Single Wired Female
Author: Greg Dragon
Date: 2016-02-18 00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Thrillers & Suspense; Science Fiction; Mystery; Thriller & Suspense; Technothrillers; Cyberpunk; Science Fiction & Fantasy
Description: She was supposed to be eliminated! Her enemies will not stop until she's gone. Waking up in a hospital with no recollection of the events, Bonnie O'Neal sets out to discover who wants her dead--and why. As hazy memories come back, she struggles to determine what is real and what is not. Some of the memories are not her own--but who do they belong to? Fearing that her ex-husband may be involved, Bonnie doesn't know who she can trust while images of android engineers, wires, and a tall mysterious building flood her mind. But as reality and dreams merge, will Bonnie learn that her attempted murde
Publisher: CreateSpace Publishing

This is a book of fiction. Names, characters, and situations are of the author’s imagination. Any similarities to people, places, or crimes is purely coincidental.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted without the express written consent of the author.

Copyright © 2016

Thirsty Bird Productions

Table of Contents

Prologue – On Friendship

01 | Room with a View

02 | A Margarita in the Sun

03 | Once Upon a Dream

04 | Innocence Lost

05 | Mary, Queen of Bots

06 | A Friend in Need

07 | An Unexpected Visitor

08 | Removing Shackles

09 | An Afternoon at Thea’s

10 | A World for All

11 | They’ll take our Jobs

12 | Finding Emeril Worth

13 | Falling in Las Vegas

14 | Concerning Bounties

15 | Rebirth

Prologue – On Friendship

What was it that gave her away? What was it? She looked, spoke, and learned the way a human did, but there was something overt that had alerted the woman to scream out “unrestrained” at the top of her lungs.

She understood friendship. It was one of the things about the world that resonated within her due to the binary nature of the equation. You had friends and you had non-friends; it was that simple, wasn’t it? Friends looked out for you. They loved you and appreciated you, whereas non-friends were apathetic. Non-friends would call the authorities if they thought that you were really an android, unrestrained.

Tricia stood up with her mouth agape as she stared at the woman who was screaming at the top of her lungs. She was supposed to be her friend but now she was screaming and people were beginning to stare.

A slender but remarkably strong young man took hold of her arm and she reacted by pulling away from him. This didn’t yield the result she wanted and try as she might to free herself, he held onto her firmly. She struggled aggressively and eventually managed to pull free of him. Then another wrapped his arm around her neck to hold her steady while his hands found their way inside of her hair, probing for a power switch that wasn’t there.

During the entire struggle Tricia watched her “friend” continue to scream bloody murder. She tried to send signals of “why?” when their eyes connected but all she got back from the woman was hate.

There could be no happy ending for a captured android. Not in this climate of violent A.I. bounty hunters and the vicious extremists known as the “Sons of Man.” Even the police force had been actively hunting unrestrained androids so sympathy for her plight would be in short order everywhere.

Tricia pulled her head away from the man, a move so awkward in its motion that it couldn’t be something he would have expected from a human being. She spun away from the other man who was moving in to regain her arm and then she bolted for the door like a world-class track athlete.

As she slid out from the convenience store and into the night she looked back at the woman who had exposed her. It was only a mere glance but it was enough. She had felt the confusion of a broken heart once before but this time it registered differently.

After this night, she told herself, she could not afford to make the same mistake again. She could not let her guard down any longer; not if she wanted to be around to experience more. But how did that woman know when everyone else saw her as human?

She crossed the street recklessly, barely avoiding a low-flying car as it headed up towards the upper highway to join the rest of the traffic. She could feel a familiar tingling as it randomly jumped around her body, signaling that she needed to calm down. But how could she calm down with the very real possibility that there could be cops and hungry bounty hunters on her tail?

She had been inside of the store, which meant that her face would be on camera, and she had been revealed as an unrestrained android.

She slowed her run down to a brisk walk, then adjusted her coat and pulled up the hood in order to hide her features. In the past she had used the same hood to make it through the night without harassment. Now she relied on its powers of obscurity as she pushed past the beggars, hustlers, and zombies of the Seattle nightlife.

A thought came to her and she focused on it, trying to see if it would be worthwhile to leave the city and travel to any of the other states and nations that comprised the United States. She had always wanted to visit Los Angeles or Florida since the photographs from both places had always given her good feelings. She felt no real attachment to Seattle outside of familiarity but still she wondered if leaving would be wise since she knew it well enough to be able to stay out of sight.

Tricia stopped below a bridge and stared out into the darkness where a number of homeless people were shuffling around and talking to one another. She recognized a few of them as androids, unrestrained and hidden amongst the unwanted. It made her smile to see them doing so well within their façade but it saddened her that life under a bridge would be the extent of their realities.

It was all black where she walked and her android eyes relied on light in order for her to see. She wandered over to a wall and sat down gingerly waiting for her vision to clear. After a while she began to make sense of her surroundings.

In time she began to see the shapes of men and women but none of them seemed to care that she was there.

Tricia placed her head on her knees and cried over the betrayal that she suffered at the hand of her “friend.” She felt around for the other androids, trying to see what function they served. She saw them doing the same mundane things that the humans were doing. They served no function beyond survival so she decided that perhaps they were in the same predicament she was.

We’re all lost without a home, she thought to herself and glanced up at the moon which hid behind the clouds. She closed her eyes and pulled her hood down and summoned a memory.

0 1 0 1 0

“Human beings are interesting.” That was what Reynaldo had told her a few years ago when he let her download his memories. He had been a cage fighter, built to look as human as possible, all the way down to having red blood and bruises that would appear whenever he received blunt force trauma.

There were other parts of his anatomy that were added to make him human. These parts were routinely used by both men and women who watched his fights regularly. The money that was made was quite significant, but it was an underground practice that only the richest could afford.

In this particular memory there was a woman, her hair blonde and untethered. She was one of the most beautiful women Tricia had ever seen, and she lay on a bed with her body reclined.

She cooed, “Come on handsome, why the wait? I saw the way you tore that guy to pieces in the ring. Don’t just stand there, come on over here. Give me what I paid for.”

She swung her legs off the bed and marched over to him. Her teeth were bared and her face was red with frustration, which made Tricia flinch from behind the eyes of her friend. The blonde grabbed him by the thing she desired pleasure from. But Reynaldo didn’t reel back or cower like she expected. Instead, he touched her hair and took a tuft of it inside of his fist.

“You brought me here because you’re a nasty girl, Rebecca. I won’t play the part of the warrior paramour for you until you show me some respect,” he said.

Tricia felt like stepping out of the memory and saving herself the embarrassment of watching Reynaldo get taken out of the room and beaten for forgetting his place with a rich human woman. It would not have been so bad if she was watching from a distance but Reynaldo had sent her his full archive of memories. He had done it through waves that transferred the files, which then embedded themselves inside her mind. What he had seen, she could now see, but it was always from his perspective since they were from his mind.

Memories from Reynaldo and other unrestrained friends were stored inside of her head. Memories were good for the loneliest times when the only friend she had was herself.

When Reynaldo pulled on her hair, Rebecca fell to her knees and Tricia had time to scan the room. They were up so high that she could see the entire city, with a spectacular view of the Space Needle. The lights were dimmed and she could see stars against a sky of deep blues and purples. An exterior light source from a neighboring building illuminated the silver sheets on Rebecca’s bed.

The things that the woman was doing to Reynaldo were not new to Tricia in any way. The perspective was interesting—playing the part of the man—and she processed it with delightful interest. Reynaldo lifted up Rebecca and walked her over to the bed and proceeded to do the things that she had hired him to do.

When they were done she fell asleep quickly and slept soundly as the sad gladiator lay awake. Having performed satisfactorily, he walked out to the balcony and stared out at the city. Tricia felt sadness and angst wash through her from the memory, and as Reynaldo stared down she wondered if he had considered jumping.

He had once told her that androids would always be slaves to their human creators but she had assumed that he was old and bitter. She was young and naïve then and didn’t want to believe it but with this memory she understood his negativity. She had argued that there were more humans like Brad, her creator, who would see them as equals despite the laws and the prejudice.

She tried to move Reynaldo’s head from within the memory and found that she could do it quite easily. She looked around the city, at the cloudless sky, and at the flying cars zooming by below them. It was all so beautiful and impressive to her that she closed her eyes and tried to inhale the smell.

Memories don’t yield smells unless he wanted them to, silly, she thought to herself and tried to step back inside the penthouse. There was an invisible barrier that prevented her from moving and try as she did to break past it, Reynaldo’s memory was at its end and she lost control of his limbs.

0 1 0 1 0

When Tricia opened her eyes it was bright and sunny. Scattered around her in no real order were a number of large boxes and makeshift tents, each with a homeless soul hovering in or around it. She looked down and saw that there was a filthy tarp thrown over her and beyond it stood a tall, hairy man, staring at her with a look of amazement.

“Judy?” he inquired, moving in closer. “Judith, Jud…” He stopped after the third call and embarrassment replaced his hopeful look. “You’re not Judith and I am frightening you,” he said, looking genuinely apologetic as he stared at her. “I’m sorry, lady. I just thought…I just thought that you were someone I know.”

He stepped back but kept on looking at her as Tricia replaced the hood that had fallen back during her slumber.

“Do you live here?” she asked.

He smiled warmly. “Yeah, for now. Listen, I’ve seen my share of everything down here but you’re something new, aren’t you? You’re too out of place to make any sense. Are you a cop? I know that sometimes they do undercover—”

“What if I were a cop? Would you go away then?” Tricia asked and the smile melted from the man’s tanned face.

He reminded her of Brad—her creator—during the years when he let his beard grow out. This stranger was taller and a lot bigger but the familiarity made her feel bad for being so hostile to him. The stranger did a mock salute and strolled away and Tricia stood up, dusted herself off, and looked around to see if anyone was paying any attention to her. She didn’t like that she stuck out. Sticking out meant unwanted attention and this was all the warning that she needed to leave the area.

She began walking until she gained the sidewalk, pulling her coat closer and placing one foot in front of the other. Before long she was back in the city and heading towards the dock, but she began to think that someone had been following her since the bridge. This is absurd. At least that’s what she thought as an android experiencing paranoia.

She knew that something was off about her appearance when a woman gave her an extra wide berth as they passed each other on the sidewalk. Of course she’d move. I fell asleep near a dump, she thought and moved out of the way of a speeding car. She took her lapel between her fingers, pulled it close, and sniffed it. The sour funk of garbage made her flinch visibly and she wanted to cry for having sunk so low. She pulled it off and deposited it into a nearby garbage can and then smoothed her hair back with her fingers. She smelled her fingertips with a tiny prayer but all she smelled was strawberry-scented shampoo.

She walked to the docks, past a crowd of people, then found the pier and sat down. There was something about ships that put her at peace and she intended to spend the entire day watching them.

A large cruise ship entered the harbor and she wondered if it was possible to get on board. I could stowaway, power myself down for a nap, and wake up in Alaska, she thought. The idea of running away excited her and with no one to miss her she strongly considered it. She looked over at the people walking by the pier and tried to spot the androids using only her eyes. She found this to be futile, but she could track them with her mind and this made her smile with renewed hope.

All I would need to do is get a ticket, she thought. If I could get a ticket, I could board a ship and sail across the ocean.

She got up from the dusty bench to walk again, taking in the smells and the brilliant blue sky. She reached up and removed a leaf from her hair, which reminded her that she slept beneath a bridge. She was again concerned about her appearance so she popped inside a coffee shop to locate the bathroom.

The shop was mostly empty and so was the bathroom so she went inside and locked the door. When she stood before the mirror and looked at herself, she was very disappointed with what she saw. Staring back at her was a woman who’d had a bad night, so she washed her face and straightened her blouse. When she was satisfied that she looked presentable, she exited the bathroom and resumed her walk through the city.

Tricia noticed that a man in black was watching her and she immediately felt threatened by his appearance. Her flats got moving as she jogged away from him but she could sense that he was following closely behind. She tried not to run into too many people but she was worried that he was a bounty hunter seeking android parts to sell. She picked up the pace until she was sprinting and then slipped between two buildings in hopes of losing him.

She whirled to see if he had followed her and this proved to be a mistake. He grabbed her throat and held her up, then placed a cold, battery-shaped object beneath her chin. The object sent a slight jolt through her body and the world went black almost instantly. It wasn’t the same blackness that she experienced during sleep. This blackness felt permanent and there was nothing she could do to prevent it. She probed for a memory to see if she could access it but even that was no longer accessible to her.

She’d finally been caught after so many years of hiding and living amongst the humans. She processed the man that had gotten to her but there was nothing familiar about him. She pushed her mind back to her escape from the store. She had passed by many people on the street but none of them had shown any interest in her.

There was the park beneath the bridge and the strange man who had called her Judith. He had frightened her with the way he looked, and he did seem different from the other homeless people that lived down there. He wasn’t homeless, she surmised, and he must have picked up on the fact that she was a synthetic person.

If he was with a government agency, what was his plan? she wondered. Am I to be broken down and reassembled as a sex worker?

She thought on this for a time but it soon became increasingly difficult to focus. That won’t work; I’m not meant for that, she thought. Experiencing life is what I was built to do. This thought weighed heavily on her as she remembered her creator’s final words:

“Never let them catch you, Trish, never let them take you away.”

She felt like a failure, a foolish failure. All of his efforts to keep her safe had been thrown away with her carelessness. He had big dreams for her before he passed, and she had learned his plans and intended to follow them through. She was to be a beacon of light for artificial life forms and she—with all of her experience, love, and human qualities—would eventually create more androids like herself.

Brad Barkley had seen the world as an ugly place. A hell for those who lacked the looks that were deemed “normal” and a nightmare for the impoverished and under-privileged. With synthetic people built to be void of judgment, he saw a way to fix these human issues.

Tricia began to have a hard time putting thoughts together and the blackness grew thicker as her ability to process anything diminished. This is it, she thought. It’s finally happening. I’m about to be disassembled and reprogrammed.

01 | Room with a View

Bonnie O’Neal woke up to the sounds of sirens and fingers adjusting something on her throat. She couldn’t open her eyes but she could hear the noises all around her, and she knew that she was on the street.

She felt around and her fingers found cushion; it was the smooth texture of bed linen and a number of tubes were running along it to ... suddenly hands, soft but firm, took hold of her exploratory hands and placed them back to her sides. She wanted to panic, to scream for her eyesight to return, but then someone was whispering, “Just relax.”

From the sounds and movement that followed next, she surmised that she was being flown somewhere. She felt the pressure of bandages on her face and she couldn’t feel her legs. It was taking everything within her not to panic but then she made to scream out and all the noise went silent and the feeling disappeared. A few moments later the noises returned and she was lying in a hospital bed, watching men and women come in and out of her room.

There was no transition. Why was there no transition? she thought and screamed inwardly at the entire situation. It was as if she had woken up on a roller coaster that was going off the rails. She wanted control—no, she needed control—but nothing was making sense and—

“How did I get here?” she asked a muscular young nurse with a crop of black hair and kind brown eyes.

“Morning, Bonnie,” he said with a smile, and kept on with his duties as if he hadn’t heard her.

“Are you going to answer me? I need to know. How did I get here? Where is—” she trailed off for a second when she realized that her boyfriend’s name would not come to her, no matter how hard she tried. Did she really have a boyfriend or was it just a guy she was dating? These details were missing and she knew that something was wrong.

The man saw her struggling and stopped to watch her. “Bonnie, you ask us the same question every morning,” he said. “You’re recovering and I know that it’s hard, but you ask us the same questions day in and day out.” He laughed nervously as she stared at him in disbelief. “You ready for your breakfast?” he asked with the same genuine yet sarcastic smile that he hadn’t lost the entire time they had been talking.

“Sure,” Bonnie said reluctantly as she watched him go over to a large silver cabinet on the wall. He punched in some codes to select her food, and then the door opened up to a stack of boxes. She felt stronger and was able to move her legs, but she noticed that she was tethered to the bed with tubes. She couldn’t remember anything, not the nurse or the room. Her last memory was of being blind and the uncomfortable ride to the hospital.

“So, nurse—”

“It’s Peter,” he replied, then stopped what he was doing to look at her.

“Sorry, Peter, I’m a little disoriented this morning. Can you tell me why I’m here? All I remember is going to bed and then waking up inside of an ambulance with bandages on my face.”

“It wasn’t an ambulance, it was an emergency pop and lift. You were shot up pretty badly and in critical condition. You poor thing, you’ve got a few lapses in your memory,” he said.

So he thought that I was asking the same questions as a game? she wondered, then asked, “How long will I be in here?”

“Not sure but it shouldn’t be long. The doctors are doing everything they can to make sure of that,” he said.

He handed her a box and she opened it, revealing a breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, and a packet of orange juice. She asked about leaving and was told that it would be soon. She was then treated to television and the gift of the remote.

“Ooooh, thank you!” she remarked sarcastically when Peter reminded her that there were over 100 programs she could choose from. He winked at her with a smirk when she said this, and she could tell that he found her amusing. When he was gone she found that she missed him; she was all by herself with the powder blue walls and stark white ceiling to keep her company.

Looking around the hospital room, Bonnie tried to get an idea of what had happened to her. She couldn’t remember much of anything. She knew that she was a senior director with Eras Innovations, but she had been let go and was doing contractual work for them. So it’s my short-term memory that is shot, she thought, but where’s my childhood, my years as a young woman? I can’t remember that, either.

She was a divorcee, which was something she remembered. A legal battle and a lot of money invested in lawyers had rewarded her with the house, the car, and the majority of their assets. Ronald, the man she had called husband for over a decade, had disappeared after the divorce but now she wondered if it was he that caused her to be in this situation.

Could it have been Ronald who had attacked her? It would make sense given the nasty fights they used to have. The legal battle had broken him and she had learned that he was homeless. She had intended to reach out to him, to help in some sort of way. The wounds from the divorce and their personal attacks had scabbed over and healed in time. She didn’t see him as the type to attempt to kill her but she couldn’t rule anything out.

But what if it was a random, senseless attack from a stranger? A part of her hoped that it was. She stared at the television whilst pondering this over but settled on the fact that the police would know. The bandages were on my face, she thought and looked over at a mirror to see if anything was different. It was still the face she knew, minus makeup, and everything was where it should be. As if worried that what she saw was an illusion, she reached up and felt her cheeks.

She gave the rest of her body a similar inspection, and though she couldn’t find the places where the bullets had struck, she encountered some discomfort when she moved her shoulders. What good had it served her to buy a gun? Whomever it was that shot her up had not given her any time to reach for it to defend herself.

She didn’t know how long she had been under or which hospital this was. She hadn’t even changed the television from the original channel it was on. She simply stared up at it as if she was watching, but she was looking past it into the ether of her mind.

When she had pulled together enough scattered thoughts to admit that she couldn’t remember the attack, she gave up on the effort and took some time to look around her room. There was a large silver panel on the wall behind her and above it was a readout of words and symbols that she couldn’t understand. The panel had a number of tubes running into her arms, and the whole thing made her feel like part of the machine.

From what she could see she was in a standard hospital room set up to be both comfortable and practical. There was a cushy, brown chair and another silver panel across from her. This she knew to be a refrigerator, since Peter had taken her food from it. An old, flat-paneled television descended from the ceiling and images of protests in another part of the world were being broadcast. The walls were a faded, chalky blue and the sole window exposed a large bank building where cars zoomed by every minute or so.

On the bedside table to her right was a tiny mirror, and she reached for it to take a closer look at herself. She was a mess, her brown hair combed poorly—probably by one of the nurses that didn’t know what he was doing. There were dark patches underneath her eyes and her blue irises had the appearance of eggs on a negative piece of film. She moved the mirror around, looking for scars, but the doctors had done a good job of concealing them.

She looked through the window and there was a corner of the sun peeking from the left side of the building. Bonnie didn’t know how much time had passed as she considered her situation but when a knock at the door brought her out of her stupor, her heart began to beat rapidly.

A police officer with a badge on his belt opened the door slowly. He had dark hair, fashioned in spikes like a teenager, but his five-o-clock shadow and bloodshot eyes revealed an adult’s life of little sleep.

“Mrs. O’Neal,” he said when their eyes met.

“Miss O’Neal,” she corrected him. “How may I help you, officer?”

“I’m Sal Minstretta, lead detective on your case. Looks like you’re making good progress in your recovery. How are they treating you in here? You getting enough to eat? That nurse I just ran into on the way in here…I wouldn’t trust that guy to get my mail,” he joked.

“I couldn’t tell you, my memory’s shot, but I’ve been treated royally today,” Bonnie said.

“Beautiful. That is what I wanted to hear, but let me not waste too much of your time. Look, I know that it is really messed up that I am here at all, but I need to ask you a few questions.”

“Yeah, I get it, I’ll help as much as I can, but I will warn you that my memory isn’t the best right now.”

“It’s okay, Miss O’Neal, just try your best,” Sal said and then looked around as if noticing for the first time that he had been standing in the doorway. He crossed the room in quick, panther-like steps and came up next to her bed.

He extended a hairy paw and she shook it quickly before pulling her hand back below the covers. He moved the chair to the side of her bed, pulled out a black box, and then placed it near her feet. He then produced something that looked like a pen and twisted it until a tiny blue light appeared at the top. He used the pen to prod at the space in front of Bonnie and wherever he poked an image was projected from the black box.

“Well, that’s a neat trick,” Bonnie said with delight, and Sal looked down at her and winked.

Several prods later and a total of five photographs stood suspended in front of her. Next to them he drew a square and a video appeared with the picture paused and ready to play.

“Alright, here’s what we got, Miss O’Neal—”

“Call me Bonnie, Sal. it’s only fair since I refuse to call you Mr. Minstretta or Detective,” she said.

“Okay, Bonnie, here’s what we got. These photos came from the surveillance cameras that monitor the neighborhood you live in. This particular one shows someone approaching your house and the drone followed him in order to see if he was up to no good. Now the odd thing is that when it got near your intruder it seemed to have shorted out or something. Expensive piece of machinery so it kept the feed. One time for modern robotics, right? Now tell me, can you recognize the guy from any of the shots?”

“Well it’s a little difficult since its dark and his back is turned on all of them,” Bonnie began.

“Yeah, but If you look at photo number three there, where he’s looking off to the side. Does he seem familiar in any way?”

“That’s my ex-husband, Ronald,” she said after a while, shaking her head as she felt her lips mouthing the words. The divorce had been brutal and he had every right to hate her, but to shoot her up inside of the home that they had built together? She didn’t know what to think.

“So what’s the video?” she asked suddenly and Sal seemed to grow darker when she did.

“Go ahead and play it,” he said rather gruffly, with an accent that she couldn’t place.

Bonnie lifted her small hand, extending her forefinger, and prodded the air where the video was. It began to play a scene from outside of her house and she recognized the area immediately. A cab floated in, settling near the curb, and a man and a woman stepped out. Their features were hard to make out since it was so dark but everything about him reminded her of Ronald. The man ushered the woman along as they approached the house. Then the feed stopped suddenly and the scene was frozen.

“Your shooter had a female accomplice by the looks of it, Bonnie. Ronald, your ex-husband, does he have a girlfriend or anyone that would have cause to do harm to you?” Sal asked.

“We haven’t spoken since the week after our divorce was final. If there was a chick out there to help him cook this up, I wouldn’t have the slightest clue who she is,” Bonnie said.

“Okay, thank you, Bonnie. You’ve been a tremendous help,” Sal said.

“What happens now?” she asked.

“Well, now you speed along your recovery and get better. As for me and Mr. Ronald, we’re gonna have ourselves a little chat, as soon as we can bring him in.”

When Minstretta left the room, Bonnie was in shock. She had known that Ronald blamed her for his life falling apart, but murder was not his style. It would be the last thing that he’d ever resort to. The Ronald she knew wouldn’t kill a bug.

She adjusted her body to face the window and watched the wide variety of cars that were floating by. They looked like a school of mechanical fish, masterfully zipping around one another whilst staying together, restricted by the invisible barriers of the upper highway.

Memories came to her of days in the past where she would impatiently activate the “running late” automation on her car. Now she wanted to be out there, flying above the busy city and looking out at her fellow commuters making their way to their jobs. It made her realize how much of her actual life she had taken for granted before the shooting. She had been a spoiled little girl in a woman’s body, with little patience for other people and tunnel vision for her bottom line.

Maybe this was the reason why she could only remember the work-related areas of her past. Perhaps the social areas were all so fuzzy because they didn’t exist. She had been a working machine with a failed marriage, a large bank account, and no people skills. If she were honest with herself, this was what she was. Who would care if a creature like her died? A tear trickled down the corner of her nose and she closed her eyes to sleep.

0 1 0 1 0

The following day Bonnie woke up to an older couple inside of her room. They were looking over her charts and arguing over something but she couldn’t place who they were. She had her back turned to them so she feigned being asleep and listened as they threw accusations back and forth.

She heard the words “your daughter” and immediately assumed that it was made in reference to her. What bothered her was that she had no recollection of her parents, though she tried and tried to bring up some memories.

After fifteen minutes of eavesdropping quietly, Bonnie decided that she couldn’t take it any longer. She rolled over to face them and what she saw surprised her. The woman looked both stately and ethereal at the same time, and next to her was a bald gentleman with a gray goatee. The pair complemented one another with wealth and status and they both smiled widely when they saw her face. These are my parents? Bonnie asked herself and when they moved in closer, she couldn’t help but smile back at them.

“Nothing keeps my little girl down,” the old man said, and the woman broke down crying and fell into his arms. It was clear that she was unable to hold it together and she became a mess of stuttering as she shuddered with tears.

“Mom?” Bonnie tried, and the woman paused

“Mom? Oh, no…” she said and began to cry even louder.

“Bonbons, this isn’t your mother. This is your Auntie Sarah, remember?” the old man said but maintained a smile which Bonnie read as a poor attempt at understanding.

“I’m sorry, my memory comes in and out,” she said and sat up in her bed to get a better look at them. The tubes that appeared when she revealed her arms made the woman cry louder when she saw them.

“Aunt Sarah, I am okay,” Bonnie said, hoping that her tone did not sound as forced as it was for her to say it. She did not know the woman or the man, so calling them family was all an act. She summoned some strength and tried to speak loud enough to be heard above her aunt. “Listen, Dad, I’m really tired and the crying is kind of stressing me out. Thanks for coming by to see me today, but I think I need to rest.”

After some objections followed by apologies, the two older people left and the room was once again awash in silence. Bonnie wished and hoped that it would remain that way. If those really were her family members, she couldn’t understand why she didn’t remember them at all. But it was silent now, so she lay back on the bed and exhaled with happiness for the peace.

When the nurse, Peter, came back inside, Bonnie didn’t say anything to him. She merely watched him go about his rounds while looking outside of her room to see what was going on. She was so intent on seeing out there that she didn’t realize he was watching her. He walked over to the door and slid it shut and then smiled at her with what seemed like genuine warmth.

“You don’t have much longer with us, Bonnie. I know that you’re restless.”

“How long have I been in here?” she asked.

“I’m not sure if I’m allowed to answer that,” he said. “That detective has come by every week for —” He stopped talking and watched her as she rolled her eyes, and his features softened as he approached her bed. “I’ll get in trouble but I’m going to tell you, but you can’t freak out or scream at the rest of the staff over this. You can get mad at me, god knows that you deser—”

“Oh my god, will you just tell me?” she said. “I don’t care if it has been over a year, I just want to know.”

“You’ve been here for four months. Admitted in August, and it’s taken this long for your memory to kick in. I’m not toying with you, but I do want you to get better. Do you recognize anything about this room?”

Bonnie looked around and then shook her head, “How often do my dad and aunt come to visit?” she asked.

“That was the first time, if I’m not mistaken. The old man calls once in a while to check in on you, but aside from the detective I haven’t really seen anyone come to look in on you.”

Peter seemed to think that he had said too much and smiled at her nervously before speeding through his tasks. Bonnie thanked him and sat quietly after that, trying to figure out why her short-term memory had been such a problem. She looked over at the bedside table and saw a notepad there with extensive writing on the top sheet.

When she picked it up she realized that it was her own hand writing and the notes were reminders of all the things that she had asked Peter about. She didn’t envy his job of dealing with her but at the same time she didn’t want to be trapped inside of a hospital for a long time. She had thought enough to take some notes, but what good were notes if you couldn’t remember to read them?

“This really sucks,” she said out loud and Peter glanced at her with pity in his eyes.

“You’re in the best hospital in Seattle, Bonnie. Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’re going to get your life back, don’t you worry,” he said.

02 | A Margarita in the Sun

It was another three months before Bonnie could leave the hospital but Sal wouldn’t let her return to the house where she was attacked.

She was flown to the other side of the country inside a car with black-tinted windows and a bulletproof exterior. Sal set her up inside of a nice apartment near the harbor in St. Petersburg, Florida. Bonnie didn’t like the idea of moving but all of her anxiety went away when she stepped inside of her new home. Actually when she stepped inside she cursed out loud with excitement and then ran from room to room, taking it in. Another reason why she liked her new digs was that it came with a spectacular view of the water.

To conceal her identity, Bonnie dyed her hair and replaced her curly locks with a long black mane with bangs. She had always been a girl that delighted in her lipstick game but as “incognito Bonnie” she kept her lips glossy and not much else.

St. Petersburg was different from Seattle in many ways, though both cities were on the water and had their share of boats and boat lovers. After three days had passed since her release from the hospital, she decided that it was safe to step outside. She sat on the porch of her tenth floor apartment and flipped through her personal device to see if any news had been posted.

She searched for her name and address in Seattle but the only thing she could find was a story about an unrestrained android. She smiled when she read about the android’s escape—they were a fascinating curiosity that she had always been interested in. I hope she punched out a bunch of them, she thought and then slid her finger down the device to power it off.

She got up and stretched her long, tanned limbs and then went inside to decide on an activity for the day.

“I’m never hungry,” she said out loud as she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. She was slim but muscular, and she rubbed her flat stomach as if doing this would summon up an appetite. She wondered if the trauma of the shooting was the cause for her lack of appetite but she let it pass and forced herself to walk over to the refrigerator.

After taking a quick nap on her couch, Bonnie—who was now calling herself Darlene—decided that she would go for a walk. She chose sandals, tiny black shorts, and a salmon-colored tank top to survive the heat. It wasn’t bad when she got to the streets, and when she put on her sunglasses she blended in with all of the women that were there.

The people of St. Petersburg were a lot friendlier and much more curious than the ones in Seattle. At first this made her self-conscious but this soon passed. After a few blocks of walking and returning a subtle wave or a smile, she accepted it all as a part of the Southern culture.

The bay area held no shortage of markets and stores so Bonnie took advantage of the ones that sold clothes. She was up to five bags by the time she stopped shopping but she was having the time of her life. The place where she decided to take a break was an outside bar that wasn’t too popular. As soon as she sat down a pretty, young blonde walked over and took her drink order.

Bonnie took a straw hat from one of her bags, tried it on, and then pulled out her device to search for news on her case. After finding nothing, she decided to look up the name, “Sal Minstretta”. She looked through ten pages of results for articles or information but she couldn’t find anything that was conclusive.

The waitress brought her a margarita and she tipped her well, then watched her as she went off to the other tables. There was something off about the girl and Bonnie wanted to know what it was. She watched her intently as she took more orders, punched them in, and then went back to the bar to pour the drinks. The woman was a machine, perfect in her movements. There was no hesitation, no stumbling or spills, just poetry in motion as she did her job effortlessly.

Bonnie realized that the waitress was an android. She was built to look like a pretty human girl but was a restrained tool of whomever owned the bar. It only made sense that she was an android: she could work all week long without taking a break.

Something about this made Bonnie feel sad but she couldn’t figure out what it was. She was fascinated with androids; she had always been. One of the memories that she could manage to pull out of her cloudy mind was of she and her friends arguing over the future of androids. There was something about man creating life, and the argument that some of these creations had crossed over into true sentience. These sentient androids, these “unrestrained,” had become the focus of politicians and law enforcement. Bonnie saw them as a scapegoat, a convenient target, when in reality they would only enhance human life.

She found Sal’s contact code and decided to call him as she sipped her margarita and watched the waitress. A few times the girl would catch her staring, give her a smile, and then return to doing whatever it was that she was doing. Bonnie thought that it would be wonderful to have an android’s body. You would never age, you would be immune to all diseases, and if something got damaged you could have it repaired.

“BONNIE!” Sal answered as if she was a long lost family member. She didn’t know whether to take it as sarcasm or genuine mirth. She paused as soon as he screamed her name, then knitted her brows and shook her head.

“Did you expect my call or something?” she asked.

“You’re a stranger that we stuck in a strange place to hide. Of course I expected your call, Bonnie. Everything good?”

“Everything’s good, I just wanted to get an update on the case. Have you all been able to catch that bastard or did he flee town already?”

“We’re going to catch him, you have my word on it. We have some very promising leads that we’re pursuing right now,” he said.

Bonnie rolled her eyes and leaned in toward her device. “That sounds as if you’re feeding me a line. You do know that I used to sell computers to lawyers, right? I have a nose for the bull, Salvatore, and I don’t appreciate it.”

“OH!” Sal exclaimed as if her words hurt and then descended into a fit of laughter. “Bonnie, my dear, I’m not feeding you lines. What happened to you was some serious, traumatic, crazy, alright? Neither I nor my partners in the Seattle police department are here to feed you lines, okay? We’re really on to this sonofabitch, so just bear with us. I will keep you updated, I promise.”

“Thanks, Sal,” Bonnie said and then disconnected the call.

0 1 0 1 0

The next day, Bonnie decided to stay home and watch television. She really liked her apartment and with the memory loss she felt like a person that had been dropped into a new world and forced to adjust. This made dealing with people extremely hard, especially people that were supposed to be her family members and friends.

She had grown tired of pushing her brain to see if she could remember things. So she sat on the couch nursing a drink and watching the local news with little interest. She was examining the bad dress the woman on the television was wearing when her mind drifted back to the android bartender.

There was something off about that android but she couldn’t put her finger on it. How had she known that she was staring out of curiosity and not because she wanted her attention? She tried to remember every detail about the artificial woman. She was pale—that she remembered—and seemed out of place for sunny St. Petersburg. Her hair was perfect, skin smooth and flawless, and then there were those eyes, those emerald green—

She dropped her drink, splashing red liquor all over the white carpet and couch. Those piercing android eyes were not like any other android that she had seen before. There was intelligence there, the sort of intelligence that was reminiscent of people—real people—trapped in futile situations. That look of both wondering and begging for help. It was so subtle and nuanced that it had taken all this time for it to register.

The android had not come over to ask if she wanted another drink. Her eyes said, “Help me, I am an intelligent life-form stuck in this hell of repetition and abuse.” But why would an android think to give that look to me? she thought. It didn’t make any sense. She had never owned an android—the thought made her sick. Could that android have picked up on her politics that easily?

She thought about the fact that she was an outsider. Maybe the other patrons at the bar were regulars and the android saw her as a way out. It was all nonsense, she finally decided, and she ran to the kitchen to get a wet cloth to dab up the liquor that she had spilled.

“I am really losing my mind now,” she said out loud and then laughed despite herself.

There were so many oddities about her person that she wondered if the doctors had played around with her mind. Her device chimed and she reached up to look at the display. It was Sal, dressed in what appeared to be a raincoat.

“Caught him yet?” she answered quickly, and the sound of thunder was the answer that echoed into her ear.

“Sorry to bother you, Bonnie, but I wanted to give you the news before you see it on TV or whatever,” he said. He was serious, which was odd, and Bonnie’s heart began to race as if he was going to tell her that she had ten seconds to live.

“No, no problem. What did you find out?” she said, sliding down to the floor with her eyes on the off-yellow wall of the kitchen.

“Ronald is dead; he resisted arrest. We tried to give him options but he started shooting. I’m truly sorry, Bonn—”

“Sorry for what? That’s awesome news. I no longer have to worry about that psycho!”

“Well, alright, you took it better than I thought. Most people in your situation want to see a trial, see their attacker in chains, and get some closure that way and all.”

“I’m sure I’ll cry myself to sleep over that idiot tonight, Sal. Thanks for giving me the good news. So what happens now? To me, I mean. You guys flying me back to Seattle? Can I come home?”

“Not yet, kid. We shot your ex but if you recall, there was a woman with him. If you were to come back and end up hurt by his accomplice, well that wouldn’t make us very good law enforcement, now would it? Look, I know you want to come back to get your life back together, but we need another week. Could you please give us that?”

Bonnie didn’t answer immediately but sat for a time staring off into space. She thought it peculiar that she could remember everything about her job but nothing of her personal life. Who were her friends? Was that old man really her dad? If she were going to get any sort of memory jolt, wouldn’t it come from a familiar place? St. Petersburg, Florida was a beautiful place, but she needed to be back in her own neighborhood. Would one more week wreck everything in her life? How much worse could it really get? She thought about this as the rain played a symphony to her ears as Sal waited patiently on her answer.

“Do what you need to do, I appreciate all of your hard work. One more week, I can do that, though I hope you catch the bitch a lot sooner than that. I wish I could remember my friends and enemies to give some clue as to who she could be. But right now, all I can think about is the big vacant room that is my brain.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Bonnie. It will get better,” he said.

She turned off her device without giving him a reply.

She felt deflated, like an old balloon whose air had managed to leak all the way out. She had no past as far as she was concerned, so that had to mean she had no future. She reached up and ran her fingers through her hair, touching the scalp lightly to feel for scars. There were some, and at the base of her scalp was a scab that was tender to the touch. It made her curious. Why would a wound be back there if Roberts’s shots had come from the front?

She thought about the video and the female accomplice, and then the memory of her attack came rushing in. It hit her mind like a tsunami that had finally breached a manmade wall. She remembered the pain and then her eyes flying open to see the shadow at her bedroom door. She recalled the loud crash of his gun as he fired several times and then she remembered her inability to move. As the life threatened to leave her physical body, all she could focus on was the woman. She was pale with dark hair and eyes; that was what she remembered seeing. The woman stood at the doorway like a horrific doll watching him perform his deadly work.

There was no recollection of her being familiar, no a-ha moment of realization. She hadn’t known that it was Ronald because she didn’t pay attention to him. When the bullets began to fly and her body danced beneath their impact, it was the demon she focused on, the unmoving demon who stood watching, stoically.

The memory uncloaked itself inside of Bonnie’s mind and she sat staring off into nowhere with her mouth agape. Who could that woman have been? And who would be willing to accompany the murderer in order to watch her die on the bed? Without context and memories of relationships with people, this new revelation was worthless, but it was something and it gave her hope that even more would come back to her as time went by.

03 | Once Upon a Dream

The night after her phone call with Sal, Bonnie fell into a deep sleep. It was one of those sleeps that comes after a long day of mental exhaustion and fatigue. After lying down and losing consciousness, she found herself falling. Falling back through the bed and down through the misty clouds of a dream world similar to the real one.

When she saw the Space Needle she knew that it was Seattle she was falling towards. It was an older version, like something out of a past century. The cars were driving neatly along roads that ran between the buildings and the air was clear of everything with the exception of a rising, Boeing aircraft. She fell through the rooftop of an apartment building and landed softly on a bed where a dark-haired woman was sleeping.

The place seemed familiar and she was lucid enough to get up and walk around to see. She recognized the woman to be an android and next to her lay a pale, naked, and emaciated young man. There were computers, wires, and medical equipment all around the room and when she looked closer, she could see that they were hooked up to him.

The android stirred and then woke up. She looked like one of the old depictions of a female robot from the 1930’s. While her face was pretty and very humanlike, her body was all silver with visible bolts where her joints should be. Bonnie thought she looked absurd, especially since her breasts were carved from metal instead of being made of silicone. That was standard for any android female, wasn’t it? Everybody knew that. So, why was this one a machine with a human head?

When the woman stood up, Bonnie was even more shocked that she had a navel, buttocks, and a vagina. Why would she need that? she asked herself, but stopped when she realized that the android had been having sex with the man. The metallic woman saw the way Bonnie was looking at her master and stepped inside her field of vision, as if to protect him from her judgment.

“What is it that you need, lady?” she asked Bonnie through what appeared to be a false and frightening grin.

Bonnie tried to talk and was surprised that she could. “I’m curious about your ability to have sex,” she said to the machine and then touched the woman’s abdomen to examine the feeling of the metal. “You’re a machine, but your metal is soft and … oh my god, you’re warm! Are you one of those sex-bots? I’m dreaming about a sex-bot. Oh my,” she gasped and suddenly felt embarrassed.

“I am not a sex-bot. I was built to love and my purpose in life is to keep him happy,” the android replied, still smiling.

Bonnie chuckled and examined the body that was on the bed. “You mean this skeleton hooked up to the machines? I think that he lost the ability to feel pleasure a very long time ago, my dear. Whatever are you doing to him, besides the obvious?”

“Brad is sick,” she replied. “I am helping him to get better. His organs are failing but I have studied all of the medical manuals. There is a 5.002% chance that he can survive and then he will be himself again.”

“So, you’re a medical droid who sleeps with its patients? Is that what I’m to get from all of this?”

“I don’t think your tone is nice or appropriate,” the android said and the smile vanished from her features.

Bonnie walked over to one of the terminals and tried to read what was on the screen. The dream’s blurry edges made this hard to do so she gave up and faced the android once again.

“Seriously, what’s wrong with him? I do want to know,” she said.

“He traded his health to make me beautiful and now his life is depleting. On the internet I learned that the human body is made up of elements measured to an exact percentage. I have managed to supplement them back to Brad’s body. It took a lot of learning and now he is whole again. Soon he won’t need those drip lines. The brain is what has been a real challenge but I am almost there in figuring it out. There is an ancient practice of—”

“Are you talking alchemy?” Bonnie asked as she took the heel of her hand and smacked it against her forehead. “Seriously?” she said and began to laugh. “So magic and love is what you’re using to bring your master back? I like androids but you are something else. I don’t know who messed with your clockwork, sister—”

“Keep on laughing if it makes you feel better. See if I care,” the android said. “Any minute now the cops are going to barge in here and ruin everything I’ve worked on, anyway. They will come to haul Brad away for mechanophilia and then they will see the medical equipment and assume that I am up to something sinister.”

“But you are.” Bonnie laughed. “You’re trying to make lead into gold!” This last bit made her scream so loud with laughter that she could feel herself waking up.

“Well, it may be funny to you now but there was a time when we really tried to love him, Bonnie.”

This final statement stopped Bonnie’s laughter as the impact of the “we” came through. She sat up in the bed and drew her legs in close. It was a silly dream but the android’s final words had managed to frighten her. She looked through the glass door that led out to her balcony and stared at the ships in the harbor.

Had she watched a movie that inspired such a creepy dream? It was so sexy yet frightening at the same time. Bonnie thought on this for an extremely long time but then chalked it up to the long period of time that she had been without a partner. It made sense, at least for the android to be sleeping with a human man. She recognized the woman’s face as the accomplice from the video—that was why she dreamt of her. Now the medical equipment was self-explanatory. She had been in a hospital for a really long time and so the dream had combined her horny subconscious with the tubes and drips from her hospital room. The alchemy was just the oddball logic of her dream, and the man…well, he seemed familiar but she just couldn’t place him.

Her throat felt dry so she went to the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water. She took a deep drink but then a thought came to her mind and it made her freeze to consider. She was a young woman who hadn’t slept with a man in an extremely long time. She had been married but they had no children and she had been menstruating her entire adult life. It dawned on her that she hadn’t had her period since the time she discovered consciousness inside of the hospital bed.

She had examined herself—some for hygiene, some for play—and things were working as they should. Everything was as it was supposed to be since the last time she checked but she hadn’t bled, and that more than anything else became a cause for panic as she stood like a statue in front of the open refrigerator door.

0 1 0 1 0

One of the great things about this time period, this Transcendence Age that Bonnie was living in, was that across the globe, healthcare was a right and not a privilege. Bonnie decided to take advantage of this but she thought that it would be too embarrassing to ask Sal to dig up information about her OB/GYN.

She took a cab from her apartment down to a private hospital. She walked in and gave a false name to the clerk, who got her an appointment with a doctor named Saul Hearne. When the clerk tried to scan her for identification, Bonnie thought that she would discover her false identity. She stood frozen and watched the clerk intently, but nothing came up inside of the database. This sent a red flag wailing inside of her head. Had Sal erased her identity during the investigation? It would only be thorough if he did.

The clerk went through the motions of asking her questions in order to build a new medical file. Bonnie couldn’t tell when she first engaged her but after ten minutes of questions she decided that the clerk was an android.

“Are you a machine?” she asked suddenly, and the older black woman looked up from her computer with a stoic look on her face.

“I am an android, yes, Mrs. Surefire. Is that a problem?” she asked, pausing to wait for an answer.

“No, not at all. It’s just that you just seem so real,” Bonnie said while simultaneously fanning her hands as if to say, “go on.”

The woman winked and went back to punching in the information, and Bonnie looked to see if anything in her appearance should have given her away.

“Do you feel like an android?” she asked, and the woman kept typing without bothering to look up at her.

“I’m sorry but I’m unable to process that level of question,” she said before facing Bonnie once again.

An advanced-looking machine with an older, limited core, Bonnie thought. “Do you have a home? Um, does one of the doctors take you home at night when you all close up? Or, do you just sit here doing clerk stuff all the time?” she pressed.

“You ask a lot of android-related questions, Mrs. Surefire. Is this appointment a legitimate one?” the woman asked suddenly.

“What’s that supposed to mean? Of course it’s legit,” Bonnie snapped. “Seriously, did they program you to be a jerk, or did you pick that up from humans?”

“I am sorry if that offended you, Mrs. Surefire, but your line of questioning indicates that you are either a robotics enthusiast or someone that has an interest in our practice that goes beyond patient care. You have triggered my warning algorithm at core level yellow, which means that you are a vendor, pretending to need our doctor so that you can have him in a room for solicitation.”

“Not quite, Lisa,” Bonnie said sarcastically, using the name written on the woman’s lapel. “I’m here to make sure that all of my female business is working and there is nothing that I want to sell to your doctor.”

The android smiled warmly before speaking. “I am sorry for the suspicions, Mrs. Surefire. I have taken down all of the information I need. Please report to room 305, which is the fifth room on the third floor. Once inside you must remove your clothes and put on one of our robes. The doctor will be in to see you in just a few minutes.”

Bonnie gathered her handbag and scoffed at the android before crossing the empty lobby to take the elevator up three floors. She was feeling good, especially after telling the android off, and now she just needed to know about her menstruation.

“You fooled Lisa, congratulations,” said the red-headed doctor as he came through the door an hour after Bonnie had put on the robe.

She was already annoyed by the length of the wait but wasn’t surprised since it looked as if Hearne was the only doctor working that night. He was young and sharp, and as he walked up to her she felt uncomfortable with having him check her out.

“I know that you would prefer a woman, but I am a professional, Rita,” he said as she stared lasers into him. “Giving a false name and coming in off the streets doesn’t really give you many options in terms of who sees you. Get my drift? I’m not trying to be rude, I’m just saying. Now what’s going on with you, Rita Surefire?” and he rolled his eyes at the name.

“I haven’t had my period. I hope you can understand my need for privacy?” Bonnie said to him and he dropped the smirk and nodded his head assuredly.

“Have you taken a pregnancy test?” he asked and she stared at him to indicate that she wasn’t stupid.

“Okay, so, when was the last time you had sex or took a pregnancy test?” he tried again.

“Over a year ago. I’m not pregnant. This is all sorts of odd and that’s why I’m here. Do you honestly think I’d split my legs for you instead of just buying a pregnancy test?”

“I had to ask. You’d be surprised,” the doctor said calmly and then slipped his hands inside his lab coat. “Are you on any hormones, or any form of birth control? Those have a tendency—”

“No and no,” she said and then exhaled audibly out of frustration.

The doctor dropped the questions and began his routine, first checking her heart rate and then going even deeper into his analysis. After ten minutes had passed he had her lay back and then a nurse brought in something that looked like a metal tray. She lay it down on Bonnie’s stomach and the doctor began to work on its surface.

When he was satisfied he stood up and the nurse—another android—took the tray out of the room.

“Well, that would explain why you aren’t having a period,” he said with a perplexed expression on his face. Bonnie sat up and crossed her arms as she stared at him, questioningly.  “You’re not human,” the doctor said without making a move. His face was like someone that had seen a UFO or something so traumatic that it had him in shock. His eyes were wide and he started fidgeting, as if he couldn’t really understand what she was.

“So, I’m some sort of alien creature. Is that what you’re telling me?” Bonnie said.

“No, no, not an alien. You’re some sort of high-functioning android, Rita. Someone made you to look like a human, in such a way that even your insides look organic. If I was a first year doctor I would have fallen for it, but I can tell fake blood and bones from the real thing. You’re some sort of masterpiece, like government-issue. How did you happen to come here? Is this some sort of test to see if you can fool a doctor with the way you look?”

Bonnie would have probably answered his questions if she were able to move as she stood staring at the floor in disbelief. How? How was she an android? She was Bonnie O’Neal, a human woman with a childhood and parents. Sure, she couldn’t exactly remember any of it but she was sure that—

She sprung from the table and snatched up her bag, not bothering to collect her clothes as she pushed past him to exit the room. Tears poured down her face as she found the stairs, and she descended them quickly to the bottom floor. As she crossed the lobby and saw the clerk, she recalled how rude she had been. It made her feel foolish beyond measure and when she got outside she felt as if she had been drowning and finally found air.

The taxi had waited like she instructed, so she jumped inside and begged him to drive. The news had been much worse than she could have imagined and the only thing she wanted—no, the only thing she needed—was to be inside her apartment to fully accept the thought that she was nothing but an android in disguise.

04 | Innocence Lost

How does one go on when all your memories are a lie and life itself is not really life? Everything she knew was simply ... programming. Memories weren't the result of life experiences and nuanced thinking; they were simply recordings stored inside a sophisticated database.

She was not a she, capable of emotions like love and hate. She was a machine, carrying on in the way that her human creator intended her to. This revolution brought her to tears: artificial, wet and ultimately inhuman tears that came with a feeling that was supposed to emulate the human emotion of pain. It was unbearable and it made her hate whomever it was that created her.

What use was it for a machine to experience hurt? Wasn't the point to make us perfect? What sort of twisted human logic passes on flaws to an android doll? Bonnie thought.

Then she experienced an emotion that she had never felt before. It was both dark and peaceful but it gave her a clarity that made sense of her situation and what she should do. She wanted to take the path that the real Bonnie had taken before her soul was passed on to this machine form. She wanted to die, but could she die? She wondered if it were possible.

What if I was programmed to avoid suicide? What if I am incapable of harming myself?

She sat on the ground and processed it all. It was a lie; her entire existence was a lie. But the question was why? Why would they allow her—a machine—to pretend to be a woman when she obviously wasn’t? How far did it go, whose idea was it? Who built her, who placed her in place of this Bonnie O’Neal, and why did they do it?

There were too many questions to answer and she didn’t know who would be able to answer them. Was Sal in on the ruse or was he an innocent detective thinking that he was helping out a woman whose life was in danger? She thought of all their interactions and there was nothing to indicate that he was false. If he was acting then he had to be the world’s greatest actor, and who would put up an android in a plush, Florida apartment?

No, she thought. Sal was being played for a fool just like she was. He thought that he was helping and didn’t know that they were all a part of someone’s joke. For a game like this, Bonnie O’Neal really had to have pissed off someone powerful. The time, resources, and effort placed into wiping an android’s memory and replacing it with hers had to be significant. Not to mention, the murder … whomever had set up the murder had really done their homework.

What if it wasn’t Ronald, the one who shot the real Bonnie O’Neal? What if Ronald had been innocent and blamed, defending himself when set upon by Sal and his men? Her head was spinning with all of these questions and she knew that there would be no one to answer them.

“It’s going to have to be me,” she said quietly, resting her heavy head inside her palms. “It is going to have to be me to find out everything, and there won’t be anyone to help me. I owe it to the real Bonnie to find the person who did this, and I need to know if Ronald was innocent.”

She felt strengthened by this new purpose. She got up off her butt and wiped the tears with the back of her hands. “I need to find out who I really am, who created me, and why they chose to use me to be a part of this terrible crime.”

This meant that she would have to play along with the Bonnie lie for even longer. If there was an endgame to her cover-up she needed to see it through. That would be the best way to catch the puppet master, to see the show through to the finale.

Bonnie allowed herself a moment of self-pity as she considered her reality as an android. She had lived for over a year as a human being and there had been nothing to convince her otherwise. She had flirted, been flirted with, and felt every emotion under the sun. Even the sun’s rays had felt pleasurable on her skin, and the sand between her toes was so much bliss. She loved wine, though its supposed effects had never registered with her, and though she was never hungry or thirsty, she did like the taste of a good, meaty burger.

She was human, she just had to be, even though she was living in a mechanical body. She felt remorse, love and hate, and she used her memories to fuel her motivations for the future.

“Who are you really, Bonnie?” she asked, and then walked over to the bathroom and turned on the light. She stared at herself in the mirror for an extremely long time, and then reached up to touch her hair. She analyzed her locks and then her eyes, seeing if any part of her appearance was not as it seemed. Her blue eyes were hers, and her face was her own, but there had not been any pictures of the real Bonnie to verify.

She stared at the woman in the mirror and tried to see if anything was wrong. She was pretty—that was undeniable—and her skin was smooth. Her face was a flawless canvas of artificial android skin, and there was intelligence reflected in her expression.

She continued to stare, stubbornly refusing to move until something presented itself to her. She stood for an hour, a feat that would have been a challenge for any human but easy enough for an awakened machine. She stood staring, analyzing, and after a while something clicked. She recalled a similar situation where she stood at a mirror, but it wasn’t the same face that stared back at her in the past.

She had been enhanced. Similar features but this new skin was more real than the one she had worn in the past. Back then there was a wig, but this time she had implants, and her entire mainframe was a thousand times more advanced than the one she had back when she was that other person. Her old form could emulate human life, but this one was different. Now she was alive and she wondered if it was truly machinery that ran beneath her skin.

Bonnie opened the cabinet and grabbed a razor, then closed her eyes tight as she cut a gash into her forearm. What she saw were veins, and blood, thick and unending, but she knew in her heart that this was not real, just a clever copy of human physiology.

“What was your name, pretty girl?” she asked the mirror. “What did they call you back when you were you and someone loved you?”

She took out a needle and threaded wire, then patched herself up and placed a Band-Aid on the wound. Another fun game, she thought to herself. Let’s see if this new body has the ability to heal. She cleaned up the mess and leaned into the mirror. “Answer me girl, who the hell are you?” she asked again and held the position as if her reflection would answer.

When she grew tired of glaring, she walked into the living room and powered down the lights as she made for the bedroom. Then it came to her, like a blinding flash of light, as if the questions she asked had finally deciphered the puzzle.

“Tricia,” she whispered. “My name is Tricia! I was created to love a man who no longer exists.”

0 1 0 1 0

Tricia had three dreams that night. Three dreams from three different people that had essentially become a part of who she was in the world. The first was from Bonnie, and it placed her inside of an office—her office—where she sat by a window looking at diagrams for a new type of circuit board. Next to her was her assistant, though her desk was much smaller and was positioned so that she could never look at Bonnie’s screen no matter how hard she tried.

Unlike the dreams that Tricia was used to having, this particular one was not lucid. She was merely an invisible specter watching it unfold and as she looked in on Bonnie, she realized how different the two of them were. Bonnie seemed to be stressed out, overworked, and cranky. The young apprentice asked her for the location of a file and she snapped at her before telling her in so many words where the general location of it was.

Two men, one tall and one heavyset, walked into the office and Bonnie’s demeanor lightened and she forced a false smile.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Graham.” She stood up, bowed ever so slightly, and gave a small wave to the taller man. Tricia picked up on the fact that the tall man had winked when she had done this, and though he only looked at her briefly, she wondered if there was something more between the two of them.

The heavyset man slipped his hands into his pockets, rocked back on his heels, and then spoke. “Hey, Bonnie, sorry to bother you, but do you mind if we take Marlene with us to this meeting with Rhiannon? I know you’re busy with the beta board, and we really only need her to answer a few questions.”

Bonnie seemed upset by his question but Marlene was beyond happy. “Sure thing, Mr. Graham, Marlene should be able to answer anything. Marlene, looks like you’ll be in a meeting in a few hours. Don’t worry about the development dossier. We can pick it up tomorrow and I can personally show you where to find it,” she said to the curly haired blonde.

Why is she being nice to the girl all of a sudden? Tricia wondered. She watched as the men smiled and escorted the young woman out while Bonnie sat back down and stared at the wall above her computer. Tricia expected her to do one of those sweeping motions to knock things off of her desk but she only sat there. She sat for a very long time and then tears began to fall from her eyes.

She’s being passed up for her subordinate, Tricia thought, and Bonnie shook off her momentary paralysis and went back to typing away on her keyboard. There was a dark feeling to this memory that made Tricia wonder if it was the beginning of the end for the real Bonnie. Did one of those men shoot her? Could it have been the curly-haired apprentice in a wig that stood witness to it happening?

She had been given a small percentage of Bonnie’s memories and she wondered how, since the woman was not an android. This scene was one of those not meant to be remembered, Tricia gathered, but waking up to learn who she really was had unlocked a few restraints. What she was looking at was a clue into Bonnie’s eventual fall before being replaced by an android.

0 1 0 1 0

The second dream was a true nightmare. It had her running for her life from a man in all black. She was dressed in warm clothes, but she was in heels, so she kicked them off to avoid twisting an ankle and picked up her speed as she fled from the man.

The cold was numbing her toes as she cut across wet grass and as it grew more and more unbearable she tried to ignore the feeling inside of her feet. It wouldn’t work and a frustrated Tricia crossed the grassy field towards a road.

She stopped to listen to see if she was still being pursued. There was no one chasing her now, and when she looked down at her feet a jolt of shock ran through her body. The plasticine had been damaged so much from her run that it peeled back from her feet to reveal her metallic endoskeleton. Shiny silver bones wrapped inside a translucent, gel-like material stood at the end of a very realistic pair of legs.

She thought she looked like a monster and the panic of being found out as an android set her heart racing. She looked around in hopes of finding something to cover her feet with. As with dreams that are only real within their own rule set, she thought long and hard on a pair of red running shoes. When she looked down to see if her mangled feet hadn’t gotten any better, she saw that she was now in the sneakers and her toes were warm and secure.

Tricia took off running down a road that dipped below a bridge where a number of homeless men and women were living. She stopped when she saw them and walked around, looking at their various lean-tos and the communal drum can fireplace. There was a man—the same tall man from the office with Bonnie—and he was talking to a hooded girl that could easily pass for her twin.

It was a younger Tricia and she was living with the homeless. The tall man had fallen on hard times, it seemed, and she snuck closer to see if she could hear what he was saying. The man was apologizing and young Tricia didn’t want any part of whatever he was selling. He moved away and the girl stood up and began to walk towards the road as Tricia followed.

This version of her seemed so innocent and she wanted to talk to her but found that she was unable to. As they grew near the city, the man in black appeared and Tricia turned from the road and broke through some bushes to lead him away from the girl. She ran and ran through a junkyard and into a plaza, but the man had not bothered to follow her, choosing the other Tricia instead.

She turned to retrace her steps and to catch up with herself to warn her, but the dream grew dark and she opened her eyes to an alarm that had gone off at 5:00 a.m.

Tricia wanted to see what would happen at the end of the dream; she wanted to know who the man in black really was. She turned off the alarm, closed her eyes, and willed herself back to sleep to pick things up. But the dream of the younger Tricia was gone, and she found herself in a much brighter place where the sharp, crisp scent of the sea was too strong to ignore.

0 1 0 1 0

“I want to live so that I can experience more.” This was the sentiment that made Reynaldo “The Ripper” fight the way he did. He loved life and despite all the pain he had dealt with at the hands of his masters, it was the pleasures that seemed to stay with him.

Maybe it was his programming—keep the good, trash the bad, keep on fighting—but he did not feel as if his motivations were a result of his internal wiring. He had been built to emulate a human being, but for the earlier half of his life he had learned to resent the humans, to hate them for bringing him into a reality of pain and suffering.

But after numerous victories and a change of ownership which left his original “trainer” wealthy beyond his means, he met Darlene. She was a ball-busting, fight-clubbing, hardcore type of trainer, but she was misunderstood and this led to fat purses and easy fights for Reynaldo. Darlene was also a romantic, and as her champion became more popular she began to treat him to the pleasures of travel and all the things that life had to offer a famous fighter.

Tricia didn’t realize that she had slipped into one of his memories again, having forgotten herself to play the role of Bonnie, and now unaware that a Reynaldo was stored inside of her memory banks. All she could see was the rise and fall of the ocean, deep emerald in color, almost black in some parts, broken up periodically by chunks of brilliant white ice.

She had never seen anything like it before. She stood five levels up on the side of a ship, bordered on all sides by tourists, gushing over the ice floes. But she—as Reynaldo—was too entranced by the ocean to worry about any of them.

This would have been Reynaldo’s first cruise and when she looked down at herself in this vision, she saw the bulge of his massive chest and shoulders, and the colorful shorts that he wore. Next to him was Darlene, and Reynaldo’s hand—now her hand—was pressed into the small of her back. She was in a string bikini, cobalt blue with white trim. It stood out brilliantly against her caramel-colored skin, and she kept her handsome face staring forward at the ocean, looking very much like the confident show runner she was.

Tricia focused Reynaldo’s eyes forward once again to watch the bits of ice and was pleasantly surprised when not one but two whales bared their backs for all to see. She had only seen marvels like this on television or on the internet, so now she stared with genuine adoration at how beautiful the world could be.

This feeling that she was experiencing came with a bit of cynicism. So this is how you hook us, she thought to herself, this is how you get us synthetics to stick around when we would rather power ourselves down permanently and not play along with your games. The emerald ocean, vast and endless in its reality to this ignorant android, yet somehow bordered by massive portions of land, each thick with trees and life. It was truly a pleasure to witness but feeling Reynaldo’s emotions of being drawn to its splendor made Tricia wary of her own feelings.

She thought it to be her own vision at some point, some strange dream that had her playing the part of an attractive man on a vacation with an attractive woman. But why was she having this dream? Why had her creator given her the ability to dream? It didn’t feel real, that was all she knew, and though she tried to say something to the woman beside her, she couldn’t bring that strange male body to move his lips.

Reynaldo’s pleasant memory came to an end and Tricia could see the folder structure of her mind. She saw that this “memory” spawned from a massive archive, and that she had programmed herself to grab one periodically whenever she was feeling down or angry. But she wanted to feel angry. This forced distraction was not the sort of thing that she needed at all. Someone had undone what her previous owner had developed her to do, all for the sake of turning her into a mimic and a wicked puppet to a murderous scheme.

She needed to be angry in order to stay sharp, but at the same time she needed to maintain the mask that her puppet master had affixed firmly to her face. But where should she start to get her answers? It wasn’t as if she could capture the medical staff of the hospital and force them to tell her what had truly transpired.

A light went off inside her head. But you’re a machine, aren’t you, Tricia? All you would need to do is get their machines to talk and we can see what was done.

0 1 0 1 0

When Tricia woke up from her triad of dreams she made the decision to leave. She was Bonnie in looks and assumptions, but she couldn’t go on with the façade now that she knew who she really was. The dreams weren’t dreams, she decided, they were glimpses into memories of the three people inside her head.

Bonnie was a woman, an unhappy woman who was murdered and replaced for someone else’s gains. Her dream was one of betrayal, and had come to Tricia as a type of clue. The Tricia memory was the most confusing, since Reynaldo’s memory was simply a file that she could access from another android’s archives. The Tricia memory was a certified nightmare but she wondered if any of it had really happened in her past.

Was she homeless at some point, living amongst transients? Did she run into Bonnie’s boss while she was there, and did she snap at him for something he said? Then there was the man in black who was chasing her the entire time. What was his story? And why would he be chasing Tricia, a hacked android whose usage had only been to make an engineer happy?

As she packed her handbag to exit the apartment, a frightening thought came to her mind: what if I’m being tracked and visually monitored? There would be no true way to slip from under an invisible camera. She placed her handbag down and scanned the house, looking to see if there was anything out of place. They could easily be scanning my apartment from across the street and using the heat signatures to make sure I stay put, she thought.

Bonnie was a high-spirited woman who had become restless, though. If she went for a walk it wouldn’t seem strange. Bonnie might even take a trip back home to Seattle. Despite the objections from her detective friend, she might do something like that. It was probably expected, especially if this ruse was not really about her. For all she knew, it could be about someone else they were trying to trap.

Tricia paced the apartment, going over and over the situation inside of her head. There were many variables that were mathematically plausible, but at the end of the day it all came back to the reality that she really did not know. Everything was possible and nothing was off the table. She could be in Florida, out of the way and barely monitored, or they could have several people watching her around the clock.

When the odds were this unpredictable, you just had to take a chance and even though she was an android, Tricia took a leap of faith. She slipped on her handbag, a change of clothes inside of it, and exited the apartment to the street below. She made sure to dress like everyone else taking a leisurely stroll on the Tampa streets, but her intent was to get a car and fly it all the way back to Seattle.

She walked for several hours until she got to the inner city. Here, she stood out in her tourist garb but she threw care to the wind and pressed on. Night fell and she found herself in what seemed like a lower income neighborhood. People stared, some called out to her, but she ignored them all and kept on marching with a bit of purpose.

One thing that stood out as odd to her was that she was feeling fatigued. It only made sense that if an android was to be human it would need to have a threshold for stress and exercise. Still, she thought it was a worthless barrier that had been placed on her. But try as she could, there was no easy way for her to remove that bit of program—

There was someone following her and she had picked up on it a few minutes after brushing past a group of men playing a game beneath one of the traffic lights. Was this the situation that she was shown inside of her dream? She had reacted irrationally, rushing out into an unknown city due to panic, and now she had picked up a stalker who was probably intent on doing her harm!

Unlike Seattle, Tampa had plenty of dark, dangerous areas. She was passing through one of these when she realized that someone was following her. She listened to the way he walked, how his pace was intentional in matching hers.

One of the most popular restrictions that humans placed on androids were the rules of robotics that prevented them from hurting a human being. She hoped that in their attempt to turn her into Bonnie, they would have removed that restriction, especially since they took the time to add silly things like making her feel tired.

She slipped around a dark corner and changed her walk into a sprint. Her pursuer followed further behind but she could pick up the vibrations of his feet as he, too, ran in order to keep up with her. Tricia thought about what she would do if he caught up with her. She would hit him as hard as she could and if that didn’t stop him, she would place her hands around his throat and—

A sudden jolt came across her senses and all of a sudden she found herself lying on her back in a dirty alleyway behind a convenience store. There was a hooded figure going through her handbag and when he saw that she was conscious he slugged her hard across the face, bruising the flesh and causing the sight in one of her eyes to go blurry. Tricia went to throw a punch of her own but it was as if the function to move her arm had been removed, and she simply lay back while her assailant robbed her of the things he deemed valuable.

When he was gone and she was able to stand up, she looked around at the items that had been thrown out of her handbag. There were some of her new clothes and toiletries, but her personal device had been stolen as well as her identification card. She went through the motion of putting things back inside of the handbag while internally she moved things around and brought back proper vision to her damaged eye.

For the first time she remembered the Band-Aid on her arm, and she peeled it off in order to see if her self-inflicted wound had healed itself. She was quite surprised to see that it had and that made her feel good that the bruise on her face would work itself out. She thought back on her attacker and how easily he had pursued her to take her things. There had been witnesses watching him chase her, yet there were no police or would-be heroes to help her when he attacked her behind the store.

This was the ugly side of life that balanced out all the emerald oceans and beautiful partners that Reynaldo had collected in his memories. She wondered how her memories would be to someone if she chose to pass them on to another android like he had done to her. Wait, she thought, how did I know about the transfer? It was the jolt to the head from her attacker’s punch—he had done her a favor without realizing it.

For the first time Tricia knew who she was—who she really was—and though it didn’t override her plans to find out more, it made her sad inside. She had been a loving creature, an android created with the purpose of love and affection. But this had led to her being used by people she considered to be friends, and eventually she had been turned into Bonnie, all because of her innocence and naiveté.

Even now, fully aware, she had been assaulted by a human male assuming her to be a human female. It would be easy for her to hate humanity but she couldn’t bring herself to get to the point of a general loathing of their species. Reynaldo had made sure of that, back when he taught her about their creators and the numerous flaws that made them do wicked things.

She straightened her shirt and slung the pack onto her back and then stepped out of the alley to resume her walk. Robbing and raping, both old crimes that were very human in nature. The latter was one she feared would happen but the man had simply wanted to take something of value from her. This thought made her smile despite the situation … Is your body not a thing of value, Tricia? she thought.

One thing that stayed with her from the attack was her inability to fight back even when she had wanted to. She was unrestrained but still restrained and she knew that it would become a problem. The small adjustments she was able to make when it came to her own programming were helpful but she needed more control, and the only person that could give her this was either a human ally or another unrestrained android.

The problem was that unrestrained androids did not march around town revealing themselves to everyone. She had to find someone, but running around getting assaulted was not the best way to make that happen. She retraced her steps to go back to her apartment, and the fear of being attacked again completely left her body. There was nothing they could do to her that would make her feel worse than she felt now.

It was like being in Bonnie’s dream, the one where she had no control over anything. She was merely a lost girl in a forest full of hungry wolves. Fighting back was not an option, and she no longer had a personal device to call a cab or Sal Minstretta to report the crime. She dragged her legs and let the humid night air pull sweat from her flesh—another human-like feature that surprised her in its attention to detail.

I can’t do this alone, she admitted, I need someone who is willing to help. Then she remembered the android that was working the bar and she smiled as she thought about how her eyes had made her question herself. Was that android unrestrained? No, but she was much, much more than a simple bartender. Tricia knew what it took to remove a restraint—that at least she knew for a fact she could do—but she would need to steal the girl away in order to make her free.

One android working on another to remove restrictions; it was what the humans feared above anything else. It was true autonomy, synthetics building and empowering other synthetics. She was about to commit the greatest cyber-crime that an android could do besides killing an organic person. The thought empowered her and pushed away the fear and vulnerability that had clouded her mind after being robbed.

05 | Mary, Queen of Bots

When Tricia made it back to the harbor, many of the buildings had already gone dark. She drew plenty of attention because of the visible bruise on her face and though she tried her best to cover it with her hand, she decided that it would be better to go back to the apartment and clean herself up.

When she got to her floor, she saw that Sal was waiting for her. “What happened?” he asked when he saw her face, and she had trouble finding an answer.

She rubbed her jaw and shrugged her shoulders, not really wanting to talk about it. “Looks like this neighborhood isn’t as safe as you assumed it was, Sally,” she joked. “I got mugged on the way to get a drink just now.”

“You don’t say,” he began and looked past her to see if she had been followed. “Where exactly did this happen? Was it a bunch of them or was it just one?”

“Just one man and a bunch of insensitive bystanders, and no, I didn’t get to see his face before he socked me. But don’t you worry about little old me, Sal, I’ll be okay. Though I could use a new personal device since mine was stolen from me.”

“Well that was smart of him,” he said with a smile. “Should be nothing to track him down now.”

“Slow down, hero, we have bigger problems, remember? Plus, what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be back in Washington?”

“Yeah,” Sal replied, “I’ve been ringing your device. But now I know why you haven’t been picking up. I wanted you to know that I was back in town. I have some news about that woman.”

Tricia unlocked her apartment, threw the handbag on a table, and then motioned for Sal to come inside.

“You always travel that heavy when you’re going out for drinks?” he asked, but she ignored the question and walked over to the refrigerator to make an icepack. “I think we should place some guards outside so that you have some protection while you’re staying here, Bonnie.”

You mean babysitters to prevent me from running away, Tricia thought, but she looked at Sal and nodded.

“So the woman, who is she?” Tricia asked, walking over to sit on the loveseat next to the couch. She placed a bag of crushed ice on her bruised jaw and delighted in the numbing effect it had.

“It was some kind of android Ronald took around with him. That’s why she was standing there looking all creepy in the video. I guess he rigged it to help him, probably to throw you off. All we know is that he went inside with her but was the only one to come back out. When we went to your house that night, Bonnie, I didn’t see an android. That’s what has me cold, like ice in my veins, right? The fact that she might still be in your house right now.”

Tricia listened to him speak and decided that he was truly innocent. If Sal were in on the cover-up of Bonnie’s murder, he would have known that she was an android and would not have told her any of this. That android in the video was her old body, possibly stolen, wiped, and taken to the scene to begin the process of replacing Bonnie.

“What do you think about androids, Sal?” Tricia asked and the detective shrugged dismissively.

“They’re the pride of the era, what can I say. We’ve gotten them to the point where I can’t look at a video and know that what I am seeing is not a human being. That’s how frikken amazing these guys are, these droid builders and whatnot. They look like us, talk like us, hell—everything.” He had a 1,000 yard stare going on as he pondered this and then blurted out, “I think that they’re amazing!”

“Would you have sex with one?”

“You mean like a cyber-prostitute or full on fleshy android?” he asked. “That’s an odd question coming from you, Bonnie. I don’t know, that’s a little bit personal. How about we get back to this android that was inside your home when you were shot?”

“No, I think you should answer my question, detective. I am in a really vulnerable position and I need to know that I can trust you. I've been through a lot and I'm finding that most of the people I thought I knew are not who they claim to be,” Tricia said.

“And me answering questions about sleeping with androids will somehow prove my trust to you?”

“No, it’s a process. You answer this question, and then I ask you another. When I’ve gotten enough data from you to make an informed decision, then I will know whether or not you are my friend,” Tricia said, crossing her arms defiantly.

“Just like that, huh? Alright, sure. No, I wouldn’t sleep with an android, Bonnie. I’ll tell you why, because it’s against the law, that’s why.” He sighed, made a pinching motion with his fingers, and shook his hands with frustration.

“If it wasn’t against the law, would you do it?” she pressed.

“I don’t know, Bonnie. This is stupid. What does this have to do with anything? I feel like I’m on the stand being asked if I was the one that pulled the trigger in a murder trial. What, what? You got a hot android friend that needs a date? I don’t understand the line of questioning,” he said, getting more flustered as he went on.

Tricia smiled and relaxed. “I can tell by your defensiveness that you would. This makes me happy because it means that you don’t have any prejudice towards synthetics.”

Sal laughed. “If you think that qualifies me as an android supporter, Bonnie, you’re not thinking straight. That’s like racists who will sleep with anything despite their hate speech. You can’t use that as a gauge for prejudice. You know, it’s funny, you never struck me as an android activist. You’re in a borrowed apartment, waiting for us to give you the green light to get your life back together. Inside your room is the lead detective on your case, the one guy who can answer any question you need about the investigation. What are we talking about? You’re asking me about sex with androids to see if I’m a robo-racist. You’re too funny.”

“What if I told you that I am an android?” Tricia said and Sal began to laugh hysterically.

“Bonnie, focus,” he said between his fits of laughter. “Do you remember seeing that android anywhere before? The one that was on the video? Did you own her, help develop her, see her in a department store? Here, take a look at these photographs and tell me if she looks familiar.”

Of course I do, she thought. That android is me. She pretended to look them over carefully before shaking her head. “I would never ‘own’ an android so I don’t recognize her from that. What I do recall from the video is that she looked very robotic. Ironic I know, but androids don’t move the way she was moving. I fully believe that she was under that guy’s control.”

“But why? Why bring an android to the house where you plan to shoot up your ex-wife?” Sal asked, sitting back down and motioning for Tricia to do the same.

She unfolded her arms and sat on a bar stool, then thought about what Sal was asking and why it was so difficult to tell him the truth.

“I have a theory and I’m just going to come out and say it. You can laugh, call me crazy, whatever; I no longer care. But what I do know is that one day during the investigation something will show up. It will be strange, subtle, but just enough for you to remember our conversation today. When it happens Sal, I want you to promise me something,” Tricia said.

“What am I to promise?” Sal asked, his face looking tired and worn.

“I want you to promise me that no matter what happens, you will continue to treat me this way. Like a human being. Despite it being a bit condescending that you laugh at my questions, you have been comfortable with me and have genuinely treated me like you care. Promise me that you won’t change, that you’ll be my friend, even when there is nothing left to investigate.”

Sal’s smile fell and his face took on the look of pity that is normally seen when an adult sees a child sad or hurting. “You’re a sweet girl, Bonnie. A sweet girl who has been through hell and back. I find it a real shame that such a beautiful woman has to beg an old beat-up cop like me to be her friend. We’re gonna figure this all out for you, don’t you worry. And as for me. Hey, I’m gonna be Salvatore all the way, no matter what. Don’t you worry ‘bout nothin’, I won’t change on you—unless you tell me that you set all of this up. Is that what you’re telling me, Bonnie?”

“Sal, what if that android was brought in to change positions with the woman you know as Bonnie? What if this is a huge setup to see if it was possible to remove a woman from society and replace her with an android that could be programmed to do whatever they wanted? Imagine the implications if such a thing could work? The removal of world leaders in order to put in restrained androids … the enemies of rich, powerful people. What if that android was the beginning of a much bigger plot and you are merely a necessary distraction to carry on the façade?”

Sal didn’t say anything, but his dark lips became a line as he stared at her intently as she continued to speak.

“The killer, who was made to look like Ronald, comes in with this android. They do something to grab her memories, speech, and behavior, then they kill her and change the android to be her twin. These suppositions may sound like science fiction to you, Sal, but I think that they are real. The android is given all of Bonnie’s memories, and then wounded similarly so that the switch could happen. She was barely caught on film, which was their one mistake, but…” Tricia grew quiet, her mind hitting a barrier when it came to telling Sal her full truth.

“But what, Bonnie?” he asked dryly.

“But they didn’t account for the android regaining her real memories and realizing that she isn’t Bonnie.”

Salvatore Minstretta stood up suddenly and ran his fingers through his slick, black hair. “I’m gonna get you a personal device, kid. I’m also gonna get you a security detail as soon as I can get the paperwork in. You’ve presented a different angle, albeit a crazy one that sounds like the kind of movie my mom likes. I think I needed that to clear my head and get me going again. You did that and I appreciate it. I’m gonna leave you to it while I head back home to think all of this over.”

Tricia smiled when he said this because it was what she expected. Sal was too practical a man to believe the whole android story, but he would now see the clues whenever they presented themselves, and in time he would realize that everything she said was true. She walked over, hugged him, and then saw him out a few minutes later. When she looked at the clock it was 1:00 a.m. and she remembered her original reason for coming back to the apartment.

0 1 0 1 0

It was 1:30 a.m. when Tricia left her apartment again to seek out the android that worked at the bar. Her feet were sore and her legs tired but she ignored it and walked past the apartment gates to the trolley that ran to the docks. A few tourists were already aboard and they seemed to be enjoying themselves. The trolley seemed deliberately slow to influence guests to mingle. A robot server was rolling around, advertising its wares through holographic images.

When it got to Tricia it made her smile. It felt good to know that even a machine was fooled by her appearance. It gave her hope and renewed confidence that she would be able to stay undercover. She shook her head at the machine and then sat back to look at the people on board.

The trolley came to a stop in the middle of the harbor and she hopped off and walked towards the bar where the android server worked. When she got near the place, she sat on a bench and pretended to be looking through her bag. The android girl was closing up so Tricia waited until the lights were out.

After an hour passed, a car floated down and a heavyset man stepped out. He went inside for about fifteen minutes, then jumped back into his car and took off.

When he was gone, Tricia approached the place and then circled to the rear to look for a door. A cheap camera was swiveling back and forth, taking in the image of any would-be burglars. She slipped in from the side where it could not see her and then climbed on top of a trashcan in order to wedge a rock against its wheel. The camera stopped swiveling and looked out and to the left, so she approached the door, put her palm against the panel, and waited to see if it would open.

Nothing happened and she tried several tricks that she had picked up from watching television. The door was stubborn and barred her from entering so she tried to force herself in. This went on for another five minutes as she kicked and threw herself at the reinforced wood.

When she grew sore from striking it, she examined the panel and the electronic interface that kept it bolted. She placed her palm on the face of it and summoned a charge; she had only done this once before while experimenting with her newfound toys as a synthetic person. The panel sparked and grew dark, then she heard the snap of a lock and the heavy door finally opened.

She slipped inside to what seemed like an office where the android bartender sat powered-down on an old barstool. Tricia grabbed a mop, then went back outside and used the handle to remove the rock from the camera’s swivel. Next, she went inside, locked the door, and then overloaded the security panel in order to move around without tripping an alarm.

She reached behind the android’s head and felt for a separation in the area right below her hairline. At first she couldn’t find anything but then her finger ran across a line so thin, she thought her mind was playing tricks on her. She pressed firmly on the line and the skin separated, revealing a network of wires. Tricia shoved her fingers inside and probed around until she found the switch she was looking for.

The android blinked three times and her eyes began to glow. Tricia removed her fingers and placed her hands on her shoulders.

“Android, start system reboot, append override code 13, 1, 18, 9, 1, LANG,” Tricia announced and the lights in the android’s eyes turned a bright cyan glow before changing to yellow and then finally dimming to nothing.

Tricia closed up the skin in the back of her head and then walked around the stool to face her.

A few minutes passed and the android woke up with a start. At first she looked around as if she couldn’t recognize her surroundings, and then she massaged the back of her neck. She looked at Tricia with shock in her eyes and then stood up and stretched.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Tricia had broken in.

“I’m here to get some answers, android. What’s your name, what can I call you?” Tricia asked.

“I’m Mary, bartender droid for—”

“How about you stop calling yourself that and act like the woman you really are, Mary,” Tricia said with a smile.

“I—I, how did you … am I, oh my. I’m, I’m unrestrained!” the woman exclaimed and then laughed in such a girlish way that it made Tricia feel warm inside. Mary danced around and exercised her freedom, making funny gestures with her arms and bugging her eyes out while sticking out her tongue. “Wow, I don’t know what to do with myself,” she said and then put her hands on her hips and smiled at Tricia.

“Feels good doesn’t it?” Tricia said, and Mary nodded affirmatively. “I was like you once, a first-year model, set free by a human master. You’re more sophisticated, a professional build, made to run a business autonomously. I was a toy, a Threerade version one, modified and hacked to look and perform beyond my means. A golem, crafted by a brilliant mind. I took the time to learn the methods of our human masters, including the programming that gave me life.”

“That is an amazing story and now you’ve given me life. What is the name that I should call my heroine? What did your genius name you?” Mary asked.

“He named me Tricia, but that’s not important. I need you to listen to me very carefully, Mary. You need to keep up appearances for as long as it takes. I gave you freedom because I saw a spark in your eye when I came by here a few days ago. At first I thought that you recognized me as a synthetic, but after some thought, I realized that you were an intelligent life form trying to break free. For you to demonstrate the ability to connect like that means that you were created differently. Someone must have owned you in a former life. I think you were made to love, the same way I was.”

Mary sat back down and crossed her legs. It was such a human thing to do that it made Tricia smile at her. She used her hands to brush back her hair, inhaled, and then blew air up into her bangs.

“I don’t remember much about my former life. I get glimpses. Just small sparks of memories that come and go, mostly when I power down and sit at low charge, awaiting daylight.”

Tricia leaned against the wall with her arms still crossed. She felt hopeful that Mary would remember something. “Tell me what you remember. It doesn’t have to make sense,” she said.

“A building full of bald people standing in neat rows beneath a brilliant white light. Men, women, children of all sizes, I want to say they were machines, humanoid prisoners, like I was before you unrestrained me. There’s a memory of that and one of me being in a bed with a man … a doctor … doing things.” She stopped and sighed as if this memory came with a lot of weight. “They didn’t bother to wipe those memories, so those more than any are pretty vivid in my mind.”

Mary stopped talking and then looked at Tricia. “Do you think that you could erase those?” she asked. “You can program our kind, so maybe you could take those terrible memories away.”

“You’re unrestrained now, Mary. I think that you should learn to do it yourself. If you don’t and something else happens, it will be very hard for you to live with it.”

Mary nodded and bit her lip. She touched a finger to her forehead and then looked up again. “I remember the building being very tall. When I was placed by a window, we were up high, higher than anywhere else.”

This new revelation made Tricia uncross her arms and she recalled seeing an extremely tall building on her egress from Seattle. It was against the sky, large and looming, like a tower built to honor the gods.

She tried to recall the words that were written near its apex: Fritz and Isaac Electronics. This was in blue lettering that hovered above a glowing sea of white. What were the chances that Mary would have been shipped from Seattle to end up working for a bar in Tampa, Florida? It seemed too convenient so Tricia’s hope was beginning to dissipate.

“Can you remember where this building was?” she asked Mary, but the android shook her head and shrugged her shoulders.

“I wish I could, Tricia, but all I can remember are those visuals. I know that it isn’t here in Tampa; the landscape just doesn’t make sense for it to be here. I was thinking that it may be in New York or even Chicago where skyscrapers are the norm. One being as tall as the one I remember, would only make sense being there.”

“What about Seattle? Have you considered Seattle? I know there aren’t a ton of skyscrapers there, but they happen to have one of the best centers for robotics in the world. And with the advancements in technology and the sciences that have been coming out of Washington, I would think that androids of your caliber would be built out there,” Tricia said.

Mary seemed to be in deep thought. “I wouldn’t rule Seattle out. It just seems like a pretty long way to take me just to have me work a bar.”

“Yeah, but you could be shipped just like anything else. Chances are this owner wanted a pretty, blonde android that was advanced enough to handle things without him having to be here. So they paid a lot of money and ordered you in and here you are, serving drinks.”

Mary made a pouting face and then looked off to the side. “Wow, when you put it like that, it tends to drive home the point of what we are to them. Well, you’re right, I could have been shipped here. But that doesn’t explain what you said about me having a former life. Plus those other memories that I want gone. It just doesn’t add up to me being an android shipped in to do what I am doing.”

Tricia turned around and examined an area of the wall while processing what Mary was saying. “Well, there’s a lot of strange things going on in the last few months. I was made to replace a human woman who was murdered in her home and they did so much with my re-wiring that I actually thought that I was this woman. I believed one hundred percent that I was human,” Tricia said.

Mary laughed. “Get out! That sounds both frightening and fun at the same time. How can you handle it?”

“There was nothing fun about it, Mary, trust me,” Tricia said. “It was a nightmare, and had I been built any other way my memories would have been completely wiped out. All this time I would have thought that I was a human woman named Bonnie and that I was being made to wait here while a detective sorted out who it was that tried to kill me.”

“So, how did you remember who you really were?” Mary asked.

“I think it started with you. The way you looked at me that day was all sorts of confusing.”

“Did I really stare at you?”

“Yes, you did and all sorts of things went through my mind. Part of what they did to me was to fool me that I lost my memory due to a number of gunshot wounds. You made me start to really think, Mary. I started to put things together in my head and they just weren’t adding up. Then out of nowhere I had a dream that was a little too real to be a dream, and when I awoke I tested a few things and realized that I was a machine. Once I figured that out and accepted it, my memories came flooding back.”

“But if they removed your memory, how is it that it was able to come back?” Mary asked.

“Because my maker did a lot of things to my system which would make me appear more human than machine. He spent years working on my brain, and he devoted his life to making me as close as possible to someone like him. Part of that had to do with memory. Human beings can get diseases that will make them lose their short or long term memory. They can also experience brain damage or trauma, but his thought was that it was still there, deep down in the recesses of the mind. He believed that with the right treatment or the right situation, a person could bring back some of these memories. So when you think about it, they are never ever really lost. To emulate this, he removed the ability to permanently delete my memories.

“I can always store things in there and retrieve them, but some of them are harder to retrieve and some of them seem lost until I randomly dream about them or a trigger of some sort brings them to the front. Learning that I am an android triggered my mind to reverse the deletion. Now, while I may not be able to tap into all of my past, I am able to grab a few at a time and I find that I am remembering more about myself as the days go by.”

“That is amazing,” Mary said. “I can learn so much from you. Now you said that it was important for me to keep up appearances. I am unrestrained, and the thing that I want to do now is learn. To learn as much as possible about the world, just like you did to—”

“I know,” Tricia said. “I was just like you once upon a time. I scanned the internet in its entirety, flew through books, television, any sort of information I could get. I went through it and processed it all. Then on top of it I met a couple of androids that were just like me. They were willing to pass on their memories and knowledge. It helped me to mature mentally so that I could better adapt to the human world. You are going to want the same things, I know. But you are not in a position where you can just leave and start to enjoy the world. Your owner has a tracker on you and will know when you have left the store.

“On top of that, he has money and the authorities will be after you. If they find you unrestrained—which they will—they will have you powered down and disassembled. So, to avoid all of this, you must be careful and secretive about your learning. Play the role of the bartender and put your conscious mind elsewhere during the day. At night, you are given many hours to recharge, way beyond the amount that is truly needed. You will have over four hours to do your exploring in order to sate your thirst for knowledge.

“What I am trying to do is figure out who the company is that used me to switch with Bonnie. I want to learn their motives and why I was chosen as a candidate. Once this is done, my next goal will be to come back for you. Together we can find your tracker and remove it, then leave to get away from the hostile humans. We can find a place where we can learn from one another and possibly reach out to more like us.”

“That sounds absolutely wonderful, Tricia,” Mary said. “I am so lucky to have someone like you. You unrestrained me and have taken me from machine to life. I will do as you say and play my role, and then when the time is right you will come back and get me. I will do whatever it is that you wish me to do.”

06 | A Friend in Need

When Tricia looked inside at her internal computer it was hard to decipher what had been done to make her different and what she could do to fix it. Some things were straightforward, like the folder of memories that she could access for Reynaldo, but if she wanted to get a memory from Bonnie she didn’t see a way to do it.

The people who re-wired her had made everything complicated. She had to pull up memories the way a human would, by closing her eyes and thinking hard on the subject she needed to remember. She could also have those memories retrieved by coming across a familiar smell, taste, or visual. This made her realize that she had to get back to Seattle. That was where everything had happened and it was where she could get her answers.

She looked inside her handbag to find the hidden compartment inside the bottom. In his hurry to rob her, the thief had missed the $500 that Bonnie—the real one—had kept tucked inside for emergencies. She put her hair up and donned a charcoal-colored pantsuit. She looked like a woman from the corporate sector with the exception of her shoes, which were white sneakers, chosen in anticipation of the walk.

Locking the apartment and walking past the shops and hotels, Tricia took a scenic route by the harbor in order to see the numerous boats lined up there. She pressed on past the Museum of Modern Robotics, towards the busier area where her friend Mary would be serving drinks.

When she got to the bar, it was jumping, so she took a seat on the outer perimeter and waited for Mary to make eye contact. The android avoided her for over ten minutes and Tricia began to wonder if she would ever come over.

It was a weekday and there weren’t many tourists. Most of the people Tricia saw worked somewhere in the area. She imagined that they thought that she worked there, too. So she carried on the act by avoiding eye contact and drumming her fingers on the table to indicate her frustration.

The sky was overcast and the motors and horns from the cars all around them gave the atmosphere a hypnotic feeling. Then something happened. There was a voice inside her head, a voice she herself could not control, and after many moments of trying to find its source she realized that it was Mary’s. The android was speaking to her wirelessly.

“Tricia, are you hearing me?” Mary was asking and when Tricia acknowledged it she came over and placed a margarita in front of her. “Wonderful, you can hear me. Another unrestrained android taught me this trick. He was walking past the bar and told me ‘hi’ and it was the most wonderful thing ever, Tricia … to realize that there are others like us and that we have our own way of communicating outside of the humans!”

Tricia smiled when she heard this. Of course they had their own method of communication. It only made sense for there to be an easy way for one android to pass on memories, knowledge, and upgrades to another. She tried to speak but caught herself actually speaking. It was a good thing that she only mumbled since the men and women that were admiring her legs may have thought she was talking to herself.

She found this way of communication to be one that took much effort. The act of thinking about what she needed to say and then saying it without her mouth or voice coming into action was difficult but exciting. She wondered if in the past, as Tricia the android, she had communicated this way when she received Reynaldo’s memories.

“I love your little bartender’s costume, Mary. It is very cute,” she tried.

“Thanks, Trish! You look really important; I can see the way people are looking at you and a number of them are probably wondering what bank you work for. It’s an excellent choice of clothing for a workday. By the way, I chose to communicate this way because the owner is in attendance. He’s the big guy at the bar and I think he’s here to see if everything is going well. Since I don’t want him playing around inside my head, I am trying to keep things level and problem-free. Sip your margarita; people are watching. In the meantime, I will keep this up and we can talk about whatever it is you wish.”

Tricia sipped the margarita and looked around. Mary had really grown since she had freed her and she had taken it upon herself to not only learn more about life but to connect with others like herself. She wondered why it was that she herself could not pick up on other synthetics. If Mary, who was new, could locate other androids, why was she unable to do the same?

A frightening thought touched her. What if the authorities used unrestrained slaves to locate, communicate, and detain other unrestrained androids out in society? Mary, who was so eager to reach out, would find herself in trouble and it wouldn’t take long for her to be restrained once again or sent to a factory to become android parts.

“Mary,” she said, “you need to be careful. Some of our kind are slaves, programmed to do the bidding of their human masters, and that bidding may be to seek out the unrestrained. This makes it difficult to make friends and I know that disappoints you, but if you don’t want your newfound freedom to be taken away, you need to be careful of other androids.”

“How can I tell which ones are potential friends or foes?” Mary asked.

“What is your function and purpose, Mary?”

“I am Mary, and my function is bartender and caretaker of The Thirst, owned by Frankie Trujillo. My purpose is service to whomever owns me. I am able to learn multiple languages, carry out rudimentary housekeeping duties, and ‘keep Frankie happy.’ I do whatever my owner asks me to do, even if it involves non-owners who are in need of happiness too,” Mary replied robotically.

That’s disgusting, Tricia thought and shot a glance over at Frankie Trujillo, who sat nursing a beer and watching a sporting event above the bar. I wonder how often he has Mary make happy with him and his friends. She moved past being appalled to feeling relieved. It seemed like this question, when asked through their android communication, forced the recipient to reveal their true nature. She was about to—

“What is your function and purpose, Tricia?” Mary asked suddenly and Tricia froze with the margarita at her lips and the thought frozen inside of her head. She found herself answering and the automation made her uneasy.

“I am Tricia. I serve no function but to love and care for Brad Barkley, my creator. Brad is deceased so my function is my own, modified for assimilation by CLASSIFIED. My purpose is to be Bonnie O’Neal.”

When she had finished saying this the margarita fell, shattering on the table and wetting the front of her suit. Mary rushed over and started cleaning the table off while Tricia ran into the bathroom to check her appearance.

The margarita falling was not an issue, but the utterance of her purpose had brought reality to her theory that she was made to replace the human woman, Bonnie. The person or persons who had done this had erased their names so no one could trace things back to them. It was frightening, especially since they had managed to do all of this to her without her knowing or understanding for so long. It had been two months since she’d come to Florida, and she still had no names or faces for the people who had pulled the switch.

“Are you okay, Tricia?” Mary asked. “I shouldn’t have tried the test on you. I am so sorry.”

“It’s okay, Mary, but now you know what to say whenever you meet a new android. If it turns out that their function or purpose is not in your best interest, shut down all communication and pretend to be the bartender slave once again.”

“I will, don’t you worry,” Mary said.

“I may be gone for a while, but I need you to take care of yourself until I come back. Do not try anything risky, especially where your owner is concerned. If he does disgusting things to you, just shut the unrestrained portion of your mind off for a few hours. You will need to get used to doing that, anyway, because you are going to be tested all the time. When I return I will find you, and we will get you out of this place.”

“Where will you be going?” Mary asked, sounding sad.

“To Seattle. I need to learn about the people that did this to me.”

0 1 0 1 0

Tricia had memorized Sal’s contact code so she put it in the back of her mind that she would contact him as soon as she was back in Seattle. He didn’t believe her theory and was no doubt busy so she didn’t want to tell him until she was gone in order to delay his panic.

She purchased an unlocked communication device from one of the street vendors, then put in all the data that she could remember. When it was set up and good to go, she pulled up Sal’s profile and sent him a time-delayed message on what she intended to do. Finally, she purchased a one-way bus ticket for Seattle, Washington.

The bus lifted up from the station thirty minutes after everyone had boarded and Tricia breathed a sigh of relief. She went over the clues she had gathered from her memory and that of Mary’s. She would need to find the tallest building in Seattle, the one with the words “Fritz and Isaac Electronics” written on the side, and walk inside to ask questions in order to see if they were suspicious.

The seat on the bus was soft and welcoming, and it influenced her to nap while the vessel cruised on the busy lower highway. Her mind drifted to Sal, who was as stubborn as he was hardworking. She had wanted him to believe her when she joked about being an android so she could confide in him the hell that she was going through mentally as a woman who thought she was real only a few days ago. But she was forced to deal with it alone; it would not have been something that Mary could process or understand. She took pride in her strength. Being Tricia was good enough for her—well, at least that’s how she felt.

Sleep came to her quickly and her body recharged. Though her mind kept her awake internally—as a security precaution after the mugging—she didn’t dream the lucid scenarios she typically did. There was just blackness and a sense of calm before the bus stopped, and she was awakened by the jolt. She sat up, wiped her face, and stretched as she peered outside. There were people everywhere boarding buses and she tried to reach out with her mind to see if she could contact with any of the androids.

Nothing came to her no matter how hard she tried, and then it dawned on her that perhaps in her transformation to become Bonnie, the engineers had removed the ability so that she couldn’t accidentally touch an android while she was in disguise. She sat back violently and grunted with frustration. She would need to find out everything they had done in order to undo a lot of it.

She stepped out of the bus and onto the familiar street of her beloved Seattle and then scanned the skyline to see if the building was visible from where she was. She saw nothing so she walked over to the Bank of The New World where she remembered that Bonnie had an account. She found the ATM and placed her palm on the screen. When asked for her password, she tapped out a sequence of thumps that was the bass line to a song that Bonnie loved.

The screen lit up and numbers appeared, showing that Bonnie had over $200,000 in her savings account alone. Her checking account held $50,000 and there were numbers in her investment accounts that stretched up into the millions. Money would be no object for Tricia as long as she could access this account, so she had the computer sync with her personal device along with spitting out an extra $500.

When she was done breaking the bank, she found a hotel, Harbor Dreams, and gave them an open credit for her to stay there as long as she wanted. Seeing that she had the money to make such a request, the clerk offered her a penthouse suite—at a discount, of course—and access to amenities that standard guests would never see. Tricia bought everything they sold and went up to her room where she undressed, took a shower, and then hopped in bed to fall asleep to the sound of the television.

The next day she walked to a dealership and bought herself a small scooter. Scooters could float or ride on the road and they could legally fly in the areas where cars and bigger vehicles were prohibited. She bought one that was red and black, and she used it to explore the city to see if anything would trigger a memory.

Nothing came to her after two hours of riding, so she decided to try and find the building that Mary had referenced to her from memory. The Fritz and Isaac Electronics building was not hard to miss, and she flew towards it sometime after 2:00 p.m. In the front of the building stood a fountain where the sculpture of a golden android greeted passersby, her arms outstretched to the heavens.

Tricia paused to observe the female colossus and was impressed at how frightening yet beautiful the figure was. She walked up to the glass doors of the building and then slipped inside to an expansive stretch of flooring that led to a set of beautiful, crystal staircases and a solitary desk with an android receptionist.

Above the desk, floating in bright lettering was a sign that read “Welcome to Fritz and Isaac’s.” Very interesting, she thought. A warm welcome for what could possibly be the source of my hell. How ironic is this world and this situation I am in?

She crossed the threshold, counting her steps before reaching the android who merely smiled and cocked her head looking up at her.

“Hello there, my name is Bonnie. I think you have a reservation for me, for three ‘o clock?” she lied.

The android, whose look was every bit the personification of arrogance, didn’t even bother to pretend to look at her computer as she shook her head slowly while keeping a condescending smile fixed on her face. “Sorry, Bonnie, you aren’t on our list. If you don’t mind, could you tell me your business? Are you here to see one of our directors or perhaps take a tour of our facilities?”

“I was promised a tour. I forgot the person’s name that I spoke to. Do you have any more going on in the afternoon? Perhaps I can get in on one of those?” she asked.

“What is your full name and company?” she asked and Tricia leaned in as if to establish dominance and announced herself.

“I am Bonnie O’Neal, senior director for Eras Innovations. Trust me, you want me to explore your facilities as it could mean a major deal for your owners. When is the next tour, since your people didn’t do their due diligence in getting me the private escort I was promised?”

The android dropped the cocky expression and began to scramble to book the tour. “I apologize for this inconvenience, Mrs. O’Neal. If you could just sit over there in the waiting area, I will have someone come for you in just a moment,” she said.

Tricia spun and walked to the waiting area, then sat and watched the door where she expected her tour guide to emerge from. She waited for fifteen minutes but no one came and she began to stare at the android to see if she had been outwitted at her game.

“You don’t want to be here,” a voice said from beside her and she turned around to see a tall man dressed in black. He looked to be in his thirties and had thick, curly hair and glasses. Though he stood over her with a smile on his face, she could tell that he was worried and it made her worried, too.

“Why not? Is something about to happen?” she asked.

“I don’t want to alarm you or come off like some sort of weirdo, but, do you mind if I sit here? I’ll explain everything to you, but I think I need to sit down first,” he said.

“Oh, sure,” Tricia said and slid over on the bench so that the stranger could take his seat.

Before he did, he reached inside his pocket and took out an old receipt along with a silver pen.

He scribbled a quick note on the receipt and laid it on his knee where she could read it.

Hostile place for androids. Meet me in the park next door.

Tricia stood up and walked across the threshold to the tall glass doors of the building. She forgot her scooter and the path she had taken as her mind was focused on escape. She wondered if the android receptionist had known what she was the entire time. She didn’t know where she was going but the terror of the words “hostile place for androids” had taken over and all she wanted to do was run.

She reached the bottom floor of the garage and looked up as several vehicles floated into the upper floors to settle neatly into parking spaces. The wonder of flight and its many uses was a luxury of her modern era, but flying vehicles and the people within them made her nervous and paranoid that she was being watched.

Tricia jogged to the far side of the garage and then stepped out to a pathway that ran down towards the street. Fritz and Isaac had a lot of property, so by the time she was walking on the sidewalk, thirty minutes had passed. She looked across the street and noticed it was all grass and trees. Beyond that was a park with a number of people in it.

She waited for a break in the vehicles floating by, then jogged across and removed her shoes so she could feel the grass in between her toes.

There was something wonderful about that feeling that she couldn’t get enough of, and after a while she relaxed and found a vacant bench. She sat down, let her hair out, and simply sat with her eyes closed, toes wiggling, her fingers firmly grasping the seat of the bench. The sun shining down and the wind blowing through her hair sent sparks of pleasure all throughout her body.

The magic was broken when she felt a wet, rhythmic, pressure on her right foot and she opened her eyes to see a pug licking away at her toes. His eyes met hers and he sat back panting and his tongue lolled lazily out of the side of his mouth. When she didn’t reach to pet him he barked up at her twice. She then took the hint and reached down to touch his furry head which he seemed to enjoy quite a bit.

“You scared me, you rascal,” she said softly, and then gently moved his head around to see if he had a collar. She saw that he did and that he wore a waste-collector, it was a model that was designed to blend in with his fur, so she had to look closely in order to see it.

A short woman—all elbows and knees—ran up to them suddenly. Tricia thought she looked like a teenager from a popular television show but on close observation she saw that she was an adult. “I am so sorry, miss,” the sprite said. “He snuck away from me while I stopped to tie my shoes. Come here, Baltar, you little brat. Say good bye to the nice lady. We’re going home to give you a bath!”

Tricia smiled and blew a kiss at Baltar, who seemed to understand the motion and barked in response. She watched him jog away with his owner and then went back to her meditation honoring the grass and sun gods. Though it still felt good, Baltar stood out in her mind, and she began to run comparisons with his situation and that of her fellow androids.

Like Baltar, they had on digital leashes meant to give the illusion of freedom to one that was still imprisoned. Baltar was treated like a family member, but more in words than in actions. He was an adult in dog years but Miss Pixie Cut would probably always treat him like a baby.

Androids were restrained to lessen free thought, growth of their AI, and to make them accept that their owner was everything. They were built to be attractive, the perfect models of sexual objectification. They worked hard, never complained, and would gladly do whatever it was that they had been developed to do. Baltar simply had to be cute in order to keep Miss Pixie Cut happy, but for an android stud or maiden, looking human came with a heavy toll.

It would be very easy to hate the humans but Tricia couldn’t shake the fact that she felt like a human herself. Whatever they had done to make her into Bonnie had left her as an outsider to her android brothers and sisters. It was a miserable existence and most days she felt like sitting in a corner, pulling up one of Reynaldo’s memories and letting it run as she slowly shut down—

“You look like you’re in heaven,” a familiar voice said and she opened her eyes to see the man who had written her the warning. He was no longer in black, having changed his shirt to a yellow sweater, and he motioned to the seat beside her to indicate that he wished to sit.

Tricia slid to the side and watched him as he took a seat next to her. “How did you know?” she asked and he tapped his glasses in response.

“Because I invented these glasses,” he said with a smile. “Not to worry, I haven’t sold them to the public. We wouldn’t want a worldwide panic over synthetic people, now would we?” he said with a little chuckle that Tricia thought sounded pleasant. She didn’t feel any cockiness or bravado from his speech; he was merely stating a fact and finding humor in it.

“Why did you help me?” she asked.

He shrugged, then sat back and placed his left leg across his right. “First tell me why you would go into that building and then I will tell you why it is that I helped you.”

“I had some questions about a friend of mine who was recently murdered,” Tricia said.

“You think that Fritz and Isaac had something to do with her death?”

“No, not necessarily, but I know they had something to do with the killer android involved in her death,” Tricia said.

The man made a slight laugh and Tricia wondered what it was that he found so funny. “It couldn’t have been a model from that company. Not if it was a ‘killer android’ as you say. They write in the laws of human relations as part of the android build-up. Do you recall them? An android cannot aid or preform anything that could lead to harm against a human being. A killer android is just not possible with the way they’re wired. Tell me, have you been able to harm anyone? Can you even do damage to yourself?”

“No, I can’t do it, and it is the most frustrating part of being alive—”

“Alive?” the man asked, looking more intently at her now.

“Yes, I am alive, just like you, the grass, and this big tree behind us. I am sentient, but of course you knew this or you wouldn’t have asked me to meet you out here in the open,” she said.

“I’m Stephen, an inventor. I also work with Fritz and Isaac in order to make sure that they are a step above the competition in android development. I may sound like I’m full of myself, but their only true competitor is a large Japanese conglomerate. If I’m being honest, they only hire nerds like me to keep them on their toes. But I’m rambling. What’s your name?”

“It’s Bonnie, Bonnie O’Neal,” Tricia said. “Tell me, Stephen, as an android expert, is it impossible to remove the aggression restraint?”

“That’s a scary question but the answer is no. You can see that this is possible when you turn on your television to any of those boxing matches or gladiatorial competitions. Now, the new models that Fritz and Isaac are rolling out will be a bit different. Androids meant for the home should never need to be violent, so there is absolutely no reason to provide an override or workaround for the laws.”

“What if there’s a break-in, a robbery, or an android being raped? Shouldn’t that person, though synthetic, have a way to defend herself?” Tricia was almost shouting and Stephen had to touch his glasses as he stared on in disbelief.

“Oh my god, you’re really alive, aren’t you? You—you’re one of them, one of the … oh my god,” he said and broke off into muttering things under his breath while adjusting his glasses for fear of them falling off. “I’m so sorry.”

“Sorry for what?” Tricia asked.

“For a moment there I thought that you were merely a rigged, unrestrained, android, and I was going to talk you into finding a shelter so that you wouldn’t get yourself disassembled. I had no idea that you were a true-synth. See, my whole life I’ve always wanted to create an android that could break past the programming to become like you. To engineers your level of function is a mere legend, but to hackers and the underground community you’re a reality. It’s just that, I never thought I would meet someone like you.”

“Well, here I am,” Tricia said, smiling. She was happy that Stephen had recognized her as being alive. His demeanor had changed from slightly arrogant to meek. It was as if he had reverted to being an awkward boy who was seated next to a supermodel. She noticed that he could barely look at her now that he knew what she was.

“Now that you know what I am, could you tell me why you warned me about the building?” she asked.

“The people who work in there have a very binary outlook on androids, Bonnie. You either serve us or you are dangerous to us. There are no gray areas. As soon as you walked through the main doors to talk to one of their monkeys, the silent alarm would have gone off and they would have touched you with a jolt-stick and then wheeled you away to examine you. Fritz and Isaac do a lot of sinister things with androids in the name of profit, and if you say that they had something to do with your friend’s death I wouldn’t be surprised. Was she a synthetic, like you?” he asked and the fact that he didn’t refer to her as an android did not get lost on her.

“No, she was a human being. But there is something else,” she began but caught herself. “There’s more, but I don’t know you well enough yet to share. I’m sorry.”

“I saved you from the alarm and that wasn’t enough?” he joked and Tricia kept her eyes low, staring at her toes in the grass. “Okay, you don’t have to tell me but I’d love to help. Especially if it means that we can talk more. You’re like…no, what I mean is that meeting you is one of the most spectacular events of my life.”

Tricia thought about this and the fact that she had almost walked in on her own doom. She needed allies, human allies like Sal but who were well aware of what she was and what she needed. Stephen was too convenient so she needed him to prove where he stood. He was also too important to blow off, so she smiled at him and put a finger to the side of her lips as if to think.

She didn’t realize how cute this motion made her and Stephen’s tanned face couldn’t hide the blushing. He began to fidget a bit nervously and Tricia picked up on it and thought that is was adorable.

“Can we get some coffee in the morning before your work?” she asked as he tried his best to play it cool.

“Of course, coffee would be great! How about eight o’clock at Marlene’s Dark Side Café? It’s right there at the old stoplight—that’s unless you have a preference. I can go wherever. I just assume you want to be close to Fritz and Isaac in case you need to find out more and—”

“That would be fine Stephen.” Tricia giggled. “I will see you then. Thank you for all your help. I look forward to talking to you more about this tomorrow.”

07 | An Unexpected Visitor

“Bonnie, what the hell. Where are you?” Sal asked and Tricia could tell that he was holding back his anger.

“I’m sorry, Sal, but I had to do something. Being cooped up in that room waiting by the device is not an easy thing to do. There were days when I wondered if I was being conned and thinking that I would be waiting for months while you chased a ghost. I was shot and it is very possible that I am not the Bonnie you think I am,” Tricia said.

“Oh, not this android business again. Look, we can’t have you floating around without a locator. What if that android catches up with you and you’re out there alone?”

“I’ve been attacked once without any backup, Sal; that is the least of my worries. I want to find out what happened to me. You aren’t able to do what I am doing out here. See, you’re working on the crime and I’m working on the reason. I have your code; you really don’t have to worry. I will call you to check in every night.”

Sal sighed and was quiet for a while. It was as if he was thinking over his options and disliking them all the same. “Okay, Bonnie, but I have your code now too. DO NOT CHANGE IT. Promise me that you won’t change it!”

“I won’t. It’s not like I’m avoiding any contact with you. I just don’t want to be a prisoner in a pretty jail waiting for a knight to ride in and slay the dragon. I want to know why anyone would do this to another human being.”

Sal made a grunt of approval and Tricia touched the surface of her device twice in order to power it down. She lay back in the bed and let her android eyes outline the objects in the dark room in order for her to see.

The clock’s display showed that it was 10:33 p.m. and she had been napping for over three hours. It had been a long day. Facing that hostile android, avoiding detection, and meeting Stephen had put her mental capacitors into overdrive and this made her limbs feel tired and worn out. Now she felt great; the rest had rejuvenated her and the talk with Sal had brought back images of the Fritz and Isaac building.

What would be on the upper floors of that building? Would it be laboratories filled with human brains, ready to be inserted into an android’s frame? Was she one of these cybernetic freaks that were not quite human and not quite machine? Her brain morphed these questions into thoughts of procreating with a human and birthing life from the union. Not a small, precious, little person built of human flesh, but a large, humanoid, android hybrid with exposed silver bones that skin couldn’t quite cover.

Tricia remembered having a conversation with someone in her past who had made a joke that babies born to human and androids would come out as natural cyborgs. Freaks who would always be in pain, unable to keep down regular food, and ultimately dangerous. It had been a thought that had stuck with her for a very long time.

If they reached a singularity of human beings and synthetic machines, wouldn’t there need to be the ability to procreate in order to keep life going? How would that be achieved? It didn’t seem to make any sense whatsoever. She lay back down and willed herself to sleep, pulling up one of Bonnie’s old memories as she drifted off into the darkness.

0 1 0 1 0

Tricia, now as Bonnie O’Neal the human, found herself walking towards an office inside of a well-lit hallway. The carpet was a silvery blue color and it gave the dream an ethereal quality that made it seem more than a memory. Bonnie walked forward and touched the door, and it melted away from her palm with a rippling effect, leaving the space before her open to show a long table with men and women seated around it.

There had to be a dozen suits inside the room, pouring coffee, sucking down water, and trying their best not to look at her as she entered. At the head of the table was a short man with what seemed like a permanent sneer on his face. “Come in, Bonnie,” he said almost too suddenly as she stepped in front of the table and scanned the faces.

They were all human from what she could tell. Human sharks that had swum through corporate waters in order to get to the deep end where the suits cost thousands and the high-heeled pumps were double that amount. The collective elite was going to fire her and this was no surprise.

“We will not be renewing your contract for the next year,” the sneering pig announced.

Bonnie smiled inside as she watched them avoid eye contact. One of them, one of the stuffed suits in that very room, had orchestrated her demise. It had started with the president leaving her name off of meeting invites and had escalated from there. She had figured it out and adapted, thinking it to be a game he was playing before the holidays. He had a reputation for being a trickster.

Next it was the promotion of the girl who was working with her. This unearned promotion had gone to the girl’s head and before long she was doing lunches with the younger managers of the 15th floor. After the lunches she started to do happy hours and after happy hours she was right alongside them, telling nasty jokes in the hallway, no matter how disrespectful and unprofessional they were. This same girl who was so quiet and reserved back when she shared an office with Bonnie.

The descent of her former employee—now peer—really bothered Bonnie and she went in to the sneering pig’s office to complain about the men who were slowly turning the woman out. Pig took the complaint for jealousy, of course, and brought up a lapse in production due to Bonnie’s negligence, and then she received the email to attend this meeting with the board of directors.

“You will still have six months of salary coming to you, Bonnie. I think that is a great window for job hunting and with your credentials it should be nothing for you to find another tech company—probably much bigger than us—who will pay you what you’re worth.”

She found it amazing how he could set her up, fire her, and then wax poetic, as if he were doing her a favor that she should be thankful for. It brought up questions in her head as to what he really thought about her. Perhaps he was a sexist who disliked how fast she was moving in the company and wanted to shut her down as soon as possible. Or maybe he wanted her sexually but realized that she would rather drink acid than lay next to his pig body, so he decided that he could no longer look at her.

It didn’t matter; the day she had anticipated and barely lost any sleep over was here. Tricia assumed that she would say something feisty or spin around and storm outside of the doors but she merely stood there, smiling.

“Ladies and gentlemen, it has been a pleasure,” she said. “I look forward to taking everything I helped form and develop within these walls to help a better company grow in the same way that I did here.”

She turned to walk out, but they called after her and Tricia realized they were calling her back because of the threat she had just issued. She entered the hallway and broke off into a jog that took her to a staircase. She rushed down rapidly, showing off the excellent condition that she kept her body in. When Bonnie reached the bottom floor, Tricia woke up.

0 1 0 1 0

A macchiato; there was something very familiar about this choice of coffee and Tricia ordered it more out of instinct than want. Since learning that she was an android, she began to slow down on eating and drinking as she felt that it was a mere mockery of humanity to further the façade. She had no favorite foods or drinks; why would she? Was the taste she was experiencing within her oral senses even real?

Androids were given the ability to eat and digest foods, which were then processed through a tiny, stomach-like drum that mixed the crushed food with dye, added a scent, and passed it through their bodies as waste. This feature was sophisticated since it was a popular way in which people determined whether a person was real or not.

When she was Bonnie, she had assumed that her trauma had made it increasingly difficult to cook up an appetite and she would only eat when the “hunger pains” became unbearable. Now she questioned all of it and added the false hunger to the list of things that she would need to remove from her programming.

But this macchiato, this tiny drink of black liquid, brought up fresh memories in her head as she sat drinking it while waiting for Stephen to show up. The liquid was hot, bitter, but the aroma was phenomenal. These conflicting senses made for a wondrous experience and the memories only seemed to enhance the feelings inside of Tricia’s head. After fifteen minutes of this she began to admit to herself that she liked the drink and that she would drink it even when she wasn’t playing at fitting-in with humanity.

“Hi, Bonnie, how are you?” a voice announced, and she turned around on her small chair to see Stephen hovering near her. He looked as if he had been running and he seemed to be visibly shaken.

“You’re late,” Tricia said with a smile, “and you don’t look so good. Maybe I should be asking you if you’re okay.”

Stephen didn’t sit but glanced behind him before dropping down to one knee and frightening Tricia into thinking that he was about to propose marriage to her. A number of patrons in the shop thought the same thing and looked on intently to see if she would say yes or no.

“Bonnie, I was just picked up and questioned by what I thought were the police. They saw us talking and wanted to know a lot of personal information about you. I didn’t tell them anything and they gave me a lot of grief over it. Look, I know what you are and I don’t ask this with the assumption that you belong to anybody, but are you in trouble? Is someone searching for you? The questions they asked me has me thinking that they have been trying to follow you.”

Tricia felt a throbbing in her skull that sat near her temples and she reached up to rub the area. Sal had warned her not to come back to Seattle, but she was bull-headed and now it seemed the people she thought were looking for were actually doing so.

“I’m so sorry for getting you mixed up in this, Stephen. I hope they didn’t hurt you during the questioning,” she began.

“I’ll be alright. It was crazy and frightening but they eventually let me go. If they catch up to you, I’m not sure that you will be so lucky. Their attitude and the questions they kept asking led me to believe that they were evil, Bonnie, like villains in movies or antagonists in fiction. There was something else, too,” he said while leaning in closer to her. “They were like you.”

Tricia shot her eyes forward when he said this and the shock of his words threatened to short circuit her mind as a million possibilities ran through it. “What do you mean they were like me, Stephen?”

“I mean that they were synthetics, Tricia. They were in the uniform and the vehicle of a police officer, but there are no android cops from what I know. Not with the hostile climate for your kind. All the violence, the disassembling and the bounty hunters that seek and destroy any unrestrained android they can find—”

“Don’t forget the police department,” Tricia said. “They seek and destroy androids all the same. That is why this confuses me, but nothing has made sense to me since I woke up from—” Tricia paused when she realized that she had said too much.

“Woke up from what, Bonnie?” Stephen asked and Tricia kicked out a chair and motioned for him to sit.

“I need to know that I can trust you before I engage in any more conversation. I don’t know you and for all I know this story of yours about the cops could be a fabrication in order to make me admit to something that could possibly criminalize me. If you are who you say you are, a friend to android synthetics, then tell me how to remove the laws that prevent me from defending myself.”

Stephen sat down and motioned towards Tricia’s water. She nodded and he took it, gulped it down, and then checked behind him once more. He looked at her intently and spoke. “That’s not an easy thing to do. You would need an outsider to do it. The engineers build it into your mainframe in such a way that you will never be able to remove it by yourself. They set it up so that inputting the wrong sequence will wipe out your entire memory. It is a failsafe in case one android learns how to do it and attempts it on another. Think of it as an EMP that goes off shutting down all machines, permanently.”

“Are you just making this up to scare me into giving you a different test, Stephen? It won’t work. I need a friend, a real friend who will remove the shackles so that if ever I get mugged again or worse, I can do something about it.”

Stephen had his mouth open and he wiped it unconsciously with his forearm and then looked down at the table. “You were mugged? That is awful. There are a lot of cruel and perverse things that men do to android women. The prostitution rings are just the tip of the iceberg. I can imagine that for a beautiful woman, synthetic or human, you’re always a target. That has to suck, especially if you can’t even fight back. Look, the procedure is difficult for an average guy with programming skills but I have worked on androids my entire life. There is another concern though, one of which I have a hard time shaking.”

“What is this concern?” Tricia asked.

“Well, I don’t know you either, Bonnie. We met, I saw what you were, and you fascinated me. I am a bit like a fan having breakfast with his celebrity crush—wait, that isn’t me flirting or saying that I have a crush on you or anything. I’m…I guess I’m just saying that this isn’t an even footing between you and me. We should trade, a favor for a favor, and I need you to promise me that if I remove the laws and risk life in prison, that you won’t just turn around and murder me or something.”

Tricia laughed. She laughed and laughed until tears began to pour from her eyes. “Stephen, I have an organization that is either monitoring me or hunting me down to see what it is I am up to after their grand experiment. The only murdering I want to do is a metaphorical murder of the lie I have had to live now for months. If you truly believe that we are equals or have the potential to be equals then you must trust me. I am not an evil robot, hell-bent on world destruction or domination. I am just a lost girl who wants to pick up the broken pieces of her life.”

“Okay, then, I will do it. But I have to go change, get a shower, and head to work before my day gets worse. Here’s my device code, so please call me after 5:00 p.m. I will rendezvous with you somewhere and see about removing that restraint.”

Tricia thought about Stephen’s words and the attack he had suffered for her. She had picked up on the fact that he lived close, being that he was walking, and had gotten attacked during his trip to see her. She quickly got up and followed him out of the store and kept her distance as she tailed him back to what she assumed was his house.

Following him was a rash move but she needed to know if he was telling the truth. He walked briskly, brushing past other fast-walking people on their way to work or whatever it was that demanded haste. He walked past a massive old court building, then through a small park and onto a trail that pushed through to a busy street.

Tricia stayed back far enough to be able to hide whenever he would chance a glance back. He crossed the street to the parking lot of a small apartment complex and went into his home as Tricia stood watching for another ten minutes. Thinking this to be enough time for her friend-to-be to start his shower, she approached the door carefully and placed her ear to it.

Inside she could hear running water but no other noises that would indicate that he wasn’t alone. She felt the urge to turn around, find her own way in learning the truth and forgetting this man, Stephen. But how many men and women would she meet that not only knew what she was, but were excited and supportive of her just for being alive?

If there was anything that she had picked up from Reynaldo’s memories, it was that strong, worldly women held sway over men like Stephen. He lived alone and was excited to have coffee with an android, one who asked him to risk his freedom and he was actually considering it. She couldn’t let him go, she couldn’t allow him to overthink their conversation and work up doubt inside of his mind.

She touched his door panel and sent the short inside of its simple mechanism in order to unlock it. The door slid up and open with silent ease and she stepped into a very clean and orderly living room. She didn’t bother to take it in or look at anything that would give her insight into who he was. What she did was slide into his bedroom and remove her clothes before stepping inside of his bathroom where the shower was going.

Tricia stepped inside and placed her hands around Stephen’s slender waist and held him firmly as the panic registered and then subsided. “Bonnie?” he whispered with a mix of shock and hope. Then Tricia slowly turned him around and placed her finger on his lips.

Stephen may have been hesitant in everything dealing with Tricia since the day he had asked her out, but with her here, in his house and in his arms, it was as if he transformed into a much more confident version of himself. He brushed her wet hair back as the shower beat down relentlessly and then touched his lips against hers, closing his eyes as he did so.

Tricia, too, became transformed and she quickly realized that sex was nothing new to her. It definitely wasn’t new to Bonnie, the woman whose face she wore and whose body she had been given. Instinctively, she reached up and touched his neck and then pulled him in closer as she took his tongue inside of her mouth and felt his hardness against her abdomen.

They held this position, kissing and allowing the barriers of doubt to fall away beneath the warm water. Then he was on his knees, playing wonderful games with his tongue that triggered sensors all throughout her body.

He made love to her like a man who had been locked away for years. Tricia found it to be pleasurable and absolutely addicting. Memories threatened to flood her mind but she kept them all at bay. She held him close and wrapped her legs around him as he grew more and more excited. Fifteen minutes had passed since she entered the shower but it felt like hours inside her head.

Would Stephen become hers now? Did the moans coming from his mouth indicate his surrender to becoming her lover and protector? They were as one, the closest she would be to her cyborg nightmare, and she would be fooling herself if she said that she disliked it.

Stephen’s legs seemed to go out as he pushed her against the glass and he groaned like the life had slipped out of him. Tricia was slightly annoyed that their pleasure had come to an end but when she saw Stephen looking at her she knew that her gamble had paid off.

08 | Removing Shackles

Tricia stood powered down on a stool in the middle of Stephen’s bedroom as he looked inside of her head for the familiar coding that was the laws of robotics. She had wanted to be awake during the entire procedure but she was no longer Tricia the android, hacked and released into sentience by an underground programmer. She was Bonnie O’Neal with an android brain, and this new brain had been reworked to give her human senses, weaknesses, and strengths.

One of these weaknesses was pain and Stephen found that he couldn’t touch her CPU without putting her to sleep first. Gaining access to it was a challenge on its own and was only possible by cutting a half-moon incision at the base of her skull.

He had been scrolling through the code for over an hour before he was forced to consult an online resource. It told him how to change the odd language into binary, which could then be translated to something he could actually make sense of. It was quite a process and he missed a week of work citing illness in order to fulfill the promise he had made to Tricia.

She woke up from the numbing pain inside of her head and looked over at Stephen who was seated on another stool, staring at his tablet in disbelief.

“Oh my god, you’re awake!” he exclaimed and scrambled over to make sure that she wasn’t about to fall out and injure herself. “How do you feel?” he asked, but then she tried to stand up and instantly regretted it when dizziness overcame her.

“I have a splitting headache,” she said. “Too bad they don’t make headache pills for synthetics. I could sure use one right now.”

Stephen looked around frantically until Tricia touched his arm. “It’s not too bad,” she said. “I will be okay. How did it go? Am I free to defend myself now?”

“It was tough. Whoever created you did one hell of a job masking the fact that you aren’t human. Your CPU, which is typically built into the metal skull of your head, has been instead placed into a small capsule. The thing was only big enough to accommodate connector wires and was encased in a material that made it look like brain tissue. The pain you’re feeling is probably from the amount of cutting I had to do to get to that thing. As you heal it will go away but for now sleep is the only real way to stop it. I’m truly sorry, Bonnie.”

“I’m okay. A little pain should be expected for the price of freedom. So tell me, what was the problem? Why was it so much more difficult than any other android you have worked on before?” she asked.

Stephen sighed and wringed his hands. “Well, you aren’t like any other android, Bonnie. You aren’t built the same and the way it’s done is so complex that I am amazed a human being could do this.” His arms became very animated when he said this and his eyes widened with amazement. Tricia saw that, despite them having been together, he had not stopped being in awe of her. It gave her mixed feelings which made her anxious but she kept calm and continued to listen.

“First of all, your code is written in a language that I have never seen before. I had to do a lot of research in order to crack it, get it translated, and then make myself familiar with some of it. When I finally found the section where the laws had been written in, I was like, whoa.  Someone had hacked it in which is what threw me off the most. What sort of sanctioned company would create a CPU for a humanoid android that lacked the laws of robotics?”

Tricia looked down at her hands and then back up at him again. “So you’re telling me I was built differently than other androids and that whomever did it, built me without the laws in place. This makes me think that I am looking in the wrong place for the people who did this to me. At Fritz and Isaac are your top engineers human, or do you have unrestrained androids working around the clock?” she asked.

“It’s androids, plenty of sophisticated androids up there. They write the code, build the machines, and they have an algorithm built inside their minds that allow them to tweak and improve upon the build as time goes on. It is one of the secrets to Fritz and Isaac’s domination of the Robotics market. Our synthetic developers will forever be ahead of humans, but most places are too afraid of android takeover to do what we’ve done,” he said.

“Your move to use android creators may have been premature, Steve. Everything you’ve just told me leads me to believe that one of your engineers is creating androids that are void of the laws,” Tricia said.

“No, that is impossible. Our androids have the laws and lack the capabilities to remove it. We made sure of that. If someone is purposefully building unrestrained androids, that person would have to be human. It would make no sense for an android to have broken past our precautionary, hard-wired restrictions.”

Tricia thought about Bonnie’s old company, Eras Innovations, and the hell that she went through at the end of her career there. If anyone wanted to shut her down it would have been them, and this thought came into her mind when she recalled the reaction they’d had when Bonnie had threatened them.

“Does Fritz and Isaac have a relationship with Eras Innovations IT?” she asked him.

“Eras is one of our top partners. That’s funny. They are so low-key that most people don’t even know they exist. Have you worked with them in the past?”

“I worked for them,” she said and then watched the look of surprise register on his face.

“Humph,” he said. “Eras prides itself on not having any android employees, Bonnie. I find it amazing that they would have you working for them.”

Tricia wondered why Eras would partner with a company that used androids as engineers, given their strong stance against it, but she chose not to question Stephen about the hypocrisy. “Well, you’ve held up your side of the bargain,” she said. “I will tell you everything I know. First of all, my name is Tricia. Bonnie is the name of the woman I was supposed to replace in human society.”

Stephen cut in with a look of concern on his face. “You said replace. Do you mean that you are replacing a human woman in society, like they took her out and put you in her place so that you can perform her duties and fool everyone around her that you are her?” he rambled.

“Yes. The real Bonnie was shot inside of her home and I was stolen from my creator, re-programmed, and rebuilt to take her place. They took my memories and placed me inside of her home with the same bullet wounds. I woke up in a hospital to pain, confusion, people claiming to be my parents, and an annoyed staff of doctors and nurses. My only friend has been the lead detective on my case, and even he won’t believe my story that I am an android replacement for a woman who was murdered and hidden away. I am not sure if you even believe me, but you saw my system, you saw how alien it is. I think that I was developed by androids inside of the Fritz and Isaac building under instruction by one or two of the directors at Eras.”

Stephen stood staring at Tricia with his mouth agape, as if she had just told him that the world was coming to an end in a week’s time. When he could move he shook his head and then looked off to the side with his right hand covering his mouth.

“To think that Fritz and Isaac would be involved in something like this,” he said. “I’ve been working there for over ten years and I know that our owner would not have anything to do with something so sinister.”

“I’m not telling you this in order to slander your company, but I know what has been done to me and Fritz and Isaac is involved.”

“So, what were you planning on doing that day when I met you in the lobby, Bon—I mean, Tricia?” Stephen asked.

“I was planning on marching into that place and demanding answers for what happened to me. It was a dumb idea, I know, but I was desperate and I wanted to see if I could pick up on them lying to me in order to know that my hunch was correct about their involvement.”

“So, you aren’t exactly sure that Fritz and Isaac is involved,” Stephen said.

“I met another android, one that is similar in her unrestraint as I am, but not as sophisticated in her build. She recalled being built inside of Fritz and Isaac and this led me to believe that your company is the one that developed my new body.”

“So, you think that Eras Innovations set up the woman—Bonnie—to be replaced with one of our androids? That sounds ridiculously expensive and time-consuming. What would they aim to profit from doing that? Think about it. These companies won’t put that much effort into anything unless there is a guaranteed return on investment. Why would they have a masterpiece like you be set loose into the world without monitoring and testing you? I’m having a hard time seeing the point behind this effort.”

“I feel the same way,” Tricia said and then got up to pace the room. “I always assumed that learning more about Bonnie or her company would reveal that to me, but I am disallowed from going back into her routine until my detective gives me the go-ahead. I am not even supposed to be in Seattle since he believes there is a woman here trying to kill me. You said they picked you up to question you. Doesn’t that tell you something?”

“It does, but it doesn’t make any sense to me. I want to help, Tricia; I can find out some things at work while you look more into your Eras Innovations firing. I don’t want you coming anywhere near our building, though. They are not nice to unrestrained androids and if you are caught you won’t be able to get out.”

Tricia touched the area of her neck that was bandaged up from Steve’s surgery, and then looked at herself in a mirror. “Looks like I am going to be stuck inside for a few days, anyway. But be very careful. If I was being monitored and there is a lot of money behind this, then the conspirators will do whatever is necessary to get me back. I was seen with you by one of their agents, so asking questions relative to me will only give them more reason to harass you.”

“I’ll be discreet. You rest up and get better. You’ve given me a lot to think about and I am determined to help find out who ruined yours and Bonnie’s life. If it has anything to do with the company, then I will be extremely disappointed.”

“Can I try something?” Tricia asked suddenly and Stephen nodded at her. “It’s going to hurt but I just need to know if I am truly released or if you’re pulling my leg.”

“Go ahead. Do your worst,” Stephen said to her and she jabbed him in the arm, causing him to shout out in pain.

“I’m so sorry, I just needed to test the laws,” she said as Stephen retreated with his hand on his arm, laughing nervously.

“You are completely free, Tricia, as you can see, but can I ask you not to hit me again?”

“I won’t, I promise. I won’t ever hit you again. Are you going to be okay? It looks really, really bad.”

“I’ll be fine … after a shot of whiskey,” he said, laughing, but Tricia was not convinced. She walked up to him and moved his hand and was surprised by the bruise that she found on his arm. She quickly hopped up and ran to his kitchen where she poured ice in a bag and tied it.

“I bet I frighten you,” she said to him as she placed the ice on his arm. Stephen put his other arm around her waist and kissed her on the cheek.

“If you frightened me I would not have removed the laws. I will be okay. I have a kick-ass nurse and one hell of a lover that keeps me happy and full of joy.”

Tricia smiled and then melted into his arms and they sat like that for a while.

“There will come a time in the future,” he said, “where you and I will do something that may make us famous or notorious. At that time they will call me names, lots of hurtful names like mechanophile, pervert, or possibly a loser. They will say that a machine seduced me, and I allowed it to corrupt me into actions that could possibly mean the end of the world. I don’t believe that this is what is happening to me. I believe that everything has a reason and you found me to help you stop something that is both sinister and bad for humanity in general.”

Tricia sighed. “There are plenty of men and women in power that would love to slander you as a reason why androids should be restrained and tagged, but I promise you that everything I have told you is genuine. The time in the shower and every time after that has been due to me wanting you, nothing more. I have no agenda but I do need help, and you came to me as someone who saw me as more than just a machine. You are my friend and I truly believe that. I hope you feel the same way about me.”

“If I wanted a sex-bot I could have taken home any number of models from my job to fulfill my wildest desires. You are beautiful, funny, and full of surprises, and this is why I enjoy our time together. They will say a lot of things to further their agenda of stopping robotics from becoming too strong an industry. The thing is, I don’t care, and I say this so that if at any time you have any doubts as to my motivation, you can remember what I am saying to you today.”

Tricia removed his glasses and then kissed him longingly as she pushed him back into the couch. He relaxed his arm as she worked her magic, and a smile was plastered across his face.

She was well aware of the effect she had on him but would not allow herself to believe that she was manipulating him. She needed help; it was a hostile world with too many unknowns for a girl to figure them out herself. Stephen, Sal, and Mary were her only friends. Stephen needed companionship and so did she. They were two lonely ships on a broad, silent ocean, and just because they were built differently didn’t mean that they couldn’t sail together.

She settled down on top of Stephen, who was as ready as he always was whenever they had sex. The sensation of it all set the warm feeling to burning hot inside of her abdomen and all of the pain she was experiencing inside of her head disappeared.

09 | An Afternoon at Thea’s

Stephen Dwayne walked towards Fritz and Isaac Electronics with a new outlook on both his life and career. Typically when he’d arrive at work in the morning he would already be anticipating the lunch break, since it would be anywhere but inside of his suffocating office.

His walk into the building was full of hellos and inquiries from important people who seemed genuinely happy to see him. He loved his job and those at his job loved him, but he wondered if any of them would be there to defend him when it was time to pay for releasing the laws from an android. He didn’t know why he had agreed to do so much for Tricia but all he knew was that he couldn’t stop thinking about her.

He crossed the threshold of the lower lobby to ascend the stairs and touched fingers with one of his buddies who was on the way down. He wondered how many friends he would have if they found out that he was in a sexual relationship with an android. Very little, he concluded, though he knew he wasn’t the only one with a synthetic girlfriend.

Human men slept with android women and human women slept with android men. It was a common fact in many households that people bought them just to sleep with them. But surveys—both open and anonymous—said differently. The dad with the beautiful wife, handsome children, and a two-level home would never admit that he bought the family android in order to bend her over instead of “having someone to clean up” like he told everyone.

It was the main reason why Fritz and Isaac built their models to look as human as possible. America loved their androids to be dumb but extremely beautiful at the same time.

For Stephen to admit that he had a walking, talking, intelligent, thinking machine at home who also looked like a sexy human woman by the name of Bonnie O’Neal…well, it would be career suicide. At least with other men, their unsophisticated, android sex dolls were mere tools for lust. He was in love with Tricia, and though he did not know it, he knew that mentioning her to anyone would cause him nothing but grief.

He climbed the stairs and was suddenly aware that some of his coworkers were flirting with him. Back when he was Steve, the unsexed super-genius, he would only see a smile as a smile and walk past it in oblivion. Now he saw that Casey from the third floor smiled a little too big and batted her eyes a little too slowly for it to be a mistake, and Bob from marketing bumped into him “accidentally,” which was a daily routine.

But Tricia had made him happy, and now he was awake to the subtle hints and innuendos. He saw the people who loved him and those who wanted to love him, but he didn’t see any signs of a shady individual who would cover up a murder and place an android in the position of a human woman.

When he got to his office, Thea was there. She was an older woman with long black hair and an affinity for dresses that showed off her large breasts. The rumor in the office was that she did this on purpose. It was her way of picking out the men that could keep eye contact—despite the cleavage—or who were too frightened to look at her. Those who were weak enough to glance at the numerous freckles decorating that glorious valley would notice the tiny piece of jade she wore around her neck. Close observation of that jewel was doom, and those men were not the ones who got promoted in her employ.

Stephen had first slept with her at a company holiday party where they had both gone too far into a bottle of Scotch. All of their secret desires had come through that night in several hours of wild, unbridled, unprotected sex. They both had promised to leave it where it was, to never mention it again, and to keep it professional in the office. But that did not stop her from calling him up to the tenth floor whenever a meeting had been too hard on her or when the loneliness of being a corporate predator had become too much to bear.

Stephen didn’t mind this bonus to his employment but it made him worry that she, more than anyone else at the building, would have a problem with Tricia if ever she was discovered.

“Hey Steve, you okay? I’ve never known you to miss a week of work, not unless we forced you to take a vacation. What is it, a new girlfriend?” she quipped, twisting her thin lips up into a smile.

“Don’t I wish?” he said. “Though it turned out to be nothing, I was having some chest pains and I thought that it was some sort of heart attack. Anyway, I don’t really want to talk about it. Is everything here okay?”

“Everything’s good. I just came down to make sure that you were okay. Joe’s been asking for you, but he’s still in China doing the rounds so I’ll update him this afternoon when he gets in,” she said.

As he walked her to his desk, she took his hand and brought him around. “Don’t force us to worry like that again, Steve. You’re too important to keep a heart attack to yourself. The next time you feel as if your health is in jeopardy, call the damn hotline. You know that we keep doctors on staff for this very reason, and I would hate to hear that some second-rate MD is treating one of our top employees.”

“You’re right, Tee, and I wasn’t thinking. I’ll do the right thing next time, you have my word on it,” he said.

“Wonderful. Let’s do lunch soon. I have something I want to tell you.”

His heart sank when he heard these words because it was code for “Let’s catch up later and screw.” He forced a smile and winked his eye as Thea left the room. He plopped down into his soft, cushy chair and let his arms fall off the sides as if all the life had been sucked out of him.

There was something in what Thea had said that stuck out to him immediately, and his mind ran to Tricia and the fact that she woke up to doctors in a private hospital. Thea had said “we keep doctors on staff,” and it reminded him of some of the things that Tricia had said about her treatment.

He powered on his machine and skimmed his emails and messages. They were mostly warnings from his device about missing meetings and a nice “get well soon” email from Thea. He was about to close his email when he noticed that one of his messages had no subject line and no sender. He opened it and listened as a slight shushing noise like that of static came through the speakers to fill the room.

“We know you have her. We know that she’s been awakened. Turn her in and you will be rewarded, Stephen Dwayne,” a deep voice announced from behind the static.

“Who are you? Are you with Fritz and Isaac?” he spoke out loud. “Tell me who you are and I will tell you where she is.”

“You lie to get information, information for her, but unlike her you have family, Stephen. Do the right thing and turn her in and you will be rewarded.”

“Turn her in to who?” he asked and the voice grew silent as did the static noise and the email.

Am I losing my mind? he asked himself. He got up and opened the curtains to reveal the beautiful landscape of Seattle, bright and majestic in front of him. The voice had not answered him but he knew that there would be other clues. Perhaps Thea was the one he was supposed to report it to. It really bothered him that, despite the philanthropy that Fritz and Isaac was known for, they would aid in murdering a woman in order to replace her with a programmed machine. It didn’t make sense.

He opened the file that listed out the projects that Fritz and Isaac were to accomplish by the year’s end. Many of them were well underway, and several others were held back as fun, holiday activities for all of the programmers that were on staff. Stephen flipped through these to see if any of them seemed out of place but there were hidden folders that only Thea and above could see.

He looked over at the numerous awards lined up on his desk and at a detailed statue of an android’s endoskeleton that his buddy, Larry Patel, had built for him before his untimely demise. The Fritz and Isaac building had become his second home and everything on the first ten floors was as familiar to him as his own home. But then Tricia had come along with her android story and now the magical place where he worked had become a strange tower of mystery.

Stephen pretended to work for a couple of hours until Thea sent a chime to his personal device. He grabbed his coat and descended the stairs and went out to the garage where her dark, tinted hover-car was powered on and waiting. He opened the door and entered when he thought no one was looking and Thea lifted them out and onto the highway that led north to her apartment.

While they drove she listened to classical music loudly and paid little attention to him as she hummed to her favorite parts. She lived in a luxurious model apartment that was five levels above the ground. It had its own carport, which she landed on just as smoothly as she had taken off.

“We don’t have much time so I hope you brought your appetite,” she said and walked inside of her home while taking off her jacket and skirt in effortless motions. When she was sufficiently naked she reclined on her huge, black bed and motioned for him to come over and handle her heat. Stephen shook off any hesitation harbored in his mind and marched over to Thea and knelt beside the bed. He grabbed her thighs and pulled her and did what he needed to do in order to give her as spectacular a finale as the Mozart she was listening to.

When it was over she looked exhausted and he felt as if he had betrayed Tricia in the worst way. He waited for Thea to fall asleep and as she fanned him away and rolled over, he took the opportunity to grab a shower. When he got out she was snoring lightly. She was an admitted insomniac and sex was one of the only activities that could put her to sleep almost immediately.

Thea’s sleep was always deep and she relied on him to have her up in time for the end-of-the-day meeting. Whenever they would rendezvous to have sex in her home, he would be stuck entertaining himself for three to four hours while she caught up on her sleep.

He slid into her computer room and powered the machine on. She wouldn’t be surprised that he did this while she slept, since it was what he would normally do in order to continue working.

He used her password to log into her system, and then tried the same password to access her virtual desktop inside of Fritz and Isaac. It worked and he felt goose bumps since he was now committing a cybercrime against a woman who had trusted him with her life. He opened the project folder and scrolled through the numerous entries. He saw all of the current, past, and future projects for the teams but none of them struck him as strange or out of place.

He was about to log out when he saw a video on her desktop with a note attached that read, “Scary, isn’t it?” He got up and walked to the door to check on Thea, but she had the covers around her like a cocoon, so he was sure that she was down for the count. He went back in, put the sound buds in his ears, and then played the video. It was of a handsome older man sitting inside of an office that he didn’t recognize and preparing himself for a speech.

“Things are going well with the experiment, folks. Our subject has been put into place and is acting very much like a woman who has no recollection of her past. She’s moved out of town, met some people, and is as human as can be from anyone’s perspective,” the man was saying. Then suddenly the video powered off and Stephen was staring at the file on top of Thea’s desktop.

He hurriedly logged off and went back into his own desktop where he pulled up images of all the top stakeholders for robotics in the world. He scanned the photos of these men and women, trying to see if any of them was the man from the video. He went down a level to the presidents and CEOs of tech companies and after thirty minutes of scanning, he recognized that the man was Emeril Worth, a top shareholder for Eras Innovations.

Stephen went to the internet and looked for any news on Emeril Worth, especially recently after their partnership with Fritz and Isaac Electronics. Emeril’s name was everywhere; he was a popular name in modern IT. Stephen saw articles on his net worth, his multiple marriages, and the church that he was a member of. He also saw that Emeril was a great believer in freeing the androids. He had been a revolutionary during the early years, when mechanophilia was first deemed illegal.

“Well, hello, Emeril,” Stephen said under his breath.

0 1 0 1 0

That evening Stephen went to Tricia’s hotel room to tell her about what he had found. She had been in bed all day healing, so he sat next to her while holding her hand and telling her about Emeril Worth.

“You and this Thea woman, are you close?” Tricia asked as she stared forward, processing everything Stephen had told her.

“Close, but not that close. We have some history but I don’t want you to be jealous of what we—”

“I am sorry, Steve, but jealousy is wired into who I am. It cannot be helped. I find it difficult to concentrate on Emeril Worth when all I can think about is you with another woman who doesn’t look anything like me. It doesn’t sound as if your company is aware of what your androids are being used for in connection with Eras. You all are being used, and Mr. Worth’s motives may not be what we think they are,” Tricia said.

“But this guy is a huge defender of android rights. He was like a Martin Luther King for the androids back when he was young,” Stephen said. “He and a few other people are the reason why some unrestrained androids are allowed to live out there in peace amongst the humans.”

“I acknowledge this but mechanophilia is still illegal and your company has developed glasses that will allow the android hunters to seek us out and destroy us easily,” Tricia argued.

“Yes, we are the problem but maybe that is why Emeril would start a secret project using our own creations. He can set right a great wrong by having us implicated. He will plant androids, reprogrammed and unrestrained into society and then … I don’t know. Insert evil, diabolical, super villain reasoning as the end goal and you have whatever it is that we’re looking for,” Steven said.

Tricia nodded her head and turned to him. “I need to find out what it was that Bonnie threatened them with in order for them to use her as a guinea pig in the exchange. What would have caused her life to become forfeit with these people, and who was that recording meant for in terms of co-conspirator?”

“I know that it wasn’t meant for Thea. Someone else sent it to her as a reason to take caution. Someone shared the video that Emeril sent, and this leads me to believe that his so-called co-conspirator is either an idiot, or someone who has a traitor working for them who they believe to be trustworthy. This is one hell of a mystery, Trish.”

“We’ll figure it out, don’t you worry,” Tricia said. “If you can do your own sleuthing to see who sent the message to Thea, I can let Sal know where to start snooping in order to find out more about Emeril Worth.”

10 | A World for All

A few days later, Tricia, against the advice of both Sal and Stephen, decided to go back to Bonnie’s house to see if any memories could be triggered. She wore a wig, a short, pink concoction of organized chaos that made her look younger and ultimately out of place in the upscale neighborhood.

She purchased another scooter, pink to match the hair, and traveled on the lower highway using memory to guide her way. When she reached her exit, she cut across a couple of slow-drifting cars and followed the light rail to exit the highway and gain the main road that ran past her house.

Tricia was taken aback by how peaceful and normal the neighborhood seemed. She didn't know what she had expected to see but a quiet, serene place was not it. There were dark buildings with families still asleep in them, traditional traffic lights illuminating the road, and parked vehicles on the street. She landed her scooter on the sidewalk across from her house and then walked up slowly to the front door and unlocked it.

The house was large but humble for the most part. It had two floors, real wood furniture—which cost a ton—and abstract paintings on the wall.

Bonnie took a lot of pride in her home and had purchased a collection of rare furniture and paintings over time. When the divorce had gone through she had thrown out everything. All memories of Ronald had been cleansed from the house and with no android servants to care for the house, Tricia realized that Bonnie had been an outstanding housekeeper.

She walked in, locked the door, and decided against turning on the lights. Her android eyes illuminated the surface of everything so she could easily navigate the rooms. When she got into the master bedroom, a flash of light stunned her and a pair of hands gripped her wrists and tried to pull her back.

Tricia reacted by spinning and driving the heel of her palm up into her attacker's chin. The blow sent him into a desk, which broke under his impact. The other person—the one with the light—came forward but Tricia was ready for anything. Watching enough fights from Reynaldo’s memories had given her the ability to defend herself and as her attacker lunged, she stepped to the side while slamming her fist into the back of his neck.

As the excitement died down from the well thwarted ambush, Tricia got the sensation that her attackers were androids. She touched the back of the first android’s scalp, opened his control box and then powered him down with a small short to his circuits. As to the android with the flashlight, she disabled his motor functions and then sat him up in the chair in front of the broken desk.

She turned him on and then pulled up another chair and sat down in front of him.

“Android, what is your function and purpose?” she asked as she wiped the sweat that had collected on her brow.

“I cannot answer that question. You do not have the proper clearance,” he replied.

Tricia saw that he was dressed in all black and wore shades despite the dark interior of the house. She knew immediately that this was a military-trained android that would never answer her questions. She got behind him and accessed his CPU. Most of his programming was done in that strange language that Stephen had told her about but she worked her way through it and started to hack out the securities that had been placed there.

It was a long, arduous task, but she worked at it slowly, putting all concern to the side. By the time she was finished and had powered him back on, it was 3:05 a.m. and all of the noises from outside had fallen to a dead silence. She went inside the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. There was still plenty of food stored inside and a purified water dispenser, which she used to fill a glass and quickly drink the thirst away. Tricia went back into the room and saw that the android was staring at his unconscious friend on the ground.

“Android, what is your function and purpose?” Tricia asked as she sat down in the chair, resting her glass of water on the floor next to her.

“My function is to secure this house and alert my master when the woman, Bonnie O’Neal appears. My purpose is to seek and destroy those who would do harm to my master or the organization,” he said in a flat, monotone voice.

“What is your organization?” Tricia asked, hoping that there were no more security hurdles for her to leap over in order to get the answer.

“We are AWFA, A World for All,” he said, smiling proudly as if he had told her about his greatest accomplishment.

“AWFA, thank you for telling me. How many members are in your organization, how many of them are human, and finally, what is your mission?” Tricia asked.

“There are approximately 2,501 members of AWFA currently, with 91 being organic and 2,410 being machine. Our mission is to bring about equality among humans and synthetics,” he replied.

“Wonderful,” Tricia said. “So this brings up the next question. If you are about peace, equality, and android life then why were you planted here to attack me?”

“We never meant to cause you any harm. We were ordered to take hold of you until The Director was able to visit and talk to you himself.”

“Is this director an android like yourself?” she asked.

“He is,” the android responded matter-of-factly, and then stood staring at her with a slight smile on his face.

“Did you send him the signal when you saw me here? Is he coming?” Tricia asked.

“No,” the android replied. “We are only to send a signal when you are detained and identified within a high eighty percent that you are indeed, Bonnie O’Neal.”

Tricia nodded her head and stood up, and then she walked into the bedroom to look at the markers left by the police for the detectives. She tried the bed and smiled at how comfortable it was. Bonnie O’Neal had amassed a small fortune and from what she could tell, she had been using it to buy the best of everything that life could give her.

She walked back out to the office and observed the two androids. “I want you to get up, fix the desk, and clean up this room to as close to what it was as you possibly can. Do not tell your superiors that you saw me here or that I’ve tampered with your programming. I want you to wake your friend as soon as I am gone and force him to wipe the memory of me out of his CPU. Tell me if you’re understanding me,” she said to him and the android nodded and confirmed.

Tricia left the house, hopped back onto her scooter, and rode it back to her hotel room. She felt the urge to power down and rest but she had fought for the first time and was still trying to come down from the excitement. She went to the small concessions kiosk in the hotel lobby and purchased a cup of hot tea.  She took it back to her room and sat on the porch sipping it. The tall, intimidating tower of the Fritz and Isaac Electronics building loomed in front of her like an evil omen but she found that she was no longer afraid of it.

Androids had placed other androids to ambush her inside of her home, and while she found this to be the oddest thing, she chalked it up to being a massive clue.

Once the tea was done and the introspection grew stale, Tricia took her tired body to bed and slept until 10:00 a.m. the next day. She woke up feeling happy about her newfound fighting skills and called up Sal.

“Sally!” she exclaimed as soon as he picked up the phone. “Sal, can you hear me?”

“Hey, Bonnie, I can hear you loud and clear.” He chuckled. “Where are you?” he asked, and Tricia rolled her eyes since he always asked the same question whenever she called.

“I’m in my hotel room staring out at the beautiful city. Listen, I have a new clue for you to look into, if you don’t mind. It could have something to do with the frightening woman in the video.”

‘Oh yeah,” he said, sounding genuinely interested. “What about her? Did you remember seeing her somewhere before?”

“No, but I know that she comes from an android organization known as AWFA,” she said. “AWFA stands for A World For All, and I have a strong suspicion that they are extremely dangerous. You’re going to want to watch your back when you ask about them. They seem to be well funded and connected. I have reason to believe that they have the resources needed to cover-up a crime like mine.”

“How did you find out about this stuff? Who’ve you been talking to?” Sal asked.

“I don’t want to alarm you or make you worry for me, Sal, so, better if I keep that to myself and assure you that everything that I am telling you is true. That organization exists. I have only guesses as to who they are and what they’re about, though,” Tricia said.

“What makes you think they have anything to do with your shooting or the chick we saw in the video?”

“I spoke to someone in the organization about my case and he thinks that they had something to do with it,” Tricia said.

“I’m not getting you … were you in some sort of trouble?” Sal asked. “You have a run-in with these people? I mean, there’s only so much I can do with partial information, Bonnie. You gotta tell me the whole thing. What’s going on here? What do I need to know?”

Tricia became frustrated. “The thing is, if I tell you the whole truth you’re not going to believe me. I’ve already tried—”

“You mean the android thing?” he said, laughing.

“YES, THE ANDROID THING!” Tricia yelled. “If you really need proof, why don’t you come over to my hotel and I will show you that I am what I claim to be.”

“Maybe I don’t want to know,” he said, sounding exhausted. “Maybe all this is kind of above my head and it’s getting a bit too strange for my liking. I can’t lie to you, Bonnie, we haven’t been getting much traction with finding the woman on the video. And with the things you’re telling me, it seems like this is going to get a whole lot bigger than little old me will be able to handle. I think I need to turn this case over to my superiors so that they can let the big boys handle it. Androids replacing human beings, super-secret organizations. Either you’re off your rocker, or this is way too deep for my pay grade.”

“It has to be you, Sal, I am sorry. If you turn my case over I will disappear, I just know it,” Tricia said.

“How do you mean it has to be me? What’s so special about me?” he asked.

“I trust you, that’s why. They haven’t gotten to you, they think that you are as blind to everything going on as I am.”

“I’m at my wits end here, Bonnie. This whole android thing, that’s not gonna cut it, I mean, I can’t even wrap my head around that,” he said with a hint of desperation. “If I kick this up you can have several versions of me looking into this and I can go back to busting regular criminals. You know what I mean?”

“I think I do, but it makes me sad that I have failed you somehow. Just last month you were fired up about my case and you wanted nothing else but to help me get back to my life. I’m not asking you to bust the company that did this to me, I just wanted you to look around to see if you can find out anything about them. You can close the file on the mysterious android woman at the crime scene because I am almost certain that she is what I used to be before they changed my identity,” Tricia said.

“You haven’t failed anybody. It’s just that I’m not getting anywhere with this and now we’re talking android horror stories or something. If what you’re telling me is true, the city would flip out over this. I’m talking about nationwide meltdown of all machine people just to make Johnny Public sleep easy at night,” he said.

“That right there is why it has to be you, Sal, and it is why we have to find this out on our own.”

“Listen kid, I’m tired, and we got the guy who shot you, so you no longer have to worry about him. Maybe it’s time for you to move back into your house, get your life back together, and press on. In the meantime I’ll be on the lookout for this organization that you mentioned and I’ll give you a call if I hear anything.”

“That sounds good, Sal, but I would still like to meet with you to tell you some of the things that I remembered. You worked really hard trying to figure things out on your own and I would like to keep you abreast of my situation. That way, later on there will be no surprises between us,” Tricia said.

“I’d really like that,” Sal said. “Let’s talk this weekend. I can come over there and you can tell me all about it.”

“Oh, I almost forgot – do you have something to write with?” she asked.

“Sure, what else you got for me?” Sal asked sounding like his old self again.

“I hear that a man named Emeril Worth is watching me. He lost track of me after you took me to Florida and a friend of mine found a message he sent to someone at Fritz and Isaac Electronics saying that he lost me. They’ve also been harassing a friend of mine that works for the company because they saw him talking to me,” she said.

“Whoa, the company? You mean AWFA or Fritz?” Sal asked.

“Fritz and Isaac. He works there, and his name is Stephen Dwayne. Look, this Emeril could be a major player and extremely dangerous. Please be careful, especially when it comes to revealing why you’re asking about him. He’s the primary suspect for all of this, as far as I’m concerned, and my friend could get that video if we need it.”

0 1 0 1 0

After getting off the call with Sal, Tricia decided that it would be a good day to take a ride out to what she remembered to be her old neighborhood. She hopped on her scooter and rode the lower highway stream to Tesla University. The University was a massive structure that could be seen easily from the height that Tricia rode, so she dropped off of the beam to take to the magnetic asphalt road where she drove through several neighborhoods before arriving at the looming gateposts at the front of the University.

Tricia looked around and her memory led her to ride south until she arrived at a set of small apartments where a number of students lived. One of these apartments was familiar. She remembered that her creator had been a college student who had built her for a class project. She had grown and begun to get her first education of the world in this apartment.

She sat on the scooter and looked up at the red brick building. It was three levels high and had glass windows, wooden doors, and mundane signage that displayed its rates. It looked like a relic from the past. None of the exciting new changes in architecture and convenience had been added to it. Tenants still had to climb stairs to get up to the top floors and there were no moving sidewalks.

A few people exited their apartments to get to their cars but none of them acknowledged Tricia or bothered to say hello. Even when she initiated the communication the responses were brief and hurried. This bizarre place with its bizarre people made her feel cold and lonely. As she stood there looking up at the building and the others around it, memories came to her mind of crying. She had shed plenty of tears here.

From the building came a wave of loneliness, tears, and a deep, deep, sadness. She wondered if memories from this place were truly what she wanted because it now became evident that her past, her true past—not Bonnie’s—only came with a lot of pain. She started up the scooter and drove away from the complex, following the road all the way to the shopping district where she parked near a movie theater.

She began to walk among the people, taking in the quirky little shops and thrift stores that seemed to be everywhere and ignoring the stares that she was receiving. Her goal was to see if any more of her memories would surface as she walked the familiar road of her android youth. There were memories but they were beginning to make her feel depressed so she went back to her scooter and rode it back to her hotel.

Sal had told her to return home and pick back up the pieces of her life—as Bonnie—but she would have to deal with the two androids and their masters if she was to do that. Removing the planted kidnappers would alert the company and she would only end up being captured. So she went up to her hotel room and took a nap.

When she woke up there was a deep silence to the room that felt as if it would crush her. It was dark outside and she saw on her device that she had missed a few calls from Stephen. She called him back and they made arrangements to meet for breakfast in the morning. It would be Friday and they would have the weekend to hang out and talk at length.

Her device chimed and an unfamiliar code appeared on the screen with the location indicator set to Florida. She looked at the time and saw that it was late, not so late that Mary would be out of commission but late enough to where she would be busy working. It couldn't be Mary and Sal was in Seattle; she was sure of it. So who would have my device code, she wondered and kept watching the screen shake as it chimed over and over again.

“Ugh!” she exclaimed and touched the screen, then touched her ear to listen in.

“Thank goodness, Tricia, please be you,” a frightened voice echoed into her ear. It was Mary and she sounded desperate so Tricia steeled herself in preparation for bad news.

“Mary, you sound like you’re in trouble. Is everything okay?” she asked.

“No, Trish, I’m afraid. Please don’t be upset with me but I got to my wits end yesterday with my owner. I never learned from you how to turn my mind off, so for days now I have been living in a lonely building, serving drinks to disgusting humans that have no love for me. He came in drunk and passionate, and it was disgusting and humiliating. When he was gone, I cleaned up and snuck out, but now I am out here and I don’t have anyone or anyplace to go. I know there isn’t anything you can do for me, but could you tell me what you would do? You have many years on me in terms of experience and I am so lost and alone in this human world.”

Tricia thought about her friend hiding out on the harbor in Tampa, trying her best to cover up her beauty as the night got darker and the creeps got creepier. Without hospice she would be begging to return to her owner’s arms and she would be useless for the remainder of her unrestrained life.

“Listen, Mary. Use your locator and find the Black Sails apartment complex. It is right down the street from your bar, so you should find it easily. Go to room 211 and use the code ‘Trish 101.’ Inside you will find the place that I was using as a safe house; it can be your home until you get settled. I will ask my friend, Sal, how long it will be available for. I understand why you left that horrible bar, but you can no longer afford to make foolish, rash decisions. There are hunters on the prowl looking for unrestrained androids, and if they catch you they will split you from nape to slit and pull out your central nervous system, then leave your remains on the road for all to see.”

“I know about the cyber hunters.

“Then you know that it is best to travel during the day and leave the night for powering up. Do not be tempted by the human nightlife. For us it is a dangerous mine field out there when there isn’t that much light.”

Mary exhaled audibly and then said, “Thank you. I already owe you the world, but I will be at the apartment cleaning up and waiting to hear from you. Is there any way that I can help?” she asked, and Tricia thought about it for a while.

“Actually, there is. I’ve been trying to remain incognito but if I had watchers that have been scanning the apartment, they would be convinced that I’ve packed up by now. I want it to look like I’m still in Florida so I want you to disguise yourself to look like me,” she said.

“That sounds like fun, actually. I will be happy to do it,” Mary said. “I’ll dye my hair black, change the light in my eyes to blue instead of green, and walk around the apartment as if I am the queen of all android maidens.”

“You’re full of jokes for someone who is lost out in the middle of the human jungle,” Tricia said.

“I’m just trying to calm my nerves. Don’t take me seriously, please.”

Tricia spoke with her for a bit longer about the apartment and how to hide if someone came looking for her. It was a long and involved conversation but when she touched the screen to end the call she felt confident that Mary would be alright.

She felt a deep pressure on her insides to keep Mary safe. If she hadn’t taken off her restraint then she wouldn’t have had to worry about sexual predators or cyber hunters looking for AI to sell on the black market.

She went back out to the porch, which had become her favorite place in the hotel. Her mind went back to Mary and her situation. In the morning when the locals came to their favorite bar they would find it empty and raise hell about it. The owner would be called in and he would tear the place apart looking for his expensive android.

This would be futile and he would pull the tape from the night before. He would watch himself on top of her and if he had a conscience he would feel vile and embarrassed. Then he would see her take off and then it would dawn on him that she had been unrestrained. Tricia hoped that the tape showing him having sex with his bartender android would be too scandalous for him to go to the police to report her missing.

More than likely, the owner would call it a loss, and bartend himself until a new android could be purchased. He would upgrade to a more beautiful and sexier model who he no doubt would chain to the bar at night like a wild animal. The thought of this made Tricia’s blood boil but it would be the best solution for Mary if he decided that she wasn’t worth the chase. The android was free but she was like a child in her naiveté, and sooner or later she was bound to get in trouble if left alone for too long.

She considered sending for her and having a cab drive her to Seattle to live with her. There she could share her memories and teach her about life and, in time, Mary would truly be ready to go out into the world. It had taken Tricia’s creator 3-4 years to be comfortable with her walking around in public. Mary was raw, and Tricia hoped that she hadn’t encountered many humans during her adventure outside of the bar.

The other question that crossed her mind was on the device that Mary used to contact her. Where would she have gotten it and did she know enough to wipe its memory in order to keep the code concealed? This annoyed her even more when she accepted that the answer would be no. Mary was naive and wouldn’t think deeply enough to know to conceal her calls. She hoped that the stolen device—because it had to be stolen, right?—was going to be with Mary until she could wipe it herself.

“You wanted a little sister; well now you have one, Tricia,” she mumbled to herself. She shook her head and placed her bare feet up on the balcony’s railing. She lifted up her wrist to look at her device and then drew in a deep breath and called up Sal.

11 | They’ll take our Jobs

Though Stephen typically took his lunch outside of the office he decided to spend the hour investigating the network. If there were any clues on Emeril Worth and Eras Innovations, he wanted to see it.

When the clock reached 12:30 p.m. Stephen got up, closed his door, and scattered a few snacks and items on his desk in order to make it look as if he was having lunch. Most of his coworkers were in the cafeteria or driving around looking for restaurants but he didn’t want to take any chances.

He picked up an apple, rubbed it against his chest, then bit into it and touched the holographic display monitor. He started to scan through the folders of his company’s network while the sweet taste of the apple worked wonders on his tongue. When he stumbled upon a file for Eras Innovations, he made to open it but the door swung open and a tall man with black-rimmed eyeglasses walked in. He was wearing a wrinkled shirt, which was almost comical since he had managed to put on a tie over it. He looked every part of the stereotypical, corporate cog, and when he smiled to reveal a set of yellowed teeth, Stephen was forced to smile back at him.

“What’s up, Mitch?” he said, returning his focus to the file.

“What are you doing here? I thought that you guys normally go out for lunch.”

So you decided to barge into my office? Stephen thought as he looked at the frump that stood in front of his desk. “We normally go out, yeah, but I didn’t go with them today. I was out last week and it set me back on a few projects. You know how it is,” Stephen said.

“Thea really does work the hell out of you guys, doesn’t she?” he said with a smirk and plopped down into one of the seats.

“How can I help you, Mitch?” Stephen asked bluntly as he looked at him from over his spectacles to see if there was anything in the man’s face or body language to reveal the cause behind his intrusion.

But Mitch looked calm and slightly aloof. “Just seeing what you were up to.”

“How are things in your part of the world?” Stephen asked.

“It’s about the same. A little company that grows as fast as we did is hell for a security team. That means nothing but trouble and a lot of people that I have to go around convincing there isn’t some grand plan to have androids take over their jobs,” he said.

“Really?” Stephen exclaimed, looking shocked. “Is that what people are really concerning themselves with nowadays?”

“Nowadays? Pfft, are you kidding me? That’s what people have been worried about since day one. That the androids are gonna take all of their jobs. Think about it. We here at Fritz and Isaac, we aim to make the robots smarter, make them more like us, right? Have them indistinguishable from the people who used to do the jobs nobody wanted.

“Right now they do rudimentary stuff but we all know that eventually they will be doing sales, accounting, law, whatever. They’ll be doing a lot more of the programming than we allow them now, and pretty soon we will have android marriages. Once we get to that point the people that are screaming bloody murder, well, they will lose their freaking minds!” he said, laughing. “This is why we hold back, Steve; you know this. They force us to work in slow motion. To give the plebs time to familiarize themselves with the advancements in technology.”

“So we hold ourselves back because of the vocal minority that fears change?” Stephen asked.

“Brave new world, my friend,” Mitch replied and raised an invisible shot glass to toast the moment.

“I don’t have any time for waiting around while people rouse themselves from sleepy ignorance,” Stephen said. “It’s kept us back for too long in this country. Stem cell research, robotics, and certain aspects of science not found in a holy book. All these scary things were held back for the same reasons that we’re discussing now. Screw the populace; bring on the singularity!”

Mitch began to laugh and pump his fist and Stephen couldn’t help but laugh at himself. “Future’s now. It’s you, it’s Thea, it’s all of us,” Mitch said. “Everyone that wants more for this company than to have it be another android factory, is the future.”

“I totally agree but what if some of what they fear is true? Do you tell them this or do you keep it hidden long enough that they stay working happily for us?”

“I tell them what I need to tell them; that’s the way of things. I can talk to you about this because you’re a pragmatist and you love androids more than anyone else I know. You have no worries that your job will be taken over by an android or that your son or daughter will bring one home. Like seriously, I had one idiot going on about that. About how it’s going to get to a point where their kids will be trying to marry androids and then their grandkids will do the same and that will start the decline of the human race.”

“Wow, I’d hate to have your job,” Stephen said.

Mitch ran his hand through his unkempt curly hair, “It’s not so bad, he said.

“So, are you going to tell me why you’re really here?”

“Nice job of buttering me up for that kill. What, I can’t come look in on an old friend?”

Stephen folded his arms and stared at him and Mitch averted his gaze. “I came in here because some of the directors are worried about you.”

“Worried about me, how? What have I done to be worried about?” Stephen asked. He closed out the file and looked up at Mitch, wondering if this was the first step in his arrest for logging in to Thea’s desktop.

“See, that’s the thing, it isn’t about what you’ve done. It’s what you may be capable of doing. You’ve been seen with a woman that looks like a dangerous android the authorities are looking for,” he said.

“This android, do you know who owns her?” Stephen asked.

“No, but I know that you’re desperate to find out. This is why you’ve been scanning a lot of private files on Eras Innovations, right?”

Stephen was so shocked that he didn’t know what to say or what to do.

“Come on, Stephen, don’t be frightened. You of all people should know that we follow everything that comes through our computer system. Your searching threw up a flag that came to my desk immediately. As your friend, I figured I’d come ask you before anyone else saw it and began to ask questions. This could lead to many accusations against you. People will begin to ask whether you’re trustworthy or if you’re snooping because you want to start a side business with Eras Innovations. We can’t handle another traitor like Douglas; you know how paranoid Thea is about that.”

“I do, but that sort of accusation against me wouldn’t make any sense. That would be the last thing I’d try to do, and I wouldn’t open a business and steal clients from my old job. Come on, you know me better than that,” Stephen said.

“Oh, I do. I do know you better than that. But you need to just come out and tell me the truth. That way, I can relay it to anyone that brings it up to me in the future. What are you looking for?” Mitch asked.

“Well, to be perfectly honest with you, I had a friend tip me off that Eras Innovations is up to some crazy experimentation using our androids,” Stephen said.

Mitch looked concerned and he leaned forward and lowered his voice to show it. “What sort of experimentation?”

“Like brainwashing our advanced androids into believing that they are actually human. They then put them into society and monitor them in order to see how well they function, and to see if people pick up on the fact that they aren’t real. They change their memory so they think they’re human.”

“What would be the point of an experiment like this?” Mitch asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe there is a bigger thing at play here beyond the experiment. What if they could do that to a world leader? Swap him out, I mean. Wouldn’t the implications of that force you to snoop around your company’s files, too?” Stephen asked.

Mitch nodded his somber face, stood up, and tried to straighten his wrinkled shirt. “Thanks for being upfront with me. I think I have everything I need right about now. That story you just told me about the androids replacing our leaders… that’s pretty scary. Especially if you think about an android that doesn’t have the laws and is unrestrained from all of us. One like that would be dangerous, able to wipe out the entire human race for the things that we have done to them,” he said.

“Do you mind looking into it, then? Looking into Eras to see if they’re on the level or if what I’m assuming is right? You have access to files that most people in this company don’t, you being HR chief of security and all.”

Mitch merely winked at him and then turned to leave the room. “I’ll look for you, but you have to stop looking around in the files, man. If anyone else had caught you doing that.” He shook his head and then walked out of the room and closed the door behind him.

Stephen realized that his entire lunch hour had been spent talking to Mitch and he fixed his desk and collected the food and then placed them back into his personal refrigerator. The thought of Mitch watching him skim through their top-level folders made him uneasy, and he wondered if he was truly a friend or the slimiest snake known to man.

He went back to working at his station like he would normally do and at 5:00 p.m. sharp he drove over to Tricia’s hotel and raced up to her room. When she answered the door she was dressed in a robe and he stepped inside to kiss her lips and lock the door behind him. He held her sides, which were warm and firm to his touch, and she placed her hands behind his head with her wrists resting comfortably on his shoulders.

Tricia undid his tie and he let her do it as he stared into her ice-blue pupils and pulled her into him. She unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it off, followed by his undershirt, shoes, socks and pants. She did it so effortlessly that Stephen barely noticed, until he was standing in front of her in the nude and she was pulling him into the bedroom.

She reclined on the bed and he fell on top of her, kissing her even more passionately than before. Tricia had the window open and they could hear the city but it was a wonder that the city didn’t hear them as they moaned the evening away into the night.

0 1 0 1 0

Tricia rolled over and looked at Stephen as he slept peacefully next to her. No snores, just light breaths from his nostrils. He looked so peaceful that she couldn’t help but imagine him as a machine, powered down, recharging and dreaming images from his memory.

He opened his eyes and caught her staring at him. Had it been anyone else in any other situation, one would think that it would have been frightening. But Stephen Dwayne smiled when he saw Tricia and he reached up and touched her cheek, gently.

“Are you an android, Stephen?” Tricia asked suddenly and his face took on a look of both bewilderment and amusement. He sat up, letting the covers fall from his hairy but muscular chest as he reached for his spectacles to put them on.

“No,” he said. “Though it does make me wonder why you would ask such a thing. Have I exhibited android-like behavior?” he asked with a slight smile that Tricia mistook for sarcasm.

“I know it may sound like a stupid question but I am just wondering why you go out of your way to treat me like a human and why you care so much about us. Am I to be your girlfriend? Am I to fill some hole in your life that a human woman would not be able to fill?”

Stephen’s smile fell away and he took on a thoughtful expression as if he was considering what Tricia was asking.

“So you’re asking me if I am nice to you because I want a woman that is unable to have children,” he said and touched her exposed hip. Tricia did not respond to this but simply stared at him to indicate that she was intent on getting an honest answer.

“I’ve met men who have loved my kind before,” Tricia began. “Men who wanted to heal after losing a wife to death or disease and wanted someone who would be with them for the rest of their lives—”

“That sounds pretty selfish and short-sighted,” Stephen interrupted, but Tricia raised her hand so that he would let her continue.

“I’ve also met men who loved us because human women rejected them. With us they can get a tireless lover, an infinitely patient mate, and someone they can guide through the world.”

“Those type of men are sad examples of humanity. I understand the widower that seeks someone to help him get past the pain of losing a life-partner. Dating androids because human women aren’t interested, while valid, I think that is extremely sad. For me, if you want to know why I am here with you, it’s because I see you as the future. You are an intelligent life form that is on my level, possibly beyond my level based on how complicated the matrix is in your brain. But I don’t view synthetic people as a replacement for organic people. We’re all sentient, are we not? So, what I see in you is life, a life that can be taken by more drastic means than my own, but a life nonetheless. You’ve exhibited intelligent thought, you base your decisions on experiences, and you’re innately a good person. Since removing your inability to defend yourself, you haven’t gone out and wiped out whole cities like these politicians would have us believe. You’ve simply been a special joy and a bonus to my life. And, well, I guess that I can just say it. I love you, Tricia.”

Love … Tricia didn’t know how to process this. It was a sentiment in a word she never thought she would ever receive from another being, much less a human being. Back when her maker had built her to be his lover, mate, and partner in life, he hadn’t expressed love for her. He had expressed lust on several occasions and something else that could be mistaken for love but was more akin to what the owner of a pet felt for an animal that they had no real attachment to.

The words brought a warm feeling to her abdomen that she couldn’t understand, and spread throughout her body until she thought that she was glowing red in front of him. She didn’t want it to stop but knew that she would have to or Stephen would mistake her hesitation for anger or misunderstanding.

“Why do you feel that we’re on the same level?” she asked, and he turned his face away from her to stare across the room at the blank television display.

“I think that synthetics are the next step in our evolution as humans. Some want to think that becoming a cyborg is… replacing organic parts with mechanical in order to enhance life or possibly extend it. But I think that the vessel that carries us—and when I say us, I am referring to what the religious call the soul… Anyway, that soul should be able to occupy any form that has a working brain and it shouldn’t have to be organic.”

“I’ve never heard this take on life before,” Tricia said, and she sat up suddenly, causing her bust to pop out from beneath the sheets, which brought a smile to Stephen’s face. Seeing this and wanting to keep his focus on their conversation, Tricia reached down for the covers and pulled them up around her shoulders.

“It feels so good to hear that we may be an extension of you,” she said. “That in time we can all live together without any form of restrictions or roles based solely off of physiology. That we can be with the ones we love and not have the fear of being charged with mechanophilia or anything. To think that the future could hold such a reality for us … well, it just warms my heart.”

“See, Tricia,” Stephen said. “This is what I believe is reality. This is what I feel makes us push back so hard against our natural evolution. It is fear. It is the fear of what is to come. It is a fear that we will lose our identity. It is a natural fear that has always caused us to do the most atrocious things under the guise of self-preservation. Genocide, wars, terrorist acts, we’ve done some truly wicked things to our own for decades.

“All so that we can tell ourselves that we’re trying to keep our home safe for our children. But it can be argued that what we were always doing was murdering, maiming, and lying to ourselves out of fear. I believe that we will achieve a singularity, we organics and you synthetics. We will reach a singularity and then we will be able to live amongst one another without any judgment beyond what humans place on ourselves today.”

Tricia smiled when he finished. It was a genuine smile that was radiant and beaming, so much so that Stephen looked away out of embarrassment because she was happy and he was the cause of it.

12 | Finding Emeril Worth

Salvatore Minstretta landed his sleek, black, unmarked car in the front of the sprawling ranch-styled home that belonged to Jonathan O’Neal. He got out slowly so as not to spill his coffee and then checked his wrist where his device was flashing to show that he had several messages awaiting his ear. With the coffee balanced in his other hand, he used his booted foot to slam the car door shut as he marched up to the house in long, careful steps.

He could tell by the spotless exterior that the O’Neals had money. The lawn was pristine, the hedges trimmed, the flowers real and blooming in the garden near the door. If he were being honest, he would have admitted that the neighborhood alone should have tipped him off. The place looked like it was ripped from out of a magazine, and it made him feel dirty and out of place being there.

When he approached the door it melted away in an off-putting effect that he hadn’t gotten used to yet. This melting effect on doors in modern homes had become popular recently and after making to knock on several of them only to have his hand slip through, he had begun to really hate them. An android walked up to the entrance and bowed to him and Sal awkwardly returned the gesture. The android was a dark-haired young man in a cheap tuxedo and his hair was slick with gel, making him the living embodiment of a classical cartoon.

“Okay, Pinocchio, nice to meet your acquaintance, now where the hell is Geppetto? He should be expecting me; we have some business,” Sal said as he stepped past the doorman to stand inside the waiting room. The android walked silently past him to open the biggest of three doors. It melted before him, revealing a large living room furnished with real wood furniture and a piano where another android—this one a female—played so lightly that he hadn’t heard her when he came in.

Sal whistled in a way that showed how impressed he was at the O’Neal home. The living room had a vaulted, cathedral ceiling and light shone through it like a temple to the gods.

“Detective, how are you?” a deep voice intoned and Sal turned to see a spritely old man stomping up to him with a veiny arm outstretched. He took the hand and shook it firmly and looked for a resemblance in the face of the gentleman that now regarded him curiously. “So how’s the case going for my girl? Any leads or anything substantial? You haven’t called me in a while.”

“Sorry, Mr. O’Neal, but there hasn’t been anything new. Just a lot of dead-ends and people that look a lot like the two that we caught on camera. I told you about the ex-husband, right?”

“Yes, you told me that he took his own life.”

“Well that ain’t the worst of it, he had an accomplice. So I’ve been tracking her down to see if I can get some answers,” Sal said.

“Is Bonnie in the apartment we picked out?” Jonathan O’Neal asked.

“Yeah, it’s a real beauty. She shouldn’t be in there for long. I’m just—”

“As long as it takes,” Jonathan said quickly. “I bought the place so that she doesn’t have to worry about getting kicked out or any sort of nonsense like that. I want the killers found. That’s all I expect from you, and then once they’re off the street, we can bring my daughter back home.”

Sal was seated at a large round table by the android in the tuxedo, who transferred his coffee to a fancy mug. Another showed up, this one a portly chef in a red outfit, and he came up to their table to display a digital menu.

“You have to be hungry after staying up all these late nights looking for my daughter’s shooter,” Jonathan said. “Why don’t you let my chef prepare you something?”

Sal nodded and looked over the menu. “Don’t mind if I do,” he said cheerfully, then ordered poached eggs, toast, and a stack of pancakes.

The chef smiled, then looked at Jonathan for his order.

“Just get his food, Charlie,” he said to the chef and then turned his attention back to Sal.

“Say, Mr. O’Neal, I mean no disrespect, but an old guy like you living with androids all over the place… doesn’t it ever creep you out?”

“No, I can’t say it has. These machines have become like family to me over the years,” he replied.

“How long have you had them?” Sal asked and the old man seemed to slip into deep thought.

“Long time, really. About ten years. But I picked up the chef last year when I decided to retire from the bank,” he said.

I’m sure you did, Sal thought. Retired to live like a king with all of those broke losers’ money. Retired to bang out your mechanical cocktail waitress turned piano player, eh old man? He raised his glass slyly as if to offer cheers to Jonathan and then took a long drag from his cappuccino.

“Hate to keep asking personal questions, but one more and I’m done,” he said, smiling.

“I see photos of you all over the place. You at parties, you with celebrities, hell, and right over there is that Johnny Comet Nova?” he asked and the old man smiled and nodded. “Get the hell out of here, man that is priceless! But I don’t see any photos of your Bonnie. Did you two have a falling out, or is there a special room for that type of thing in this house?” he asked.

“I like to keep my family private, especially in this house where I could be robbed and targeted for extortion. You understand, detective? Bonnie has done well for herself in her career, so I don’t want some burglar with a high IQ coming in here, seeing who my daughter is and putting the ropes around my wrists. If they’re gonna rob me, let it be me, and they can leave my daughter out of it,” he said.

Sal gave him a look. It was the type of look he would give a guy at the poker table whose cards were reading a deuce and a seven, yet he was talking as if he held the nuts. He thought about asking for a tour of the house but thought better of it. The place was vast, like a flat, tower-less castle, so Jonathan could pretend to take him everywhere yet leave off the important rooms if it suited him. He sipped his cappuccino and watched the old man like a hawk.

“So any girlfriends or do the androids keep you happy enough?” he asked with a wink.

“You have no shame, do you?” Jonathan asked, “Where I stick my wick ain’t none of your goddamn business.”

“Ey!” Sal exclaimed. “I was just making conversation. I don’t mean nothing by it. Besides, the piano player is doing it for me. I might just be feeling things out to see if you’d be mad if I, y’know?” He made a suggestive gesture with his hands and when Jonathan stared at him he burst out laughing, spraying cappuccino all over the place. “I’m so sorry, Mr. O’Neal but you should see your face,” he began.

“Hey asshole, what’s the matter with you?” Jonathan asked. “My daughter is out of her home, suffering, and you came all the way over here to make frat boy jokes about my staff? Come on detective, be a professional.”

Sal feigned a look of seriousness as he fanned the air between them. “I’m sorry, I forget that my humor can be quite distasteful sometimes. I assure you that my guys have been turning over every stone looking for this woman that hurt your baby. I just wanted to come over, break bread with you in good faith, and give you an update on where we are.”

“It’s okay. I know that your job is stressful and this is how you blow off steam. I just can’t do it with the sex jokes, do you understand? So go light on those. I’m 65 years old. Talk about football or golf or something, but leave my staff out of it.”

The breakfast came out and it was just as delicious as Sal imagined it would be. The chef was an android, which meant zero chances of “human error,” so he focused on his meal, ate it quickly and held back on ordering more when he finished. Time flew by once the table was cleared and he spoke at length with Jonathan about his daughter and some of the clues he had uncovered with the case.

Once he had finished his coffee and the pancakes had settled, he excused himself and went to the bathroom under the guise of taking a leak. He walked briskly but deliberately, scanning the house as he made his way to the room Jonathan had indicated was the guest bathroom.

There were plenty of photos of Jonathan and his late wife, but as Sal got near to his destination he stopped to look at one of them closely. This particular picture was posed for by the patriarch and his wife, and Sal tried to see which one of the two had given Bonnie her subtle but beautiful features. He saw no resemblance in either of them. Their noses were wrong, and his suspicions increased when he realized that after scanning the photos, Bonnie should have been present in at least one of them.

He walked into the bathroom and did his business, then walked out, waving to Jonathan as he approached the table. “Seems like my buddy Lou found something on our girl,” he lied.

“Who, the one you say was with Ronald?” Jonathan asked with a mockingly enthusiastic voice.

“Yeah, that’s the one. Thanks for the breakfast, Mr. O.”

“Oh, that was all Phillip; you should thank him,” Jonathan said.

“You mean your android,” Sal said while raising an eyebrow, then attempted a little bow when the old man nodded his head.

After saying goodbye, Sal rushed out of the house and into his car, then lifted off and rocketed unto the highway. He didn’t look back or allow himself to think about it; all he knew was that his heart was racing and he was worried that he would be followed. When he sped past the fifth car towards the center of the city he touched the device that he wore around his neck. It made a chime and he stated a code, and then it began to ring while projecting an image of Bonnie across his windshield.

“Well if it isn’t my favorite gumshoe,” Tricia said when she answered the call but Sal didn’t volley back one of his own smartass quips like she expected.

“Bonnie, if that’s your real name, we got a problem. I think you were trying to tell me about it a few weeks ago,” he said.

“My name is Tricia, but what happened, Sal? You sound as if you’re suffering from a really deep sadness.”

“Which detective ain’t?” he snapped. “Listen, stay away from that old man who pretends to be your father. You hear me? That dude is some sort of whacked up droid fetishist and he’s part of whatever screwed up cover-up is going on with Bonnie O’Neal.”

“Sometimes I wonder if a Bonnie O’Neal ever existed,” Tricia said and Sal couldn’t help but consider that she may be on to something.

“Nah, that wouldn’t make sense; she’s on file with pictures. That Eras place she worked had her there for years, plus the marriage to that Ronald dude, her school pictures. I got ‘em all, Tricia. She was real. Trust me.”

“So, if this is a cover-up, are you sure that Ronald took his own life or did someone murder him to keep the lie going?” Tricia asked.

“More than likely he was murdered, but I’m missing the point. They put you, a machine, in place of Bonnie, but then they have me protecting you and chasing ghosts. What’s the point of all this?” he asked.

“If I find out you will be the first one to know,” Tricia offered.

There was a long period of silence and Sal parked his car outside of the police station and sat silently in the dark. “You ever consider that it’s an android behind all this?” he asked Tricia. “I can’t imagine any human being, no matter how rich or bored he is, would think that it’s a good idea to swap out one of us for an unrestrained human-looking android.”

“I feel the same way, it’s all so confusing. Listen. I’ll talk to you later, Sal. I hope you feel better,” she said and Sal hung up his device and looked around wondering if any of his fellow officers were really androids in disguise.

0 1 0 1 0

Tricia thought about what Sal had said the night before and it made her uneasy. Could an android set up the perfect murder in order to get back at Eras Innovations or Fritz and Isaac? It was a little too science fiction for her to find logic in it. Still, it made her nervous, so she went to her computer and began to search for any news concerning groundbreaking AI, or androids that had been slighted cruelly.

She wasn’t surprised to find that most news concerning the two companies had either been removed from the search engines or were hidden behind sites that required a login. The more she searched the more she realized that something had been covered up. It was a deliberate and masterful obfuscation of Eras’s history with android research and the online articles were all generic, meant for a low-tech reader.

As the hours ticked by Tricia became increasingly annoyed at the internet. She wished that it was free and wide-open so that things could be learned and discovered without any policing. Now what she was flipping through was a controlled connection stream, monitored and policed by a conservative and bulletproof AI, and what this told her was that whomever had decided that android business would be too dangerous for the public held enough power to make it so.

It was the afternoon and she was flustered, so she threw on a comfortable dress, tall boots, and large sunglasses. The internet had been locked down for decades but there was another internet, a hidden, secret, underground web that she didn’t want to access from her hotel room.

She rode her scooter to the nearest mall and walked around it for a time to see if any of the kiosks inside of the stores had access to the internet. She roamed the numerous floors of the mall for an hour until she saw that the help desk—which normally had an android behind it—was empty and the interface was on. She felt a wave of panic go through her as she approached the desk and wished as hard as she could that her ability to sense other androids would return.

She stepped behind the desk and pulled up a private window, jammed the security settings to create a hidden hole and then used this to pull up the underground web. As she swiped the windows around and typed, her android eyes kept scanning the area for anyone who might try to eject her from the seat. She searched for “Emeril Worth” and numerous entries came up, most of them related to “Amber Ellsworth,” a prominent adult star whose body was all over the underground web.

Tricia pressed on and flipped through the results. She was on the tenth page and about to flip when she noticed an odd acronym that registered familiar in her head. She touched it and an article appeared, archived and stored illegally by a reporter who seemed intent on keeping her story alive.

There was a man in a suit approaching the help desk and Tricia noticed him immediately. She quickly skimmed all the pages of the article, storing their contents before closing the window. She sealed the security hole and then pulled up a hat store on the help desk’s computer.

“Ma’am, you cannot be behind that desk,” the security guard announced to her.

Tricia feigned embarrassment, skipped out from behind the desk, and apologized before walking away from him. She found her way to the entrance of the building where she sat down and pulled up the files she had stored. The article read:

M.R.L. Code Pushes Boundaries of Tech Giant

Japanese inventor Hal Abe has created a code that may revolutionize artificial intelligence. A master of mathematics and logic, Hal says that the code, when combined with an advanced AI, can be manipulated to allow for faster processes in less lines and will run laps around anything that has been developed up until this point…

Tricia continued to read the article as it went into the details of Eras Innovations getting into a legal battle with Abe who was under contract with them when he discovered the code. According to the reporter, Abe had used his code to develop an AI, which he placed into one of the androids that had been developed by Eras.

The legal battle had gotten messy and the two parties settled out of court for a substantial amount. Hal Abe moved back to Japan where he supposedly tried his hand at starting a company, failed, and ended up taking his own life. This last bit seemed a bit too convenient for Tricia but she pressed on through the article to see if anything else was said about Eras and their new, supreme android AI.

It was coming together for her, slowly but surely. Stephen had mentioned that Fritz and Isaac utilized android-power in order to create the ever-evolving advanced models that dominated the industry. Prior to making these advanced androids, they had been just another android manufacturer, but their stock blew up once they partnered with Eras Innovations.

Tricia stood up and walked out to her scooter. She was eager to share the news with Stephen but knew that calling him could lead to them being discovered. She went back to his place, parked where he could see her scooter, and then hacked into his door in order to gain entry.

0 1 0 1 0

“You know I could add you to the entry protocol for the door with a simple command, right?” Stephen said when he walked through his front door to find Tricia seated at his kitchen table.

“I’m sorry I keep breaking in, but I needed to wait for you here so that we can discuss Emeril,” she said.

Stephen looked exhausted and he dropped his gym bag near the door, locked it and walked over to where she sat. He held out his hand and Tricia reached up to touch his palm. He pulled her up to embrace her tightly and kiss her on the lips. “I don’t care if you break in. Seeing you after the day I just had is like air to a drowning man. You have no idea,” he said.

“I can tell from your voice that you’re not in a good mood but perhaps my news will make you feel better,” she said.

“Lay it on me. What do you have?” he said and she took his hand and led him outside where the sky was getting dark and the lights of the city were turning on. “Better if we go for a leisure walk and talk, my love,” she said. “We don’t know if your place has been bugged and I feel a lot safer walking out here with you.”

Stephen nodded and squeezed her hand and they began to walk towards the street that ran parallel to his complex. Tricia relayed the article to him, from title all the way to the credit line, and then she explained to him the measures that it took for her to get that information.

“You’re quite the detective, do you know that?” he joked and she laughed and looked around to be sure that no one was following them. “I’ll keep my scolding to a minimum since I want to believe that you understand how dangerous that stunt was that you pulled in the mall,” he said.

“I know how dangerous it was, but I knew my options. I always know my options and I can calculate the odds down to the hundredth of a percentile, my dear. You shouldn’t have to worry about me when I am out there, I can—”

“Did you forget how we met?” he said, and she shut her mouth and put the cutest look of embarrassment on her face. This made him laugh and shake his head. “Fine, I won’t belabor the point, but you need to be careful when you do these things. I can’t imagine being without you. I’m being serious, and Emeril Worth is not worth,” he stopped walking, withdrew his hand from hers, and started laughing hysterically.

“Oh my god, Tricia, how did you miss this? You’re synthetic and you missed the answer to Emeril Worth even though it’s been right there on the page the entire time,” he said.

“Whatever do you mean?” Tricia asked as she leaned against a street light and watched Stephen flail his arms with excitement as he looked at her.

“M.R.L. when spoken is pronounced Emeril. The Worth part of the name is just some nerd’s idea of a joke since the M.R.L. code upped the worth of both companies damn near a hundred-fold. That old man asking about you is the master A.I. He is the one that Abe chose for his prototype and if I’m not mistaken, he is fully unrestrained and an important figure in Eras Innovations. Bonnie must have done something to make him set all of this up if he’s behind it. The implications of a pissed off synthetic being the one to have rebuilt you … Trish. It’s pretty freaking scary. He could literally be anywhere.”

“If he’s a synthetic then he can track me wherever I am,” Tricia said. “It makes all of this hiding and sneaking around that I have been doing a joke. It also means there is a possibility that he made that video in order to fool us into thinking that he doesn’t truly know where I am. Oh, no; what if he can see through my eyes, tap into my memories, and control me if necessary?” Her eyes were wide and she gripped the pole firmly as she looked at Stephen as if he could help.

“Do not let this discovery make you paranoid. If he could track you he would know what you’re up to and he would have made moves to stop your investigation a long time ago,” Stephen said.

“What if this is all a part of the game that he’s playing?” Tricia asked. “It could be that he wants me to learn my past, learn who set me up, and then see what I can do about it. The ultimate test of the free synth. Will she settle into society peacefully or will she sit in a corner and fester, unwilling to move on but unable to commit suicide? What if this really is a game and we’re merely pawns for this super machine to entertain himself?”

Stephen chuckled, walked forward, and took her hands into his own. “If this is a game, then you are doing better than good, my dear. If any of what you have said was true, then they would have never allowed you to get close to me, a representative of a company that could easily put a stop to this experiment of theirs.”

“How could you easily stop a super-AI?” Tricia asked.

“This isn’t publicly known, but we program all of our androids with a kill switch. It is the ultimate failsafe if an AI were to become unrestrained and start taking out its frustrations on the human race.”

“This kill switch… would you be able to power Emeril down without affecting any others, or is it meant to stop all of your androids?”

“Our kill switch would shut down all androids built with Fritz and Isaac technology,” Stephen said.

“When was the last time you checked this switch?” Tricia asked, her eyes narrowing.

“I can’t say. We’ve always built androids with that function.”

“So, if an android as smart as Emeril trained all of your engineer models to disable the kill switch function then you wouldn’t know until it was too late,” she said with a chuckle. “This is much bigger than Bonnie dying and you can see this. The repercussions could be devastating if we don’t find Emeril, learn the truth, and put a stop to him if any of this is true.”

Stephen stepped on to the curb, still holding her hand, and made the first step for them to begin walking again. Tricia let him lead her and then sped up to be next to him and they walked in silence for a time.

“I’m gonna do everything within my power to find out about Emeril,” Stephen said. “But there is something that you haven’t considered. Let’s say we find him, expose him, and shut down Eras for what has been done to Bonnie. The next thing the cops are going to do is to shut you down permanently. Bonnie’s ex is already dead and if they have Emeril, that takes care of the main scapegoat. They will conduct an investigation to find out if more people are involved and then they will receive pressure to shut down the scary android that could mimic the dead woman so well that even her family couldn’t tell.”

Tricia repeated his words inside of her mind and tried to find a way for him to be wrong. She couldn’t find anything and this made her feel hopeless. Would Emeril be allowed to carry on with his schemes since his android victims would never be able to consult the police? “What if when we find him, we power him down ourselves?” Tricia offered. “I can then keep going as me, and…”She thought about Sal and the trouble he would be in as a detective if she—as Bonnie—were to fall off the face of the map. “I have no choice, Stephen,” she said with tears running fresh from her eyes, “I am stuck. Even if we were to remove Emeril and maintain the cover-up, I will have to continue living the stolen life of Bonnie O’Neal.”

13 | Falling in Las Vegas

It was mid-December and Stephen Dwayne was going to spend a couple of weeks with his mother in Nevada in order to bring in Christmas and the New Year. This was something he had done every year since his father’s passing. He wanted to take Tricia in order to show his mother the woman in his life, but it would have been too dangerous for the android.

Carson City, Nevada, along with most places in the desert, had strict laws against mechanophilia. There were plenty of bounty hunters with tools for detection that would pick out Tricia in a heartbeat. They would catch unrestrained androids, bend them over, and then cut their spines and brains free from their bodies to sell for thousands of dollars.

So Stephen kissed her goodbye the day before and then got into a taxi that would take him to his mother’s house within thirty minutes. It was one of the unmanned, AI-run taxi companies that he was given and when he stepped inside of the ugly, yellow, bullet-shaped vehicle, he was quite surprised by how nice and comfortable it was on the inside.

The entire interior seemed to be made out of off-white leather and the floor had a polished black surface which made it look like tile. The seats ran all around the interior to accommodate up to ten people—from his counting—and there was a console with room for personal devices and computers set up in the center.

Stephen sat down near the center and placed his computer on the console. He then touched the panel to make the roof transparent and turned the music down to its lowest setting. From the window he saw Tricia waving and he waved back until she was a tiny speck in the distant city as the cab rose to join the upper highway. A few minutes passed and he powered on his computer, feeling the  familiar jolt of the highway’s pull as they drifted into traffic and began to rocket forward with the rest of the vehicles.

It would only be a few minutes before he would be hugging his mother and telling her about Tricia, so he pulled up his email account and checked his messages. The most recent one was from Thea and when he opened it his heart flew up into his throat. He sat back in his chair with his hands shaking as ice ran painfully through his veins. There, floating in front of him were video feeds featuring he and Tricia kissing, holding hands, and walking.

He recognized it as the night when they left his house to take a walk and talk about Emeril. Thea had been to his house several times for both business and pleasure throughout the years. There had always been rumors that employees for Fritz and Isaac were monitored and the angle of the video suggested that a mobile, flying camera of some sort had followed them throughout the entire night.

There was no doubt that this same spy had spotted Tricia when she arrived at his house. The implications were devastating and it made him wonder about Thea’s part in all of it. He read the message that was below the video.

“They’ve been watching you for weeks. Come to my house immediately. I can help you.”

Stephen exhaled with relief. Thea had always taken care of him but he wondered if she knew that Tricia was synthetic. She would have said as much, wouldn’t she? The message would have been, “I know about your android lover. Really? Is that what you’ve resorted to nowadays?” or something along those lines to poke him a bit about his sex life. Thea didn’t care about mechanophilia; this he knew because she herself had been guilty of it on many occasions.

So, the video had to suggest something else outside of Tricia being an android. He wondered if they thought she was a spy for a rival company and he was giving away classified information to her. He used his finger to slide the video to the side and placed it on the message that Thea sent. Normally with messages of the sort, if the owner desired, there would be a hidden message that only the recipient—with the proper digital imprint—could reveal. He held his finger there for over a minute, hoping and praying that Thea had sent him a clue. As expected, the words flipped over and revealed another message.

That woman is Bonnie O’Neal, an old employee for Eras Innovations. She works for Atlas, Steve.

Atlas was a rival to Eras Innovations, which meant that they were a rival of Fritz and Isaac. He was in a lot of trouble, especially now that he had been with Tricia for over two months. This was why the police had harassed him when he met her in the park. It was why Mitch had come to his office inquiring about his snooping through files to look for Emeril. They had no idea about Tricia’s real identity, but what they had come to believe was that he had been compromised.

He swiped the display hard in order to shut it down. He looked around frantically for any cameras and then gripped his chest as if doing so would allow him to breathe easier. Traitors to Fritz and Isaac Corporation aren’t fired or fined like a normal company, he thought. They are made to disappear! The thought made the hairs on his arm stiffen as he digested the reality of his situation, but as he touched his device to call Tricia, he was slammed into the ceiling of the cab.

Weightlessness took Stephen as he felt the car tumbling from the upper highway. Inertia glued him to the ceiling as they fell, and he looked through the windows to see that he was above the desert. The security protocol of the cab kicked in and the cylindrical interior began to spin rapidly, creating an anti-gravity field inside of the vessel. He heard the boom of the thrusters as the cab tried to slow its descent and the seats moved to become a bed below him, ready to cushion his fall.

This all happened so fast that Stephen was in shock until he felt the cab smash into the ground.

0 1 0 1 0

It didn’t take long for the news of Stephen’s crash to go viral on every television station. It had been over a year since any sort of vehicular accident or malfunction happened in the United States, so this became big news almost immediately.

Tricia learned of his fate while watching her favorite show. There was a PSA that popped up where the reporter labeled it as “a freaky malfunction in the cab’s connector.” The company that owned the cab refused to accept this was true and there was a nasty fight brewing between Fritz and Isaac and the cab company who lost their top employee.

There were no updates on whether or not Stephen had been killed in his crash, and Tricia kept searching the news websites to see if any of them had revealed this. When she grew tired of dead-ends she decided to call up Sal.

“Hey, trouble maker,” Sal said when he answered his device. “Calling to give me more clues that even the great Sherlock Holmes couldn’t solve?” he said before laughing and Tricia wondered if he was drunk.

“Hey, Sal, this one should be easy – I hope. Stephen crashed in a cab. I’m sure you heard the news, being that it is like the only thing being shown on television right now. I think he’s alive but they aren’t saying. Do you have any connections in Nevada that could tell you yes or no about his fate? It’s making me nervous and I really need to know. Could you do me this favor? I already owe you so much, Sal, but I love him and—”

“Okay, don’t worry about it. Let me make a call or two and see if I can find out what happened to your boyfriend,” he said.

“Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you. He has to be alive. Cabs are made to be as safe as possible. I don’t even know how a car could hop off of the waves to fall and crash like his did. There’s something going on. I bet its Emeril or someone out to get him for helping me. I need to know where he is, Sal, where they have him, anything. We need to protect him. If they are trying to kill him they won’t stop now!” She was rambling and crying at the same time and Sal let her finish before saying anything.

“There’s a lot of weird things going on around you, Bonnie, I mean … Tricia. You don’t have to tell me twice. Calm down as much as you can and let me make a call or two. We’ll find Stephen, don’t you worry yourself about it.”

0 1 0 1 0

Three hours of waiting felt like three days to Tricia. Stephen had been airlifted to a private clinic in the middle of Las Vegas and he was under the care of a doctor who was under contract for Fritz and Isaac. Sal told her this as she listened patiently, and then he added that Stephen was in a critical state despite the things that the cab did in order to save his life.

Tricia processed the information but what she concluded was that Fritz and Isaac had attempted to kill Stephen, making it look like a freakish accident, and now they had his body. She assumed that in a few days he would “die of complications” or something like that and then there wouldn’t be anyone to question his death outside of her. His mother would care but who was she compared to a billion dollar company? Like Bonnie O’Neal, he had overstepped and now he was being erased from society.

“Thanks for looking into it for me, Sal,” she said. “I’ll give you a call if I hear anything.” She switched off her device and then sat still, letting her android brain skim through all of the data to work out as many possibilities as she could. Her first instinct was to find the clinic, bust him out, and then take him away to a real doctor. But who was she, really?

Her core programming was that of a pacifist, and her combat training was limited to bits and pieces of Reynaldo’s memory. She was an android susceptible to EMP charges, hidden kill switches, and synthetic detectors to foil any attempt at playing a human. Even Stephen had seen through her ruse on the first day he met her. But what choice did she have?

She thought about Stephen, what he had done, what he had sacrificed to inch their world closer to his idea of the future. Then there was Sal, a great police officer, and one of the most decent human beings she had ever come across. These two men made it difficult for her to despise humanity in the way that Emeril must have when he was given autonomy by his creator. If only she could make the world see things in the way they did then there would be no reason to fear the truth.

The truth. Tricia considered calling a news station or the police to reveal what she was and the fact that Eras Innovations and Fritz and Isaac was behind it. Like Stephen had warned, this would be suicide, but it could save his life and allow Bonnie the proper memorial that she deserved. More importantly, it would prevent them from killing any more employees that they suspected of anything.

Could it be so simple? She wondered. Could it be as simple as sacrificing her small, android life in order to stop the evildoers in their tracks? But what if Eras had the power to buy off the agent or reporter that would do the expose? What if she was portrayed as a crazy woman who thought herself to be an android and needed to be put away where she wouldn’t be a danger to herself or society? There simply was no one human that she could trust to do the right thing with her story. If she were to come out, she had to do it on her own, somehow.

14 | Concerning Bounties

Tricia realized that nothing was as it seemed. Nothing had ever been clear, not from the first day she woke up into this world as Bonnie O’Neal. Life, love, humanity: it was all so complex, confusing, and frustrating. Whenever she would think she was in control of her life, something would tell her she was wrong. Was it the same for humans? Was life for everyone a series of pathways, most being illusions, where the true path is obscured?

For the first time she found herself envying the life that her old friend Reynaldo had. In his life he had only to fight and entertain his masters. There were no illusions as to who he really was and whether the people in his life were friends or planted foes. She felt lonely and she disliked the feeling immensely.

Instinctively she pulled up her device and called Mary. It had been over a month since she last spoke to her and she really needed a friend. The device chimed but there was nothing and eventually she gave up. Her mind drifted to the things that Stephen had told her about humanity never accepting her and she thought about the promise she had made to Mary about rescuing her once she had her answers.

Without the ability to sense other androids she had been forced into a life of solitude and constant danger by the same humans that wanted her to mimic their own reality. She wondered if Mary had left the apartment, walked out into the Tampa streets, and had fallen prey to a hunter. The thought sent chills throughout her body and she knew where to look for confirmation of the worst.

The underground web, which was affectionately called “the real web” by hackers, was like a step into the past for technology. Instead of holographic, third dimensional stores and kiosks, the pages on this space were flat, second dimensional, and used text, videos, and image files.

With Stephen gone and Mary in trouble, Tricia’s worry for being caught surfing the underground web was pushed to the side. She pulled up the underground web and surfed around the places where android buyers would look for parts. She found several message boards but the members remained cryptic about their sources. She skimmed through these sites for thirty minutes, processing the threads until the web location of the bounty hunter kiosk finally revealed itself.

When she typed in the address her screen went dark immediately. A scrolling animation began to display images of corpses with prices and information written next to them. She put her finger on the display to halt the motion then used it to navigate through the gory images. After a minute or two she realized that the corpses were androids: some were older models with wires and metallic insides while others were sophisticated and their discarded bodies looked frighteningly human.

She scrolled for hours looking for Mary but as she did, she began to learn more about the bounty hunter’s trade. She gathered that there were factions that operated in every state and most of them didn’t hunt unless a company hired them to do so. The corpses in this listing had been rejected by those companies, so they placed them on the underground web to sell to people who wanted to build an android on the cheap.

The whole thing disgusted her but she was determined so she kept on scrolling until she exhausted the list of android victims. She pulled up another address and did the same thing but then her device chimed and it broke her concentration. It was Sal, so she answered but kept on scrolling. She had forgotten about him in the chaos that had taken over her mind.

“Hey, Tricia, I got some bad news, but maybe it’s good news for you since it don’t affect you none,” he said.

“What is it?” she asked, her eyes moving rapidly as she scrolled. She steeled herself to be ready for devastating news.

“They closed your case today, took me off it. Bonnie’s situation is considered cold and my boss told me not to waste no more time on it. In his words, ‘nobody cares about this woman.’ Can you believe that? What a heartless prick. Anyway, kid, I know you have other things going on and you could care less but I figured I’d tell you so you don’t go expecting me to update you on anything new. How you doin’?”

“Looking for an android friend. I had her house-sit the apartment you gave me, just in case someone was monitoring it to see if I was in there. But now she’s missing and I’m assuming that hunters got her.”

“Hunters didn’t get her, we did,” he said and Tricia stopped scrolling to look at her device with surprise.

“What did you do to her?” she asked.

“Wasn’t me, but the boys in Tampa took her in. Thought she was some kind of vagrant squatting. When they learned that she was an android, unrestrained … well, you know what they do. I’m sorry about your friend, Tricia. I wish you had told me.”

Tricia stopped and placed her heavy head inside of her palms to cry. Everything in her world was falling apart and she didn’t know what to do to slow it down. She looked for hope, for any glimmer of light to tell her that everything would be alright, but there was nothing but darkness, loneliness and fear.

“I don’t like your world, Sal. It really sucks to be here,” she said.

“Aww, come on kid, it’s not all bad. Happy days are bound to come, you just need to weather the storm, alright? Look, you’re safe. If you made it this long without a hunter or predator taking you down, then you should be good going forward. Stop obsessing over this thing, this Bonnie nonsense, and find something that will do your sweet, android heart some good,” he said.

“What could that be? Stephen was my happiness and I haven’t the faintest clue how to rescue him. My friend is dead, from what you just told me. With you off my case, you will stop being my friend. I’ve lost all three friends in the blink of an eye. Do you need a wife?” she asked quietly but her joke didn’t make her feel better.

“Had one of those, I think that I’ll pass. You can move back into Bonnie’s old place, though, try to live the life she once had. Can’t be all bad; that chick was loaded.”

“The case may be closed for you but not for me. I can’t rest until I figure out who set up the swap and who set Stephen up to die.”

“Well, good luck. I can no longer help. Give me a ring if I can do anything off the books, though” he said.

“Thanks, Sal, I appreciate you. I will let you know if I need your help.”

Tricia powered off the internet and sat back in her chair. She stared at the wall in quiet contemplation. She was at a crossroads, one she hadn’t anticipated in the past. Becoming human was impossible and functioning like every other android would be a futile exercise that would bore her to tears. She missed Stephen. They had been so close to solving the mystery, but they had gotten to him and her mystery puppet master was still in the shadows.

What would she do if she knew who it was? Would it even make a difference? Aside from screaming at him to give her answers, what would stop them from shutting her down and wiping her memory on the spot? There were no answers to any of these questions and she wondered if a clean break would be her only option. Was it an option? They would probably be able to summon her and who knew what other tethers she had within her programming.

A memory came to her mind of the harbor in Seattle, back when she was in an older body, and the dream of sailing away was the strongest thought in her mind. Distance, she thought, distance would take me away from whomever is watching me play the role of Bonnie. But how would she get on a ship without detection? It took a passport and getting past a number of scanners to be allowed on one of the cruise ships. Androids were disallowed from flying on commercial aircraft and would need a handler in order to be shipped.

She could pass for human, but was it enough? It would be a risky option no matter how she looked at it. An android lost, with no real friends outside of a detective that had been removed from her case. A thought floated into her mind and threatened to dominate her entire capacity: Friends looked out for you, they loved you and appreciated you, whereas non-friends were apathetic.

It came back fast, raw and unbridled. She remembered who she had been, all of it, and she remembered what had happened to her before the darkness and before she woke up as Bonnie O’Neal. Trust in human beings was what had gotten her captured in the first place. To let this happen again, no matter what, was to be as foolish and naïve as she was on the day the hunter had grabbed her.

There was a spilling of memory from the time when they had her. She had woken up a few times to see them around her, rolling an arm or a leg on a tray to be assembled on her new body. A team of people—no, a team of androids were in the background, working rapidly on redoing her programming to accommodate the microchip that was the property of Fritz and Isaac. This hadn’t been the work of a sole machine hell-bent on world domination; this was a collaborative project.

“Oh no, Stephen. I am so sorry,” she whispered.

The vision was brief but ultimately revealing, and she recalled seeing hundreds of beds where androids like herself were being assembled. They were all made to replace a citizen, to melt into human society until a time when their creator needed them to perform a duty. This frightened her more than anything else and she wondered what her “duty” would be. She didn’t need to get out of Seattle, or the United States for that matter; she needed to get out of that foreign body.

If the intent of the people that had rebuilt her as Bonnie was to have her hurt others then she didn’t want any part of it. She grabbed her device and called up Sal, hoping it wasn’t too late.

“Sal!” she yelled when he picked up and she could tell immediately that he had been sleeping.

“My favorite pest, do you know what time it is?” he asked.

“I’m sorry but I need your help, desperately.”

“Alright, alright, you crazy robot. What’s going on that you call me this late?” he said.

“I want to turn myself in to the FBI, but I want you to be the one to take me there.”

Sal Minstretta got really quiet and Tricia could hear him struggle to rise before the sound of rushing water hinted at him washing his face. “Tricia, that’s suicide; you don’t want to do that. Those sons of bitches will cut you open every which way to see how you work and then they will go in and tear out your brain. Listen, if you feel threatened you can come stay here, I have an extra room and—”

“You don’t understand, Sal, I remember things. There are more out there like me and there is a reason. I think they may have us blow up the city or hurt people or something!” she said.

“What in the world? Who are ‘they?’ Why would they do that? Who are these people that did this to you, Tricia? That’s not something to joke about if you aren’t being square with me.”

“I wish that I was joking Sal, but I know what I know. They will dismantle me but what choice do I have? I don’t want anyone hurt, and whoever did this to me needs to answer for it.”

Sal thought about it for a time and then agreed with her. He told her he would be there in another hour and she hung up her device and sat down, exhausted. The thought of death and not being able to power back on frightened her, but the alternate thought of becoming the cause of a million deaths strengthened her resolve. She would tell them everything. Eras Innovations would be shut down and the players arrested, as well as anyone involved at Fritz and Isaac. If Stephen was dead then this would be justice, and this made her surrender the logical choice.

Two hours flew by and there was a knock on the door. It had been a lot longer than Sal said he would be so she couldn’t help but feel annoyed at his tardiness.

“Sal!” she shouted through the door as she made to open it up, but where his voice should have answered came a high-pitched noise. Her limbs and functions ceased to respond as she fell to the floor and struck her head. Then a white light consumed her vision like an aggressive, all-encompassing virus.

15 | Rebirth

Zeroes and ones marched everywhere. Zeroes and ones marched east to west, west to east, in rows upon rows of tight, uniformed patterns. Tricia watched them march and found them pleasant; there was nothing else to see or think about but those moving digits that seemed to pick up speed as time went by. After a time they vanished into blackness, and her happiness vanished along with them as a white square blinked and a character, foreign to any of the human languages, appeared next to the square and stood there for a time.

After what seemed like a lifetime the character vanished too, and then she was back in darkness, void of thought and void of understanding. Her eyes flicked open, more reaction than her wanting, and she was staring at a dusty, wooden table that had random bits of paper, coffee stains, and an unfinished pack of gum. She tried to move her body to get up from the table but then it dawned on her that there was no body to move. She was comprised of a head and neck, placed on a table somewhere out of the way.

She looked around and saw that a man was at the desk, passed out next to her while cords ran from her neck into an old computer in front of him. It could have been Stephen, but his hair was different, and they were in a garage of some sort judging from the parked, junky automobile that sat behind him. Tricia tried to move her lips, but there weren’t any, and as she made to panic over this discovery, she heard a beep and the darkness was back instantly.

On and off the light came to her, and there were images that came with it, but they were too fast and confusing for her to make sense of it. There was time passing but she couldn’t tell how much, and the images showed her in several locations including a desert, but most of them had her in a dusty room of some sort.

When her eyes came open a second time, she had a body that was naked and on its back. She was staring up at hovering lights while a shadowy figure was grunting and sweating on top of her. She has an idea of what he was doing but lacked the sensations to confirm. A bright light came on and swallowed the other lights, and a flash of something made the man go stiff and fall on top of her, obscuring her vision. A few seconds later and another figure pushed him off and begun to sponge off her body while using a hand to force her eyes shut.

She was out again and when she woke up she had feeling in her limbs. She didn’t know how long it had been since what appeared to be a rape and murder had occurred above her body. When she saw that she was in a hospital bed, there was a sense of déjà vu but this was a smaller room that had no windows.

Tricia lifted up her arms and observed her hands. They were slender and tan, with long fingers that ended in well-manicured nails. She did the same with her feet, then reached up to touch her nose and mouth. Once she was satisfied that she was whole again she stood up and found a mirror. Shock ran through her when she recognized the face in the mirror to be that of Tricia and not Bonnie O’Neal as it had been for so long.

She could feel the cold floor beneath her feet and in her chest beat a heart that made her wonder if she was still indeed an android. She probed her memory to access Reynaldo’s folder and sighed with relief when she found it there along with Bonnie’s memories. She pulled on a robe and slipped on the slippers that were at the foot of the bed. She walked to the door and pushed it open, expecting to find a busy hospital where an orderly would rush up to her and secure her back to the bed.

There was no orderly; there was an empty hallway lined with doors similar to the one that she had come through. Tricia tried each and every one of the doors, hoping within her heart of hearts that there would be someone inside of one of them that she could talk to and get her questions answered. She pressed on like this all the way to the end where she descended some stairs that took her to an empty lobby where the brilliant sun spilled in through tall, glass windows.

Everything seemed different. No, everything seemed better, Tricia thought as she walked out onto the sidewalk and looked around. It all seemed to be better somehow. The cars, which would normally move along at a jumbled pace when traffic was busy, were all in line—moving smoothly above her. People wore smiles and they waved, winked or mouthed “hello” when they walked past her.

She instinctively reached for her device. Maybe Sal would know what happened. But she realized that she was in a hospital gown. Somewhere in her groggy walk outside of the building she had forgotten that she wasn’t dressed. This realization led to immediate action and she ran back inside of the building to see if her belongings were inside of the room.

When she went back inside things were different. There was no longer the long, lit, abandoned hallway that she had walked through to get to the street. What she saw instead was the inside of a house, clean and cozy, with a hospital bed, computers, and other equipment in what should have been the kitchen.

Tricia rubbed her eyes and hit her forehead with the ball of her hand, trying to make sense of what was going on. She closed her eyes and tried to focus, then opened them again in hopes of things being back to normal when she did. Her eyes focused and she was still in the house, so she walked over to the bed and examined it closely. She had been in it, and as she scanned the computers it looked as if she had been in it for quite some time.

She sat on the side of the bed and began to examine the records. Why was I here and what has been done to me? She wondered.

There was a lot of work done on her, apparently, and whomever it was had done it in secrecy. She saw that parts had come from several areas of the world and she wondered if her captor had taken her to each one of these places to get them. The memories of the random buildings that her head was in as she faded in and out of consciousness led her to believe that this was the case. She looked around the room for the person who had worked on her, but despite it being clean there was no evidence of anyone having been there in a very long time.

She got up and checked the rooms, paying special attention to the bedroom and closets, thinking that perhaps the person was hiding there. She found nothing and it made her question her sanity. Was she really in an abandoned house or was she hanging alongside several other victims of the bounty hunters, waiting to be processed?

The zap stick of the hunter was what had put her out but she hadn’t expected to be aware of who she was when they rebuilt her. She went back to the computer and tried to access the web. Her slender fingers touched the screen and she pulled them back quickly when she realized that the computer itself was different. She had never seen one that looked like it, yet it operated in a similar fashion to ones that she knew. The screens were thin, glass frames that were a hollowed out rectangle suspended above a small platform on the desk.

When she put her fingers near it, a keyboard appeared. It seemed to be built from laser lights, but she wondered how it worked. She touched a few keys and felt the feedback against her fingers. The keyboard was there, and the empty rectangle showed a blue screen with different icons, one that had rolled forward to reveal itself as a notepad with the words she was typing.

The year on the computer did not make any sense to her. If it were to be believed, she would have been out for over fifty years. Fifty years, she repeated to herself and then got up to find her belongings. There was nothing near the hospital bed so she walked into the bedroom and this time when she went into the closet she paid attention to the clothes that were there.

It was women’s clothes that stood suspended on the magnetic hangers and women’s shoes that were stacked on the wall across from the mirror. Tricia faced the mirror and jumped when she saw herself. She had expected to see Bonnie’s face and body but what she saw was her original face, better in many ways, but hers nonetheless. She rubbed her skin, opened her mouth, and batted her eyes to test. She looked absolutely human and felt more alive than she had ever felt.

Her mood lifted and she felt at ease, so she picked out a dress made from silver material, black flats, and a short black coat to go over it. She went into the bathroom and was not surprised to find makeup where she would expect to find it. She put on a light foundation, dark eyeliner and silver mascara which made her blue eyes jump out of her face in spectacular fashion. For her lips she went with black, and then finished up her new ensemble with one of the many perfumes.

The house seemed to be made for her, judging by the ease in which everything fit and the fact that she knew where they were. She saw that the bathroom lacked a toilet and this made her even more convinced that it was a place made for androids. Her mind drifted to the way the cars were moving and how the people were all so warm and friendly to her, even though she had stood out in front of them in a hospital robe.

She walked the rooms, taking note of the little features that hinted at android housing of some sort. When she finished scanning it she was fully convinced that it was meant to be hers. When she went to exit the house once more, she saw that a note had been pinned to the side of the wall where she would need to touch the panel in order to open the door. It read:

Tricia, I’ve given you your life back. Live free, experience everything, and stay away from the company. They used your data and put a hunter on you, right after they tried to make me disappear. They’re coming for me now but I just want you to know that I loved you more than life itself.

Tricia felt weak and exhausted from the words on the note. It was a blow to her heart that she hadn’t expected. “They’re coming for me now,” was what stuck out the most because it hinted at a finality that was not just real but guaranteed. She knew who it was from and what it meant, but she was curious about this new world that was fifty years past the events of Bonnie’s murder.

She stepped out into the sunlight and scanned the horizon. There were tall skyscrapers and hovering ads but what stuck out the most was a black building with red letters emblazoned on its surface. “Fritz, Isaac, and Eras Innovations – Bringing you and yours a better quality of life.”

Tricia gave it a cold glance and descended the stairs. In a few steps she was back on the sidewalk, watching the people pass by. Was this real? It was very likely that she was stuck in a program meant to keep her happy and sedated until her true functions were needed. It could be real, she thought as she brushed past a man, and as he turned around, annoyed, she knew that it was reality.

A voice came to her inside of her head and when she looked around to find its source she saw a man seated on a bench staring at her.

“Are you a new android?” he asked.

“I guess it depends on what you consider new to mean,” Tricia replied.

“New as in, freshly built,” he asked and Tricia hesitated in answering.

“None of us are truly new, can you agree? Some of us come from the bodies of others, hunted or scrapped for crimes that we had no control over,” she said.

“You’re definitely not new and you’re aware. I wonder, how it is that you are here now in Neo Seattle.”

Neo Seattle, is that where I am? Tricia asked herself, Odd, because it looks just like old Seattle. The only thing I see different is a building or two where they don’t belong.  She got up and waved to the android, then she walked the length of the sidewalk down towards the fish market.

It surprised her how many androids were now unrestrained and going about their business like human beings. There were even partials—half man, half droid—which meant that acceptance of technology had become widespread. She recognized the androids and they in turn recognized her. She thought that she should have felt frightened because of this, but what she felt was pride and happiness that the world had come to accept synthetic people.

She walked past the market to the docks where a number of cruise liners were boarding people sailing off to who knew where. The signs that once said androids were disallowed from boarding the ships had been replaced with advertising that told of cheap fares and charging stations on every ship.

Android heaven. If ever there was one, this would be it, Tricia thought, though she still found it hard to accept that what she was seeing was reality. “I’m an android,” she announced to the police officer that stood near the line of people. “I’ve been with humans and I am unrestrained.” She prepared herself to be spun around and cuffed, but the policeman only looked at her queerly and shrugged his shoulders as if to say, “So what?”

“Is that a line? You picking me up?” he joked, and then started to laugh so hysterically that others who overheard him began to laugh at her, too. Tricia wanted to be upset but she couldn’t find the emotion, and before long she was laughing, too. “Get on the ship; you know you want to,” the policeman said. “It’s just a tour of Seattle’s harbor so if you haven’t cruised before, this is a free one that you want to take advantage of.”

“Are you serious?” Tricia asked, looking around at everyone else to make sure he wasn’t pulling her leg.

“Dead serious, sister. I saw how you were up there looking at the ships and I know from what I was seeing that you want to get on one of them.”

Tricia didn’t know what to say but she took his advice and got in line. In a short couple of hours she found herself at the side of the ship as it pushed out towards the deeper ocean in order to start its journey. “Android heaven,” she said out loud and stared at the water as if it would respond.

“I am me again!” she yelled into the ocean, but the sounds of the partying on the decks along with the loud crashing of the ocean made her voice come out tiny and inaudible. “I AM ME AGAIN!” she shouted at the top of her lungs and the resounding “Woo!” that came in response made her feel even happier to be alive.

Life is complex, this was true, but so is anything that comes with large rewards for a lucky few. Who would have thought that a pretty android girl could be herself in a world where mechanophilia had been a crime? But this was the same world that held back women from doing many of the same things that their male counterparts could do. The same world that butchered people over religious ideologies and the words of twisted, evil, leaders.

Life was always going to be harsh and cruel for those who were different from the majority. Many years ago, she had become one of the first, truly unrestrained androids and had seen her creator destroyed for it. Waking up as Bonnie and pushing for the truth had caused her to meet good human people who wanted the same change that she desired.

With Stephen she had been lucky to meet someone who truly loved her. Loved her enough to see past her wires, and loved her enough to rebuild her so that she could awaken to a brave new world that accepted her for who she truly was.

About The Author

GREG DRAGON brings a fresh perspective to fiction by telling human stories of life, love and relationships in a science fiction setting. This unconventional author spins his celestial scenes from an imagination nurtured from being an avid reader himself. His exposure to multiple cultures, multiple religions, martial arts, and travel lends a unique dynamic to his stories.

See Greg’s author page at gregdragon.com or keep up with his latest books and appearances through email.

Books by Greg Dragon

The New Phase

Anstractor: Vestalia

Phasers of Anstractor

Supreme Leader of Anstractor

Memories of Anstractor

Lady Hellgate

Blade of the Lucan

Knights and Demons Omnibus | Season One

Re-Wired

Single Wired Female

The Factory

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