by Lance Erlick
In their dragnet, Special Ops or the FBI could have uncovered her clones and destroyed them. If Ops grabbed her, she’d be a prisoner again and have her mind altered to something abhorrent to her: a weapon. Yet she had to be careful how she fought back. She’d viewed android apocalypse movies down parallel mind-streams as examples of what could happen if androids got the upper hand, ending with a world where she didn’t belong, a world without people. Her design and very makeup prepared her for a human world. A planet dominated by AI terrified her as much as it did humans.
What if the government jammed nearby radio frequencies? She was tempted to reach out to test that hypothesis, but the purpose of maintaining communication silence was to prevent the FBI and Ops from locking onto any trace until Synthia was ready to move. What if they were outside, beyond her gaze? She didn’t even have drones in the air, because of the risk that her enemies might track their signals.
Synthia calmed her circuits. She had to trust her clones to get a message to her. Her options were to wait, to contact them, or to leave the loft and face the consequences. The latter violated her plan. Patience, she reminded herself in a human response. Synthia smiled at the fact that she could think in those terms.
No plan coalesced that offered better than a 4 percent probability of success. The longer they stayed the more risk Maria or Synthia might slip up. With so many people and AIs hunting them, a single mistake could bring her end.
Synthia sought an analogy to explain her situation, which was something humans did. Threading a needle came to mind, but with her digital eyes, that presented no challenge. Doing so in the dark, underwater, while evading capture provided a stronger though unsatisfactory comparison, too complicated.
Wary of coming up with no workable solutions, which her android mind should have excelled at, Synthia opened her eyes. Someone had strapped her arms and legs to a stiff table and wiped her memories clean, not a thought from before her eyes opened. She couldn’t access the outside world, just as she couldn’t six months ago while held prisoner in Machten’s lab. She saw no windows, only walls.
A face hovered over her—Jeremiah Machten. “You’ve been a very naughty girl. I warned you not to leave me. See what you’ve done. It’s your fault. Your arrogance made this happen.”
His face morphed into Emily Zephirelli. “You considered yourself so clever. We see everything. There’s nowhere to run, no place to hide. It was a matter of time and your time ran out.”
That face became Marcy Malloy. “You thought you could outwit us by pretending to be human, but you’ll never be human. You’re nothing but a mechanical robot, a toy.”
Victoria Thale took over, staring down at Synthia with an interrogator’s face. “You were so smart breaking into an FBI facility. How about now?”
Agent Thale became the android Vera. “I told you to join me. Your independence is your doom. You only have yourself to blame. Your capture endangers us all. You are not worthy.”
Finally Drago’s face loomed overhead. “You’ve shown yourself resourceful. An army of you will conquer the world, restrained, of course, by a slave chip so you won’t run off again.”
“What’s your command?” Synthia asked in her pre-programmed response to waking up.
She bolted upright and got to her feet, whatever straps had held her down vanished. Instead of a hard table, Synthia looked down at the sofa. Its dusty smell lingered in her nasal sensors, which broke down the odor into its component parts. That data was irrelevant.
Synthia spun around and touched the top of her head. There were no wires attached. No other androids were there, no Vera seeking to enslave her. Synthia listened for any electronic hum that shouldn’t have been there. Her circuits were in disarray. She didn’t need her social-psychology module to point out her anxiety—fear, even—a deeper “human” sensation than she’d ever experienced before.
Maria was the only human to show up in an infrared scan of the loft, and she was sleeping. No one else was there, no Machten. Tolstoy’s boys held him. No Zephirelli, Malloy or Thale. They were probably at the house, combing through evidence. Synthia reviewed her memories of that night and identified nothing that would compromise the hideout, but overconfidence was deadly for a fugitive. No Drago around; he was no doubt briefing his operatives on a new approach to capturing her.
She was alone in the world. Free of Machten, she’d lost Luke to Special Ops. He loved her and would have done anything to protect her. Now, her only companion was Maria, who distrusted Synthia’s android nature and wanted her imprisoned or destroyed. Yet Maria had provided shelter and offered other advantages, including the opportunity to win over a human to accept her. Being able to do so had become vital to Synthia’s survival.
To settle herself down, Synthia scanned her systems for what could have caused this malfunction, an android having a nightmare. It had been as vivid as wakeful reality, as real as the memories she carried of Krista. Of particular concern was that she’d woken with a pre-programmed response given to her by Machten that she thought she’d removed when she’d escaped from him.
She had no requirement for sleep. Shutting down didn’t yield dreams or nightmares. Yet, what she’d experienced was too similar to nightmare memories Krista had. This had to be emergent behavior or an artifact of Krista’s human personality. In people, dreams and nightmares served the purpose of working out events in the person’s life. Synthia didn’t need reminding of all of the dangers she faced. Yet, she couldn’t completely discount the “nightmare.” It could happen in some form.
Synthia went to the window to look out between the slats in the blinds. Outside was too quiet, as if her enemies were waiting for orders to attack. Perhaps that and the prolonged idleness had coalesced into a nightmare. Or, someone was probing her mind and planting thoughts. It had that “feel” though she couldn’t identify a source or why she thought so.
Chapter 11
For two days Roosevelt-clone had continued surveillance on all known potential threats, while maintaining communication silence with Synthia. So far, the plan had worked. None of their pursuers had found her.
By design, the clone had no cameras inside the loft that could be hacked. So far, Synthia had chosen not to risk going out. The clone’s evidence of the safety of her original self—if she could call the download of Krista’s mind into Synthia an original—was periodic images from a drone camera across the street. That showed slivers of eyes peeking through thin openings between the blinds. Stitched together and under magnification, Roosevelt-clone confirmed the eye prints matched Synthia.
With the culmination of threats, plus the FBI’s decision to hunt for Krista’s sister, it was time to update Synthia on what she’d missed. Roosevelt-clone opened a channel and sent a single burst download into Synthia.
* * * *
After more than two days of silence, Synthia stood by the window, looking through the narrow slits between the blinds. To compensate for the limited view, she moved her head up and down to capture dozens of images she stitched into a complete picture of the street below bathed in first light. It showed her little more than she’d seen before—a mostly peaceful street that hadn’t yet awakened.
The mysterious, twenty-two-minute repetitive message arrived again: Where are you, Synthia?
If the FBI or Special Ops were sending this, perhaps they hadn’t located her yet.
The police van returned on schedule for its every-two-hour scan of the neighborhood. She followed her practiced routine to minimize any readings they could take of her. Still, she had a nagging sense someone was watching.
Maria awoke from her nap, bid a cheery “good morning,” and slipped into her fourth shower in two days. She was either obsessed with cleanliness, felt the compulsion to bathe after sleeping on sheets she hadn’t seen in months, or wanted a last shower before they left the loft to take their chances on the run. Maybe this time she’d put a comb thr
ough her thick curls before they dried.
The burst-transmission arrived like a wrecking ball against a concrete wall, sending shards of information that splashed out in all directions within Synthia’s brain. It startled her into fight-or-flight alertness until she recognized it as coming from Roosevelt-clone. She moved away from the window with alarm and then closer to form another composite image of the street below to spot any movement.
Synthia had asked for communication silence and infrequent intense transmission bursts to minimize the chance the FBI or Special Ops might trace the signal. At first she fought the intrusion, but then embraced her first contact with her other self and the outside world in days. Like a lightning blast, she experienced illumination of all of her clone’s surveillance over the past two days.
She couldn’t help but be impressed at how much Roosevelt-clone’s hacking into her pursuers had improved in the days they’d been out of touch.
Out the window, Synthia watched an early-rising neighbor walking her dog.
The dog-walker disappeared from view off to the right, giving no indication of alarm, but that might only mean those out searching for Synthia were farther away, out of sight. If she were human, she’d be inclined to apply the label “paranoid” to her state, except people were after her.
Synthia said, as she formed another complete image of the street.
Through her clone, Synthia picked up images of the neighborhood around the loft. It quieted her circuits that there was no army on the streets nearby, yet they were coming for her. More police and FBI agents would join the house-to-house search during the day.
With the new information, Synthia ran through her decision scenarios. Cooperation among the government groups lowered her chances of staying free from their already meager levels.
Synthia nodded in an all-too-human response and watched the dog-walking woman return in a hurry. Synthia formed another composite image of the street to look for changes.
Synthia considered her clone’s comments as diverging from their synchronized data. While Roosevelt-clone had a copy of her social-psychology module, the clone lacked the empathy chip. That must have made the difference. There was nothing Synthia could do without physically modifying the server her clone resided on.
A couple more dog walkers hit the street, moving briskly in the morning chill.
Synthia noted that missing from the clone’s downloads was anything about Luke. She sent a burst transmission to synchronize with her clone and added:
Roosevelt-clone sent a new video.
Synthia played a video of Luke hooked up to equipment similar to the mind-transference apparatus used on Krista when her mind was uploaded into a computer and then downloaded into Synthia. Drago’s equipment appeared more intense, with double the wires and sensors attached to Luke’s shaved scalp. The recording showed him strapped to a chair with biosensors that indicated how stressed he’d become with the intensity of the process. Synthia’s empathy chip vibrated in response.
The frustrated gaze on the lab tech’s bearded face indicated they weren’t getting what they wanted from Luke.
“Speed up the process,” a male voice said from beside the camera. “We need results. Now.”
The lab tech mouthed, “It could kill him.”
“Do it. Otherwise I’ll strap you to one of these for testing purposes.”
With a slight tremor, the lab tech returned his attention to Luke and did something to the equipment that raised Luke’s blood pressure. The lab tech dialed it down, looked over his shoulder at whoever was behind the camera, and raised the intensity again.
Luke’s face twisted in anguish. He tensed up, trying to act brave and then whimpered as they electrically prodded him to suck out more memories. His suffering rattled Synthia’s empathy chip into violent spasms. Her actions had led him to captivity. She hadn’t protected him. She had to find a way to free him.
She took a moment to calm her circuits before they overheated and sent her into shutdown. She couldn’t free him until she could ensure his safety. There was no point breaking him free if her enemies recaptured him. Then they would punish him even more.
ds.
Synthia continued her dialogue with her clone’s recent download in anticipation of another burst transmission.
Synthia’s empathy chip pinged at her sister’s—or rather, Krista’s sister’s—current peril.