Unnatural

by Anthony DiGiovanni

CHAPTER 9

  As the flight paths of Livingston’s and Jane’s planes converged, Sabrina’s unease at what Livingston had told her about Uriah grew. Sure, she wasn’t too keen about the notion of an arranged marriage for no deeper reason than utilitarian reproduction, especially when the impression she had of Uriah as a person and as a mate scarcely matched her ideal.

  At the same time, occupying herself with one of the complimentary word puzzles, she found herself fearing for the fate of a man upon whose reproductive organs rested the future of human civilization.

  That was, assuming the world would go about its affairs according to her ethics, but such was wishful thinking. Although reliably functional artificial wombs didn’t yet exist, she could picture the government going to drastic lengths to impregnate her without him, perhaps even against her will.

  It was insane, but she could understand it on some far-reaching, twisted level. To let the human race go extinct now would be tantamount to jumping off Mount Everest after reaching the halfway mark to the summit. Evil ideas die with evil people, said Zolnerowich’s poster, but good ideas die with good and evil people, too.

  All the literature written and preserved by people, dead.

  All the music whose lyrics and melodies touched people’s souls, dead.

  All the magnificent architecture in which the business of society took its course, dead.

  All the philosophy and theology of beings struggling to clear the fog of absurdity and ambiguity, dead.

  All the art of creatures with a sense of the whole greater than the sum of its parts, dead.

  All the memories and records of unifying moments that embodied the height of love and joy, dead.

  All the science and technology, a testament to the curiosity and industrious genius of some human minds, dead.

  Barring either the preservation of robots as supposedly human-like as Jane, or a visit from extraterrestrials, these fruits of human labor would be like the proverbial falling tree. It exists, but with no one to hear it, one could say it doesn’t make a sound.

  Yet Sabrina told herself that all this wasn’t worth the darkening of any number of souls. Though more souls might be born as a result of ungodly reproduction, they’d be doomed to repeat the sins of their parents, one of the deadliest of which was the treatment of humans as means rather than ends in and of themselves.

  Hence, as she deduced the eight-letter answer to the clue “obscure things,” Sabrina elected to find a healthy middle ground here. Reluctantly entering a loveless marriage that she had no reason to believe God was calling her to – that was no option. But she would neither wish death upon Uriah nor harden her heart to the possibility that he could truly be meant for her.

  Would God surprise her, against the evidence of her very genes?

  Livingston snapped Sabrina out of her reverie of verbal and moral dilemma. “It’s time.”

  When the weight of those two words registered, she gave her uneasy reply. “You’re sure this won’t be, y’know, cruel to Jane or anything?” She followed Livingston toward the cockpit.

  “Positive. It’ll be down before it even knows it’s being attacked.” It.

  A security android accosted them when they approached the autopilot machinery. “Please present your warrant for search of this area of the plane, sir.”

  “Watch the wizard at work, Miss Lockhart,” he said in undertones. Then, louder, “Well, I’m afraid I can’t provide that, but I do have this form that you may find satisfactory.” Livingston produced a Softsheet from his pocket, which the android remotely analyzed before feeding into its input system.

  After a few seconds, the bot regurgitated the Softsheet and handed it to Livingston. “Acceptable, sir. You have permission to examine the cockpit at your leisure, under supervision.”

  “Naturally.”

  Sabrina held her mouth open, brow creased. “How did that work? Robots have a very high standard of evidence in risky circumstances like these. I mean, that’s why human pilots are out of business!”

  “A good magician never reveals his secrets,” he said with a knowing grin.

  “Let me see the form.”

  She took it regardless of his consent. It was a wordy document that said less than it read, the gist of which was that Livingston had permission to search classified areas granted by the Prime Minister of Russia, who apparently feared “robotic terrorism.”

  “This is prepost–”

  Livingston pressed his index finger to her lips and said to the security bot, “Excuse me, may I have a word with this young lady before I conduct the search?”

  They left the cockpit. Affronted, Sabrina said, “Did I miss something, or is there freedom of speech in this country?”

  “There is, but there’s also the freedom of decency. The least you could do was let me finish my business until that ‘droid was out of earshot.”

  “Maybe so, but your ‘business’ seems pretty deceitful to me. No way in a sane world could you just waltz into a cockpit, show a form to an intelligent robot, and gain the liberty to search it on the grounds that the Prime Minister said you could. Even assuming you know who the Prime Minister was.”

  “Like I said, there’s a magic touch I gave to that form. Not everyone deserves to know the truth about some things, and that goes for you as much as for security androids.” He moved towards the front of the plane, perhaps too eagerly, but Sabrina stayed where she was.

  “Withholding truth is one thing, but distorting it is something I’m not comfortable with, Zach. Be honest with me. When you said you were going to ‘do something about’ Uriah, what did you mean?”

  He sighed. “Sabrina, we don’t have time to talk about this. Better to get Jane in the air than when we’re at Plesetsk and it can see us.”

  “I won’t go along with any ways of ‘getting’ Jane until you tell me how you plan to ‘get’ Uriah. Are you willing to kill him?”

  “Why would you ask such a thing?” Chuckling, Livingston seemed to be fighting to keep calm with his emotional suppression mechanism.

  “Because you haven’t made it easy to trust you!” She raised a finger and repeated this with other fingers as she added examples. “In the hours I’ve known you, you’ve rigged my landing so that I would end up in your helicopter – don’t pretend that wasn’t you – tried to justify a past of sexual predation, illegally seized command of a potentially dangerous Sonicap, touched me in a way too close for comfort at this stage of our relationship, likely blocked my communications with Luna despite your thin cover, and shown a control over your emotions and the actions of robots that I just find … unnerving.”

  For the first time since Sabrina had met him, Livingston displayed hints of anger. “Oh, so it’s unrestrained emotion you want? Why didn’t ya say so?”

  “Not totally unrestrained, just natural. I know it sounds kind of petty, almost jealous, but I think the way you display emotion is just unhealthy. Real people don’t put on the kind of facade you do unless they’re plotting something.”

  “Facade? You think this is all an act? God forbid I try to make the world a little more pleasant!” He caught himself and became his amiable self again, putting his hand on Sabrina’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. I’m better than this, and so are you.”

  He was only proving her point, but she had to pick her battles. “Fair enough, but I’d like it if you’d just admit what you’ve done wrong and show me the real you. Can you blame me for doubting someone so … powerful?”

  Only “doubting” was the wrong word. It wasn’t doubt, but fear, and Livingston could surely see that as she pulled away.

  Livingston said nothing for some time, retracting his hand and looking away in thought. “Okay, Sabrina. There’s no fooling you. Yeah, I did all those things you said I did.” He faced her with imploring eyes, as if afraid of losing her. “Still, you put your faith in me up until now, and for good reason. I brought you here because I knew you’d need h
elp dealing with Jane and figuring out the Dethroning. You were heading for the wrong spot, and if you’d kept up your route, not only would Jane be suffering longer, there’s no telling what that unstable robot could’ve done in the time you would’ve spent preparing a defense. Sorry, but this situation calls for preemptive measures.”

  “Zolnerowich would’ve told me Jane’s location.”

  “Too late for such information to be any use.”

  Sabrina paused. “And your other transgressions? I suppose defending harassment was necessary, too?”

  “No, it wasn’t. That was just my ego. I neglected to mention that thanks to Neurehab, my, er – history – is moot. Figured it was enough to let ya see that the proof of the pudding is in the tasting, but I guess that was naive of me.”

  “Fine, three to go.” She was not going to let this guy make a fool out of her. “I’ll be generous and let the emotional control thing slide.”

  “Thanks. The Sonicap is obvious. I couldn’t have Zolnerowich mistaking me for a threat. Same for cutting your line to Luna. You don’t need their ‘help,’ if you can call it that.”

  Her brows lowered and her hands went on hips, but she let him go on.

  “Bureaucrats on a blood hunt to pacify the masses, that’s all they are. They don’t respect you, Sabrina. You know that.”

  “Maybe, but the better question is, how do you?”

  Just then, they both began to feel a sinking sensation.

  They darted to the cockpit, Sabrina shouting, “Do you know how high we are?” Which translated to, how much time do we have until we’re dead?

  “High enough that we can hit Jane where it hurts and grab some parachutes in time.” Seeing that the safe he must have intended to raid by hacking its password was locked by its deactivation, Livingston plucked a ring off his finger and handed it to Sabrina. “Would’ve like to have used the firepower in there, but we’ll have to make do with something I sneaked on-board.”

  “I thought you got a pat-down?”

  “Yes, but the ‘droids wouldn’t suspect any danger in these. They may not be very fashionable, but they’re discreet, at least. I always have a Plan B, Miss Lockhart.” He led her to the emergency exit, next to which was a compartment of skydiving equipment.

  “Put that little bugger around your pointer finger and get a parachute ready.”

  She didn’t like the idea of taking orders from a liar, but survival took priority.

  Livingston placed a visor over his eyes. “Ya won’t need one of these. Now here’s what we’re gonna do. On the count of three, we’ll jump out at the same time. With this” – he pointed to the visor – “I’ll find and lock onto the parts of Jane and its plane we need to nab. All you have to do is point that finger outward and touch the ring with another finger after fifteen seconds. By then I’ll have found the targets, and the ring’ll fire pulses toward the targets accordingly. Then you pull the ripcord of the parachute and land safely.”

  It’s a sad fact of life that people are most courageous when they have no choice otherwise, as Sabrina reasoned that she had nothing to lose by taking the leap. “Here we go.”

  The seconds of free fall gave her that brief shock characteristic of a dive into relatively cold water, only things didn’t get any better from there. The catalyst was a single thought. After counting, one, two, three, the notion hit her: What if he planned all this so that the parachute doesn’t work and I die? She dismissed it just as soon as it came, but it threw off her timing. What was I on? Nine, ten …

  Twelve seconds in, she jerked the tip of her middle finger on top of the ring.

  The doubts seemed to add to gravity’s resistance to the drag her open parachute created, but she soon found the reassuring sight of a second falling aircraft. Yes, it was definitely Jane’s.

  But there was another entity rushing toward the Earth at a hazardous speed, and it was wearing a red suit.