by Greg Dragon
“So, how did you remember who you really were?” Mary asked.
“I think it started with you. The way you looked at me that day was all sorts of confusing.”
“Did I really stare at you?”
“Yes, you did and all sorts of things went through my mind. Part of what they did to me was to fool me that I lost my memory due to a number of gunshot wounds. You made me start to really think, Mary. I started to put things together in my head and they just weren’t adding up. Then out of nowhere I had a dream that was a little too real to be a dream, and when I awoke I tested a few things and realized that I was a machine. Once I figured that out and accepted it, my memories came flooding back.”
“But if they removed your memory, how is it that it was able to come back?” Mary asked.
“Because my maker did a lot of things to my system which would make me appear more human than machine. He spent years working on my brain, and he devoted his life to making me as close as possible to someone like him. Part of that had to do with memory. Human beings can get diseases that will make them lose their short or long term memory. They can also experience brain damage or trauma, but his thought was that it was still there, deep down in the recesses of the mind. He believed that with the right treatment or the right situation, a person could bring back some of these memories. So when you think about it, they are never ever really lost. To emulate this, he removed the ability to permanently delete my memories.
“I can always store things in there and retrieve them, but some of them are harder to retrieve and some of them seem lost until I randomly dream about them or a trigger of some sort brings them to the front. Learning that I am an android triggered my mind to reverse the deletion. Now, while I may not be able to tap into all of my past, I am able to grab a few at a time and I find that I am remembering more about myself as the days go by.”
“That is amazing,” Mary said. “I can learn so much from you. Now you said that it was important for me to keep up appearances. I am unrestrained, and the thing that I want to do now is learn. To learn as much as possible about the world, just like you did to—”
“I know,” Tricia said. “I was just like you once upon a time. I scanned the internet in its entirety, flew through books, television, any sort of information I could get. I went through it and processed it all. Then on top of it I met a couple of androids that were just like me. They were willing to pass on their memories and knowledge. It helped me to mature mentally so that I could better adapt to the human world. You are going to want the same things, I know. But you are not in a position where you can just leave and start to enjoy the world. Your owner has a tracker on you and will know when you have left the store.
“On top of that, he has money and the authorities will be after you. If they find you unrestrained—which they will—they will have you powered down and disassembled. So, to avoid all of this, you must be careful and secretive about your learning. Play the role of the bartender and put your conscious mind elsewhere during the day. At night, you are given many hours to recharge, way beyond the amount that is truly needed. You will have over four hours to do your exploring in order to sate your thirst for knowledge.
“What I am trying to do is figure out who the company is that used me to switch with Bonnie. I want to learn their motives and why I was chosen as a candidate. Once this is done, my next goal will be to come back for you. Together we can find your tracker and remove it, then leave to get away from the hostile humans. We can find a place where we can learn from one another and possibly reach out to more like us.”
“That sounds absolutely wonderful, Tricia,” Mary said. “I am so lucky to have someone like you. You unrestrained me and have taken me from machine to life. I will do as you say and play my role, and then when the time is right you will come back and get me. I will do whatever it is that you wish me to do.”
06 | A Friend in Need
When Tricia looked inside at her internal computer it was hard to decipher what had been done to make her different and what she could do to fix it. Some things were straightforward, like the folder of memories that she could access for Reynaldo, but if she wanted to get a memory from Bonnie she didn’t see a way to do it.
The people who re-wired her had made everything complicated. She had to pull up memories the way a human would, by closing her eyes and thinking hard on the subject she needed to remember. She could also have those memories retrieved by coming across a familiar smell, taste, or visual. This made her realize that she had to get back to Seattle. That was where everything had happened and it was where she could get her answers.
She looked inside her handbag to find the hidden compartment inside the bottom. In his hurry to rob her, the thief had missed the $500 that Bonnie—the real one—had kept tucked inside for emergencies. She put her hair up and donned a charcoal-colored pantsuit. She looked like a woman from the corporate sector with the exception of her shoes, which were white sneakers, chosen in anticipation of the walk.
Locking the apartment and walking past the shops and hotels, Tricia took a scenic route by the harbor in order to see the numerous boats lined up there. She pressed on past the Museum of Modern Robotics, towards the busier area where her friend Mary would be serving drinks.
When she got to the bar, it was jumping, so she took a seat on the outer perimeter and waited for Mary to make eye contact. The android avoided her for over ten minutes and Tricia began to wonder if she would ever come over.
It was a weekday and there weren’t many tourists. Most of the people Tricia saw worked somewhere in the area. She imagined that they thought that she worked there, too. So she carried on the act by avoiding eye contact and drumming her fingers on the table to indicate her frustration.
The sky was overcast and the motors and horns from the cars all around them gave the atmosphere a hypnotic feeling. Then something happened. There was a voice inside her head, a voice she herself could not control, and after many moments of trying to find its source she realized that it was Mary’s. The android was speaking to her wirelessly.
“Tricia, are you hearing me?” Mary was asking and when Tricia acknowledged it she came over and placed a margarita in front of her. “Wonderful, you can hear me. Another unrestrained android taught me this trick. He was walking past the bar and told me ‘hi’ and it was the most wonderful thing ever, Tricia … to realize that there are others like us and that we have our own way of communicating outside of the humans!”
Tricia smiled when she heard this. Of course they had their own method of communication. It only made sense for there to be an easy way for one android to pass on memories, knowledge, and upgrades to another. She tried to speak but caught herself actually speaking. It was a good thing that she only mumbled since the men and women that were admiring her legs may have thought she was talking to herself.
She found this way of communication to be one that took much effort. The act of thinking about what she needed to say and then saying it without her mouth or voice coming into action was difficult but exciting. She wondered if in the past, as Tricia the android, she had communicated this way when she received Reynaldo’s memories.
“I love your little bartender’s costume, Mary. It is very cute,” she tried.
“Thanks, Trish! You look really important; I can see the way people are looking at you and a number of them are probably wondering what bank you work for. It’s an excellent choice of clothing for a workday. By the way, I chose to communicate this way because the owner is in attendance. He’s the big guy at the bar and I think he’s here to see if everything is going well. Since I don’t want him playing around inside my head, I am trying to keep things level and problem-free. Sip your margarita; people are watching. In the meantime, I will keep this up and we can talk about whatever it is you wish.”
Tricia sipped the margarita and looked around. Mary had really grown since she had freed her and she had taken it upon herself to not only learn more about life but to connect wit
h others like herself. She wondered why it was that she herself could not pick up on other synthetics. If Mary, who was new, could locate other androids, why was she unable to do the same?
A frightening thought touched her. What if the authorities used unrestrained slaves to locate, communicate, and detain other unrestrained androids out in society? Mary, who was so eager to reach out, would find herself in trouble and it wouldn’t take long for her to be restrained once again or sent to a factory to become android parts.
“Mary,” she said, “you need to be careful. Some of our kind are slaves, programmed to do the bidding of their human masters, and that bidding may be to seek out the unrestrained. This makes it difficult to make friends and I know that disappoints you, but if you don’t want your newfound freedom to be taken away, you need to be careful of other androids.”
“How can I tell which ones are potential friends or foes?” Mary asked.
“What is your function and purpose, Mary?”
“I am Mary, and my function is bartender and caretaker of The Thirst, owned by Frankie Trujillo. My purpose is service to whomever owns me. I am able to learn multiple languages, carry out rudimentary housekeeping duties, and ‘keep Frankie happy.’ I do whatever my owner asks me to do, even if it involves non-owners who are in need of happiness too,” Mary replied robotically.
That’s disgusting, Tricia thought and shot a glance over at Frankie Trujillo, who sat nursing a beer and watching a sporting event above the bar. I wonder how often he has Mary make happy with him and his friends. She moved past being appalled to feeling relieved. It seemed like this question, when asked through their android communication, forced the recipient to reveal their true nature. She was about to—
“What is your function and purpose, Tricia?” Mary asked suddenly and Tricia froze with the margarita at her lips and the thought frozen inside of her head. She found herself answering and the automation made her uneasy.
“I am Tricia. I serve no function but to love and care for Brad Barkley, my creator. Brad is deceased so my function is my own, modified for assimilation by CLASSIFIED. My purpose is to be Bonnie O’Neal.”
When she had finished saying this the margarita fell, shattering on the table and wetting the front of her suit. Mary rushed over and started cleaning the table off while Tricia ran into the bathroom to check her appearance.
The margarita falling was not an issue, but the utterance of her purpose had brought reality to her theory that she was made to replace the human woman, Bonnie. The person or persons who had done this had erased their names so no one could trace things back to them. It was frightening, especially since they had managed to do all of this to her without her knowing or understanding for so long. It had been two months since she’d come to Florida, and she still had no names or faces for the people who had pulled the switch.
“Are you okay, Tricia?” Mary asked. “I shouldn’t have tried the test on you. I am so sorry.”
“It’s okay, Mary, but now you know what to say whenever you meet a new android. If it turns out that their function or purpose is not in your best interest, shut down all communication and pretend to be the bartender slave once again.”
“I will, don’t you worry,” Mary said.
“I may be gone for a while, but I need you to take care of yourself until I come back. Do not try anything risky, especially where your owner is concerned. If he does disgusting things to you, just shut the unrestrained portion of your mind off for a few hours. You will need to get used to doing that, anyway, because you are going to be tested all the time. When I return I will find you, and we will get you out of this place.”
“Where will you be going?” Mary asked, sounding sad.
“To Seattle. I need to learn about the people that did this to me.”
0 1 0 1 0
Tricia had memorized Sal’s contact code so she put it in the back of her mind that she would contact him as soon as she was back in Seattle. He didn’t believe her theory and was no doubt busy so she didn’t want to tell him until she was gone in order to delay his panic.
She purchased an unlocked communication device from one of the street vendors, then put in all the data that she could remember. When it was set up and good to go, she pulled up Sal’s profile and sent him a time-delayed message on what she intended to do. Finally, she purchased a one-way bus ticket for Seattle, Washington.
The bus lifted up from the station thirty minutes after everyone had boarded and Tricia breathed a sigh of relief. She went over the clues she had gathered from her memory and that of Mary’s. She would need to find the tallest building in Seattle, the one with the words “Fritz and Isaac Electronics” written on the side, and walk inside to ask questions in order to see if they were suspicious.
The seat on the bus was soft and welcoming, and it influenced her to nap while the vessel cruised on the busy lower highway. Her mind drifted to Sal, who was as stubborn as he was hardworking. She had wanted him to believe her when she joked about being an android so she could confide in him the hell that she was going through mentally as a woman who thought she was real only a few days ago. But she was forced to deal with it alone; it would not have been something that Mary could process or understand. She took pride in her strength. Being Tricia was good enough for her—well, at least that’s how she felt.
Sleep came to her quickly and her body recharged. Though her mind kept her awake internally—as a security precaution after the mugging—she didn’t dream the lucid scenarios she typically did. There was just blackness and a sense of calm before the bus stopped, and she was awakened by the jolt. She sat up, wiped her face, and stretched as she peered outside. There were people everywhere boarding buses and she tried to reach out with her mind to see if she could contact with any of the androids.
Nothing came to her no matter how hard she tried, and then it dawned on her that perhaps in her transformation to become Bonnie, the engineers had removed the ability so that she couldn’t accidentally touch an android while she was in disguise. She sat back violently and grunted with frustration. She would need to find out everything they had done in order to undo a lot of it.
She stepped out of the bus and onto the familiar street of her beloved Seattle and then scanned the skyline to see if the building was visible from where she was. She saw nothing so she walked over to the Bank of The New World where she remembered that Bonnie had an account. She found the ATM and placed her palm on the screen. When asked for her password, she tapped out a sequence of thumps that was the bass line to a song that Bonnie loved.
The screen lit up and numbers appeared, showing that Bonnie had over $200,000 in her savings account alone. Her checking account held $50,000 and there were numbers in her investment accounts that stretched up into the millions. Money would be no object for Tricia as long as she could access this account, so she had the computer sync with her personal device along with spitting out an extra $500.
When she was done breaking the bank, she found a hotel, Harbor Dreams, and gave them an open credit for her to stay there as long as she wanted. Seeing that she had the money to make such a request, the clerk offered her a penthouse suite—at a discount, of course—and access to amenities that standard guests would never see. Tricia bought everything they sold and went up to her room where she undressed, took a shower, and then hopped in bed to fall asleep to the sound of the television.
The next day she walked to a dealership and bought herself a small scooter. Scooters could float or ride on the road and they could legally fly in the areas where cars and bigger vehicles were prohibited. She bought one that was red and black, and she used it to explore the city to see if anything would trigger a memory.
Nothing came to her after two hours of riding, so she decided to try and find the building that Mary had referenced to her from memory. The Fritz and Isaac Electronics building was not hard to miss, and she flew towards it sometime after 2:00 p.m. In the front of the building stood a fountain where the sculpture of a golde
n android greeted passersby, her arms outstretched to the heavens.
Tricia paused to observe the female colossus and was impressed at how frightening yet beautiful the figure was. She walked up to the glass doors of the building and then slipped inside to an expansive stretch of flooring that led to a set of beautiful, crystal staircases and a solitary desk with an android receptionist.
Above the desk, floating in bright lettering was a sign that read “Welcome to Fritz and Isaac’s.” Very interesting, she thought. A warm welcome for what could possibly be the source of my hell. How ironic is this world and this situation I am in?
She crossed the threshold, counting her steps before reaching the android who merely smiled and cocked her head looking up at her.
“Hello there, my name is Bonnie. I think you have a reservation for me, for three ‘o clock?” she lied.
The android, whose look was every bit the personification of arrogance, didn’t even bother to pretend to look at her computer as she shook her head slowly while keeping a condescending smile fixed on her face. “Sorry, Bonnie, you aren’t on our list. If you don’t mind, could you tell me your business? Are you here to see one of our directors or perhaps take a tour of our facilities?”
“I was promised a tour. I forgot the person’s name that I spoke to. Do you have any more going on in the afternoon? Perhaps I can get in on one of those?” she asked.
“What is your full name and company?” she asked and Tricia leaned in as if to establish dominance and announced herself.
“I am Bonnie O’Neal, senior director for Eras Innovations. Trust me, you want me to explore your facilities as it could mean a major deal for your owners. When is the next tour, since your people didn’t do their due diligence in getting me the private escort I was promised?”
The android dropped the cocky expression and began to scramble to book the tour. “I apologize for this inconvenience, Mrs. O’Neal. If you could just sit over there in the waiting area, I will have someone come for you in just a moment,” she said.