What Lies Behind: A New Adult Dark Science Fiction Romance

by Travis Simmons

  Natalia wasn’t accustomed to letting Cass dress nice, or go outside. There was no need for it, she was told. She was an indoor unit, and she wouldn’t be going outside as long as she belonged to Natalia.

  Brandon slipped into the driver seat and buckled his belt. The hover car hummed to life and Cass could feel the vibration beneath her feet as the engines whirred, readying for takeoff.

  Brandon pushed down on the steering wheel, and there was a lurch as the hover car lifted off from the roof. Dust kicked up around them but before long Brandon was surging out of the debris and off into the sunny morning.

  Cass’s hand tightened on the seatbelt. She closed her eyes, never truly having gotten used to the feel of being in a hover car.

  “You don’t like flying?” he asked. She could almost hear the smile in his voice.

  “No,” she said, shaking her head.

  “Then you’d hate the jetpack I have.” He chuckled and the car clunked as he reduced the speed and merged into traffic. Her hand tightened more and she let out a strangled breath.

  “Yea, I don’t think I would really like that,” she managed to say

  “Just open your eyes, look around you,” he urged.

  Reluctantly she obliged.

  “Don’t you think it’s lovely?” he asked. “We used to travel on those roads down there, never fully seeing what the tops of our buildings looked like unless we were in helicopters. Now we can enjoy that view.”

  “But are you forgetting the beauty, and safety, of seeing the bottoms of buildings?” Cass wondered.

  Brandon laughed at her. “I’m beginning to think you weren’t really all that damaged. At least maybe not enough to go to the doctor.”

  Cass didn’t want to tell Brandon what she thought the shaking in her hand was really caused from. She couldn’t help but notice that the further they got from Natalia, the more the shaking subsided. Even now, up among the glistening heights of the buildings where she feared to be, the shaking in her hand was non-existent.

  Brandon noticed how she was watching her hand. “Seems like the shakes are gone, but I’d still prefer to see what the doc has to say.”

  “Oh,” Cass looked up into his dark brown eyes. She slipped her hand down beside her so he might not see if it was shaking or not. For some reason, even if he wasn’t exactly a friend, being with Brandon was very relaxing to her. “Yeah.” There was a strange hitch in her chest. One she’d never felt before. She didn’t have a lot of time to analyze what was happening to her though because Brandon was shifting the car out of traffic. He did a slight loop in the air and before she knew it they were settling down in a parking lot out behind a small brick building.

  When the dust settled, Brandon stepped out and shut the door behind him. Cass was still looking for the handle to the door when he made it around to her side and opened the door for her.

  With a self-conscious hand to her tangled hair, she stepped out into the breezy day. Her visual overlay noted that it was eighty degrees outside, and humid, but she couldn’t feel that on her skin. Cass wondered briefly what the humidity would feel like.

  The doctor’s office was a one story building that looked like it had been there since before robots were first created. When Brandon opened the door for her into the small white hallway with orange carpeting, she wondered what kind of building it used to be before it was a doctor’s office.

  Her hand went to her hair, and straightened the front of her tangled, floral print shirt. She’d not felt this way before, but she was almost, what was the word? Embarrassed. Yes, she felt embarrassed to be seen in public in her current state. Her clunky white shoes, her blue polyester pants that Natalia only allowed her to wear, and the floral print shirt that was much too large on her, and many years too old for someone who appeared no older than her early twenties.

  “You look fine,” Brandon said. He led her into a waiting room off the hall. Plastic chairs lined the walls with a folding table in the center that sported magazines that a quick look told Cass were out of date.

  Brandon went to sign her in and she took a seat in one of the chairs that shifted under her.

  Across from her were windows that looked out into a store room that was much larger than the waiting room she sat in. Out there she could see a few random people strolling through lines of what looked like mannequins, but Cass knew they were automatons. She stood and went to the window to get a better look. There was a sense of familiarity about the room, the way the robots stood against the walls set back in opened glass cases. They reminded her more of coffins than they did display cases. The doors stood open so that the people could feel how lifelike the skin was. So they could run their hands through an automaton’s hair and see how it felt almost as real as a humans.

  Almost like a human, but not completely like one, she thought. The thought startled her. She stepped away from the window and now she stared at her reflection more than the families gathering around the newest model of automaton, this one from Japan.

  Brandon’s reflection filled up the window behind her. There was a look on his face that she couldn’t completely read.

  “This place…feels familiar,” Cass said. Was this where Natalia got me from?

  “I imagine one show room is much like another, isn’t it?” Brandon asked.

  The plump receptionist was watching them over the rim of her glasses. She wore a scowl. Why would she be scowling? Cass thought. She frowned at the lady. The receptionist gave a start and returned to her work.

  “What was that?” Brandon laughed.

  “Oh my God, what did I do?” Cass asked, her hands going to her face.

  “Maybe that bump did more to you than you thought?” he led her to the seats, this time in a section where she couldn’t easily see the show room.

  Brandon was chatting away, but Cass couldn’t help to think of everything that had happened that morning. Defense systems. Emotion nodules. What was all of that about? She didn’t know that robots were capable of having emotions…or free will. Was that why she was frowning at the receptionist? Is that why she felt all of this uncertainty in her stomach? This feeling she could only imagine was panic telling her that she wasn’t where she belonged? She should be home with Natalia, with her mistress, serving her and up keeping the home. She shouldn’t be here, in a doctor’s office, waiting to be seen for something that her nanobots probably already took care of.

  Her eyes drifted to Brandon’s hands laying lax and open on the torn jeans covering his legs. His hands were strong with corded veins running over the top. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back. She shouldn’t be here away from Natalia and having these feelings toward Brandon. She couldn’t deny how safe she felt with him. How easy it felt with Brandon. Much easier than with Natalia. She felt comfortable, and oddly, a strange whir in her stomach that made her feel on edge despite her level of security.

  “Cass?” a nurse in raspberry scrubs called from a doorway in the back of the waiting room.

  Cass jumped, her eyes snapping open. All of these new thoughts she’d never had before, all of these new sensations had dulled her to the nurse coming into the waiting room. Cass frowned.

  “That’s us,” Brandon said, helping her to stand, though she didn’t need it. She followed the silver-haired nurse down the hall and to one of the two open doors.

  Cass took a seat on the paper covered table while the nurse asked Brandon questions and checked Cass over. Cass was too lost in her thoughts to pay any attention to what the humans were talking about, and didn’t rouse out of her delirium until the nurse shined a light in her infrared eye. Her visual overlay was blinded out in a rush of white heat that drove every thought from her mind.

  Startled, Cass leaned away and shook her head. Her hand shot up to cover her eyes and the other hand slapped the light out of the nurse’s hands.

  The nurse gasped and stumbled.

  “Alright,” she said and gave a nervous laugh. “We don’t like that at all.” The room slowly c
ame into focus and she saw the nurse bent over a glass tablet, furiously typing notes. “I think that’s all I need. The doctor will be with you shortly.” She didn’t waste any time leaving Cass and Brandon alone.

  “What was that?” Brandon asked when the door thumped shut. He studied Cass intently.

  “I don’t know,” Cass said, looking at her hands.

  “You struck out at her,” he said. “That’s not normal for an automaton.”

  “I know,” she said, her voice more heated than she’d intended it to be. “We aren’t supposed to strike out at humans. It’s in our programming.”

  Brandon frowned and crossed his arms over his chest. Cass wouldn’t meet his eyes because she knew she would only see there what she felt within, confusion.

  “It hurt,” she said after a moment.

  “It’s not supposed to hurt,” Brandon said, his eyebrows clustering together above his nose. “You’re not supposed to feel that. I imagine if automatons could feel anything that it would hurt to have a light shined into your infrared. You shouldn’t be able to feel that.”

  Her hand began to shake. She tucked her hands under her legs before Brandon could see her fingers shivering.

  Was he going to tell Natalia? She glanced up at Brandon, trying to see if his face revealed his true emotions, revealed if he was going to rat her out and have her taken away from Natalia. Honestly, is that bad? She wondered.

  She didn’t want to know. She averted her eyes before she could see her fate written in the lines of his face. He’s only being nice to you, why do you think he’d tell Natalia?

  Why wouldn’t he tell Natalia? Cass was an automaton, she wasn’t a person. She shouldn’t be acting this way. She shouldn’t be having these thoughts and she shouldn’t have been able to feel pain much less react to it.

  It was several tense moments of Brandon staring at her, and Cass avoiding his gaze and staring at the white speckled gray floor before the doctor pushed into the office.

  He was a tall man, with long curly hair pulled into a ponytail. The top of his head was bald and his large stomach appeared that much larger by the button down shirt he wore tucked into his pants. His fingers flickered deftly over a glass computer he carried in his hands.

  He appraised her with a tight smile and held his hand out to shake Brandon’s hand. Brandon offered his hand to the doctor, but didn’t take his eyes from Cass.

  The doctor didn’t seem to notice. He pulled up a chair. “So you say that she’s suffered a rather nasty bump on her head?” Cass didn’t think the doctor looked that familiar until he started talking, and when she heard his voice, she knew she knew him from somewhere before.

  “Yes,” Brandon said, shaking himself from his contemplation of Cass. “I’m not sure exactly how it happened,” he lied. “I came into my girlfriend’s and I saw Cass on the floor. I’m not really certain that she’s alright.”

  “What makes you think that?” Doctor Gerard asked.

  “Show him your hand, Cass,” Brandon motioned to her and took a seat himself.

  Reluctantly Cass pulled her hand out from under her leg. It was still shaking, though not as much as before when Brandon started questioning her so vehemently. The doctor rolled his chair closer to Cass and flipped her hand over. He brushed his thumb over her palm and then pressed here and there as if he might feel something under the surface. The doctor bent low, squinting his eyes at her hand as if there was something there that he could see and she couldn’t. She knew her anatomy well and she knew there was nothing on her hand that would tell him why it was shaking.

  Likely he won’t find it anyway, Cass thought.

  “Hmm,” he said and rolled over to the counter to tap a few times on the computer. He scrunched his mouth up as he read through her files, his finger flipping up through the pages as he went. “Alright, Cass, if you’d lay back for me?”

  “What is it?” she asked. “What did you see in the file?”

  Doctor Gerard frowned at her.

  “And she’s doing that too,” Brandon said. “Questioning. Acting…different.”

  “This isn’t how she normally acts,” Doctor Gerard said, but it didn’t seem like a question.

  “No.” Brandon shrugged. “This just isn’t part of her programming. She’s never questioned things before.”

  “Alright, just lay back and let me take a look,” Doctor Gerard instructed. The paper crunched under her back as she lay herself down on the table. “I’m going to have to switch you off for just a moment while I look, if that’s okay?”

  Cass nodded. The doctor smiled at her, and the room faded from sight.

  Memory cell activated:

  “Well, what do you think of android rights?” the blond woman asked. She leaned back in her chair, watching her husband over the flickering candles on their dinner table. Cass knew these two. She knew the slender blond in the black sweater and faded jeans as Olivia. The man sitting across from her with the dark disheveled hair and five days’ worth of beard was her husband, Jack.

  “As much as I cherish androids, I’m just not sure we’re ready for android rights.” He sat the forkful of pasta on his plate.

  Olivia nodded her head, her teeth worrying the edge of her lip.

  “There just aren’t enough androids yet to warrant such a thing,” Jack said. The argument sounded feeble even to Cass.

  “And then what? When there finally is enough androids are we just going to fumble our way through equal rights like we have every other time we try to incorporate different classes of people into our legal system?”

  Jack sighed and rested his head in his hands. “Maybe you’re right,” Jack said.

  “There’s more to it than that, isn’t there?” Olivia asked.

  “It’s just—” Jack let out a huge sigh and leaned back in his chair. He rested his hands on his lap. “It’s just that androids aren’t humans,” he said.

  Olivia nodded her head, not like she agreed with him but like she was finally hearing something she knew he believed for a long time.

  “Androids only feel what we program them to feel.”

  “What if they are programmed to learn, to adapt? What if they are programmed to be an exact replica of a human?” Olivia wondered.

  “Why would someone do that?” Jack wondered. “Why would someone make a robot able to comprehend things outside of their programming?”

  “You don’t think that will happen some day?” Olivia asked.

  Jack shook his head, defeated. He knew it was a possibility, as Olivia knew it was possible. “That day is very far away, if we are coming to it at all.”

  “We need to have something in place for the androids that are being made now. We need to safeguard the automatons we are producing. Just because they aren’t human doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be protected.”

  “Would you treat your computer like a person?” Jack wondered.

  “If my computer could walk and talk and think and cook and clean and—”

  “Okay, okay,” Jack held up his hands in defeat. He laughed. “Point taken.”

  “We make a really interesting couple,” Olivia said.

  Jack smiled. “What, I’m an engineer working on advancing androids who doesn’t believe they are human enough to deserve equal rights—”

  “And I’m an android equal rights activist.” She returned his smile. “I don’t understand how you can be working on advancing automatons so that they can one day live as humans, but at the same time think they don’t deserve the same rights the humans they are imitating enjoy.”

  “Because it’s just that,” Jack said. “They are imitating humans, they aren’t actual humans. I believe everyone should have the right to live as they choose, but androids aren’t really alive.”

  Olivia nodded. This time there was more heat behind her eyes when she contemplated. “So what is the ultimate end goal of androids? Will they be able to be birthed? Will they be able to breathe and have to take medicine and face the same kin
ds of issues humans face? Will they be able to reproduce?”

  “Olive, I don’t see how androids would be able to reproduce.”

  “Science is growing by leaps and bounds every day, so it’s not completely out of the realm of possibility that one day androids might be able to reproduce.”

  “I guess, if there was ever that technology then those future humans would make that decision,” Jack shrugged his hands.

  “Alright, so we have these machines who have organic parts that are living their lives as humans, but they don’t get any rights to choose how their lives will go?”

  “I just don’t know,” Jack said. “I’m not the speaker for the conservative party, so I guess you don’t have to worry about arguing your case to me.” He smiled, one of his disarmingly wide smiles.

  Olivia laughed at him and tossed her napkin at him, barely missing the candle flame.

  “I see…you can’t win your argument with me, so you’re launching flaming projectiles at me?”

  “Guilty as charged. Just wanted to turn up the heat a little,” Olivia said.

  “You do that every time I look at you,” Jack said, leaning over the table. Olivia met him halfway and gave him a quick kiss.

  “Dinner was good Cass, thank you,” Olivia said with a smile. She gathered her plate and stood.

  “Olivia, I can do that!” Cass protested. “You’ve been working all day.”

  “And so have you,” Jack said, as he stood with his plate too. “You need a break just as much as us.”

  “SEE! She earned the right to have a break, didn’t she?”

  “Oh gosh, let it go.” Jack smiled at Olivia and snapped her butt with the end of his napkin.

  Her answering yelp chased Cass up into consciousness.

  The memory faded and the sterile room came into focus around her once more. She was staring up at a white ceiling covered in black dots. She felt the panel on her side shut.

  “I don’t see anything wrong with her,” Doctor Gerard said, leaning away from the side of the table. Cass straightened her shirt and sat up.