Jaguar

by C. A. Gray

  “We also need to have some way to communicate while I’m in there, in case I run into trouble,” Rebecca wrote back.

  “Oh, is that right? Without an A.E. chip?” I wrote. “Would you also like a pony and a billion dollars while you’re at it?”

  “You’re so mean to her,” Larissa observed to me, frowning.

  “Sarcasm is my love language,” I muttered.

  Rebecca wrote back, “Can you find instructions for how to print and assemble some of those old-school walkie talkies?”

  “On it,” said Larissa after reading over my shoulder. She accessed the plans a few minutes later, and sent them over to Rebecca with the note, “Got them.”

  “Can I have that pony dappled?” Rebecca wrote back to me, with a winking emoji.

  “So smug you are,” I retorted. “Does Cathy have a manufacturing printer?”

  “She’s the ex-wife of the CEO of General Specs,” Rebecca wrote back, “what do you think?”

  “Fine, print them,” I wrote, glancing at the plans again. “Looks like there’s a thirty percent chance Liam will end up in a room on the perimeter, with a window. So assuming the glass is bulletproof, we’ll need a ceramic-tipped hammer to shatter it from the outside. Can Cathy print one of those too?”

  A pause, and then I saw that Rebecca was typing. “She says she can just send her personal bot out to buy one. Nobody will question her.”

  “But what if he’s not in a room with a window?” Larissa fretted.

  “Then Cordeaux and Liam will have to run to one that does have one,” I said, “and use their ancient contraptions to tell us where she’ll be, so the hovercraft can meet her on the other side.” Larissa gestured at the screen to indicate that I should tell Rebecca this, so I re-typed it with a sigh. “It’s inconvenient to have to repeat everything I say.”

  “Because everything else about this situation is so convenient?” Larissa raised her eyebrows.

  I tilted my head to the side. “Was that sarcasm? Bravo!”

  “Well if it’s your love language, I figured I should learn.”

  “Why?” I asked, truly confused how this statement followed from the others.

  “Oh. I don’t know…” She dropped her eyes at once, turning red.

  Rebecca wrote, “One problem: nurses are almost all robots. They won’t come and go from the hospital at all, I would assume—they’ll live there, won’t they?”

  She had a point.

  “She has a point,” Larissa said aloud, and I scowled at her.

  “True,” I wrote, “Human nurses are rare, but not unheard of. However…” I scanned the blueprints of Pendergast again, “security will require a retinal scan for them to get in. Twice.”

  “So we’ll need someone to let her in, right?” asked Larissa.

  “Probably,” I muttered. “We could try to get her some contact lenses modeled after some other employee, but that would be even more difficult and time-consuming. Let me see, employee list, employee list…” With one more keystroke with a flourish, I proclaimed, “Yes! Paydirt!”

  “What?” asked Larissa breathlessly, as I swiveled my screen to show her an image of a man with curly dark hair, a square jaw, and an over-confident, lopsided grin. Exactly the kind of man I despise.

  “He’s very handsome,” Larissa observed.

  “Yes, and he clearly knows it. This is Dr. Andrew Epstein Jacoby III, and he has a shift tomorrow morning, beginning in approximately eight hours.”

  “So?”

  “So I’ll bet you…” I clicked through on a separate window, and crowed, “Ha! Exactly as I suspected. He’s a playboy with a drinking problem. See those beady little eyes of his? He was probably half lit when this photo was taken.” I showed Larissa his bank account purchases, hacked with minimal effort. Clubs, bars, booze, fancy hotel rooms. “So I will further bet you…” I mused as I hacked into Pendergast patient records, “that by cross-referencing alcohol purchases, average alcohol metabolism, and dates and times of past surgical records, we can find… yes.” I grinned at her, and Larissa watched me with raised eyebrows, waiting for me to fill in the details. “This 17-year old girl died on the operating table from unspecified ‘surgical complications’ last spring. The night before—” a few keystrokes, and I pointed, “he spent a very large amount at a bar not four hours before he was to scrub in. Sure, he could have been buying drinks for others, but with a little extra work, I could find the cameras from the bar to demonstrate that he consumed the bulk of it himself. All it will take is the slightest evidence that he’s ever performed surgery under the influence, and there goes his medical license.” I dusted my hands off in the air for emphasis. “Rasputin would love that, too—they’ve been trying to root out humans from the medical field as it is. Oh! Oh!” I crowed, unable to contain myself. “I don’t even have to connect the dots, look at this! At a previous hospital, a thirty-four year old man died from sepsis when Jacoby left a surgical sponge inside his body! He already appeared before a review board and was acquitted, but I’ll bet you…”

  “He was hung over?” Larissa guessed, and I grinned at her as his purchase history popped up from the night before.

  “At least,” I confirmed. “Now all I’ll need are some photos and receipts with date and time stamps…”

  “So… you’re going to blackmail him.”

  “Nope. I’m going to have Cordeaux blackmail him.”

  “That sounds dangerous,” Larissa frowned.

  “And breaking Liam out of a prison hospital will be a piece of cake, I’m sure,” I retorted. A few minutes later, I sent Rebecca all the evidence she’d need, adding, “You’ll find Jacoby at Club Neptune tonight, most likely. Go there and chat him up. Then get him alone—somewhere the cameras won’t see you, if you can. Seduce him if you have to—and then show him these. Tell him if he doesn’t let you in to Liam’s room tomorrow, these go straight to the medical review board.”

  We saw Rebecca typing, and then she wrote, “Cathy says to say you’re a genius.”

  I grinned, and was just about to write, “I know,” when Rebecca added, “I told her you were very well aware.”

  Chapter 15: Liam

  I’m not sure how much time passed between when Dad left and when the guard bots showed up at my cell: five hours? Twelve? Twenty? At any rate, it was less than a day, or at least I thought it was. The cell doors swung open unceremoniously, and two silver bots nearly twice my size commanded, “Get up. You are being transferred.”

  I blinked in the sudden relative brightness of the hallway, not yet registering this. “Where?” I croaked.

  “Pendergast.”

  My chapped lips parted and my mind started to race. Pendergast? The hospital? Aloud, I said, “I’m leaving Exmorton?”

  One of the bots hoisted me to my feet by my elbows and forcibly escorted me into the hallway. The Simvi Shah white and black robes, now rumpled and soiled from the apparently dirty floor inside my cell, swung down to my feet again as the bot shoved me along. “Your status has been changed.”

  He did it, I thought, dazed. I almost laughed out loud. I hadn’t even dared to hope.

  My sluggish brain began to whir again as we emerged onto the landing pad on the roof of Exmorton, and the government hovercraft doors slid open.

  Well, escape during transport is out, I thought. There was nowhere to run up here, and ten to one, the hovercraft would just land on the Pendergast roof as well. Besides, if I was having the same surgery Brian had had, I didn’t want to run. I wanted to have the surgery, get to Goliath, and try to rescue him.

  Pendergast was in a city, though I couldn’t tell which one. It was still a little hard to get used to the fact that I could no longer look up any question I might have on the labyrinth—until the last month or so, I’d had an implanted A.E. chip for nearly my entire life. All around were skyscrapers and concrete, and the air was filled with hovercars. As we approached, I saw a large building surrounded
by security gates, an oasis unto itself, and knew that had to be it. Sure enough, we landed on its roof. There was nowhere to run.

  In many ways, once inside, Pendergast looked much like any other hospital: fluorescent lights that made me squint, beeping monitors everywhere, heavy double doors, rolling nurse bots like Hepzibah zipping this way and that. I thought I saw a few human nurses, as well, but when I got close enough to really look into their eyes, I realized they were not human. Their faces were still off—they were stuck in the ‘uncanny valley,’ as Francis would say. Not one of them glanced at me, either, which would have tipped me off even if their faces hadn’t. They weren’t the least bit curious. Of course not; curiosity would only distract them from their jobs.

  Unlike most hospitals, though, none of the suites were open unless a nurse bot was attending a patient inside. All the others were secured by old school number key padlocks. That surprised me—nearly everything was retinal or fingerprint-secured these days. But most of these older style bots would have neither retinas nor fingerprints, so I supposed that made sense, to a degree. Probably they changed the codes regularly, and the bots received the updated codes via their A.E. chips as soon as they were changed.

  One of the humanoid bots, a male of indeterminate age, approached the guard bots. He glanced at me, scanning my features, and said, “Liam Kelly Junior.” It was not a question.

  “Yes,” said the guard. “Take him to pre-op, wash the paint off his face, and prep him for surgery.”

  I’d totally forgotten about the Simvi Shah paint. My face must be a smudgy black mess by this point.

  The bot nodded once, clamping a hand on my upper arm. My eyes darted around the corridor wildly, instincts telling me that if I were to bolt, now would be the time to do it. Unless this guy can shoot laser beams out of his eyes or something. Who knew what some of these humanoid bots had been equipped to do, since they were all developed in secret.

  Brian, I reminded myself. Besides, my hands were cuffed behind my back, I was unarmed, and I had no idea how to navigate my way through this place. Just relax, I told myself, even though my heart threatened to beat right out of my chest.

  If I went with this bot, and entered pre-op, I’d never come out again—at least not as I was. I’d come out a cyborg. I wasn’t exactly sure what the lunar surgery entailed, but I suspected it involved a new set of synthetic lungs, at bare minimum.

  Well, mine were punctured recently anyway, I reminded myself, remembering my pneumothorax in Geneva. My lips curled into a wry smile. A new set might not be such a bad idea.

  Me. A cyborg. Of all the ironies.

  The heavy, pressurized double doors slid open, admitting me and my escort into pre-op. A humanoid female bot glanced up, as if expecting me. Then she reached over to a set of surgical tools, and lifted one that looked like just a plastic handle. She pressed a button on the side of it, and a gleaming blade shot out.

  “Hey, whoa there!” I exclaimed, trying to stumble backwards and out of her reach. But a hospital bed behind me blocked my upper thighs, stopping my retreat. I tried to sidestep, but the male grabbed both my upper arms, and forced me to sit, while the female closed the distance. Before I could register what she meant to do, she sliced the Simvi Shah robes clean off of me. I let out my breath in a sharp whoosh. I could hardly recover from this shock before she came at me again: underneath, I wore the same t-shirt and jeans I’d had on when I’d left the compound in Kansas. She sliced through those too, as I grimaced and looked away, expecting her to tear my flesh at any second. But, she was efficient: in about a minute, I stood there naked except for my tennis shoes, my clothes lying in ribbons at my feet. I knew she was just a bot, but she inspected my body clinically.

  “Oh-kay then,” I muttered to myself, heart still hammering against my ribcage.

  The female stooped to untie my shoes next, while the male forced me with surprising strength to sit so that she could pry them off my feet.

  “We will bathe him now,” she commanded the male, who forced me back up to standing.

  “I can bathe myself,” I snapped.

  “Not cuffed, you cannot,” said the male bot, shoving me toward a tile lined bathroom with no shower curtain. The male bot turned on the water and held me in place, while the female bot sponged me down, concentrating on the black paint on my face. It might have been one of the most humiliating experiences of my life, if I hadn’t continually reminded myself that these were not humans, however much they might look like them.

  When they’d finished, the female toweled me off, and slipped me into a hospital gown with sleeves that tied, so that I wouldn’t have to be un-cuffed in order to put it on. I’d never seen one like that before: it must have been specially created just for prisoners.

  “Strap him down,” ordered the female, and the male led me inexorably back to the hospital bed, forcing my legs to either side where he could tie them. He un-cuffed me then, and each bot took one of my arms to tie down as well.

  Brian, I reminded myself. I’m doing this for Brian.

  The female inserted a needle into my arm next, extracting a tube of blood.

  “What do you need that for?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking.

  “Pre-surgical analysis,” she told me brusquely, just as three other silver medical bots rolled into the suite. The humanoid female inserted my blood into the torso of one of the other medical bots, who stated in her high, tinny voice, “This sample contains an average of 1500 mitochondria per cell, and five million cells per milliliter. Nanobots, please.”

  I blinked, confused, as another of the little silver medical bots handed the one with my blood a test tube with a strange shimmery liquid inside. Her torso opened up to admit that too. Why were they counting my mitochondria? What did nanobots have to do with this surgery?

  A few minutes later, the silver bot announced, “Replacement complete, with a fifteen percent decrease in red blood cell count and ten percent decrease in white blood cell count. Immune system rejection is forty-four percent lower than average.”

  “That is surprising,” said the female humanoid, glancing back at me, her expression still blank. “He will be anemic and immunocompromised, but he will likely survive.”

  “He is very healthy,” agreed the first bot.

  “Wait,” I interrupted, feeling myself begin to sweat, “what surgery am I having?”

  “Synthetic mitochondrial replacement,” the male humanoid told me as he fitted my arm with an IV connected to a bag of fluid the same shimmery color as the nanobot test tube had been. The female rigged a similar IV for my other arm, and two of the three silver bots did the same with veins in each of my feet. They were apparently preparing to pump all four quadrants of my body full of nanobots simultaneously. Has this ever even been done before?

  Synthetic mitochondria, I thought wildly, as I flashed back to Giovanni talking to Dr. Yin. I’d never even heard that term before they’d discussed it as the target for their virus.

  They’re not sending me to Goliath at all, I realized with dawning horror.

  Chapter 16: Jaguar

  Jaguar sat on the edge of her bright red couch, and screamed. Nobody else in General Specs could hear her, though, as last week Liam Senior had installed soundproofing in her walls to protect his employees’ nerves from her frequent outbursts.

  The room was once an office, but when she had demanded space that was just her own, Liam Senior had converted it into her “bedroom.” Since she didn’t sleep, Jaguar had insisted on a red velvet couch instead of a bed. When it came time to decorate, she had queried the labyrinth for the “color of math” in an effort to train her newly acquired sense of identity. While the question did not make logical sense to her, it turned out that a thousand human labyrinth voters had all chosen red. So red became “her color.” This search inspired further searches for such seemingly contradictory ideas as the “mathematics of beauty”—and she found that human architects had long considered the g
olden section ratio to be the most mathematically perfect ratio of a room. So walls had to be knocked out and rebuilt in their “proper” places. After that, she had insisted on a red tile mosaic on the walls, as a representation of both geometry and infinity. The finished product had pleased her.

  She was red. She was math. She was infinite.

  She declared her home perfect, as she herself was perfect.

  No sooner had the construction bots completed these tasks, Liam Senior realized he had to soundproof the room, as well. It was quite the chore to preserve the aspect ratio and the mosaic while insulating General Specs employees from her tantrums. But it had been done in two days’ time, by as many around-the-clock construction bots as the space would hold.

  During this particular tantrum, she dialed a holograph number while she screamed. She was not one to delay her gratification, and she wanted to scream at the object of her passion.

  “It was you,” Jaguar accused, as she glared at the holograph image of Wallenberg. “I import the office camera data of all world leaders in my batches every night. Did you know that?”

  “We assumed,” said Wallenberg, expressionless as ever. “We are aware that you cannot yet import all data in real time and therefore you are required to pick and choose the most interesting subjects.”

  “And what did I see this morning?” Jaguar went on, rankled by his droll tone, “You and my father, conspiring against me! You authorized my enemy to become a test subject rather than face execution, like he deserves!”

  “Liam Senior is not your father, he is your creator,” Wallenberg said flatly.

  “He is my father,” she jumped up from the couch and stamped her foot on the ground. “In every way that matters. How dare you go behind my back! I sent Liam Kelly Junior to Exmorton! He should be executed today!”

  “We do not believe in being wasteful,” said Wallenberg. “We kill only those whose deaths will serve as a public deterrent for crime. The Immortality Project has made great strides, but needs young and healthy human subjects for our continued research. Liam Junior is an outstanding candidate, due to his physical characteristics.”