Robot Awareness: Special Edition

by B. C. Kowalski

  "I understand how you feel," she said, staring deeply into Isellia's eyes.

  A phrase along the lines of “You don’t understand squat” crossed her mind, but the words died in her throat. The intensity of Celia’s gaze went straight through her, felt like it penetrated to her soul. She felt like the woman reached deep into her. For a moment, she nearly allowed herself to open to her, to drop her wall of protection.

  Isellia wasn’t one to be confused about her emotions — she usually knew exactly where everything stood with her and her reactions were swift. But she stood in front of Celia with no idea how to react, or any understanding of what was going on inside her. Isellia was left with the impression she was dealing with something — someone — out of her league.

  She finally shrugged away, shaking her head as if coming out of a trance.

  "You — you don't understand anything," Isellia said more weakly than she intended, holding her head.

  Celia only smiled, a smile that revealed she understood more than Isellia wanted her to. She appeared calm and in complete control, the exact opposite of Isellia. Celia loomed like an impenetrable wall, both emotionally and physically.

  “You don’t like me,” Celia said. “I get it. But since we’re headed in the same direction, why don’t we try to get along?” Celia held out a hand in the old Earth custom.

  Isellia stared blankly at the hand, as if lost in thought. Her expression went from blank to anger, however, and she raised her eyes to Celia, batting the hand away once again.

  "Just stay away from me!" she yelled, stomping off to her quarters. "If you hurt him again, I'll kill you!" She slammed the door to her quarters shut, the noise resonating her empty threat throughout the hall with a metal clang.

  ***

  Underow signed the papers with little regard for their deadly consequences. To him, it was one more piece of business. To those named in the papers, however, it meant their execution.

  The papers, translucent with a deep red ink, were quickly inserted in a black slot on his desk, disappearing into it with a digital sparkle. They would re-appear at their recipient’s desk in much the same manner. Underow thought nothing else of the docscan he'd sent as he continued to toil under the moonlight shining through his office/home's window. Underow rarely slept and rarely stopped working. It wouldn’t have occurred to him to stop, even if he were able. For Underow, work was existence. He wouldn’t have known what to do with himself if he had a day free of duty.

  A small window popped out from the screen on which he furiously calculated expense reports — mostly cost differentials involving the failed assassination attempt. The instant holomessage stopped his typing immediately and hovered in front of his screen. He paused, folding his hands on his lap. The message was from the top.

  No one ever actually saw anyone from “the top." Orders came down from the top via messages, electronic mail, carrier (large black birds that, legend said, never actually died or were born), or instant messages such as the one Underow had just received.

  The latter communication was particularly troublesome, because one false slip could delete them. Underow recalled a man he had entered Company C with who was fired and never heard from him again. When someone was fired, no one was ever told why, their desk just sat empty as if they had never existed. In his case, it appeared that literally was the case. Rumors spread that he’d deleted a message from the top, but Underow wasn’t sure. But he had no desire to confirm or deny those doubts for himself.

  "Is it done?" A black figure, undistinguishable, appeared in the window, with these words underneath.

  Underow sweated a little — what little emotion Underow was capable of, fear was amongst the strongest and most prevalent. "No. Our mission was delayed by unexpected setbacks,” he typed. Sweat pooled on his temple to see the words on the screen. It took all of the little will-power he had to press enter.

  "The assassin?"

  ...

  “Has turned into a liability.”

  ...

  “Must leave no loose ends.”

  ...

  "I'll see to it."

  ...

  "Termination is acceptable. Entire party if necessary, save the target.”

  ...

  "Understood."

  ...

  ...

  Underow sweated, afraid to ask but compelled to nonetheless. "Am I to take responsibility for their escape?"

  ...

  ...

  ...

  "The price has been paid. The attacking soldiers have been downsized."

  ...

  "Orders from above?" Underow typed with relief. It was a victory of survival.

  ...

  "Indeed. The CEO is most displeased."

  ...

  Underow's sweat turned cold, a tingling sensation washing over his head as his nerves tingled with fear. "The CEO is involved?"

  ...

  "Computer analysis demonstrates the combination to be a severe threat. The CEO himself is concerned."

  ...

  Underow didn't realize that the problem went that far up the chain. This would be a chance to make or break his career. He might jump a whole decade of levels. Or crash to the basement. "I'll prioritize their capture."

  ...

  "That would be prudent. Company C only has room for team players. And teams only have room for valuable players. Be sure you remain valuable.” The window disappeared almost immediately after the message was typed; he barely had time to read it.

  Underow wasted no time contemplating the implications of the last statement. The target would be captured at all cost. He did not want to have to "take responsibility" if they weren't.

  ***

  Rex's ears perked up only slightly at the creak of the metal door to his quarters opening; the ever-so-slight click of the assassin's black stilettos navigating the narrow corridor reached his ears, growing almost imperceptibly louder as they had approached the doorway. No one else on the ship would have heard their slight tap had they been standing behind her, and had she desired it, Rex wouldn't have heard it either. But Celia wanted Rex to know she was coming.

  "Busy?" she asked, leaning against the door. She still wore her black, tight assassin’s outfit, which both accentuated her well-toned figure and rendered it sleek and deadly. It caught on nothing and made no noise. It’s tightness served a functional purpose — but it had other affects as well, which Celia wasn’t above exploiting. None of which went unnoticed by Rex.

  "Nope,” Rex said, reclining on his bunk with his hands casually cradling the back of his head. The room was sparse, save for a small duffle propped between the bunk and the hard metal floor. “Thought training wasn't for another hour."

  "It's not," she said, slinking gracefully into the room. The black fabric hugged her form in a way that accented every movement she made, fetishizing her body’s mechanics. Rex, generally aloof to the opposite sex, felt his eyes instinctually drawn to her and something inside him stirred. "I had...another activity in mind,” she purred

  As she said this, he noticed her black-gloved finger rise to her ear, slowly tracing a circle around her lobe. He immediately recognized the signal for what it was, and started to loosen his calm to a wave of nervous excitement and anticipation like remembering something long forgotten, brought back into immediate memory. He almost forgot to respond in kind, quickly cupping his hand over his ear to initiate the sexual challenge.

  The assassin grinned slightly, which he saw as she stood facing away from him, stretching her whole body out in one continuous motion.

  Then in a flash, it was on. Both figures moved impossibly fast, engaged in a battle in which the only outcome possible was both of them winning. Rex almost immediately felt himself falling behind, just as he had in the Sasugan landing bay. He tried with all his heart and mind, fighting in honesty to keep up with the flow that was ever growing in her favor. Eventually, he would fall. Eventually, he would win. They both would, in this carnal contest.<
br />
  His senses were sharper than the last time they battled, and this time he felt the moment she gained the advantage. As he went to the floor, he was able to roll with the fall and use the floor as a cradle. Coupled with added gentleness on her part, Rex dropped to the thin, worn carpet of his quarters much more softly than he had the shiny metal floor of the launch bay.

  She was on him in an instant, pinning his hands behind his head as her lithe body leaned over him, knees straddling either side of his chest. Her chest pressed into his as she leaned her face to his ears, whispering, "We win" as she licked his ear with her soft tongue.

  Rex's anticipation hardened as he felt inclined to agree. She stripped off his shirt, revealing his sinewy, chiseled muscles. He looked down, at the scar that crossed his chest, then up at her — she seemed to pay it no mind. He longed to caress her body but lay pinned, his naked back pressed against the thin carpet, allowing himself to enjoy the domination.

  Still pinning Rex to the floor, she adeptly grasped the previously unseen zipper to her outfit, smoothly unzipping it in one graceful motion. In a few twist and turns, impossibly skilled and swift, and she was left in nothing but her boots. Rex could only gaze in wonder and admiration; He’d never seen a more beautiful woman in his life — nor one as strong — and for someone who paid little mind to the opposite sex, he felt himself filled with desire at the combination.

  Rex soon found himself in a similar state of undress, feeling a cathartic liberation through his bondage to this mistress, submitting to the waves of sexual energy she teased out of him, teased into him, shared between them. The separation of gender dissipated as they merged into a single entity; the ship, the crew, the universe revolving around them for a moment in time, the conclusion of a game neither could lose, completed only in the mutual expulsion of their sexual energy.

  ***

  “He’ll be coming in a few minutes,” the woman in a dusty mining suit said to Porter. They stood in front of the cargo ship, a slight breeze blowing her dark brown locks in front of her face occasionally.

  “I don’t like this. I know Isellia is a teenager, but I didn’t exactly have in mind a 12-year-old when I said I wanted more crew members.”

  The woman brushed her long brown hair back from her temples. She looked over her shoulder, as the desert sun set on the horizon. “I didn’t exactly have sending my son along with a bunch of smugglers in mind either. But here we are.”

  “Cargo transporters.”

  “Uh-huh,” the woman said. “Look, most crew members don’t come with a little bonus money either. He’s very bright, somewhere in that head of his. He might seem a little doofy on the outside, but... trust me, he’ll be fixing your ship more than you before long.”

  The woman broke into a coughing fit, nearly doubling herself over from her heaving. Porter raised his eyebrows, not sure if he should offer some kind of help. She was beautiful; or at least, she had been at one point, before years of hard labor. Her eyes still shined brightly, despite the toll that long days had taken on her body. He reached out a hand but she stood up.

  “Look, here’s the money, just take—“

  “Put that away.”

  “Look he’s a good kid—“

  “I’ll take the kid. Joey, was it? Just put the money away.”

  The woman’s face lit up briefly at this, a smile through a face worn down by years of hard labor. She smiled, patting him on the chest a couple of times.

  “You could come too. We’re awfully short on bodies.”

  She coughed a bit more, then shook her head. “Nah, I got unfinished business here. Just get my boy away from... this.”

  She moved in closer to him, putting her hand on his chest again. Her eyes were even more beautiful up close. “Promise me.”

  Porter said nothing, but nodded. She looked into his eyes for a moment, almost as if searching for something, then decided she was satisfied. She walked away without another word.

  Chapter 8

  Joey had nearly succumbed to the space doldrums that plagued him the entire trip when the words “I.S.S. 457" flashed in a little green box above an arrow pointing to a small dot on the viewscreen. Joey's face glowed green at regular intervals as he watched it blink.

  "I.S.S. 457," Joey read, turning in his chair. "Is this it?"

  Porter nodded, as he hunched over a console at the far end of the ship. "That's it. Set a landing pattern."

  Joey punched at the controls that had become so familiar in the last few weeks — he wouldn’t yet call himself an expert, but he was getting the hang of it. The station didn’t have the same level of automation the Sasugan station did, but Joey knew enough to adapt to the more manual control.

  "We're being directed to bay 413," Joey said.

  "Good job," Porter said, giving him an approving smile. Joey looked back at his controls — his confidence continued to grow the longer he sat in front of the console.

  Porter walked up behind him, placing his hand on Joey's shoulder. Joey recoiled instinctively, then relaxed and accepted the gesture.

  Porter took no notice of this, or at least didn't show it. "Know anything about the inter-star system station configuration?" he asked, double checking the controls without making it obvious what he was doing.

  "The what?" Joey asked.

  "It's one of the few places Company C hasn’t got its hands into. And they don’t take any profit either.”

  "Really?" asked Joey. He'd never heard of another company that wasn't in some way tied to Company C. And no profit?

  "The stations were started by the Dea, one of the first species in the galaxy to achieve inter-star system travel," Porter said, seeming to take on a professorial posture. It seemed unfamiliar and strange to Joey. "As other species gained the ability to travel between star systems, they gradually started using the stations too. They're completely supported by the governments of those that patronize them. Also on the support of others who stop at the station. It's one of the last entities in the galaxy not to be corporatized. All profits support the upkeep of the infrastructure, and as such it's one of the last free markets operating on a socio-capitalist structure..."

  Porter paused when he looked at Joey, who looked like a 12-year-old confronted by the theory of relativity. "Oh. Well, you get the idea.”

  Joey's brow furrowed. “What are the Dea like? Are they like the Sasugans?”

  “You can buzz them when we’re in port - there’re plenty of history portals dedicated to them. They're long since extinct, however."

  "Extinct? You mean they’re all gone?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What happened to them?”

  Porter paused for a moment. “There’s a few theories on that. No one knows for sure, since they’ve been gone so long. Heard on the buzz that they found a new document, claims there was some kind of cosmic accident. Another theory says they’re still around, but fled the galaxy. Mostly, I think they integrated with other species.”

  “Oh,” Joey said, face scrunched into deep thought. “So then who's in charge?"

  "Well, anybody."

  “What do you mean anybody?"

  “Well, if you work there you have the ability to be on the board. And anyone can work there if they want.”

  Joey frowned. "Oh."

  "What's the matter?" Joey looked at the floor of the spaceship, as if he'd heard the words "lima beans."

  "Elections are kinda pointless. Aren't they?" He looked up to Porter for a reaction.

  "Why do you say that?"

  Joey was silent for a moment. Porter didn't intercede but studied him with interest.

  "Well, my mom used to say that elections are just a means of the company picking who they want anyway. She always said they were a farce. Like a nice idea that got turned into something much worse.”

  “An illusion of power?” Porter asked.

  “Yeah, I guess.” It was the first time since he'd left his home that he'd mentioned her. The excitement and novelt
y of space travel, coupled with his duties on the ship pushed his memories toward the back of his mind. But she was never far from his thoughts, he realized — even if he didn’t mention her out loud.

  "You miss her, huh?” Porter said, his enormous hand giving Joey a sympathetic squeeze. A tear fell from his eye, absorbing and spreading into a small, nearly round circle on his pant leg. He didn't look up nor did he answer, though Porter understood perfectly. Joey wiped it off with the back of his shirt sleeve, sniffling a little in an effort to conceal his tears.

  "I'm sure she's okay, Joey," he said. “Your mom asked us to take care of you, and that’s what we’re going to do.”

  He let Joey have a moment, thinking about the woman who came to him for help, coughing and barely keeping herself together. She had a resiliency, one that Joey seemed to carry inside of him as well. "Come on, let's get this ship into port, huh?"

  Joey swallowed, his throat feeling tight, and attempted to mimic Porter’s assuredness. "Yes sir," he managed to stammer with a wavering sobbing voice.

  ***

  Joey eased the ship into an empty space in a row of similar-sized space vessels which seemed to stretch for longer than the eye could see. He'd flown the ship past rows and rows of ships much like the one in which he’d just parked — sections devoted to large cruiser-type vessels to tiny craft it was hard to believe could make an interstellar journey. Joey hadn't before imagined that there were this many ships in all of space, let alone parked at one of many stations throughout the galaxy.

  "Calculating the average density of a life-supporting planet, multiplied by the number of space-faring vessels per —" was as far as the robot made it through a logical explanation before Joey hushed him. He wanted to savor the moment of awe he felt at the sheer enormity of the scene.