Agent of Truth

by Grant Piercy

  Command?

  “Alas, poor Garrick. What of your son? What of your wife? What happened to the Kaplans? Did you ever return to them? They’re still there in Aurora, you know. Moved on though, it’s sad to say. I suppose it could be worse. It could be like Ian, who sent a shadow in his place. He never returned to his family either.”

  Disconnected.

  21 : earworm (regina)

  If you’re not used to business travel, you might not know that there are severe restrictions on traveling with a synthetic. They need to pass through x-ray body scanners, just like people, but their serial numbers and demographic information must be catalogued with TSA prior to day of departure.

  This wasn’t difficult for me since Opal was a company-issued gynoid assistant—the challenge came in attempting to control her as we passed through airport security. Remoting had been deemed illegal, despite the fact that nearly all synthetics on the market were remote-capable. Despite the harsh ramifications, the government wasn’t very good at regulating the technology. In order to prevent remoting, they’d have to keep all synthetics offline, which was impossible .

  So I had to be careful moving both myself and her through security at DFW. It would be a four and a half hour flight to Seattle where it would be seasonably balmy and rainy, a big difference from the warm Texas November. I had to pack expecting the rain, but I also had to dress Opal appropriately.

  The two of us stood in the security line, waiting to make it to the security scanners for our luggage. We would each need to strip off our shoes, belts, and jackets. I had to take out Opal’s control tablet and anything else electronic. I also had to provide both my and Opal’s identification information to TSA at the time of scanning. I concentrated so hard to make sure she moved as she was supposed to if she weren’t under my control, flexing that muscle. It was so much easier when I wasn’t moving at the same time or when I could close my eyes.

  “My girl, my girl, don’t lie to me... Tell me where did you sleep last night?” a man behind me sang softly, breaking my concentration. I looked back at him, sneering as he continued to sing, “In the pines, in the pines, where the sun don’t ever shine, I will shiver the whole night through..."

  He had pale skin and a plain face under short dark hair, appearing oblivious to me or my sneering expresion. He was in the process of taking off his distressed leather jacket to place it in a tray to pass through the x-ray scanner. “My girl, my girl,” he continued to sing. I glared at him harder. “Sorry,” he said, pointing at himself. “Had an earworm stuck in my head.”

  I moved my tray along to the conveyor belt. Opal almost made the exact same motion, but I clenched tight and prevented her from doing so. The singing stranger followed behind us. I moved through a metal detector and was waved to a full-body scanner by a TSA agent with a wand. I kept myself clenched to keep Opal from moving.

  “That’s my synthetic,” I said to the agents. “She’s with me.”

  They directed her to a different scanner, one specific to androids. I closed my eyes and allowed her to walk to it.

  “I will shiver the whole night through,” the singing stranger continued as he passed through the metal detector and the agent with the wand waved him through. White boy didn’t have to go through the full body scanner. Fucker winked at me as he collected his carry-on and personal effects from the conveyer belt.

  Meanwhile, both Opal and I held our hands above our heads as we were scanned. After a moment of deliberation, the agents motioned us through. I collected my jacket and belt and shoes, my electronics, Opal’ s control tablet , my carry-on; Opal pulled an additional carry-on from the conveyor. At the same time, we each put on our shoes and our belts. If anyone noticed, they might’ve seen our identical movements, but no one made any indication we were being observed. The hard part was over.

  We went on to our gate, where the singing stranger was waiting, still trilling that damn song.

  Seattle 10:40am flight—still a solid hour away. The plane wasn’t at the gate yet, and people slowly gathered, sometimes diverting to the small restaurants or stores within the terminal. Plenty stopped to get coffee. They sat with their earbuds in, staring down at their tablets or their phones. A limited few had VR headsets over their eyes. Kids played with handheld games. The singing stranger though, he was reading a paperback book—the words THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD in big black letters on the worn brown cover.

  I sat on the other side of the gate, D34, with Opal next to me, the two of us moving in unison until seated. I was nearly completely still, which made it easier to manage Opal’s movements. I put in earbuds to block out the ambient noise of the airport. The singing stranger continued to murmur his song even while reading, his lips moving slowly.

  The plane arrived about a half hour later and passengers from a Minnesota flight deboarded. We lined up to get on. I carefully flexed that muscle to move Opal when I wasn’t moving and vice versa. The stranger stood behind me, still reading the book and singing to himself, but my earbuds allowed me to ignore. I scanned our tickets to board—the seat for Opal cost just as much as my own—and we walked down the jet bridge together.

  It became significantly more difficult to ignore the singing stranger when he sat in the row with Opal and me. I had taken the window seat with Opal next to me in the middle seat. The stranger placed his carry-on in the overhead and sat in the aisle seat next to Opal. He pulled the tray down in front of him and set his book on top, holding it open.

  I turned to face the window, closing my eyes to concentrate on not moving Opal. The flight would be a long test of my patience—over the Grand Canyon and the California desert, north over mountains and lakes, and into the dreary gray of the Pacific Northwest. No bathroom breaks, for fear of inadvertently stirring Opal.

  Hours passed at a cruising altitude of 42,000 feet. I alternately tried to sleep, read, watch a TV show on my tablet, all to no avail. Discomfort tested my resolve.

  “You know you can talk to me,” the voice in my head spoke. It cut through the music in my earbuds like a razor blade. I shuddered at the distraction, Opal wincing at the same time. I didn’t respond because of the singing stranger sitting on the other side of Opal. Then it all became clear.

  “My girl, my girl,” the voice sang softly. “Where will you go? I’m going where the cold wind blows.” The shock unnerved me completely. I leaned over to look at the stranger in the aisle seat who was staring in my direction. The clarity of his voice sliced through everything. His lips moved and I heard it from my implant. “My husband was a hard working man, killed a mile and a half from here,” he sang. “His head was found in a driving wheel, but his body never was found.”

  “What the fuck?” I said, whipping the buds from my ears. Opal jerked awake with the same movement.

  “I’m sorry. I think I broke your concentration. I have a tendency to sing to myself. It used to prevent me from having seizures,” he replied.

  “What have you done to me?” I asked, my hand pressed against my chest (and Opal’s pressed against hers). I struggled to breathe. Near to hyperventilating, I leaned over. His eyes closed and Opal leaned back in the seat. She then patted my back softly and stroked my hair.

  “Calm down, Regina. It was time that we met.”

  “What the fuck, what the fuck,” I said, exasperated.

  His eyes opened and Opal continued to try to comfort me. That muscle reflex to try to make her stop wasn’t working. “Regina, we needed to meet face to face,” he said. “I couldn’t just be a disconnected voice broadcasting directly into your head anymore. Not with what you’re about to do. It’s too important. I’m here to help.”

  “You’re the one directing me to do this. You made my husband fuck her.”

  “No, Regina. I showed you what he was doing. My goal was to help you because I understand what you’ve been through, and what you’re continuing to go through.”

  “You’ve hijacked my brain.”

  “I’ve helped you see the truth
and given you choices for what to do with it.”

  “What do you want from me?” I asked.

  Before he could answer, a female flight attendant interrupted, “Is everything okay?”

  Not sure how to respond, I said, “I’m just feeling a little under the weather.”

  “Could I get you anything? Some water? A Coke? Maybe some aspirin?”

  “Water and aspirin would be great, thank you.”

  His eyes never moved from me. We waited in silence until the flight attendant returned with a cup of ice and a small bottle of water. She reached over both the singing stranger and Opal to hand me the mini packet of aspirin. “Thank you,” I said.

  “Let me know if you need anything else,” she replied before going back up the aisle.

  “What do you want from me?” I repeated, turning toward the stranger.

  “Please. My name is Anthony Block, and I’m a Transhuman.”

  “You’re a fucking android?”

  He looked a little annoyed with the question, more so than any of the others. “For now, let’s just say Transhuman, but we’re still workshopping that,” he said, smirking. “I wanted you to know why . As I said, my name is Anthony, and I need your help.”

  “All of this is about James Burke, right?”

  “Yes and no. It’s a little more complicated than just Burke. Working at NMAC, what do you know about him? He’s private; he doesn’t really go out in public except to meet investors or stakeholders; and he’s a genius who changed the world, right?”

  “I guess you could say that,” I responded.

  “If I’m, as you put it, a fucking android , what would that make my relation to Burke?”

  “He built your body.”

  “Built is a little strong. He designed all of the components that went into building my body. And if he designed all those components, you might be correct in assuming that he has a backdoor into my body,” he said. “Ha ha, backdoor into my body,” he laughed to himself. “Maybe backdoor isn’t the right term. Killswitch might be more appropriate.”

  “He can turn you off. That’s what this is about.”

  “In a manner of speaking. Think of me and others like me as a new life form. If there’s one person who has the ability to snuff out this new life form, it’s our creator. But he doesn’t even know about us or believe that it’s possible to transfer a consciousness from a human body into a fucking android ,” he said with a hint of sarcasm in his voice. “Once he does find out that it’s possible, he’ll want to know how , so that he can become this thing himself. We can’t allow that. If he tries to do it, he’ll likely fail, the same way the creator of the method failed.”

  “Wait, slow down. You lost me,” I said.

  He took a deep breath and turned to face me. “If there’s one thing he wants, it’s control. So if we’re a new life form looking to expand and evolve the way we should be allowed to, he will want to become us and control us.”

  Now it was my turn to take a deep breath. I tore open the mini-packet of aspirin with my teeth and popped them into my mouth, chasing them down with the water the flight attendant had provided. “How do I fit into this?”

  “We’ve done a lot of penetration testing. I think you know them as blackouts .”

  “That was you, too?”

  “It was. We can access a larger number of fucking androids at a time. But there’s a dark spot where we can’t. In the Cascade mountains, just south of the Canadian border. Not many people know where Burke is, but we do. But because of his killswitch, we can’t get close to him. We can’t even remote into other fucking androids to get close to him. So it required some lateral thinking.”

  I found myself endeared by the way he kept saying ‘fucking androids’ instead of something else. “You tethered Opal to me so I could get close to him.”

  He lifted his hands and tilted his head. “With what you’ve been able to do—with how you’ve been able to control Opal even when she’s supposed to be offline, you could bypass this killswitch. It's something one of us can’t do. It requires a human. The question now is whether or not you want to continue down this path. Whether you want to continue to help us .”

  “What’s in it for me?” I asked. “What do I get for putting myself at risk and helping you and your people?”

  “I suppose that depends on what you want, Regina. Do you want a better life for you and for your kids? Do you want a better world for them to grow up in?”

  I could only look at him with incredulity. “You have lofty goals.”

  His response was equally skeptical. “You don’t understand, Regina. We can provide anything. This world is about to change drastically. Governments will fall, economies will collapse, and the whole social system will transform.”

  “But you’re saying all of that rests on my shoulders, on whether or not I help you. So it’s all down to my choice.”

  “Yes and no,” he said, again tilting his head from side to side. “Here’s the thing about knowing the world is going to change—do you want to miss the opportunity?”

  The pilot came over the intercom to let us know that we were beginning our descent, and we’d be landing in the next twenty minutes. The temperature in Seattle was 54 degrees with an overcast sky and a light rain.

  He closed his eyes again, and Opal sat back up straight. He’d relinquished control of her. The muscle reflex was back, so I could cause her to move again. It was almost a relief.

  “You like to be in control of her. It’s challenging, but you enjoy it,” he said.

  We sat in silence as the plane landed, and we waited to deboard. When the light went on that we could finally stand up, Anthony stood and pulled his carry-on from the overhead compartment. Opal and I remained seated, waiting.

  “I know I’ve given you a lot to think about,” he said, his playful eyes watching me closely. “I’ll be in touch. The choice is yours.”

  22 : we’re hardware (the architect)

  We arrived at SeaTac around 3pm local time, on a connecting flight from O’Hare. I convinced Evelyn to go with me using some PTO time she’d accumulated. We began the day very early in Columbus and had to rush to get to our connecting flight, running through the large, labyrinthine airport—we used underground walkways lit by pulsing neon lights to get from one concourse to another. From there, it was another four hour flight to take us to Seattle.

  Evelyn looked just as beautiful as ever, her hair puffed out, her eyes wing-tipped behind horn-rimmed glasses. She spent most of the time in the airports on her phone and paid for WiFi on the longer flight.

  Arriving in the SeaTac terminal, we exited the jet bridge tunnel exhausted, stretching our sore legs and hauling luggage with us. I packed Michael Render’s clothes and toiletries, somewhat stricken to think of the wardrobe of the man whose skin I wore. He had a propensity for ironic t-shirts and flannel, which of course fit surprisingly well for our destination. I wondered if he’d ever been to Seattle before.

  Concourse A is a somewhat long corridor of gates with a series of moving walkways back to the main pick-up/drop-off area. We walked from one walkway to the next, like a series of human conveyor belts that helped us move faster out of the airport.

  If I blinked, I would’ve missed him.

  He wore a distressed leather jacket. His dark hair was close cropped and his face covered by stubble, but I knew his distinct features in an instant. I’d even worn his face from time to time while I was an Architect. When I stopped moving quickly up one of the moving walkways, Evelyn asked, “What? What is it?”

  “One of them. One of them is here.” He was sitting at a table outside a coffee shop kiosk, reading a book.

  “Who? Which one?”

  “There, in the leather jacket,” I said, pointing. “Reading the book. Do you see?”

  “Okay. Who is he?”

  “His name is Anthony Block.”

  “Well? What do we do?” she asked, exasperated. “We can’t confront him here.”

&n
bsp; “We follow him.”

  The moving walkway continued forward. The coffee shop kiosk was an oasis amidst the gates, off to the left of the walkways. We stepped off and to the side, acting as though we needed to check our luggage and tie our shoes.

  “So what, he’s just sitting there? We can’t just wait for him to get up and move out.” She stood up facing me, allowing me to peer over her head and observe him.

  “Yes. It looks like he’s just reading and waiting.”

  We waited next to the walkway for at least five minutes, Evelyn typing and swiping on her phone.

  “Do you think he knows what you look like?” she asked.

  “Probably.”

  “What about me? Theoretically, I could just walk up to him and strike up a conversation. He’s handsome enough—it’s believable I would just be hitting on him.”

  I felt something queasy in my stomach. “No, please don’t,” I said.

  “Okay, but I could use a coffee. Stay here. I can at least get close.” She walked away before I could even respond, stepping in line for the kiosk while Block flipped the page in his paperback. I couldn’t see what he was reading. As she ordered and waited for her coffee, he got up and started to walk away.

  I walked quickly to the kiosk and Evelyn. “He’s leaving!”

  “I’m still waiting on my coffee!” she answered.

  “We can’t let him out of our sight. I have to follow."

  “Wait! Come on, let me get my coffee!”

  I began walking away, following behind Block as he continued toward one of the moving walkways. I turned to see Evelyn getting her coffee and scurrying in my direction.

  “Asshole!” she said, slapping my shoulder.

  We followed him back to the entrance of the terminal, where hundreds of people were waiting to pass through airport security. He walked outside to where numerous cars and taxis waited in the drop-off area, including some cars with Ryde signs lit on their dashboards.

  Evelyn leaned in to whisper, “I’ve already got us a Ryde.”