What Lies Behind: A New Adult Dark Science Fiction Romance
Page 8
“We need to go,” Cass told Brandon. Her eyes were wild. Her body filled with the need to leave this place.
“We came here for a reason,” Brandon told her. “We need to see Olivia.”
“I can’t. It’s too early,” She tried to pull away from him, but Brandon stopped her with an iron grip on both of her shoulders.
“Cass, fight it.” He looked deep into her eyes. His brown eyes were so dark as to almost be black today. There wasn’t any of the jokester in his eyes that she was so used to seeing. He was serious. “You need to fight this. Your programming can’t take you over unless you let it. Remember, you have free will now. Your programming doesn’t matter.”
“I don’t think I can,” she told him. She tried to yank away from him, but Brandon shook her.
“You have to. Are you going to let those humans win? Are you going to let those people who programmed you win?”
Cass shook her head. Fire flared through her stomach, but this wasn’t circuits being burned, this was something she hadn’t felt before: determination brought on by anger. “No,” she said, resisting the urge to run from this place. “I won’t.”
“Alright, which way then?” Brandon said, relaxing his grip on her shoulders.
The way was down the hall and to the right. There was only one door at the end of the hall, and a large mahogany desk sitting outside the doorway. A tall woman sat behind the desk filing her nails. A phone receiver was wedged between her ear and her shoulder. Her hair was black as were the rims of her glasses and the blazer she wore.
As Cass and Brandon moved into view she wrapped up her call and hung up the phone.
“How can I—” her mouth hung open.
It was those few words that she uttered and Cass knew who the woman was.
“Janet,” Cass said. The woman from her dream, or memory, or whatever it was. “‘On to the next project’ Janet?”
“You’re not supposed to be here,” Janet whispered. Her face seemed frozen in terror. “Not yet.”
“I know,” Cass told her. “But I need answers.”
“Olivia isn’t in,” Janet told her, straightening her blazer and schooling her emotions. “You will have to come back some other time.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Cass said, leaning against the desk. “I need answers and you’re going to give them to me.”
“I said come back later, when you’re needed.”
“So this is my other programming?” Cass asked.
Janet held up a device that Cass recognized from when Doctor Gerard neutralized her.
“I can see that you recognize this device,” Janet said. She looked at the pen shaped object, the nail of her thumb toying with the end of it. “This EMP is probably unlike any that you’ve encountered, do you know how I know?”
Cass stared at her.
“It’s specially programmed for you. All it takes is one click of this button and every electronic component in your body becomes nothing more than a melted, fused ball of metal.”
Cass stepped away from the desk.
“You will have your answers,” Janet said. “Soon enough.”
“What am I meant for?” Cass asked.
Janet only smiled.
“Cass, come on,” Brandon said, pulling her away from the desk. “We need to get you away from here.”
Janet waved goodbye at her, a triumphant smile ghosting across her face. “See you soon.”
“This isn’t over,” Cass said, pointing at Janet. “Mark my words.”
Brandon steered her out of the hallway and down the way they’d come.
“How does everyone have one of those?” he asked once they were safely on the elevator once more. “Aren’t those EMP devices illegal now?”
Cass didn’t really hear him. Her thoughts were on something else. The confrontation that was to come: her destiny.
“When are you going to learn?” Natalia asked, pulling Cass’s head back by her hair. She steered her near the closet again.
Cass wanted nothing more than to scream out and beg Natalia not to put her in the closet again, not to put her in that box, but she refused to show weakness to Natalia. Isn’t that what she wants?
“You aren’t human. You don’t get love. Who could ever love a machine?” Natalia pushed Cass into the closet, her head slammed off the wall. Before she could turn and try to get out of the closet, Natalia had slammed the door shut and threw the bolt.
“I’m your owner. I’m his girlfriend. He loves me. And he will never love a machine!”
The blinding white light flared on accompanied by the low pitched squeal that made her circuits dance on end.
Cass crumbled to the floor, nearly paralyzed, and hoped that this time her motherboard would be well and truly destroyed so she didn’t have to face this torture again and again.
“I don’t know why you put these thoughts into her head!” Jack said. It wasn’t the first time lately that Cass had heard him raise his voice to Olivia. It was always the same thing, Olivia trying to encourage Cass that she was more than a mere machine.
“Because she deserves to know what is out there in the world outside being an automaton,” Olivia said. There was fire in her voice alone with a note of pleading. “She deserves to know what it’s like to love and be cherished.”
“But she’s just a machine! I care for her as much as you, but she’s not human,” Jack retorted.
Cass sat on the concrete stairs outside the kitchen door inside the garage. This was where she lived, in the garage. She rarely needed to power down, and Olivia and Jack didn’t think she needed to either, so they’d provided her with a nice space in the back of the garage where she could work on art, crafts, and puzzles. It kept her entertained, and she thought she enjoyed it.
Do robots really enjoy anything? She wondered. Jack was an engineer, he made robots so he would know, and here he was saying that she didn’t have the capacity for such things.
“If her free will was on,” Olivia said. “It would be different.”
“And why would anyone put her free will on?” he said. In his voice Cass could hear that he though Olivia was being absurd.
“Because she’s a thing, Jack,” Olivia said. “She deserves the right to choose.”
“To choose what? Think of all the times your free will got in the way, hurt you. We are protecting her. Besides, automatons weren’t made to be another race. They are more efficient computers. How on Earth can you imagine that turning on their free will would even help?”
“The singularity,” Olivia said. She scoffed. “You’re worried about the singularity as much as the conservatives.”
“It’s something everyone should be cautious of,” he said. “They are computers. Even if they have free will, they are made to calculate and not let their emotions get in the way. When they see how horrible humans are, what do you think the logical course of action would be?”
Olivia didn’t say anything.
“She’s not a person, Olive. She doesn’t need to know how to love. And who could really love a machine anyway?”
Something slapped her in the side of the head.
“Stupid machine, I said wake up!”
Cass opened her eyes. The door to her closet was open and Natalia stood there, framed in the light from the living room.
“Your clock broken? My coffee isn’t made, my breakfast isn’t done. I had to get my own clothes around.”
Cass didn’t say anything.
“Well? Are you just junk now? What’s the point of having you if I have to get my own clothes out? The shower wasn’t even started for me.”
“I’m sorry,” Cass said, standing. Her legs were uneasy from her time in the closet with the noise and the light. Cass was painfully aware that she’d made it through the night.
“You know where we send machines that aren’t useful any longer?” Natalia said.
“No,” Cass mumbled.
“The scrap heap. Do you want to go to the junkyard?” She
was following Cass into the kitchen now. She flicked a lighter and puffed a cigarette to life. “Holo on,” Natalia said to the holovision against the wall. The little ball of light floating against the far wall, above shelves of various plants, expanded and melted away to reveal a news cast sitting around a table. They were in three dimension, as if they were there inside the living room.
Cass pulled a cast iron pan out of the oven and sat it on the stove.
“What are you doing?” Natalia asked Cass who was on her way to the fridge. “I don’t want breakfast yet. I want a shower. Get it ready for me.”
Cass mumbled her apologies and scurried across the living room and through Natalia’s bedroom to the master bathroom to get the shower ready. She adjusted the dials specifically as Natalia liked and when the water was steaming up the bathroom, she went to the adjoining closet.
Today was Tuesday, so the calendar on her visual overlay said. That meant Natalia was having a meeting with the CEO of the magazine, her father. She would want to wear a nice dress suit. Cass pulled out one she’d fabricated for her a few days before. It was a black suit with a wispy skirt, tight jacket that laced up the front, and a white cotton shirt underneath. She sat the suit out by the couch in the closet and located the pair of heeled boots Natalia normally wore with the outfit. She placed the shoes beside it.
As Cass was about to leave the closet, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. She still wore the outfit from the day before. Her hair was messy now, given the abuse of the night before. She figured if she was anything like a human, and not a machine, she would have bruised all over her face.
On her way to the kitchen to make Natalia’s breakfast, Cass stopped by the patio doors and the huge windows that took up the outer wall. It was such a beautiful day out. Cass wanted nothing more than to go out and enjoy the sun, but after last night, she really didn’t think she should.
She adjusted the controls on the environmental system that oversaw the patio garden. It wasn’t until Cass heard Natalia on the phone talking to Mrs. Birch that she realized how long she’d been standing there and that Natalia was done showering.
The dream was still with her, clinging to her memory. She really wasn’t a human, even if she did have her free will now.
Was that something Olivia did for me? Cass wondered. How could she imagine that Olivia was doing anything for her? Maybe it was Janet that was helping her. If this could be called help.
Moreover, what was she going to do about Brandon? Did she like him? What right did she have to split Natalia and Brandon up?
She isn’t good for him, she thought. There was anger in her internal voice. She crossed her arms over her chest and stared out the window, not really seeing the hover cars as they went by.
“I want scrambled eggs today,” Natalia said. “One whole egg, two whites. Make them moist this time? Don’t dry them out like you always do.” Natalia came into view drying her long dark hair. Her lithe body was wrapped in a bath towel three times too large for her. It was almost like a toga they used to wear in ancient times, Cass mused.
Cass returned to the kitchen. She returned the cast iron pan to the oven and pulled out a more appropriate one. She cracked the eggs into the pan and went about setting out the jelly, the fat free butter, the knife, plate, and fork all on the table. She salted the eggs heavily, and used too much pepper. The eggs, half raw, went onto the plate. The wheat toast was three shades darker than Natalia liked it.
Cass stood in the corner, waiting for her owner to arrive. She felt at her rat’s nest of hair and frowned. Then she realized what she’d done. Her hand began to shake. Cass knew that Natalia didn’t like her breakfast the way she’d cooked it. Once she learned how Natalia liked her breakfast, she’d always cooked it the right way. However, this morning she hadn’t. This morning she specifically cooked it in a way that would anger Natalia.
“I’m running late,” Natalia said, whisking into the kitchen, her heeled boots thudding along the tongue-and-groove flooring. “I don’t have time for breakfast. It looks horrible anyway.”
She gathered up her purse, her work papers, and her umbrella and was out the door in a cloud of juniper perfume.
Cass sat at the table, studying the runny eggs and the burnt toast. Even with her free will, she did not do this kind of thing subconsciously. She’d always had to make herself do it, or at least be aware that she was going against her programming. Now, she hadn’t even thought about it.
Was it the anger she’d felt outside?
She turned her head to look out on the stone patio. The sun bathed the terracotta pots and the dense green foliage outside. She remembered the time she’d spent with Brandon. Was she really going to give him up? She liked him that much she knew. It was more than friendship to her. She liked to think that it was more than friendship for Brandon too. The memory of what Natalia had said the night before intruded on her. And the dream…
She wasn’t a human.
But that’s what I want! She thought. She tried to scrub the thought from her mind. She was a machine, as Natalia told her. She wasn’t supposed to have wants and desires. Was she? No, she was supposed to have wants and desires, whatever wants her owner programmed her with.
Cass shook her head to clear it of all the thoughts running through her synthetic mind. She didn’t have time to consider all of this. She had to clean.
When she was done with the kitchen, she made her way to the bathroom.
Brandon was insisting that she become an android, as if she had any control over that. He seemed to want it before she’d really wanted it. Now, after the turn of events with Natalia, it was almost all she could think about.
To be an android would be the closest she could get to being human.
She picked up the mess of the bathroom and deposited the towels into the hamper. She stopped at the closet and looked inside. Like always, Natalia had gone in there and strewn clothes all over the place, as if Cass hadn’t already sat out the outfit that Natalia would end up wearing for the day.
Most of the items on the floor were things that Cass had fabricated for her.
She picked up the orange dress that was more for days off and lounging in the sun than it was for work. It had thin straps that went over the shoulders. It was tight around the breast but then flared out down to the knees.
Cass liked it. She ran her fingers over the fabric. Her visual overlay told her it was a cotton and polyester blend. She held it up to herself and studied her reflection in a mirror. It would look nice on her, she decided.
She stripped out of her old clothes and put the dress on. Cass spun here and there, looking at her reflection in the mirror.
A knock sounded at the door and she jumped. Her hand pressed to her chest, she urged herself to relax.
She went to the front door, her bare feet thumping along the way. It was Brandon.
Cass frowned, though inside she wanted nothing more than to smile. She thought about not answering the door, but then he’d go out and look for her.
She opened the door and he smiled at her. When he saw the tangle of her hair and that Cass wasn’t smiling, he frowned.
“Another rough night?” he asked, letting himself in.
Cass shut the door behind him. Her hands went to her hair to smooth it into place.
“Here, get a comb and a clip, I will help you,” Brandon said.
She went to the bathroom, gazing at the mess of the closet she refused to clean.
So much like the first time, she thought. Funny this should end right where it began. She grabbed a comb and a flower clip and returned to the living room. She sat before him and he silently did her hair.
“We can’t keep doing this,” Cass told him, closing her eyes to steel her resolve. “We can’t keep seeing each other.”
“Because of how rough it is on you?” Brandon asked, not pausing in combing her hair. “I don’t like what she’s doing to you. It’d be easier if you’d take me up on becoming an android.”
“Yea,” Brandon said. “You’re right.”
“And there’s no way out of this for me,” she told him. “Unless she kil…shuts me down.”
“What’s this really about?” Brandon asked her, sliding the clip in place.
“This is about what’s right. This isn’t ever going to go anywhere,” she told him. “I’m just a machine.”
“You’re so much more than that.”
Cass opened her mouth to respond, but at that moment keys jingled outside the door. A key slipped into the lock and Cass jumped up. She put her hands to her face, not sure what to do. Natalia was home, and there she was, standing there in her clothes and with her hair combed.
She ran her hands up to her hair, and was moments away from yanking the clip out of her hair when Brandon stopped her.
“It’s okay, I’m here with you,” Brandon said.
“What about when you leave?”
The door swung open and Natalia came in.
“Brandon,” she said, her voice carrying a note of pleasure and surprise. “I didn’t expect to—,” her gaze fell on Cass. “What are you doing?”
“I…”
“You, what?” Natalia said. She dropped her keys with a clatter on the table beside the door. “I can’t wait to hear this. This should be good.”
“Natalia, it’s my fault,” Brandon said.
That was the wrong thing to say. Natalia turned her eyes on him.
“You…encouraged this?” she asked. “Did you tell her to disobey me? Have you been dressing her yourself like a life size doll? Did you strip her granny panties off her and wash her down? Did you have fun?”
“What? You’re being crazy!” Brandon said.
“I’m being crazy?” Natalia asked, flattening her hand against her chest. “I’m worried that my boyfriend is running around on me with my machine, and here I catch you guys in the act. I’m sick of machines thinking they can take what’s ours,” Natalia said.