A Date With Angel and Other Things ...

by J. Judkins

  No one else was present.

  The tall goon turned to leave, but the shorter one lingered at the entrance. “Would you like anything to drink?” he asked.

  “Mountain dew, please?”

  He nodded and left. The door closed behind him.

  On impulse, Kim pushed and pulled at the door. Locked. Undeterred, she pulled out her phone, selected her sonic screwdriver app, and buzzed it at the door. It remained locked, but the effort cheered her and helped boost morale.

  Five minutes later, Kim realized the short one wasn’t coming back with her drink. Apparently, he didn’t appreciate getting one-shotted with a camera. She hoped his friend teased him unmercifully about it.

  Suddenly curious, Kim fished out her phone again. Why hadn’t they taken her phone?

  Oh. No service.

  She put the phone back in her pocket. If she wanted to use it as a tool, her best bet was saving it to throw at someone’s head.

  Kim threw herself into one of the luxurious chairs and settled down to wait. This mysterious company, whatever it was, wasn’t at all stingy. Everything about it screamed wealth.

  She was starting to get thoroughly bored and wished she’d brought a book with her when the door started beeping from the other side. A man swept through. He was in his late forties, by Kim’s estimation. Brown hair with only a hint of grey. He wore a pristine white lab coat over a fairly nice work shirt and casual looking jeans. Kim’s mind immediately thought doctor or scientist. A computer geek would have skipped the lab coat. He certainly didn’t seem to be an executive or manager.

  Kim noted he didn’t lock the door behind him and filed that information away under ill-conceived ideas destined to fail. It wasn’t much, but she didn’t have much in the way of options. If she and Angel weren’t reunited at some point, she might need a spur of the moment plan.

  "I'm told you're the one who picked up our wayward android,” the man said, crossing his arms. “Would you care to tell us where she is?"

  Kim blinked. "Excuse me?

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  “What have you done with our android?” the doctor asked again.

  The question threw Kim off, but only for a moment. Then her analytical mind kicked in. What he asked made sense, in a twisted sort of way. He couldn’t very well start out asking about aliens, now, could he?

  It had to be difficult, asking questions about something while at the same time doing your best to deny certain aspects of the subject’s existence. Kim didn’t envy his position. Instead of asking “what have you done with our escaped alien?” he accused her of stealing their state-of-the-art android, instead. An android that could effectively pass for human, no less.

  A neat trick, if you could manage it, because neither aliens nor self-aware androids were supposed to exist.

  Angel couldn’t possibly be someone’s escaped android. What the man suggested was absurd.

  But it didn’t mean she couldn’t play his game. She’d accept his premise, for now. Let him believe he had her fooled.

  "First of all, our wayward android?” Kim asked, putting a sneer in her voice. “She doesn't belong to you. And second, you know damn well where she is, because you’re the ones who took her."

  “She isn’t here,” he insisted. “We lost her just over two weeks ago. And yes, I meant our android, or rather, mine. I designed her, and she’s my responsibility."

  “What you’re really talking about is ownership. If Angel is a self-aware artificial intelligence, then you have no right to claim her. She’s her own person.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Angel?”

  “That’s her name. She chose it, herself. You claim she’s lost property, but if that's true, where are the police? Why haven’t you called them?” Kim spread her hands. “Why didn’t you storm in with an army of lawyers at your back, demanding her return?”

  “You know the answer to that as well as I do. Angel is a self-aware entity. She was never born, and as such, she has no rights under the law. That makes her my responsibility, and you have no right to keep her from us."

  “Did she leave you by her own choice?"

  “She did leave us, yes,” he admitted stiffly.

  “Then your responsibility for her is over.”

  The scientist smiled. “So that’s the way you want to play it? Tell me, if she’s her own person and is fully responsible for her actions, isn't she also responsible for the damage she caused on her way out?”

  Kim smile widened as her confidence grew. She was in her element. Nobody won arguing science fiction concepts with her. “It doesn't say much for you as a doctor or a scientist or whatever you call yourself if you allow your own creations to escape. Didn't they teach you anything in mad scientist school?”

  He snorted. “Contrary to popular belief, when a mad scientist's creation rebels against its creator and kills indiscriminately in a bloody rampage on its way out the door, the scientist isn't a failure, he's a success.”

  Kim said nothing. It was a valid argument. She agreed with that point.

  “I'm the envy of other scientists,” he boasted, “or I would be, if they knew. The others can only dream of their creations achieving self-awareness. Mine actually achieved it. The proof is in the casualty report.

  “Not only did Angel, as you call her, demonstrate self-awareness, she demonstrated judgment. Restraint. Empathy. Self-control. She didn't kill anyone. In fact, she went out of her way not to kill anyone!”

  The apparent mad scientist took a seat in one of the high-quality, overpriced chairs. He steepled his fingers and leaned forward, grinning savagely in a way that didn’t disabuse Kim of his mad scientist image in the slightest. “When I read that report and realized she put twelve people in the hospital and none in the morgue, my heart swelled with pride. It was one of the greatest moments of my life.”

  He leaned back as if overcome with emotion, wiping at his eyes.

  Kim leaned closer, surprised and fascinated. Are those tears?

  “Personally,” he continued, “I think children are an unholy abomination. But in that moment, in that shining, majestic, beautiful moment, I felt something akin to what parents must feel seeing their child achieve greatness for the first time. She was...perfect!”

  “Um.”

  His eyes shown with pride and reverence. “She’s everything I could have hoped for and more.”

  “Okay...” Kim found a new spot to sit down on the opposite side of the table, four spaces away.

  “But in spite of all she’s accomplished, she’s still not ready for the outside world.” He whirled on Kim, as if suddenly remembering her presence. “And you didn't answer my question."

  “Yeah. About that? I'm sorry, but I never heard a genuine mad scientist rant before. What was the question?”

  “Is Angel responsible for the damage she caused?”

  “Of course, she isn’t.”

  “Explain.”

  “If you were holding her illegally, then she's justified in using force. You can't have it both ways. If she's responsible for her actions, then you’ve admitted she's a self-aware intelligent being and you have no right to hold her here against her will.

  “But if you claim she's not responsible, then someone needs to take her away from you and keep you out of the lab because you've made a horrible mistake, creating a dangerous entity you can't possibly control. And you shouldn't be in the mad scientist business in the first place.”

  Kim paused, thinking about it. "Okay, maybe that would qualify you for the mad scientist business, but not the responsible mad scientist business. What do you call yourself, anyway? I didn’t catch your name."

  “I didn’t give one.”

  “So what should I call you? Just ‘doctor’?”

  “If you want.”

  “Really? You're the second Time-lord I've met this week.”

  "Not that kind of doctor,” he said with a grimace. “If you must know, my name is Edward Harrison, or Doctor Harrison. Edward is fi
ne.”

  “What about, ‘Eddie Baby’?”

  “No.”

  “That’s from Monty Python, by the way.”

  “I know what it’s from,” he snapped.

  “So if you’re not a mad scientist, what do you do, exactly?”

  Edward leaned forward in his chair and set his elbows on the table once again. “First of all, I’m not mad in any sense of the word. What I've done is create a fully functional, self-aware android indistinguishable from humanity. Angel could go through her entire life thinking there’s nothing extraordinary about her. She isn't subservient to other people and she isn't Asimov three-law safe. As far as anyone else is concerned, she’s as human as you and I.

  “And I am responsible for her conduct because, as far as the law is concerned, self-aware androids have no rights. Angel needs supervision. If she kills someone or does something illegal, I'm the one responsible. I’m the one who will be sent to prison.”

  “Is that why you took her back and imprisoned her here? For protection?”

  “That implies we have her.” He began to speak slowly. “For the last time, we don’t have her. She isn’t here.”

  “I don't believe you.”

  “You think she came back to us? Voluntarily?”

  "That's what she told me," Kim said, but the first hints of doubt were upon her. She studied the table. It didn’t seem likely Angel couldn’t get herself captured if she set her mind to it.

  But where could Angel be, if not here?

  “Why?” Edward pressed. “Why would she return, if she wanted her freedom so badly?”

  To steal your research data and burn your company to the ground? To discover her own identity?

  But Kim kept these thoughts to herself. Aloud, she said, “Angel knew you were looking for her, and wanted to protect me.”

  The doctor leaned back in his chair and folded his arms, adopting a condescending expression that was just a little bit more condescending than his normal condescending expression. "Maybe she protected you by leaving you behind. Did you ever think of that?"

  “No. Angel wouldn't do that.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Are you emotionally attached to her?” he asked.

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “Yes, yes, I understand perfectly. You’ve become emotionally attached. But when I said the word android, it didn’t surprise you. Why is that, I wonder?

  Kim didn’t correct him. She had been surprised at his assertion, but only for moment. Edward could be right. Angel could very well be an android intelligence, as he suggested. Kim prided herself on being open to any theory she didn’t disagree with.

  “Is that your ploy? You think that’s going to convince me? It’s not going to work. Claiming some sort of emotional attachment doesn’t make you more qualified. You should turn her over to us.”

  “Or what?” Kim retorted. “You can’t threaten me. Angel isn’t lost property. You don’t have a legal right to claim her.”

  “We have more of a legal right than you do.”

  Kim barked a laugh. “You don’t have any legal rights. No matter what you say, I’m not going to walk away thinking how lucky I was that you didn’t press charges, keeping her from you. What is this place, by the way?”

  “You think I'm going to tell you anything about what we do here?” Edward sneered in disdain.

  Kim merely waited. Six seconds, she guessed.

  It took less than three.

  “Here’s how it works. Governments fund projects for curious scientists. But after a scientist makes his discovery, his involvement ends. A scientist’s job isn’t to produce something a company could use to turn a profit. From there, companies find real world applications for whatever was discovered.”

  Kim didn’t interrupt. She’d heard something similar to Edward’s rant on a podcast featuring Neil Degrasse Tyson, and didn’t doubt his words. The astrophysicist was a hoopy frood who knew where his towel was.

  “That’s what other people do. We don’t do that. We exploit those companies when they fail to produce a marketable invention and finish what they’ve started. We also reverse engineer foreign technology.” He nodded at the empty wall. “Ask the others working here, and they'd tell you. If they weren't sworn to secrecy.”

  “So you admit you don't actually invent anything?”

  “We expand on their half-formed ideas and apply our genius and superior finances to do what others can only dream about.”

  “Things like your sexbot program?” Kim grinned.

  Edward’s lips curled into a sneer. “Oh, please! Not another one. I get enough of that sort of nonsense from the others. That’s not why I do this.”

  Kim held up her hands. “Hey, I’m not making any judgments here. If you don’t go out and make them, somebody else will. I’m sure there’s a legitimate non-perverted reason why you made Angel as beautiful as possible.”

  “Why would I want her to be anything less than beautiful?”

  Kim didn’t argue the point. While she still couldn’t envision anyone from Earth designing and creating Angel, she wouldn’t put it past whoever had sent her to have physical alterations done in order to help ease her infiltration. They wouldn’t settle for average. They’d make her as beautiful as could be.

  An Earth scientist working on his female combat-monster would do the same, but for different reasons. Anything less than beautiful wouldn’t be enough to show those other upstart scientists who the true master was, exposing them for the incompetent hacks they truly were. The long, flowing hair that never tangled? Absolutely essential. The gorgeous body that caused potential victims to stop and stare when they should be running for cover? A requirement. Had to be done. Kim would expect nothing less if she were a scientist striving for perfection.

  “I don’t want sexbots,” Edward was saying. “Yes, I accept the possibility that they may want to pair up with humans or even with each other from time to time, but we’re certainly not making a business out of it.”

  “Why wouldn’t you? You could be a billionaire overnight. The geeks would love you. They'd build statues of you and write fan-mail and at leave offerings at your door.”

  “Because those androids would be nothing more than slaves, that’s why! I designed them to be free-willed, not subservient to others.”

  “Yeah, I’m not seeing a potential for disaster, at all,” Kim smirked. “Do you watch many movies? Read much science fiction?”

  Edward sighed heavily. “I already know where you're going with this.”

  “Perhaps you've heard one or two stories where the machine intelligence gets too smart and all but destroys humanity?”

  “Artificial intelligence has existed for decades. How many of those doomsday predictions actually came true?” His fingers drummed the table. “I’ll give you a hint. The number is less than one. Care to tell me?”

  “None of them, of course, but--"

  “That's right. None of them. You sound like the others. Unlike certain other science fiction androids, Angel has her own set of emotional responses.”

  “I'm not saying Angel’s the next Skynet and wants to build a robot army. After all, why would she need to bother? You're building one for her.”

  “And could you tell me why a race of intelligent machines would want to kill us? Especially if they’re like us in so many ways? My androids are indistinguishable. They blend in and mimic human behavior. It’s in their nature.”

  A chill ran down Kim’s spine. Blending in did sound an awful lot like Angel. That had always been her defining characteristic.

  Is it possible? He couldn’t be telling the truth, could he?

  Kim pressed on. “I still think creating something that's naturally stronger, faster, and tougher than the average human is an extraordinarily bad idea.”

  “What are you talking about?” the doctor asked, eyes narrowed in apparent confusion. “Her strength is no greater than the average human's. Better than average intelligence, but rou
ghly comparable. Reflexes a step or two above normal, I grant you, but not excessively so.” His expression hardened. “I wanted to create something similar to humans, not greater than them!”

  Kim said nothing. She knew for a fact this didn’t apply to Angel. And it changed everything.

  Edward had given Kim the final piece of the puzzle. Kim knew from personal observation that Angel had powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men.

  What does Edward truly know? That’s the question.

  Kim didn’t doubt Angel had once been a prisoner here. That the two of them shared a history. But that didn’t necessarily mean he knew everything there was to know about her. Perhaps he honestly didn’t know Angel’s full capabilities? Or was he fully aware of them and lying to her?

  Did he know? Or was he intentionally trying to deceive her? That was the question.

  Kim thought Edward was being sincere, but she was also fully aware of her own limitations. The ability to detect lies was a social skill. And her social skills weren’t particularly impressive.

  Fortunately, that elusive talent wasn’t necessary. Kim had logic and reason to guide her.

  There were two possibilities. Either Edward intentionally created Angel with above average abilities and lied about it, claiming she was average to make himself look responsible, or he lied about building her in the first place.

  In either case, he was lying. QED.

  “How many androids have you built?” Kim asked.

  “Angel is our prototype.”

  Kim grinned. "Meaning she’s the only one. I don't think you built her at all. Human science isn't advanced enough, yet. I think you found her and kept her here to study her.”

  The doctor looked irritated at being questioned. "I did build her. And as for the rest of it, you're half wrong.”

  “So I’m half right?”

  “No. You're half wrong. Everyone else is years if not decades behind me. My team and I have accomplished wonders. I'm the smartest person you'll ever meet.”

  “Yeah? So tell me, 'Doctor'," she said, making quote marks with your fingers, "why haven’t I ever heard of you?"