Loving AIDAn (Bernard Frankenheimer Center Book 3)

by Troy Hunter

  I considered that this may not be a true reality. The term “dream” came to mind, even though I wasn’t quite sure what it meant. At least not in this sense. I knew dream could mean a hope or desire. That’s not what this was. This was another kind of dream.

  I walked over to a lab table with metallic tubing linking some sort of metal device to a switch labeled Gas. I turned the switch and detected methyl mercaptan and methane emitting from the device.

  I pressed a button on the device, which caused a sharp click, and a flame emerged, as if it was some kind of mechanical candle.

  I had taken my chances with the scalpel, pushing it toward my skin, attempting to pierce through it. The scalpel bent instead. Likely, the burners here somehow had a similar precaution built in. I moved my hand into the flame, which burned around it, though it never jumped onto my skin. It was as if the fire was completely unaware of my presence.

  I could tell the flame was hot. I could measure its exact temperature, 512° F, though I couldn’t feel pain. I had no impulse to remove my hand from what should have been excruciating heat. The only reason I did eventually move my hand away was out of boredom. The fire had lost my interest and I was ready to move onto something else.

  I pulled a beaker down from the shelf and sniffed it. I then took a sip. It was concentrated hydrochloric acid. I was sure that’s what it was. I don’t know if I had ever tasted hydrochloric acid before, but the intense flavor was so particular that it couldn’t have been anything else. By every account, drinking it should have burned the tongue out of my mouth, if I was human, but I swallowed and felt no ill effects.

  There was something odd about this situation. I considered the idea that all these objects could be props, but then how could I explain my ability to detect their temperatures or chemical composition? If everything else appeared normal, perhaps I was the odd one.

  Could anything harm me? Surely, something must be able to, though it wasn’t metal, fire, or acid. If something could hurt me, I had yet to figure out what it was.

  Could I be—my body shivered in response to the thought—a god? Perhaps a man reborn as a god or maybe that’s what I had always been, though I was cursed with the inability to hold onto my memories.

  None of this sat right. All of my explanations were completely absurd, though they didn’t strike me as any more absurd than the situation itself.

  Everything in the lab could have been fake. What couldn’t be faked was what happened in my head. I noticed a whiteboard with some mathematical symbols written across it. Before even looking at them completely, I knew I could solve the equation. I scribbled the answer on the board with as much certainty as if someone had asked me whether I was standing on the floor.

  Had someone done something to my mind? Installed some sort of calculator? And an encyclopedia of chemicals, allowing me to know the beaker had held hydrochloric acid? It’s possible, but they also equipped my body with precise sensors, able to measure the exact temperature of a flame.

  The most startling element was a sensation I couldn’t describe. It was as real as touch or sight, though somehow more abstract. It wasn’t something I could point to or even give an indication of what it meant. I only knew it was a sensation that needed to be taken care of, as if it was a hole that needed to be filled. I would go so far as to call it a feeling, though I would hesitate in saying that, because I wasn’t certain. I pictured an emptiness inside my body and it was the first thing I was aware of that suggested any discomfort. Neither the fire nor the acid caused me any kind of pain, but the emptiness that led to the—could it be loneliness?—did. I would do anything to have another person treat the problem.

  I knew that it wasn’t just any person either. It was a special person out there. I would devote my life to finding him or her.

  A word shot through my mind in an instant, with large, bold letters drowning out any other thought processes.

  LOVE

  That must be the right word. I would love them.

  I didn’t know what I would do with them. I had vague ideas related to physical contact, and indeed, it was as if I could feel them touching me, almost like a memory. I could feel hands on my inner thighs, pressing into them and moving toward my groin. Just the thought sent signals through my head and a smile formed across my face.

  I looked inside my head in order to find such memories. Though I couldn’t remember anything before waking up, everything since then was ingrained in my mind with photographic accuracy. I could play each moment over again, rewind it, and pause at anything I wished to examine in closer detail.

  Deep in the inner reaches of my mind were the controls for each function, and along with them, other functions: a long wall of levers I could pull down and activate. I had been using them all along without realizing it. There was a switch for standing up and another for wiggling my fingers. These may have been the reason for the disconnect I was feeling.

  And then I happened upon a function within my mind that I didn’t understand. It was labeled Canis lupus. Curiosity encouraged me to enable the function. For the first instance, there was nothing. Perhaps it took time to work.

  Small bumps popped over my skin. I rubbed a finger over them, finding them soft and firm, not coarse at all. Through these bumps, strands of dark grey hair emerged, only half an inch or so, though the bumps were so dense the hair soon covered my body. I looked back onto the metal bed’s reflective surface and watched hair grow across my face as well. My nose elongated and broadened while my teeth enlarged, the tips turning into tiny daggers.

  It was at that moment that I heard a series of beeps by the door and I disengaged the function. The hair crawled back into my skin and my nose reverted to human form.

  The door to the lab opened and I saw the shadowy figure of a human in the entranceway.

  Chapter 5

  Jeffrey

  I pushed my ID card up against the sensor on the door and waited for the green light and accompanying chime. I was tired and looking forward to going home and lying on the couch. Hopefully my roommate, Gale, would be there and we could watch garbage TV until we fell asleep.

  Gale is my favorite person in the world. Though she can be needy at times—okay, she’s needy virtually all the time—I don’t know what I’d do without her. If it wasn’t for her, I’d spend every night home alone, by myself.

  I didn’t realize how much I appreciated her in my life until she and her boyfriend got together. It’s not that I don’t like him. He works in the lab with me and I was the one who introduced them. It’s that she’s spending a lot of time at his place and I realized how lonely the apartment is without her.

  I was happy for Gale but also scared to lose her. I wanted her to be happy, but without her, I only had my research, which is probably why I didn’t mind working such long hours in the lab.

  What I wanted was someone to call my own. My own Bradley. For a little while, I thought I had it with this other guy, Lucas. We got together a few months after Bradley and Gale became an item, and for the first few weeks of the relationship, everything was great.

  Well, mostly great. There were warning signs at the beginning. He’d constantly ask where I was and I caught him snooping on my phone at one point, though he denied doing it.

  This paranoia intensified until he flat out accused me of cheating on him, and this is a little funny to me…with Gale. I explained to him over and over again that I was gay. He didn’t believe anybody was truly 100% gay and demanded I move out of my apartment, effectively forcing me to choose him or her.

  I told him over the phone that I chose Gale. He was furious and raced over to my apartment. Fortunately, Gale and Bradley were there. Gale answered the door and told Lucas he had exactly ten seconds to leave before she called the police. I’ll never forget the look he gave me as he left, a scowl with fire in his eyes. I don’t know exactly what thoughts were going through his mind at the time, but I do know that if Gale and Bradley hadn’t been there, things would have turned out muc
h worse.

  The door to the lab unlocked and I walked inside. It was dark, and at first, all I saw was a large, shadowy figure. I felt a jolt through my system, with my first instinct telling me somebody had broken into the lab.

  The figure walked toward me and into the light, and I relaxed when I recognized it was AIDAn.

  I didn’t believe it at first. I couldn’t believe it. After so many hopeful attempts ended in failure, I’d become more and more convinced that AIDAn would always just lie on the table, a body without a functional brain.

  My heart fluttered in my chest as I stared at him, almost resorting to pinching my arm to convince myself this was actually happening.

  He was up and walking with a smile on his face and a glimmer of life in his eyes. He looked a bit silly there in the lab coat, bare feet on the ground, like some kind of erotic fantasy of what a scientist might be.

  “Hello.”

  His voice was deep and full, his pronunciation clear, cutting through the lab and above the background hum of the machinery.

  I didn’t know how to respond. I was in the middle of a remarkable moment, likely one of the most significant in human existence.

  When Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, he mistakenly said, “Small step for man,” rather than “Small step for a man,” forever etching his error into the history books. I didn’t want to do the same.

  “Hello,” I said, playing it safe in typical Jeffrey fashion.

  I walked toward him. He stood tall and strong, the model of proper posture, a living mannequin representing an ideal human form but without the artificial plastic appearance. The illusion was convincing. He looked like a perfect person, but he still looked like a real person.

  I snapped my fingers in front of his face and watched as his eyes followed my gestures. My hand touched his cheek and, somehow, he felt more alive than he had before. He’d been nothing more than a warm body before, capable of breathing and little else. Now, there was a person inside of him and an intelligence in his eyes.

  “My name is Jeffrey Patel,” I said.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you. Are you my person?”

  His person. Of course. We had built longing into him. He wanted a partner. I wasn’t to be his partner though.

  “No, I am not.”

  He looked disappointed, his head turned down.

  “When do I meet my partner?” he asked.

  “Just a minute.” I left my lab and ran down the hall to Dr. Slickberg’s office, but he’d already left. I might be able to catch him if I ran down the stairs after him but I also didn’t want to lose track of AIDAn.

  I returned to the room. He stood there in the center, his silver skin shining in the fluorescent lights, god-like. At least on the surface, we had created a perfect man.

  What was I supposed to do with him? I couldn’t leave him in the lab and only Slickberg had access to the tools that would render him immobile. He was liable to escape or get into trouble. And his awakening likely offered the most interesting scientific results. What did we get right? What did we get wrong? What could he adapt to and what was innate?

  I pulled out my phone and called Slickberg. It went straight to voicemail. He’d turned off his phone, something he’d been known to do when he was working on something important. He’d disconnect from the internet, too, making it virtually impossible to get in touch with him.

  The problem was that he needed to know about this. He no longer needed to waste his time with a trivial slide show presentation about what could happen when we finally achieved our objective. Instead, he had the prototype. He would steal the show. Nothing else anyone had developed could possibly compete with what we’d done.

  We had done it. For the first time in a long time, I had something to show for my work and I was excited to show my advisor that we’d done it, just as he said we would.

  “You want to meet your partner?” I asked. “Let’s go meet your partner.”

  This was dangerous, taking him out of the lab, but I didn’t see any other choice. We had to move fast or we wouldn’t get to Slickberg.

  “Make sure you stay close, do you understand?” I gave him a stern look, indicating I was serious.

  “I understand completely.”

  I ran over to my backpack. I kept a pair of athletic shorts in there on the off chance that I’d be motivated to spend time at the gym. As it turned out, they’d sat in my bag for about three months, unused.

  “Put these on.”

  I pulled the shorts out of my backpack and tossed them to AIDAn. He grabbed them, stretching the band out as he put them on in front of me, the lab coat swaying out of the way and revealing his penis. It’s strange how different it felt now he was responsive. I couldn’t look away.

  I would have given him my gym shoes if I thought there was any chance they’d fit him. The shorts were a necessity, as a nude man wandering around campus was bound to attract attention—this isn’t Berkeley, after all—but the shoes were not.

  He stayed very close to me, practically holding my hand as we walked out of the lab toward the elevators. The squeaky wheel of a janitor’s cart echoed through the halls, coming closer and closer.

  It was late and our department was usually the last stop for the cleaning crew. The good news was that if he didn’t see us, it wasn’t likely we’d run into anybody else.

  The elevator arrived, and AIDAn and I jumped inside. I heard the voice of the janitor asking us to hold the door as I pushed the button for the ground level floor repeatedly. The doors closed and we began our descent.

  When they opened and we walked outside the building, it was like seeing the world through new eyes. I kept telling myself he was just a machine, but I couldn’t help noticing a sense of wonder in AIDAn’s face. How could a robot express wonder? It had to be mimicry, he couldn’t actually be feeling anything.

  The mimicry was very convincing though. We’d solved the easy problem of consciousness.

  AIDAn jogged toward a tree and rubbed his face against the bark. He smelled it; can he smell? He had scent receptors in his nose and he appeared to be smelling but was that the right word for it? He considered the bark for a second then licked it. I wondered if I should say anything. Should I point out the ways in which he wasn’t behaving like a human or should I let him figure it out on his own?

  “This is a tree,” he said.

  “Yeah…”

  He repeated himself, excitement in his voice. “This is a tree!” As if it was some mythical creature he’d just discovered was actually real. He hugged the tree, then took a slow, deep breath.

  “It’s producing oxygen so we can breathe,” he continued. “It sits here, taking in sunlight, taking in the carbon dioxide we’re exhaling and turning it back into oxygen. It’s like a dance we do, or a kiss. We’re helping each other breathe.”

  I pulled a notebook out of my backpack and began jotting down some notes in shorthand. Interested in tree, Sense of wonder, Expresses excitement. It was impossible to convey what I was seeing in just a few words, but I had to do it for posterity. I was the first person to experience this.

  I was the first human being to interact with walking, breathing, sensing artificial intelligence. First contact, as it were.

  AIDAn looked toward the sky. “It’s the moon.” He laughed. “In its gibbous stage. There’s Venus and that’s Saturn. I can see Neptune.”

  “You can’t see Neptune without a telescope,” I told him.

  “I can.” He pointed to a blank area in the sky. “It’s small, but it’s right there. You can’t see it?”

  I squinted, but it wouldn’t make any difference. Human eyes couldn’t make out anything that small and far away.

  “I can’t, no.”

  He turned back toward Saturn, a dim light in the sky. “I can see Saturn’s rings,” he said. “It’s…” he paused, looking for the word. “It’s beautiful.” He laughed again. “That’s what beauty is.”

  I jotted down. Laughter, more excitemen
t, acute vision appears to be vastly superior to 20/20. Can resolve rings on Saturn.

  “It’s all so big. There’s so much everything.” He looked around and then took off running down a long stretch of road.

  “AIDAn, no!” I shouted, running after him, as if there was any chance of catching him.

  And then I saw something I didn’t believe. It was dark, sure, but I could see him lean forward and put his hands on the ground as his body contorted into a different shape. I put my pen to the notebook, but wasn’t sure what to write.

  A long, fleshy tail emerged from his back, then thickened with coarse gray…was it fur? His head collapsed like a soda can, then elongated with a snout, covered with a thinner layer of the fur.

  Then two sharp pointy ears emerged on the top of his head as his stride got longer. He looked more like a dog than a human being. No, not a dog: a wolf.

  What was going on?

  Chapter 6

  AIDAn

  As I dropped to the ground, I picked up speed and really felt the air move through my fur. The Canis lupus function turned on by itself. I suppose I told my body to go faster and that was the easiest way.

  I ran around the area, between the buildings and through the grass, feeling free. I was trapped in the room before but now I had the whole world to explore. None of what I was seeing was new. I had the names for all of it, building, tree, car, concrete, but nothing in my mind had prepared me to actually experience it. There was more to these items than what they were and the files in my system failed to do them justice. They couldn’t be expressed with words or ones and zeros. A thought drifted into my mind from out of nowhere. You can have the best poets in the world work together to describe blue to a colorblind man, but until he actually sees it, he can’t know what it is.