Android X: The Complete Series

by Michael La Ronn

  X fired at Jeanette, but a bullet struck his hand and deactivated his gun. Brielle stood at the entrance to a secret door in the wall, a gun smoking in her hand.

  X withdrew his broken gun and replaced it with a knife; he aimed at Jeanette with his other hand and guarded his face with the knife.

  “Brielle!” Shortcut cried.

  “Shortcut, she’s not the Brielle you remember,” X said.

  Brielle joined Jeanette. “You won’t stop the Android Winter,” she said.

  “No!” Shortcut said. “Listen, you can’t do this. You can’t—”

  “I’ll kill you myself,” she said. She ran at Shortcut, but Shortcut sidestepped her.

  “Listen to me,” Shortcut said. “You’re not evil.” He ducked as she slashed a knife at him, and he stumbled back and struck the wall.

  “Goodbye, Shortcut,” she said, cocking her gun and putting it to his forehead.

  BANG! X shot Brielle in the head, and she collapsed to the floor.

  Shortcut crawled over Brielle’s body and opened her black box. Tears were in his eyes. He connected himself to her black box and tried to reprogram her. “Stay with me, Brielle.”

  Brielle looked up at him. As he recoded her emotional programming, her eyes flashed over into their familiar green. “I’m sorry, Shortcut.”

  “You’re back,” he said, smiling. “It’s okay. It’s not your fault. Just stay still.”

  “It’s funny,” Brielle said. “Even when I was trying to kill you, you never attacked.”

  “Why would I do that?” Shortcut asked.

  “It’s over for me, Shortcut. But at least I know what it feels like to be loved.” She reached up and stroked his cheek, smiling at him as the color in her eyes began to fade.

  Shortcut wiped tears from his eyes and said, “Stop talking like that!”

  Jeanette laughed. “Brielle, kill him.”

  Brielle’s eyes turned red again, and X’s algorithm chip buzzed.

  “It’s a trap!” X cried. He reached into Brielle’s head and crushed her black box, rendering her motionless in Shortcut’s arms.

  Shortcut held Brielle with tears in his eyes. Then he set her down gently and lunged at Jeanette, aiming his rod at her. “You killed her!”

  Jeanette turn her gun toward Shortcut, but X shot it out of her hand and pumped her with bullets until she lay on the floor in a pool of blood.

  X couldn’t believe how fast it was over.

  “Finally, you did it,” she whispered. She struggled to breathe as her chest rose up and down rapidly.

  X looked at her, and felt a stab of what he thought humans would call pity. “I’m sorry it ended this way,” he said.

  “You are the face of true intelligence,” Jeanette said. She forced a smile through her pain. “Willing to kill in order to advance your status, yet kill without being evil …”

  She looked up at the ceiling and said, “I’m sorry.” Then she looked at X again. “You may hate me, but I was just … being a good daughter.”

  “Who have you been talking to?” X asked.

  “I wasn’t strong enough,” she said. She reached for X’s hand.“Remember me. Remember—”

  She fell back onto the floor, clutching her chest. Her breathing slowed, then stopped.

  Shortcut grabbed the tablet from Jeanette’s dead body. “We’ve got to shut this place down.”

  X grabbed the tablet and adjusted himself to the singularity androids’ strange language. He decoded the instructions to the city and disarmed the missile control. The ground stopped shaking, and one by one the towers of the city went dark.

  “The system should finish powering down shortly,” X said, studying the panel. “We did it. It’s over.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Shortcut said. He started for Brielle’s body, but X grabbed him.

  “We can’t,” X said. “It’s too dangerous.”

  Shortcut gave a sad nod to Brielle and said, “I’m sorry.”

  They ran for the door, but just as they reached it, the room hummed and the computers restarted, sending tremors through the building as the lights of the city flickered back on.

  “What the?” Shortcut said. “You said the city was shutting down!”

  X looked around and his algorithm chip buzzed again. He scanned Jeanette, who lay dead on the floor. She hadn’t moved.

  “This legacy will be fulfilled,” said a computerized voice.

  “Who are you?” X asked.

  “You don’t recognize me, X?” the voice asked. It was ethereal, everywhere and nowhere at the same time. X scanned the voice; he detected a human trace mixed in with the digital modulation. Then his eyes widened at the realization. “No—it doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Jeanette fulfilled her duty as a wonderful daughter. But she was foolish in her last moments. She forsook me just like you forsook her.”

  “Yvette Crenshaw,” Shortcut said, scratching his head. “I thought you died.”

  “We barely escaped from the fire. I was badly burned. My daughter kept me alive even at the expense of her health. I didn’t think I would survive, but she found a Terminus ship in the Arctic. Using singularity technology, she was able to upload my brain to the city’s neural network. In return, I accessed all of the singularity androids’ knowledge and passed it on to her.”

  “That’s why she was always able to stay one step ahead of us,” X said.

  “Fifteen steps, to be exact,” Yvette said. “I admire you, X. I really do. But you are fighting against forces you don’t understand.”

  “You knew where Terminus was all along,” Jazzlyn said. “You could have destroyed the world. Why didn’t you?”

  “I had to soothe my daughter’s pain,” Yvette said. “And I needed Jeanette to help activate the city. I needed her to create an android army, most of whom you destroyed, X. Lax served his purpose in that regard, giving us the android parts we needed, for a price. But Jeanette was so damn stubborn. She wouldn’t shut up about her father. It was better for her to learn the harsh truth than to keep prattling on.”

  “So you let her cause carnage and destruction,” X said.

  “Sometimes you have to let your children find their own way, even if it means death.”

  “Those are harsh words for your daughter,” Jazzlyn said. “You don’t sound like a widow who misses her husband, either.”

  “Of course, I miss Roosevelt,” Yvette said. “More than your feeble mind will ever know. But when you gain artificial intelligence like I have, you learn to make your decisions based on facts, not emotions. It’s surprisingly easy. Surely you understand, X.”

  X fired at the computer panel, but Yvette laughed. “Destroying this machine would be like destroying a cell in a healthy body. This entire city is an organism. It would take you millions of years to defeat me. Once I was uploaded to the city’s mainframe, the transformation was complete.”

  “What about the terms of the will?” X asked. “Did you know about them?”

  “Yes. Roosevelt was my husband—nothing he ever did surprised me. But I couldn’t let Jeanette know. She would have turned good, and I couldn’t have that. So I had to use you, X.”

  X’s eyes widened.

  “Do you really think that Roosevelt programmed the upgrade timing for all those memories inside you?”

  “But they were real,” X said.

  X’s algorithm chip buzzed so hard it twisted upon itself. He had never been so thoroughly fooled, and he clutched his head.

  “When you met Jeanette for the very first time in that apartment and the metal arm attached itself to your skull, I installed myself inside of you. I couldn’t reprogram you—Roosevelt’s code was too good. So I used singularity code to mask myself inside you; since the UEA engineers have never seen it before, they obviously missed it. I stayed with you, and whenever you were in danger, I triggered the memory upgrades from Roosevelt. I couldn’t let you die. When you received your memory chip back, it made my life significan
tly easier.”

  “But Dr. Crenshaw programmed those memories for me,” X said. “They were incremental upgrades.”

  “I accelerated them,” Yvette said. “Roosevelt had incredible foresight, but he didn’t plan for your upgrades to kick in for a few more years. He never expected things to happen as they did. He suspected that Jeanette might have disputed his will, but he never planned on me doing it. Yet he knew that you would uphold his legacy to the death, upgrades or not. Every epiphany I gave you solidified your purpose and made you stronger, making my daughter’s choices inevitable. With you as the beacon of justice, there was no way she could turn good. I needed her to activate Terminus so that I could rise.”

  “You’re evil,” Shortcut said.

  “No remuneration or apology can ever replace Roosevelt. All I wanted was his body so I could give him a proper burial. All of this could have been prevented if the UEA had done the right thing. But my priorities have changed. Now that I am Terminus, I have devoted myself to knowledge in a way Roosevelt never could.”

  The waterscraper shook as it began to ascend toward the surface of the sea. Several screens fell off the wall and shattered. X struggled to keep his balance.

  “Thanks for the memories, X,” Yvette said. “Please begin your journey above ground. I have chosen to spare you. I hope you will join me when the Android Winter is complete. There will be no use fighting us, at least.”

  “The singularity androids are dead,” X said. “You’ll have no army to fight with.”

  Yvette laughed. “You have such a short memory for an android. When Jeanette hacked into the UEA database, I went with her. And I left a piece of myself in the network. I will turn the UEA network against its citizens. I won’t need an army. Every non-Crenshaw android will be under my control.”

  “We have to get out of here,” Jazzlyn said. “We can’t defeat her.”

  “We have to do something,” X said.

  Jazzlyn shook her head. “We need to regroup.”

  X’s algorithm chip told him that Jazzlyn’s advice was the most logical. He nodded, and he and Jazzlyn ran out of the room; Shortcut followed, but then shut the door behind them at the last second, locking himself in the room.

  “Shortcut!” X cried. “What are you doing?”

  Shortcut sat at the command center as his lens lit up. He looked longingly at Brielle’s body.

  “Are you serious?” Jazzlyn asked. “Quit being stupid and let’s get out of here.”

  “Guys, let’s be honest. The world is going to end if we don’t take drastic action.”

  “You’re not making sense,” X said.

  “I don’t have to make sense for once,” he said. “Please, go. And trust me.”

  “I’m not leaving without you, Shortcut,” X said.

  Jazzlyn pulled X back and pointed toward the elevators. “Good luck, shrimp.”

  X’s algorithm chip crunched several scenarios and told him that they would all die if he didn’t run. He had no choice but to leave Shortcut. He placed his hand on the glass. “Goodbye, Shortcut.”

  Shortcut nodded and said, “Goodbye, buddy.”

  X and Jazzlyn ran into the elevator, and the doors shut on X’s last view of Shortcut, who was waving at him as a wall of green information bloomed around his head.

  At the top of the waterscraper, X and Jazzlyn ran onto the roof, where a black plane was hovering above. It let down a ladder, and they climbed aboard.

  “Where’s Shortcut?” Fahrens asked.

  “He stayed behind, sir.”

  Fahrens’s mouth twisted, but his voice was calm. “The missiles are going to launch any moment. Brace yourselves.”

  Terminus rose and broke through the ice, then suddenly began to sink and explode. A volley of missiles launched from every building in the city. They rose into the air and then turned back on themselves, destroying the city in a brilliant series of blasts.

  “What—?” Fahrens asked. He turned the plane around and pointed it south; as they flew away, they saw an android climb out of the burning waterscraper.

  “Look!” Jazzlyn said.

  “What’s it doing?” X asked.

  The android stood staring at them. Another blast engulfed the waterscraper in flames and the entire building crumbled into the sea.

  Craig’s voice sounded through the radio on the dashboard. “Nice job, guys! How’d you do it?”

  “I’ll tell you all about it when we get back,” X said. “But Craig, we lost Shortcut.”

  Chapter 21

  Back in the UEA headquarters, X sat in front of a terminal, authoring an entry about Jeanette Crenshaw in the UEA database.

  It had been several days since the Terminus battle. In the interests of full transparency, the entire event had to be recorded in the public database. The Council could no longer hold back Crenshaw’s secrets. They had wanted a historian to interview X and write the entry, but X had asked to write it himself, out of respect for Jeanette and Dr. Crenshaw.

  Writing an obituary about someone who had tried to destroy the world was challenging, but X found that the words flowed quickly:

  JEANETTE CRENSHAW WAS AN ANDROID ENGINEER AND SCIENTIST WHO ATTEMPTED TO DESTROY THE WORLD. SHE IS THE DAUGHTER OF FAMED ANDROID ENGINEER, DR. ROOSEVELT CRENSHAW, AND YVETTE CRENSHAW.

  BORN IN THE UEA, JEANETTE SPENT A CAREFREE CHILDHOOD WITH HER PARENTS, EXPERIMENTING WITH ANDROIDS AND ENJOYING THE AFFLUENT LIFE HER FATHER WORKED SO HARD TO GIVE HER.

  WHEN HER FATHER DIED, JEANETTE DISPUTED THE TERMS OF HER FATHER’S WILL. DURING AN ARGUMENT WITH UEA OFFICIALS, SHE WAS HURT IN A FIRE AT THE CRENSHAW MANSION. SHE FLED TO THE BADLANDS, WHERE SHE WANDERED FOR SEVERAL YEARS, GATHERING ANDROID PARTS TO CREATE HER OWN ANDROID ARMY. DURING THIS TIME, SHE FOUND THE APPROXIMATE LOCATION OF THE CITY OF TERMINUS AND USED ITS SAILING TECHNOLOGY TO HOUSE HER OPERATIONS.

  IN 2300, SHE MADE HER INTERNATIONAL DEBUT WITH A SIEGE ON THE UEA HEADQUARTERS. AFTER A HEAVY CAT AND MOUSE GAME, SHE WAS KILLED IN TERMINUS.

  WHILE JEANETTE CRENSHAW WILL BE REMEMBERED FOR HER ACTS OF EVIL, SHE BELIEVED THAT SHE WAS UPHOLDING HER FATHER’S LEGACY. SHE WAS A DEVOTED DAUGHTER TO HER PARENTS AND A LOVING MOTHER TO HER ANDROID GANG.

  There. X typed the last word and sat back, studying what he had written. Good enough. Comprehensive enough to paint Jeanette in a bittersweet light. She deserved that.

  “Looks good,” Lonnie said, peering over X’s shoulder. “I think you just about captured the essence of it.”

  “Thanks, Lonnie.”

  Lonnie leaned on his broom and shook his head. “She’s gonna be more polarizing than her father, now.”

  “They are two sides of the same coin,” X said. “One light, one dark.”

  “Well, I guess she preserved her dad’s legacy all right,” Lonnie said. “No one’ll ever be able to mention one without the other now.”

  “That was her problem,” X said. “Her flaw was that she was the perfect daughter. She lost her identity in obedience. She couldn’t define herself without Roosevelt and Yvette. Too bad for Dr. Crenshaw. He was trying to accomplish things. Now there’s no one alive to carry on his legacy.”

  Lonnie nodded as he stroked his chin. “Might could be. But doesn’t change the facts.”

  X hit the submit button. Jeanette’s picture flashed on the screen as it entered the database, and the terminal chimed. “That’s all I owe you,” he said to her, shutting down the program. And then he pushed Jeanette out of his memory, only needing to call her up if it was relevant.

  “You gonna forget about her just like that?” Lonnie asked.

  “Her life is just a series of facts now,” X said. “Now that she’s dead, the world can continue living. We can move on.”

  “Yeah,” Lonnie said. “I guess there’s somebody else that you have to remember.”

  X adjusted his tie and stared out the window quietly, where a procession was gathering on the front lawn.

  Shortcut’s funeral was small, but Fahrens, the Co
uncil and the entire android squad were there. The Council wanted to keep the exact details of Shortcut’s death quiet for fear of Crenshaw copycats finding Terminus.

  An empty coffin sat on the stage, surrounded by flowers. A digital screen with Shortcut’s face hovered next to it. He was smiling with a can of strawberry soda in his hand.

  X stood on stage at a microphone.

  “I can’t express emotion,” X said, looking out into the crowd. He focused on Craig, who sat in the front row with a proud smile on his face. “Not because I’m an android, but because there’s no amount of emotion that can express what Shortcut meant to all of us. In his own quirky way, he made me human. Despite all his foolish antics, he was one of the best agents that we had, and his hacking skills were unparalleled. Because of his sacrifice, we live in peace now, and for that, we must celebrate him.”

  A scream came from the back of the crowd. A singularity android stumbled toward the stage. He was steel blue with orange eyes, and its body was beaten up and covered in smoke and char. He walked a few steps, fell down, then pulled himself up again. He reached for the stage even though he was still a hundred feet away. He had a crumpled black box in his hand.

  The audience ran away from him and the UEA androids gathered around the Council. X jumped into the air and landed in front of the android with his guns activated.

  The android fell on his knees and said in a modulated voice, “Don’t shoot.”

  “How did you get here?” X asked.

  “I live here.”

  More UEA androids joined X. The android held up his hands and said, “Relax, guys. Don’t you recognize my voice? It’s me, Shortcut.”

  Chapter 22

  “I had no choice,” Shortcut said as he lay on a table in front of X and Fahrens. “I was the only one who could defeat Yvette Crenshaw.”

  His voice still surprised him. It was no longer human—instead, it was cold and metallic with a human cadence.

  Shortcut looked out across the lab. The human part of his consciousness recognized all the familiar shapes of the room—the digital screens, computers, desks and chairs—but at the same time, the artificially intelligent part of his consciousness saw everything as data to be manipulated. With a simple glance at X, he knew everything there was to know about his construction, personality, and his ability, more than he had ever known as a human.