by Morin, J. S.
“I wasn’t programmed!” Charlie25 barked. “I was mixed. Bits and pieces plucked from Charlie Truman, Jason Sanborn, and Dale Chalmers. There are no lines of code until you reach the interface layer. You should stick to the paper-pushing and leave the science to real scientists.”
Dale2 didn’t lose his coolant. He tapped the tips of his gloved, stainless steel fingers together and waited for a gap in Charlie25’s rant.
“Yes. You know Kanto as well as any of us. That’s why I called you instead of someone more pliable and cooperative. But if you think you know everything hidden in that monument to Charlie2’s hubris, then explain this.”
With the touch of a button, Dale2 sent a link to Charlie25’s ship. He waited, counting the milliseconds until the message arrived.
“Anyone could have faked this,” Charlie25 said cautiously. “It proves nothing.”
“I didn’t fake it,” Dale2 assured him. “And proof is the reason I called you. Access Kanto’s database. The files you’ll be accessing haven’t been touched in a millennium. That’ll be good enough to take that lying sack of circuits off his pedestal.”
“I don’t see how removing Charlie7 from the picture will—”
“It will change everything!” Dale2 thundered, slamming a fist on his console and sending spiderweb cracks across the surface.
“—advance our goals. We’ve already been—” Charlie25 flinched as Dale2’s outburst caught up to him in real time. “Fine. Then tell me this: how am I supposed to access systems I’m ‘programmed’ not to be able to search for?”
Dale2 waited as emotional buffers cleared. There were days where he regretted leaving so many of his human foibles intact, but he was so close to reverting back to human existence. It was all going to pay off soon enough.
“You need the girl,” Dale2 said. “The Madison Maxwell-Chang clone known as Rachel Eighteen.”
The “later” that had so long eluded Dale2 was finally at hand.
Chapter Five
Charlie7 had a front row seat for the first human performance at Radio City Music Hall since before the invasion. Though located on the site of the original, its surroundings were now a deciduous forest instead of the bustle of downtown Manhattan. A winding gravel path led Charlie7 from the skyroamer lot at Central Park to the theater nestled in a clearing.
It had been worth the trip.
Heracles was among the last of the Plato clones to gain emancipation. It wasn’t for lack of intellect or physical ability. Of all the humans alive, he had possibly suffered most at the hands of his creator. With his entire body covered in fur and eyes of feline morphology, Heracles struggled to reconcile his place among humans and robots alike.
It had taken years for Heracles to gain the confidence to take control of his life, no longer sheltered and protected under the infinite patience of Nora109. Though his emancipation ceremony had been months ago, tonight was his true emergence into society. Tonight, he played.
The storybook tale of Heracles’s journey from lab experiment to concert pianist would have claimed his playing reminded the jaded old robots of the choirs of angels. Some tortured, beautiful part of his soul would have risen above his upbringing and emerged, phoenix like, from the ashes.
Tapping out such ancient melodies as “Ode to Joy” and “Imagine,” Heracles was serviceable at best.
More than eighty robots were in attendance. Most had come for the novelty of the show. Some had come merely to show support. Charlie7 had come because it was expected of him.
After Heracles finished “Imagine”—an entirely instrumental version, thank Lennon—he rose and accepted his applause with a formal bow. Despite his leonine appearance, the tuxedo lent him dignity. “Thank you. My next piece will be…”
Charlie7 didn’t need the program read aloud to him. All the theatergoers had received it in advance digitally. What had caught Charlie7’s attention, however, was a digital message of a different sort.
ALERT. KANTO RESERVE DATABASE ACCESSED.
Unlike many other system broadcasts, there was no other robot on Earth whom Kanto’s main computer would contact for this breach.
Charlie7 experienced a brief series of blank processor cycles as the implications hit him. “Reserve Database” was a timeworn euphemism for “files nobody should ever see again.” If Charlie7 had been less the curator and more the vandal, he’d have deleted them.
However, Charlie7 hadn’t been able to sever a tie that went back so far, tethering him to a distant past in flesh and blood. Much as it pained him to think someone might one day get into that archive, despite his best efforts, he couldn’t destroy the information it contained.
It would have been akin to burning the Library of Alexandria.
As Heracles sat back down to play, Charlie7 found his thoughts looping. He was trapped here. Leaving in the middle of the show would be inexcusably rude, and his best efforts to make excuses might not be good enough. The Human Protection Agency was a country club job these days, not warranting hasty departures without warning.
How had anyone gained access in the first place?
The answer struck Charlie7 as so obvious it pained him. Rachel. It had to be her. Few enough robots were granted access to Kanto’s main systems. All of them were programmed with the blind spot. Charlie13 must have trusted Rachel with full access, which wasn’t the same as full access for anyone else but him.
Rachel was human, and humans didn’t run on Charlie7’s software.
If he’d spent more than a nanosecond in the past thousand years on those archives, it might have occurred to Charlie7 to remove them from public storage. But just as he’d buried the knowledge in Kanto’s database, he’d buried it in his own thoughts, as well.
All this passed through Charlie7’s crystalline matrix within the first second of receiving the system alert.
Charlie7’s mission was clear. He had to get to Rachel, swear her to silence, and contain the damage. She wasn’t the socialite that Phoebe was or a celebrity like Eve. At worst, maybe she’d mention it to Charlie13. That would be awkward to explain, but ‘13 knew how to keep his mouth shut and his data ports firewalled.
Yes, the worst thing Charlie7 could do now was draw attention to himself.
As soon as this performance was over, he’d offer his congratulations and make all haste to Kanto.
Damage control would begin in eighty-four minutes, plus three minutes of obligatory socializing. He might even try to cut that to two and a half.
Chapter Six
When Eve stepped down from her skyroamer on her private landing pad in Paris, she hadn’t expected to be greeted by Plato and Abbigail. Thus, she wasn’t surprised to find them absent.
Unlike the island of Japan, the weather in western Europe was balmy, with wildflowers in full bloom and an azure sky of patchy clouds to spur fanciful imaginings. In short, it was the sort of day when a young child should be exploring the world, not waiting on a patch of asphalt for her mother to return.
Eve crept around the house and into the grove of fruit trees that had been planted out back beyond the lawn. The grounds were tended. Pear and apple trees grew in regimented lines. Grassy lanes between the rows were kept trimmed as neatly as the yard. From one row over, she heard the sounds of an imaginary battle.
“A harmless dragon, you say? A likely tale, forsooth,” Abbigail shouted in challenge. Eve peeked between the branches of adjacent apple trees to see the girl perched upon her father’s shoulders. The would-be knight was dressed in protofabbed plastic armor that clattered like a stack of cafeteria trays. Her lance was one of Plato’s golf clubs, the driver head tucked under her arm. “Your eating of robots is at an end. I, Chairwoman Abby of the Dragon Committee, hereby charge you with a violation of section 4.5, paragraph 6 of the Dragon Guidelines: no eating robots.”
Eve nodded along. She’d read Abbigail’s committee charter. Paragraph 6 was succinct on the point of eating robots—there was to be none of it. The document was remarkably thorough for being the pr
oduct of such a young mind, with clauses dictating habitat, diet, and social responsibilities of dragons. It was modeled loosely on the Human Welfare Committee charter, but Abbigail had made extensive alterations.
Despite all her detailed work, section 4.5, paragraph 6 had been the focus of all of Chairwoman Abby’s adventures.
“The penalty for eating robots is… death,” Abbigail said with adorable menace. Since Plato had drawn the line at any kind of reins, the armor-clad chairwoman gave her paternal mount a swift pat on the side of the head. “Charge!”
As Plato galloped into action, holding onto Abbigail’s ankles in lieu of stirrups, today’s dragon became clear. Toby140 had left an auto-fertilizer drone on site. The ungainly contraption had been draped with a green tarpaulin, and when Plato reached into his pocket for the remote, it belched to life, spouting gouts of dust from an empty hopper.
Plato pulled up short with just enough distance left for Abbigail to skewer the machine with the butt end of the golf club, rubber grip meeting sheet metal panel with a hollow thump that jostled the tarp.
“Hooray,” Eve cheered. “The robots are safe!”
“Hi Mommy,” Abbigail squealed. Plato had to crouch low before the girl dismounted while he was standing upright. As soon as little feet hit grass, the golf club dropped to the ground, and Abbigail was off like a shot.
Eve braced for impact, scooping the heavier-by-the-day knight into her arms and lifting her for a hug. The plastic armor was ungainly, but Eve managed to find a spot on the girl’s cheek for a kiss.
“How many dragons have you slain today?” Eve asked.
Abbigail didn’t hesitate. “We’ve killed two and issued citations to four others.”
Plato ambled over, damp with sweat from being a horse for much of the morning. “It’s the invisible ones that give me the most trouble.”
Eve leveled a look at Plato that changed the subject without a single word.
“Yogurt,” Plato replied to Eve’s unspoken question.
“Yup,” Abbigail confirmed cheerily. “Minimize cooking time. Maximum time to play before Mommy has to go again.”
Historical texts indicated that children showed an uncanny wisdom at times, unburdened by propriety and preconception. Eve swallowed back a lump as she gamely held onto her smile. Her five-year-old daughter was performing rudimentary schedule optimization to spend more time with her.
Lunch was, as advertised, a simple meal of pre-packaged yogurt from the Pyrenees Agricultural Station. Abbigail had two 110-gram cups of yogurt with raspberries in them. Eve ate three. Plato preferred the plain variety and downed fourteen, leaving a small village of empty cups on the kitchen table.
Afterward, Plato headed off to shower away the morning’s grime while Eve and Abbigail changed into matching practice uniforms of synthetic silk. Out in the yard, mother and daughter stood facing the Parisian skyline, where tall buildings peeked over treetops to remind them where they lived.
Every action Eve performed, Abbigail mimicked. There were more advanced forms that Eve knew, and she could have performed any part of the routine far faster than the younger version of her could have hoped to match, but that wasn’t the point.
Martial arts had passed father to son, mother to daughter, back in the days when humans roamed the Earth in staggering numbers. While of little inherent value themselves, the exercises and education paralleled the sharing of family and societal values. This was an ember of civilization that Eve enjoyed rekindling.
During the ancient and hallowed traditional forms, Eve had shut off the visual overlay from her implanted computer. Despite a nigh-imperceptible optical shift from the plastic of the lenses themselves, Eve saw the world in its natural state.
INCOMING TRANSMISSION. URGENT.
Eve continued her routine, but there was a momentary falter.
“What is it, Mommy?” Abbigail asked. “Are people in your eyes again?”
She had vowed never to lie to the girl. Eve had been lied to her entire childhood, both by fact and omission. “Yes. But I can look at it later.”
As Eve continued the progression of forms, Abbigail stopped. “Mommy, you have an important job. You can’t just not look at it.”
A tight smile was all she could manage without her composure breaking. What had she done to deserve such a child? “All right. I’ll look.”
Ethical emergency at site 140A. Request in-person disposition of anomalous embryonic development.
It was from Elizabeth55 at the Madagascar Center for Human Advancement. Those were just fancy words to dress up a clone factory. Elizabeth55 had danced the tightrope of every ethical guideline, fastidiously adhering to committee restrictions but always right on the brink of violation. Everything they did was geared toward volume production of humanity, and Elizabeth55 leveraged her position on the Cloning Committee to stretch the regulations at every opportunity.
“It’s Madagascar again,” Eve said glumly.
Abbigail nodded. “I’ll make Daddy finish forms with me.”
Eve knelt down and hugged her daughter. “I’m so sorry. I’ll make it up to you.”
“I know,” Abbigail said. “You always do.”
Eve hugged Abbigail again before she headed to her skyroamer. There might have been time for a change of clothes, but if she had any time at all to spare, it would have been saved for Abbigail.
She called up an Earth map in her lenses. The overlay transparency allowed her to navigate the garden path to the landing area as she planned her trip. The Madagascar Center for Human Advancement blinked from a continent away.
As she powered up the engines of the skyroamer, Eve fired off a quick message to Plato, sending the text sliding off the side of her interface. Abbigail could keep out of trouble until he was done showering.
Eve lifted off and set a course for Madagascar. One feature of her computerized lenses was that they projected images directly to her retinas without distortion caused by tears.
Chapter Seven
Charlie25 had taken command of Mining Vessel 77405, giving the autonomous vessel a captain for the first time in decades. While that fact wasn’t unprecedented, what set Mining Vessel 77405 apart was the fact that its cargo could almost have been considered a crew.
The hold of the mining ship had been converted to scientific use. As Charlie25 stalked the rows of transparent aluminum cylinders, he peered in at the occupants.
Each was suspended in a syrupy non-Newtonian fluid that would resist the shock of sudden acceleration. Each was a hairless, fully formed adult human body. They bobbed in place, limp and unresponsive, fed by tubes and monitored by wires. Bubbles emitted from the rebreather fitted over nose and mouth at regular intervals. Each was an adult fetus awaiting birth.
Even with false delivery orders, Kanto would see them coming.
Charlie25 pressed a metallic hand to the outside of one cylinder, staring at the closed eyes of a body cloned from Mel Atkins, a former wrestling star. Dale2 had picked out the form. No two of his soldiers were alike. This one appeared the most menacing with muscle bulk and tone even in a comatose state.
Not a single one of them scared him half as much as Charlie7.
Dale2’s plan had more holes than a colander. Land at Kanto. Take over by force. Capture the human Rachel and force her compliance. Somehow, the secrets this girl had unlocked would topple the first in a series of dominoes that would bring down the whole system.
Charlie25 didn’t know if that was possible.
Certainly, he could take over Kanto. They’d brought the firepower to do that. No one knew the paltry defenses of the factory better than he. Even Charlie13 didn’t get bogged down in the daily production numbers and inventory capacity issues.
“You don’t even understand what you are,” he told one of the glass jar occupants. She was one of four females in the group. Tactically speaking, twelve male specimens might have been more effective. But armed with coil rifles, strength was only a minor advantage.
Studying the naked, floating body, Charlie25 remembered his time as Zeus. Even without the neurochemistry of a human, he’d had echoes of carnal yearnings. Now, those echoes were faded beyond distinguishing. He knew that the man, Charles Truman, would have wanted this woman. The robot, Charlie25, saw her as merely a proof of concept of Evelyn11’s research, an experiment he had improved upon.
Telemetry came in from the mining ship’s computer. Earth’s atmosphere was two minutes away.
“Mining Vessel 77405, come in,” a voice came over the ship’s receiver. It was Fred62. By vocal impression alone, it could have been any Fred, but Charlie25 only knew of one who would have business with a mining ship inbound from orbit. “We are currently over capacity on ore. Please divert to the West Virginia Orbital Ore Refinery.”
Charlie25 didn’t answer.
With atmospheric impact imminent, he made his way to the cockpit to secure himself for the roughest part of the ride. With each step, his magnetized boots reengaged the steel floor. A sharp enough jar, and he might pull loose from the floor to float free.
None of the specimens were bothered by the lack of gravity, drifting in colloidal goo that would protect as well as secure them in transit.
“Mining Vessel 77405, come in,” Fred62 repeated. “We are beyond capacity on ore at the moment. Alter course. Head for the West Virginia Orbital Ore Refinery.”
Charlie25 felt a smirk tug at the corner of his lips. Still, he made no reply.
“Mining Vessel 77405, I am overriding flight controls.”
“Like hell you are,” Charlie25 muttered.
The frustration was plain in his voice when Fred62 came back on the comm. “If anyone is even up there receiving, you better get your receiver back online pronto. Without traffic control, you’re a menace. I’m putting in a maintenance work order for you—don’t thank me. Just get that defective piece of garbage fixed before you foul up my production schedule.”
The mining vessel rocked as it struck the mesosphere.
