I, Android: A Different Model

by Heather Killough-Walden

  Twisting… broken….

  A chill rolled through me suddenly. On the subject of altering things to become something they shouldn’t…what if…. Christ, what if it had all been a ruse from the very beginning with Ben?

  I’d found him virtually destroyed on that sidewalk. But what if he’d done all that damage to himself? Just to play on my sympathies and infiltrate Prometheus? Was such a thing even possible? Could an android be so single-minded? So obscenely determined?

  No.

  There was that word again. But this time it made sense. It wasn’t that an android was incapable of determined brutality – Zero was proof enough of that. It was that the timing in this case was wrong. The bounty announcement went out after I found him, I explained to myself. So the injuries had taken place well before a bounty even existed.

  Unless… there was more going on here than Prometheus was aware of. Nicholas had hinted that Zero was a master strategist. Maybe Zero was even more ahead of us strategically than we’d imagined.

  But it didn’t matter. Now Ben knew our location. He knew so many of our secrets. He had Jack, for crying out loud. And if I did what he asked, he would soon have me.

  We’d made the ultimate mistake. We’d trusted someone.

  I glanced at the clock by the bedside. “Fuck.” That word just slipped out too.

  As it turned out, my shower had been so long, I now had very little time to deactivate whoever was here at Prometheus and make it to Trillian Square without anyone being the wiser. Trill Park, as it was called by locals, was just a small plot of public land with a gazebo that had been built a few miles away around twenty years ago. It was erected in honor of a young woman who’d rescued two children during a rogue tornado. Her name was Mary Trillian.

  Pittsburgh was one of those cities that had never experienced tornadoes decades ago, but that was now hit with bizarre weather patterns like a lot of other previously calm places.

  I stood and ran to the closet to get dressed. Damn it all, I thought frantically as I pulled on jeans. This was why Ben didn’t meet me when Lucas and I returned from the docks. It was why he hadn’t approached me when I knocked on Jack’s door even though he was supposed to be watching over Jack at the time.

  I was pulling on socks and quiet rubber-soled hiking boots when something further occurred to me and I froze mid-lace. Then I hastily finished lacing and tying, straightened, and spun on my heel. I sprinted as silently as possible out of my room and across the hall to Jack’s door. There was a scanner beside it as there was for all doors, but they were almost never in use. They’d been installed in case of another foothold situation.

  I placed my hand on the scanner and whispered, “Emergency override Samantha Hart.”

  The door beeped softly and slid open, revealing an empty room – but for the limp form of a massive dog on the floor beside the bed. “No, no, no….” I whispered yet again, running to Nanuk’s side. But right away, I could see that he was breathing. I shook him gently, and though there was no response, he appeared to be unharmed.

  A sudden snort relaying slightly clogged sinuses further assured me that he was okay. Ben had only drugged him. He hadn’t been so heartless as to kill him, which was the sudden fear that had seen me running from my room to Jack’s. After all, I couldn’t put the slaughter of an innocent animal past any man willing to do the horrible things to himself that Ben had done in order to infiltrate a secret base.

  I closed my eyes in relief and stood, forcing myself to breathe.

  One thing at a time. I need to deactivate everyone, and I need to do it without raising alarms.

  I could do this one of a few different ways. I could approach every resting android individually and inject them with android tranquilizer and hope it kicked in fast enough to knock them out before they called out for help. Or I could lock them in a room and shoot that same tranquilizer at them all from a distance, hoping they couldn’t find a way to avoid the bullets or fight back before they were all struck. Or… I could choose this moment to test the sleeping gas I’d been working on in the hopes of using it in one of our upcoming Vector Fifteen raids.

  In the end, I knew the right course of action was probably to utilize several methods at once.

  The gas was in the infancy stages of development, and I never even talked about it. It was one of many things I was working on in tandem with other improvements or inventions. Science was ever-evolving. The sleeping gas was so new that I hadn’t even given it a name yet. Which was just fine by Nick. He hated the names I gave my inventions. He might not be wrong. I supposed Droider All was a tad whimsical given the gravity of our current civil war situation. Then again, life did need its moments of comedic relief.

  Although the gas had been developed as a benign method of attack and there was nothing in it that could harm an android, it was still brand new, and new science was dangerous and uncertain. There was no telling how effective it was time-wise. My concern in using it was that it wouldn’t work fast enough for me to get out of Prometheus without someone telepathically reaching out to Daniel on their shared Prometheus android link.

  I also worried that it would work all too well, and knock some androids out for good.

  I glanced at Jack’s clock. Another two minutes had gone by. For me, each minute was precious.

  I decided to increase the dosage of specific ingredients in the gas, manually override the locks on everyone’s suites and quarters, and release the gas through the air filtration system, bypassing the air conditioner so that the poison couldn’t be filtered out.

  To do this, I needed to follow several steps. First, I needed to get to Prometheus’s control room and past whoever was on duty there tonight. Then, assuming I made it without triggering suspicion and alarm, it would take me a few extra precious seconds to override the locks and reverse the airflow of the lab’s central air vent so that I could use it as an intake vent that would disperse the gas to the rest of the facility. Finally, I would then have to make my way quickly to the lab, concoct a new mixture of the gas, and release it into the vent.

  I glanced one last time at the clock. Another minute gone. But in truth, I wasn’t surprised to find that if I hurried, I would actually have enough time to do it all. Ben no doubt knew I wouldn’t see the note he’d left until I was coming out of my bathroom. The angle had been just right for that.

  And he had also no doubt been keeping tabs on my habits, such as the fact that I took very long showers.

  He was good. He’d planned everything to the letter…. “Holy crap,” I muttered because I realized that if he’d planned it this tight, he probably also knew about the android sleeping gas and expected me to use it. He must have wanted me to use it.

  But why? All the androids were in their quarters. I could sneak out undetected as easily as Ben had.

  So why the extra measure? Why the gas?

  I blinked. Because. He doesn’t just want to take out the androids here. He wants to take out Daniel and the others once they arrive back home.

  The gas was invisible and had no odor. It wouldn’t have had enough time to dissipate because the facility was underground. The second the rest of Prometheus walked in, they would be hit with the gas and it would take another few short seconds before they were out of commission as well.

  Which would give Ben – with his bounty – much more time to get away.

  My gaze narrowed as my mind worked.

  No doubt Ben had chosen Trill Park because of its proximity to Prometheus. He was probably monitoring the power readings of the androids in Prometheus to determine whether I’d followed instructions and deactivated them. If I didn’t do it, he would know. And he would kill Jack.

  So I needed to figure out a way to deactivate the androids but protect Daniel, Lucas, and the others when they arrived.

  I ran my hand through my hair. Paced. Looked at the clock.

  And then I had it.

  Once I knew what Ben was trying to do and figured out a way around it, ac
tually doing it was simple. With a bit of luck, this wouldn’t be hard. It was just that Ben probably didn’t expect me to realize what he was up to in the first place. Lucky for me, despite everything else Ben now knew about Prometheus and its rebels, he still didn’t comprehend the depths of my tenacity.

  Still standing in Jack’s room, I took a deep breath, put on as relaxed a face as I could, and counted to ten.

  Over the next four and a half minutes, I managed to deactivate the co-crests in the facility without alerting anyone wearing one that they were off by simply setting them to a charge state. I then hacked into Prometheus’s security room, knocked out the guard with my own personal store of android tranquilizer, and re-set Prometheus’s room locks and air-flow controls. Next I added one extra command to the central air system that would kick in exactly five minutes after the gas had been deployed. It took me another three or four minutes to race back to the lab, re-mix the ingredients for the sleeping gas, and set the gas canister off at the vent just as the airflow reversed.

  Once that was done, I watched the gas disperse through the vent’s slats, crossed my fingers, and waited.

  I gave it a minute just to be sure, then rushed out of the lab and into the hall. All was quiet. I moved to the nearest personal quarters door. No movement or sound from beyond. So I closed my eyes, sent out a quick prayer to Yoda and the Force, and grabbed my winter gear. Then, at 3:47 a.m., I left Prometheus behind and made my way very quickly to Trill Park.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  They weren’t dead. But they were incapacitated. In any battle of any war, that was the first step in dead.

  As I traversed quiet alleys and pulled my hoodie low over my face, I tried to wrap my head around the fact that I’d just effectively taken out all of Prometheus with a single weapon. And if Ben was working for Zero, IRM-1000 would soon have the means to that very same weapon in his hands.

  I was beginning to think maybe Prometheus would be better off if I were dead. The rebellion wouldn’t have its nifty new arms, but then neither would Zero. At least not from me.

  And wasn’t that always the way things started anyway? Wasn’t that how it always ended up going sideways? With an arms race?

  Oppenheimer’s quoting of Vishnu in the Baghavad Gita spoke solemnly in the hollow hallways of my mind: Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.

  How far was I willing to go to give Prometheus that extra edge? What was my next step, my next advancement, my next idea that would make us stronger or faster or more deadly? And what was my guarantee that the enemy wouldn’t get ahold of it too? And improve upon it?

  Something I hadn’t told anyone yet, not even Nick – not even Lucas – was that I did have ideas. And they were deadly. The truth of it was, a solution was very clearly outlined in my head. There in that darkness were well-lit roadmaps to victory, blueprints to all-out triumph for androids who wanted equal rights.

  I could decide this war for Prometheus so easily. I could stop it once and for all. I knew how to do it.

  Sometimes it was Vishnu’s words that echoed in my head. But sometimes, like when I passed by make-shift clinics in alleys set up to illegally tend to injured androids who’d been denied care, it was the crew of the Enola Gay I heard instead.

  Theodore Van Kirk, Thomas Ferebee, and Paul Tibbets were the navigator, bombardier, and pilot of the B-52 Superfortress plane that dropped the “Little Boy” atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945. Of the 80,000 people killed, 20,000 of them were soldiers. The rest and vast majority were civilians.

  But when the Enola Gay, named after Paul Tibbets’ mother, returned to the base after the thirteen hour mission and bombing, they returned to massive fanfare. Tibbets was awarded a medal on the spot. And all three men were grinning.

  When later asked if he would take part in the bombing again, the navigator of the Enola Gay said that under the same circumstances – yes, he would. He held firm to the belief that what he’d done had been necessary. We’d been at war for five years.

  “In a war, there are so many questionable things done. Where was the morality in the bombing of Coventry, or the bombing of Dresden, or the Bataan Death March, or the Rape of Nanking, or the bombing of Pearl Harbor? I believe that when you're in a war, a nation must have the courage to do what it must to win the war….”

  The same sentiment was shared by his two crew mates, Tibbets and Ferebee.

  Tibbets had been in medical school before joining the armed forces. While there, his roommate who was a doctor had given him a word of advice. He told Tibbets that former classmates failed the program and wound up in drug sales because “they had too much sympathy for their patients, which destroyed their ability to render the medical necessities.” Tibbets thought back on these words when he learned people who were not soldiers were being killed in his bombing missions.

  “I am just like that if I get to thinking about some innocent person getting hit on the ground. I am supposed to be a bomber pilot and destroy a target. I won't be worth anything if I do that ... I made up my mind then that the morality of dropping that bomb was not my business … Morality, there is no such thing in warfare.”

  The use of “Fat Man” and “Little Boy” in World War II effectively secured the end of that war. If the war had continued, who was to say how many more innocent lives would have been lost? Enough to cover the cost of lives lost in Hiroshima? Most likely.

  And this was what went through my mind when I looked at the devastation this revolution had wrought. How much longer would it have to go on? Five years? Entire cities were evacuated. The trenches were overflowing. Humans still hadn’t come to recognize life, much less value it. Even now.

  But then again… Tibbet’s doctor friend had touched on something that always bothered me. Maybe it was that very lack of sympathy, that lack of empathy, that was the cause of war in the first place. Doctors without bedside manner were less effective in their work and more often sued than those who were kind. Plus, they were assholes.

  Lack of sympathy led to mistreatment, which led to violence, which led to humans having to act unsympathetically, and ironically in violence, to bring the violence to a close. It was a vicious cycle that fed into itself. And I didn’t want to be a part of the cycle.

  So I maintained where I had always been in this civil war. I created armor and shielding and communications devices and tranquilizers. I didn’t want to be a part of death. But death was only the last step, and I’d already managed to subjugate a small army of comrades. The enemy would have no qualms about taking my inventions and improving upon them.

  I stopped in my tracks as I approached Trill Park to find it shrouded in darkness. The lights that illuminated the city at night had been turned off here. I wasn’t surprised; Ben had most likely planned as much ahead to protect our dark dealings.

  But as I stared out across the shadowed square, my heart pounded. I was early, and I seemed to be alone. There was still time.

  I raised my left wrist and looked down at the vein that pumped blue beneath the surface of my skin.

  And I couldn’t help but think… maybe that cycle of apathy and violence and more apathetic violence that I’d been pondering would be better off if I were taken out of the equation all together. It would make the last bit less effective, anyway.

  The vein at my wrist pulsed visibly with my mounting fear. It would have been so easy for me to dig my fingernails into it, rip it open, and bleed out. No one ever considered their own nails and strength when contemplating suicide. Why was that?

  Maybe it was too painful or messy or violent.

  Or maybe it was that the idea was stupid. Why make it painful when you could just slice clean and easy and be done with it?

  For me especially, it was dumb. For one thing, it was freezing outside. It would take me forever to bleed out. Long before I managed that, Ben would find me and bind the wounds. He’d probably just up and kill Jack out of sheer spite then for the trouble I’d caused.

>   Yet I stared at that vein… and even raised my other hand. Fear was so heavy in my blood at this point, my skin prickled with impending panic, my ears were ringing, and my vision was spotting.

  “Whatever your thoughts, Samantha, you seem deeply troubled by them.”

  I jerked in surprise, and my head snapped up. Ben stood between me and the gazebo, his body of course perfect and healed. His head was tilted as if in curiosity, and his hands were clasped in a calm, at-ease gesture.

  “You wouldn’t be considering something drastic, would you?” he asked softly. Too softly. It was a warning rather than a question.

  I lowered my arms slowly and straightened, narrowing my gaze on the traitor before me. “I didn’t have to come Ben,” I told him frankly. “Zero wants Jack alive. If you don’t give him the antidote, you’ll both die.”

  Ben lifted his head and smiled. “Ah yes,” he said in a manner that was completely unlike the Ben I thought I’d gotten to know over the last week. He was even dressed differently, wearing all black in a functional, military style. I couldn’t have denied the look suited him. He was an attractive man, striking in black. The dark contrast brought out the blue highlights in his raven hair and made his hazel eyes shine vividly. I wondered at how I’d thoroughly I’d been duped.

  “The bounty announcement,” he said thoughtfully. “Surely you’ve figured it out by now? The announcement was spurious, Sam. It was made to send all of Prometheus’s androids scrambling. And it worked. You were so busy inventing ways to avoid the hunters above ground, you completely overlooked the one sitting down below, curled up quietly with you in your nest.” His smile broadened, becoming a grin. “Like a viper watching over the eggs.”