I, Android: A Different Model

by Heather Killough-Walden

  I didn’t give them any further time to telepathically discuss the state of my mentality. “Got it,” I said. Then I kicked up the stand and turned to speak over my shoulder. “Remember not to lean.”

  Lucas didn’t reply. Most likely he was a little insulted that I would deign it necessary to remind him. But that’s what he got for being a pill.

  I turned the throttle to rev the engine, nodded a farewell to Daniel and Jack, the latter actually chuckling with giddiness at the sound the bike made. Then I kicked off toward the storage facility exit. The door automatically began to rise as I neared it; sensors in the wall detected a motorized vehicle approaching and reacted. They would let anything out, they just wouldn’t let anything in. One of the ironic things about the revolution was that even though the violence had escalated and people had evacuated their homes and belongings, those personal belongings were safer than ever. Security systems were advanced and effective to begin with, but more importantly – androids didn’t need anything. And most of them didn’t care. Your necklace was safe in that hand scanner lock box, and my bike was safe in this storage unit.

  As I pulled the bike out into the adjoining alley, I adjusted my grip and the strength of the throttle, getting used to the extra weight at my back and the wet surface beneath my tires. For the umpteenth time, I was grateful I’d decided to make an upgrade to something. This time, The Wraith.

  They were perhaps the only thing I did change on the bike – the tires. Rubber doesn’t last, like I’d said, but since I had to change them anyway I naturally wanted to improve them. I wanted them to last as long as possible, given that finding and buying them was a pain in the ass and making them was just as hard because the rubber had to be just right. And though rubber was already a high-friction material, I wanted my tires to grip everything and anything, reducing my chances of winding up with a nasty case of road rash – or just winding up road kill.

  So I designed and added a modified micro-hook metal composite to the mold-injected rubber, then found an old mold that would fit well and – voilà. I had grip.

  Lucas was instantly an expert rider at my back. His hold on my waist was firm but not suffocating, and I had to admit his balance was absolutely perfect.

  The side roads were empty, but that wasn’t really surprising. It was when we moved up the on-ramp and onto the electric highway that I noticed the cars on either side of us were moving well under the speed limit, the way they did when they were empty. A quick glance at the first few we passed confirmed that. They were all empty. The highway had been interdicted.

  Over the last century, weather had become entirely unpredictable. You could either look forward to a non-existent winter, or a winter from the eighth circle of Hell. And there was no warning as to which it would be. This was one of the latter.

  I wasn’t surprised by the road closing. I could feel a heaviness in the air around me and knew a massive blizzard was getting ready to let loose.

  Lucas, can you hear me? I sent out the quick telepathic ping through the co-crest behind my right ear.

  Yes, he said simply. I nodded to myself and tried someone a little further away. Daniel, I thought, reaching out through the co-crest. Are you there? I think a storm warning went out. The highway’s off-limits and we should have the advantage of a curfew tonight.

  Since the evacuation of most humans from Pittsburgh and neighboring areas, laws and things like curfews were enforced upon the androids by the androids themselves. Policing was nearly unnecessary. And for once, I was grateful for the climactic state of the planet.

  Affirmative, he instantly replied. We’re almost at Harbor Hill.

  Prometheus’s members were traveling separately to avoid suspicion. Anyone available and capable of flexing a bit of muscle would meet up with us at Harbor Hill once the ship had been rerouted. We would work together as quickly as possible to unload what we needed and get it back home.

  Jack’s sitting this one out by the way, said Daniel.

  Is he okay?

  He started limping when we got to the base, I caught him hunched in one of the halls on our way back out so I scanned him. I know he’s suffered episodes with arthritis flareups in the past, so I ordered him to rest.

  I cringed. I bet he loved that.

  He called me every name in the book and a few from its footnotes.

  I smiled to myself. But the smile slipped shortly after it appeared. I hoped Jack knew where we kept the pain killers so he could take care of himself.

  Ben’s keeping an eye on him, and it’s a short mission, said Daniel as if to reassure me. And to that end, there’s been a slight change of plans.

  Oh? I thought at him warily. I couldn’t help but tense up. When Daniel took that tone, it was almost always followed by a direct order, and the order was usually one I didn’t like.

  Once you’ve re-routed the ship, I want you to head back to Prometheus with Lucas and stay with Jack while Luke meets us at Harbor. He paused as more dichotomous emotions moved through me, this time relief and anger. But there was admittedly more of the former than the latter. You’ve been up for more than fifty hours straight, Sam. I really need you to rest.

  I didn’t say anything. I really need you to rest. His words played over in my mind. I wondered if he was afraid “the Angel of Prometheus” would burn out when Prometheus needed her most.

  It irked and bridled, but the truth was I really had been up too long working on the bullet-proofing and scramblers. I was beginning to get that staticky feeling that came with lack of sleep, as if the nerve endings were dry and brittle and separating like the split ends of damaged hair.

  Right, I said finally. Then, because I didn’t know what else to say and didn’t feel like arguing for any reason whatsoever, I changed the subject. We’re almost at the docks.

  Good luck, Samantha. There was a pause before he added, And so you know, I’m ordering Lucas not to let you out of his sights. Giving him grief about it won’t do you any good.

  I smiled even though he couldn’t see it, then steered the bike directly for the off-ramp for Lock Wall One Marina. Got it. Sam out.

  I reduced the bike’s speed and tried to prepare myself mentally for whatever might happen. I always did this at the onset of a mission. Even after a year, I wasn’t sure it had really hit me that what I did for Prometheus technically amounted to breaking the law. Over and over again. That I was viewed as a terrorist rather than a rebel. Then again, that’s probably how the Empire saw the Rebel Alliance in Star Wars. So….

  “Okay, here goes everything,” I said out loud as the bike approached the LWOM docks front gate. I held my breath. But the “borrowed” serial number attached to a specialized signal generator on the side of the bike’s tank successfully broadcast a recognizable ID to the gate’s scanners.

  It worked. No alarms went off and no walls or nets popped out. Chalk yet another win up for Nicholas Byron.

  “We’re in.” I grinned under my helmet.

  “We have eleven minutes to get onto the ship and reroute it,” said Lucas, my personal countdown timer.

  I pulled the bike in and parked it in the shadows, then Lucas got to work using his long-range control on the facility’s cameras. They were deactivated, and their short-term memory drives erased.

  Sticking close together, the two of us slipped onto the ship undetected. It was far easier than we’d expected it would be, because of the curfew. With the roads closed, businesses had to close as well. There were no workers around, and almost everything was automated anyway. Plus, it was assumed that if you’d made it this far onto the property, you probably had every right to be there. Hence inner-complex security was lax.

  Luckily the ship itself was also fully automated and had no actual captain or crew that we had to hide from or hoodwink. Society hadn’t become brave enough yet to entrust passenger airplanes with fully automated piloting systems, since the most frequent mantra recited by someone with a flying phobia was usually, “The pilot doesn’t want to die
either; they’ll get us there safe and sound.” But as far as trains, cars and boats were concerned, we’d more or less passed the automation mark going full-speed.

  Onboard the vessel, Lucas disabled recording devices and bypassed the security protocol for me. Then while he kept a look-out, I hurriedly checked the energy reserves of the boat and routed it to re-dock further up the river as planned, giving me and Lucas two minutes to get back off the ship again before it would pull away from land.

  Luck seemed to be on our side tonight because we were off the LWOM property and riding The Wraith back onto the shut-down highway with ample time for Lucas to make it to Harbor Hill. But it wasn’t until we had gone a mile or more that I breathed an enormous sigh of relief. I was on edge. Nervous.

  That was too easy.

  I felt a little like I had when we’d left Vector Fifteen after Prometheus rescued me from IRM-1000’s clutches. I’d grown up learning the hard way that more often than not when everything was going your way, it was usually because you’d done something wrong. Life wasn’t meant to be easy. It was only necessary to consider the kill-or-be-killed foundations of life’s very existence to recognize this much. So when a plan “came together,” as The A-Team’s leader used to say, I almost always experienced an ambiguous mix of emotions: relief and trepidation.

  But when I went over everything in my head, I couldn’t pinpoint anything we’d forgotten. And at least our part was done. We’d successfully infiltrated the docks, hidden our identities from any twenty-four-hour security cameras or scanners, and we’d gotten back out again without any scrapes, bruises or broken bones. Most importantly, we hadn’t run into any bounty hunters.

  Now we could take the bike back to storage and head back to Prometheus together, and I would finally get to catch up on some sleep.

  Daniel, the job’s done. We’re en route to Prometheus.

  There was a slightly longer pause this time before he responded, but when he did he sounded pleased. Well done, Samantha.

  Thank you. Let me know when the ship docks.

  No one’s going to tell you squat, said Nick firmly. You’re headed back to Prometheus to rest and you don’t need anything interrupting that rest. You need sleep. Don’t pretend otherwise; I heard your thoughts earlier loud and clear.

  Shit, I thought as privately as I could as a number of things moved through my head. What thoughts? I asked, dreading the answer. I wondered what else they’d heard…. Like, did they know that I felt uneasy about how simple this job had been? I didn’t want to alarm anyone just because I was feeling fidgety from exhaustion.

  Wow, I thought openly at them, trying to deflect. Open channel, huh? Apparently Nick had managed to turn the co-crest device into a party line for Prometheus members, human and android alike. I’m impressed, Nick. But you raise a good point. Those who’ve been up too long should get some rest. If I’m sleeping, so are you. After all, he’d been working for as long as I had, if not longer.

  That’ll be in separate beds Nick, said Cole with a hard note of jealousy, despite his outwardly teasing tone.

  Cole, you’re on here too? I started to feel distracted, and not in a good way.

  Time to close channels, boys, said Lucas. I felt his arm around my waist give a supportive and possessive squeeze.

  Firmly, Nick said, Sam, don’t worry. I’m going to make sure they get the right components from the ship and I’ll head back to Prometheus early.

  I nodded to myself. The adrenaline of the mission was wearing off and my bed was calling to me. Got it. See you there.

  See you soon, Sunshine.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  When we arrived at Prometheus, Lucas saw me safely inside leaving again to meet the others. The building was quiet; Prometheus’s androids were either out on missions or had retreated to their quarters for the night.

  I went to Jack’s room and pressed an ear to his door, listening for the sounds of movement from beyond. But after a few seconds, I realized this was an old habit of mine from the days when we’d had wooden doors. These doors were metal. He could have been doing aerobics on the other side of the door and I wouldn’t have known.

  I smiled at the mental image of Jack jazzercizing and raised my fist to knock.

  But before my knuckles hit the metal, I stopped. He’d been in pain earlier and Daniel had ordered him to rest. If he was sleeping I didn’t want to wake him up. The man was probably exhausted. He wasn’t ancient by any means, but he wasn’t in his twenties either. It was winter, and cold could be cruel to aging joints. Wet cold was even worse, and Jack was fighting a revolution in it.

  I lowered my arm and turned away from the door, deciding to leave him in peace. My own room was further down the hall. I entered my room and waited for the door to close behind me before I exhaled a rather loud sigh of mixed weariness and reprieve. “Lock door,” I commanded. The door made a beeping sound at my back as it complied.

  If I’d been wise smart instead of book smart, I would have taken a few minutes to do some Tai Chi or stretch out and eat and drink something before going to bed. But I wasn’t. So I didn’t.

  Instead I headed to the adjoining bathroom, brushed, flossed, and mouth-washed, then started up the shower. Water had become an invaluable commodity decades ago, as rising temperatures and shifting climates caused most of the interior of the country to dry out and wells and reserves to run empty. On the other hand if you lived on the coast, you had plenty of water. It was in your living room. But that was another matter altogether.

  Fortunately, necessity was the mother of all invention, even if it did seem be immediate necessity where humans were concerned. Once people began getting sick enough to threaten the popular vote, laws were put in place that prevented lawn watering in dry climates. And then researchers were suddenly funded to come up with a solution to the water shortage.

  In record time, scientists invented inexpensive in-house filtering systems that purified used water and recycled it right back into the plumbing of individual homes. The reverse osmosis technology was ridiculously simple and had been there all along. It was only a matter of re-sizing and mass-producing it.

  But at the moment, all I really cared about was that when I pressed the screen controls on the shower’s temperature and jet strength panel, perfectly hot water immediately sprayed from the showerhead above me, steam fogged up the mirror, and I didn’t have to worry about the water running dry.

  I did, however, shower until the water ran cold. Then I got out, toweled off, ran a little cherry blossom scented leave-in conditioner through my wild, white hair with my hands, and blow-dried it into submission. Then I lotioned my entire body with the same scent and considered myself sufficiently pampered. I pulled on one of Luke’s oversized t-shirts that came to mid-thigh on me, and left the bathroom with the full intent of sleeping until next week.

  But when I stepped into the main room of my quarters, I noticed something I hadn’t seen earlier. It was only visible from my current angle. It was a note, small and white, folded and taped to the bottom drawer of my bedside night stand.

  I smiled to myself as I walked to the bed and sat down, yanking the note free from the drawer to unfold and read it. It was just like Lucas to leave me something like this.

  But as I read, my smile slipped – and dread flooded my body like a sickness my veins.

  Samantha – I have the Captain. I’ve injected him with a poison for which I possess the only antidote.

  Follow my instructions to the letter.

  Destroy your co-crest. Rid yourself of all communication and tracking devices. Deactivate the androids remaining at Prometheus.

  Make your way to the Trillian Square outpost by 4:00 a.m.

  Do not alert anyone to your actions or whereabouts.

  Come alone.

  If you fail to precisely observe any of these instructions, Captain Hugo will die.

  - Ben

  “No,” I muttered.

  It just came out. That single useless word
that summed up an untenable level of disbelief. That word that people always seemed to mutter, or always managed to scream, or always gave up and prayed aloud in that moment of implausible, specious wrongness, despite the futility of its mono-syllabic sound: No.

  I joined the ranks of those inarticulate and ineloquent as I re-read the note. “No, no, no….” All this time, all this time, Ben had been playing us. Daniel had been right to be upset with me for bringing a stranger to Prometheus. I’d been wrong. I’d somehow misjudged him.

  No good deed, I thought miserably. My gut clenched and my head swam, and it hit me that in all its simplicity, Ben had played the perfect hand. I had no choice but to do what he asked. And I was the only person who could do what he asked.

  He’d left me to deactivate the remaining androids at Prometheus because I knew how to do it without alerting any of them. I knew how to get in close, effectively turn them off, and never raise any suspicion. As for Jack and Nanuk – that would have been so stupid easy for Ben. Simply drug the dog’s food. Then drug Jack. Then carry Jack out when no one was looking.

  Oh hell, there were a hundred different scenarios Ben could have played out. They were all equally simple. I had a feeling Jack’s “arthritis flare-up” had more to do with Ben’s planning than nature and time, in fact. It had come on so suddenly, and there was no barometric pressure change or telling wind that would have explained the rapidity of the flare-up.

  He’s going after the bounty. Nothing we’d done for him had mattered. Nick and I had restored him completely, repairing his internal workings and dermal layers, replacing his missing components. He was walking on two legs thanks to Prometheus. We’d even made certain to restore the beauty he’d been originally imparted with.

  All androids were beautiful on some level. Nick had made certain of it when he’d been in charge, and FutureGen had followed suit. It seemed that when humans played god, they at least created whole, fully functioning creatures with strong bones, quick minds, and features that were either lovely or handsome. It was one of those philosophical mysteries that the gods humans prayed to appeared to become bored with basic structure, allowing or instigating the twisting of DNA until it became something it was not meant to be.