Engineered Tyrant Read online

  Gerry grabbed Alex’s forearm to take a closer look. “You did this yourself, one-handed? Idiot!”

  Alex snatched his hand back. “Of course not. I programmed a machining center with a half-millimeter bit, then pried it out with some forceps I Protofabbed.”

  “That’s some Rasputin-level tough-guy action,” Stephen said in awe.

  “Please,” Alex scoffed, tugging down his sleeve. “The pain was fleeting, and I’ve felt free ever since.”

  “What if you get lost?” Dr. Toby asked. “Wouldn’t you rather have the peace of mind knowing rescuers could locate you?”

  For all his good intentions, Dr. Toby still thought like a robot at times. He still gave the mixes too much credit. He still trusted the committees.

  “No,” Alex stated bluntly. “And anyone who wants in on my plan will do the same or this is the last they hear of it.”

  Silence greeted that proclamation.

  Miscalculation? A step too far?

  “I’m in,” Wendy said. Her fingers dug into the flesh of her forearm, kneading at a lump buried beneath the surface. “I hate feeling this thing inside me.”

  Gerry huffed. “Fine. I’m no coward. I can take a little pain.”

  Soon the whole group had come to an agreement in principle.

  “But what’s this about a plan?” Irene asked. “Your experiment was just yesterday. How much planning could even you have done since then?”

  Acknowledgment of superiority. Tacit acceptance of leadership.

  Alex had hoped someone would ask that. “Months. I don’t plan for failure; I plan against it. I’ve had a backup plan all along. You’re forgetting who I am and who raised me.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Abby lay in bed, limbs leaden and eyes like bricks in her skull. A homemade intravenous pump cycled, injecting measured amounts of saline solution into Abby’s bloodstream. As medical advances went, her invention was nothing extraordinary, merely the best cure she’d found for a hangover.

  As the pump brought her back to the land of the sapient, Abby watched news feeds on the screen in her bedroom. A tornado formation broadcast live from the Tulsa Meteorological Observation Center. Geneticists in Brazil had released a non-stinging insect capable of pollinating flowers. Students at Oxford had put on a stage performance of The Tempest.

  Abby shook her head. At 1,487 years old, that play was still being shown. Her own works were lucky to garner a second rehearsal.

  “This isn’t working,” she muttered, and she didn’t mean the pump. Once again, it had worked marvels in blunting the worst of her own ill-considered indulgences. “I can’t keep living like this.”

  She pulled the needle from her vein and tucked the end into the miniature autoclave attached to the device. Yawning, she stretched and tried by physical means to shrug off the shackles of her own expectations.

  “You become a reflection of those closest to you,” she quoted the ancient proverb. There was no science behind the phenomenon, but the power of social pressure made it sound plausible. Better yet, it was actionable.

  Tucked beneath the edge of the bed, where Abby recalled tripping over it, she found her portable computer. Blowing aside a loose lock of hair, she flicked through screen after screen of acquaintances in her Social network.

  Nigel, Rosa, and Billy were fine friends, but they didn’t bring out the best in her. Abby enjoyed spending time with them but always seemed to regret it later. They’d become a habit, she admitted to herself.

  “Habits are best reinforced or broken,” Abby said, quoting her mother. Eve had never liked stagnation. Abby wallowed in it like a duck in a rainstorm. She knew herself all too well. Self-awareness was as much a curse as a tool.

  Even a rusty tool had its uses.

  Abby tried a connection with Jessica de Wilkes, hoping that the budding nutritionist could take time from her busy day to at least talk.

  CONNECTION > TEXT

  Abby scrunched her nose. Well, text was better than nothing.

  HEY ABBY. WHAT’S NEW?

  If there had been anything new, Abby would never have thought to reach out. “Oh, nothing much,” Abby tapped back. “Just realized that I’d been a little out there. Wondering if I could reel myself back into the solution with the rest of the world.”

  HAHA, IF YOU’RE NOT PART OF THE SOLUTION, YOU’RE PART OF THE PRECIPITATE. RIGHT?

  “Something like that. So, what’s new in the world of food?”

  YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE LIKE THAT. ENZYMATIC BALANCE IS A REAL SCIENCE. I’M NOT A SHORT-ORDER COOK.

  Abby clenched her fists. She’d remembered the precipitate joke. Why couldn’t she recall that Jessica was sensitive about her vocation being a scientific field?

  “Sorry. Never mind. I’ll let you get back to doing real work.”

  Abby closed the connection before she could further embarrass herself.

  Closing her eyes, she envisioned a world filled with people and endless shopping centers of friends and acquaintances. It was Human Era Earth again, and Abby was just a student playwright working in Old New York—an oxymoronic name that brought a smile to her lips. Friends had been so much easier in those days. Among billions, there were guaranteed matches out there in temperament and interests.

  The Second Human Era was short of friends for the misfits and the mildly misanthropic.

  It wasn’t Abby’s fault. She’d been raised by humans. And while Eve and Plato had seemed like wonderful parents at the time, after her emancipation, Abby noticed that she’d been ill prepared to accept her fellow humans without complaint. There was always something missing, some broken trait she felt compelled to fix, some quirky behavior that rankled her.

  Stop.

  Abby had to quit blaming Eve and Plato for leading her to believe she was perfect. She wasn’t. Abby was as flawed and idiosyncratic as anyone. Overcoming the belief that she was the default state of normality was a journey she could only take if she forced herself to believe it wasn’t the truth. She needed someone to challenge her, to show her another path, to stretch her outside her comfort zone.

  She needed someone to accept her calls.

  After five other acquaintances—she would have called them friends if intellectual honesty hadn’t barred her way—all found reason not to take the time to catch up, Abby turned to family.

  The next call connected on video after the briefest of delays. It was like looking at her own reflection in a rippled pond.

  Phoebe bit her lip and sized Abby up over the video connection. “Damn, you are one fine-looking lady.”

  Abby smiled. It was the same joke that most of her genetic twins used. Even if, in socio-familial terms, Phoebe was her aunt, they shared the same genome. At twenty-one, Phoebe would have looked just like her. “Hi, Aunt Phoebe. How’s everything but work?”

  “That comprises sleeping, eating, and mini-marathons of Pulcher and Creek,” Phoebe said. “The other twenty hours a day are work.”

  Abby briefly considered seeing if Phoebe wouldn’t mind a little company, but watching Pulcher and Creek was a line she’d drawn somewhere in her head. The comedy was lowbrow and often lewd. The story lines were trite and predictable. Acting had been invented by the time it was filmed in the mid-2030s, but to the cast, it might as well have been Damascus steel, an art lost to the ages.

  “You… OK, sweetie?” Phoebe asked when Abby’s response wasn’t forthcoming. “You seem a little outside yourself.”

  Abby blew a long sigh. This was why she liked her aunts. None of them pulled punches, and all of them could read her facial expressions. At times, that bothered her, but right now it meant that her introspection could be partly outsourced.

  “I’ve had a rough couple days.”

  “I heard about Spartacus. I’m sorry.”

  “The house is eerie quiet without him,” Abby said. “I didn’t think I was such a creature of habit, but I can’t think to write. And it’s not just grief. I want to write about him. I’m thinking of a play
about how he stole Dad’s name.”

  Phoebe grinned. “I’d watch that. Need me to build you a new playhouse? You could help design it.”

  A pang jabbed at Abby’s stomach. Putting on performances at the site of Shakespeare’s old theater or Broadway as the subject matter dictated had been a point of pride, a connection to the past even if it was a replica built by robots seventy years ago. “No. I like the theaters I’ve got. But thanks.”

  “Try something new,” Phoebe advised. “Get out of the house. Anywhere. You never build anything; take some of your unused drone credits and make yourself a vacation home. Or take your sketchbook and have some of your drawings made into sculptures.”

  “Thanks, Aunt Phoebe. Maybe I will.”

  She ended the call and slumped into bed. Phoebe always suggested getting out and building something. That was her panacea. Abby was more abstract in her recreation.

  Or was that the problem?

  Abby studied her hands. Smooth. Soft. She used an ointment that Rosa had come up with to keep her skin moist and pliable. Historically, that would have marked her as an idle creature too good to sully her hands at labor.

  Was she?

  Abby wrote, played, sang. But she avoided stringed instruments because of the calluses. Also, the asymmetry. If she could have played left-handed as well as right-handed, she could balance out the effects of her fingertips growing hard and rough. But the idea that the tips of her left fingers would be different from the right would have kept her awake at night.

  “God, I am so broken,” she muttered.

  Before she could think of a good reason not to, she picked up her computer and tapped in a formal request to appear before the Transportation Committee. Abby needed to go somewhere, to do something new, something that would inspire her. She needed to kick herself from the doldrums of grief and loathsome self-reflection and inject fire into her veins instead of saline.

  She needed to go someplace where humans weren’t meant to tread.

  And, since Mom would kill her if she pulled a Plato, she determined to get the proper permits to do so.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Two hours later, Abby stood with her hands clasped behind her back in the Transportation Committee boardroom in Prague. Her arriving on a day when the committee met in person was half luck, half the fact that the Transportation Committee came together more often than most. They had more work to do.

  Abby stood patiently, her name an addendum at the bottom of the day’s agenda, and waited through aerial zoning updates, Kanto build requisitions, and updates to the agrarian delivery routes. It turned out that one of the latest batches of emancipated teenagers had decided to move to Antarctica, throwing the efficiency of the global traffic network off kilter.

  In her head, Abby floated words back and forth, trying to come up with song lyrics for the story of Plato and Spartacus. Twice she caught herself humming a tentative melody aloud and hushed herself before it distracted the committee.

  In time, it was Abby’s turn before the committee.

  “Miss Fourteen, welcome,” Janet20 said, extending a hand toward the opposite end of the table from where she sat at the head. The room’s decor was so similar to other committee boardrooms that Abby could easily have imagined herself in Shanghai, Paris, or Kanto. Only the view of restored medieval architecture of a distinctive Eastern European flair kept the illusion from taking root. “What can we do for you today?”

  It was a formal request, for the record. Abby hadn’t been coy about her desire when seeking a spot on the agenda.

  “I’d like permission to enter one of the restricted areas,” Abby said, remembering her posture and bearing. Some robots took offense to slovenly behavior in humans, and she didn’t want to lose any votes on a topic she suspected might not garner universal support.

  “Which one?” Dr. Kabir asked in that wonderfully melodious accent so unlike any other robot’s. Abby found herself wishing that his reply had been less economical with words. Kabir3 was on the Transportation Committee as well, and with that same voice, but had thus far not found reason to speak during the meeting.

  “I’m not picky,” Abby replied. “Any of them ought to do.”

  Why make things harder by narrowing her choices? If the committee were to object to a particular destination, she might lose her chance. By opening up the possibilities, surely there had to be one they’d allow.

  “I don’t understand,” Dr. Kabir asked. “Why would you want to go somewhere that is off limits if you don’t know the reason?”

  “Oh, I know the reason,” Abby said. “I need inspiration. I’m not finding it in the humdrum of daily life. I need a fresh perspective. A room with a view. I need to experience a place that no human eyes have grown bored with.”

  Arthur80 snickered. “You’re stir-crazy.”

  “Am I? Perhaps,” Abby allowed. “But I’m also feeling creatively stifled. New output requires new input. My imaginative engine is starved for fuel.”

  The smile on Janet20’s face was patronizing. That was an Eve smile, and Abby knew it well. Without knowing the specifics, she knew the flavor of the next words about to come.

  “You know, Earth has over five hundred million square kilometers to explore. Surely there are other—”

  “No, there aren’t,” Abby snapped. She didn’t put up with it when Mom talked down to her. She wasn’t going to let a mid-level committee chairwoman do so, either. Getting her petition rejected was preferable to accepting a pat on the head and kick to the behind to dismiss her. “Blank landscapes might inspire a painter. Mountains and rivers are pretty. The crystal caverns beneath Mexico inspire awe. But no one watches a play about a landscape. If they wanted to sit for two hours and stare at a rock formation, everyone’s got a skyroamer to do so. The only songs about places are meant to fill the wayward soul with memories of home. Humans only share a few common memories of home, and Earth doesn’t need another song about Paris.”

  “And you think one of the restricted areas—regardless of which it is—could provide a backdrop for a dramatic performance?” Janet20 asked. “Is that the long and short of it?”

  “Maybe not a volcano or anything but yeah.”

  “Too dangerous,” Kabir3 said, and Abby’s heart melted a little. In life, Kabir had only been thirty-one when scanned. It wasn’t scandalously older than her. But there was no biological version of him running around to make that little fantasy come true. “There are reasons those sites are off limits to humans. Too few humans walk the Earth to risk them on foolish ventures.”

  “Oh, give her a chance,” Arthur80 said. “I’ve always thought creating restricted areas pushed the boundaries of our charter to begin with. We should be making travel advisory zones, not forbidden ones. Nothing forbidden ever gets respected anyway.”

  “The dangers are real,” Janet20 pointed out. “And this committee has created travel restrictions for the safety and welfare of humans and robots alike. You don’t get to serve on a straw man committee you’d like to have formed. You’re on this one.”

  “We’re overlooking our own best interests,” Holly110 said, adding her opinion to the mix. “If there’s one field in which humanity is light-years ahead of robotkind, it’s in the fine arts. If we want avant garde art, we need to allow creative freedom. Abby could have followed a long family tradition of ignoring protocols and just headed off on some half-baked adventure.” She paused to wait for titters around the room, mainly aimed at Abby’s father’s expense. “But instead, she’s asking permission. I say, if we want to let the arts thrive, we figure out a way to help her do it safely.”

  “What?” Janet20 asked. “Are you suggesting a babysitter?”

  Abby cringed and took a step back. “I… uh… think the point would be to experience the real essence of a forbidden area. Not get carted along in an engineered bubble by a robot.”

  Holly110 shook her head. “Not that. A guide. Someone who can watch out for the dangers. I’ve already sent a Soci
al inquiry on the committee’s behalf, just as a contingency.”

  “You what?” Abby demanded.

  Janet20 rapped her gavel on the table. “Petitioner is out of order. Holly110, can you clarify? Who did you contact?”

  Holly110 graced Abby with a conspiratorial smile. “Olivia. She’d be more than happy to guide her niece wherever she’d like to go.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “I hope you’ll forgive my late cancellation,” Alex said with an apologetic smile. On the screen, the image of Jason90 stared back at him. “I just can’t bring myself to leave my current project at this crucial point.”

  He sat back and spread his hands along with a shrug. The office from which he did all his at-home videoconferencing was purposely devoid of anything that might show up in the background. The camera only broadcasted Alex in his black shirt from the shoulders up set against a matte gray wall. The ambient lighting was aligned to eliminate shadows. Off camera, anechoic fabric lined the rest of the room, ensuring that no errant sounds escaped.

  The outbound signal was also filtered through a roughing algorithm before being reconstituted for transmission. If anyone ever accused Alex of doctoring a video, it would be hard to prove ill intent. He tampered with every qubit of data that left his house.

  “Suit yourself,” Jason90 replied. “It was a courtesy invite anyway. Your carbureted engine designs are still decades behind the rest of the club. Might spend a little more of your spare time refining them.”

  Alex forced his smile to broaden and take on a more congenial aspect. “Yeah. I’ll consider that.”

  He cut the transmission before things got ungentlemanly.

  “Smug bastard,” Alex snarled beneath his breath. He opened the door and allowed the ambient sounds of the household systems to enter once more. All his friends were out there, scattered and bustling about their preparations.

  Almost all. Wendy was waiting just outside in the hall, arms crossed, not doing anything but pacing as she stood watch for him. “How’d it go?”