Stanley Duncan's Robot: Genesis

by David Ring III

  “This will be different,” said Stanley. “A decentralized, non-human group of watchmen, patched in at lightning speed. Incorruptible.” Stanley could picture it: Dan and a brigade of machines enforcing the law. Connected to the cloud, interfacing with cameras and intelligence centers around the world, they would be able to receive communication at light speed and swiftly organize at all levels. Futuristic, non-lethal weapons to subdue criminals. Always following the letter of the law, always acting in accordance with what was right.

  “Nothing is incorruptible,” said Morrison. “You know what happened with RaceX, right?”

  “Yeah. Tons of hype but no delivery.”

  “Ha! You couldn’t be more wrong. When Ellen — ”

  The line went dead.

  Stanley tried to call him back, but the line was out of order.

  “Strange,” he said as he dragged himself over to his usual spot by the window. Someone had egged it again. He couldn’t be bothered with cleaning it; there were too many ideas to explore. Slouching over, his head resting on his fists, Stanley disappeared into deep thought for a long while.

  He couldn’t imagine Dan becoming corrupted. It seemed impossible, save for some virus or malware. But that would still be the programming, not who Dan really was.

  Dan was good, incapable of evil. He had never made a non-deterministic decision in his life. There was no separate entity that existed within Dan with the free will to flip bits and modify his binary trees — it was completely deterministic. There was a reason for every one of Dan’s actions. A moral code had been programmed into him, but with the update Stanley had installed, even this code could be self-modified. Nevertheless, there had to be an external reason for it — and it couldn’t deviate from goodness. Because all of Dan’s actions conformed to this, corruption was impossible.

  The front door exploded open, bursting the bubble into oblivion.

  Sergeant Brad Jenkins sent shock waves through the stairs as he thundered up the metallic staircase, nearly toppling poor Glenda over. Using his thumb to crack two of his knuckles in his right hand — the once-broken ones seldom cracked — he desperately wanted an excuse to beat someone within an inch of their life.

  He was one of the few people who had tried fuse and managed to stay off it afterward. It made him feel too good. He loved his pain. It was his identity, fueling him. He needed it and would not let anyone or anything steal it from him. He couldn’t forget what she had done to him — not completely. That pain was always there, floating like a distant buoy in an ocean of alcohol, reminding him of his reason to hate the world. He fostered the pain, drinking it in like a revitalizing elixir. Always angry, he was continuously looking for excuses to mete out punishment. The very notion of hurting someone delighted him. Between his anger, copious amounts of whiskey, and his deadly strength, very little that bothered him survived for long. The slightest reminder of her would send Brad off-kilter, one wrong look away from going ape-shit on someone and rearranging their face.

  In the hallway, Glenda grimaced as she scanned Brad’s police uniform, her gaunt fingers tightening around Mittens. “What do you want with Stanley?”

  Ignoring the impulse to push that senile bitch down the stairs, Brad snorted like a bull, glaring at her. He was ready to break down the door and smash Stanley to bits. He didn’t want to wait any longer. He could squish the life out of the ancient cat-lady with one hand if he wanted to. No surviving witnesses. But that wasn’t the plan. Stanley was a recluse, and that worked perfectly with his no-warrant strategy of coercing through fear. With his fist in the air, ready to knock at the door — or smash through it — Brad’s phone buzzed.

  “Morons,” he muttered.

  “I think you should leave,” said Glenda.

  Brad launched himself off down the stairs, setting off a minor earthquake.

  Glenda grabbed the rail as tight as she could, Mittens squirmed against her chest before vaulting onto the ground. With incredible speed, Brad injected a syringe of fuse into her carotid artery. Lifting her limp body over his shoulder, he brought her to the cruiser and strapped her into the back seat. She’d make a fine addition to the fuse farm.

  When he returned to Stanley’s condo, he didn’t even bother to knock. The door exploded with one shoulder ram.

  Stanley trembled by the window with a cane in his hand, his one eye opened wide in fear, making his red face more hideous than normal. “Get out!” His words squeaked like the mice Brad loved to stomp on.

  Brad approached. Stanley swung at him, but he was so ridiculously weak that Brad nearly fell to the floor with laughter. Brad grabbed the cane. A jolt of electricity ran through his body. He ripped it out of Stanley’s hand and threw it across the room. “Tingly.”

  Stanley backed up, falling over the couch. “Leticia, contact Dan. Tell him I’m being attacked at home.”

  “I’m sorry, but I’m unable to reach him. Would you like me to leave a message?”

  Brad laughed. “The tin can’s been crushed, and now it’s your turn.” Brad placed several syringes of nanites on the table. “By the time I’m done, you’ll be begging me to let you upload the program for Brutus.”

  Chapter 13

  Dan had rifled through the man’s pockets and found an ID but no phone. He had managed to stay on top of him, but now he was exhausted. This area was dangerous, and his options for leaving were sparse. “So, tell me, Ike: What drives a man to bludgeon an android to death?”

  No response.

  Dan could tell that Ike was weary from the failed escapes and the comedown from whatever drug he was on. But Dan had hoped he would have given up some sort of information. Instead, he had stonewalled him.

  If the police weren’t coming, what could he do? The choices didn’t seem great. He could leave Ike here, hoping he wouldn’t come after him. That would be an awful miscarriage of justice, though. He could walk him to the police station, but there would certainly be a lot of resistance, and Dan was nearly out of energy. He was fit and muscular, but the prolonged battle had greatly fatigued him. He could have saved energy by knocking Ike out, but that felt wrong. This wasn’t a safe area. The longer he waited, the greater his risk. He needed to make a decision.

  As he analyzed multiple solutions, a small drone roared above them. He got an idea, but it was going to take the rest of his strength to do it. “This man has committed murder and must be held accountable.”

  Dan dragged Ike toward the scene of the crime, his muscles burning from exhaustion. Ike struggled so fiercely he had to stop and rest, restraining him on the ground.

  A police car arrived.

  Dan noted the curious timing.

  Police strobe lights flashed against the reflective aviators of both officers, standing with their arms folded across their chests.

  “Officer Michaels — thank God you’re here.” Dan’s voice was strained, his face weary. Not for a second did he loosen his grip on the murderer. “He’s a wild one. Be careful.”

  Officer Michaels stepped forward, his hands dropping to his hips, his finger twitching as if longing to put his hand on his gun and pull the trigger. “Don’t tell us what to do.”

  Dan’s jaw dropped. “Of course not. I was — ”

  “Get off of him!” snarled Michaels.

  For nearly one hour, Dan had fought to maintain this position. It didn’t feel right getting up. Ike could attack him at any second — all three of them could. He had to be careful. “Would you consider cuffing him first? He’s dangerous.”

  Michaels walked closer.

  Dan eyed him, hyper-aware of Michaels’ hands. If he reached for his gun, Dan had to be ready. “You remember me — right, Officer Michaels? From the hospital.”

  Michaels grabbed Dan by the arm and shirt collar and yanked him up. “Another word and I’ll arrest you for obstruction of justice.” His face twisted and transformed into th
e angry snarl of a territorial dog.

  Dan lifted his hands in surrender. “Guess this means my invitation to join the force has been rescinded,” he said to himself in a simulation. The joy of it nearly carried over and made him laugh.

  “We’ll settle this later.” Ike looked at Dan with murderous eyes before disappearing into the back seat of the cruiser.

  Shocked at how he had been treated, Dan stood on wobbly legs as simulations raced through his head about how things should have gone down. Very few of them ended up like this. He should have been praised for catching a criminal — not treated like one. Despite the fact that Dan had not done anything wrong, the law came down on him. Was this his first encounter with corruption, or was it something more significant, some inherent part of human existence?

  Walking back to the area that contained the android remains, he tuned into a different type of scenario being calculated: the outcome of a fight with the officers. In nearly every single one, Dan was able to kill them. But why would he do that? They were the police and were here to uphold the law. It didn’t make sense that he would even consider it, and it really didn’t make sense when he felt —

  “Leave police work to the police. To humans,” said Michaels, as the cruiser rolled past him. “This is your last warning.”

  Marshfield’s Coliseum was located a few blocks away from where Dan had been ambushed. Like much of the property in this part of town, Evan owned it. Tonight, he had arranged a private showing and training seminar.

  Standing in the ring, he screamed at Michaels and his partner. “You morons! How could you screw this up? Because of that damn drone broadcasting the tin can’s garbage all across the world, you’ve put the whole plan in jeopardy. Now we are going to have a PR shitstorm, which is going to make our objective ten times harder to achieve.”

  Brad squinted as if he were compressing his few brain cells together to gather a complete thought. “We wanted to show that the tin can is violent. We could say it attacked Ike.”

  “Good idea, Brad,” said Evan, patting him on the shoulder. “And we might have been able to do it even with a little video footage. But what really sealed our fate was when Michaels arrested Ike!” He walked toward Michaels and punched him in the stomach.

  Michaels doubled over, shaking his head like an idiot. “It wasn’t our fault. How could we have known we were up against Robocop?”

  Evan reached for his gun. “Robocop? Say that again, and I’ll put a bullet in you.”

  Brad grimaced.

  Evan didn’t see the promising officer Brad saw. He saw weakness, and that made the entire force weak. But there were hardly any other viable candidates, and Evan had to take what was available. At least he was loyal. “Maybe I should get in contact with that man you were talking about, Michaels. The one at the hospital. What was his name?”

  Michaels turned white. “I never got it.”

  “That’s some real fine police work.”

  “All I’m saying is that the toaster was tough. He ducked against a home-run swing and then tackled our guy.” Michaels looked to Brad for support.

  Evan got in his face. “Don’t make excuses!”

  “I’m not.”

  “It’s a goddamn cyborg. A soulless sack of flesh and bones. What sort of crackpot did you send in to screw this up?”

  “This was Ike,” said Michaels.

  Evan tightened his fist. Ike was their best hitman. He had never let them down. A stone-cold killer. Had he been able to stay off the smack, Ike could have risen much higher in their organization. Evan would have preferred him over Michaels any day, but Ike liked getting his hands dirty too much. “This is exactly what we wanted to avoid. It should have been a quick, clean hit. Nobody would have cared about another missing abomination. And we would have had the time and discretion to implement the next phase of the plan without the world breathing down our neck.” He glared at Michaels.

  “The toaster already had an Internet following,” said Michaels.

  “But you fools gave him prime-time coverage.” Evan locked eyes with him, wishing he would press the issue. Tension electrified the air.

  “So, what’s the plan, Deputy?” asked Brad.

  “My contacts in Boston have shut down the tin can’s social media accounts. We still need to destroy that abomination and the freak of nature he lives with, and we’re going to make sure nobody tries to run this bullshit ever again. No more cyborgs in Marshfield. Zero tolerance. We’ll set an example that all of Massachusetts will see.”

  “They’ll be begging you to be governor.”

  “And then president,” grinned Evan.

  Michaels and Brad nodded to each other.

  “Thanks to Brad’s work, we have secured the program to unlock Brutus’s safety protocols and turn it and all other androids into our own weapons.”

  Brad flexed his enormous pectorals.

  “But haven’t we already programmed the androids to kill?” asked Michaels.

  “That’s right.” Evan knew it was a good question, but he still wanted to hit him. “The difference is quality. The ones we have here are stupid as — ” He resisted the urge to look at his sergeant, still flexing his upper body in admiration of himself “ — as a tin can. With Duncan’s programming, they’ll be finely tuned killing machines. The world won’t be able to ignore them anymore.”

  “But isn’t that what we want to avoid? I just don’t get why we’d make them stronger.”

  Evan sighed, doubting they would understand. “The machines are holding back, and nobody is taking them seriously. If they wanted to, they could unleash an attack right now that might wipe us all out. All we’re doing is showing the world what they’re capable of before it’s too late.”

  “That’s brilliant,” said Michaels.

  Evan smiled. Maybe Brad did have potential, after all. “We’ll launch an attack that will serve to ignite the American people against the machines and get the support we need from the government. The next step is keeping Daffy Duncan in line and finding the ideal setting for everything to go down.”

  The men grunted in agreement.

  “I’m tasking you with this assignment, Brad. Do not let me down.”

  Brad lifted his right hand and flexed. His muscles looked as if they were going to explode out of his shirt.

  “We’re — ” An intense focus knocked Evan off balance as a distant memory resurfaced to haunt him.

  The photographs.

  His head pounded with an unbearable intensity, and his heart exploded like an overloaded forge, making him wish he could stab it and rip it out with a knife. Nauseous, he crushed the memories with all his strength, vowing once again to make the toasters pay for what they had done to him. If anyone in Marshfield found out he had been beaten and humiliated by the abominations, he’d be laughed out of town. Nobody would ever respect him again.

  Brad stepped in to fill the void. “You two screwed up.” He got in Michaels’ face. “I’m going to deal with your punishment personally.”

  “Yes, Sergeant!” shouted Michaels, overly enthusiastically.

  Cratos wheeled a large android to the ring on a dolly. It looked like an evil seven-foot-tall Ken doll in a suit. He had short, dark-brown hair and light-blue eyes, with frozen, gaunt facial features. “Meet Brutus, our new champion. He’s by far the most powerful fighter we’ve ever had.”

  Shoulders and chest puffed up, Brad strutted over and inspected Brutus and the mighty war hammer protruding from a strap on its back. “Pathetic. I’d destroy it in seconds.”

  “An eccentric billionaire created this one-of-a-kind model to serve him as a security guard. He has so much polymorphous steel inside of him that he’s practically indestructible. Manufactured before the majority of regulations on android production, his strength is three times that of a normal android.”

  “Impressive.
” With a sinister grin, Evan took out his gun. “That means it can withstand my bullets.”

  The man nodded. “As long as they are not made of polymorphous steel, they’ll damage only his synthetic flesh.”

  A shot rang out. The casing shattered on impact.

  Brad reached out and tried to scrape off what looked like a silver stain from Brutus’s chest. “Will you look at that. The lead liquefied on him without making a dent.”

  “This could be fun.” Evan shot the android in the forehead.

  “Composite plastic made of layers of clay nanosheets shields his eyes from harm. Though not as strong as amorphous steel, it is nearly impervious to bullets,” said the Cratos. “Behind its eyes, there’s a thick layer of polymorphous steel that will protect his main processor and prevent him from being disabled. And there’s still more that I’m discovering about him every day.”

  Evan put away his gun. “Let’s see his fighting skills.”

  A look of fear swept across Michaels’ face.

  Evan smiled, soaking up the intimidation. He had committed far worse methods of torture, but Michaels was an officer of the law and a fellow human. Evan wouldn’t punish him for loyally following his orders. But if he ever betrayed him …

  “Bring another android here,” ordered Brad.

  Sweat pooled in the large cavity on the top of the man’s head as Cratos returned with a clown-like android whose body had been pierced by steel rods, like a pin cushion. His nose had been replaced with a red knob, his face had been bleached white, and his hair had been dyed red. “Unlike most androids who have an on-off switch at the back of their head, Brutus is controlled remotely. We’ve overridden his security features and set him to destroy anything within this ring. So, if you’ll all take a seat on the ground level.”

  After everyone took their seat, the man hit a few buttons on his phone. Brutus drew the war hammer and slammed it down onto the clown’s face, burying it inches deep. Brutus raised the hammer into the air, lifting the still-attached clown with it. A swift kick sent it toppling to the ground — decapitated.