by Stephen Cote
Part 5: An Encounter In Her Bedroom
Janus assumed Anastasia would head for the storeroom in the kitchen; she surprised him by walking to a servant staircase. They climbed the narrow spiral stairwell from the kitchen to the third floor. At the top of the staircase, they came eye-to-eye with one of Mr. Welch’s square-framed bodyguards.
Janus opened his mouth to say something, but the bodyguard told Anastasia, "I’ll unlock your room."
She led Janus to a grand door halfway down the hall, opened it, and motioned him inside. After she entered, she closed the door and activated an electronic lock.
Janus stood agape at the extravagance of the room and that it belonged to Anastasia. "I didn’t know you lived here. You live here?"
She approached a wall panel and manipulated the molding; a broad section of wall slid back and receded, revealing a spacious closet. Softly, she laughed.
"You live here," he said and motioned around the entire room. Pointing at the door he asked, "With Mr. Welch?"
Anastasia selected a long, conservative black gown, simple black shoes, and less conservative under garments. She walked across the room and laid the clothes on the bed, placed the shows on the carpeted floor. Then, she glanced at him and said, "Yes. However, I’ve been on Mars for the last fourteen years working for my father."
Janus sat in a reading chair and watched her. "I’m baffled."
"Give it a moment, you’ll draw the correct conclusion." She walked to another wall and opened a second closet. Janus could see shelves packed with rectangular containers.
"Mr. Welch is..." He prompted.
"Correct," she said, distracted as she began selecting and removing containers from the closet.
"But you’re a …" he started.
She returned to the bed. "Let's discuss family history another time."
"Very well," he said.
"Janus," she said, "You’ve seen me upgrade once, and I won’t let any pre-conceived notion of modesty affect me. But, you may not want to watch."
"What else is there to see?"
"This isn’t my," she started, and passed her hand along the curve of her hip. "I am emulating a Transynth, but am able to refit my build. Doing so, I've been told, is … icky."
"I don’t mind," he said.
"Some find it gruesome," she said.
Fascinated at the macabre suggestion, he shrugged. "I'm okay."
"Alright," she said, and slipped out of her gown.
Small candles fixed to wall sconces lit the room, and in the light Janus thought the nude body he had selected to be finely sculpted. But she neither demurred nor posed, and stripped away everything. Hair, face, slats, and breasts were disconnected and set in a lacquered wood tray. She removed her pelvis as she might panties, and unrolled leg shells as though a pair of nylons.
Anastasia stood as a skinned human, her chassis covered in cellulose gel. And that, too, she began to peel off. She threw the pieces of coagulated gel into a wastebasket.
Janus grew nauseous as Anastasia disrobed. He had never known synthetics were able to use such complex mechanisms to shape their bodies. Staring at her electronic infrastructure, he asked, "Are synthetics androgynous?"
"No. There are distinct male, female, and asexual frames. I have a female chassis." She touched a plastic fingertip to a molded hip joyce. "And my subconscious processes include feminine gender role behavioral guidelines." She walked into the bathroom, opened a rectangular stall door, and stepped inside. Moments later she emerged, a new cellulose gel encasing her chassis. A different woman emerged.
As quickly as she had disassembled herself, she began to add features to define her physical self.
"Priscilla used to spend more time in the bathroom than that," Janus said.
Anastasia smiled and gave him no time to admire her buff form. "Men are so visual. My body changed, but remember I am the same person." She donned her under garments, and then slipped into the black dress.
Still, Janus saw an entirely different person. He found beauty in her sinuous exotic body. Her physical appearance fit her personality better than the one he mistook as a Transynth Series Two. He reminded himself that he didn't like synthetics, but Anastasia was certainly unlike any synthetic.
Now fully dressed she asked, "The sight of me naked didn’t detest you?" She touched his shoulder and then returned to the bathroom. "Still need to fix my hair and makeup."
"No," he said. "It was … interesting." A little gross. "I didn’t know synthetics could change shape."
"They can't," she called from the bathroom. "I’m a unique design. Custom," her voice trailed off.
She returned, her hair brushed and knit into a French braid. She turned around for him. "How do I look?"
"Beautiful," he said.
"Thanks," she said, and blushed.
"What did you do on Mars?"
"I worked on myself. My studies overlapped with my design, so I’m wearing my work." She sat beside him and slipped on her shoes.
"What kind of work do you do?"
"I invented the cellulose gel frame technology, and the associated behavioral programming."
"Why on Mars?"
"Because the diamonds found on Mars have the best structure for use with diamond-carbide bonding," she said. "My gel frame and chip set require Martian diamonds."
"Are there other advantages besides being able to change your frame dimensions?"
She nodded and picked up the pelvis from the tray. "Most synthetics have a standard chassis. Slats and buffers can be added to fill out some parts, and identifying characteristics can be changed." She pointed to portions of the pelvis, and then returned it to the tray. "But the base chassis remains the same. That’s why it is so easy to identify a synthetic. Once you’ve seen a model you can identify the build. And, the lack of an organic layer makes it very easy to identify a synthetic with a thermal scanner or x-ray."
"So that gooey stuff under your skin is organic tissue?"
She made a face and shook her head. "No. It looks like it is to a medical scanner, but it is not living tissue. Cyborgs are impractical. Synthetics with modifications like mine have the benefits of a cyborg but without the living tissue."
"There are others like you then?"
She nodded. "Other companies have competing technologies, and their prototypes are out in public."
"How do you know when you meet another prototype?"
"I don’t know. Production synthetics are easy to identify using tissue and thermal scanners, or analyzing speech and behavior. But my model is very different in those respects." She checked her clothes and looked at Janus expectantly. "Still, I’m a synthetic. Are you ready?"
"In a moment," he said. He stood and looked at her, drinking in her finely crafted features. Perfect, but not too perfect. Then, he considered the implications of their conversation. "If Mr. Welch, er, your father, loses these mines…" he paused, and felt a mellowed sweep of vertigo. "Legally, are you the property of the Mining division that manages those mines, or of Mr. Welch?"
Crestfallen, she said, "The mines. Tomorrow I will be the property of the new owner."
"And Mr. Welch?" he asked. "Where are his mines?"
"I …"
"Is Mr. Welch like you?" He asked. "Is Mr. Welch a synthetic?"
She didn’t answer, or give any indication to the contrary.
Janus studied her face, her transformation of electrical stimuli into a saddened expression. "Mr. Welch circumvented the issue of ownership by selling himself to his own mining company."
Still, she remained silent.
"A Martian mine, then? He will lose himself and you?"
A slight nod, but no sound or sign of emotion.
"He said he suspected the culprit would be here tonight. Why did he invite me? I can only assume the perpetrator would need access to me to make the deception possible." His mind raced and he thought back to the kinetic energy field that allegedly altered his pitch. "He said most syn
thetics can’t see kinetic energy fields. But he can, right? And you? That is how he knew it existed and why he started investigating right away. But something like that would need a point of reference. Something I was wearing?"
"Priscilla could have planted something," he said. "She had access to my equipment, and was the first to put as much distance from me as possible."
"We can’t admit to seeing the field," Anastasia said. "If we do, everyone will know what he is. He will be discredited."
"Don’t you think someone already knows?"
"How could they?"
He took her hands in his. How human her hands felt, how human she appeared. Though he still felt antipathy towards synthetics, he could not dismiss his growing ambivalence towards Anastasia. She was a synthetic. But, he had to admit, I like her.
"Anastasia, they know. They’ve known for a long time."
"How can you make such an assumption?" she said, though flexed her palms in his.
Even after the way I acted tonight, she still likes me. Or, at least wanted him to think so.
"Because owning you and Mr. Welch is far more valuable than mines. They may want your blueprints. Your father said that there was a lot of money in diamond mines, but there is more money in synthetics."
He looked down at their hands folded together. "In my doctoral thesis, I studied random disturbances along a known trajectory. Consider that someone knows is a random disturbance. The trajectory begins with your father and you being the property of your own company, and ends with someone owning your company, and therefore owning you. The potential buyer, who we won’t know until it is too late, is the ultimate conspirator, and the co-conspirator is the person we need to find tonight. If we find that person, we may be able to prove the kinetic field exists and was used during my last game."
"But how?" she asked. "We don’t know how. That’s why my father asked you. You were the first victim of this ruse. And we calculated your education makes you likely to better interpret the situation."
He then realized a potential truth. "If Priscilla was involved, perhaps her employers positioned her near me. At an appointed time, she planted some device to act as a beacon for the kinetic field generator. Her employer, then, is most likely the person who bought those mines."
"But we have no proof. How do we find proof?"
"Simple," he said. "We’ll prove Priscilla is a synthetic."
