Brain Recyclers (Robot Geneticists Book 2) Page 4

  Eve would not stay caged.

  Chapter Eight

  Plato’s hand ached.

  Encased in a Protofabbed polymer shell, the appendage boasted six fractures, extensive bruising, and an itch that Plato couldn’t scratch. It was his own fault, losing his temper like that. He’d hoped that with good behavior they’d let him see Eve. One punch had flushed that chance down the toilet.

  Ashley420 had offered him painkillers before and after she set the bones. Plato had refused. Dulling the pain would have dulled the lesson along with it.

  Control. Plato wasn’t an animal. Emotions were fuel, not a drug.

  The hulking boy in a man’s body stretched his legs. The apartment, or prison cell, or whatever the robots wanted to call it was too small. For a human, he was a beast; for a robot, Plato was a weakling.

  Brute force wasn’t the way out of Plato’s predicament. The throbbing hand was the reminder he needed to keep his vengeful thoughts in check.

  With his good hand, Plato reached up and rubbed at his temples. He winced. There was nothing wrong, not even a mild headache, to prompt the gesture.

  Shift change was coming soon, and Plato had the seed of a plan. Plato was no farmer. Seeds didn’t nourish the way a grown plant could. A starving man won’t wait for harvest. He’ll eat the seeds and take his chances until he could find his next meal.

  A man could plan his life away in prison.

  Plato paced. Now and then, he’d feign his headache.

  “Hey, kid,” Brent184’s voice came over the intercom. “Maybe call it a day and get some rest?”

  “Whadda you care?” Plato called out, addressing the microphones embedded in the ceiling. “I’m some other guy’s problem in… four and a half minutes.”

  “You feeling OK?” the voice sounded concerned.

  “I’m fine,” Plato snapped. “No thanks to you. Hand doesn’t hurt half as bad as my ears, forced to listen to your voice all day.”

  Brent184 didn’t say another word before the shift change.

  “You planning on giving me any trouble tonight?” Fred55 asked over the intercom.

  “You up for GameDeck action?” Plato asked in reply. “Maybe Broadsides at Trafalgar? Or how about OmniThrust Racer?”

  “Nah, not tonight,” Fred55’s voice came back disappointed. “You’ve gotten enough muckity mucks riled up that someone’s going to be watching the security feeds.”

  “C’mon, bot,” Plato whined. He waggled his casted hand for the cameras. “I’ll be on the disability interface and everything. This is your lucky—ahhh!”

  Plato grabbed at his head as if he’d just whacked it on a steel girder. Squeezing his eyes shut and grunting in pain, he stumbled against the couch and careened off a wall.

  Never having suffered a brain aneurysm, Plato hoped he was at least mimicking some realistic symptoms.

  “Plato! You OK in there?” Fred55 demanded.

  “Gaaaah!” Plato tried to channel Arnold Schwarzenegger in that movie where scientists tried to zap the memories out of his character’s brain.

  The pressurized door released with a puff.

  Fred55 rushed to Plato’s side.

  As soon as the robot was hunched over him, trying to perform a medical exam, the human prisoner sprang into action.

  Grabbing a startled Fred55 by the wrist with his good hand, Plato used a judo hip throw. Poor Fred55 used a Version 40.4 chassis with corroded servos—that was why the robot was junk at video games. Before that 40.0 chassis could react, Plato wrapped his free arm around the robot’s neck.

  Plato didn’t need to grip to apply a choke hold.

  There was no time for threats or bargaining. “Sorry, Fred.”

  With a quick jerk, Plato snapped the robot’s fiber connection, severing the data link to his body. To the muscular human’s surprise, the whole head came detached. Head and human landed in a heap as Plato overbalanced.

  “My body!” Fred55 shrieked.

  The door was open.

  “You’ll be fine,” Plato assured Fred55’s head, giving it a pat with his casted hand. “Wrong place; wrong time.”

  Tossing the disembodied head onto the couch, Plato rushed out the door. The head’s wailing calls for help faded as he sprinted down one corridor after the next.

  The seed of a plan had been chewed up and swallowed. Plato needed something more, or he was heading right back into captivity.

  The prison was some sort of sub-orbital hovership. That much Plato had been able to deduce from within his cell. Since it had yet to land during the months of his captivity, Plato surmised that there had to be smaller craft for delivering supplies and moving personnel.

  “If I were a bunch of crazy robots, where would I park the skyroamers?” Plato muttered.

  The belly.

  Plato had been mapping the prison ship in his head as he fled. It was a maze of bare steel corridors and pigeon-gray floors. Unlabeled doors lined the walls at irregular intervals. Despite the lack of landmarks or signage, knowing that his cell had an outside window helped Plato direct his search.

  Why weren’t there klaxons?

  Where were the guards?

  Any movie prison break would have been a frantic chase, with a grating, repetitive honk that couldn’t let an escapee forget he was being pursued. Scores of pounding boots should have been just one turn behind the fleeing prisoner.

  The halls were quiet. Plato relaxed.

  These robots were idiots. One guard? Plato had imagined the single door guard as merely the first line of defense. There should have been other guards resting who weren’t on active duty. Secondary doors should have been locked.

  Plato smirked when a door between sections opened as he approached.

  There it was, just as predicted. A hangar. Rows of light transports and skyroamers lined a vaulted chamber along both sides. The seam of a bay door ran half the length of the floor.

  Two steps into the hangar, Plato realized his mistake.

  “Hold it right there!” Brent184 shouted. The robotic prison guard leveled a rifle. Three other robots in plain black military garb aimed similar armaments at the rogue human.

  Plato nearly fell over himself diving back through the door.

  “Crap… crap… crap…” Plato chanted the mantra between panted breaths as he ran down corridors chosen at random.

  The guards weren’t far behind. “You’re not getting anywhere. There’s nowhere to run.”

  The plan hadn’t been to run. Plato had intended to fly. Regroup. Find Eve. Live happily ever after. It had all been simpler in his head.

  Power tools. Welding equipment. Plato needed to find something to even the odds. Ambushing an unsuspecting Fred was one thing. There was no way Plato could take on four armed robots hampered by a bum hand.

  A side door opened at the touch of a console. Again, no security.

  Inside was a utility room. Open panels gave easy access to electrical conduits, fiber cables, coolant and water pipes. If the ship needed it distributed, it passed through this room.

  Sabotage. Plato could manage that.

  But how? What could he do that would enable an escape?

  Plato swallowed. He wasn’t getting away. It hit him in the gut like a glass of spoiled milk.

  A diagnostic terminal blinked with an inviting user prompt. Plato didn’t need to run a diagnostic on the ship’s coolant pressure or power load. But any terminal worth a damn could do a whole lot more.

  Knowing he only had seconds as the storming boot steps closed in, Plato entered a false login.

  He was in! The system accepted a valid, if anonymous, Social ID. Plato ignored the handful of old messages cluttering the inbox. The new message was addressed to Eve14. Plato trusted the algorithms to route it to whatever ID Eve had been assigned.

  eve it’s me plato im being held prisoner but im coming to rescue you cant talk long theyre coming dont worry about me ill be

  The door to the utility room swung open. Brent184 and his
three chassis-twins grabbed Plato.

  With a final lunge, Plato hit SEND.

  The human went limp and allowed the four robots to carry him away. Letting his head loll back as his feet dragged on the gray painted floor, Plato cackled.

  “You’re too late. I beat you. I’ll beat you again. You can’t win in the long run.”

  Chapter Nine

  A black-and-white checkered board balanced on a set of rumpled bedsheets. Two pairs of identical eyes studied the chessmen intently as the monochrome armies did battle.

  “Do you think this is what Nora109 had in mind?” Phoebe asked as she moved a bishop. “Check.”

  Eve sat cross-legged, pondering her next move. Phoebe was embarking on an unexpected attack. “I don’t know what Nora expected. But she Protofabbed a board and pieces. She can’t have minded.”

  “I read up,” Phoebe said with a huff. “It seems like we should be doing each other’s hair or telling ghost stories.”

  “Or talking about boys,” Eve added. “I read the same list. But I like mine short—”

  “Too short,” Phoebe corrected, reaching across the board to scrub her palm across Eve’s bristly haircut.

  “Plus, I don’t know about you, but Evelyn never taught me any ghost stories.”

  Phoebe rocked back, threatening to upset the pieces on the board. “No. But I could look one up and read it to you.”

  A twinkly chime sang from Eve’s computer terminal.

  The hawk-eyed genetic twins glanced over from the bed. Both could make out the tiny text.

  “There’s a boy to talk about,” Phoebe said with a mischievous grin. She waggled her eyebrows.

  Where had Phoebe picked up such habits? Had Evelyn raised her so differently?

  Eve lifted the chessboard and balanced the pieces as she set it down on a bedside table.

  Phoebe rushed to the terminal and sat in Eve’s seat before the game was safely preserved. “What should we say back to him? Would it be rude to correct his lack of punctuation?”

  “No!” Eve snapped. “I mean don’t say anything. Look. Plato got cut off. Someone was chasing him.”

  “That sounds pretty awful.” Nothing in Phoebe’s tone suggested she grasped just how awful Plato’s situation might be.

  “They were going to kill him, you know,” Eve said.

  Phoebe rolled her eyes. “They’re not going to kill him. You voted. Remember?”

  Eve glanced at the cameras. They were covered over in brown adhesive paper. Could the robots see them through that meager precaution? Was Nora109 listening through the door?

  Eve had to trust that she was truly alone with Phoebe.

  “I’m not sure my vote was enough,” Eve confided, leaning in close to her sister’s ear. “Plato is in danger. I need to help him.”

  Phoebe pulled away. “The Human Committee meeting isn’t until next month.” She reached over and tapped the terminal. Eve’s social calendar popped up—vacant except for one committee meeting each month out to the limit of the calendar view.

  “I need to get to Plato. Not with permission from the Human Committee. They already made it clear they won’t help. I need you, Phoebe.”

  Phoebe’s brow knit in an expression Eve knew from her own mirror. “Need me for what?”

  Eve tapped the calendar app, and the view switched to academic. There was an outing scheduled for tomorrow.

  “I need you to help your older sister.”

  Then Eve cupped a hand and whispered a plan into Phoebe’s ear.

  Chapter Ten

  Eight Eves stood in a line, arranged by height. Each was dressed in a single-color outfit of loose-fitting cotton. The colors identified them in pairs. Vivian and Uhura wore purple; Theresa and Sally sported matching green uniforms; Rachel and Olivia were attired in sky blue. Phoebe and Eve were allowed to wear the traditional orange of the Shaolin monks whose temple the class visited.

  Eve couldn’t help being impressed. The temple didn’t have the belittling colossus of Liberty Island or the grandiose pride of the Arc de Triomphe. Yet the stonework all around, from the flagstones to the temple steps, conveyed a profound sense of timelessness. Humans had carved the bones of the primordial Earth itself and stacked them into places of worship and study.

  “Now that we’ve concluded the tour,” Holly68 said, voice carrying in the clear morning air. “We will begin your daily exercises.”

  Olivia raised her hand until Holly68 acknowledged her with a nod. “Should we change now? My workout clothes are back on the hovership.”

  Holly68 smiled. “Many of the exercise forms you’ve learned during your indoctrination were developed in this very temple. Evelyn11 used old video records of ancient martial arts techniques to teach you balance, breath control, and self-discipline. The outfits you’re all wearing are reproductions of what the monks of this temple once wore.”

  A holographic screen appeared, taller than the temple walls. Grainy video showed bald-headed humans whose movements flowed like water droplets down a pane of glass. They twisted and spun, froze in place and lashed out with ferocity, dropped to the ground and bounced back to their feet.

  The holographic monks put on a mesmerizing display, but in and among the grandiose acrobatics Eve thought she could pick out individual movements she knew. This was the purpose. Thousands of years ago, this is what humans did with the knowledge whose surface the cloned girls had just scratched.

  Eve found herself intrigued. She glanced to Phoebe out of the corner of her eye and found her sister looking back. They smiled in unison.

  “Now follow along,” Holly68 announced.

  The grainy images faded. In their place appeared a computer-generated human puppet. The puppet had a bald head and bland, cartoonish features. It was dressed in a gray version of the uniform the girls all wore.

  As the puppet ran slowly through a series of warm-ups, all the girls followed along, mirroring the puppet’s actions.

  Eve recognized the sequence as the exact pattern from the Exercise 7 routine created by Evelyn11. From the point of that epiphany, the practice session left a sour taste in the back of Eve’s mouth. She stopped mimicking and ran through the form on rote memory.

  “Excellent work,” Holly68 called out at the end of the routine. “Vivian, you need to keep your fist straighter. Theresa, stop pausing between movements. Keep fluid. If you need guidance, watch Phoebe.”

  Eve blinked. She must have misheard. As the oldest, Eve assumed that the admonitions were leading up to using her as the exemplar.

  “Now,” Holly continued. “We’re going to break into pairs for sparring. You are all color-matched with your sparring partner.”

  Olivia raised a hand. “What’s sparring in this context?”

  Holly68 made her way over to Olivia but spoke loudly enough for all to hear. “The forms you’ve been learning your whole lives are a form of self-defense. In the unlikely event you ever find yourself in physical danger from an attacker, this training might save your life.”

  A crew of automatons slid out a padded red mat that covered the flagstone surface of the temple courtyard. The Eves hustled out of the way when the automatons showed no sign of pausing for them to clear the area. Except for Vivian, who hopped aboard and rode the mat as it slid into place.

  Holly68 showed a brief instructional holograph.

  Eve and her sisters watched, rapt, as the training maneuvers meshed like gears between opponents. There were rules, which always made things easier. Apparently the monks had a detailed and safety-oriented regimen for assigning points and fouls.

  Phoebe stepped around and raised her hands in a sparring pose. “Remember. This isn’t chess.”

  Chess had been a surprising discovery. Eve and Phoebe were evenly matched. In eight games, they’d each managed a single win alongside six draws.

  “Begin.”

  Before Holly68’s voice finished echoing, Eve and Phoebe had exchanged strikes and dodges. Unlike the chess matches, kung fu sparring roun
ds ended quickly.

  “Point, Olivia… point, Theresa… point, Uhura… point, Eve.” Holly68 called out the names as points accrued in each pairing. The robotic shifu had no trouble tracking all four sparring matches at once.

  The other three matches had mixed results, but one refrain repeated, over and over.

  “Point, Eve… point, Eve… point, Eve.”

  Indeed, this wasn’t chess.

  Phoebe popped back up to her feet and marched over to Holly68. “Shifu, you strongly implied I had the best form. Why does Eve keep winning? What am I doing wrong?”

  “Nothing,” Holly68 remarked without meeting her pupil’s angry glare. “Eve is two years your senior. You may be fully grown and look alike, but she’s faster and stronger than you and has had more practice in her forms. Your fluidity in solo forms fails against Eve’s internalized reactions.”

  “Well, that’s not fair,” Phoebe replied. “Can I train against Olivia?”

  Holly68 clasped her hands behind her back and meandered away. “Well, that would leave Rachel with Sally and Theresa with Uhura. What of Vivian? Does she spar with Eve? Phoebe, you are overlooking the greatest unfairness here: poor Eve.”

  “Me?” Eve asked. She couldn’t help feeling that for the first time she had a right to enter the conversation.

  “Yes, you,” Holly68 replied. “We learn through failure. The defeated improves more than the victor. Eve has been denied a valuable learning experience by winning every match.”

  Phoebe glanced from Holly68 to Eve with a puzzled frown. “Sorry?”

  “No need for that,” Holly68 said. “You did your best.”

  Eve found herself wondering what it would be like to practice against Plato. For someone so huge, he moved like a cricket. Even with all the leverage techniques from the forms, Eve doubted she could budge the giant.

  “That’s enough for today, ladies,” Holly68 shouted. Across the courtyard, the sisters ceased practice and exchanged bows. “Hit the showers, change, and meet Nora109 at the transpod in ten minutes.”