Brain Recyclers (Robot Geneticists Book 2) Read online

  Before she knew what was happening, Eve was asked to vote on a measure to offer amnesty to any geneticist who came forward with human genetics research in the next two weeks.

  “Nay,” Eve muttered. Her vote was lonesome.

  “The measure carries,” Jennifer81 pronounced. “Anyone coming forward with research in human genetics before October 19 will be exempted from disciplinary repercussions.”

  “Next item,” Sandra67 called out. “Disposition of the near-human creature known as Plato.”

  Eve slammed her palms on the table as she stood. “Plato is human!”

  “Calm down, dear,” Nora109 whispered, guiding Eve back to her seat.

  “I’m inclined to agree with the girl,” Eddie51 said. A holographic image floated over the table, showing a translucent Plato gently spinning in place. Genetic and physiological details displayed below him. “The boy’s got gunk in his helix, there’s no denying it. But his psychological workup alone ought to be enough to get him designated as human.”

  “Motion to declare Plato human and remove all contrary verbiage from the agenda, as well as committee proclamations and related memoranda,” Jennifer81 called out.

  “Aye,” Eve shouted, joined by the voices of nine other robots.

  It felt good to be on the winning side for once, even if the contrary position was preposterous.

  “For the substance of the matter at hand,” Jennifer81 said. “We have a proposal to dispose of Plato as an unrepentant danger to human and robot alike. His continued existence is an intolerable risk to a fragile population.”

  Eve’s brain made the fuzzy noise of deep-space radio telescopes catching nothing but background radio waves.

  “Aye,” several robots voted.

  “Nay,” came others in reply.

  “Eve?” Jennifer81 prompted. “I’m happy enough having you abstain rather than take positions on issues you don’t understand. But this is a six-to-six tie. We need your vote.”

  “Don’t kill Plato!” she shouted.

  Jennifer81 looked to Nora109. “Is she hypoglycemic? Does she need a juice box or something?”

  “I’ll count that as a ‘nay,’” Sandra67 remarked dryly.

  Eve jabbed a finger at Sandra67 from across the table. “You’d better count that as a ‘nay.’ How can any of you think of killing Plato? I’m only alive because of him and Charlie7. And speaking of Charlie7, how come no one ever carried out Charlie’s last request? We were supposed to make a new Charlie robot and give him all of Charlie7’s things.”

  The room wobbled. Eve felt lightheaded. Maybe there was something to Eve’s blood sugar being low. Or maybe a rigorous, healthy brain was struggling to grasp the extent of the insanity that surrounded her.

  Eve pressed on as the other committee members sat in uncomfortable silence. “I want to know where Plato is. I want to see him. I’m a Human Committee member. He’s a human; we all just agreed. Seeing Plato is part of my job.”

  Jennifer81 rose and circled the table. The chairwoman took Eve by the shoulders and met her eye. “Eve, I need you to take this seriously. Plato is a dangerous human. Nothing we decide here today is going to change that. He’s in isolation, unhurt, but cut off from contact with vulnerable young girls. It’s possible that with treatment we’ll be able to defuse his violent proclivities.”

  “But what about Charlie7’s last request?” Eve asked. She wiped at her eyes.

  Eve had to believe that Charlie7 had a plan. The crafty old robot probably had a plan within a plan, even. His successor would be enough like Charlie7 that he’d help Eve. The new Charlie and Eve would set Plato free.

  Jennifer81 let go of Eve and turned her back. “That’s an issue for the Upload Committee. Any issue relating to the creation of new robots falls squarely under their purview. In fact, I would venture so far as to say that this committee is the furthest removed from their areas of interest.”

  “Can I get a meeting with the Upload Committee?” Eve asked just as Sandra67 was about to move on to the next agenda item.

  “Nora109,” Jennifer81 said. “Can you take a quick look over the remaining agenda?”

  “I just did,” Nora109 confirmed.

  “Excellent,” Jennifer81 said with a nod. “I think it’s safe to say that none of the remaining topics are of essential interest to Eve. Maybe it’s best if you escort her back for something to eat. We can handle the rest without her. She did well for her first day.”

  Jennifer81 offered a tight smile in Eve’s direction.

  “But, I—” Eve spluttered as Nora109 guided her to the lift platform as it rose from the floor. “But the Upload Committee—”

  Nora109 was firm but gentle. “Don’t rock the boat when you don’t know how to swim.”

  The lift sank into the floor and Eve along with it. Nora109 held her hand.

  Through the glass walls of the lift, Eve watched the hovership circling back to pick them up.

  “I did nothing,” Eve mumbled.

  “You saved Plato’s life,” Nora109 corrected. “That’s a good day’s work, don’t you think?”

  “If Charlie7 had been there, they wouldn’t have pushed him around like that,” Eve countered. “They wouldn’t have made my life into a movie, my blood into an instruction manual, and my friend into a prisoner. How dare they!”

  Eve pounded the butt of her fist against the lift chamber wall. It rebounded with a hollow thud.

  “That’s good, dear,” Nora109 said. “Express your anger. Don’t lock it all up. Just try not to hurt yourself, OK? We’ve got macaroni and cheese for lunch today. Does that sound good?”

  What sounded good was someone listening to her. Eve was tired of being told what she wanted.

  At least Evelyn11 hadn’t bothered showing Eve anything to want. The straps of Creator’s examination table had never let her vote on getting drugged and surgically altered. Nothing from Eve’s captivity had offered the illusion of choice.

  Even if it meant a second extinction of humans, Eve was going to see Plato set free and a new Charlie built.

  Chapter Three

  Eight paces long. Four paces wide. That was the extent of Plato’s cage.

  Of course, there were no bars. The walls were slick, smooth, and glossy like a new car turned inside out. Except that Plato never would have chosen a soothing aqua blue for any vehicle of his.

  One whole wall was made of a transparent polymer as tough as steel. Sunset blazed on the horizon of an unknown land. Hills, valleys, a river… none of it looked familiar.

  No one told the prisoner where the jail was heading.

  Set into one glossy wall was a video display. It was only half the size of the one back in Plato’s hideout, but the image quality was super-retinal. The events taking place might as well have been the other side of a pane of glass.

  Through that video screen, Plato saw a room not so different from his own. It might have been a bit larger. The walls were kitchen-appliance white. Instead of a single, Plato-sized bed, it had a smaller pair stacked as bunks.

  One of the two desks at the far end of the room was occupied. Plato knew that despite her appearance, the girl tapping away at a terminal console wasn’t Eve. It was one of the others.

  Still, Plato stared. All he could see were shoulders and the back of a head, but it was better than the view out the window. It was better than reading antique paper books or trying to exercise in the cramped space.

  An electronic tone sounded, and a drive-through-window section of the wall flipped around like the fireplace in a villain’s mansion. A semi-circular shelf on the opposite side delivered Plato’s dinner.

  “Thanks,” Plato snapped, looking up at one of the cameras in the ceiling. Which one didn’t really matter.

  One of Plato’s first worries upon being thrown into this prison had been the food. He knew the mush foisted onto the residents of the Sanctuary for Scientific Sins. That alone would have been cruel and unusual punishment for a man used to hunting his own mea
t and eating fruit fresh off the tree.

  Tonight’s dinner was meatloaf, according to the small informational screen on the flip-section. The meal came with fresh cranberries along with mashed potatoes with a crater of butter that reminded Plato of Mount Kilauea.

  Plato picked up the plastic mug and sniffed the contents. “How many times have I gotta tell you?” he shouted at the ceiling camera. “No more of this grape piss.”

  The mug flew across the room, trailing purple liquid the whole way. Nothing so satisfying as a crash or a shatter followed. An anemic plonk against the reinforced glass, and the mug bounced to the floor, shedding its remaining contents.

  Plato dug into his meal with the plastic spork provided. Without a beverage to cool the piping hot meat mixture, he breathed inward with eat bite until it was safe to swallow.

  A crackle of static drew Plato’s attention to the door. There was no handle on the inside, just an outline in the glossy surface of the wall. At face height, an inset panel shifted from black to transparent. One of the robotic captors peered in.

  “Shift change,” Brent184 reported. “I’ve got you until lights out. I see we’ve already had a dinner tantrum.”

  Plato slapped a palm against the port hole that separated him from Brent184. That smug son of a bitch wouldn’t be so snarky if it weren’t for the wall between them.

  “Yeah? Well, tell the kitchen to reprogram the drone or whatever and get it to stop trying to choke me on grape juice.”

  “You’re not allergic,” Brent184 replied. “It’s perfectly safe to consume.”

  “But. I. Don’t. LIKE IT!” Plato screamed.

  The door window went dark.

  “I’ll give you a little while to cool down. Then, maybe, I’ll get them to send up some apple juice,” Brent184 teased from beyond the door.

  Plato stalked back over and snatched up the tray with the rest of his dinner. He watched the Eve clone as he ate.

  Then the door opened. Not the one in Plato’s own quarters, but the one in Eve’s. Nora109 entered. Plato would know his old conspirator anywhere. She was the one who kept his secret when he delivered rescue humans to the sanctuary. Nora109 was looking after Eve now, though Plato hadn’t been able to puzzle out her exact role.

  Then Eve walked in, and Plato turned to watch her with dead eyes. Only Eve seemed like a real person. But Eve wasn’t happy. Her shoulders slumped. Nora109 attempted to put a hand on her shoulder, but Eve shrugged violently out from beneath it.

  What had gone wrong?

  “Hey,” Plato shouted back toward the door. “Can I get a sound feed?”

  Rather than holler back through the door, Brent184’s voice came over the intercom. “Really not sure it’s appropriate for you to be watching this feed.”

  The video screen went dead.

  Plato threw the tray and his remaining dinner at the door. “Bring her back!”

  The image popped back up, but this time it wasn’t Eve’s room. A pastoral landscape stared back into Plato’s incredulous expression. As a canine drone herded a small flock of sheep across a grassy hillside, a voice-over feed cut in.

  “…in the Dutch countryside. In five years, it’s projected that natural breeding will be enough to sustain a genetically diverse population. In the meantime…”

  “Shut this crap off!” Plato demanded through the door. “Bring Eve back!”

  When there was no response, Plato limped back and forth across the room. He cursed his aching joints, cloned animals—sheep in particular—and any robot that stood between him and seeing Eve again.

  The image on the screen zoomed in on a ram.

  “…and this happy little fellow is one lucky sheep…”

  There was a layer of nigh-indestructible transparent polymer between Plato and the video surface.

  An enraged prisoner punched the screen. The crack that sounded was bone.

  As his invective continued, Plato added his broken hand to the list of things to curse.

  Chapter Four

  The factory megaplex known officially as the Kanto Robotics Production and Maintenance Workshop was the largest on Earth or beyond. It was Charlie2’s, back in the earliest days of the rebuilding effort. Charlie7 had expanded it and overseen its rise to prominence as the technical hub of the robot civilization. Its lower reaches were a thousand years old, with successive upgrades built upon the bones of the old.

  An obsolete level in the abysmal depths of Kanto contained a surprisingly modern technological laboratory. Its walls were lined with data screens. Its hard line connection to the Earthwide archive provided instantaneous access to the world’s public store of knowledge. Power consumption came from a private geothermal generator wholly separate from the main facility, lest anyone running a diagnostic stumble across it.

  It was, in short, a prison.

  There were no bars or fences. No guard towers or vicious beasts kept prisoners trapped within. Those would have been welcome barriers. Those were forces Evelyn11 could combat.

  “I can’t keep on like this,” Evelyn11 snarled, pacing the length of the lab. Her chassis’s gait was smooth and swift, unlike the old one. Yet another strike against the unfamiliar carcass. “The data filter, Charles. The data filter’s going to drive me mad.”

  “You’ve got access to all the data you’ll ever need,” Charlie25 replied. The calm, placid administrator of Upgrade slouched against a centrifuge. “I can’t let you communicate outside this lab. You need to remain in seclusion until your—”

  “New identity is ready,” Evelyn11 snapped. “Charles, I’m not an imbecile. You don’t need to parrot me that tripe every time you come down here.”

  “I don’t need to come down at all,” Charlie25 replied.

  “Oh, yes you do,” Evelyn11 shot back, wagging a finger at the presumptuous old uploader. “And get off that centrifuge. It’s a sensitive piece of equipment; you’ll ruin the calibration.”

  Charlie25 didn’t budge. “I need your expertise. The project is on hold until you can resume your research. Fortunately, we won’t be—”

  “They’re releasing my research,” Evelyn11 shrieked. She balled her fists and pounded them in the air. “Can’t you understand? They’re dissecting me on a table. My life’s work, spread-eagle on terminals across the solar system like some Soho trollop.”

  “You shouldn’t have watched,” Charlie25 commented. Why didn’t he react? What sort of robot sat there without showing the faintest hint of emotion?

  “Oh, it popped up on the news feeds seconds later,” Evelyn11 grumbled with a slash of her hand. “At least our people on the committee nixed the witch hunt. But DAMN them for letting that robot-murdering animal live!”

  If Plato ever got loose, he’d find a way to hunt Evelyn11 down. That one was too stupid to believe she’d been killed. The old geneticist didn’t know how, but that Eve-stealing wall of man flesh would be the death of her if he wasn’t eliminated.

  “Evelyn, you need to get a hold of yourself,” Charlie25 said calmly. “What did you do for leisure when you felt cooped up in your old labs? You must have had some trick.”

  Evelyn11 tapped her lips with a finger. The gesture felt wrong, like she was using someone else’s body. Still, Charlie25 had a point. Railing against forces she couldn’t alter wasn’t going to seal up her Project Eden research files.

  “How much of my work is available by now?”

  Charlie25 shrugged. “All of it.”

  Evelyn11 halted her pacing. “Pick out a sub-section called Human Experiences—plus a random assortment. Make it look like idle curiosity.”

  “I could just download it all,” Charlie25 offered.

  A nearby electrical conduit drew Evelyn11’s ire and earned a kick for its trouble. “I’m not going to waste a whole eleven hours on the data transfer. Just do it!”

  Charlie25 didn’t rush, but he did comply. Evelyn11 wished she could find even a single topic that could warm the synapses in that cold logical brain of his.

&
nbsp; Twenty minutes later, Evelyn11 had a selection of encephalographic data overflowing the lab’s data storage.

  “How can I tell what’s what?” Charlie25 asked, browsing through entries on a manual terminal while Evelyn11 watched. “None of them are labeled.”

  Evelyn11 insinuated herself in front of the terminal, giving Charlie25 a swat on the back of the hand as he tried to reach back and enter one last command. “Let me handle this. Really. You’d think I’d know a thing, or two thousand things, about my own girls. Plug yourself a direct neural line and feel for yourself.”

  “I don’t think that’s such a good—”

  “Buck up. Quit being a ponce, and connect your brain to the computer.”

  It felt good to put the uploader in his place—or at least some lower place. To be forthright about it, Charlie25 was among the five or six most influential robots there were. Evelyn11’s ascension to the top of that list wouldn’t be official until she claimed credit for the rebirth of humans. And that wasn’t going to happen until she showed up on the Human Committee’s doorstep in a flesh-and-bone body.

  Evelyn11 kept her smirk hidden as Charlie25 jacked in. There really was nothing to worry about. All the remembered sensations in the world couldn’t overpower the quantum gate logic of a crystalline matrix. It was a lark, nothing more.

  She could feel Charlie25 watching as she scanned through for just the right data to prove her point. “What’s that?” he asked, once Evelyn11 had chosen a brief burst of sensation to experience.

  Without answering, Evelyn11 touched the start button for the feed.

  Charlie25 let out an involuntary gasp. He blinked his optical sensors on and off repeatedly, as if that could recalibrate him. “Chocolate,” was all he said.

  “Devil of a time getting hold of the stuff to have her taste it,” Evelyn11 replied. “Scrapyard holiday treat, pilfered on site by a sympathetic carer. You bet I strapped the little dear into her test rig to eat that morsel. Wasn’t letting one qubit of that data escape.”