Extinction Reversed (Robot Geneticists Book 1)

by J. S. Morin

  That was when the door to the lab opened without warning.

  Creator rarely came without forewarning, and I’d never heard of her coming back that early. Sometimes she said she’d be back in three days and it would be five, or she’d be back in seven days, and it was twenty. But she’d never given a short time frame like fifteen hours and come back in four and a half.

  Of course, since you know mostly where this story is going, you also know that it was Plato who arrived in the lab, not Creator.

  He was like nothing I’d ever seen before. He wasn’t a robot at all. I’d never seen anyone who looked more like me than like Creator. I stared, taking in all the nuance of his physical form without even bothering to wonder why he had come.

  Creator had told me that I was unique, the first of my kind, and her personal invention. None of her colleagues ever corrected her in front of me, so either she’d fooled them too, or they fooled me. I can’t say which. But there was another human in the lab, which meant I was not, in fact, the only one of my kind.

  This new human moved like no robot ever had. He had a fluidity and balance that I didn’t even see in the mirror during my katas, and he ran without any visible effort.

  When he stopped in front of me, I craned my neck to look up at him. He had to have been almost half a meter taller than me. His neck alone was thicker than my thigh. Somehow I was surprised that he could speak.

  Words exploded from his mouth. “My name is Plato, and I’m here to rescue you. There’s no time to explain. You’ve got to come with me.”

  He held out a hand toward me.

  If this had been a puzzle, I had failed it badly.

  I was still trying to sort out the “my name is Plato” part of his statement, and he had apparently passed well beyond that in his thinking. Because when I failed to take his outstretched hand, he stooped and put a shoulder to my midsection. Before I knew what had happened, I was being carried out of the lab.

  I’d seen out through the door, of course. Hundreds of times. There was nothing but a short stretch of corridor and another door beyond that I had never seen open in my life. It was open then, and every door beyond it as well. I flew atop Plato’s shoulder, watching as everything I’d ever known shrank in the distance before vanishing around a corner.

  “Sorry about this,” he said to me. “You’ll thank me later. Right now you just need to know that you’re not safe here and that I’ll protect you with my life.”

  I don’t know why I believed him. At the time, it never occurred to me to doubt him. I was afraid, but it was of some unknown calamity that he hinted at, not of Plato. Now I know that he was referring to Creator herself.

  All I knew then was that the muscles of his arm and shoulder were like steel but warm and reassuring. The way he spoke made it sound like he knew what he was doing, and I trusted that he did.

  For a time, I expected that he was taking me to Creator—after all, where else would I be safe? But instead, we came up to the surface.

  He had a skyroamer waiting and helped me inside. It was a lot like yours, but it was warm inside. The sky was dark outside, which struck me as strange because the clocks in the lab had said it was the middle of the day. I’d learned all about orbital mechanics, planetary rotation, and the cycle of day and night. At 11:30 in the morning, the sun ought to have been nearly overhead.

  Instead, we flew away together in the predawn gloom. We were in the air when morning sunlight began to leak over the horizon.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  “Hold on,” Charlie said, interrupting Eve for the first time since she began her story.

  It was a little disjointed and unevenly paced, but for a girl who’d probably never told a story before, it was remarkably cogent.

  “Which way was the sun in relation to the skyroamer’s heading?”

  “It was definitely behind us.”

  The dawn sun behind them meant Plato had taken her west, which suggested somewhere in Europe. “And your heading?” he asked, unable to hide the excitement in his voice.

  Eve was quiet.

  “A heading is—”

  “Oh, I know what ‘heading’ means,” Eve said quickly. “I just… wasn’t paying attention to that. Plus, Plato kept us close to the ground and didn’t fly a straight line, so the sun kept moving and disappearing the whole way. Sorry.”

  Eve hung her head and turned away from him. Did she expect him to punish her for not knowing?

  Charlie7 rested a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “That’s all right. It’s not your fault.”

  But it was.

  Eve was born and raised to have a mind like a computer. She could have easily tracked their path if she’d been paying attention to her surroundings. But yet, as she sat there in the passenger seat, knees hugged to her chest, it was hard to be angry with her.

  The gaps in Eve’s life experience were difficult for Charlie7 to grasp. He’d lived ten lifetimes with years to spare, seen things no living creature ever had.

  How would Charlie7 speak if he didn’t know all his letters? How would he run if he’d never learned to walk?

  “Will the world ever make sense again?” Eve asked as her breath fogged the cockpit window.

  Charlie7 locked in a heading and set the controls to automatic. Unbuckling his safety harness, he scooted over to wrap an arm around Eve.

  “No. It never will. The day the world makes sense to us is the day we stop thinking. Having all the answers would be worse than death. I hope for your sake that the world is always filled with wonder. But if it’s within my power, I’ll make you feel safe in the world again.”

  As the skyroamer shot over the Atlantic, Charlie7 hoped he’d chosen a place where he could keep that promise.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Steel shrieked on stone as the automaton set down a shipping crate on the storage room floor. Evelyn38 saw the minuscule gouge and knew that for as long as she had this lab, it would forever be a reminder of the automaton’s incompetence. She resisted the urge to chastise it. The blame lay in the programmer, the manufacturer, and perhaps even herself for failing to account for the mindless machine’s shortcomings. Thirty-two of them were busy at work, transporting her equipment and specimens to the new lab.

  “Carry on,” she said offhandedly as she swept out through the door that led to her new office.

  The mindless mechanical beasts would perform their tasks much the same whether Evelyn38 watched them like a nanny or left them to fend for themselves. She had an alert set for when they began to move the valuable cargo.

  For now, Eve’s creator satisfied herself with unpacking her personal belongings. Her desk was already in place. The smaller crates that contained her office décor were gathered around it in neat stacks. Filtering through them, she found the one that mattered most and popped the lid.

  A polished steel shelf gleamed along one wall supported by bolts driven straight into the rock of the smoothed cavern wall. One by one, Evelyn38 took out the skulls of all her Eves and set them in order. Nothing in the crate had been labeled, but to Evelyn38’s eyes, each was as distinct as the girls themselves had been.

  Evelyn38 paused, as always, to share a quiet moment with the skull of Eve9 before setting it in place with a kiss.

  After the skull of Eve13, Evelyn38 left an empty space, then placed the newest addition to her collection. This skull was so fresh she kept a cloth beneath it for the moisture. The rods that had left the telltale pattern of holes in it were packed up in a different crate, ready for cleaning and reuse in their next host.

  The creator and destroyer of humans cupped the skull’s cheekbone with her hand. “Eve, I’m so sorry. The odds were slim that you were ready, but I’m running out of time. You were such a good girl, all the way to the end.”

  If Eve15 hadn’t been fully prepared for the procedure, the chance of Eve16’s brain being any better suited was vanishingly small.

  It was a despicable waste. Fifteen years’ effort squandered on th
e one, fourteen likely to be turned to vapid mush soon enough with the other.

  Evelyn38 had to keep trying. The alternative was unconscionable. The crystalline brain supporting her consciousness was failing. It had passed through multiple chassis upgrades and lived past its recommended replacement date by decades. Acting without urgency was begging for her brain to enter a cascade failure from which she’d never recover.

  Submitting herself to the Upload Committee and putting her crystalline matrix in the hands of their technicians was liable to reveal a host of unpleasant truths best kept private. She could find ways to acquire a new crystal but none that would allow her to continue using the Evelyn38 identity.

  The Eves had to work.

  Infrequent as they might be, the brain transfers were a horrific experience. Theoretically, robotic brains could be transferred electronically from one mind to the next indefinitely. But each time, the old host was wiped by an electromagnetic pulse.

  No duplicates. That was the rule. The Upload Committee enforced its edicts by limiting upload hardware to sanctioned and monitored use.

  Upload was no phoenix rising from its own ashes. It was the cannibal eating his enemy’s brain to gain his wisdom. The new host believed it was the original; the old was consigned to oblivion.

  If Evelyn38 were going to go through that hell once more, it would be to a human body. One life to feel, to taste, to smell, to be truly alive again. Sixty or eighty years would be enough. By then, she could decide how much longer to prolong her existence, if at all.

  Picking up Eve15’s skull, Evelyn38 gazed longingly into those empty sockets. “I could have been happy, being you.”

  Evelyn38’s notification went off, sending a signal from computer brain to thinking brain that her automatons required more direct supervision. Setting Eve15 back on her perch, she idly wiped her hand on her lab coat and hurried out to check on their progress.

  The line of brainless humanoid machines marched into Lab 07. One by one, each automaton set down an 8-liter gestation tank filled with translucent green fluid.

  Electricity had been restored using an old geothermal generator, and Evelyn38 crawled around the floor connecting power to each. The tanks lit with indicators and readouts.

  None of the specimens had been damaged in transit, and the nutrient levels would hold until the supply lines could be attached. Two empty tanks stayed dark, but the rest contained the embryonic and fetal versions of Eve.

  Evelyn38 tapped on the glass and winked one optical sensor at the eldest of the fetuses, a 32-week specimen.

  “One of these days, you’ll grow up, and we’ll be sisters. I might be a 72-year-old woman in an 800-year-old body now… but I think I’ll make a good big sister.”

  The sound of feet marching in step caught Evelyn38’s attention and sent her rushing back to the main corridor. A pair of automatons lugged the first of the sleeping pods toward Lab 06.

  Stretching only half the length of the well-padded interior cradle, Eve21 slept comatose inside. The sedative line into her median cubital vein was intact. The brutish automatons—who had no business handling such precious children—hadn’t dislodged it.

  Given ideal circumstances, Evelyn38 would have transported each girl personally, under light sedation, just enough so they wouldn’t remember the trip. There was far less chance of damage that way. But haste called for shortcuts, and shortcuts meant risk.

  Better a spoiled specimen than a committee investigative team finding her project.

  Eve20 passed by in the care of another two automatons. Then Eve19 as well.

  Evelyn walked alongside Eve18’s sleeping pod for a few steps. The girl’s head was shaved smooth and clean. Evelyn38’s first order of business once Lab 01 was up and running would be to prep the girl for surgery and install her transcranial probes. She’d been teasing the girl for months with the promise of Eve14’s probes, telling her how grown up they’d make her look and how pretty she would be. The fact that she’d be getting the ones from Eve15 wouldn’t matter an iota; the girl would never dream where they’d come from.

  Though they slumbered a few meters apart as they were carried off to their respective labs, not one of the Eves knew about the existence of the others.

  One of them would have to work. The technological side was sound. The upload equipment functioned as intended by all measures Evelyn38 could test. What she lacked was a brain that was fit to accept the massive intellect that had accumulated during her interminable life.

  Tomorrow, either Eve16 would prove more worthy than her elder sister, or she would perish as well. Evelyn38 expected the latter, but there was nothing else to be done.

  The only way to save any of these other Eves was for James187 to drag Eve14 back where she belonged.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Plato’s skyroamer, Betty-Lou, had the fuel to keep this chase up for days. Plato, on the other hand, was running on fumes.

  The plan had been for the crazy robot with the dart gun to chase him and lose track of Eve. That part seemed to have worked exactly according to plan. But the follow-up step had been for Plato to lose his pursuer, then double back and collect Eve. Any planning past that wasn’t worth a boar’s snout.

  Even after an overnight game of hunter and prey, Plato still looked back and saw the robot’s craft right behind him.

  Of course, the good news was that the robot didn’t seem intent on making him crash. Able to tolerate G-forces that would pop Plato’s eyes out the back of his skull, the robot cut inside Plato’s every turn and accelerated faster than he dared.

  It would have been child’s play for the robotic pilot to clip wings with him, force them both to crash into the forest or the sea. Instead, the pursuing pilot played it safe.

  Plato’s eyelid’s drooped.

  The ancient heroes of the silver screen could have turned to coffee for solace. Plato had never so much as tasted the stuff, but he envied the magical powers it displayed over wakefulness.

  The cache of food stowed beneath the pilot’s chair had run out a couple hours back. Stabs of hunger clawed at Plato’s stomach from the inside.

  Eve’s self-appointed bodyguard was on his own, and he wasn’t going to last much longer. Time to make a hard choice. Either Plato would have to violate one of his major tenets, or he wasn’t getting out of this jam. Continuing to play duck-and-dive with a tireless opponent was only going to get him killed or captured.

  A few taps on the cockpit console enabled a voice scrambler that would make Plato sound like a robot. The pilot of the other craft would know better, but anyone listening in might be fooled. He opened a low-power transmitter channel and locked a directional signal onto the other vessel.

  “Was marvelous flying with you,” Plato said in his best impression of Toby22. “Don’t you think it’s about time we both went home?”

  Plato banked left and pulled up, feeling the G-forces press him into his seat. For those few seconds, he felt light-headed and couldn’t even take a breath.

  “Come on. Come on,” Plato muttered to himself. “Break off and go home.”

  It was a long shot but the best of his options if it worked. Anyone overhearing the message would think the two of them had been joyriding. Robots had such weird hobbies. It was unlikely to raise many eyebrow actuators.

  Why did robots even bother with eyebrows? Plato blinked to clear his head. This wasn’t the time to get philosophical about robot quirkiness.

  The opposing pilot banked even tighter, and Plato could barely twist far enough in his seat to see the skyroamer on his tail. For the first time, he got a close look into the cockpit. His pursuer didn’t look amused.

  Feeling around behind the seats of Betty-Lou, Plato put his hands on his rifle.

  The MEMP rifle was useless in hunting animals, but its monopolar electromagnetic pulse could wipe a robot blank. Twenty-five petabytes of robotic thoughts and memories reverted to clean, empty crystalline matrix in a nanosecond. The same technology sanitized obsole
te brains after they’d been uploaded to a new host chassis. Amp up the power output, refine and columnate the field, and it was an ideal weapon for fighting back against immortal machines.

  But one of Plato’s core tenets, more sacred than the rest, was never to harm an innocent. This pilot on his tail had lost track of Eve, so it was only his own skin Plato had to worry about. Plato couldn’t even use her safety to justify bending the rules.

  Killing a robot who hadn’t actually harmed a human was a line Plato wasn’t ready to cross.

  Piloting with one hand, Plato used the other to access one of his fake accounts on the Social. It was time for a gambit.

  Every robot had a personal account linked to their unique ID, but so many of them had dummy accounts for the sake of privacy or anonymity that a few more never raised any alarms. Their whole society was founded on not having any founding principles.

  How the robots lasted a thousand years was a mystery to Plato. More than two thousand individuals without a single government. Committees regulated certain aspects of life on Earth, but if it didn’t fall under a committee’s purview, it went unnoticed. There were rules, guidelines, and edicts aplenty but not a single law.

  No laws meant no law enforcement. No surveillance meant no data analytics. It created a million holes for someone like Plato to hide in. He was Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. He was the Illuminati and the Knights Templar. No one believed in him, and therefore, no one accounted for him.

  There were perhaps two unwritten laws that summed up present-day Earth better than anything else Plato could think of.

  First was to look out for your own turf. There was no authority to turn to and no signal to shine into the night sky to summon aid. A friend might help in times of need, but that just led to the second unwritten rule: Stay on everyone’s good side.