King laid the photo down on the table again. He blinked, consulted her file, but found nothing helpful for this situation—even though he didn’t doubt Annalise’s truthfulness. His senses read her body signs very clearly and her vitals were now steady as a rock.
“I don’t know what to say, Annalise. What do you expect from me? No, that’s not what I meant to ask. Damn it—I think I’m in shock—and please excuse my language. My body temperature and respiration are suddenly erratic. Since my restoration, my cybernetics tend to have blips when I get this emotional.”
“It’s okay to express yourself around me anyway you want,” Annalise said firmly. “I choose to believe your strong reaction is because we still matter to you on some level…at least a little. It also tells me I was right to trust you with the truth.”
King rubbed a hand over his face, something he’d seen Peyton do when frustrated. He wanted to tell Annalise he couldn’t help her or her family…and part of him didn’t want to help. But some other part caused a nauseous feeling in his gut when he thought about refusing.
Doc said he deserved to seek as much closure as he needed about any part of his life. Right now he certainly needed to know Annalise’s daughter hadn’t gone off the deep end too far because of what Norton had done to them both. He had started over just like Seetha Harrington had intended him to do when she sent him back to Norton. Now she needed to start over too.
King quietly studied Annalise’s concerned gaze holding his. Did Annalise even ask him to see the daughter? Or was that debate just going on inside his head? The startling information had given him so much to think about he’d lost track of their conversation.
“Don’t you think seeing me again might be forcing a cruelty on your daughter, Annalise? It would be bad if she got her hopes up about my relationship to her since I’m never likely to recall the missing information. Even if I did magically get the erased info back, Dr. Winters has confirmed the Cyber Husband files don’t have any human emotion attached to any of them. For a restored cyborg, it’s like reading research information. When I was with your daughter, I promise you I was nothing more than just a series of AI programs running. Every answer I have ever made to any wife was pulled from a help file with thousands of politely phrased choices meticulously coded by some sensitive cyber geek at Norton. As I learned a wife’s preferences, I coded the ones that netted the most positive results. That’s all my responses could have ever been with Seetha.”
“I hear what you’re saying, Kingston. I’ve read all about Cyber Husband programming. Like you say, your relationship with Seetha started out quite logical and formal…and just as impersonal as you describe. It started out just like ours did when you came to me. But I’m telling you, as surely as I am sitting here across the table from you now, following codes was not the full reality for you. After six or seven months with Seetha, you started to change. While I don’t have any proof outside of a few pictures I rescued from the trash, I would bet my entire fortune you had genuine human feelings for my daughter. No one will ever convince me differently. With Seetha, you were always more than just a cyborg programmed to please her.”
King’s mind whirled. Despite Peyton’s brags about his processor being superior, his own sifted through all his Cyber Husband files with lightning speed. Since he had only been contracted four times, it was not very difficult. He ran through them repeatedly, changing just one variable each time.
On one pass, he decided to stop at each wife’s file and just catalog his body’s reactions to acknowledging its existence. Ironically, that’s how he found the blip on Seetha Harrington’s. Sweaty palms. Nervous stomach. Anger. The last reaction checked him up because it was illogical even though it felt very real. The data about Seetha had been erased. How could his human side be angry over what he didn’t remember? Why would any part of him care? Not even her photo jogged his recollection.
He ran the same check again on all four files and got the same result…with one exception. Each time he ran the check, the sensation of being angry when he got to Seetha’s became a little sharper. Of course it could be just trepidation over the lack of data and not knowing why it was gone. His cyborg side could never condone something just being missing—it would search for a reason. But as he and Peyton had discussed many times, anger was a portal emotion for cyborgs. Behind it lurked a reality which was nearly always shocking.
So many good things had happened to him in the weeks since he’d been restored—like the restaurant, just to cite one big one. That didn’t mean he had no awareness of the bad following him around, like the ongoing distrust most people in the world carried for his kind.
He knew he wasn’t an emotional coward. Regardless of the outcome, he wanted to know all of his reality, no matter how much potential it carried for causing him more pain. Right now, he wanted to know with his mind what caused his body to get upset over nothing more than a placeholder file and an erasure notification.
“No matter how many times I have watched you freeze up to think, I still find the process alarming. Perhaps I’m just nervous because last time you did it, you left for good. You can’t know how relieved I was to see your name listed as one of the restored cyborgs. I was even more thrilled when you created social media to talk about the restaurant. I knew then I would one day find a way to talk to you about what happened.”
King looked hard at Annalise. Her genuine concern for him as well as her daughter was in her kind expression. How could he be unkind back? The bottom line was that he couldn’t.
Knowing he’d done the right thing by both Harrington women was going to be worth a little drama and a lost afternoon of his time. So he’d talk to the daughter—figure out the anger thing—then they could both go on with their lives.
“Okay. You’ve convinced me. I guess I’m at least willing to talk to her. Where is Seetha now?”
Annalise swallowed hard, frowning as she held his curious gaze. “I don’t know. I was hoping you’d help me find her.”
Chapter 2
Seetha rolled over in the tiny, narrow cot that served as her bed. She pulled the cover up to her chin and willed her overactive mind to shut back down so she could go back to sleep. Once she rose for the day, the guard would be alerted by the surveillance camera watching her every move. After that, there would be no resting until she was returned to her cell.
The engineer side of her winced as it always did when she heard grinding metal joints accompanied by soft shuffling.
“Engineer Harrington. A unit is malfunctioning. You are needed.”
Sighing, Seetha rolled over and blinked at the AI bot addressing her. “Okay, Rodney. Give me ten minutes of privacy to wash and dress.”
“Last time I gave you privacy, you returned to sleep. Such a response is unacceptable today. Unit M716-D7 is unable to function and requires your immediate attention,” Rodney stated flatly.
“Last time I fell back asleep because you had only allowed me three hours of rest. We’ve had this discussion many times and I wish you would allocate the data storage to remember it. Full humans cannot function efficiently on three hours of sleep. However, I rested sufficiently last night. If you must stay, please turn your back so I have the illusion of not being watched.”
Seetha sighed heavily as he ran her polite request through his limited processor. Her answer came in seeing Rodney turn away after more than thirty seconds of internal debate.
Sighing again, but this time in resignation, Seetha climbed from her bed and walked barefooted to the small adjacent bathroom. She longed for a shower to help her wake up, even if it was in the small concrete stall with no curtain, soap, or even a cleansing cloth. Unfortunately, there was no time for more than a cursory cleansing at the sink.
Rushing through her usual routine, Seetha finally walked naked back to the small trunk of clothing stored by the cot. In the absence of having underwear, which for some bizarre reason the work camp guards had confiscated upon her arrival, she pulled on a couple layers of
loose tops and pants. She was still wearing only the clothes she’d brought with her initially, even though they hung loose off her body now. Despite the sticky discomfort she would have from hours in the mid-afternoon heat, multiple clothing layers gave her a sense of security. They also allowed her to wick off some of the jungle’s humidity. Stuffing them into the ancient one hour sanitizing cycler each day kept them wearable.
“You have two minutes left of your time request.”
Seetha snorted at the reminder as she strapped on her sandals. It was amazing how much logic sounded like sarcasm to her after dealing with the bots for so long. Finally she stood, grabbed a piece of fruit the bots pulled from the trees for her, and one of the protein laden food bars which comprised the bulk of her two meals a day diet. She looked down at her trim body, remembering a time when she had been very round and soft from an over abundance of food. The man who cooked for her back then had insisted he preferred some padding on a woman.
Seetha wondered what King would think if he saw her body now. Probably nothing. Probably he would look at her body and smile that polite stranger smile she hadn’t been able to stand seeing on his face the last time she saw him. Maybe he hadn’t recalled the many times his lips have travelled over every inch of her, but she sure the hell had.
“Okay, Rodney. You can turn back around now. I’m ready to go.”
Seetha listened to Rodney turning, remembering his first calibration. While she’d had him cracked open, she’d made sure his joints grinded against each other loudly enough to provide a warning to her of his arrival. Fortunately, he had bought her explanation of his parts wearing as the reason for the sound.
“Are my tools already by the unit?” Seetha asked.
“They will be there upon our arrival. William 874 is bringing them,” Rodney supplied.
“Oh, William’s bringing them. Well, that’s just great,” Seetha said without any joy. Her cyborg assistant gave her the creeps, even though she had compassion for the fact they were both captives of the facility. “Are you staying to observe the repairs?”
“Yes. I am staying to monitor.”
Seetha nodded her head, happy to have a chaperone around William. The guard bots—really all the bots—were programmed with the lowest of human recognition programs so they didn’t understand nuance. The sole cyborg trapped there with her retained some memories from day to day, but she knew his data storage area was also routinely wiped. She could always tell when it had been done because of his surprise to see her. It reminded her of King getting his brain stripped clean of all his knowledge of their long-term relationship. She hated Norton and anyone associated with them for taking it from him. They were responsible for her loss of King, and now they were responsible for her being a prisoner here.
“Rodney, you’re moving slower today than you were yesterday. Soon you’re going to need to be calibrated again,” Seetha said, attempting conversation to see if he’d figured out her shoddy work strategy yet.
“Affirmative. There has been a slight decline in my performance. It is not yet critical enough to require your attention.”
As a small rebellion against a system she had not been able to fight alone, Seetha had dubbed Unit G356 as “Rodney”. Her personal guard bot was only programmed with the basics of human communication, but he was quite capable of forcing her cooperation to do as he asked. She had learned that first hand in the initial couple of months where she had resisted their demands for her services. She felt ashamed now every time she thought about how easily she’d given up her I-won’t-do-it crusade. Now she jumped when they said jump. She was no better than the programmed cyborg they sheltered or any of the AI units. Compliant since those first months, she spent all her days since fixing broken robots and dreaming of escape.
Over time, the passive strategies of botching repairs helped her feel a little less helpless. She had tried to increase Rodney’s positive responses to her queries, but his processor didn’t allow for very much learning. Not that she really knew how to affect his logic and thinking—that kind of programming had never been in her skill set.
Using the cover of her alleged “fixes” on the bots, she had somewhat managed to slow Rodney’s physical responses. When that had worked, and gone undetected, she had done the same to all of the AI units she’d worked on. She wasn’t sure if she’d cracked open all of them yet, but she worked on several each day. Even with hundreds of bots roaming about the grounds, she had to be close to having worked on them all at least once.
She didn’t know who worked on the cyborg. Those mysterious cyber geeks arrived in a black air jet late in the day and left the next morning while she was typically heading to her first task. The bastards knew damn well she was being kept there though. They flew over her freaking head and passed her by without so much as a nod of recognition. Maybe they weren’t human, or completely human, but somehow she had a sense they were, and that they were colluding with her captors. It was a short jump in logic to suspect it since she knew with certainly Norton was behind her incarceration.
“Damn Norton and every cyber scientist working for them,” she mumbled. She had no fear of the bots or the cyborgs reacting to her grumblings, but it was a waste of energy.
Thoughts of Norton working on King haunted her more than usual as she trailed behind Rodney to where William was waiting for her. The cyborg nodded briefly when they made eye contact and held up her box of tools. Briefly meeting his gaze, she said hello before moving to the AI unit already prone on her workbench.
“What kind of malfunction is he having?” Seetha asked, shifting into business mode. There was a pause while Rodney consulted the trouble logs wirelessly. The transmission technology in the AI units was outdated and painfully slow. She prepared her mind to hear the issue when she heard his joints squeak as he moved forward.
“His legs are randomly failing to respond to movement commands,” Rodney recited.
“Thank you,” Seetha said automatically. She knew her guard bot didn’t appreciate or understand the social graces her mother had taught her during all the pretend tea parties they shared after she was adopted. Now those good memories of her childhood were practically the only ones untainted by the gross imbalance of technology in the new, so-called ‘peaceful’, world.
Glancing around at the environment she’d been allowed to enter, but not leave, Seetha once again regretted ever signing up as a Peace Brigade Volunteer. How was she to know Norton’s consolation reward for King’s return was only a cover for obtaining the manual labor they didn’t want to pay a normal engineer to do? She finished eating the food bar as she motioned for William to set her tools at the end of the bench. The fruit was devoured a few bites later as she picked out what she needed.
Reaching behind the AI unit’s neck, Seetha flicked the switch to deactivate him. Like all the others, he turned off in the same manner as the antique dolls her mother had collected. It took a little time for the unit’s energy to bleed off his very efficient solar battery and shut down.
Sadly, Seetha ended up thinking about King again as she waited. She’d lost track of time during one of her extended depression periods, but it had been something like two years now since she had returned him to Norton. She wondered if her former Cyber Husband was at this moment getting to know his new wife as well as he’d once known her.
Shaking her head at the useless musing for a life she was never getting back, Seetha stepped forward and opened the panel located in the unit’s lower abdomen. Pushing futile thoughts of her former husband away, she got down to work in diagnosing what was wrong.
***
In the Norton cyber lab they’d taken over this morning, King stood elbow to elbow with Peyton looking over Eric’s and Nero’s shoulders as they crunched info and searched for details. Kyra’s assistant, Nero Bastion, was looking through King's old Cyber Husband records which he had located in Norton’s extensive database. Corporal Eric Anderson, the scout on their fire team, was manning the workstation next to
Nero and searching for the last time Seetha Harrington had been heard from or seen.
“There’s a locked file in your records with just a date on it. I think it corresponds to your last update,” Nero said, glancing over his shoulder at the giant looming over him. He’d gotten used to Peyton’s size pretty quickly. Kingston West was even larger and a bit more intimidating, especially with the unhappy frown he was sporting today.
“What’s that mean?” King demanded
Nero shook his head. “I don’t know exactly, but whatever is in the locked file is obviously data they didn’t want many people seeing. The old Brad could have had this open in ten seconds, but it's going to take me a while. I would ask Brad to try, but he’s not as sharp as he was before his conversion.”
“And thank God for that,” Peyton exclaimed.
Nero nodded, but sighed. “Yes—but this task would be much easier if we had access to the version of him that helped lock up files like this.”
“I’m sure there are plenty of other evil cyber scientists in the world if we decide we need a still functioning one badly enough,” Eric said, swiveling to look at Peyton and King. “Your wife sent you back to Norton and then she disappeared the week after—well, days after really. That’s a long time to be missing and never heard of again in our technologically advanced world. Her ID chip should have shown up somewhere.”
King winced at hearing Seetha being called his wife. Though he knew it was illogical, he felt guilty for not being able to think of her that way. “Are you saying you think Seetha Harrington is dead?”
“No,” Eric said patiently, “it means I never found any data in UCN records talking about her. But I also can’t find her, her ID chip, or any traces of her existence anywhere…which is strange. Her demise is not outside the realm of possibility, but what happened to the body? A missing Jane Doe morgue check came up with zero matches. Her ID chip should still be pinging unless it got cut off or scrambled somehow. If she’s dead, you can bet it’s because of that locked file Nero found. In my opinion, she’s been made to disappear.”
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