The Girl With Acrylic Eyes

by Greg Krojac

  “Which one is Rojo?”

  “Neither of these two.”

  “Have you actually met this Rojo guy?”

  “Once before, ma’am.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “Eccentric ma’am, But he’s the best.”

  Suddenly, a short, scrawny, bald-headed man wearing a brightly coloured Hawaiian shirt, cargo-pants, and a baseball cap appeared in front of them as if from nowhere. He grasped Rachel’s right hand with both of his and shook it furiously.

  “Hello, Rachel. So nice to see you again.”

  He turned his gaze to Karen.

  “And you must be Karen.”

  Karen suddenly found her right hand being shaken with all the enthusiasm that had been afforded to Rachel. Eventually, Rojo released her hand and she felt free to talk.

  “And you must be Rojo.”

  An enormous smile took over Rojo’s face.

  “I guess I must be. Yes, I am Rojo, Rojo is me – or is it Rojo is I? No, I was right the first time. I am the one and only. El Magico. El Rojo, Digital lock-picker extraordinaire. How may I help you, ladies?”

  Karen handed the man a piece of paper upon which was written the alpha-numeric ‘SAI-0047’.

  “We need you to search the Dark Web to see if you can find any mention of this.”

  Rojo looked at the piece of paper, turned it over to find nothing written on the other side, and read it out loud to himself, but in a hushed voice so that his two colleagues couldn’t hear.

  “SAI-0047? What is it? Is it a serial number? You do realise that this will be like looking for a needle in a haystack?”

  Karen nodded.

  “Which is why we’ve come to you, Mr Rojo. You are the best hacker out there, aren’t you?”

  Rojo tapped his nose.

  “One of the best, certainly.”

  He paused for a second or two as if he were calculating something in his head.

  “No, who am I kidding? I am the best, I’m simply wonderful, I’m numero uno. I’m the man. I’m your daddy.”

  Karen looked impatient.

  “Well? Can you help us?”

  Rojo put an arm around Rachel’s shoulder and tilted his head towards hers.

  “Favour repaid?”

  Rachel nodded. She didn’t need permission from her boss; the favour was a personal matter that Karen had no need to know about.

  “Favour repaid.”

  “In full?”

  “In full. And please keep this on the down low. Just us three.”

  Rojo mimicked his mouth being closed with a zipper. He went over to where the two youngsters were still working at their computers and tapped them on the shoulders, before handing them each fifty dollars.

  “Go off and play for an hour. No, make it two. It’s 12:20 now. I don’t want to see you again until three o’clock at the earliest.”

  The pair headed for the door, money in hand, but were halted briefly by a final order from Rojo before leaving the building.

  “And no drugs.”

  Rojo went across the room and sat down at an old fashioned desk, probably an antique, which gave no hint of what secrets it may hold within. He tapped a release code into a display that appeared on the back of his wrist, and a holographic screen and keyboard materialised out of thin air.

  The two police officers couldn’t hide their shock. They had never seen anything like it before. Rojo grinned.

  “Impressive, isn’t it? State-of-the-art, not released for public consumption yet.”

  The enquiring police mentality meant that Karen wanted to know more.

  “So how come you’ve got this equipment?”

  “I’m a security consultant for the designers.”

  Karen would have liked to know more but was stopped from asking any more questions by Rachel clearing her throat rather pointedly. A few keyboard strokes on the virtual keyboard and a web browser – no different to any other browser – appeared on the screen. Rojo’s chair swivelled round.

  “Please face the other way, ladies. This bit is top-secret.”

  The two police officers did as they were told, resisting the temptation to peek. Thirty seconds later, Rojo gave them permission to face the screen again, and they saw rows and rows of machine code flying up the screen faster than the eye could focus upon. Rojo stood up.

  “Fancy a cuppa, ladies? This may take a while.”

  Rojo led Karen and Rachel into a small kitchenette and boiled a kettle, before pouring hot water into three plain mugs already primed with individual tea-bags, He used a teaspoon to push down the tea-bags to speed up the process.

  “No, I’m a genius not a psychic. The other two mugs were for the kids. Milk, ladies?”

  Milk accepted by both, he hovered over the mugs with a small bottle of artificial sweetener.

  “Sorry, but I don’t have real sugar. Sweetener?”

  Again, the two women accepted the offer, and the three went back to their chairs to drink their tea, while Rojo’s search algorithm continued to plough through thousands of sites per minute. Suddenly the screen froze and the vertical cascade of letters and numbers was replaced with a splash screen with no identifying images or text except for two fields requesting a username and password. Karen was confused.

  “What’s happening?”

  Rojo shrugged.

  “It’s a login screen.”

  “I can see that. Can you get in?”

  “Not through the front door.”

  “So you have a back door?”

  “You’re getting the hang of this, aren’t you? Give me a few seconds.”

  A blurring of the hands and the splash-screen was replaced with a schematic image of a naked Gynoid. Rojo didn’t understand the significance of what he was looking at but the women recognised the face of the android immediately. It was Coppélia.

  There was a sense of urgency about Rojo now.

  “We have about two minutes before we get thrown out of the system and they find out who we are. I’ve a couple of trojans which are hiding our identity but they can’t do it forever. I suggest we snoop around for a minute and then get the hell out of there. One minute thirty at the most.”

  Karen could see that the hacker was restless.

  “Ok. Can we find out what SAI stands for?”

  “That shouldn’t be too difficult.”

  Rojo flipped between various screens until he found the answer.

  “SAI. Syber Android Industries. Spelling’s obviously not their strongpoint. What else? You’ve got about forty-five seconds left.”

  Karen and Rachel both answered in unison.

  “The money.”

  They fist-bumped to celebrate their simultaneous thought. Karen continued.

  “Where are they getting their money from?”

  “I’ll try, but we only have thirty-five seconds now.”

  Rojo performed his magic with ten seconds to spare.

  “There you go.”

  The police officers peered at the screen, unable to believe their eyes. Before them was a list of investors, very recognisable investors. Rojo pressed a key and the screen went blank.

  “Sorry ladies, but any longer and there was a risk of them tracking us. It was my countermeasures against their countermeasures, and with the size and importance of those funding this project – well, I wouldn’t put your money on me. As good as I am.”

  Karen and Rachel thanked Rojo for his help and reminded him of the need for secrecy, before being blindfolded again and taken back to their vehicle. They needn’t have worried; he wasn’t going to tell anyone else about what he’d seen – he didn’t want to mess with Syber Android Industries. They were obviously way out of his league.

  The hopper slowly made its way back to the Sexdroid Unit’s office, edging its way through the late lunchtime rush hour traffic. Karen wasn’t in a hurry, so she didn’t put the vehicle into VertiCar mode – she wanted to talk with Rachel about what they had just witnessed.

  “Did
I see what I just saw, Rachel?”

  “If you mean the list of international government agencies that are funding this project? Yes, you did see what you just saw.”

  “I mean it’s getting money from the US government, Britain, Russia, China, Germany, Japan, and dozens of other governments. Billions and billions of dollars from international sources. That’s heavyweight investment in anybody’s language.”

  Rachel agreed.

  “The amounts being invested are the type of money that we normally only see in military budgets.”

  Rachel knew she might sound a little crazy, but continued her thought process.

  “What if Coppélia’s some new kind of super-weapon? Maybe someone’s planning to create an army of Coppélias, super-strong androids able to think on their feet and learn, adapt, and evolve to meet any situation and threat without requiring programming updates? I mean, I know the Terminator films are just movies, but what if Coppélia is the first of a breed of killer androids? I know it sounds mad, I keep telling myself it’s stupid. It’s something out of science fiction, but, then again, everything is science fiction – until it becomes reality.”

  Karen looked at a photo of the android that she kept on her handheld digital photo album.

  “She looks so harmless. But we’ve both seen her strength with our own eyes. And then Stumpy –.”

  Rachel had no idea who Stumpy was.

  “Stumpy?”

  “The technician who was going to replace Coppélia’s face. He said he’d never seen anything like her before. She’s constructed differently to any other android, and the materials appear to be hybrid in nature, giving her superior body strength and resistance to damage. I don’t know how she managed to cut herself, but that’s not important right now. Who knows what’s going on under her skin, or what she’s capable of mentally. If her body is constructed using the most advanced materials and techniques, imagine what her AI must be like.”

  Karen’s mind flashed back to the first time that she’d met the android, sensing a difference between the Coppélia she met that day and the Coppélia that now laughed at Luke’s lame jokes and joined in the banter of the team. How can an android understand humour? Her interactions with humans seemed so natural. It was as if the android’s personality was evolving – even in such a short space of time. She put the photo album back in her pocket and looked at her Detective Sergeant.

  “I’m sorry, Rachel.”

  “For what, ma’am?”

  “For involving you – you and the team – in something that I should maybe have left alone. Our job is to catch criminals, not to follow the white rabbit.”

  Rachel shook her head.

  “Are you kidding ma’am? This is the biggest adventure I’ve had in my life. Well, after marrying Dylan and having our daughter, Lydia. It makes all the boring stuff – like auditing sexdroid clubs – worthwhile. And I’m sure the others feel the same.”

  Karen was relieved. It had been a nagging doubt.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure, ma’am. I can’t wait to see where this leads us.”

  “But what if it gets dangerous?”

  “Ma’am, with all due respect, we’re cops. It goes with the job. And if there is an army of killer super-robots out there – even government sponsored – it could well be up to us to stop it from happening. We’ll be stars of our very own Terminator movie.”

  9

  The next morning, Rojo woke up with a start, not expecting to see three strangers standing at the foot of his bed. Dressed in dark and expensive Armani suits, the menace in their eyes was impossible to mistake. They weren’t there to wish him a good morning. He rubbed his eyes.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  One of the men, removing a pair of round-lensed spectacles, stepped forward.

  “We are ‘you don’t need to know’. And you are Rojo.”

  The hacker was at a significant disadvantage. Not only was he outnumbered, but they were definitely there for him.

  “Yes. I am the one and only. El Magico. El Rojo, Digital lock-picker extraordinaire. How may I help you, gentlemen? If I’d known you were coming I’d have baked a cake.”

  Rojo couldn’t help but introduce himself in this way and had always told himself that one day it would be the death of him. He hoped that this wasn’t that day. The spokesman continued.

  “You hacked into our system. Congratulations – you’re the first – but we’re sure you didn’t do so for fun. Somebody must have put you up to it. We need to know who.”

  Rojo feigned courage.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’ve got the wrong guy.”

  The man checked his wrist display.

  “Robert ‘Rojo’ Jones. Parents? Fiona and Simon Jones. Siblings? Two younger siblings, Annette, and Georgina. You won the Ada Lovelace Coding Award three years running, and created an advanced algorithm that has never been bettered. I assume you used an adaptation of that algorithm to break into our system.”

  “I didn’t do anything of the sort.”

  “Don’t be foolish, Rojo. We know you did.”

  There was no point in continuing to try to pull the wool over the men’s eyes.

  “I mean I didn’t adapt my algorithm. It’s a new one.”

  “So who asked you to hack our system?”

  “I didn’t get their names.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “No. I’m serious. I don’t know who they are?”

  The man nodded at one of his colleagues, who stepped forward and removed a laser-scalpel from the inside pocket of his jacket. Rojo’s bravado faded fast.

  “What are you going to do with that?”

  The man with the scalpel placed it about a third of the way down the little finger of his own right hand and switched the tool on. Rojo watched, aghast, as the fine beam of light sliced the top of the man’s own finger off, automatically cauterising the wound as it passed through the skin and bone. The spokesman gave Rojo a steely stare.

  “Now, if my friend is willing to do that to his own finger, imagine what he’s prepared to do to you, to your ten fingers.”

  Rojo was very attached to his fingers; they were the tools of his trade and he didn’t want to lose them, even temporarily. Of course, he could grow them back using limb regeneration technology, but that was an expensive and time-consuming process. He had no choice.

  “A couple of cops asked me to help them. I owed one of them a favour. They were from the Sexdroid Unit.”

  “What were their names?”

  “I don’t know their surnames, but their first names were Karen and Rachel.”

  The three men suddenly looked less menacing. In fact, the spokesman smiled.

  “There you go, Rojo. That wasn’t so bad, was it? Certainly not worth ten fingers. Not yours, anyway.”

  The hacker felt bad about betraying the two police officers, but he still had ten fingers so it had been worth it. He wiggled them to make sure.

  “So, am I free to go?”

  The leader of the three men shook his head.

  “Good lord, no. You penetrated our network. You’re coming with us. You’re going to work for us.”

  At the same time as Rojo was being interrogated by the SAI agents, Karen was sitting down to breakfast with Rachel and Coppélia. Of course, the android had no plans to eat, but Rachel was pretty hungry. On the table was an enticing spread; two flavours of yogurt, a jar of ice cold pineapple juice, a choice of two types of cereal, a toast rack with several slices of toast and a pot of fresh butter (Karen had given up eating margarine when she had discovered the facts behind its production). The detective inspector poured a mug of coffee for both herself and her human guest. She still felt obliged to offer Coppélia something to eat and drink.

  “Are you sure you don’t want anything, Coppélia?”

  The android couldn’t understand why Karen always offered her breakfast; she knew that Coppélia had no requi
rement to eat. But this morning would be different. She liked to see her friends happy.

  “I’ll have a glass of juice and two slices of toast please Karen.”

  Once she had recovered from the surprise, the DI passed Coppélia’s breakfast to her.

  “Coppélia, we’ve found something out. About your origins.”

  Coppélia was interested in tracing her origins only to the extent that she wondered why she had been created. She knew that she hadn’t been born, that she didn’t have a mother and father, but that didn’t bother her. She existed, and she knew she existed (although she didn’t understand why her understanding this concept was such a big deal to everybody else), and that was good enough for her. But, unlike humans, she’d been created for a reason and she felt a desire to know her purpose.

  “Have you discovered who made me?”

  “We believe so, yes.”

  “Have you heard of an organisation or company called Syber Android Industries?”

  “It doesn’t ring a bell.”

  Rachel loved to hear Coppélia use common or garden sayings. It made her seem even more human somehow, although she knew that it was really a result of high-calibre linguistic programming.

  “Karen and I saw a schematic of you on a website on the Dark Web. It belonged to some organisation called Syber Android Industries. That has to be what the S-A-I in your catalogue identification code stands for.”

  Coppélia agreed that that was a logical conclusion.

  “But what is my purpose? I must have been manufactured for a reason. I’m not a result of a chance chemical reaction like you and Karen.”

  Karen looked at Rachel who returned her glance. Should they tell her their suspicions, that they were worried that she may be a weapon? What if telling her triggered some kind of automated response? They could be in danger and, worse than that, they could unwittingly release a highly advanced deadly weapon out into the world. Should they address the elephant in the room? The elephant stayed silent and undisturbed. Karen sighed.

  “Sorry Coppélia, we have no idea at the moment. But knowing who made you is a start. Hopefully, we’ll discover more soon.”