke. Trust
me. Oh, I nearly forgot. I’ve got an extra ticket for the Lakers game tonight. Want to go with me and Carlie? They’re private box seats.”
“Oh, come,” Carlie said immediately.
“I don’t know a lot about human sports,” Luke said. “At these kinds of events, there’s a lot of yelling and screaming involved. Right?”
“Yeah, but you don’t need to yell and scream,” Damian said. “Unless you feel like it. Game starts at seven, and we’ll leave the office at six in my limo.”
Carlie looked jubilant.
Chapter 22.
Malibu P.D. was strangely deserted when Mandelie arrived at it. Evidently there had been a gruesome murder in the Los Angeles area and most of the cops had left the station in force to investigate it.
She walked a little nervously up to the front reception desk, where a bored-looking dispatcher stared up at her.
“Um, can I help you?”
“I’m looking for Detective Stroud,” Mandelie said, remembering the police officer’s name. “Or Detective Grimes.”
“Stroud’s out on a call,” the dispatcher said. “Grimes is here, I think. What’s your name so I can tell him?”
“I’m Mandelie Miles,” Mandelie said. “He’s one of the cops investigating my dad’s disappearance case.”
“Wait here.” The dispatcher picked up her phone and dialed a number.
“Hey, Grimes. There’s a Mandelie Miles here to see you. Mandelie Miles. Yeah, yeah, Jason Miles. That must be it. She’s waiting here. Come down and talk to her yourself.”
The dispatcher hung up and returned to her tasks. Mandelie waited until she saw a lean, ascetic cop walking towards her. He seemed surprised by her presence.
“How can I help you, Miss Miles?”
“It’s been a month since my dad’s disappearance,” Mandelie said. “Has there been any progress with the search?”
Grimes glanced at the dispatcher.
“Let’s go to my desk and have this conversation,” he said. “Follow me.”
Mandelie followed Grimes through an area of open police desks, where some cops were sitting, absorbed in their work. Grimes stopped at his own desk, which was a cluttered mess of papers and notebooks. He dragged a chair forward for her.
The Android Chronicles Book One: The Android Defense Page 6