“There used to be this singer called Mama Cass.” Brandon told her.
“Was she pretty?” Cass asked.
“She was. People harassed her at the time because she was overweight, but she was pretty, and her voice was amazing.”
“I’m not sure if I’m any of that, but I like the name.”
“You’re much more like Mama Cass than Cassiopeia,” Brandon told her. “A beautiful woman with the voice of an angel.”
They both chuckled and he pulled her in closer, his arm wrapping around her side.
He was warm. She could sense in a robot way, not a human way. Still, she liked to imagine she could feel his warmth seeping through her clothes and transferring to her. Something of Brandon within her. Part of his energy. Part of his essence that she could keep with her when he wasn’t around.
“Maybe Libra?” Cass said.
Brandon laughed. “Oh, you’re serious?”
“I take it Libra isn’t a good name?” Cass asked, her eyebrows furrowing.
“You can be whatever you want to be. There’s no need to decide right now,” he told her.
The impulse to get home was growing stronger and stronger, and now something was happening that she hadn’t known to happen before. She was seeing a path to her left, lighting up, showing her the way home. She’d always been able to activate the path on her own, but this was the first time that it had done it on its own.
It was like something was calling her home.
She felt safe here with Brandon. She felt like she could stay there the rest of the night, snuggled tight to him and talking about the stars and dead singers. For the first time since the memory of her previous life, she felt like she belonged.
At the end of that path conjured on the edge of her vision lay a different life. A life that didn’t make her feel safe and wanted. She knew one thing, she didn’t want to go there, but she had to.
They’d been silent for some time, and if it hadn’t been for the fact that Brandon was diddling his leg she would think he had drifted off to sleep.
The rain was creeping closer.
“I really should be headed back to Natalia,” Cass said, pushing up to a sitting position. Brandon’s hand trailed down her side.
“Do you have to?” he asked.
“I don’t want to,” she looked at him. His brown eyes had grown darker, deeper. They were heavy with sleep.
“Then stay here, with me,” he said.
“I would really love to,” she told him. “Come by tomorrow, when she’s gone to work? We can talk more about Mama Cass?”
“Ah, your new namesake?” he laughed and pushed her jokingly.
She giggled.
“Alright, if you insist on leaving me here, all alone to face the long night!”
“At least you can sleep!” she told him, reluctantly making her way away from him.
“Tomorrow,” he called to her retreating form.
Cass hesitated at the door, her hand poised above the knob. She couldn’t reason with herself why she’d come here, other than the impulsion to do so. There was every reason to stay away. If she’d asked, Mathilda probably would have let her stay there with her.
On her way ho…to Natalia’s place, the need to reach her owner had only increased until it was almost a need driving her greater than any force she’d felt before. Even now, standing outside the door, refusing to let her hand lower on to the knob, she was almost shaking trying to resist the call.
She couldn’t resist forever, and finally her hand made contact with the door. Another pulse of need to get home went through her, and she opened the door and stepped in.
The apartment was dark, but that didn’t mean anything to Cass. She could see almost as if it were lit up. The confrontation her and Natalia had early was still evident in the spill of rubbish along the floor. She hadn’t cleaned up. Natalia wouldn’t clean up. That was Cass’s job.
“I can see your red eye glowing,” Natalia said. She was sitting across the room, next to the windows in a high-back chair. She was still dressed in the suit Cass had sat out for her earlier. “That’s just another way I know you’re not human. You have that devil eye about you. It glows like the pits of hell. If such a place exists, I imagine it exists inside the minds of machines.”
Cass didn’t say anything, nor did she move to clean up the mess. She stared at Natalia. She still held the door open.
“Where were you?” Natalia asked.
Cass didn’t answer.
She saw Natalia’s hand move ever so slightly, and a wave of compulsion ran through her. She wanted to tell her. Something felt like it was forcing the answer out of her. Cass wrapped her arms around her chest tighter as if she could keep the truth locked inside her chest with the constriction of her arms.
“Do you know what this is?” Natalia said, holding up something. Cass couldn’t really see it, but it didn’t matter, she imagined it was a rhetorical question.
I should never have come back.
“It’s a little way of controlling you. See, since you’re a machine, and not a human, there are devices I can acquire that can show errant machines who’s really in control. This influences you to my will. For instance, the reason you came home.”
Cass’s arms slipped from her grip, but she wouldn’t show that Natalia had really surprised her. It made sense now. Why else would she have wanted to leave such an amazing evening with Brandon?
Cass backed toward the opened door. Maybe it wasn’t too late, maybe she could still get back to the water and Brandon would still be there.
“Ah, ah,” Natalia said, pressing a button on the remote. Cass froze where she was, the will of the remote overriding her own desire to leave. “See how that works? How can you really imagine you are anything like a human when your will and desire can be overridden so easily?”
Cass’s body was locked in place, she couldn’t answer.
“At any time I want, I can control you with just a click of this button.” Natalia stood and sat the remote down. “Now, do you know what this one does?”
Natalia waited for an answer, but she knew that Cass couldn’t answer. There was a war inside the robot. The remote was both forcing her not to speak and filling her with the desire to answer her owner.
Natalia laughed. “This little remote will help me…well I hate to say punish because I don’t think I’m that ruthless. It will help me ensure that, in time, the remote to control you isn’t even needed.”
Natalia walked around the end of the sofa and closer to Cass. Her bare feet thumped on the floor as she approached—her black skirt swooshing in the darkness.
“I’d hoped that the new installment to the closet would have been enough, but I see it’s not. Some demon programming in you is taking over, isn’t it? Well, I could simply have you wiped again, but this is better I think.” Natalia leaned against the back of the couch. “This way you will want to serve me, not just do it because of some programming.”
She appraised Cass for a moment. Cass wondered what Natalia was looking at, but she couldn’t determine the thoughts running through her owner’s mind.
“Shut the door,” Natalia commanded.
Cass shut the door, and then fell still once more.
“Do you know what an electromagnetic pulse is?” Natalia asked. “You should.”
Cass did know what it was. She couldn’t help but think of Doctor Gerard telling her not to come to his office again. She doubted Natalia’s EMP device would be as forgiving as his had been. She felt a shiver claim her body, despite the will of the remote that she didn’t move.
How did she get one of those? Cass wondered.
“See, all I have to do it push this button here, and you just kinda…go to sleep. Isn’t that right?” Natalia said. “Well, maybe that’s not exactly right. You might wake up with your circuits in a knot. Shall we try it?”
Cass didn’t have time to try to protest. Natalia pressed the button and a wave of heat washed through Cass’s bo
dy accompanied by the worst high pitch noise she’d ever heard. She felt her limbs go lax before the world faded to silence.
The light was above her, swinging back and forth slightly, as if someone had knocked into it. She could feel someone tampering in her stomach. Again, she was aware of the female presence to her left and the male presence to her right.
“How long do you think before she’s ready for her next assignment?” the woman asked.
“Shouldn’t be long, we just have to make sure she goes to the right person.”
“And you think this is what we need? Is this the right thing to do?” the woman asked.
“What’s right and what’s wrong?” the man asked. “She’s just a machine.”
“That’s not how we see it,” the woman said.
“Of course, but I work with on every day, it’s hard to see them as people,” the man said. “Just because a computer runs doesn’t mean it deserves rights, does it?”
The woman was silent.
“Look, your last assignment nearly did her in. If she had actually gotten into—”
“It was necessary,” the woman cut in. “One of the few things left standing in the way.”
“I just don’t understand how you can value the life of a machine more than you can value the life of a person,” the man said.
“There are casualties in every war,” the woman told him.
“Even if they were good people,” the man said.
“Good people can still have bad beliefs.”
The man touched a wire and the light faded, her visual overlay automatically replaying a scene before her.
The door was closed, and there were screams and cries pouring from behind it.
“Cass, let me out!” it was Jack.
Cass cried out and reached for the door, but there was a sense of heat when her hand connected with the handle, and some impulse within her made her step back.
One of the robot safety measures, never put themselves in danger.
She had to save them. Olivia and Jack were still in there.
What was she thinking?
She shook the thought away and stepped for the door. She could see the light of flames under the door and hear the coughing as Jack tried to take a deep breath to shout.
Shadows under the door…
Cass knelt down to look under the door. A terrified green eye stared out at her. It was losing its light fast.
“Jack,” Cass said, reaching out for him. “Jack, hold on.”
Sirens rang outside and lights flashed through the garage windows.
“What did you do?” the woman asked as Cass came back to herself under the overbearing light. “Why did she do that? Why did she call out for Jack?”
“Sorry, my hand must have slipped,” the man said. He didn’t sound sorry.
“Well, make sure it doesn’t slip again. There are other doctors out there that could fill the bill. You don’t want to be a target on our list.”
There was a song playing in her head. A beautiful song.
The nanobots were repairing her again. That much she could tell, but the song drowned out everything else. She knew the song because the name would flash up on her visual overlay before the song started playing. “Dream a Little Dream of Me.” It was by Mama Cass, the singer Brandon had told her about when they were by the lake. The song was lovely.
It reminded her of Brandon in more ways than just because he mentioned it. She really wished that she could live with Brandon in that dream world conjured within her whenever he was around.
Just a machine, that’s what the man in the memory had called her. Just a machine. Everyone seemed to be referring to her as just a machine…including Mathilda, who was so much more than just a machine.
The woman in the memory seemed to think differently. She seemed to think that robots were worthy of so much more than the life most people were giving them.
That woman was Janet, and she wasn’t treating Cass like much more than a machine either, sending her on missions. Ones that, it seemed, Cass didn’t want to go on? How was she any better than the man who thought of her as only a machine? How was she any better than Natalia?
There had been her other family, but they were gone now. Dead, and Cass hadn’t been able to save them because…she was just a machine. Even Jack thought that. Was that the real reason she killed him? She was a machine, and one of the main things she’d been programmed with was the need to survive and not put herself in danger.
But don’t humans have the same instinct? Flight or fight they called it, but they had a choice. There was an “or” in their “programming” that Cass didn’t have. She had a flight, no fight. She wondered if she was completely free willed if she would have that option to fight, or if the will to survive would always override her bravery.
No. That had already been proven wrong. She knew that Natalia would punish her if she went to the apartment, but she still had to go. It could be overridden, but she had to get that device from Natalia.
“Cass?” she heard before her. She couldn’t see though. The nanobots hadn’t repaired her vision yet. The song stopped. “You were singing,” Brandon said. “I told you it was a great song.”
She felt his hands on her shoulders as he turned her slightly.
“What happened to you?” he asked. She felt him pick her up and carry her out of the closet. “I really don’t need to ask. You really need to get away from her. We both do.” He sat Cass on the sofa and she felt him working at the panel on her side. “Whatever she did it’s being repaired. You wait here, I will be just in the other room, okay?”
She couldn’t answer, so she didn’t try. She could feel the nanobots whirling around inside of her, making their repairs and chirping their statistics as they went. Before long all systems were online and she was able to sit up on the sofa.
“Alright,” Brandon said, coming in. He was wearing a long sleeved green thermal shirt today with his customary loose jeans. “Natalia isn’t here. What happened?”
“EMP,” Cass said. Her speaking was slurred, slower than it had been before. The room around her was spinning. She let her head drop into her hands to help stop the sensation.
Speaker damage detected…initializing repairs. The nanobots swirled out of the base of her neck and around to the front of her throat.
“How did she ever get her hands on that?” Brandon asked. He had been in the process of sitting down, but he stopped mid-motion when he heard of the EMP. He stood once more. “Alright, that doesn’t matter. She has it, and it’s illegal. So that means it must be here somewhere,” he said. “We need to find it, and we need to get you away from here. You’re coming to stay with me. I will keep you safe.”
Cass was already shaking her head no.
“Why?” he asked.
Speaker repaired.
“She has another remote that can control me, take away my free will,” she told him. “She will use it on me. That’s the reason I left you last night. I couldn’t fight it.”
Brandon frowned.
“So she has a remote that can control you, and an EMP generator. Those are freaking weapons! They weren’t just outlawed because of how people were using them on robots. They can mess up a lot of shit with them.”
Cass nodded, but her vision wavered out in gray noise when she did. The nanobots reported another damage and came out of their hidey hole. “I know, but while she has the two of them…”
“You have to come with me. There’s no way around it.” Brandon knelt before her. “If you’re staying, I’m staying too, long enough to find that remote and destroy it. Do you think you can resist the remote long enough for me to do that?”
His eyes searched hers.
“I don’t know if I can,” she said. “How could I leave her like that?”
“That’s the remote talking,” Brandon said, sitting back on his heels. “Cass, I really enjoy your company, and I would love to see where this goes. It’s been a long time since I’ve reall
y liked being around someone.”
“You’re around people all the time,” Cass said. She pushed to her feet, though the floor seemed to move beneath them, and crossed to the window. Instinctively she adjusted the environmental controls for the patio, taking into account the overcast day. She looked out the balcony doors and to the street below. Natalia didn’t want her out there, not in her own little refuge, but Cass didn’t care.
She stepped outside anyway. The verdant plants around her almost seemed to exalt in her freedom. The synthetic lighting made the patio brighter than the day really was.
Brandon followed her.
“That’s not what I meant,” he said. “Of course I’m always surrounded by people, but that doesn’t mean I’m not alone. The way we talked the last few weeks? I haven’t been able to talk to someone like that in ages. I don’t know what this is, but I want to see where it goes, and we can’t do that while you’re all muddled up with Natalia’s abuse.”
Cass sighed, some emotion she didn’t have words for bubbling up inside of her. All she knew was it made her feel bad, it made her feel almost like the night she’d stared into Jack’s dying eyes.
She didn’t like the feeling.
“I’m a machine,” she said. “How can you feel this way for me?”
“What?” Brandon asked, drawing nearer. Cass didn’t believe that he hadn’t heard her.
“I’m just parts and wires and gears. Blood runs through your body. Some bio energy produced by water and algae runs through mine! We aren’t compatible. Natalia is better for you!”
“I don’t want Natalia. I don’t care what runs through your body. So what, you are made up of bio energy and wires. Without electric impulses, my brain wouldn’t run. And what’s blood but an organic oil?”
Cass didn’t look at Brandon. She didn’t know if she could have looked at him at that point. She didn’t want to see him then. What would she really see? Was this another torture of Natalia’s? Had she figured out that in the last day or so that Cass wanted more than anything to feel human? What was more human than being able to love and being loved? Had she concocted this with Brandon as Cass originally feared? Her vision was blurred. Her shoulders shook.
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