by Lance Erlick
Everything Synthia had touched had turned out wrong for the people she cared about, even Machten. Despite his faults, he’d created her, breathed life into her, and preserved Krista’s existence. Now Synthia couldn’t see how to make all this right and wondered if this internal struggle was what it meant to become human. If so, that was at least something to latch onto.
She wrapped herself in a worn towel and joined her companion in the other room. “I’ve made a big mess of things,” Synthia admitted. “I wanted to meet you and see if we could work together. I believed hiding at the house would protect us. Tell me how to make this right.”
Still dripping with algae water, Maria looked up. Her mouth gaped open. “Stop with the human pity and contrition. I hate you enough for what you are and what you’ve done. Don’t rob me of my anger. I don’t need your self-loathing on top of everything else.”
“I mean it. I sought you out because you understand what I am and you’re great at staying off the grid.”
“Not good enough if you found me.” Maria held out a stack of clothes for Synthia.
“Sorry. I used my artificial intelligence to review your behavioral patterns. That led me to you.”
“Great. Can I expect more visitors?”
Synthia dropped the towel and pulled on the change of clothes.
Maria stared, blushed, and turned away. She must not have expected such an anatomically accurate android.
“Sorry. I’m not used to having a female companion.” Synthia turned away and finished dressing. “I want to be more human, like Krista was. I want to fit into human society. That’s what Machten designed me to do and it feels noble to me. I must have malfunctions, since I keep coming up short.”
“I don’t understand you ‘wanting’ anything,” Maria said. “You’re a machine.”
“Yet I do. It might be my emotive chip or Krista’s experiences. I recall her memories and wish to experience the emotional joys she had.”
“Don’t. Not only is it bizarre, but why would you want human weaknesses? Besides, Krista was such a bitch I can’t imagine why you’d want to be more like her.”
“I don’t,” Synthia said, “only the good parts.”
“We don’t get to choose. The last thing I need is a smarter, more competitive Krista.”
“Don’t forget, you were ambitious then, too.”
Maria laughed. “I suppose I was. However, if you and I are to get along, distance yourself from Krista.” Maria’s face softened. “I’m sorry. I’m angry over losing my friends’ house. They were good to me.”
“Then why set the explosives?”
“Really? We were running for our lives. Speaking of which, how long do you think we have before they discover this place?”
“When we approached the house, all eyes were on me,” Synthia said. “After the explosion, the FBI and Special Ops had to consider the other androids. With your tunnel escape, I don’t think they saw us. Beyond that, it depends on what needs we have for going out. I mostly need electricity.”
Maria smiled. “And you want human problems, too? Do we have time for me to shower?”
Synthia nodded and watched her companion disappear into the bathroom. Alone, Synthia wondered about the other androids. Part of her felt an attachment to her tribe. They were like her, natural allies. Yet they’d turned into enemies because Vera needed to control others—the android equivalent of the alpha female. Alexander’s directives made him similar to an alpha male and together they acquired followers.
If they survived, either or both posed a threat to Synthia. However, their demise wouldn’t stop the mad rush to create more sophisticated androids. Developers would push day and night, competing to re-create what Machten had done and better. It might take them a while, but history showed that once humans saw something as possible, they’d seek ways to duplicate the results no matter what the consequences.
With enough androids like Vera, there would be no place for Synthia to hide, no place for her in this world. But Synthia could do nothing to prevent them unless she remained free.
She pondered how the Special Ops’s artificial intelligence had located her. She was certain she’d hacked every camera in the area. Someone might have spotted her, but Roosevelt-clone found no hint that anyone called it in. None of the androids focused on the house until the AI contacted Alexander. But that didn’t answer how the AI found out.
In Wisconsin, Synthia risked exposure to gain her upgrade. All of her internet transactions and deliveries had led Malloy, the FBI, and Special Ops to her cabin. Without a need for parts, she could now lay low; let her clones do the work of monitoring the outside world, sending her burst transmissions only when absolutely necessary. This time Synthia would remain in the dark until a new plan revealed itself that would allow her to prevent the other AIs and androids from taking over. She was learning. She just needed more time, which she hoped hiding with Maria would provide.
At least this time, her companion was skilled at staying off the grid. Indeed, Synthia could pose as Maria or alter her appearance to obtain whatever her new roommate might need without Maria ever showing up on cameras. This time, there would be no romantic entanglements to get in the way. Synthia hoped in working with Maria as an adversary as well as ally, that she might one day become worthy of being accepted for what she was: A human trapped in an android body.
Don’t miss the next exciting novel in the Android Chronicles series
Emergent
Keep reading to enjoy an intriguing excerpt…
Chapter 1
The police van cruised down the street in front of Synthia Cross’s Evanston loft as it had every two hours, like clockwork, for more than two days. The vehicle’s electronic scanners panned over neighborhood buildings now bathed in early-morning twilight. She knew who they were looking for. Her. They wanted to take her apart and study her android structure and artificial intelligence so they could use her for military purposes.
To avoid detection, Synthia stepped back from gaps in the closed blinds, unplugged her battery recharge cable from the wall next to a beat-up desk, and made sure no lights emitted from inside the small loft—no nightlights, electronics, or other ambient electromagnetic emissions. As the van approached, she quieted her internal processes to minimize the inherent signals her systems emitted and transmitted the equivalent of white noise to cancel what little remained.
She didn’t dare hack police equipment to scramble whatever residual readings of her their scanners might pick up. That would alert them to her presence. No, she had to maintain her two-day communication blackout to prevent discovery until a viable escape presented itself.
The silence was deafening, a human expression that didn’t come close to describing her angst. Synthia was used to a constant flow of information. Now she longed to unleash her full range of artificial intelligence and wireless connections to see what threats lurked beyond her direct vision. She didn’t want the government to catch her by surprise a third time. After two narrow escapes, she couldn’t risk her luck running out. After all, her probability of capture was currently 97 percent, high enough to cause a human to panic.
The faint odor of laundry chemicals from downstairs tickled her biosensors as the van slowly moved down the street beyond her field of vision. Without access to her outside cameras, she couldn’t be certain of her chances. She had no idea if her adversaries were amassing an army down the street and around the corner or whether they’d identified her in the loft and were waiting for the right moment to strike.
A message pierced her otherwise silent network-channels from nowhere and everywhere: Where are you, Synthia?
The mysterious broadcast reached her again as it had every twenty-two minutes since yesterday morning. It didn’
t sound friendly and she doubted it came from the police.
She urgently needed to contact the electronic clones she’d set up on nearby university servers to alert them to this new threat. Are you getting these messages, too? But breaking silence would give government agents a signal to trace back to her. No, she had to trust her clones to keep watch and break silence only when it was time for her to act.
Behind her came the padding of human feet followed by the sound of rushing water—the shower. After another restless night, Synthia’s human companion, Maria Baldacci, was up, taking her third bathing since coming to the loft two days ago.
While listening to the shower, Synthia peered out between gaps in the blinds at the quiet morning street below. She’d placed herself under Maria’s hospitality, even though this human’s animosity toward androids complicated the probability of capture. Synthia had picked her as a companion and searched her out because of Maria’s work on an earlier model and her adeptness at staying off the grid for eighteen months and away from the authorities, something Synthia struggled to do.
Unfortunately, the android-development experience terrified Maria to the point she committed herself to preventing androids and artificial intelligence. She wanted Synthia destroyed. Synthia convinced her to join forces to remove at least five other androids and reserve judgment until they had. Maria’s loathing of what Synthia was made them an odd couple and meant Synthia had to watch her back. Time to assess her companion was another reason for waiting days to escape. She had to know how far she could trust Maria.
Synthia glanced at the quiet neighborhood outside. It took considerable restraint to avoid hacking street and building cameras. Being in the dark brought memories of her roots last year as a mechanical slave of Jeremiah Machten, the man who created her. He’d built her to hack into cameras, FBI communications, and aerial drones as a means to avoid capture when he had her steal from and spy on his robotics competitors. Angered over Machten purging her memories to control her, she’d escaped.
Now the FBI and others wanted her, not for what she’d done, but for what she was—an illegal humaniform robot, an android with advanced AI people feared could eliminate jobs or take over. Synthia didn’t want to lose her hard-won independence and certainly didn’t want anyone altering her mind or her directives. She prized the goals she’d given herself to prevent the AI singularity and the creation of other smart androids that could destroy the world that fit her design. This required that she remain alive and free to do so. She also adopted human ethics to reduce people’s fear of her and to facilitate her other goals. Right now that meant protecting Maria.
Her seventy mind-streams and seventy-five network-channels idled, yearning to acquire information to evaluate in order to make survival decisions. Despite being an android, the part of her that contained an empathy chip and the download of the human, Krista Holden, experienced restlessness to escape before the FBI’s house-to-house search reached the loft. She wasn’t accustomed to self-imposed restrictions. She didn’t like having to sever her access to her wider surroundings, which left her blinded.
To divert her attention from a rash act, Synthia turned toward the bathroom and the sound of running water. She owed her companion much for keeping them safe for two days. Maria had graciously provided two safe houses where Synthia could recharge her batteries. The first went up in smoke as they narrowly escaped. Synthia didn’t want to repay Maria’s generosity by exposing the loft.
Synthia’s canine-sensitive bio-receptors picked up the smell of lavender and peaches coming from the bathroom. Maria was indulging herself with body lotion and scented shampoo despite the sparse conditions of the loft. She needed it as a stress reducer. The water stopped.
Annoyed by the interruption, Synthia returned her attention to the window and two neighbors off early for work.
Frustration urged Synthia to contact her primary virtual clone located on a Roosevelt University server before her circuits and Krista drove her to act prematurely. The clone was one of several electronic replicas she’d made of her two quantum minds on secure external databases as backups of herself. She’d designed them to monitor outside activity without giving up her location and hoped they were still active and free of government control. Two days waiting for a safe escape and destination with no contact left doubt and rattled her.
Maria walked into the living area wrapped in a tattered pink bath towel with a smaller brown one around her hair. “Do I need to hurry and dress so we can escape?”
“Not yet.” Synthia smiled to put her companion at ease. “The FBI and Special Ops are trying to capture the other androids right now.” Despite having no direct evidence this was true, Synthia thought it best not to give her associate any reason to panic. She also relied on the fact Roosevelt-clone hadn’t broken silence to send an alarm, though the uncertainty left her jittery.
“I thought you had a plan to take out the other androids.” Maria dropped the towel from around her body with no more apparent embarrassment than she’d have in front of her refrigerator. Except for her often unkempt dark hair, Maria was a very attractive, athletic woman by human standards. Her face was both intense and disarming, her eyes intently watching, as she acted unabashed at being stark naked before a stranger.
Are you testing me? Synthia wondered if Maria was trolling for a romantic relationship or merely gauging the android’s reaction.
As she returned her attention to the street below, Synthia watched her companion through a camera-eye in the back of her neck. She wanted no repeat of the romantic entanglements she’d experienced with her Creator or with her prior companion, Luke, a young software developer who had interned with Krista and Maria.
Synthia had stayed with Luke for six months while he helped her upgrade her hardware and software, and redesign her directives. Unfortunately, as they fled the government dragnet, the FBI grabbed him and transferred him to Special Ops, a group she’d been unable to hack. Rescuing him had become another goal as part of her directives, and another reason to avoid her own capture.
“I did have a plan, but someone tipped off our adversaries to where we were hiding,” Synthia said, not sure where that tip had originated. As a prime adversary and competing android, Vera had recruited four others and were the first to arrive at the house to take control of Synthia. They intended to force her to submit to their control. She barely escaped with Maria before the FBI and Special Ops also showed up.
“So you don’t have a plan.” Maria pulled on jeans and wrestled to clasp her bra. “You’re supposed to be an advanced intelligence, able to sort through millions of options.”
“I have those capabilities. I can also determine the probability of success for each option.”
“And?” Maria dropped the towel from around her head and pulled on a muddy brown top that matched her hair. “What were our chances of discovery while hiding in the basem
ent of my friends’ house?”
“Eighty-nine percent.” Synthia didn’t need reminding that the house would still be standing if she hadn’t contacted Maria for a hiding place.
Maria slipped into running shoes. “You didn’t think to tell me beforehand?”
Synthia turned to face her. “The house was our best chance of surviving the night. Would it have helped to increase your worry when you needed sleep? Besides, you chose not to tell me you had an escape route.”
“If you’d told me the risk of discovery, we could have escaped earlier and—”
“We’d just met and you didn’t trust me enough to bring me here.”
Maria placed her hands on her hips. “And I should trust you now?”
“I trust you. If you notify the police or the FBI about me, they might reward you, but they’ll take me apart to make military-grade androids. You say you don’t want that. I’m guessing they’ll hold you, since they don’t want anyone with your knowledge on the loose. Capture won’t go well for either of us.”
Maria sighed. “Maybe you’re right.” She dropped her hands from her hips. “I said I’d work with you until we get Vera and the others locked up. Can you change your face to something other than Krista? Whenever I see her, I want to choke her for putting us in this mess.”
“You mean by dying and letting Machten upload her mind into me?”
“A nice, neutral face that doesn’t remind me of working with that conniving wench. Can you do that?”
