by Roxy Mews
The reporter was in the middle of a protest. It wasn’t a peaceful one.
Paisley’s stomach convulsed and she was really glad she hadn’t gone for more coffee. It would be all over the floor right now. She chewed the inside of her cheek to near bleeding as Bridget turned up the volume.
“We’re on the scene of what started out as a peaceful protest of Coral’s Bill. Individuals who worry that we are giving too much control to the mechanics we live with every day are out en masse. Humans have forged a symbiotic relationship with robots over the last few decades, and we all know that advancements in technology have improved our lives. The people behind me fear we have started to slide the other direction.”
A woman holding a large picket sign stepped forward.
The reporter thrust a microphone in the picketer’s face and asked, “Ma’am. Can you tell us why you’re protesting today?”
The woman lowered her sign and stared down the camera. “I sure as shit will. I spent my entire life savings to purchase a fully ambulatory robot to care for my mother. Now the robot wants a paycheck. How am I supposed to pay anything when everything I had went to buying it in the first place? Artificial intelligence sure doesn’t have any kind of gratitude built in. Now I’m considered backward because I want my ailing mother to have care that I paid good money for? The world is going wrong, and all of us here want to set things right. These robots need put in their place or they need shut down.”
“How would the robot be of use to you if you shut it down?”
“At least I’d have parts to sell off. I might make back enough money to pay the medical bills. It’s not right. They aren’t human, and we have to stop treating them like they are.”
The scene changed in a second. Bottles, rocks and even phones began flying around the reporter. The camera panned quickly away to try and catch the source of the debris, but it zeroed in on something else.
The military was closing in on the scene. Huge trucks. Humans wearing the strongest armored fabrics with full gas masks and large electrolyzed shields formed a line in front of the tall black vans.
Then the image panned to the tops of the vehicles. Men and women had weapons pointed downward, but not at the protestors.
The news lady’s voice came back on.
“Do you see this? Andy, are you getting this?”
“I’m on it.”
As the camera adjusted focus, behind the wall of militia was another group. Coral was standing in the front.
“That’s… That’s Coral Sechundert. Are they really planning on breaking up this rally? Let’s go talk to her.”
Paisley glanced to Bridget and Matilda, but they were glued to the screen too. All Paisley could think was how many mechanics were in the palace. If these people were protesting at the City County Building, why would they pick Saturday? The offices were closed.
The cameraman and news anchor made it over to the military blockade, but instead of crossing, they were held back.
The signal cut out, and the broadcast was cut to a news room that was clearly not ready for the shot.
People scattered from view of the camera, and the man behind the desk touched his ear and nodded. The green screen behind him clicked to life seconds later.
“We are being told that our crews were asked to leave. Upon further questioning of the assembled armed forces, their equipment was confiscated. We will try and have more teams on the ground as soon as possible, because drones are not being allowed on the scene. The other news outlets have reported all mechanical reporters being shot down with electrical blasts.”
He touched his ear again.
“The royal family and parliament are unable to be reached at this time, but efforts are being made to obtain statements regarding this escalating situation.”
The palace-wide communication device buzzed loud in the silence of the news feed. Even the commercials were drowned out by the rhythmic noise.
Without thinking, Paisley rushed to the com system and picked up the earpiece.
“Royal Palace, how may I direct your call?”
“Paisley? What are you doing there?”
It was Quinn.
“Quinn, what the hell is going on? Why is Coral in the front lines of a protest?”
“I don’t have time to explain. I need to talk to my cousins. They have to do something and it’s got to happen fast. Public opinion is fickle and if we don’t act soon, they are going to see things exactly how the Anti-Mech movement wants them to.”
Paisley put the earpiece on and rushed up the stairs. It was still morning, but the king was always awake. Unless something was drastically different, he would be in his library.
Forgoing formalities, she pushed the heavy door open as quickly as she could.
His majesty was leaning forward with his head in his hands watching a screen. The king never watched television. He read and he listened to his advisors. Paisley didn’t even realize there was a TV in this room of wall to wall literature.
But there it was. The sights in that feed showed a very different view of the situation.
This camera angle was on the other side of the militia blockade. This camera wasn’t as steady and it kept losing focus.
Paisley was riveted. Guns and electronic blasters were pointed directly at the camera and the spaces next to it.
Then a voice came over the picture.
“Your majesty, I needed you to see this.”
Coral’s voice.
“I never thought it would come to this. The variables I processed put this as an extreme. I apologize for not being surer of the outcome.”
Paisley crept forward and knelt by the television. Coral was there. Coral was in front of those guns. They were going to kill the only person who ever really cared for Paisley. And the one she cared for more than herself sometimes. They were going to blast her with guns and tear her apart.
If the king was upset with her presence, he pushed it aside. Paisley gripped his hand that held her shoulder for dear life.
“Can she hear me?” Paisley asked. She kept staring at the screen, seeing through Coral’s eyes.
The picture wobbled and all Paisley could see were vague shapes.
“Paisley, I am so glad you are safe. Please stay where you are. And please…tell Quinn…”
The picture wobbled under the weight of her tears. Paisley couldn’t tell if they were hers or Coral’s anymore.
“Anything you want to tell Quinn, you are going to tell him yourself. Get the hell out of there, Coral.”
Paisley’s hands started to shake as she reached out to touch the television. She was too late. She found everything out too late. If she had just done things her way, without pushing, maybe the magistrate wouldn’t have acted so soon.
If she had been researching instead of fucking her neighbors, maybe she would have found out about the magistrate’s plans in time.
“I can’t leave, Paisley. Your majesty…” The plea in Coral’s voice was heartbreaking. “The DNA extraction they did wasn’t for lubricant type. They injected a scrambler under our skin. I have it all recorded from the bug Paisley planted on Magistrate Winters, but I only learned of it after he activated the signal.” Coral wiped her eyes again.
“It was encased in a new material that blended with my current circuitry. I didn’t know they were doing this to every applicant. The signal sent down was a death sentence. If we leave, he will activate the chips.”
Paisley knew what a scrambler was. Coral had taken one with her when she first became self-aware and was stolen from the palace. Then, it had been a suicide pill.
This time, this scrambler…it was a little microchip of murder.
“Coral, who has the programming?” Paisley knew Quinn was still in her ear, and if she had any sense she would have turned the com off, but there wasn’t time.
“The programming originates from the magistrate’s office, but they can be activated from anywhere. Paisley, please know that I care for you. I…” The scene on the monitor cleared as Coral wiped her eyes, and Paisley saw the officers mixed with the robotics and throwing items into the protestors.
They were being framed.
The noise swelled, bullhorns shouted words in all directions, but even with the amplification, it was impossible to discern individual words. The words didn’t even matter. The ones with the guns were the ones who were lying.
Was there really anything you could do when the people who were supposed to protect you were the ones who you had to defeat?
Quinn growled in her ear. “Paisley, can you hear me?”
The king was on his tablet typing away furiously. Quinn disconnected, and another call kept buzzing in the background, but no one answered it.
Paisley had to focus. She let the tears leave her eyes so that they could flood her cheeks. Crying wasn’t something she did, but she wanted to see everything with Coral. For as long as she could.
“I hear you, babe.” Paisley bit the side of her cheek to keep from sobbing. “Keep talking to me. You’re on the recording transmitter. We’ll fight no matter what. Believe that.”
Coral’s feed bounced as she nodded. “I know you will. You are stubborn.”
Paisley’s laugh was watered down, drowning under her tears.
Coral kept talking as the guns came closer. “I wanted to tell you that I love you, Paisley.”
“Oh Coral, I love you too.”
“I was never able to say the words. I wanted to be sure. I thought I needed more data, but knowing that I might cease to exist…I want you to know that I love you. Can you tell Quinn that I love him too? I always have.”
A loud thunk shook the floorboards next to Paisley. Quinn had arrived quicker than she thought he could.
He reached for the screen and let the love of his entire existence know, “I love you too, Coral. I’m coming there. If I don’t get there in time—”
Coral’s feed blurred and shook. “You can’t come here. I need you to live. Please.”
Quinn crawled toward the screen so he could stay at eye level with the data feed. “Can you see me?”
“Yes.”
Paisley backed off. This was a personal moment, and although she heard the king rise behind her to leave, she couldn’t miss the possible last moments her friend had. She was eavesdropping, but someone needed to know Coral. She and Quinn knew Coral was important. They’d have to tell everyone in case…
“I loved you from the moment you opened the windows in the west wing. The light hit your hair, and shined off your eyelashes. I saw you. I didn’t know you, but I knew that there was more to you than what everyone else said there was.” He took a deep breath. “You can never be recreated. And I am the luckiest man on the planet because I can say that I was with you as you discovered how amazing you are.”
Paisley wiped her eyes. Love existed. They loved each other. She loved Coral. And these bastards were trying to destroy it. She practically ran to the display unit. It was an independent transmitter and it was fully charged.
Stealing things from the palace was a felony. Losing her friend was worse than any prison sentence. Paisley pulled the small screen from the dock, and when Coral’s view of the world moved from Quinn’s immediate vision, he stood.
“Are we going?”
Quinn’s eyes brightened and Paisley saw his whole body tic when he realized he needed to get his ass moving.
He reached for the screen. “I’m faster.”
Paisley hopped on his back and tucked the screen into his shirt enough to keep it stable. “I can hold on.”
He was faster than she thought, but he didn’t seem to mind the blood she drew as she dug her nails in. There was a good chance the strain on her muscles would hurt, but not nearly as much as the bullets they would likely be pelted with.
Coral kept transmitting. The off-site storage ensured the images would last forever. So would her account, her view and her words. If Paisley turned this over to the press, it would get air time. If they didn’t make it in time, they would be Coral’s last moments.
They didn’t have a chance to admire the perfectly kept landscaping as Quinn forced them through the gardens in seconds. It was only minutes before the green grass and trees were replaced by the blurs of sleek metal and glass. Her stomach turned, the speed and jostling she took from Quinn made it worse.
She gritted her teeth and yelled, “Faster.”
Chapter Twenty-One
The scene was out of a horror movie. No, not a horror movie. It was out of a documentary. Reality was comprised of images that weren’t supposed to happen anywhere other than on a screen. The noise was so loud it hurt her ears.
There was smoke in the air. Cars had been rolled upside down in the street. The people around them took the stakes from their signs to beat the already crumpled metal that used to be a roof. How did destroying property do anything to emphasize their point?
How did their anger at someone else’s rights manifest into a full-blown riot?
Paisley hopped off Quinn’s back and tried to feel her legs beneath her body. She looked to the front of the line. There was a solid hundred-foot-long shoulder to shoulder group up against the police. In the middle stood the magistrate.
Unlike all the other protestors, he was a hologram. It was easy to be a fearmonger when you weren’t really there. Guess there was at least one person in the City County Building today.
Quinn pulled her down as the tear gas shot over head.
Paisley pointed to the building towering high above the police lines. “We need to get into that building and get to the projection system. The holographic transmitter is in the magistrate’s office. He’s hyping these people up and they aren’t going to be happy until they get to the robotics…”
Paisley let her voice trail off as she spotted the camera person she had been watching on the news.
“I’m going to get to Coral.” Quinn flicked out a blade. “Then I’m getting that piece of shit out from under her skin.”
Paisley stopped. “No. It’s going to look to the crowd like you’re attacking them.”
Quinn pushed both of them out of the way as a rock smashed through a window behind them. “Then they might not try and kill me for a few minutes.”
The wall of militia looked like it was only interested in shooting the mechanics, but the fear in their eyes made it clear that even though their guns were aimed away from this side of the barricade, they would have no qualms about spinning their position around if their vehicles became compromised.
The bullhorns shouted in both directions now.
Quinn disappeared among the smoke. Paisley hoped he had some kind of mechanical upgrade that protected him from the tear gas.
Luckily, smoking cans flew in the opposite direction she was going. The media tent was emptying fast, but the woman had grabbed her cameraman by the collar, refusing to let him leave.
“This is history. No matter what happens I’m staying. If you are going to bolt, leave the fucking backup camera.”
“I’m still rolling.”
“Then you’re doing your job. If you have any passion for your work, you would be running toward this.”
The woman was yelling at her cameraman to go into the danger. That was the woman who would air Coral’s story. Paisley made sure she had the SD card inside the device with the auto backup of what had already happened. She tucked it in her pocket and rushed into the media tent.
The woman caught the movement and turned, ready to fight. She’d either had some kind of personal defense training or schooling in martial arts by her stance. Whatever it was, Paisley held up her arms.
“I just wanted to get you behind the militia line.”
The woman practically drooled. “You’ve got access?”
Paisley handed over the tablet. “Coral, can you say hello to the reporter? She’s going to need convincing if she’s going to air your feed.”
Coral began to talk. The camera trained on the tablet for at least five minutes before anyone even breathed loudly.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Paisley knew she’d gotten her information where it needed to go. This woman would have told anyone who asked what Coral had to say. She’d tell them even if they didn’t ask.
Touching the tiny piece of plastic in her pocket, Paisley took off. She didn’t know where Quinn had gone, but she knew the general direction. She ran sideways. The wall of militia in front of the City County Building was thick, but there was a break in the lines if she could make it to the back.
It took her a whole five minutes of running, and without Coral’s voice in her hands, it was the longest five minutes of her life.
Luckily, she discovered as she circled back to the employee-only entrance, she still had her badge in her wallet.
Swiping the card down the reader, Paisley was in. If the magistrate had any sense, he would have triggered the lockdown protocol, but he didn’t have any sense. This mess with the scramblers wouldn’t work now that they were letting androids without skin apply. The Anti-Mech supporters had to rally now, or his plan to control the outcome wouldn’t work.
Green papers floated around her as she opened the door. Paisley was pretty sure her hatred for the green paper would make next St. Patrick’s Day awful. She grabbed one from the ground and it said, “The time is now.” Paisley would bet good money these were all over the city. It would make sense to communicate through paper when what they fought were the very machines some used for their answering services.
But it wouldn’t work. Even if it was the last thing she did, Paisley wanted to make sure Coral and everyone like her would be the ones who had a say. Robotic citizens didn’t care about the politics. They cared about the facts, and they could mine the data necessary to see through all of the bullshit.