Artificial

by Jadah McCoy

  I leave the empty shop, locking it behind me by pressing a thumb to the glass square beneath the doorknob. I’m the only other person programmed to the door besides Michelo.

  Outside, the skyline glows orange as the sun sets on the horizon. The streets are busier than usual, which I also expected. The citizens of New Elite have amassed this evening to pay their respects to a most beloved political leader and to meet his replacement—his upgrade. I can’t help the sneer that curls my lip.

  Most Elitians are dressed in their best livery—the highest heels, brightest colors, sharpest suits. The others, the androids from the slums, filter out of their shacks off to the side of the streets. Some limp, their legs nothing but thin steel frame and unfinished wiring that drags behind them. Others remain stationary against the wall, either because they cannot move or because they simply do not have the will to. I suppose I don’t blame them.

  It matters not. Eventually, the PICs will come and round everyone up.

  I pass through the noisy streets, making my way toward New Elite’s main square. The cobblestone turns to blue glass beneath my feet, the dark shacks give way to businesses and sleek, brightly lit buildings.

  The androids around me chatter in their idle way and bump into me every once in a while. Everything around me is madness, yet inside I’m still, quiet, alone. It was a half-truth when I told Michelo I wasn’t afraid. I do not fear for myself. It’s everyone else I fear for.

  The fountains appear in front of me as I turn a corner. Splayed across the CorpEx building’s face is a giant poster of Pontus. He’s dressed in yet another heinous suit, his face covered in the same dramatic makeup as usual. If there is anyone who will actually miss him, I’m very sorry for their uncharacteristically low artificial intelligence.

  It hardly matters, anyway. A large database holds the plan for his prototype. Death is not ever really death, not when there’s a puppeteer pulling the strings, able to carve yet another puppet.

  People fill the main square, to the point that it’s difficult to maneuver through the crowd. A strange sort of pallor falls over the gathering—almost ominous beneath the thin veil of remembrance and celebration. I see it in the stark, emotionless faces interspersed throughout the crowd. The Unglitched, the normals.

  I can see the cogs spinning in their callous, algorithm-based brains. Who was it that murdered Pontus? Which malfunction dared to retaliate? How long will it be until the same fate befalls each of them?

  PICs wander through the gathering crowd, a higher volume than is normal. There’s a bubble of space around each of them despite the crowdedness, as if they carry their own foot-wide force field on each side. Perhaps they do. But more than likely no one here wants to be anywhere near one. I pull the hood over my eyes, obscuring my face from view.

  I glance around, hoping to see a flash of blue eyes and red hair in the crowd, maybe a lab coat, but there’s nothing. Before I can search for her, the giant poster goes white and a face appears on the screen. It’s a handsome face, nearly androgynous with a dark complexion, except for the shock of long, straight, silver hair. The black eyes, I’ve seen them many times before on brightly lit advertisements as well as on the menagerie of political propaganda littered throughout New Elite.

  They are Pontus’s eyes.

  The crowd cheers with effervescence, and everyone turns to face the CorpEx building. As he opens his mouth to speak, the happy cries die down.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, my fellow androids,” the face says, voice echoing as the pink and orange sky turns to ink, “thank you all for coming here tonight to mourn the passing of a brilliant model… my predecessor.”

  I roll my eyes beneath the hood, and the manufactured muscles in my jaw strain. Such vanity. The only thing that could possibly be worse than bringing Pontus himself back is upgrading him. I thought he was insufferable before, but here he is, giving his own bloody eulogy.

  The face on the screen is placid, a quirk of the lips displaying amusement. “It is my distinct honor to be the seventh upgrade of the great Model P15-A, who rose up as a leader when all others had fallen.”

  He speaks with conviction, and the crowd around me claps and murmurs in agreement.

  “I want you, New Elite citizens, to know that I, Lexion, will deal with this act of terrorism swiftly and harshly. It is not in our nature to abide those who choose not to follow our laws.”

  For a moment, Lexion’s black eyes seem to fall directly on me in the crowd, and the dull roar of applause fades into the background. Unease makes my fingers twitch in my pocket. The eyes burn on my face as he continues speaking.

  “Inside information extracted from a smuggler, a traitor to all androids, has led us to a culprit. Worry not, my people, for soon this shall all come to an end.” He smiles darkly.

  Panic spreads through me, sharp and acrid as it electrifies my inner circuits.

  Micro.

  The words Lexion speaks and the cheers of the crowd become nothing but background noise, fuzz that my brain refuses to recognize as information. My limbs are stuck to their spot, and then sluggishly they begin to move away from this place.

  Even more people have gathered since I arrived, and it’s a struggle just to escape the massive crowd of androids coming from all areas of New Elite. A PIC drifts through the crowd in my direction, and I change trajectory to avoid the officer. I push the hood over my face. I don’t know how much they know, and it’s generally safer to avoid them.

  I’m almost out of the sea of people when a great cheer erupts. I turn to see an amassing of cream-colored lamps rising toward the night sky, the flames that light their centers lifting them. They float on the breeze, lighting the night in an absurdly sentimental display. I continue on my way, ignoring the laughable ceremony.

  Finally, I free myself from the crowd. I try to walk toward an alley, but two bodies trap the tail end of my coat. Agitated, I grab it and pull until it comes free.

  Every molecule of me desires to run to our meeting spot, but that would be suspicious. It would call attention to me, and the last thing I need is yet more attention.

  Some people have already begun to prematurely return from the remembrance ceremony, and they follow the same path I do, or they’re already farther down. Micro and I usually meet in an alley behind a wire shop close to here. It’s a quiet place—not many people venture there. Though tonight will be different due to the events going on.

  As I get closer to my destination, I see too many people where I should be turning. There should only be one person here: Micro. Why are they all gathering like this? Don’t they have some bloody place to be?

  Agitated, I walk faster and push through the ambling crowd around me. I get a few unpleasant looks and whispers for that.

  Passersby in front of me glance over and stop. A lady covers her mouth with a hand. “Terrible,” she mutters, before sheilding her eyes and rushing away in the opposite direction.

  No. It cannot be. Not her. Not now. Not like this.

  My walk turns to a jog, and a jog to a run as I approach the alley. I push away a woman blocking my path and turn the corner.

  And it can be. It is. It is. It is.

  “No!” I push people away and fall to my knees there below her, below Micro.

  Her body dangles in a spider web of wires in the alley where we were to meet. Her ruby hair is shorn and in jagged disarray, the word “Glitch” branded into her forehead. Our pain receptors may be an imitation of those an Organic possesses, but that doesn’t make the pain any less real.

  She’s unclothed, torso bare for all to see. And below the waist, she’s nothing. Nothing but mangled wires trailing along the cold ground, and the dark lubricating fluid that drips from them. Her widget lies by my feet, covered in black liquid, and there’s a gaping hole where it once was implanted in her arm. They must have pulled it out first, stopped her from calling for help.

  What they’ve done to her…

  Ice settles into me. Ice and black anger, and I’m
drowning in them. All of this… it’s my fault. If I had listened to her… if I had just answered her… I’m such an idiot! A damned fool. CorpEx, Pontus, Lexion, someone—anyone else, whoever is behind this, I will find them and make them pay for the terror they’ve wrought upon their own kind.

  It’s sick and makes us no better than the humans we’re so ashamed to be replicas of. This is not the answer. Why can no one see that genocide is the furthest thing from the solution to this problem?

  I lash out, hitting the wall beside me. Soft gasps float in the air and calculating looks from fellow androids burn me. The wall crumbles beneath the force of my fist, chips of the substance tumbling to my feet.

  “What are you all looking at?” A few of them walk away, whether from pity or developing disinterest, I’m unsure.

  I rip at the wires pressing into her skin and pull her down. Micro’s body is light as it collapses in my hands, covering me in the same dark liquid seeping from her. I shake her, pry open her eyelids. There’s no light glowing in her eyes, nothing to show that any of her main systems are running. She’s motionless, unresponsive.

  I brush back her mess of short hair and press my forehead to hers. The sound of shoes scuffling on the sidewalk surrounds me. Everything else fades away for a moment, and there’s nothing but my skin on hers.

  But I can’t dwell on it. There simply isn’t time. It pains me to leave her behind in this alleyway, a message for others of our kind, a debacle, a sideshow. She doesn’t deserve that. I don’t have a choice, though.

  I turn her head to the side and pull at the information port at the back of her neck. I need to get her memory chip. If anything could give me a clue as to who did this to her, it would be that. The metal port comes out with a pop and a crunch that makes me cringe. Wires trail out of the new hole in her neck and just beyond them lies the chip I need. I tug at them, and it seems they’ll never come to an end until finally a small square pops out.

  I glance up just in time to see a PIC rounding the corner with purpose. Bloody hell, of course. What else should I have expected? I wrench the small chip from the box. It’s blackened around the edges—the bastards ripped her data. I’ll be lucky if I can get anything off this.

  The PIC is getting closer, and I’ve no time to waste. I have to get out of here. With massive regret, I turn and walk away from Micro’s body. I know what will happen if that PIC catches me. I’ve shown too much, displayed too much emotion, to pass as an android without a malfunction.

  I shove the chip in my pocket for later as I rush around the corner. Footsteps sound behind me, signifying the chase I’ve just become a part of. I try my best not to run as I dodge down alley after alley, hiding behind other androids and using the dispersing crowd to my advantage. When I’m out of sight, I take off my jacket and throw it into a corner, hoping to make myself less recognizable.

  I’m closer to Michelo’s, just a few blocks left. I hear no footsteps following me, so I slow my pace. No matter what, I can’t lead them back to his shop. I can’t allow anyone else to become tangled up in this. I turn behind me, glancing around the corner I just passed. There’s no one there, no sign of any happy masks or anyone else for that matter.

  Exhaling with relief, I turn back around. The wide eyes and toothy smile fill my vision first. A PIC stands directly in front of me, blocking my path. The panic washes over me again. Its shoulders square with determination, and I eye the weapon in its hands. My only choices are to run or fight.

  There is a 57.6 percent chance of survival if I run and only a 32.4 percent chance if I fight. Less than ideal, but I can work with those numbers.

  “Why do you run, Model BA-5T10N?” the PIC asks in its granular, monotone voice. “Only the guilty run.”

  “Then you are the ones who should be running.”

  I take a step backward, edging toward my exit only to bump into something. I don’t have to look behind me to know what it is. Where there’s one, there’s more. Like animals scenting blood, like predators to a kill.

  Before I can react, the PIC behind me throws out a leg, knocking my own out from under me. My body hits the ground, and a knee presses into the metal ligaments of my spine.

  The PIC shoves a black bag over my head, shrouding everything in darkness. I throw back an elbow, struggling against the weight that presses me down. The hit lands but doesn’t faze the PIC. I pull at the frayed ends of the bag over my head, but it does nothing to loosen the grip.

  I struggle as two sets of hands hold me down. One of the PICs lifts the bag up, and something pierces my information port. A violent electric jolt courses through me, makes me seize under their grip. I grit my teeth, groaning in pain. Patterns flash in my vision, numbers and shapes and random operations.

  System failure flashes in red on the outskirts of my vision. Force reboot.

  My eyelids turn heavy and then everything goes black.

  Bastion

  ll I hear is the constant dripping.

  The sound is soothing at first, lulling me into a serene state as my operations prepare for reboot. But the sound is wrong somehow and doesn’t sit well with me. There should be no dripping. Something is wrong, but I can’t…

  With a low buzz, my system reboots. Loading optics reticulum, cochlear linear system active, regaining access to memory drive, testing fluid levels…

  My eyes snap open, and I glance around. The cataloged memories filter back into my brain in flashes: silver hair on a screen, the hum of the crowd, bright lamps floating away, a cascade of wires covered in black sludge, the hands holding me down. Micro, the PICs—is Syl all right?

  Fluid levels low! blinks again and again in my peripheral.

  What the hell did they do to me?

  I try to get up, but my arms, legs, and head are restrained. I struggle against whatever is holding me down, but the grip doesn’t loosen. My equilibrium is off, causing the world to spin around me. My vision flickers, the colors distorted—a side effect of low fluids. I know that even if I am able to free myself, my movements will be slow and jerky, another side effect.

  Unable to move my head and suffering from a terrible case of vertigo, I look around as best I can. My surroundings don’t appear familiar; I haven’t been in this place before. The walls are blank and gray, and pipes run from one end of the room to the other. It’s grimy in here, the smell of mildew filling the air.

  Several floor-to-ceiling tubes line the wall across from me. Inside them are the remnants—or beginnings—of what seem to be experiments. The bodies inside are organs held together by gray, semitranslucent, melted-looking flesh. Limbs that shouldn’t be growing protrude in strange places from the bodies. Some are shriveled, and some are large and full of thick veins. All of them are disturbing.

  With a jolt, the table I’m lying on begins to rotate. The ceiling passes from my view, and dark corners and doorways, dirty instruments, and test tubes replace it. From the corner of my eye, I see something protruding from my arm—a tube of some sort. Dark fluid flows through it, trailing its way up the tubes to an elaborate setup of beakers and petri dishes and colored liquids beside me. That must be the dripping I hear and why my fluids are low.

  Behind me, footsteps tap against the floor.

  “By now I believe you will have noticed the malfunction in your system.” I recognize the voice.

  “What do you want?” I ask through gritted teeth.

  He ignores the question. The silver head appears in my vision first. Lexion crouches over his tinctures and tools, fingering and examining each one as he makes his way down the table.

  “What do you think it is that makes you a Glitch?” he asks, though I believe he’s asking himself instead of me. “I’ve tested everything—operations, systems, programs, fluids, wiring… and still nothing.”

  “It’s the same thing that makes you a bloody madman.”

  His big, dark eyes settle on my face, and his smile is anything but friendly. He stands, pensive, tapping a finger against his mouth.

/>   “Bloody madman. Where have I heard that phrase before?” He squints into the corner. “Ah, yes. I believe that’s what Micro called me. Well… before she…”

  My jaw clenches so hard my teeth might break off.

  Lexion makes a sound of mock comfort, clucking his tongue against his teeth. “Oh, I’ve upset you. Unfortunate fate she met with. Such a beautiful, breakable thing she was.”

  He saunters from behind the lab equipment and steps in front of me, dressed in black leather and shining silk. His head cocks to the side as he studies me.

  “Would you like me to tell you how she cried when I ripped out her widget, epidermal thread by tiny epidermal thread?”

  He takes a step closer to me, and my body tingles with the effort to push myself farther away from him.

  “Or how she screamed when I took her apart?”

  Another step and we’re nearly nose to nose.

  “Or, perhaps, how it was your name she called when I—”

  “Enough!” I pull against the restraints, hoping to loosen them. The bolts creak and strain as they contain me, but they do not relent.

  If I could get out of here, I would tear him apart bit by bit, just like he and others have done to so many of our kind. None deserve that fate more than he does.

  He laughs, the maniacal sound echoing through the otherwise silent room. “Bastion,” he calls my name, but it’s her voice that comes from his mouth—a recording. It’s less my name and more of a desperate plea. Maybe it’s something that actually happened, or maybe it’s just a vocal trick he’s concocted. Either way…

  The heady rush of anger flows through me and cools to a thin layer of ice on my skin. I can do nothing. It rankles to know I must sit here and bear this one-sided conversation. More like the cat terrorizing the mouse before tearing its guts open and leaving it uneaten.

  I keep my face blank as Lexion turns to me again, a satisfied smile on his face.

  “But do you know what would really be fun?” he asks.