by Jeff Pollard
“Right! Totally cut, no activity on the line,” Paul says.
“So how is she out here piloting an animatron?” Lazarus demands.
“Maybe it's her soul,” Paul says.
“Her soul!? Souls don't interact with robots you idiot.”
“How do you know?” Paul asks.
“If there's no activity on the neural net, that must mean she's not on the neural net. Maybe she's not in the Comatorium and is getting access from somewhere else.”
“The internet is completely cut, so wherever she is, she has to be in the building,” Paul says.
“I want every square inch of this place searched,” Lazarus says.
“That's not going to be easy,” Paul says.
“Just do it,” Lazarus demands. Paul takes off in another direction. Lazarus walks through a door and enters a Vivisection room. Dark rusting blood remains from a recent procedure. Lazarus runs his finger through the blood and examines it.
“I still don't understand why I could get out of the Comatorium and nobody else could,” Renee says. Seth sits up on the edge of the bed, buttoning his shirt.
“Because you're not in the Comatorium...”
“What?”
29
Latex eye-lids flutter while shut tight against glass eyes. Renee's animatron hangs from the docking port on its neck in a dark room somewhere in the Solipsis Ocean Platform. There are no other animatrons or docking stations. Just her and a bank of computers. A flat display shows what this animatron is seeing: dreams, memories, moments, flashing from one to another. The screen reads: Downloading: 79%
“They know you're in the real world now. They can disconnect you from this body. We need to put you in one that's off the grid.”
Renee and Seth slink down a corridor on the simulation floor. Renee follows the boy into a room and he shuts the door quietly behind them. An animatron hangs from a crudely spliced docking station. The animatron is a flesh-bot, a technological creation every lonely teenage boy can love.
“You need to put me in that body?” Renee asks.
“They won't be able to track you,” Seth replies. Renee looks at him suspiciously. Then she notices something on a bank of displays next to the docking station: SCP1. Somewhere in her mind, those four characters ring a bell.
“What is this?” Renee tries to push him aside. He won't budge. “Move!”
“You don't want to see this,” he says.
“I do!” she shoves him aside. Her jaw drops in shock. A series of screens display everything about a person: vital signs, respiration, brain waves, a visual representation of the audio they are hearing, and a double screen showing what each eye sees. But this isn't just some person. This is Renee. Looking into the visual display, it turns into an infinite regression. She closes her right eye and watches as the right screen goes dark. “What is this?” She asks. Her words register on the audio display.
“Don't freak out, okay,” Seth says. Renee finds a readout on the display:
Simulated Consciousness Project 1
“You're an AI,” Seth says. “You're not a brain in a jar.”
Renee feels woozy. Her knees weak. She wobbles backwards until she finds the far wall. She slides down to the floor, her feet slide on the floor, still trying to push her away. “I don't understand,” Renee whispers.
“You don't need to understand. Right now I have to plug your brain into this body directly,” Seth says, pointing to the flesh-bot he has rigged up.
“I don't understand,” she begins repeating.
“They know you're not in the Comatorium now, they'll find you, just like I did. They'll turn you off, okay, that's it, you'll be off, dead, whatever.”
“But...I'm a person, I was born, I was vivisected, I've heard the story,” Renee stares straight ahead, mesmerized by the regress. “I'm a person. How is this possible?”
“I don't know, okay? But I do know that if you don't come over here and get in this docking station and let me transfer your brain computer into this body, they'll find this thing and they'll turn it off.” She simply nods, and Seth comes to her side, helping her stand. He guides her into the docking station. She bends her knees, lowering her neck onto the port. Seth hits a series of buttons on the side of this docking station. He downloads her consciousness from her regular animatron into the ether. She's shown standing in a white loading space on a screen, the animatron is powered off.
Seth then goes to the SCP1 computer. He opens a metal panel, revealing a series of blade super-computers. Renee's simulated consciousness is hosted on one such blade. Seth extracts the blade carefully. It switches to internal power as the connections are broken. Seth turns to the flesh-bot, and presses the blade toward an open panel on the side of its aluminum ribcage. He sweats and struggles to keep steady. The blade computer shakes and rattles against the rails of the blade port. He presses it in gently until it stops. He takes a deep breath and pushes harder. The blade clicks, locking into place. Seth takes his hands out and the covers slaps closed. He pushes the flap of rubber skin until it sits flush with the rest of the skin around the ribcage. He crouches behind the bot, under the docking port it hangs by.
Seth pulls open a skin panel on the back of the flesh-bot. A small screen shows Renee in the white loading space, just as he left her. He presses a button and her consciousness is sent streaming into this animatron.
Renee's eyes open. She slowly extends her feet until she stands up, freeing herself from the neck port. It all feels very strange, as if waking up in someone else's body. Seth hears shouting down the hallway, the search for Renee is growing near. He flips the lights off, casting the room in shadow.
“We need to go,” Seth says. Renee takes a step, but nearly trips, not at all used to the different controls of this animatron. She steadies herself and then spots her old animatron hanging blissfully from the docking station. She stares into her own face.
30
Renee flashes back to a forgotten memory of her childhood. The memory is more a vague feeling of emptiness than anything else. She looks stunned at Gwen's face.
“You're an artificial consciousness. From conception to birth to now, you've been simulated by a computer,” Gwen says. “Your father and I digitally combined our DNA and then made a computer simulate your growth.”
“That explains a lot,” young Renee says quietly.
Only now does the memory become clearer. She sees the kitchen, Gwen leaves her alone to think. Renee knows she's just a simulation of a person. She wants to feel alive. She reaches for a knife in a block. She cuts a line across her arm and winces in pain. It really hurts. She digs deeper, it hurts more. It feels real. She takes the butcher's knife and hacks hard at her wrist. It hits the bone and bounces off, cutting a notch into her radius. She hacks harder and harder, finally breaking and severing the bone.
“You're not a brain in a jar,” Seth says to Renee as she lays naked under the covers. You're a computer simulation of a person. That's why you could get out, you're not in the Comatorium. So when he cut the neural net, you were still connected,” Seth explains.
“I'm what?” Renee asks.
“You're a simulated consciousness,” Seth says.
Renee stares at him. She refuses to believe it. Her eyes start to glaze over. She lies back down, facing the ceiling.
“How did you know how to make this thing?” Seth asks, examining the small bomb. She doesn't respond. Seth looks to her, finding her oddly staring blankly at the ceiling.
Renee suddenly bolts upright in bed, screaming. “What the hell is going on?” Renee covers herself up quickly. “Who are you?”
“Are you serious?” Seth asks.
31
Footsteps echo into the room from the dark hallway. Flashlights shine toward the door.
“Come on!” Seth shouts in Renee's face, finally breaking her stare. He takes her hand and they start fleeing for door. Just before they reach the door, a cult member pushes it open and enters. Seth and Renee quickly p
lant themselves on the wall beside the door hinge. The cult member doesn't see them, instead focusing on Renee's docked animatron. His flashlight hovers on the face as if he recognizes her.
“I got something here,” the guard says into a radio. The cult member examines the make-shift docking station, the flashlight follows the cables to the the SCP1 computer. “What the hell?”
“Oh good,” Seth says, announcing his presence to the guard who turns around quickly, alarmed. Seth pretends to have just entered the room.
“What's good?”
“The robot's in here, she must have run out of battery power,” Seth replies. “Let's shut her off,” Seth says, heading for the SCP1 displays.
“Wait, I don't understand,” the guard says. Lazarus pushes the door open and enters. Lazarus looks at the SCP1 display. Seth starts manipulating it, pretending to shut it off, unbeknownst to them, the actual simulation isn't in this terminal anymore. Instead it resides in Renee's new animatron. She sits in the corner of the room, pretending to be powered down.
“What am I looking at?” Lazarus asks. “Simulated Consciousness?”
“That must be how she got out of Solipsis,” the guard says quietly, “she's an AI.”
“A real AI?” Lazarus asks incredulously, “they made a real artificial intelligence? One that thinks it's human? My god. This changes everything. No! Don't turn it off.” He smacks Seth's hand away from the display.
“Why not turn her off?” the guard asks.
“Don't you see?” Lazarus replies. They don't see it. “Where is she now? Where is her consciousness? It's not in this animatron, it's not in a loading program, so where is she?”
“A different animatron? Maybe she's switching bodies when she's recharging her batteries,” the guard suggests.
“Well then we better find that animatron.” Renee, in the flesh-bot, slumped against the wall, might not have much time to run. Seth makes eye contact with Renee as she plays dead. His intense eyes dart at the doorway, urging her to run.
“There are tons of these things, she could be in any of them,” the guard says. Renee jumps up and bolts for the door, escaping into the hallway. She does it so quickly that they are taken totally by surprised and don't even get a good look at her in the darkness.
Lazarus, the guard, and Seth rush into the hall giving chase. They don't seem to know that Seth is playing both sides. The clinks of Renee's metallic footsteps echo ahead. They round a corner and find the stairwell door slowly closing by itself. “Tell everyone,” Lazarus shouts to the guard while running for the stairwell.
Renee runs down a corridor of docking stations, surrounded by thousands of lifeless animatrons. She hears shouting coming from all directions. Renee jumps into a docking station, hanging her head on a docking port, but not downloading. She remains conscious, playing dead, as a dozen cult members search all the docking stations, shining flashlights into the animatrons' eyes, looking for any kind of reaction from the mechanical pupils. A guard looks right at her, shines a light in her eyes, stares, then carries on searching.
Seth comes along, pretending to search, he waits for a nearby guard to go around a corner. “Okay, let's go,” he says, trying to smuggle her out. Renee pushes her feet down, raising her neck out of the port. Lazarus walks around the corner and Renee completely freezes. Her body jerks and then dangles as if disturbed. Two cult members follow Lazarus over.
“Did that one just move?” Lazarus asks Seth suspiciously.
“I bumped into it,” Seth quickly replies.
“Gotta be around here somewhere,” Lazarus replies. “You know, I think this is why we are here.”
“What do you mean?” Seth asks.
“This AI! If I can convert her, save her soul, my God, what an accomplishment.”
“How do you know she has a soul?” a guard asks.
“If she's a human, even a digital one, she should have a soul. The soul isn't contingent on the physical body, it's supernatural. Don't you see?” Lazarus's speech has a power of his cult members. “That's why I'm here, that's why God has guided me on this mission. It's rather poetic. Man plays God and creates artificial man. Then God sends a missionary. I had wondered why God picked this mission, why these people, they're all witness, but they rejected God, so why send someone to redeem their souls? This is why. She can be saved.”
“That still doesn't help us find her,” the guard mutters. “She could be in any of these.”
“Wait, isn't there a diagnostic function on these things?” Paul asks.
“I don't know anything about them,” Lazarus replies.
“Watch,” Paul says, going to the animatron directly to Renee's left, a tall attractive man. He opens the rubber panel covering its back and hits a button. The animatron's eyes open, it stands up, removing itself from the docking port, takes one step forward, extends both arms straight up over its head, then returns them hanging at its sides. The robot stands perfectly still.
“Is that it?” Lazarus asks. The robot turns its head toward Lazarus, making eye contact.
“I can hear you,” the unpiloted robot replies. It then faces directly forward, still, soulless.
“That was creepy,” Lazarus says coldly.
“Return to docking station,” Paul says. The animatron steps back, re-docking. “It's just a diagnostic tool, it shows that the muscles are working, it has balance, it can hear, speak, etc.”
“So let's just run the diagnostic on every animatron in here, and the one that can't do it right is the one we're looking for,” a guard says.
Paul shows them all how to turn on the diagnostic program just meters away from Renee. She keeps her eyes closed, but sneaks a peek here and there. She's going to have to be able to mimic the soulless diagnostic program exactly. Many cultists from elsewhere in the station come to help in this search.
“Once you test an animatron, go ahead and put a slash in its forehead to mark it,” Lazarus says. Box cutters are passed around. Once they finally set off to do the search, they spread out, but Seth stands in front of Renee, trying to keep anyone from testing her first. The many cult members start doing the diagnostic test on dozens of animatrons. Seth goes to Renee, pretends to be working on the panel on her back.
“You saw how to do it right?” Seth whispers. Renee nods her head very slightly. “Go.”
Renee opens her eyes and stands up, freeing her neck from the docking port. She puts her hands over her heads. A cult member walks by, looking at each inspection, he stares at Renee. She drops her arms to her sides and doesn't let her pupils stray from dead center.
“Can you hear me now?” Seth starts to ask, but before he can get it out, the other cult member beats him to it. Renee turns to the cult member, looks him right in the eyes. Stares coldly and says, “I can hear you.” Renee keeps focused on him for a moment then returns to staring forward.
“God that's creepy,” the cult member mutters, then approaches Renee with box cutter in hand. He raises the box cutter in front of her face, but before he slices her forehead, he notices something off. He lowers the box cutter and stares at her eyes. Did they move? He brings a flashlight up, shines it in her eyes. She stares forward. Her pupils constrict, but don't move a millimeter. He raises the box cutter up, jams it into the rubber flesh at the top of her forehead then starts tearing across, splitting it open, physically cutting and destroying hundreds of touch sensors. The pain is excruciating, but Renee has to keep focused, staring straight ahead, making no movement, no sound, no indication. The box cutter scrapes against her artificial skull. Renee holds her breath, clenches her fists, anything to keep from giving herself away.
Finished with his slash, the cult member steps back. Seth reaches for Renee's back panel to simulate telling her to redock and turn off, ending the diagnostic program. “Ready to redock?” Seth whispers.
“Wait!” the cult member says insistently.
“What?” Seth jumps back from Renee. The cult member points his box cutter at Renee's hand. It's ba
lled into a fist.
“Is it supposed to do that?”
“Yeah,” Seth replies.
“The other ones don't do that.”
“I think it's different on this model,” Seth replies. The guard stares at Renee and Seth.
“Alright, let's keep moving.”
Renee pretends to redock herself and closes her eyes. She's marked as clean, all she has to do now is wait for them to either give up searching in here, or for the coast to clear long enough for her to make it to the stairwell. She thinks through the next steps. Suddenly a searing pain rips through her, Renee screams out in pain.
She opens her eyes and finds the guard standing right in front of her, he recoils, stunned. He has slashed her forehead again, an X now marks her. The ruse is up. The guard's eyes are as wide as they can get and he slowly backs into an animatron docking right across from Renee. Another cult member heard her scream but doesn't yet grasp the meaning of the scream, he walks towards the shocked guard. Renee doesn't have long.
“What?” the alerted guard asks as he walks over. “Spit it out man!”
The stunned guard starts reaching for his gun. Renee can't wait. She leaps from her docking port, tackling the guard, slamming him into the boundary between docking stations. Renee immediately rips his gun away from him, tearing the shoulder sling clean off. She turns and fires at the other guard, a three round burst destroys his chest and he falls backward.
“What did you do?” Seth asks, looking at the fallen cult members. All of the others on this floor heard the gunshots and come running. Renee looks at the guard she tackled. He's in a lot of pain, the tackle smashed his back and severed the spinal cord somewhere in the lumbar region, his legs are paralyzed. His wide eyes stare up at her.
Renee raises the gun, aiming at him.
“What are you doing?” Seth pushes the gun away.
“He's seen me!”
“He's a person, you can't just kill him!”
