Brain Recyclers (Robot Geneticists Book 2) Read online

  “Eve’s right here in Kanto,” Evelyn11 blurted.

  Charlie25 lifted the handheld computer so that it shielded his eyes from Evelyn11’s. “I have real work to do. I’ll simulate some phantom human girls for you to chase later. Right now, I’m prepping for an upload.”

  “Beg off. Find some excuse.”

  “It’s. One. Of. Ours,” Charlie25 separated each word as if she might not parse it otherwise.

  “Then they’ll understand,” Evelyn11 countered. “I’ve got a path through Kanto that Eve’s wandering even as we speak.”

  Charlie25 stood and slapped the portable onto the desk. “I don’t have time for your theories. You don’t even have outbound data access. You’re jumping at shadows. And while Brent15 might not mind waiting for his new host, the last thing I need is a skittish Paul98 getting suspicious. I run a tight ship. My reputation is everything.”

  Snatching up the portable before Charlie25 could stop her, Evelyn11 brought up her analysis. “You see? Factory diagnostics tell the tale, even if no one’s listening. She’s here, Charles. Now do you see it?”

  Charlie25 tapped a finger against his cheek. “I do.”

  Could the curmudgeon have been any less gracious in admitting she was right?

  “Well, then?” Evelyn11 demanded, marching up and waving the portable in Charlie25’s face. “Send someone to collect her.”

  Charlie25 stepped around her and headed for the door. “In good time. In good time…”

  “Good time? What sort of rubbish is that? She’s here, Charles, right under our very noses.”

  Pausing as if just remembering something, Charlie25 plucked the portable computer from Evelyn11’s hands. “Patience, Evelyn. You used to be good at that.”

  If Evelyn11 were to have drunk a glass of water, steam would have poured from her ears. How dare he? How dare Charlie25 treat her as a misbehaving underling?

  As she followed Charlie25 through the more reputable portions of Kanto, Evelyn11 wondered what might happen if she toppled him over the edge of a catwalk or grabbed the ends of a power conduit and plugged them into the sides of his head.

  Before long, Evelyn11 realized they were just outside the upload chamber. This was the place every robot needed but privately dreaded. You went in one side of the machine, and a new robot that remembered being you stepped out the other.

  Charlie25 was about to murder someone.

  Whether a wobbly kneed Paul98 or a rejuvenated Brent15 came out of the upload rig, the Paul98 that lay down in the scanner bed was going to die. Every robot that entered that chamber accepted that part.

  Some robots turned to religion to deal with the existential mess. Others buried their crystals in pseudoscientific blather to convince themselves that their consciousness slipped from one end of the machine to the other.

  As the door closed, Evelyn11 listened in silence as Charlie25 greeted his unsuspecting victim. Paul98 was there now, yammering away like a nervous prom date. He was too old for this to be his first transfer.

  To hear him reassure the stammering uploadee, anyone would think that Charlie25 had been a mortician or a hospice nurse in his living days. But Evelyn11 held old, human-stained memories of Dr. Charles Truman. He was personable and charming but didn’t care a stale biscuit about people.

  Charlie25 had that same dichotomy. Saint while the lights were bright. Snake in the darkness.

  Evelyn11 heard the unmistakable clack of magnetic force straining its support structures. The EMP had fired. Paul98 was dead.

  The door opened at Evelyn11’s command. She suspected that Charlie25 would have locked it if it weren’t safe to enter.

  “Evelyn?” Brent15 asked. He chuckled. “My God, you look like a wind-up toy in that chassis.”

  Brent15 looked little better. He wore a castoff old Version 30.5 that looked like it had rolled in the desert sand in its prior life.

  “I’ve grander designs than a new 68.8,” Evelyn11 taunted back. In truth, it wasn’t a bad bit of machinery to inhabit, by the look of it. Certainly it was a far cry from her current hermit crab’s shell of a chassis.

  As Evelyn11 watched, Brent15 helped Charlie25 haul Paul98’s limp chassis out of the scan side of the rig.

  “You ready?” Charlie25 asked as Brent15 climbed into Paul98’s place.

  Brent15 gave a thumbs up to Charlie25 and a wink to Evelyn11. “Beam me up, Charlie.”

  Evelyn11 allowed that Brent15 was at least putting on a brave face. Without all the involuntary reactions of an organic body, utter fearlessness could be faked. It was a simple matter of programming.

  Charlie25 started a legitimate upload cycle. The machinery hummed to life, scanning the inert Brent15.

  Minutes later, the rig switched to upload mode.

  Evelyn11 waited in rapt fascination. She couldn’t remember ever watching another robot go through this exceptionally personal experience. A lifetime’s worth of hopes, memories, and personality flowed through data lines, injected like plastic resin into the mold of a new crystalline matrix.

  The cycle ended.

  Without waiting for assistance, the Version 68.8 on the target side reached up and disconnected himself from the rig. “Phew! Glad to be on the far side. This baby handles like a decathlete.”

  Evelyn11 clapped, tapping fingers to her opposite palm. “Bravo, Brent. Next you’ll put your head in a lion’s mouth.”

  “Better call him Paul,” Charlie25 warned. “He’s Paul98 now. You got your ID memorized?”

  Brent15 cowered slightly. “Yes, sir. Don’t hurt me, sir.”

  Charlie25 rolled his eyes. “Don’t ham it up. Just lie low for a few years and keep your friends at arm’s length.”

  “Will do, boss,” Brent15 replied with a flippant salute. “Where’d old Paulie park his ‘roamer?”

  Evelyn11 spared a surreptitious glance at the real Paul98, limp and discarded on the floor. To think of the centuries of knowledge lost…

  What a waste.

  “Not quite yet,” Charlie25 said, stepping between Brent15 and the room’s far exit. “First, I’ve got a job for you. It’ll be potentially dangerous.”

  “C’mon, Charlie,” Brent15 chided. “I just got this body. Haven’t even worn the anti-corrosive layer off the bearings.”

  “Eve Fourteen is loose in the factory. Evelyn can provide details.”

  Brent15 looked her way with such an avaricious gleam in his eye. Evelyn11 didn’t know whether to cringe or scold him.

  She did neither.

  “Here,” Evelyn11 said flatly, taking the portable computer from Charlie25 and indicating Eve’s path through Kanto. “Alive. Unharmed. If this mystery accomplice is with her, make sure he, she, or it doesn’t live long enough to transmit what happens.”

  Brent15 snapped the portable from her hands and flipped it around. “You’re still hung up on this kid, huh?”

  Charlie25 pulled a syringe from his pocket and handed it to Brent15. From the size of the dose, it appeared to be pre-measured for Eve14’s physiology.

  “When did you…?”

  Evelyn11 caught herself short.

  “You had this prepared all along!”

  The hand of a Version 68.8 chassis swept up and patted Evelyn11 on the cheek. “Don’t worry. I’ll bag your little play toy. More power to you being the guinea pig; I’ll enjoy being an immortal machine until you find a way to clone Kip Redding.”

  Evelyn11 watched the Brent in Paul’s clothing disappear through the door that led deeper into Kanto. Her technology was the beginning of a new age. A resurrection. She’d delete Brent15 herself before she’d ever uploaded him into a clone of a carnal entertainment star.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Eve followed in Gemini’s wake. The taller girl seemed to know where she was going, so Eve didn’t question their route. Without having a chance to see their path, every part of Kanto looked like another. Cranes, conveyors, lifts, gantries… everything moved. Nothing was allowed to remain still for long unless it
was a fixed structure.

  The monotony gave Eve time to ponder.

  If Charlie13 wouldn’t help them, they might have better luck with Charlie25. After all, it wasn’t his job to make new robots, and according to Charlie13, all Charlies were troublemakers. Maybe the problem was that Charlie13 was well within his rights to make a robot identical to the original Charlie7.

  Charlie25 could help Eve just to spite Charlie13.

  Even in Eve’s own head, the logic sounded convoluted. As much as Charlie7 was a good friend and had saved her life, she was probably never going to understand robots and all their irrational quirks.

  Still, better to have a trained professional help them than risk getting Charlie42 wrong.

  “I changed my mind,” Eve called ahead.

  “About what?” Gemini replied without slowing.

  “I think rather than find Evelyn11’s old rig, I think we should give Charlie25 a chance.”

  Gemini kept up her swift, sure pace. “Good. I was thinking the same.”

  “Wait. I thought we’d agreed I could face the upload rig that nearly killed me. It was a small personal triumph. You mean all this time—?”

  “I was saving you the mental anguish,” Gemini replied. “Even if you hadn’t changed your mind, I imagined your relief would have been the same. Charlie25 isn’t the expert on the subject that ‘13 is, but he’s a more reasonable sort.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “Come now, Eve.”

  Gemini kept speaking, but the rest of her words were lost in a haze as Eve’s mind snapped back to her time in Evelyn11’s lab. How many times had Creator coaxed her or chided her with that little phrase, come now, Eve?

  “Something the matter?” Gemini asked. She was ten paces ahead.

  Eve had stopped dead in her tracks.

  Gemini stopped as well.

  In the brief silence that ensued, Eve heard a faint, repetitive noise out of place. A second earlier she’d been ready to apologize and hasten to catch up. Now as she strained her ears, she recognized the sound.

  “Footsteps!” Eve whisper-shouted.

  “How’s that? I haven’t a noise filtration system, dear.”

  “Someone’s heading this way,” Eve raised her voice. Anyone looking for them already must have known where they were.

  “That’s daft,” Gemini countered. “There’s nothing going on in this stretch of the factory. We’re a good quarter kilometer from the nearest…”

  As Gemini’s words drifted off into nothingness, Eve saw the realization set in. With wide eyes, Gemini looked off into the shadowy depths of the factory where Eve had heard the footsteps.

  Metal on metal.

  Automatons.

  Someone knew they were here. And now that someone was after them.

  Chapter Forty

  Gemini’s thoughts were a maelstrom as she led the way deeper into the factory.

  Left.

  Down one flight of stairs, then another.

  Hop onto a conveyor platform. Release the brake.

  For the first time since they arrived in Kanto, the boots on Eve’s feet made enough noise to assure Gemini that her charge was following. That feline grace vanished in a football hooligan’s stomping across grated metal floors.

  Wind rushed across Gemini’s bare scalp, cooling the sheen of sweat.

  “Who sent those?” Eve shouted over the rush of air and general clamor of machinery.

  “How should I bloody well know?” Gemini snapped, raising her voice over the howl.

  That was what raised the tiny hairs at the back of this body’s neck. No one should have been after the two of them at all.

  Gemini couldn’t imagine Charlie13 had let them wander free only to send dumb drones to capture them. It would have made no sense. Inscrutable as the wily old mixer may have been, he wasn’t irrational.

  Charlie25 being responsible for harrying them made, if anything, even less sense. Gemini was already leading Eve right for the uploader’s demesne. Why would he risk spooking them?

  Gemini threw the brake on the conveyor platform, and it caught with a jerk.

  Across a catwalk.

  Up five levels on a lift.

  Through a security door with one of Evelyn11’s ID codes.

  Then a maze of corridors. Left. Right. Two more lefts.

  After a while, old memories kicked in, and Gemini remembered her way around this section of the factory.

  But if it wasn’t either of the Charlies, then it must have been the Human Committee that had finally tracked them down. Irregularities in Kanto were newsworthy. Gemini cursed herself for a fool.

  “You sure we’re not lost?” Eve asked.

  “Positive,” Gemini snapped.

  She entered a code at the next locked door. It opened, but waiting on the other side was a pair of factory automatons. Designed for robotic assembly, they had dexterous hands and could lift half-built robot chassis like twigs.

  Eve let out a yip. “Turn back!”

  Gemini backpedaled as she swung the EMP rifle off her shoulder. “We can’t. This is the way we need to go.”

  The rifle hummed with a pull of the trigger. With a clever shot, Gemini had caught both automatons in the destructive magnetic field. Two inert piles of animatronic limbs crumpled to the floor.

  The force of firing a magnetic weapon so near a steel wall had threatened to wrench Gemini’s arms from their sockets. She stumbled toward the near wall as she released the trigger.

  “You all right?” Eve asked, placing a hand on Gemini’s shoulder.

  Gemini winced. The burning pain in her rotator cuff suggested a connective tissue injury. Knowing the clinical diagnosis did nothing to salve the screams of protesting neurons. “I’m fine,” she lied through gritted teeth.

  Eve knelt to inspect the fallen drones. “I think they’re going to notice this.”

  “You think? Of course, they’re going to notice. Come on. Keep moving.”

  It had been impulsive to fire. Hot blood ran in this body’s veins. It had trigger reflexes all its own, Gemini told herself.

  Glancing at Eve as the girl picked her way over the metallic bodies, Gemini’s heart fluttered. Her baby. Her little Eve was in danger here.

  She blinked.

  Where had that thought boiled up from?

  Evelyn11 had grown Eves by the vat. Little blastulas floated in nutrient solution. As they developed, some mutated; Evelyn11 had culled them. Others had thrived. Those she had transferred to individual tanks, cryogenically frozen, and spaced out to birth at regular intervals.

  There had been nothing maternal about the process.

  But the first sign of threat to Eve, Gemini’s reaction had been to shoot first, think later.

  Gemini was breathing hard from a combination of their frantic flight and the sudden scare. “I’ve got a backup plan,” she blurted before she could think better of it.

  “I’m up for something that gets us away from crazy chase-bots,” Eve replied with an optimist’s smile. The little scamp wasn’t even winded.

  Much as Gemini envied Eve her superior genetic construction, she knew that she couldn’t harm the girl. Whatever Charlie25 or the Human Committee or anyone else who might butt in had to offer, Eve wasn’t anyone’s bargaining chip. She wasn’t anyone’s plaything.

  Not any longer.

  “We’re going to find that cobbled old upload rig of Evelyn11’s and hope Charlie42 can think up a quick way out of this mess.”

  Eve nodded. When Gemini took them in a new direction, she followed.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Charlie25 sat behind his desk, leaning forward from the edge of the seat. The monitors displayed a real-time chase, broadcast on encrypted channels, which hid the chase from the eyes of automaton workers.

  Should the drones have been working on Version 75.0 prototype chassis production? Of course.

  Would the demonstration schedule for the Version 75.0 be delayed because of the chase
? Unlikely.

  Brent15 had control of the drone workforce for 10 percent of Kanto. All of the workers operated under Charlie25’s direct authority, so there was no risk that anyone else would miss them.

  The robot who would be known publicly as Paul98 had yet to reveal himself to his quarry, preferring to wear them down and drive them deeper into the factory’s lowermost reaches. It was a superb plan. Every meter of progress he denied Eve and Gemini was one step closer to recapturing both of them.

  Best of all, it was the best television program Charlie25 had watched in forever.

  There was no way to speed up the viewing. The temptation to vacuum up the contents of Star Trek or Doctor Who in mere seconds always dampened Charlie25’s enthusiasm for a rewatch.

  This chase was everything the old uploader needed in entertainment. He didn’t know the outcome. He knew all the players. Ultimate triumph and heartbreaking tragedy were equal possibilities.

  Would Eve prefer suicide to imprisonment?

  Would Gemini continue her apparent betrayal or remember that hunting down Eve was her idea in the first place?

  Could the two humans match wits with Brent15 and overcome the handicap of being short one army of drones?

  Charlie25 could have fed the data streams into his internal computer and crunched it down into a minor distraction while he resumed his daily work. But why? Why deny himself this unique opportunity?

  The door to his office slid open. Evelyn11 stormed inside. “Why am I locked out of the Kanto data feeds?”

  Charlie25 didn’t look up from the show. “Because you’re an obsessive loose cannon with impaired judgment.”

  He stopped short of mentioning that Evelyn11 was only alive because she was the best geneticist among Charlie25’s co-conspirators. If the robots were going to reap the fruit of their genius and rejoin the living as the heart of the Second Human Age, she was the fastest route.

  “I insist you remove the lockout from my laboratory,” Evelyn11 demanded, lifting her chin.