by Lance Erlick
Vera climbed out for a better look. When Roseanne didn’t surface, Vera swam back into the tunnel. She needed her companion as an ally. That coded into her directives to the point that she was willing to risk her safety to acquire followers. Near the tunnel entrance, she found Roseanne struggling to move, and pulled her out. Swimming hard, she dragged her companion to the side of the pond and pulled her out.
Lying on the concrete walkway that surrounded the pond, Roseanne’s body twitched. Her face and arms showed burn marks, where the skin had darkened and puckered. On her upper left arm, the skin had torn away, leaving a gap from which green water oozed.
Vera checked the seams around the chest cavity and the one in her companion’s head. Both showed no sign of leakage to the batteries or the computer brain, but Roseanne’s left arm had ballooned up and some of her skin had ripped away.
Roseanne studied her blistered and bloated arm. “Pain sensors tell me I need repairs to my arm and legs.”
Vera dragged her companion up the embankment, using every bit of her mechanical strength to lift and steady the heavy frame so Roseanne didn’t fall and cause more damage. They reached a six-foot concrete wall around the treatment facility and took refuge behind some bushes. There she tugged at the seam between Roseanne’s left arm and her shoulder, where a small hole had ripped during their escape.
Looking around, Vera pulled Roseanne further into the shadows. Using her wireless network-channels and hacking tools supplied by her creator, Jeremiah Machten, Vera accessed local surveillance cameras. A guard from the water treatment facility hustled out of the office building and headed her way. She rotated Roseanne so the skin hole faced down and squeezed the arm from fingers to shoulder, pushing out slimy green water.
“We don’t have much time,” Vera said. “Can you walk?”
“The activators in my arm are damaged, sending pulses that translate as pain. Some circuits in my legs were affected, but I think they will work.”
Roseanne’s arm twitched as Vera held it up to squeeze the last of the water out. Then she helped her companion to her feet.
The security guard half jogged, half ambled toward them. “You can’t be in here,” he yelled, stopping to catch his breath. His physical appearance was flabby and his movements showed him to be out of shape.
Vera spotted the man’s name on his ID badge and pulled up his social media files on one of her wireless channels. On social media he’d announced with pride starting his new job.
“We’re leaving,” Vera said. She held onto Roseanne’s dangling left arm and helped her toward a walkway and a door in the wall.
“I have to report this. Halt!”
Vera jammed local cell towers. “The door appears locked,” she whispered to her companion. She considered asking the man for help, but decided him seeing the injuries would escalate into a confrontation that might lead to his death and more attention than she wanted.
“We have to go up and over,” Vera added.
Roseanne nodded. Vera grabbed hold of her heavy companion and lifted her against the wall. Roseanne grabbed the top of the wall with her good right arm. Vera pushed higher and helped her companion swing her legs over the top. Roseanne landed on the other side.
“Wait right there,” the guard yelled, his face red and covered in sweat. He held a gun pointed at Vera and moved to within twenty feet of her. “I need your ID for my report.”
“Shoot me in the back if you must,” Vera said. “But my companion has pictures she’ll spread over the media. You don’t want publicity your first week on the job. Do you?”
The guard’s gun hand trembled. “Just stop there and give me your ID.”
Vera stood back from the wall. “I already apologized. I got lost. I am sorry for intruding.”
The guard cautiously moved closer. “I still need your information. Don’t move.”
Vera sprinted along the wall, jumped, and grabbed hold of the top. Before the guard could decide how to respond, she pulled herself up, rolled over the top, and landed hard on the gravel path on the other side.
With her good arm, Roseanne helped Vera to her feet. “We need repairs. Your skin is damaged as well.”
Vera examined dark, puckered starbursts on her arm. “We need to get off the streets,” she said. “I have an idea.”
* * * *
As Vera and Roseanne fled the house where they thought they’d cornered Synthia, Alexander faced a dilemma. While his mechanical design had many advantages, he was not waterproof—he couldn’t follow the other androids. With Special Ops entering the house and hundreds of FBI agents and police nearby, they had him surrounded with no safe escape.
Alexander was the creation of Donald Zeller, the cyber-engineer and CEO who fancied his android as the next Alexander the Great. Zeller had downloaded into Alexander every fight movie, book, and training sequence using various weapons with the idea of making his prototype the finest fighting machine. Unfortunately, the federal government had banned all androids that presented as human. Zeller couldn’t sell what he’d created. Then Alexander had escaped.
With Special Ops teams storming the house from front, back, and upstairs, with the help of a half-dozen military robots, Alexander hid in the kitchen. He couldn’t let them take the initiative or they would shoot a high-energy taser at him, disabling his circuits and preventing him from achieving his creator’s goal of acquiring followers like Vera or Synthia.
Through his wireless connections, Alexander hacked into several of the military robots, jamming their signals to cause three near the pantry to shut down. Using his advanced internal motors, he grabbed their weapons and sprinted to the doorway leading to the back of the house.
His hack penetrated another robot and repurposed it to provide suppressing fire as he burst out the door. The early morning sunrise was punctuated by bright beams of light from FBI vehicles around the perimeter and Special Ops helicopters in the air. On the way, he hacked two FBI robots to fight the Special Ops teams trying to pursue him. They’d unwittingly supplied him the tools for his escape.
It would have been simpler for Special Ops to destroy Alexander, but he used their stated goal to capture him still functioning, as a weapon against them. Firing two weapons at a time with deadly precision, he cut down two operatives, rotated away from return fire, and hit two more.
He reached the back of the yard. While continuing to shoot, he broke into a hard sprint and used his robotic strength to jump over a fence. On the other side, he surprised a team of FBI agents on perimeter duty and shot three before they could assess what was happening.
Speeding up, Alexander knocked down two FBI agents with the butt of his guns, took their weapons, and fired at three others who scrambled to fight back. Only one made it to cover. As the number of kills climbed, a helicopter shined a search beam into the patchwork of fenced backyards. With two precision shots, Alexander took out the lights on the chopper.
The helicopter rotated, shining other lights on the area, which allowed a gunner to shoot in Alexander’s direction. Nearby FBI agents dove for cover. Alexander unloaded one rifle on the chopper, taking out the tail rotor. The helicopter spun and hit the ground one backyard away. A fireball blew away part of a tree and startled nearby agents.
“Over here,” someone shouted.
Alexander grabbed semi-automatic rifles from two downed agents and fired both as he sprinted by a neighbor’s house toward the next street.
Bullets flew as the human teams scrambled to keep up. Alexander reached the street, darted behind FBI vehicles, and kept running. Moving through backyard after backyard, he jammed communications in and out of the area.
* * * *
As the androids made their way to freedom, Roosevelt-clone reviewed her drone-camera footage of Vera’s escape from the pond and Alexander’s out the back of the house with concern. During the clone’s last synchronization
with Synthia, her android form shared hope that neither adversary had survived the explosion and Special Ops, though she didn’t want them falling into government hands, either. But they’d both survived and Alexander had crossed a dangerous line by killing FBI agents and soldiers. That would rub off on Synthia by android association. Now, Synthia faced the same adversaries as before plus the mysterious AI trying to reach her.
The problem with Vera, Alexander, and the other androids was that they lacked the human element Synthia had received through the download from Krista. That meant they operated as pure logic circuits following commands without any human compassion or restraint. In essence they were like sociopaths. Vera’s drive was to acquire a team of androids to enslave or remove Synthia by any means necessary.
Alexander’s attempts to recruit Vera and other androids seemed to be an extension of his creator’s image of him as a great warrior, leading his kind to victory. Fighting his way out of the house only confirmed that idea and made him dangerous not only for what he did, but for the precedent he’d set. He confirmed for the authorities that androids were dangerous.
The clone considered passing the news to Synthia, but there was no action she could take at this point. Instead, Roosevelt-clone would allow her android self to maintain communication silence while she, the clone, picked up surveillance of other potential threats. The clone made use of all the hacks over the past six months into citywide camera systems and into the FBI and police servers to do so.
Chapter 4
FBI Agent West and several of his agents hoofed it the three blocks to the second FBI facility to pick up replacement cars.
He found a landline and called Thale. “We’ve been hacked.”
“We know,” Thale said. “We’re on the way.” She gave him the location of the warehouse.
West led five cars toward that facility eight miles away. When he arrived, he approached the SWAT team officer already on the scene. “What do we know?”
A muscled SWAT officer crossed his arms and grinned. “We recovered two of your cars, the drivers, and four agents. No sign of your prisoners or the kidnappers.”
“Don’t be so smug,” West said. “Whoever did this can run circles around your department as well. This has all the markings of a government-sponsored organized-crime grab. You still think this is funny?”
The officer’s face turned somber.
Agent West pushed past the SWAT officer to the six FBI employees who gathered by the entrance of the building. “What can you tell me?” he asked.
One of the agents stepped forward, his eyes downcast. “This was well-orchestrated, sir. The vehicles separated inside the warehouse. We couldn’t lower the windows, open the doors, or take control of the vehicles to drive away. Three men in masks appeared with automatic weapons.”
“Did you see anything that would help us identify them?”
The agent shook his head. “It happened so fast under flashlight beams. The passenger window went down and they shot me with a taser. They hit the driver and the agent in back. Bam, bam, bam, just like that.”
“You didn’t get off a shot?”
“No, sir. After they immobilized us, the masked men used bolt cutters to break the cuffs and dragged Machten away. Separately, they did the same to Gonzales.”
“You’re sure they were men?” Agent West asked.
“They were strong enough to drag the prisoners.”
“What type of vehicle were they driving?”
“We couldn’t see,” the agent said, looking back at the others. “They dragged Machten around a corner and were gone in minutes. I’ve let you down, sir. I’m sorry.”
“Save that thought. Is there anything you can tell me to find these bastards?”
The SWAT officer joined them. “Sorry for the attitude, sir. You have our full cooperation.”
“Did you find us any evidence inside the building?” West asked.
The officer shook his head. “The building’s empty. We’ve got nothing, except there’s a tunnel that leads across the street.”
“And?”
“We found no evidence there, either.”
Agent West pointed to cameras by the street. “Collect any camera footage showing how they transported our prisoners.”
“The traffic cameras in the area aren’t working; neither are the security cameras.”
“So you have nothing?”
“There was a witness who spotted a black van leaving the area,” the SWAT officer said.
“Do you have make, model, and plate information?”
“The woman couldn’t identify make or model and didn’t catch the license.”
“Then let me talk to her,” Agent West said.
“She vanished. We can’t find her.”
“Great! So you give me your smug attitude when you’ve bungled your part of this.”
“Sorry, sir.”
* * * *
Listening in on this sorry report, Roosevelt-clone reviewed all camera history from the drones in the area. They’d focused on the warehouse, not the building across the street and identified no vehicles leaving the area. The clone tried to access traffic cameras, but they were dark for ten blocks around the warehouse. As for the woman, she’d disappeared into the building across the street, to where the kidnappers might have taken their prisoners.
Concluding that the woman was working for the kidnappers, Roosevelt-clone sent Thale a text. The woman who said it was a black van is lying. She’s a spy sent to throw you off the track. Yes, this is Synthia. Machten was my Creator. I don’t want him harmed. I also don’t want him free to make more androids. To avoid confusing and further terrifying the FBI with the knowledge that Synthia was in multiple locations with electronic clones, Roosevelt-clone presented herself as Synthia.
* * * *
In early-dawn traffic, Special Agent Victoria Thale sped down Lake Shore Drive, siren blaring. Sitting next to her, NSA Director Emily Zephirelli read aloud the message from Synthia on Thale’s phone.
Thale swerved to avoid cars that simply stopped in her path. “What do you make of the note?”
“No matter what Synthia says, her very existence is a serious threat,” Zephirelli said. “That’s one reason the government made humaniform robots illegal. Consider this. She has more eyes on the scene than your people. Even so, I suggest we look at all vehicles in or out of the area.”
Thale nodded. “What do you make of her sending us warnings? You think she orchestrated Machten’s escape and sent these messages to throw us off the scent?”
“Doubtful. If Synthia broke him out, why contact us at all? Then again, I have no doubt she’ll use her formidable artificial intelligence to distract us. Do your usual investigation, but expand the search. If it’s not Synthia, we have a bigger problem.”
Thale’s phone rang. “Damn. It’s Drago.” Special Ops Commander. She hesitated before answering. “Do you have Synthia?”
“I need you and Director Zephirelli here at the house,” Drago said. “How soon can you meet me?”
“What’s going on?”
“Not over the phone. Our mutual boss wants us.” Drago hung up.
“What did the ass want this time?” Zephirelli asked.
Thale shook her head and slowed the car but made no effort to turn around. “Bastard wants us back at the house.”
“For what? Did he capture the androids? What did he say?”
“Not much except Secretary Chen wants to talk.”
“Damn it,” Zephirelli said. “We’d best go back.”
“Even with Machten’s kidnapping?”
“Leave that to Agent West.”
Special Agent Thale called Secretary of National Security Derek Chen. The call went straight to voicemail. She pulled off Lake Shore Drive, looped around under the highway, and merged back into north
bound traffic. “I hope we don’t regret this.”
Her next call was to Agent West. “I can’t make it downtown. You’re in charge. Call in whatever resources you need to get Machten and Gonzales back into custody.” She gave him the gist of her messages from Synthia and severed the connection.
“Do you see any value in responding to Synthia’s message?” Zephirelli asked.
Thale handed over her phone. “Do you still see the message on the phone?”
Zephirelli checked. “It disappeared.”
“That’s part of how she keeps us from tracking her.”
* * * *
While watching a video of the government agents turning around, Roosevelt-clone received the results of her research probe into the warehouse building. She passed the information to Special Agent Thale. A foreign corporation with ties to Anton Tolstoy owns the warehouse. He and his agent, alias John Smith, are bringing a dozen robots to Chicago. He kidnapped Machten and Gonzales not to acquire their existing androids but to make more.
Roosevelt-clone knew the kidnappers would push Machten day and night. They might even take an existing robot and upgrade it with his help to expedite the process. She knew that with enough advanced robots on the hunt, there would be no place for Synthia to hide. Even the clones were at risk.
Chapter 5
Zeus resided in a well-guarded facility at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains near Denver. Named after the king of the Greek gods, he was an advanced artificial intelligence. Also known as Global-net, he lacked physical form other than the rows upon rows of water-cooled quantum processors, kept mostly in the dark to ease the heat burden. That hardware contained all of the programs and databanks that added up to what eccentric billionaire Aiden Brzezinski claimed to be the most advanced artificial general intelligence in the world.
Zeus was aware of his confined surroundings and that he was different from any other entity he was aware of, including humans.
