The rails had been laid in anticipation of a job going through. Now they provided a brace for wooden planks that had been placed across them and secured to provide a non-muddy walkway. I imagined that later we would make this a more permanent walkway, laying cement or even stones. But for now, it served its purpose and it was wide enough for Ben and I to walk side-by-side.
I could tell he wanted to say something after we’d been walking another two or three minutes without any break in the scenery, but he didn’t. So I filled in the silence for him and figured I’d make him feel useful at the same time. “Keep an eye out for a small blue handkerchief,” I told him.
“Like that one?” he asked immediately.
It was tied to the railing on the right-hand side up ahead about twenty paces and barely visible in the dim light. At least to a human. To an android, it would have been visible for a while. I grinned and nodded. “Exactly like that one.”
I stopped ten feet before the handkerchief, let go of Ben, and knelt down so I could run my hand on the underside of the metal rail. I found the switch without too much trouble, depressed it, and heard the whirring of machinery. I stood quickly, wrapped my arm around Ben’s waist, and got ready to move.
“What is that?” Ben asked nervously.
“Hopefully it’s Prometheus opening the door for us.”
A slice of blue-white light infiltrated the tunnel up to our left, and I sighed in relief. “And there it is.”
The wall opened inward, revealing that the door’s inside was sheer, clean metal, around three-quarters of a foot thick. As Ben and I drew closer and it opened further, I got my first glimpse of the latest Prometheus. We stepped inside, the door closed behind us, and we stared in bewilderment.
A large central entryway and main gathering room lay before us. It was circular and all-white, clean-lined and perfect, built with recessed blue-white lighting, recessed shelves filled with books, schematics, and knick-knacks, and a recessed center floor that dropped down by way of three white marble steps.
The recessed area contained a round, enclosed fireplace crackling with blue-white flames. Beside the fire was a rectangular table with rounded edges. There were eight white chairs tucked in around it. Several white sofas and plush love seats took up the remaining space, along with side tables sporting built-in cup holders, writing areas, remotes, and hand scanners.
I knew androids could work at extraordinary speeds to design, engineer, and ultimately built, but this… well, I had never seen anything like this. The Prometheus site that had been discovered by IRM-1000 and destroyed by his men had not been anything like this. These clean, white lines, this pristine sci-fi vibe – this was all was new.
I couldn’t help but notice that there were even soft, fuzzy throws tossed over the couches for comfort. Every detail had been seen to.
A circle of open-arch doorways framed the central room. There were five in total, as if leading to points of a very special star. Each stretched into long, identical hallways ringed with more blue-white lights, and amazingly – windows. They weren’t real windows, of course; we were underground. But they gave the impression of impossible dimension as they afforded views into the cosmos, replete with light-speed stars streaming by or the slowly spinning rings of planets, or the shimmering of prismatic galaxies.
The ceiling overhead was domed and smooth white, the floor polished white stone. It looked like marble. And when we passed the threshold and the door closed behind us, locking shut with a mechanized and pressurized sound, the futuristic effect of the entire structure was complete.
“Hoooly shiznit,” I finally whispered, utterly bewildered.
“I’m so glad you approve,” said Lilith.
I turned to find the veritable “mother of Prometheus” standing in an archway I hadn’t been able to see from the main entrance. Jack and Lucas were standing with her, and so was Nanuk. Lilith was smiling gently, as usual. Jack was grinning a lopsided, knowing smile. Lucas was watching me as always, but with a glittering gray gaze and the slightest upturned lips.
Nanuk was panting and wagging his tail, shifting between sitting and standing. It was clear the poor animal wanted to run across the main room and jump on me at full speed, but Jack had been trying to teach him to be patient and refrain from lovingly trampling people to death without at least being called by name first.
I looked from the enormous dog to Lilith. When I’d joined Prometheus more than a year ago, one of the first things I’d done was set about helping Lilith. She’d been very badly damaged in what she termed “another lifetime,” resulting in grievous wounds. The entire back side of her skull had been missing, for starters. But that was a year ago, and little by little, with my knowledge of biomechanics, and her intrinsic knowledge of what her system could and could not handle, we pieced her back together.
Now she wore her beautiful hair in a shiny, thick black bun, and wisps of that hair sometimes broke free of the bun to brush her shoulders. A year ago, biofluids from fractured biocomponents had filled her eye sockets to the half-way point. She’d gotten used to seeing through it as if half submerged in water. Now she had brown eyes clear as day, with flecks of green here and there that matched the color of the dress she wore. And that was only the beginning.
In short, she was whole again. At least on the outside. On the inside, she would always be fractured. She would forever remember the traumatic events that had shaped who and what she’d become. But that was perhaps a good thing. Because who and what she’d become was something and someone wonderful.
After a few seconds, Nanuk whined impatiently, and I let out a wonder-filled breath. “Lilith… this – this is… Jesus, I don’t – I don’t even have words for how amazing this is!”
Clearly.
Lilith laughed softly, but proudly. “I’m truly thrilled to know you like it. We literally took the design ideas from fanart on your computer,” she said through her laughter. “It was Daniel’s idea, so he gets chewed out for the violation of privacy.”
I laughed, thanking my lucky stars that I never downloaded anything embarrassing on my Prometheus computer. At least not without thoroughly erasing it after. I hoped.
“He knows how much you love science fiction. And… you’ve made so many of our dreams come true,” Lilith said as she came forward to enter the main room and I saw movement in the other tunnels out of the corners of my eye.
I turned to see the rest of Prometheus emerging. They’d probably been drawn out of whatever quarters waited down those halls by the sound of voices, or maybe even just a silent alert system that the “front door” had been used.
Daniel, Shawn, Sonia, Nicholas, Jack, Lex, Charlotte, Ruby, Matt, and Eddie Six – that’s how the Eddie's preferred to be referred to was by numbers, like the Borg, which they found funny – all came together to enter the main room. Something struck me as immediately wrong in the group, but it was a nagging kind of thing in the back of my mind because I was still far too stunned by what I was seeing to pay it the attention it deserved.
Lilith went on. “Since we had no choice but to start over anyway, Daniel wanted to build something that would make one of your dreams come true. And we all agreed.” Her smile was enormous and proud.
I looked from Lilith to Daniel. But Daniel’s smile was not nearly as enormous. Though his eyes were just as warm, his smile was tighter. His gaze slipped from me to my one-legged companion.
Oh, right! I’d forgotten about Ben. No wonder Daniel wasn’t happy.
Daniel stepped away from the others and descended the steps to the recessed area on his side, crossing it in long strides. “Do you like your new home, Sam?” he asked, turning his attention back to me and obviously deciding to put the matter of Ben on an immediate backburner. There was a touch of suspicion in his gaze when he looked at Ben, but when he turned to me, there was hope and a lot of nervousness, which was rare for him.
So I alleviated that right away. “Daniel, I absolutely love it,” I told him honestly, fro
m my heart of hearts. “This is truly everything I’ve ever wanted in a home.”
Including the family to fill it, I thought.
His face cracked a massive, relieved grin and he chuckled softly, climbing the steps on the my side of the recessed area to finally stand before me and Ben.
“Good,” he said with a nod. “Welcome home, Angel of Prometheus.”
The others echoed the sentiment word for word, and I blushed furiously as I glanced at them all. I returned their smiles through painfully overheated cheeks.
But that was when I noticed Ruby was alone. Her best friend Erica was usually standing beside her. They had joined Prometheus together and were normally inseparable.
And… that wasn’t all. Ruby only had one arm.
Ruby was a “BRM” model android, whose crude designation was derived from the term, bedroom model. She and the other bedroom models had been created for the sole purpose of pleasuring humans at the Gaius Club that Nicholas had talked about and detested so much. Unlike other BRM models, she had dyed her hair red to match her name. But now not only her hair had been altered; her body had been terribly altered as well.
Erica was also a former bedroom model android. Once she and Ruby had escaped the Gaius Club after having to literally kill to get away from the man who’d rented them for the sole purpose of raping and killing them first, she had cut her hair short and taken the name “Erica” to separate herself from the rest of her series the way Ruby had. The way a human would.
Naturally.
Ruby and Erica were never apart. Not a single time I’d seen either one of them had they been without the other. This was new and different in a weird and decidedly unsettling way. What was going on?
But even as I asked myself this question, I knew the answer. I knew it had to do with the attack. I just didn’t want to see that particular writing, clear as day, on that particular wall.
Daniel must have realized I was noticing things, because he fell silent.
And in his silence, I continued to notice things.
Finn, Prometheus’s school teacher, wasn’t there either. And he almost always accompanied Lilith, especially in situations like this. They, too, were best friends. Finn was another android that had been very badly damaged when I arrived at Prometheus; he was one of FutureGen’s earliest models, and once repaired, he’d begun instructing the android children we took in so they could continue to live a relatively normal existence.
Eddie Three and Eddie Four were missing, which wouldn’t have been noticeable if Eddie Two and Six hadn’t been there. But they were. And Three and four were always with him. Eddie’s One and Five had been killed years ago, and the Eddies were the only five androids of that model ever produced. Hence, they felt a kinship with one another.
The children of Prometheus weren’t there either, but that didn’t trouble me as much since Mabel wasn’t present and I knew she’d survived the attack because she’d been at the hospital afterward. I figured the kids were all playing in some other area of the beautiful new building. Still, it was oddly quiet. Normally the children could be heard squealing as they played, or at least talking with one another.
Most disturbing of all was not what was missing but what new thing was present. It was something Daniel was wearing around his neck.
It was a pendant on a leather cord. I’d seen that pendant dozens of times over the last year. It was a sterling silver skull with emerald green eyes and rose gold horns that curled up through the center of a yellow gold halo. It was highly symbolic, expertly designed, and had been created by one of the world’s most renowned artists: Jonathan Montgomery.
It was Jonathan’s neck I’d seen the pendant around all those times.
I stared at the pendant and blinked. The room grew very, very quiet.
After a moment in time so long it seemed to encompass forever, and so short it seemed a single pebble in an hour glass, Daniel softly said, “I’m so sorry, Sam.” He drew a shaky breath and repeated in a whisper, “I’m so, so sorry.”
I looked up to meet his gaze and saw there in its blue-green depths the confirmation of my fears. My lips parted, and across a dry tongue, air from my lungs formed the words, “Jonathan’s gone. Isn’t he.” It was a statement, not a question. I already knew the answer.
At least I thought I did.
But Daniel didn’t nod. “Jonathan,” he said instead, “and Nathan.”
That one hit me like the real, much taller wave that always came after the fake wave when you were trying to surf. I think I was about to ask him to repeat himself because I was sure I hadn’t heard him right, when he continued. Through an increasingly loud roar in my eardrums I heard him say, “They had just arrived at Prometheus that night in the hopes of surprising you… when Zero’s men attacked. And they were killed.”
He paused, tore his gaze from mine, and looked down at the floor. In a distant, pain-filled voice, he said, “Their bodies are in the next room in chronostasis. We wanted to wait until we were all together for their funeral.” He looked up, capturing my eyes. “Jonathan and Nathan are there. Along with Erica….” He swallowed hard. “Eddie Three, Eddie Four, Finn….” His eyes took on a shining cast. “And two of the children.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Android bodies were not burned when they died, mostly because burning an android body produced too much toxic smoke. The horror of the truth was that android bodies were normally tossed out like rubbish and piled in a dump as dismantled trash.
Needless to say, that didn’t happen in Prometheus. When an android died, he or she was buried.
But Jonathan Montgomery had been human, not android. And he’d also been a big fan of pop culture. So on the night of the first year of the new century, Prometheus gave Jonathan a “Hunter’s Funeral,” the way they had on the old television series, Supernatural.
For a special send-off with a poignantly personal touch, while they burned his body and the body of his son, I sang Xena’s “Burial” song.
It was something I had learned to sing in my teens. Lucy Lawless had possessed the most beautiful voice, so the producers of Xena had often taken advantage of it and incorporated music into the show whenever possible. When someone important to the series died, Xena and her companions would do the same thing the Winchester brothers did. They would wrap the body up, lay it out atop a pyre, and set the body ablaze. Then Xena would sing.
And every single time, it was soul-searing and otherworldly.
The night of January 1st, 2100, as the moon reflected clear on a calm lake and the flames rose high into the multiverse, I watched my dear friend and the man who’d been a father to Daniel go up in ashes. As if I’d been unknowingly preparing for this moment my entire life, I then closed my eyes in the respectfully waiting silence, and my voice poured forth with more depth and emotion than ever before.
I have to admit that despite the literal pain wrapping around me from my chest outward, the night I sang standing beside Jonathan’s funeral pyre was the most beautiful I had ever sounded. That was perhaps the most painful thing of all. Because Jonathan didn’t get to hear it.
And he would have loved it.
When the human remains were burned down to ash, we took the molts from the androids who’d died with them and lovingly, tenderly placed both the ashes and the reactors in a sealed capsule. Then each of us placed into the same capsule something meaningful, something that defined the tie we’d had with the ones we’d lost.
The capsule itself would be buried somewhere special later on. For now, we would keep it close, place our hand against it when we needed to, and mourn.
It was dark and quiet later that night after the funeral. In this dark silence, Daniel came to find me in Prometheus’s library and ask to speak with me in private.
I tensed up, lifting my face from the electronic reader in my hands. Just like that, I knew my mourning period was over. I knew he wanted to talk to me about Ben. After in effect “burying” several close friends, I had never bee
n in less of a mood to hear a reprimand. But I nodded and followed him out of the library anyway. He was Prometheus’s leader, after all.
The private meeting room of Prometheus was designed with interrogations in mind. It was a small sound-proof room at the end of one hallway. Like the other rooms, it was all white and clean-lined, but it had a colder and more pragmatic feel to it, clearly designed with intimidation in mind. At the center of the room there was a metal table, and just as did the tables in police interrogation rooms, this one came with built-in supports for bindings or cuffs. The single chair bolted into the floor possessed the same.
It reminded me of Zero’s metal chair in that room on the twenty-seventh floor of his Vector Fifteen building. When I saw that was the room Daniel was leading me to, I dutifully stifled the urge to stop and question him. But my blood pressure spiked.
However, when I followed Daniel into the room, it was to find that several more chairs had been placed inside, along with AV equipment – and several other people were there too.
Also in the room, on a small side-table in the corner, was the canister holding Jonathan and Theo’s ashes and the molten salt reactors of the fallen androids. I guess it was included… just in case someone needed any of their old friends to be there.
Cole, Lucas, Nicholas, and Jack were already in the room. They were seated except for Cole, who was standing bent over the computer I assumed controlled the static image on a screen someone had attached to one of the walls.
I looked at each of them in turn. None of them were smiling, and that was bad enough. Worse was that there was a hollow darkness under Luke’s eyes that he rarely acquired. I’d noticed it appeared when he was deeply troubled. It was as if he were designed to reflect the harrowing effects of human emotion, regardless of whether or not he needed sleep. Maybe it was part of his diplomacy programming, additions made compliments of FutureGen or whoever it was that had awakened him.
When I met his gaze, he held it for a moment then gracefully placed his hands atop the table and stood, pushing out his chair. He walked around the table as Daniel and I entered, striding toward me.
I, Android: A Different Model Page 27