The idea intrigued me. “There’s others like me?”
“Not quite,” he said. “They either went mad—just screaming inanely, or mute, or psychotic—and they couldn’t be used. You’re…one of the first we’ve gotten to actually talk.”
“Spotweld,” said Titan, her tone acidic. “Don’t encourage it. Figure out a way to reinforce the neural blocker and we’ll get back to work.”
I, somewhat reflexively, ran my hand over my head. It was a metal skull, smooth and chrome, without hair. I realised I could feel things; my steel fingers could sense the tactile sensation of my shiny head, feel its cool temperature. Prosthetics were advanced, but it felt very much like my own hand.
This body felt like mine.
“So, okay,” I said, trying to work through this. “So I can’t go back into my old body, so I guess this is me now.”
“Yeah,” said Titan, shaking her head, “that ain’t gonna work. See, we’re losing this war, and we need soldiers. Having kids takes too long. We need soldiers that roll off an assembly line. AI soldiers.”
Made sense to me, with one catch. “That sounds like slavery to me.” Something else she said caught my attention too. “War? Uynov is at war?”
“All the colonies are,” said Spotweld. “The Earthborn are hitting us on every front. We have to hit back.”
I stared. “The Earthborn are still fighting us? After nine years?” They had only attacked last year…or so I’d thought.
“Fighting and winning,” said Spotweld, a sour edge to his voice. “Their clones are too numerous. So this might give us the edge.”
“Which is why,” said Titan, an impatient edge growing in her voice, “we really need to shut you down and figure out what went wrong. I keep telling you—”
“And I keep telling you.” I backed away toward the door. “Nobody’s shutting me down.”
There was a tense moment, where I knew—I just knew—one or both of them were using their implants to call people. Security, possibly. It didn’t matter. It couldn’t happen.
I crouched down and sprang forward, leaping toward Spotweld, letting a metal fist lead the way.
There was a strength in my legs that surprised me. I leapt with the force of a jaguar, my steel hand smashing into Spotweld’s chest, crushing it with the sickening snap of bone. My new body was a lot stronger than I thought.
Momentum carried me forward; I crashed into the far side of the wall, sending a spiderweb of cracks up along it, my fist embedded up to the wrist.
“Shit,” said Titan, turning on the drill. She advanced toward me, the machine whirring ominously as she aimed it toward my exposed back.
I tried to free my hand, tugging frantically. It was stuck. I flexed, bracing myself against the wall, pushing off with my feet. Come on, come on…
Inches before Titan drilled into my head, my hand snapped free. I fell, hitting the ground with a thump. She stabbed the drill down at me, slashing up my side and throwing sparks everywhere.
I grabbed her head and jammed my fingers into her eyes. They went in easily, right through to the squishy centre.
Messy. Titan’s body went limp over me. I tossed it aside and struggled to my feet, still adjusting to the strength and power of my new limbs.
Ominous silence, broken only by the blood dripping down from my hands onto the ground. I walked over to a nearby sink and reached for the tap, accidentally breaking it off. Water sprayed up toward the ceiling in a violent jet which, unfortunately, still felt cold to me. It got the blood off real quick, though, but I knew that it was unlikely nobody would have noticed either the brawl or the water damage.
Time to go. I snatched up one of the tools from the ground—a short, surgical knife—and then I turned and pushed open the door, out into the corridor beyond.
And I ran.
Metal feet clanking on a metal deck, I ducked out into a long corridor full of doors. Plastic, just like the one I’d come from. At either end was a reinforced steel pressure door with a small glass-covered window.
Those two probably lead to other areas. When I was alive I had implants to guide me; using them was like flexing a new muscle, but try as I might, I couldn’t seem to access anything. My whole body was robotic, and yet, all I had were the same standard array of sensors that a human being had. Touch. Sight. Hearing.
No smell, though, which honestly was probably a blessing. Not much smelled good and lot of stuff smelled bad. No time to think about that though.
I studied the pressure door. It looked like the standard seal from a starship; those doors were designed to prevent decompression, but they didn’t need any special skill to open. Just a big red button. It was painted blue.
Two choices, either way being as good as the other. It didn’t matter in the end. I just needed to get to the spaceport. To get away from Uynov. Eris was full of bleeding heart liberal shitheads; I’d probably get sanctuary there. Osmeon, too. Or a starship; big ships always needed crew, and a robot, I imagined, could be real useful. Plenty of options.
But first, the spaceport. I picked a door randomly, jogging up to the door and peering through the glass window. It just showed a corridor beyond. Empty. I touched the red open button and the doors parted with a hiss.
Another corridor, another set of pressure doors at the end. I ran up to the next one. It, too, slid open.
The passageway beyond forked like a T, giving me two options. I chose left and opened that door.
Six exits this time. What the hell…I picked a random one, hoping I wouldn’t have to backtrack.
Another corridor. Three exits. Another T intersection. The door to the left wasn’t blue, it was green; something different was of great interest to me. I opened that one, almost breaking the button.
Beyond lay a large, open room fill to the brim with greenery. The floor was grass, moss grew up the walls, and row after row of plans hung from the ceiling, vines crawling down the chains. They didn’t seem to be growing anything specific. Although there was the occasional flower, there wasn’t a specific crop being produced; no fruit or vegetables. Just…plants.
The ceiling was a transparent glass sheet, crisscrossed with reinforcing beams, and through it I could see a dark green, roiling mist that choked out the sun and smothered everything. Huge buildings thrust up through the smoke, their feeble lights struggling to break through the gloom.
Definitely Uynov. Only a year ago—although I now knew it was more like ten years ago, since I’d been dead for nine—their world had been blasted from orbit by bioweapons. There had been…discussions. Plans to move the survivors who had developed limited immunity into space, or in caves underground, in sealed skyscrapers or reinforced domes on the surface. Guess they had gone with the latter.
At least I was on the surface.
Carefully, I stepped onto the grass, hesitating for just a moment. For some reason, it felt unnatural to put metal feet onto this place of nature and growth, to intrude into such a green place, but fuck that. I didn’t know where that feeling came from and I didn’t care. I was getting the hell out of here.
I strode through the greenhouse, looking for a way out other than the way I’d come, looking for another one of the pressure doors.
“That’s so gas,” said a voice to my left. Some kid, a teenager really, with short blond hair and an ambiguous gender. Looked like a little shit. “Hey. You. You’re one of Doctor Titan’s robots, aren’t you?”
What the hell was I supposed to say? My hand tightened around the surgical scalpel. Should I cut that little bitch’s throat? Or use them as a hostage, maybe?
No. Maybe they could be useful.
“Affirmative,” I said, straightening my back and trying to pretend to be as artificial as possible. “How can I serve you, human?”
His—her?—face scrunched up. No, definitely a him. “What?”
“Uhh—” I stammered slightly before forcing out words as robotic as possible. “I wish to serve you, human. How can I assist you?”
> For a moment, he just stared at me in confusion, and then laughed. “Wow,” he said, “she’s programming them to make jokes now.” The kid bent his arms, jerking them like a robot. “Boop beep. How. Can. I. Assist. You.” His arms flopped down. “That’s hilarious.”
Stunned, I smiled—then I remembered that I couldn’t move my face, so nothing would happen—and, instead, laughed. “Yeah,” I said, relaxing. “Sorry about that. She’s trying a new thing.”
“Yeah, I bet,” he said. “Doing great work.” He looked me over, nodding approvingly. “Lots of motion in those limbs. And your vocal processing skills are really good. She must be pretty proud of you if she’s letting you wander around the facility un-escorted.”
“I’m the apple of her eye,” I said, and I was suddenly glad I didn’t have a proper face anymore, so I couldn’t give a cheeky grin. Which was probably a good thing.
The kid leaned back, sliding his hands into his pockets. “So, what did she build you for? The last one was to test her algorithms for image recognition.”
“To test the process of question and answer,” I said, the gem of a plan forming in my mind. “Do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions?”
“Sure,” said the kid, and I was glad I didn’t kill him.
“How do I get to the spaceport?”
The spaceport at Sector 44, District 101, Block 2 turned out to be pretty large. I later discovered the science facility was pretty important to the locals, and consumed vast amounts of resources, so placing it next to the point of resupply made sense to them and to me as well. It was a giant, elevated disc about a hundred metres up, anchored to a massive ringed support which seemed far too thin to support something of its obvious weight, not to mention the weight of any potential supplies. Engineering technology must have advanced during the time I was gone.
The only way onto the platform was a lift. I could see through the small window in the door that there were two guards standing watch.
“Does this answer your question?” asked the kid, who had insisted that he show me the way.
It did, but it was also less than totally helpful. I didn’t know how resilient my new body was; it seemed pretty tough, but was it bulletproof? The guards had pretty big guns. They might even be specifically equipped to deal with robots going haywire. I couldn’t risk taking them on.
“Yep,” I said, already kind of sick of the kid. “You can go now.”
He scrunched up his face. “You don’t want me to ask you more questions?”
“Nope.” I had what I needed. Although… “Actually, do you know if there are any ships due today?”
He glanced to the door and shrugged. “Beats me.”
Great. “Well, thanks anyway. I should go on and check my interactions with others.”
The kid snorted dismissively. “There ain’t anyone else here, just me and my parents.” For the first time, he looked at me with something approaching scepticism. “ Didn’t they tell you that?”
Titan and Spotweld had been a couple? That would explain why they fucking argued the whole time, but it didn’t help me at all. “You didn’t mention that before,” I said. If this kid found out I just splattered his folks…
“You didn’t ask. Besides, Titan hates it when I point out she’s my mother.” His tone turned bitter and heavily sarcastic. “She insists that she shouldn’t be given any special privilege or treatment because we’re related—anyone can have a kid, 933914! Ugh. Fucking sucks, man.”
“Your name is a number?”
He kind of stared at me like I was a freak. Which, you know, I was. “Of course it is. I haven’t picked one yet. I’m only fourteen.”
“Right,” I said. Typical Uynovians. I stared out of the window at the guards. How was I going to get past them? “That must, uhh, kind of suck for you as well.”
933914 rolled his shoulders lazily. Did all kids shrug so much? “I guess. The main thing that sucks is Titan insisting that I get educated here instead of at the community. I want to go to school with the other kids. I have the grades. Why can’t I do what I want to do?”
“Fortunately,” I said, “I get the impression that this won’t be a problem for you much longer.” I jerked my thumb over my shoulder. “Beat it, kid.”
“Wow.” 933914 put his hands in his pockets again, but this time he didn’t look happy. “That’s just fucking rude. You’re a rude robot.”
“Fuck you, kid.”
He stuck out his tongue and turned to leave, so I turned my attention back to the guards. It was risky to get past them…real risky.
But there was no security on the support pillar.
“Hey kid,” I asked. I had one more question for him. “How do I get outside?”
933914 pointed to the door. “Through there, jerkarse.”
“No, I meant, outside.”
He seemed confused for a moment, then seemed to understand. “Ahh. Right. Of course you can survive in the miasma.” For a moment I thought he wouldn’t answer me, but he did. “All the red doors lead outside.”
This place was a maze. “Can you show me one?”
933914 took a step back, his brow furrowing. “Nah. I got shit to do. I gotta…what did you say? Oh yeah. Beat it.”
My fists tightened by my sides. “Just tell me,” I said, turning to face him angrily.
That scared him. He pointed over his shoulder with a finger, to a pressure door I’d barely noticed was there. “Through there,” he said. “Down the corridor. You should find a bunch of them basically anywhere.”
Answering that question saved his life. Without saying a word, I turned and walked toward the door, opening it. It was just as he said; a red door to my left, heavily reinforced and leading to an airlock. Four black, heavy looking environmental suits hung from the walls in various sizes. I didn’t need them.
I pushed the open button. The door bleeped softly at me and remained closed.
“You have to cycle the airlock,” called the jerk kid. “Tap it twice quickly and it’ll start.” He laughed. “By the way, I hope you die out there.”
“I already did,” I said, tapping my metal fist on the button. Through the pressure door’s window I could see the green mist start to drain out. “I’m getting pretty used to it.”
The airlock cycled. I stepped in and hit the button to repeat the process.
Green mist hissed in, flooding the small room and enveloping me. I’d heard of bioweapons before, but never seen them in action. Instead it felt like the gas chamber once again; I hadn’t seen the nitrogen that had eventually killed me. This time the gas was a dark, evil olive and it sought me out hungrily.
Fortunately, now, my body was immune to such things. The vapours washed over me like ocean water on a beach. The airlock finished its cycle and I stepped outside.
The entire surface of the planet was a barren, lifeless husk. The area I was walking on had been trafficked by thick, heavy boots—probably from the environmental suits I’d seen hanging on the other side. Beyond a small distance I could see the crumpled, withered remains of plantlife, either poisoned by the atmosphere or starved by lack of sunlight.
And I thought Scolla was bad. At least my homeworld only had nasty blizzards and occasional volcanic eruptions. This was something else entirely.
Fitting, it was, that I would be bought back to life on a dead world.
The thought bought me down a bit.
I walked across the barren wasteland, the poisoned wind howling as it whipped around me, seemingly eager to cling to my clean, synthetic body. I realised why after a moment; it was picking the last flecks of blood off the metal and dissolving them. The Prophets Wept…how had even some Uynovians survived this?
The nine years I’d been gone had been marked only by war and suffering. Uynov had never been beautiful, but there was a simple homeliness to it that people liked. Now it was this. Empty.
I wasn’t the most philosophical type, but my father, a Buddhist monk, had sometimes tried to talk to me
about external forces and influence.
Full disclosure: I wasn’t a great kid. Even before the murders. My dad, perhaps, could sense that in me, trying to steer me to a better path.
He once told me that everything outside of ourselves, our own minds and bodies, was constantly trying to impress upon us, communicate with us, passively and actively. Everything. Holonet advertisements, the news and media, our family, friends; the implants we got, the tattoos we added to our skin and those on the skin of others, the weather, our jobs, the colour of a room... you name it. Everything changes us. Everything alters our perceptions and how our day is going to go. Looking at a piece of art could make you happy or sad, or tensed, or relaxed, or trigger a memory that does all those things.
He explained we couldn't stop this process and it was wrong to try. It was built into human nature as surely as any other part of it. We all see and hear and smell and touch and taste things that affect our emotions; what was important, he felt, was recognise when these changes, subtle or overt, were happening, and think and choose to process the information internally before it let us affect our external world.
So I tried not to let the walk through the ruined remains of a dead world bring me down. I processed it internally, and reminded myself that the Uynovians had, seemingly, done pretty well for themselves.
Apart from Spotweld and Titan, of course. Waking me up had been the biggest mistake of their lives.
I reached the pillar. The rings around it were small, but steady enough for me to climb with. The whole surface of it it was rough, coarse, as though some corrosive force had been eating into the metal. That left handholds and footholds in between the rings which might prove useful. I had very few doubts about what this corrosive force could be. It worried me. Was that same stuff eating away at me too? I could feel no pain, but I doubted very much that this body was designed to go outside.
Orphans In the Black: A Space Opera Anthology Page 51
