by A. W. Cross
Pine, Alive
Copyright © 2018 by Glory Box Press
Published by Glory Box Press
British Columbia, Canada.
[email protected]
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. For information regarding permission, write to Glory Box Press at [email protected]
First edition, 2019
ISBN 978-1-9995711-0-8
Cover design by Danielle Fine
Interior design and formatting by Glory Box Press Editing by Danielle Fine
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Rain broke against the car window then slid down the smoky pane to disappear into the coming darkness.
If only I could do the same.
Envy at the water’s liberty squeezed Pine’s chest, a familiar, unpleasant ache. She pressed closer to the glass, willing herself to pass through it.
As though he could read her mind, Antonio Carpenter patted her shoulder from the next seat as their vehicle navigated itself from the seaport toward the bright lights of inner Portfade. The touch was supposed to be pleasant, a gesture humans used to comfort one another. Pine’s skin crawled. If only she could slap his hand away, tear off the synthetic hair they’d stitched to her head and smash her feet through the windscreen before vanishing into the night. She’d return to the ocean, to see if any of her kind still lingered, or perhaps she would go to one of the hundreds of islands off the coast of Foxwept, where no human would ever find her.
“It’s going to be okay,” Antonio said. “You’ll like Joseph.” He dabbed at the cherry-red tip of his nose with a handkerchief.
How can I? He’s a stranger. A stranger who now owns me. Pine fingered the barcode tattooed on her wrist, an unmistakable mark of what she was.
“What do you think of your new clothes?”
Pine glanced down. Her luminescent wetsuit had been replaced with what Antonio called “street clothes”—skinny-legged jeans and a shiny, buttoned-up blouse. They were ridiculous. The jeans were suffocating, the stiff material bunching intolerably behind her knees and chafing her groin, and the slippery silver of the blouse echoed the pale skin of the dead fish that had once floated past her on their way to the surface, their bodies bloated and peeling. Her fingers itched to rip off the buttons, to rend the shirt from her body.
“They’re fine.”
Her hair was the worst part. She’d always been bald and had once admired from a distance women with long, silky hair that bounced and shimmered as they walked. Imagined having hair like that, gathering it up and twisting it into shining plaits, like the ship figureheads she’d found half-buried in the sand, their arms flung behind their backs and their pointed breasts arched toward freedom.
But that wasn’t the hair they’d given her, with its fashionable asymmetrical shape and garish cerise streaks. Again, the urge to wrench the outrageous mop from her head and throw it in Antonio’s surprised face washed over her.
“You’ll find your own style in time, I’m sure,” Antonio said in the soothing voice that burrowed into her mind like a crab. “I don’t know much about young women’s fashion, but the girls in the office said this is what the kids are wearing these days.” He gave her what he probably thought was a winning grin.
She hated him.
No, that wasn’t fair. Shame flooded her, laced with guilt. Antonio was only trying his best to make her comfortable. It wasn’t his fault. None of this was. Pine gave him the sincerest smile she could muster and gazed out the window again, carefully avoiding the ghostly reflection that peered back at her, imploring her to do something.
The view outside the car was just as foreign as her clothes. Houses—real houses, not just barracks—and cars filled with all kinds of passengers multiplied as she and Antonio drew closer to the heart of the city. Pine had never seen so many. In fact, she’d never seen much of anything they passed—stores, schools, trees just now in bloom. Even the open air itself was strange. Especially the air. It threatened to dissolve her.
Down in the depths of the Ghostlight sea, close to the Foxwept shoreline, the warm weight of the water had been comforting. Now, sea and sky had switched places, and the air, though heavy with moisture and tangy with salt, seemed thin and insubstantial, displacing Pine. Making her as fragile as the raindrops shattering on the glass outside, so far from home.
But the Ghostlight wasn’t home, not anymore. That was here now, in a place she’d never been, with people she’d never met. It was no less surreal now than when Mrs. Hayes had first told her she was being relieved of her duties, explaining that there’d been protests, court cases, and grand speeches made on wallscreens across the region—and that Pine, like all other sentient androids, had been emancipated.
Emancipation. Pine snorted. All it was was going from one owner to the next. Synadroids like her still had no legal standing or rights. All emancipation had done for Pine was force her to leave her friends and everything she’d ever known. Some freedom. What would she do now, if not what she’d been created for? The storm of anger and fear inside her threatened to short her circuits out. Whoever had insisted on emancipation hadn’t seemed concerned with how the synadroids themselves would feel about it.
Mrs. Hayes had told Pine that she was lucky, that the man who now owned her was kind and would treat her like a daughter. Just like that. As though humans were the ones programmed with emotions. Just flick a switch and, “You’re my daughter, as real as if you’d been born to me.” Until the next flick, when she was once more property, to be sold on to the next buyer.
But, as bitter a pill as it was, Pine didn’t have a choice in the matter. It was done. Her only option now was to play along, to wait and watch for her opportunity. Then, when the time came, she would make her escape to that remote island, and live alone or among others who’d suffered the same fate of being not quite human, not quite a machine.
There, she would be free.
James Cruicéad balanced awkwardly on the edge of a too-small chair, forearms resting on his gangly thighs. He was trying to seem relaxed, as though his closest friend wasn’t about to make the biggest mistake of his life.
“Are you sure I’m not keeping you? You can always come by tomorrow to meet her if you have business to take care of.” Joseph Polendina glanced at the digital numbers in the corner of the wallscreen.
“No, I’m happy to stay.” James also eyed the clock. 8 p.m.
Antonio was nearly an hour late—as usual—but there was no way James was leaving his friend alone now. Not until he was sure he was safe. No, he was staying put, and he wasn’t going to do it quietly.
“I think you’re crazy, if you want my honest opinion.” Joseph, in fact, hadn’t asked for his opinion, but he was going to get it anyway. “There are too many uncertainties. I understand there’s a huge sentimental value to you, but—”
“It’s not just sentimental value.” The older man paced the room. “Not that I have to justify myself, but I believe we have a responsibility toward these synadroids. We built them, gave them human emotions, and designed their lives for them. We can’t simply abandon them now we’ve decided it’s morally unconscionable.” He crooked hi
s head in sympathy. “James, I know you’ve had some bad experiences with—”
“That’s an understatement.” James’s time as a soldier on the Perimeter had marked him in more ways than one. “I understand all that, Joseph, I really do. What I don’t understand is why you’re insisting on taking one into your home. I mean, I know you designed them, helped build them, but look at how Sonder treated you. And now they’ve palmed one—”
“The company didn’t palm her off on me. When Antonio told me what was happening, that the synadroids were being replaced by non-sentient droids, I—”
“Replaced? I thought they’d been ‘liberated.’” James shook his head in contempt. “Isn’t that what all the protests were about?” He’d watched the rallies from the fringes, biting back the temptation to tell the naïve campaigners the truth about the synadroids they were trying so hard to free.
“They were,” Joseph agreed. “But do you really think a corporation as big as Sonder would’ve given in to handful of synadroid sympathizers, no matter how loudly they shouted? No, the synadroids were already on their way out. But this way, the corporation got to unload them while looking magnanimous. Great optics, and a public relations success all round.”
“But why would they replace them? I thought the synadroids were Sonder’s greatest accomplishment.” The day the synadroids had been announced, Robert Smythe, the head of Sonder, had nearly fallen of the stage, light-headed as he was with pride. Even then, James had been skeptical.
“They were. But give a being complicated human emotions…” Joseph shrugged. “They react like humans. Which is ironic, given that emotional instability was one of the things they were supposed to replace.”
“But then why give them human emotions in the first place?” It seemed so obvious. “Surely Sonder foresaw the complications? And considering the risk and expense—” Joseph had shown him once just how intricate the synadroid’s physiology was. Though they were completely synthetic, they’d been constructed to mimic humans in every way—skeletal structure, muscles, skin, even a fully functional nervous system complete with synthetic hormones. That James had seen firsthand. An overwhelming rush of adrenalin through a physically superior body… He shuddered. It had been a stupid, foolhardy venture. Thank goodness the experiment had been short-lived.
Joseph stopped pacing and stood before a large picture on the far wall of the living room. Within the frame, a dozen men and women grinned back at him, their faces unlined and buoyant. “Robert had a very romantic view of sentient androids and what they would mean to humankind. He had a vision of man and machine, separated only by birth, working together, hand-in-hand, toward a better future. The synadroids having the same emotions and physiology as us was fundamental to that equality.”
“He sounds like a lunatic to me.” James rose and examined the picture over Joseph’s shoulder, fascinated as always by the younger version of his mentor. He couldn’t reconcile the open brightness of the face in the portrait with the weary wisdom of the man he now knew.
“Perhaps he was, but I shared his vision, as did the government at the time. And there was enough funding to make it come true. So we did. Now, we need to take responsibility for that and protect them.”
“By adopting one?”
“I know you don’t approve.” Joseph turned away from the picture.
Frustration swelled in James. How could he make Joseph understand? James was only trying to protect the most important person in his life. Why couldn’t Joseph see that? “I just think there are other ways—”
“It’s not just about taking responsibility. I have selfish reasons, too.” Joseph wandered across the room to another image on the wall, a portrait of a middle-aged woman with rosy cheeks and a screwdriver in her fist, her expression caught between concentration and excitement as she tinkered with a tiny robotic hand, the fingers opening and closing as she manipulated the controls. She looked up at the cameraman and smiled before returning to her work, captured forever in an eternal loop.
Joseph’s smile was gentle. “Mara and I always hoped we’d have children… She wanted a daughter, but working on these androids was as close as she ever got, and she loved them like her own. This is what she would’ve wanted.” He reached out and traced his finger over her image. “We’re going to have a daughter, Mara,” he whispered.
James looked away, uncomfortable with the intimacy. He understood. Really, he did. He lived with loneliness and loss and the need to fill that awful void every day. But to relieve it by putting your own life at risk? That was something else.
It’s not your decision, James. The best he could do was make sure it didn’t end badly for his old friend, no matter what he had to do to shield him. Resolution filled him. He would see this charade through to the end.
“Aaah, there they are,” Joseph said as a swathe of light cut across the bay window. He rubbed his hands together in anticipation, and his steps toward the front door were lighter than James had ever seen them.
Joseph flung the door open. Antonio stood on the doorstep, blinking at the sudden rush of light, his hand hovering in front of the doorbell.
“Come in, come in.” Joseph beckoned with trembling fingers that hurt James’s heart. “Get yourselves out of the rain.”
Antonio eagerly obeyed, and after a moment’s hesitation, a smaller, slighter figure followed him through.
And there she was. The sentient android Joseph was so ready to embrace as his flesh and blood.
She kept close to the door, skittish, a wild animal poised to flee. What could she possibly have to be afraid of? If anyone was in danger, it was the three men. Maybe it was all an act, playing the scared little synadroid so Joseph wouldn’t realize just how threatening she was.
James had to admit, it was a good disguise. She looked like any other attractive young woman, her fashionable hair and clothes making her as chic as those who sauntered through the downtown sectors on their way to vape overpriced, flavored oxygen at those ridiculous bars.
Except that, unlike those young men and women, she stood self-consciously inside her clothes, an imposter. Despite the trendy cut and expensive fabric, the outfit was alien on her petite frame, inelegant and wrong. She kept her eyes downcast. He had to hand it to her: she was playing the role of vulnerable outsider perfectly.
“Joseph, James, this is Pine. Pine, Joseph and James.” Antonio placed a bolstering hand on her arm and gestured toward the two men with the other.
Pine finally raised her eyes to meet theirs, and it was like someone had punched James in the gut.
Her eyes were definitely not human. They had all the elements of a human eye framed by sweeping eyelashes, but the color was decidedly alien, the black, bottomless pupils surrounded by an iris that rippled from dark copper in the center to golden peridot edged with ivory. They reminded him of a brown cup coral, or perhaps the ocean where it met the shore during the first burning after the Goldhare Horizon disaster, when smoke had covered the sky and turned the sun a bloody crimson.
She was all at once beautiful and disturbing, and something stirred in James. He couldn’t look away. This is how they get you. Joseph had also told him how their appearance had been carefully fashioned to make them attractive to humans—all the better to integrate them.
“James? Are you all right?” Joseph asked, breaking the thrall.
Quiet had descended on the room, and two pairs of human eyes peered at James. Hers were again focused elsewhere.
He shook himself. Now he was the wild animal. But was he predator or prey? “I’m fine. It’s just been a long day.” He considered the synadroid. “Pine. That’s an interesting name. Did you choose it yourself?”
She raised her strange gaze to his, her expression solemn. “No. They don’t let us choose our names.” Her voice held a bitter edge. “I think it was a joke.”
“A joke? What do you mean?” Joseph frowned.
“We spend our lives underwater. Or would have,” she replied. “So they named us af
ter things they knew we would never see.”
Joseph cleared his throat in the following silence. “Well, I think it’s a lovely name. And don’t you worry, I’ll take to you see your namesake—and anywhere else you’d like to go.”
Pine nodded, her attention fixed now on the wood-tiled floor.
“Joseph, Antonio? Could I see you in the other room?” James couldn’t wait any longer. Seeing Pine in the flesh had only cemented his doubts—if Joseph insisted on going through with this, he could do so after James had said his piece. His conscience wouldn’t be able to rest otherwise. “Pine, would you excuse us for a moment, please?”
This time, she didn’t even nod.
The three men passed through the living room and into the smaller one Joseph used as his office. James waited until the door had been shut tightly behind them. Free of Pine’s presence, he finally regained some of his composure.
“What do you think, James?” Joseph asked, his eyes gleaming. His cheeks had more color in them than James had seen for a long time. Damn. Joseph was already getting attached to this strange being, just as James feared he would.
“I’m sorry, but I just don’t think this is a good idea. I think she needs to go.” There. No point tip-toeing around it.
“Pine? Why? She seems fine.” Joseph twisted his head, as though he could glimpse her through the closed door.
“I know she’s a bit quiet,” Antonio said. “But she’ll get over that in time. She seems like a lovely young woman—”
“That’s just it,” James interrupted. “She’s not a young woman. She’s a machine.”
“She’s a sentient android, James,” Joseph reminded him. “Even if her body isn’t human, her mind is.”
“But it’s not the same. Her emotions aren’t real—they’re a program.” He clenched his hands at his sides.
“And what are yours, James? Your emotions—all human emotions—are encoded into you by nature. These synadroids were programmed using the same mechanisms.”
“It’s not the same.”