by Elisa Hansen
In the far corner, the steady blinking of a tiny orange light caught his eye. He paused to stare at it, hypnotized for a moment. It emanated from the breast of a slumped figure that looked like a woman covered with metal. As he drew closer, he decided it was more like metal covered with woman. Pure machine of pure feminine build. Two cords extended from an open panel in her tapered waist to a torn-out wall socket.
She was nearly as tall as Leif, or rather, would be if she stood straight. Like the android soldiers who once dominated military advertisements, she had no artificial hair or skin. But unlike those marching drones, her figure must have been sculpted by some engineer with the eye of a classical artist. So elegantly-proportioned, yet there was no mistaking her solidity. Despite her lithe shape, he wagered she could withstand an explosion or two. Leif had never heard of an android that so mixed fetishistic aesthetics and battle-readiness. What could her purpose possibly be?
Her silver-gray body was delightfully nude save for a long, thin blue scarf looped once around her slender throat. Metallic threads in its polyester weave twinkled as her breast light blinked. Against her feet rested a bulging duffel bag, greasy stains marring its pale blue canvas. Leif nudged it with one of his new shoes, and it clunked with hard, metal sounds.
The mechanical woman’s face did not appear as solid as the rest of her. Her eyelids folded delicately, half-closed above fine cheekbones, and the sockets around the matte eye bulb covers looked made to move. To express. And other places abounded—the crooks of her elbows, the webs of her fingers—the same brushed color as the armored parts but made of softer stuff. Leif’s fingers itched to discover how soft.
He found he liked the way she smelled, the way all the scents about her blended. Plastic and steel and silicone and copper and carbon fuel and human. He plucked up the end of the blue scarf and brushed its slippery fringe against his nose. Yes… Faint, a tease, but human. Recent human. Where was that human now?
A sudden whirring and the entire mechanical body straightened. “Powering up,” said a pleasantly-intoned female voice.
The head lifted, and two indigo eyes flared alight in the silver face, accompanied by the sound of a laser weapon activating.
“Step off,” said the voice much less pleasantly.
Leif leapt across the room. His back hit the wall with force to make the entire building shudder.
The metal woman frowned, the soft corners of her mouth wrinkling in a perfect imitation of human disdain. In fact, her whole face was so very human, except for the eyes. Why ever would anyone design such a human face with such inhuman eyes? No visible pupils in the round glowing centers behind the lenses. Leif would have shivered in delight if he weren’t preoccupied by the rather intricate gun protruding from her right forearm.
“Go away,” she said.
“Oh, no.” A quiet laugh escaped Leif. “Just like that? But you’re my first android.”
The orange spot on her breast blinked to amber. “I will fry you.”
And why hadn’t she already? Leif slid his hands deep into the pockets of his coat.
She took a quick step but stopped when the cords connecting her to the wall jerked taut. The gun did not waiver in its aim on his eyes.
“Easy!” Leif pulled his hands from his pockets. One held the iPod, headphones wrapped neatly around it, and the other presented the charger. “I’m not going to hurt you.” He bit back a chuckle. Could she even feel pain?
“No,” she said. “Leave.”
“I’m harmless.”
“Get out.”
“Hmmm.” He eyed her gun, then the door, then focused back on her. Androids always on edge, like they used to say in the news when they mocked those adorable Robot Rights activists. “I can see you’ve got trust issues.”
“I can see you’ve got fangs. The only reason I haven’t shot you yet is to avoid attracting your friends.”
Friends? Now that was really worth a laugh, but Leif refrained. Perhaps it would be a fitting end to the night, but he didn’t particularly want to be shot.
“Come now,” he said. “There’s an outlet right over by that cabinet behind you. Allow me to plug this in. Then while it’s charging, you can tell me all about your tormented childhood and how your robot daddy didn’t love you.”
He stepped toward her, and her gun went off four times, lighting up the room with sapphire fireworks. With each blast Leif avoided, he gained a few steps, and then he sprang upon her. Snatching her forearm, he shoved the weapon back into it.
She swung at him with her other arm, but Leif ducked, and her fist made an impressive dent in the metal cabinet. The blinking light on her breast turned back to orange as his fingers flashed out to grab the cords connecting her to the wall. He twisted them around his palm, and the android stilled immediately.
“You don’t want me to rip these out of you, do you?”
Her electric eyes smoldered furiously, and her silver lips clamped tight.
“I didn’t think so.” He forced his fingers to remain steady, but the effort of evading her gunfire reduced his veins to quivering again. The human smell about her became ten times more of a tease.
“What do you want?” she snapped.
“To charge my iPod.”
“That’s not an iPod.”
Wasn’t it? Leif did his best to keep up with these things, but centuries of information tended to have a way of blurring in his brain. So many names for so many things. He knew how to program the little contraption; that was all that mattered.
“Whatever it is, I want to charge it.” He took a soft breath as he studied her pliant face. “That’s all, really.”
She looked to the door, and her eye bulbs flickered, changing color to pistachio, then emerald, then back to indigo. Leif could hear the faint whirs of the components inside her marvelous head. A smart cookie, this one. He supposed she deduced by now he had no friends.
The not-flesh around her eyes narrowed as she focused on him. “Why here?”
His hand tightened on her arm, but the metal did not give in the slightest even under his grip’s considerable pressure. He gave her a gentle smile. “The same reason you’re here, it appears. Where else?”
His gaze dipped to the light on her left breast. She moved her hand to cover it. Carefully, he released her forearm. The gun popped right out again at first but then folded back in with a muffled click.
“You’re smoother than I thought you would be,” he said. “And warmer.”
“The air temperature is warm.” Her eyes fixed on his hand on her cords.
“In the films, you things always looked hard and cold all over. And shinier. You’re not very shiny.”
The soft ridges that served as her brow knitted, and her eyes glowed darker.
Her face begged to be touched, but her hand snapped up and caught Leif’s the moment it moved. The force in her grip might have cracked human bones.
“What do you have against vampires?” he asked as he sniffed her discreetly. So good. Too good. The recent human must have been quite recent indeed. “It’s not as if I’m going to bite you. I don’t drink lubricant, or whatever runs through your artificial veins.”
She threw his hand back at him. “You’re all power-thirsty parasites with no respect for humans.”
Oh-ho. There it was. He gave her a slow nod. “Hm. I see. And all robots are war machines.”
“I’m not a government android.”
He smiled. “And I’m not a commune vampire.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Very well, but it’s true.”
“How could I possibly know you’re not lying?”
“What difference does it make?” Leif’s smile faded, but he gently released her cords and backed off. “The only power I’m thirsty for is enough to bring my little music box back to life. Really.”
She twisted to inspect the nest of wires, but he noticed how she positioned the duffel bag between her feet.
“Watch.” Leif took o
ut his iPod—or whatever it was technically called—and charger again. “See?” He plugged the adapter into the wall outlet by the cabinet and nestled his iPod against the nearest ledge below. He had no idea if proximity helped the wireless charge speed, but it seemed a safe assumption. He patted it with his fingertips. “There you go, little one.”
The android frowned. Her orange light blinked back to amber.
Leif glanced at her through the flaxen tendrils of hair that fell over his eyes, then they dropped to the dark message on the small screen.
Please wait. Very low battery.
“Do I have a choice?” he asked it with a glum sigh.
“Do you regularly talk to your music box?” the android asked, watching him closely.
Leif lifted his face. “No. Of course not. It’s just a machine. That would be unheard of.” He offered her another smile.
She frowned back at him. Again.
He crossed the room to retrieve a folding chair from the wall. The four freshly-singed holes in the corrugated metal above it practically winked at him. He winked back, then dragged the chair over to her. Flipping it open, he perched on the back of it, his feet planted in the seat. Resting his elbows on his knees and clasping his hands, he commenced to look her over, making no effort to be discreet about noting every curve and bend. His gaze came to rest on the blinking amber light on her breast.
She moved one of the hanging ends of her scarf to cover it.
“Does it become green when you’re all done?” he asked.
“That is none of your business.”
He pursed his lips. “I’m cranky if I get interrupted while I’m feeding, too.”
“Not amusing.” She turned away.
He cupped his chin in one hand. “Oh, come now. Blood is the electricity of life, wouldn’t you say? What goes around comes around, the circle of creation, et cetera, et cetera. You’re sucking energy out of that wall, just like I might out of a human.”
“Humans aren’t walls.”
“Some of them are.”
She made a grating sound, not unlike a scoff, and faced him again. He let his smile spread slowly for her.
“What do they call you?” he asked. “Let me guess. May I? Is it Galatia XZQ789? Gynoidatrix? Antivampireattackbotomatic?”
“Carol.”
Leif laughed. “Carol? Oh, how charming! Carol! What a pleasure to meet you, Carol.” He slid off the chair and offered his hand. She ignored it.
“I’m not being sarcastic,” he said. “It is a lovely name.”
When she continued to ignore him, he circled to take in her back side. Symmetry slithered about her curves with a perfection the human form it imitated rarely attained.
“Well, Carol, you may call me Leif. I am not a commune vampire, and I’m not going to hurt you.”
Carol turned her back against the wall. Could it be? A self-conscious android?
Her eyes locked on his, her hand tightening around the end of her scarf. “You could be as dangerous as they are without being a part of the commune system.”
“Yes, I could.”
“I’ve known enough vampires.”
“And they were all bad, were they?”
Her lips remained clamped for a moment. “I am aware that there are vampires who are ‘good’ individuals—”
“But I couldn’t possibly be one of them, could I?” Leif took a step back. Who could she mean? Not Apollonia and hers, could she? Leif didn’t know of any others, but wasn’t Carol a rather long way from New York to have such an association? “Carol, Carol. Really, what do I have to gain from deceiving you? We’ve only just met, after all.”
What indeed? Exactly what sort of information did she have stored in her mechanical brain?
She stared at his not-Pod for a quiet moment, then back to him. “Why aren’t you with a commune?”
Leif’s face twisted, and he returned to his chair. “Oh, because they treat humans—people—like cattle. And it never used to be that way with our kind. It gets old so quickly. They think that simply because now they can do it, they have a right to it.”
“And you don’t think so?”
“It’s not very sporting, and frankly, it puts me off my appetite.”
Carol shook her perfectly symmetrical head, but her brow puckered. “You are telling me what you think I want to hear.”
“Am I?”
“If it all gets so old, why do an estimated ninety-six percent of vampires still do it?”
Because Lorenzo sees to it. Because they’re thirsty. Leif’s veins rippled, but he hid the tremor beneath a shrug. “That’s the thing, you see? Most of them out there, they’re all so very young. Younger than I am, anyway.”
“And you have achieved enlightenment in your old age?”
He laughed and ran his fingers through his hair. “Oh, Carol.” He focused on twisting and untwisting his headphone cords. Four and a half centuries was an age an increasingly small percentage of his kind endured to achieve, but Leif was no Apollonia. Would that he ever lasted as long as she, he might begin to approach something like enlightenment. On the other hand, Lorenzo had a couple centuries on Leif, which proved “goodness” was no aged trait. The other commune masters and the vast multitude of young ones Lorenzo influenced simply preferred the easy road, really. Sheep herding cattle.
Carol looked down at her bag.
“It’s not so complicated as all that,” Leif said after a moment. “Some choose that way of life, and some don’t. I don’t. I have my reasons, and they’re enough for me.”
“There are some vampires who are trying to change things,” Carol said as if playing a trump card.
Leif bit his tongue to hold back the bitter laugh threatening to bring all the oozing blackness to the front of his brain. Trying? And trying and trying. And failing and failing and failing.
He shrugged and got up to check on his iPod. “I suppose there are.”
She must know of Apollonia and her council of fasting hero-saints in New York. Who else she could mean? Easy enough for them to hole up on their fortress island and play the long game. At their age, the thirst was so much easier to manage. Or so they claimed.
“You know,” Carol said. “You’re no better than the communes if you do nothing to try to stop them.”
This time Leif couldn’t keep his clipped laugh from escaping. “You know, you’re the most judgmental android I’ve ever met.”
“I thought I was your first.”
“Quite.” He twisted to look at her. “Spokesbot for your species as far as I’m concerned.”
“You can’t form an opinion of all androids based on me.”
“Can’t I? Then tell me, how can you form an opinion of me based on all vampires?”
“You—” She stared at him for a moment, then at the door, then at her bag again. “Caution is not equitable to prejudice.”
“Hm, no. Just robot trust issues.”
“How can anyone trust a stranger? Tell me that.”
“Carol.” Leif sighed. “Carol, Carol. You have nothing I want. Really. I’m no scientist. You tickle my curiosity as a novelty, and you seem like a simply fascinating person, but I wouldn’t begin to know what to do with whatever mind-boggling technology zigzags inside your microchips in order to make you such a brilliant conversationalist.” Though he could think of a few things he might do with her well-crafted body.
But what might someone like Lorenzo do with her? Even though she was Leif’s first, he knew enough to realize her uniqueness. Her value.
Especially if she knew details about the vampires in New York.
Lorenzo would love her.
Leif let his next words slide out as if that thought never occurred. “Nor am I working for any evil overlord who might want to defragment you to harvest the secrets of whoever it is you’re working for. I didn’t even know you were in here when I came. I’m merely a well-dressed vampire, all alone, who might go a little mad if he were too long deprived of good music.”
The color of Carol’s eyes flickered in a way that would have been imperceptible to a human as her silence stretched. When she did speak again, her voice was gentler, almost sad. “I’m not working for anyone.”
“Good.” Leif made sure his countenance reflected her gentleness as he returned to his chair. “I’m sure I wouldn’t like you so well if you were a government android.”
Her glowing eyes followed him, softened in color subtly, and then she smiled, just a little. The sweetness of the expression struck Leif as altogether un-machine, and it sent a thrill across his skin.
“What brings you to Dog Flats?” he asked. “Or have you always been here?”
“Passing through.”
Could that explain the recent human scent about her? Would she be near one again soon? Perhaps even possibly, more than one?
No antenna light had blinked when Leif entered town hours ago. If she arrived since then, had humans as well?
“Where are you heading?” he asked.
“Nowhere.”
“I don’t believe you.” He gave her another smile.
“Where are you heading?” she asked.
“Nowhere,” he said. “But that’s the truth. I’m not heading, I’m leaving.”
“Leaving.”
“Oh, vampire politics. You can be as disinterested as you please, but the larger a party gets, the more persuasive they can be.” Especially when they had two semitrucks full of flesh-eaters.
“So you were involved with them.”
“Not that way. But a vampire has to abide to some extent, or he wakes up to a sunroof in his resting place. Either abide or disappear.”
“And you’ve disappeared.”
“I try.”
She nodded. What a lovely, thoughtful expression. Then she checked on her cords. The scarf slid over her breast to reveal the light again. It glowed a steady violet.
“That’s a charming scarf,” Leif said. “I like how it sparkles. Brings out the magpie in me. I suppose you don’t wear it to keep your neck warm?”
She glanced at him from the wires. “A friend gave it to me.”
“Another robot?”
She made no response other than a soft pinging sound and disconnected the cords from the wires in the wall. She tucked them into the panel at her waist, then closed it with a muffled flap.