Unnatural

by Anthony DiGiovanni

CHAPTER 13

  Uriah woke up refreshed. Across the room from his bed was a calendar with photos of exotic lizards. Pat’s birthday, if he’d been keeping track of the days correctly. He dispelled the thought and all the memories it came with, as he had never believed folks who say your loved ones never leave you when they die. They do, you never will see them again, and it hurts like a devilish disease until you decide to let them go.

  Of course, Livingston had resurrected, but Uriah figured the discomfort of the notion that he might do so again outweighed the solace Pat’s revival could bring. For who would wish another life upon his beloved in a world gone to pieces because of someone else’s other life?

  Getting up and striding to the door, he couldn’t obstruct the flow of memories completely. “Dennis, you seriously shouldn’t have,” she’d said last year. “You know I don’t like to make birthdays a big deal, and I would say money doesn’t grow on trees, but that kinda isn’t true.”

  She couldn’t help appreciating his gift regardless, and the recollection of following events brought a smile to Uriah’s face that vanished when he heard Sabrina say the four deadliest words in a woman’s dictionary.

  “We need to talk.”

  It was irrational, sure. What was the worst a girl who was basically fifteen could say to him? Still, his reply was as cautious as it was unnecessary. “Was everything okay last night?”

  “Sure, if you can call finding out we’re stuck inside here at the mercy of the whims of a dead man’s robot slaves ‘okay.’ Have a seat.”

  She ignored Uriah’s muttering, “Just asking.”

  Complying, he asked, “Couldn’t you just break the windows if necessary?”

  “Tried, didn’t work. Nanos must’ve reinforced everything.” Sabrina sat across from him to put him at ease. Her next words were dripping with implication. “I don’t know what could drive them to keep us in here, alone, indefinitely, with no living master to tell them to do so, but it’s all right, because we need to sort out a few things.”

  “Shoot.” He kept his cool.

  “Uriah, mind explaining these to me?”

  She showed him the videos, waving away his accusation of a violation of his privacy. “Any reason a robot out there would send those to you?”

  He diverted his eyes away from hers, blue and viciously contracted. “Like I’m supposed to know why it had the video at all. Just Livingston’s spying, yeah, but I’m as clueless as you are as to why.” That was a lie. Livingston could only be aiming to drive a wedge of distrust between them, but damned if he knew the “why” of this, much less the “how” if he’d blasted Livingston’s brain beyond reconstruction.

  “You sure you didn’t plan this? This house arrest?”

  “You’re being ridiculous.” He told himself not to cross his arms, as it would only hurt him in the long run. “Why would I have a robot send me that video clip when you could intercept it, even if I wanted to lock myself in here with you?”

  Sabrina shrugged slightly, trying to keep his eye contact in apparent fear that he would do something malicious the second she took her eyes off his. “Maybe you needed that clip to review something, to make sure you didn’t accidentally mess up your story, and it just slipped your mind ‘cause you were so tired last night.”

  Uriah was about to protest, but she held up her hand. “And as for that ‘even if’ part, don’t kid yourself. You’re … deprived. No more Pat, no more benefits that come with a proximate female. ‘Til now. For all I know, you could’ve set this all up, killing almost the entire human population just to give the government a reason to let you have me.”

  “Now you’re really nuts. Do I look like a pedophile?”

  “I’m not a kid,” she snapped. “To you, I’m the closest – and only Organic – woman by tens of thousands of miles, who happens to look a little, er, youthful.”

  She must have trust issues, he realized. Livingston. “Sabrina, please. Let’s be sane here. Set aside that I’d have to be an idiot of the highest order to let that video fall into your hands and incriminate myself. Is there any sign whatsoever about my personality that would lead ya to think I’m willing to –?”

  “If people could easily tell the difference between rapists and non-rapists, they wouldn’t suffer that injustice as much, now would they? Besides, why risk my dropping dead before I have a child? I know what Zolnerowich told you to do, Uriah.”

  Uriah could no longer stand this. “Do you also know that I told her I was against it? Listen, Sabrina, I don’t know what’s going through your head to make you believe this garbage, but it’s insulting to the both of us.”

  “Well, excuse me!” she cried shrilly, standing up. “What else am I supposed to believe? What, that Livingston’s back from the dead again and he’s screwing with us? For God’s sake, it’s hard enough to believe he rose the first time!”

  Uriah narrowed his eyes. “That’s a funny thing to hear from a Christian.”

  “What?” She was still hysterical, just also confused now.

  “You believe Jesus resurrected, don’tcha? Why not Livingston?”

  “Oh, that? Why’d you think I’d believe that?”

  He didn’t know what to make of this. Perhaps another of Livingston’s antics of mind modification, but he seemed to have removed the tendency towards her belief in Christianity, rather than knowledge of the faith’s existence. Smart sociopath, brings him that much closer to what he wants. He looked off to the side and said, “Never mind.”

  “So why do you expect me to believe Livingston magically returned?”

  “It’s not necessarily magic, first of all, and second, what makes you think it’s either A, I’m a pervert, or B, Livingston did it?”

  “Well, who else could have?”

  “That’s bad logic,” he said as calmly as he could. “I’m not guilty until another likely suspect pops up, I’m innocent until proven guilty.”

  Sabrina took particular offense to this. “I’m just picking the best explanation I have!”

  “Which you can’t do until you’ve thought of all the options.” He met her gaze. “Look, we’re not the only humans alive besides Livingston. I’d say Zolnerowich has plenty of motivation to trap us together. Ya might as well call this a breeding ground rather than a house.”

  “Just how would sending that video help speed up the process?”

  Neither of them spoke in the awkwardness that question created, much less did Uriah even have an answer. Crazy as Sabrina saw it, he had to admit the Livingston hypothesis fit the facts better. She finally said, “I don’t think Governess Zolnerowich would use such a barbaric method, anyway. She’s a slimy politician, but she’s no control freak, Dennis.”

  So they were back on first-name terms. Good. “You’re right there. If there’s anything I don’t trust Zolnerowich about, it’s not that, so much as how she feels about Jane.” That recalled a quandary he’d been turning over in his mind last night. “Sabrina, I don’t get what happened before you got here. Ya say Zolnerowich sent you to Earth to incapacitate Jane, right?”

  She nodded as she sat.

  “Why you? Why not a professional who knows robot psychology?”

  “Because I’m an Organic. You don’t send a Transhuman up against a bot with an EM gun built into its hand.”

  “Her hand.”

  “Excuse me?”

  He explained himself matter-of-factly. “Jane’s a woman. She has a brain just like a woman’s, ‘cept it’s not gray matter.”

  “Women aren’t made to be slaves,” she said with slight contempt.

  “The way she tells me it, she isn’t a slave. She knows she has no choice but to love Marshall, but she thinks that’s a good thing.”

  “You can’t be serious!”

  “Don’t get the wrong idea. I’m not saying slavery is okay if ya like it, but if her brain was made with a tendency to love someone unconditionally and completely,
and she doesn’t have any freedom to take, is it really slavery?”

  “Forget it. I don’t want another reason to distrust you, so just tell me where you were going with these questions.”

  Great, he was losing her. “Okay, so, why’d you agree to stop Jane from sabotaging the shuttle if you were going to do that?” He knew the answer was that she had never blown up the shuttle, but he wanted to know just how elaborate Livingston’s lies could be.

  “Because I didn’t want to blow it up at first. I wanted to aid the world by getting those ambassadors on terra firma safely.”

  “So what changed your mind?”

  Sabrina made no eye contact, preferring to look at some unsightly Amish plates. “It was really impulsive of me, and in the end I regretted it, but I decided I didn’t want to help those people ruin the world.”

  “I see.”

  “They’re parasites. I want nothing to do with them.”

  That was all the explanation he needed, even if he was slow to believe it. What was more likely, that she’d betrayed innocent people and was confessing it willingly to him, or that Livingston had deluded her with the same means by which he’d removed all memories of him from her brain? Plus, it contradicted her insistence that he shouldn’t judge all Unnaturals.

  “Sabrina, why are you telling me this? You showed your hand before ya knew I’d killed Livingston.”

  She hesitated. “I don’t know, I guess it’s because I just needed to get the guilt off my chest. And I wanted to show my trust in you, but I suppose it was wasted.” She took a sip of the caffeinated beverage, called Kinetic, left untouched since at least the time he’d come downstairs.

  Best not to dwell on that last part. “Don’t keep yourself up for me.”

  “It’s not for you. It’s so I can watch over you.” Sabrina crumpled the can and looked around for a recycling bin, evidently to no avail in such a conservative home. Maybe it was just a habit, or she really was expecting her actions to have consequences for future generations. “You don’t believe me, and I don’t believe you.”

  Uriah gave up. Surrender the battle, but win the war. “All right, I’ll play along. If ya don’t feel comfortable around me, we can make this work. There’s no such thing as impenetrable walls, or doors impossible to unlock. Let’s find a weak spot in this cage, and I’ll make sure to keep my privates out of a ten-foot radius of yours.”

  “Dennis, I’m not saying I think you’re a predator, I just –”

  “No, no, you’re right. I’m a creepy guy who gives off a creepy vibe. If you’d rather not risk a visit from certain unwanted haploid cells of mine, I can respect that. I’ll take the east half of the house, you get the west.” Uriah stared off at nowhere in particular with epiphany. “No, wait!” He walked around the house, exclaiming, “Aha!” after a few moments.

  Sabrina came closer than ten feet from him, a fact he supposed it better not to address aloud. “This is what basements were made for,” he said as he descended the steps and turned on his flashlight. People would go sun-tanning in Siberia before he’d bother with an oil lamp.

  Uriah froze before turning to Sabrina. “Don’t move! You stay between that door and its frame.” He drew the EM gun he’d kept for himself, aimed for the door, and pulled the trigger.

  The block of wood slammed shut on Sabrina so that she was half inside, half out. He darted upstairs and threw all his weight against the door, which only nearly sent him tumbling backward to his death. He held onto the doorknob for dear life.

  “Shoot again!” she screamed amidst groans. No need to tell me twice. He gave another try, but there was no frying these machines. Hearing her pained exclamations, Uriah pulled her arm and torso with every Newton of force he could muster until she was free. They grabbed hold of the banister as soon as the opportunity arose, listening to the death sentence that was the slam of the door.