Human Phase

by J. S. Morin

  They’d obeyed.

  Knocking on the door, she’d been greeted by a gruff “Who’s there?” as if the idiots on the inside hadn’t thought to bring perimeter security cameras.

  “Eve Fourteen,” she stated firmly. Somehow the robots who’d programmed this model had even accurately translated how her voice sounded to herself when she spoke. “I’m coming in to work out a deal with Edward Lund, leader of the self-proclaimed Chain Breakers.”

  The eyes of the man showing through the sliver of open doorway widened. “I… um, I…”

  “By all means,” Eve said, hooking a hand to keep the door from sliding shut. In less time than the blink of the man’s eye, she’d pulled building plans for Arthur Miller Theater, looked up the closure force of this particular model of door, and cross-referenced to her own chassis specifications. If it wanted to close, she could stop it. “Tell Mr. Lund I’m here.”

  With an effort best described as swiping a muscular output slider to maximum, Eve wrenched the door wide. The guard at the door wasn’t familiar to her, but his face was referenced in the local census data. Calvin Jackson was his name, a worker on the Mars Terraforming Initiative. She plucked a primitive wrench from his hands. “Be careful with that. You could hurt someone.”

  As he disappeared into the lobby of the theater, Eve found the controls for her audio receptors and tuned them higher until she could listen in on the bickering and infighting of Ned Lund’s lieutenants. It seemed there was a squabble over who was going to tell him that a robot claiming to be Eve Fourteen had showed up to meet with him.

  That suited her just fine. Eve strolled the lobby, examining the posters for upcoming performances with a critical eye. It was strangely comforting just how little her vision had changed. The life-like optics worked just like her own implants—or at least the biological Eve’s implants.

  There would come a time when she’d have to wrestle with the existential dilemmas of all robots after a crystal upgrade. Was she still the same Eve or a copy with memories of the original? But that was for later. At the present, by the shouted conversations taking place out in the theater proper, Ned would be coming soon.

  The theater doors burst open. Ned Lund blustered into the lobby with a week’s bearded scruff on his face and a remote detonator in his hand. “What the hell are—good God… it’s true. You’re one of them.”

  Eve stepped forward, but Ned backpedaled just as quickly. “You have twelve humans and five robots captive. I want them released.”

  Holding up the remote like a cross to ward away a vampire, Ned replied, “You’ve got my demands.”

  “I do. But before I give in to a single one of them, I demand to see the robotic captives.”

  Without the distraction of chemical emotions, Eve could work around the fury inside her and present a calm, dignified facade. How many robots had felt this loathing in her presence without ever letting on? Were the mixes any more even-keeled than a human, or did they merely hide it better?

  “So… they crammed your brain in a tin can and now you’re more concerned with the robots than your own flesh and blood?” Ned demanded, drawing himself up tall as if it gave him the moral high ground.

  “Do you want your list of demands filled or don’t you?” Eve asked.

  A sly narrowing of Ned’s gaze told Eve that he was up to something. “Fine. Follow me.”

  Ned kept watch over his shoulder, never letting Eve out of his sight. To her mild disappointment, he didn’t blunter into anything along the way. All the while, as they slipped through doors meant for theater staff and into the back area of the theater, Ned never loosened his grip on the remote.

  One of Ned’s underlings—Lester Smythe, she recognized from old Oxford records and officiating his emancipation—opened the door for them. A Martian-born named Gregor sat atop the back of a chair with his feet resting on the seat. In his hands, the man held a device meant for aligning magnetic fields in a Truman-Effect reactor that Earth had never delivered.

  Eve appreciated the irony of using the device to threaten the lives of Earth-made robots from the factory their reactor had been diverted toward.

  She was less appreciative of the line of severed robotic heads that lined the dressing room table, stainless steel craniums gleaming beneath the archway of yellow bulbs surrounding the attached mirror. By the glow in their eyes, she deduced that the tangle of cables running in and out of the skulls was enough to power the brains.

  “Is that the device you intend to use if your demands aren’t met?” Eve asked with a nod toward the magnetic alignment tool.

  Ned gave a gesture that combined a shrug and a nod. “One for the humans. One for the robots.”

  “This is all unnecessary,” Eve said.

  “From Earth, maybe it looks that way,” Ned replied. “But we can’t get by out here taking handouts forever, and Earth tightens our belts every time it looks like we’re going to fix this red rock and turn it blue.”

  “Terraforming is a decades-long process,” Eve said. “A week, a month, even a year isn’t going to stop progress on the planetary timeline.”

  “Maybe I want to enjoy it myself, not wait until I’m a shriveled old shell of a man.”

  Gregor heaved a sigh. “I’m a more patient man, but I’m a fair one. Earth isn’t fair to Mars. It never will be so long as it controls us like a puppet on strings.”

  Eve shook her head. “The robots aren’t out to persecute you.”

  “Says the traitor who joined them,” Ned said, spitting at her feet. “Always knew you were too cozy with them; never figured you’d go over.”

  “I was afraid,” Eve said. “I was born as a lab experiment. If anyone had cause to fear robots, it was me and my sisters. More of them died in that lab than survived.”

  Ned swallowed self-consciously.

  “This brain of mine was supposed to be a new crystal for a decrepit old robot who didn’t want to go through upload again, who’d do any vile, despicable deed to taste, to smell, to really feel again. She once offered to put my mind into a chassis. Did you know that?”

  Both Ned and Gregor shook their heads.

  “Ever since, I’ve harbored nightmares about that lab, about being drugged and strapped down, about having my mind treated like a pile of quantum gate operations. You are the reason I’m in this body,” she said, aiming her perfect human-replica finger squarely at Ned.

  “Me?” he asked, indicating himself with the thumb of the hand holding the remote.

  “Yes. You. I was going to see my family, as best I could gather them up on short notice, and give in to the failing body that I’d been born with. But no. Someone had to take my great-granddaughter hostage. And when that didn’t spur me to action, my damned daughter stabs me in the heart by throwing herself before the wheels of your juggernaut.”

  Ned looked puzzled. Gregor nodded sagely.

  “You’re saying you’re only a robot because Abbigail Fourteen is out there?” Ned demanded, suddenly piecing together a stick-figure image of how Abby’s intricate plot had lured her.

  “And now I’m telling you, as the greatest skeptic of human upload to robotic minds, that this is the next phase of human evolution.”

  Gregor and Ned shared a horrified look.

  “Don’t you know your history?” Eve demanded. “That was the stated goal of Project Transhuman. They were never meant to weather an alien invasion. That was Charles Truman improvising. These robotic shells were the cure for cancer, the cure for age-related illness of all kinds, the cure for death itself.”

  “Sounds blasphemous,” Gregor replied mildly.

  Eve threw up her hands. “So is creating worlds, if you think about it. But if you want to go off and find what came next for our ancestors, it’s your protected right as humans. Personally, I feel more alive than I have in… since I can’t remember when.”

  Ned shook his head. “No. No, I’m not having any of this. You, get out of this theater. NOW! Gregor, give her a head to take back
with her. Blank.”

  Eve reached into the waistband of her Kanto-made pants. Charlie7’s spaceroamer had the same standard emergency supplies as his skyroamer, which Eve had ridden in 732 times—a figure that sprang to mind with fluid ease, not even having to consider it. Dating back to his days in the short-lived Human Protection Agency, that had included a non-lethal means of disabling a human.

  In one smooth motion, Eve drew the tranquilizer dart pistol and fired. The first shot took Gregor in the carotid artery. The second took Ned in the shoulder. Eve had reflexes that even her teenage self would have envied, allowing her to catch both men before they fell and hurt themselves.

  Gregor was limp as a blanked robot. Ned was groggy and fading fast.

  As Ned slumped against the wall, Eve stood over him with both the detonator remote and the improvised EMP weapon in her hands.

  “How?” Ned slurred, gazing up at her with glassy eyes.

  “The EMP was real, but this remote is phony,” Eve told him. “Brilliant, actually. All the robots on Earth would never figure out how to disable it remotely, so they’d either be forced to give in to your ludicrous demands or come in and kill you.”

  “No…”

  “Yes,” Eve said. With the strength in her new fingers, she cracked the casing on the remote open. Even a cursory examination of the circuitry was conclusive. “It’s just a light switch. You can turn those indicators on the collar on and off. Oh, how noble you’d have looked if Charlie7 or some ambitious James number had charged in here and saved the hostages, killing you and realizing that there was never a threat to the humans at all.”

  But Ned was no longer listening. He slumped over. Thermal vision indicated a slightly lowered body temperature and heart rate. He and Gregor would be fine.

  Pity.

  Gathering up the collection of heads and their temporary power supply, Eve lugged them toward the exit. Even with her hands full, she was able to open a Social channel and summon tech support to the theater door. “I’m terribly sorry about all this. If I’d suspected for a moment how much I’d enjoy a robotic chassis, I’d have come straight away.”

  On a minimal power feed, the five transorbital crewmen mumbled various thanks and promises to make it up to her.

  Last was Toby521. “Does this mean Rachel might come back too? I miss her.”

  “I imagine so,” Eve replied somberly. There would be no reversing course now. The river of human history had been diverted down a canal long in the making and which Eve no longer had the wherewithal—or the desire—to keep dammed off.

  After she handed over the heads to a Martian team of well-meaning and questionably competent young people, Eve turned and headed back into the theater. There were still the human hostages and six more of the Chain Breakers, any of whom might decide not to come along quietly now that the game was up.

  Eve had a daughter to scold and a great-grandson-in-law to safely secure for Kaylee.

  As she strode confidently through the lobby, Eve reloaded Charlie7’s tranquilizer gun.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Two weeks later, a crowd gathered deep within Kanto. There hadn’t been a gathering like it since the mass awakening of the Project Transhuman team. Robots from across Earth and humans from both Earth and Mars were present as the upload rig thrummed.

  Kaylee squeezed Eve’s hand. Thanks to the miracle of modern robotics, Eve could feel the warmth of that grip, sense the hope and trepidation mixed within her great-granddaughter. On the far side of the girl—though at forty-six, Eve ought to stop thinking of her that way—was Wendy, grasping Kaylee’s other hand.

  Around the room, committee heads and robotic luminaries mingled with Eve’s living family members, human committee members, and visiting officials from Mars. No one wanted to be left out of the moment.

  The upload rig finished. A green indicator light on the side signaled a successful transfer.

  Yet another identical robot stood up and wobbled, looked around the room, and swore. “Operation didn’t work?” Abby asked.

  Eve felt it was her duty to break the news. “Too much internal trauma.”

  Abby’s shoulders rose and fell in a fake sigh. “Well, glad we pre-scanned. Hope I can still compose decent music.”

  “Could you before?” Rachel asked, poking her head from around the upload rig, where she’d been monitoring the transfer. Far from upset that Eve had co-opted her rainy-day chassis, she’d been overjoyed to come to life in the fresh-from-production version Jason90 had assembled on short notice.

  At Eve’s side, Phoebe shrugged. “I liked the song about the duck and the breadcrumbs.” While all the base chassis were identical, Phoebe had taken no time in customizing hers with a vivid green hair teased out in spikes.

  “I was six!” Abby protested.

  Phoebe clucked her tongue. “A career that peaked too soon.”

  Despite the teasing, Abby was greeted with hugs from her robotic sisters and the still-biological members of the extended family. Eve joined in, happy for her daughter, but at the same time, there was something missing from the reunion.

  “What’s wrong?” Phoebe asked quietly, catching Eve alone at the back of the chamber. Now that she was aware of such things, she realized that Phoebe’s voice was modulated just low enough that standard audio sensitivity settings for a robot wouldn’t allow anyone else in the room to hear her.

  “Nothing,” Eve said. “Just prone to stoicism. Easier with emotive shutoffs.”

  “It’s not nothing,” Phoebe said. “I didn’t know you for over a hundred years without picking up on things you can’t hide behind a slick new chassis.”

  Eve shrugged, watching the gathering from behind as Abby described her experience to anyone who’d listen. They were all there, every sister but one that she’d rescued from Creator’s lab so long ago. Kanto’s production team had bent over backward to provide them all new chassis, shutting down a number of major projects temporarily. Everyone was so happy to be reunited.

  “Plato would have hated this,” Phoebe said, picking up without words what was nagging at Eve’s heartstrings.

  “Maybe he wouldn’t have,” Eve replied.

  “We made Olivia the offer of a scan, and she flat-out refused,” Phoebe said. “If Rachel had come up with this plan before Plato’s time ran out, he’d have done the same.”

  Her sister was right, of course. As much as Eve feared what life would be like as a robot, she’d always been secretly intrigued as well. Every cybernetic implant had been one step closer. Plato had begrudged every medically advised device that kept him going. He took too much relish in the act of living; he wouldn’t have wanted to lose that tactile sensation of life—even if new chassis designs were so tantalizingly close to replicating the real thing.

  Charlie7 stepped over and inserted himself in their private musings. “You two wallflowers going to witness our final upload of the day?”

  Eve had let her reminiscing distract her from the next ceremony. Informal as things were on this occasion, this was an event where everyone would be looking to her for approval.

  Jason90 carted in the first chassis that didn’t resemble the others. It was still human-like, but it had been slated for disposal, failing a number of quality checks that its new inhabitant insisted didn’t matter. She hadn’t wanted to divert resources from production that could have gone to someone else.

  When the door at the far side of the room opened, Gemini crept in with tentative footsteps at odds with the monstrosity of an exoskeleton that carried her.

  A hush fell over the upload chamber.

  Of all the remaining humans on Earth—or Mars—no other had gone to greater lengths to cheat death day by day. In no other era of human history could the thin ribbon of flesh and bone have remained alive as anything more than a bedridden invalid. Incapable of speech, of movement, of controlling more of her biological functions, all Gemini had left was her mind. The body that the exoskeleton lugged around was more of a burden than a
living thing.

  Gemini paused just inside the door.

  Eve stepped forward. “Come in. You’ve played your part in this.” She walked down the parted row of guests that had cleared a path for the exoskeleton to pass and extended a hand. “Time to make good on a challenge you made me long ago.”

  “A challenge?” Gemini asked, her voice an echo of Evelyn’s prim, cultured accent, squeezed through the meat grinder of a voice modulation box.

  “You once asked how you were to redeem yourself if you never got the chance. I turned you over to Ashley390 to care for the sanctuary residents on Easter Island. They represented your own sin, even if none had been your personal creation. We,” Eve said, spreading her hands to encompass most of the room, “are your legacy. You might not have had the noblest intentions in creating us, but here we are. The Second Human Era began with you. You’ve lived over a century in exile. Today, I would like to welcome you back to the world.”

  As Eve towed her along the line of attendees, the Eve series clones, newly robotic and organic alike, each offered their forgiveness in turn.

  Even Charlie7, sly old cynic that he was, stood at the end of the line and clapped a hand on the exoskeleton’s shoulder. “You’ve created some of the best friends I’ve ever had. Despite everything you did along the way, I forgive you too.”

  Eve and Rachel maneuvered the cumbersome exoskeleton into the scanning bed. Given the extent of the exoskelton’s cranial connections, the scanning apparatus was superfluous. Rachel connected the upload scanner directly. Even the fresh scan was a formality, a gift to Gemini, allowing her the memory of the event that had just taken place—they could have uploaded her from one of ten thousand of her own scans.

  “I should like to have enjoyed a bit more chocolate while I could still taste,” Gemini said via the box.

  Rachel poked her head out from behind the controls. “Oh, don’t you even start on me. Give me five years—ten tops—and I’ll work out synthetic taste. I refuse to go through eternity without ice cream.”