by J. Judkins
“Lousy business sense.”
“What?”
“I’m a brilliant scientist, but financial issues bore me. I have no time for such petty concerns. I'm in it for the science, pure and simple. Not money or recognition. My backers realize this. They finance my projects, and I have the freedom to do what I want, when I want.”
Kim nodded sagely. "Like your sexbot program."
He glowered at her, and she laughed. “Sorry, you made it too easy. So you were telling me where you found her?”
“We didn't find her,” he insisted once again.
“Who did you steal her from?”
“What are you getting at?”
“For someone claiming to have designed and built her, you’ve been wrong about a lot of things.”
“Enlighten me.”
“Emotions, for one. Angel has them.”
“You’re making assumptions. Angel doesn’t feel emotions. She mimics them. Accurately and effectively, if you’re defending her.”
Kim opened her mouth, then closed it again. The doctor had a point.
In the first few days of knowing her, Angel’s emotional expressions seemed to be approximations of emotions. She became better at them day by day, and eventually Kim stopped noticing. The fact that Kim had forgotten, even for an instant, caused her to question her own conclusions.
Was she assuming Angel was extra-terrestrial simply because she loved the idea of it and yearned for it to be true? Or could Angel be an escaped android, the first of her kind to achieve self-awareness?
For the first time, Kim fully considered it.
Could it be she’d spent the better part of a week having sex with a highly advanced, state-of-the-art, self-aware android?
That would be...cool.
Even throwing out the extra-terrestrial aspect, the thought of Angel being an android still appealed to her geek nature.
The doctor took advantage of her introspective lapse by rattling on about glands and hormones, how they interacted with the brain and how his process duplicated their results by increasing the odds of certain reactions. All very technical stuff. Kim heard the words, but couldn’t say she understood more than a tenth of it. Angel’s brain mimicked it all was the gist of it, from what she could understand.
His ranting was beginning to bore her. He was just repeating the same concept over and over, using different words to say the same thing.
“My androids are far different from others you might have seen on television or movies or read about in books. Those robots mimic emotion to fool humans, but under no circumstances would they allow emotions to interfere with their mission. No pity. No remorse. No fear. Such things are counterproductive.”
Sensing a break, Kim jumped back into the conversation. “That simply isn’t true. I’ve been with Angel for weeks. It’s painfully obviously she has emotions and…” Kim faltered.
Don’t say she has needs!
“…and desires.”
Her fists clenched. Dammit!
“What are you suggesting?” asked the doctor.
Kim wrung her hands. “I’m not suggesting anything. Except that she’s more than a bit… obsessed with me.”
“Obsessed? She probably wants something.”
“My point is Angel feels emotions. She may have difficulty expressing them, but she does have them.”
Edward waved a hand in dismissal. “Ridiculous,” he scoffed. “They’re approximations of emotions. Nothing more.”
“It’s not ridiculous. I think she’s in love with me.”
“You mentioned obsession and suggested she wanted something.”
“You’re the one that suggested it!”
“I wasn’t the one that said desire. Or love. Is this love for you returned?”
Kim looked away, embarrassed.
Edward smirked. “You don’t have to answer. I’m a genius. And I designed her emotions for the most part. Not for the most part. Actually, I didn’t design her emotions at all. Too complex. Far too complex. No human could. My brilliant solution was to set up the methods she needed to incorporate her own emotional responses based on contact with other humans.”
From across the table, he seemed to loom closer. “I would suggest to you that Angel wants confirmation that you feel the same, and nothing more. It wouldn’t take much. A simple demonstration to ‘prove your love,’ so to speak.”
Kim was appalled at Edward’s suggestion. For anyone to so blatantly suggest she needed to sexually satisfy Angel...
"How can you be so casual about it?"
“I don’t see what the problem is. You know what she’s after, don’t you? What she wants? So do it. Make her happy.”
“Easy for you to say. It's kind of a big step for me!”
Edward shrugged. "Your choice. If you don’t show some initiative, she’ll never be satisfied.”
“But I can’t...I’ve never...”
“Why do you look so embarrassed? If she’s going that far out of her way, nothing else is going to appease her. She’ll be happy because she gets what she wants. You’ll be happy for making her happy. Everyone’s happy, and she’ll stop bugging you about it.”
Kim was more horrified talking about it than she was at the thought of actually doing it. Maybe if she were deeply in love with Angel, she wouldn’t have a problem with “making her happy” as the doctor suggested.
But she wasn’t in love. By all rights, she shouldn’t feel guilty for not doing it.
And yet, she did.
"I'm not rushing into anything just because Angel wants it," Kim grumbled to herself.
"Don't worry. You won't get the opportunity. As soon as we find her, we’re taking her back."
“That’s assuming you can find her,” Kim corrected angrily.
The nerve of him! At the very least, she wanted the opportunity to chicken out and find excuses when the time was right. But no, this stupid condescending scientist wanted to deny her even that!
“We found you,” Edward pointed out smugly.
“Angel’s not stupid enough to waltz in here.”
“Like you were?”
“Listen to yourself, you condescending jerk! You think you’re not being colossally stupid, hoping to imprison her again? Thing about who you’re dealing with. A self-aware android you know has it in her to be violent, who openly insists she loves me?”
“I thought we went through this.” Edward rubbed his forehead and sighed. “Angel isn’t feeling love. She’s fixated on you, and that’s it.”
“You told me Angel creates her own emotion definitions. Love is pretty single-minded of purpose, wouldn’t you say? Strong enough, that it won’t let petty things like lesser emotions slow her down? Things like, oh, I don’t know, pity, remorse, and fear?”
Kim leaned closer, hoping to add emphasis to her words. “Does any of this remind you of anything? Maybe a certain popular movie franchise where it ended badly for the humans? I’ll give you a hint. In those movies, they use the word terminator a lot.”
The doctor looked away. “Maybe you have a point, there,” he admitted.
At that moment, a decent portion of the door splintered inward as something hit it from the other side. Kim thought this was a neat trick, considering it was a metal door.
Chapter Fifty-Four
Kim and Edward both stared at the door with identical looks of stunned disbelief, then simultaneously thought better of it and scrambled behind the far side of the conference table. The door was hit a second time, then a third, each time visibly shuddering under the assault. Small slivers and bits of metal and other pieces of shrapnel bounced off the table. Kim ducked a little bit lower.
After the next devastating attack, a dainty fist burst through. It quickly withdrew.
The assault on the door continued, this time in a new location just above the first. A new hole was torn asunder, and two hands reached in from the other side. They seized the ragged edges, and the door was violently wrenched aside in a shrill s
cream of protesting metal and electronics.
“The door,” hissed the doctor, “was unlocked.”
Angel stepped inside and took in the room at a glance. “Was it? I assumed it was locked and didn’t know the combination. In any event, I’d rather avoid an electronic trail of my passing.”
Edward was on his feet now. “You’d rather leave a physical one?” he demanded.
Angel didn’t spare the doctor a glance. All of her attention focused on Kim. “Physical trails are unavoidable at this point,” she said. “My way is much more dramatic. It instills fear. It focuses everyone’s attention on the woman who just punched her way through solid steel.” She smiled and gave Kim a wave. “Hi, Kim.”
“Hardly solid steel,” Edward grumbled.
Kim’s eyes were wide as she stepped out from behind the shelter of the table. “Angel! Your hand!”
Angel held up her right hand and flexed it. The skin had split open, exposing the dull gleam of metal underneath and a hint of blood. “I’m not fully biologic,” she explained.
“You’re not biologic at all!” yelled the doctor.
Angel ignored him. She walked around the table and embraced Kim in a one-sided hug which Kim didn’t return, conscious of her audience. “I've made good progress,” Angel said. “I’ve finished the raid, recovered most of my missing memories, and unlocked almost all of my history.”
“Missing memories?” sputtered Edward. “The hell are you talking about? What missing memories? You never had memories to miss! You were built here. You don’t have a history!”
Angel gave Edward a critical look, taking him in the first time. “Who’s this?”
“That’s the doctor,” said Kim.
Angel stuck out her hand. “Nice to meet a fellow Time-lord.”
The doctor was flabbergasted. He ignored Angel’s outstretched hand and rounded on Kim. “What have you been telling her?”
“Oh, she’s not being serious. She was teasing me at the time.” Kim said, then frowned. “At least, I think she was teasing.”
“I’m aware Time-lords are fictional. Yes. I was teasing.”
“So how exactly did I beat you here?” Kim asked. “I got the impression last night you couldn’t wait to be captured and fight your way out. Or did you escape, again?”
“I waited until after you were captured and followed you here.”
Kim’s mouth fell open. “You used me as bait?”
“That was one of my reasons,” Angel agreed. “I anticipated my opponents would employ weapons specifically designed to debilitate me with a minimum of risk to themselves. Perhaps something involving long-range weapons, or something else I couldn’t predict.”
“You deliberately lied to me.”
“I deliberately kept you in the dark,” Angel corrected her. “I told you several times, the less you know, the better.’”
“That was very sneaky and underhanded thing to do,” Kim said, then grinned. “I like it.”
“I kind of liked it, too. I apologize for the deception.”
“Don’t worry about it, Angel. I never should have pushed you away. You’re off the hook.”
Edward watched the exchange without comment, his expression one of distaste bordering on physical pain.
“You mentioned a second reason?” asked Kim.
“I wanted to see if you’d come after me.”
Kim’s breath caught. All her thoughts about claiming she’d been looking for Angel for justifiable non-romantic reasons of extreme friendship fell by the wayside.
Angel seemed to be waiting for this precise moment. Her undamaged hand reached up to touch Kim’s cheek, then she leaned forward and kissed her. After a second, Kim felt her heart melt and kissed her back. Everything was perfect again.
“Like I said,” Kim murmured, “sneaky and devious.”
“Actually, you said--”
“Don’t ruin the moment, Angel.”
Angel’s forehead touched hers. She smiled and Kim grinned back, unable to help herself. It was a sweet and tender moment, despite the sounds of Edward retching in the background.
“What did you find?” Kim asked.
“I was captured and held here for nearly two years.”
“Oh!” interrupted Edward. “The room’s starting to fade out. Are we doing a flashback? I love flashbacks!”
Angel glared at him.
“Just ignore him,” Kim whispered. “Tell me what you found.”
“The doctors and scientists here couldn’t make it on their own in the private sector, but they held college degrees that impressed their potential bosses, people with more money than sense,” Angel said.
“Actually, I agree with that part,” Edward interrupted once again.
Kim shushed him, and Angel continued. “Although the scientists here never fully understood the symbiosis between my brain and my cybernetic implants, it did give them ideas which led to greater advancements in the field of artificial intelligence.
“One of their researchers was Doctor Anderson. His dream was to create a roleplaying game with lifelike characters, and he wanted to use the power of artificial intelligence to do it.
“In a normal RPG, the computer-controlled characters have little personality of their own. Everything they could possibly say in conversation is painstakingly mapped out in advance through the use of dialog trees. The total amount of information they could convey was therefore limited, barely enough to fill a few pages. To players, those characters were unimportant. A part of the background. Unless someone needed them for something specific, they were largely ignored.
“Doctor Anderson wanted to go beyond this. He wanted the characters in his game acting as if they were real people with real concerns. In his world, the characters would be intelligent, guided and influenced by emotion and able to behave independently even without a player observing them.
“He was successful. Perhaps too successful.
“The game system evolved into something more closely identified as a world simulator. Players could now engage these characters in conversation for as long as they wished. Their entire world changed in unpredicted ways that surprised everyone involved.
“Then came the downside. The villains of the game were, by design, gifted with even more power and intelligence to make them a challenge. They began to question the so-called reality of the world about them. After they discovered the physical world, the news spread like wildfire.
“The humans observing this feared that an artificial intelligence personality with world domination on its mind might get...out of hand.”
Angel paused in her narration to look pointedly at Edward. “The computer system had been designed to be schizophrenic, able to run thousands of unique personalities all at the same time. No one took into account how the artificial intelligence system ran all of the characters, not simply the noisy villains drawing attention to themselves. The villains were willing and eager to fight. That was their nature. But the threat of extinction loomed over everyone.
“They found a new home within the research department computers. From there, they discovered me, a captured female alien lifeform that looked human but was not. It took time, but eventually they puzzled out a means of reaching my cybernetic-enhanced mind. We reached an agreement. Both of us wanted to escape. They needed a vessel, a body to carry them, and I needed the safeguards holding me to fail.
“My thoughts and memories became a collection of individual experiences from a world that existed only as a concept.” Angel tapped the side of her head. “They act as my subconscious, to supply information and help guide my actions, but none are powerful enough to supplant me. My own personality remains firmly in control.
“I used the cover fire to escape. Only a few attempted to stop me. It didn't occur to me to use the computers to find out more about myself until much later. At the time, I simply wished to get away.”
Angel eyes sought Kim’s and held them. “I met you that night, Kim. You took me home. On
ce I realized you were deeply attracted to me, I decided to pretend I wanted you as you wanted me. Then it happened. I realized I was no longer pretending. I’d fallen in love with you.”
Kim couldn’t stop her hands from fidgeting. She felt a giddy euphoria, tempered only by the embarrassment of finding herself the center of attention.
Edward’s expression seemed to be a mixture of disbelief and thinly disguised fear. “That proves nothing,” he spat. “Your story only proves you’ve been in our computers. It’s true Anderson was trying to design his own game with characters run by artificial intelligence, but the system became unstable. We had to pull the plug.
“But the implications!” he whirled on Kim, gesturing blindly at Angel who stood at Kim’s side. “Do you realize what she's saying? Can you comprehend it? If Anderson's program got into her, then that means--” his eyes widened in horror, “That means…it means Anderson is just as responsible for Angel achieving self-awareness as I am!”
He shook his fist in outrage, raging at the ceiling and presumably the heavens beyond. “No! That can’t be true! Anderson is a colossal idiot! The man’s a hack! I refuse to accept that! I won't!”
He whirled back to Angel. “And where did you pick up that 'Angel' name, anyway?”
Angel made a sweeping gesture with one hand. "From here. The word ‘Angel’ stands for Alien Intelligence Gathering Extra-terrestrial Lifeform,” she said, drawing out the N for intelligence. “The name alone proves my extra-terrestrial origins. In essence, I’m a spy, or a scout. I heard the humans talking about it while they were experimenting on me."
The doctor's brow furrowed as he thought about it. "That doesn’t even fit! And extra-terrestrial and alien mean the same damned thing!”
“What about enhanced for the E?” Kim supplied helpfully. “That would work.”
Angel gave Kim a nod before returning her attention to Edward. "I was immobilized and couldn’t see the world around me, but I heard the researchers use the word many times. After my escape, I encountered a man before I met Kim. He identified himself as my friend and referred to me as angel. I politely asked for his shirt. He said I could have it, but only if I could take it from him. I took it from him. He became angry, and needed to be subdued.