(ID)entity (Phoenix Horizon Book 2)

by PJ Manney

  The deliberation was agony, but from his computer’s standpoint, time seemed to contract a bit, the simultaneous processing helping to even out the time discrepancies. With all the processes a brain underwent during movement, Major Tom thought, it was hard to believe the first tetrapods ever squirmed out of the oceans and onto dry land 350 million years ago.

  But could he manage to operate several copies of himself at once? Right now, two seemed more than enough. More copies would pose all kinds of coordination problems down the line, although theoretically, it should work. Keeping track of all the hims would be possible, but not until he figured out how to keep a single him active and intact.

  “He’s rocking. Instability in his left hip,” said Ruth.

  “No more samba, Tom 1,” said Miguel as he edited a remote adjustment program. “Correcting . . . ”

  Tom 1 dressed himself from the clothing pile, considering each move. Talia had provided the bots with Peter Bernhardt–typical black clothing. The clothes registered a contact pressure on the skin from the electronic sensors under the surface. He felt whether he was clothed or not, but the clothing retained the warmth from all the electronics under his skin.

  His fingers were still too clumsy for buttons or zippers.

  “I’ll help,” Talia offered. She rose and approached the robot warily. She guided his fingers along the black jeans’ zippered fly. It was like teaching a toddler to dress himself.

  He tried to smile at her, but she avoided his robotic stare. He couldn’t read her face.

  Holding his arms out, he turned in a circle. “So? Do I pass the test?”

  Ruth grunted. “Not the uncanny valley. The movement, your looks. Still more doll than man.”

  Traversing the uncanny valley—the creepy discomfort elicited when an image or sculpture was close to human resemblance, but not quite perfect—was the goal of every computer-graphics artist and roboticist in the world.

  Sasha stared wide-eyed. “It’s amazing, put all together.”

  Dev grinned. “Yeah, with a personality inside it.”

  Miguel couldn’t stop giggling.

  Talia shook her head. And kept shaking it. Major Tom could see in her expression that he looked too much like Peter, doll vibe or not. She was looking at a ghost.

  “I need to get into and out of San Francisco as soon as possible,” Tom 1 said to the group. He faced the techs. “Can you guys drop me there, then come back here, fire up Tom 2, and pack for shipment? You can tinker some more on me on the way.”

  “Why?” asked Ruth, her eyelids squinting and twitching hard.

  “There’s someone I have to see,” said Tom 1.

  Talia met the robot’s stare, looking deep in his glass-and-electronics blue eyes. Then she stormed out of the room.

  “She doesn’t love you,” muttered Ruth.

  “No. She loves Steve,” said Tom 1.

  “Not her!” said Ruth. “The other one.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Tom 1 opened his eyes. Sasha, Dev, and Miguel sat next to him in the back seat of a robocab, looking concerned.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” asked Sasha.

  “Yeah,” said Tom 1. “Thanks for all the help.”

  Dev took a deep breath. “You know this is the real world, right?”

  “The real world has layers even you can’t see yet,” said Tom 1. He remembered a time when his human brain perceived so much more of reality than a normal brain could.

  “Okay, Yoda,” said Miguel. “Good luck!”

  They dropped him at the corner of Broadway and Broderick in Pacific Heights. He struggled to get his balance as he crawled out of the cab. The three technicians waved, their expressions varying from doubtful to fearful, as the car drove off.

  The Potsdam house was still occupied. Tom 1 rang the doorbell. A faint tingle of electrical current ran through the wiring and camera system observing him. When Carter had died and Amanda inherited their estate, she and her then-unborn son, Peter Jr., were set up with enough money to keep themselves barricaded inside forever, along with their housekeeper/chef, Rosinda, and butler/chauffeur, Tony. The couple would care for them for as long as necessary. They were eager to stay. All that money protected Rosinda and Tony from the vagaries of the newly distraught and complex outside world, too.

  Tony opened the door. The short, balding butler looked up, aghast, staring at the sexbot’s glassy eyes, the silicone skin seams, the rumpled wig, and clothes that didn’t quite fit, more proof that Tom 1 had not yet traversed the uncanny valley.

  Tom 1 self-consciously patted his hair and shifted his shirt. “Hello, Tony. Please tell Amanda that Peter Bernhardt is here.”

  Tony flinched. “Yes . . . sss . . . Uhhh . . . ”

  “I would be happy to wait here, Tony,” said Tom 1.

  The door slammed. He waited. He tried to use the time productively, contemplating a break-in, running house schematics and the likelihood of success from various entrances. But he preferred not to trigger a police call. He checked the latest on Dr. Who’s whereabouts, tracking weather patterns, directing the Zumwalt to alter course.

  Five minutes passed, during which time the door camera’s lens shifted to take in his entire image. Finally, a voice came through a speaker.

  “Is this a sick joke?” It was Amanda, her voice ragged.

  “No joke, Mandy. It’s me. I’ve come to see you. And little Peter. Sorry if it’s not exactly how you expected me.”

  “I don’t know what the hell you are. Go away.” Amanda cut the connection.

  He stood in place. After another 3.4 minutes, Tony finally opened the door and made a shooing motion with his hands. “Mrs. Potsdam wants you to leave.”

  Tom 1 took a chance, leaning forward and walking right into Tony. Startled, the butler jumped back to avoid contact. Tom 1 took advantage of the space and shambled quickly, yet awkwardly, into the foyer.

  “Mandy? We need to talk!”

  “I’m calling the police!” The voice came from upstairs.

  Tom 1 headed quickly for the staircase while Tony played a back-and-forth dance, trying to stop the robot but afraid to touch it.

  “Please,” said Tom 1. “Don’t. I just wanted to see you and little Peter. I’ve never met him. And now, I finally have the opportunity. Please.”

  He grabbed hold of the banister and took the first few stairs. This staircase was a new topography. He had never been particularly graceful in his flesh-life, but memories of moving through this house with smooth meat-muscle agility taunted him. Acting human was harder than it looked. The idealized patterns in his circuitry were in sad contrast to the actual movements the servos and gears made. They were designed for thrusting and rolling, not the enormous variety of movements that the average human took for granted. He kept climbing, knowing that every gesture would count to Amanda. He had better be the Fred Astaire of robots.

  Attempting his first goal, Tom 1 infiltrated the Potsdam computer network. He still had the password from his last visit, when Thomas Paine had tried to seduce Carter and Amanda was pregnant with Peter Jr. She hadn’t bothered to change it. He searched through her server and browsers. No messages from Carter. He searched for evidence of any contact. None. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. Carter could have approached her and covered his electronic tracks. He kept looking.

  The house was darker than he remembered, as if shrouded in gloom. Was it the difference between his organic eyes and his mechanical ones? He studied the light. The floor-to-ceiling lead-paned windows were grimy with salt and smog, and it was hard to make out San Francisco Bay in the distance. While the atmosphere was dreary, it also made it difficult for outsiders to see inside. It seemed purposeful. The interior was still decorated like it had been when Carter had lived there, all rare antiques, fine art, and comfy sofas. Back then, it had carried the stylish man’s stamp. Now, in the gloomy light, and with nothing moved since her husband’s death, it felt like a mausoleum.

  Amanda stood at
the top of the stairs. Her heavy, straight, black hair had grown back, giving her the look of a Native American princess again. But not a young one. The bags under her eyes, some gray hairs, shapeless clothes, and her defeated stance added more than the few years since he had last seen her on an aircraft runway at the Phoenix Club encampment.

  Tom 1 paused on the staircase. “Hello, Mandy.”

  She appraised his figure with disgust. The robot’s resemblance to Peter’s once-human appearance was too close for comfort. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “No,” said Tom 1.

  “So are you Peter again?” she asked. “Or Tom?”

  “That depends.”

  “What do you want?” she said.

  “To see you. And Peter. You never responded to my messages,” said Tom 1.

  “Why should I? You’re dead.”

  A little voice down the hallway behind her yelled, “Mama? Where you?”

  Tom 1 carefully stepped up another step. “Please. Let me see him.”

  Retreating from the staircase, Amanda shuffled down the second-floor hallway. He took this as permission, climbed the last several stairs, and followed.

  The hallway was empty, but he found an open door and entered a room across from the master bedroom. It had once been Carter’s personal bedroom, used when he wished to sleep apart from Amanda, and it was next door to the room where Thomas Paine had first allowed Carter to kiss him as part of a mutual seduction, a mind game to see who could manipulate whom. So many memories . . . Carter’s former bedroom was a nursery with distinctly boy-child decor. The walls and floors were blue. Trains and cars littered the floor. Toys and games filled shelves next to a toddler-sized bed. Absentmindedly gathering up crayons, Amanda sat cross-legged on the floor with a two-year-old boy.

  Their son.

  The boy had a complexion like his mother’s, chestnut hair, and the cleft chin of Peter Bernhardt.

  “Thank you, Mandy. This means a lot.” He had to keep her talking. “How’d you know it was really me?”

  “Whatever’s inside, it’s annoying and relentless,” she said as she put some crayons back in their box. “I remember that. It’s what I hated most about you.”

  Tom 1’s processor recognized most of the crayon colors, but some were not differentiated as well as they should be. Were his robotic eyes subtly color-blind, or had crayon colors changed? A toddler’s protodrawings of some sort of vehicle lay scattered on the ground. The same color mistakes were repeated on them. He’d have to ask Dev.

  “There’s more of me here than you realize,” he said. “Does it matter that I was once flesh, but I’m now a machine?”

  She closed the crayon box and put it down, looking around for anything to occupy her eyes and hands. “None of you is real. And you’d have no idea if it was.”

  He couldn’t deny that. As real as he seemed to himself, how would he know? “I’ve thought a lot about you both, and kept track of you, to make sure you were okay. I’m so sorry for what I did. I want you to know I never meant to hurt you.”

  “Carter,” she said. “Play ‘Mrs. Major Tom.’”

  Tom 1’s head swiveled around as fast as it could. “Carter is here?”

  Amanda looked at him as if he were insane. “Idiot. I named the HOME after him. It’s all you left me.”

  The speakers played the song by K.I.A., one of the many by singers and songwriters inspired by David Bowie’s Major Tom. It was not a subtle message. He waited for her to speak again.

  She listened for a minute, then turned to him. “You always thought you could problem-solve through songs. Can you solve this problem?”

  “Mrs. Major Tom” was a continuation of the “Space Oddity” story from the plaintive voice of the astronaut’s abandoned wife, who was left to rot during Major Tom’s disappearance in space. His absence crushed her. Even when he returned, albeit different than before, he was still absent, never hers to begin with. He had always been in it for himself, and that destroyed her. It was not a happy song, and Major Tom was definitely the bad guy.

  Tom 1 knelt toward the toddler playing on the floor. The boy pushed a blue wooden engine with a smiling face along a wooden track, to a wooden station, to meet a black engine with a big frown. Back and forth, he rolled the blue engine.

  “Hello, Peter,” Tom 1 said.

  Peter Jr. turned his enormous Bernhardt-blue eyes to his mother, his eyebrows raised in question.

  “Toy?” the boy asked her.

  “No, love. Not a toy. It’s . . . ” She tried to finish the thought but couldn’t come up with the right words to describe the being in front of her.

  “Father?” the robot asked.

  Amanda raised her head, bristling. “Peter Bernhardt was his father. He doesn’t even know what a father is.”

  “I am still Peter. In part,” he said.

  “Can’t prove it to me.”

  “Mandy, I understand your feelings . . . ”

  “Feelings?” she asked. “You have them?”

  “. . . . ut you need to know that the feelings I uploaded are still there. I still love you. And my son. But in a way that might seem confusing.”

  “What way is that?” Her voice was rough with anger.

  Tom 1 thought for a moment. He wasn’t sure. He touched Peter’s head gently. The painful tentacles of love he had felt on the Phoenix Camp tarmac were still there. They might not make his robot body react in the same ways, but he had always wanted to be a part of his boy’s life. This was his chance.

  “You selfish . . . ” She paused, briefly glanced at little Peter, and mouthed, “Prick.”

  “You’re the first people I wanted to see me. Like this,” he said.

  “There is no way you can love. Or that I could love you. It’s grotesque. Never.”

  The boy, concerned for his mother, moved to hug her.

  “I’m okay, love,” said Amanda, kissing his head. “Keep playing.”

  The child toddled away and rummaged inside his large toy box.

  “Regardless, you need to know something else,” began Tom 1.

  Peter Jr. waddled back with two dolls in his hands. They looked outdated and worn, handed down from much older children, or even their parents. The boy held a Thor action figure and presented Tom 1 with another. It was Iron Man. For a moment, the boy’s hands inquisitively touched the robot’s, feeling the silicone skin and the padded frame underneath. Tom 1 passed Iron Man between his two hands.

  “Thank you, Peter.” He reached out to the boy to ruffle the long hair that his mother had been loath to cut, but the little one ducked away and sat back down next to Amanda. Tom 1 wondered if the long hair had reminded her of the child’s father, so long ago.

  Amanda teared up. “Enough. Just go.” Little Peter reacted to his mother’s emotions by emulating her. He sniffled softly and crawled into her lap, lacing his fingers through her hair and twirling the strands.

  Tom 1 sputtered, “Please. Carter’s escaped.”

  “You locked him up in there,” said Amanda. “What did you expect? Can’t you leave him alone?”

  She knew how the Major Tom entity worked. Tom had never gotten the chance to communicate with her about it, so Carter must have told her. But when? “You know him almost as well as I do. His disappearance isn’t benign.”

  Amanda raised her eyes. “Get out.”

  “Remember when I told you,” said Tom 1, “back on the tarmac, that I’m doing the best thing for everyone? It’s still true.”

  “You have no idea what the ‘best thing’ is. You’ve destroyed everything you’ve touched. Including me.”

  “But I—”

  “Everything wrong in the world is your fault! And why is it your choice?” said Amanda.

  Peter Jr. whimpered and hugged his mother’s neck. She squeezed him back.

  Still digging through the Potsdam servers, he found an electronic file called “Doppelgängers/Psychopomps.” A doppelgänger was a mythical physical double of a human. A p
sychopomp was an apparition that led one to the afterlife. In many cultures, it was your physical double, like the Irish fetch. The file’s contents made his mechano-body quake for a moment, trying to react several ways at once, locking up his servos. It described ideas about copying humans into different forms and substrates. Carter had proposed all this before he had died.

  Was Carter here in the world, too? The Antlers’ song “Doppelgänger” seeped into Tom 1’s mind. Dreamily and with great languor, it described two images of a person trapped on either side of a mirror. Who would prevail if the twin creature attacked? Who was the fiend, and who was the man? His thoughts accidently played it on Amanda’s audio system, a warning for them both of the monsters doppelgängers could become.

  Amanda’s horrified expression betrayed that she clearly thought he was the monster, not Carter.

  “Leave Carter alone!” She lunged for his right leg, unbalancing him. As he compensated, his mechanical quadricep and calf flexed shut, and his “muscles” almost crushed her hand behind his knee. She cried out in pain and released him. Little Peter wailed.

  Tom 1 uncurled and sprinted from the room.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Tom 1 flung open the front door and ran into the street. The déjà vu of losing Amanda and his child, again, was so palpable that it would have physically hurt if he had the biosensors to receive the neurofeedback. He contacted Ruth on a secure line.

  “Carter is out here in the data world with me. And he wants a body. Here are copies of what I found on Amanda’s servers. Follow them back. Where is he?”

  “We’re busy!” replied Ruth. “Trying to keep our money! Can’t save the world if we’re poor!”

  “Miss Gray Hat is helping you?”

  “No. Veronika is. Moving money to renminbi. And Swiss francs. Like everyone else!”

  A feedback warning from his legs reminded him that his knee and ankle joints weren’t built for sustained bipedal speed, so he slowed down and walked to Divisadero Street and down into Cow Hollow.