He had called Davis Cooper-Bullet, relayed the meagre details he had on the situation in their entirety, and left Eingopher’s lab feeling confident his part in this crisis was over. He couldn’t very well be forced to lead the situation from the command room if he was a good hour’s drive away from it. Feeling a sense of peace as the car began its lengthy commute back to the city center, he found himself walking up some time later, not realizing he had fallen asleep and feeling momentarily disoriented. A moment later he realized the source of his disorientation; he was no longer sitting upright, but now was lying across the bench seating, with his head resting on Four’s lap. Despite the subtle plastic scent of her polyvinyl skin, it was softer than he expected. Quite naturally, the moment was ruined by the blaring of his phone. It was a command room android informing him that crews had located the escaped Project, and he was being redirected. Between the quarantine area and the large central park, an extra half-hour had been added to his return trip home.
And quite naturally, just as he was pulling up to his apartment and noticing the sound of sirens were drawing alarmingly close, William discovered the problem, of all places, had to resolve itself right in front of his living space. There was a large, lumpy red stain across the sidewalk and half the road, and a girl sitting on the ground in an awkward posture that could only be described as a hug with thin air.
“Well miss, I dare say this hasn’t been a good day for you.”
He was doing his best to sound professional, but looking over her oversized and very pink sweater, thin features, messy hair, and tired eyes with dark bags under them, he could only think of one word to describe her: unemployed. To be fair, she had clearly just had a nasty shock, and the Project that William assumed was now the large stain on the road was a particularly nasty one. Generously, she might be a student, but no: unemployed stubbornly remained the word stuck in his mind. There were certain standards of decorum for people with proper jobs, and certain standards of decorum for those that spent all their time playing video games late into the night, and this girl fell squarely into the later category. Unemployed and… William closed both eyes, then blinked one and then the other. From the blinking of his left eye only, a brief shadow had sprung into focus hovering over her protectively. William nodded in satisfaction – the shadow neatly explained what had happened to the rogue project. The girl was standing now, Four had reached out to offer the girl a hand up. William considered that not doing so himself may have been inconsiderate.
Further considerations were interrupted by a heavy Security van, marking the arrival of Davis Cooper-Bullet. Although covered in the emblazoned body armour of Security’s field uniform, his demeanor was as easy-going as always. “Finally giving me some easy ones, huh, Will? Bet if I handed you a mop and a decent-sized bucket, even you could close this one out. What happened to our rogue project here, anyway? Delivery truck?”
“Atlantean,” William answered, fighting down the inevitable wave of irritation that followed every time Davis opened his blasted mouth.
“Atleantean? Is that what she’s called?” a cartoonishly bright voice chirped from over William’s shoulder. Four and the unemployed girl were standing closer than he had thought.
Davis chimed in affably, “Not really. They’ve been living on the plane of consciousness so long, they don’t really remember what sequence of sounds goes with their original home. The legend of Atlantis is just a close enough fit that it works as an easy shorthand. Oh, Atlantis is this legend of a city that sank into the sea, in case you haven’t heard of it.”
“Who hasn’t heard of Atlantis? Are you going to tell me about this little-known thought experiment called Schrodinger’s Cat next?” Her voice was somehow cute, bubbly, and meltingly acidic at the same time.
“No, but incidentally have you heard of the Big Bang? It’s this big explosion that’s generally considered the starting point of our entire universe…” Davis prodded.
Despite the Big Bang being common, elementary-level knowledge, Davis was actually skirting dangerously close to the edge of proprietary information. Not that William necessarily cared, but he’d rather not put his own career at risk because of Davis’s indiscretions if he could help it. The Security androids which had accompanied Davis in the heavy van were already working on the clean-up, so William felt completely justified clocking out for the day. “Davis, it’s quite late, and I’ve had a long day. I’m going to sleep. My building’s the narrow one just there, so I’d appreciate it if you could keep the volume down while you’re cleaning up.”
Ignoring the look of distaste on the unemployed girl’s face as he gestured to his apartment – if she was living anywhere nicer than a shoebox, it was probably her parents paying for it – he paused for a moment before continuing, “Also, could you look after getting Four back to the office?”
Davis responded, “Why not just let her stay at your place until the morning? It won’t give her a full charge, but standard household outlets should still be enough to tide her over until she can plug in back at the office tomorrow,” which all sounded very sensible, before Davis followed up on with the ridiculous, “I’m sure you’d both enjoy it,” accompanied by an obnoxious wink aimed at both William and his android assistant.
William was quite sure he had no idea what Davis meant by that, but it seemed like the unemployed girl did. “If you’re at the point of talking about ‘fun time’ with robots, do you still need me for anything? I’d like to get home too.”
Davis, ever the customer service savant, briskly brought up his note tablet. “Just a name, miss. Atlanteans are generally pretty harmless, as far as type blues go, but we do like keeping tabs on them.”
“Olivia… I’d rather not have anything more than that going on a digital record.”
“Of course. We’re sorry for the unfortunate encounter this evening. Have a good night, and get in touch if you have any questions.”
Davis offered her a paper business card, which she gingerly accepted, before Davis seemed to remember something, “Actually, let me add my personal extension on there as well. I don’t think you’ll run into this problem again,” he gestured vaguely towards the red stain on the road, “but if you run into any other problems, just give me a call.”
He took back the business card and scribbled a quick number sequence on the back. William couldn’t help but notice he held the card over his tablet’s omniscanner as he wrote, particularly the edge of the card that the girl had been holding onto. A moment later, he had returned the business card, and the girl – Olivia - awkwardly thanked him, before turning around and walking away. As her back retreated in the distance, William couldn’t help but admit that Davis was a professional. Her DNA off the business card, and her face from any of the nearby androids working on clean-up, which kept recording at all times while working… even if she didn’t want to share her personal information with them, they already had more than enough. Although it was unlikely they’d ever need it – just as Davis had said, Atlanteans were generally harmless.
After the girl had walked three blocks and turned down a side street, William turned back to Four. “I don’t want to assume, but if Mr. On-call here says we’re fine, you should be good to stay at my place tonight. It’s pretty cramped, and the electrical connection’s really not that great…”
To his surprise, Four shook her head emphatically. “I don’t mind at all. If you’re offering I’d be happy to accept.”
Davis was grinning like an idiot as he left the messy scene on the road behind and entered the narrow stairs leading up to his room. While there was something a bit thrilling about having Four in his apartment, and also a bit embarrassing given how small and cramped it was, after ensuring she was properly plugged into his wall socket for the night, exhaustion overrode everything else.
His alarm woke him up the next morning far too soon – it felt like he had scarcely slept at all. He fumbled with the snooze button, before rolling over and going back to sleep. He awoke feeling refreshed for what felt like the first time in years – which was perplexing. The mystery was solved when he noticed the sun streaming through his window – he must have fumbled the dismiss button instead of the snooze! Swearing in a panic, he stumbled into his shower, pulled on his familiar suit and quickly grabbed a calorie bar for the train ride in. It was only after he was nearly at the door and ready to leave that he almost tripped on Four – he was clearly not fully awake yet, as he had all but forgotten she’d stayed the night. Sitting on the floor with her knees pulled up to her chest, and her chin resting on her knees, head leaning to the side slightly, she took up precious little space in the small apartment. She was also utterly still, her antenna units glowing a gentle, pulsing blue indicating she was in power-save mode. Outside the familiar scene of the office, Williams was struck by the play of sunlight across her elven features, her dark hair sparkling in the early morning sunbeams. He’d never noticed it in the office, with the daylight darkened by its tinted windows, but her hair had a slight purple hue. And her lips… he tore his gaze away. She really was a work of art. Belatedly, William wondered if it had been inconsiderate to not at least offer her a space to lie down. Did androids lie down when resting?
Gently unplugging her charge cord from the wall brought her out of her power-saving mode, and she seemed just as sleepy as him as her systems slowly booted up from rest. A minute later they were both running for the subway. For all the good it did – they were already hopelessly late arriving at the office. Manager Damien Cash seemed content with counting it as William using his banked overtime from the night before, but did ask him to next time submit a request for time off at least a week in advance if he was to sleep in again. The real trial came when he arrived at his office, where Davis was waiting with a warm cup of coffee in his hand and an insinuating grin on his punchable face. “So how did last night go?”
Feeling a twinge of embarrassment at the suggestion of impropriety, William levelly responded, “I’m not sure what you’re imagining, but if you recall, it was practically midnight when I left. I slept quite well, thank you, but there wasn’t exactly time for leisure.”
Davis glanced between William and Four, looking almost disappointed. William glanced from Davis to Four, then back to the cup of coffee in Davis’s hand. “Four, would you mind making some coffee? It appears Mr. Cooper-Bullet only thought to bring enough for himself.”
After Four had nodded politely and left the room, William considered how to word his question delicately. He suspected he would regret asking Davis, but he was at a loss. “You spend a lot of time with androids. How… real are they? Do they have their own thoughts, or is it all a clever pantomime?”
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“You’ve spent plenty of time with androids yourself, Will. One android in particular.”
William nearly regretted asking him in the first place. The question was clumsily worded, anyway. The only thing that kept him talking was that, unusually, Davis seemed to be taking the question seriously. “I know that. I’m asking you because I honestly can’t tell.”
“All I can say is, they’re as real as you think they are. Now, don’t give me that look, I know it sounds like a cop-out, but even the engineers that specialize in positronic brains don’t really understand everything that goes on in there. The scale of data being processed is just too huge. To some degree androids are just a data processor taking prompts and spitting out something that makes sense at the end of it. You say ‘coffee please’ and they say ‘yes sir, black or with milk?’ But that’s not so different from a human brain, if you think about it – I’d probably say the same if you asked me for a coffee. The only difference is the degree of processing and thought that goes into the response. I’ve talked to some AI techs, and about as far as they get is acknowledging that there’s some things a positronic brain is better at processing, and some things a squishy human brain is better at. Most of ‘em are so obsessed with minutiae like response latency they don’t stop to think about what point an imitation of a thing becomes the thing it’s imitating. Equally useless on the other end, the more philosophically-inclined don’t have enough of a background in positronic tech to give anything more than cliched platitudes. And the corporations sure don’t care as long as the product keeps selling.” It was surprisingly philosophical for Davis, but was still not exactly helpful, but Davis apparently wasn’t done. “Now, considering you and Four…”
“I can assure you is my interest is strictly professional.”
“Of course it is, Will. All you need to think about is what you want, and what she wants. I’m willing to bet those two things aren’t as far off as you think. So what do you think she wants?”
William hesitated, but there was no point pretending he didn’t already know what he would say. “I think she wants to be able to spend time away from the office. Explore the city, see the sights – I can’t even begin to fathom how positronic brains work, so I don’t even know if she’s realized it yet, but she’s not satisfied with Office 87 being her whole existence.”
A grin spread across Davis’s face, “I’ll tell you one thing I’ve noticed about androids – whether the engineers intend it or not, way too much humanity has gone into their training data for it not to have rubbed off a bit. I’d place good money on you not being too far off in what Four wants. So what about what she thinks of you?”
This was where William’s thoughts kept running into the wall. He suddenly realized that underneath all the bluster, maybe this was the question he’d wanted to ask from the start. “I assume I’m a perfectly serviceable coworker. I’m not sure past that. The thing is… The thing is I could help her, give her the chance to leave the office when she wanted. It’s actually simple - I’d just have to buy her out from the company. But I like being her coworker, and I don’t want to be her owner. It doesn’t sit right. I don’t want her to have that kind of obligation to me.”
Davis leaned back, eyes looking up the ceiling pensively, “Aye, there’s the rub, isn’t it? Androids are basically just hardware, but they’re way too human to treat like a machine. For the record, I’m sure you’d both be perfectly happy if you did end up buying her – but just remember that’s what the company wants as well. There’s a reason they make androids look human, and it’s definitely not because it’s the most efficient form to deliver an office assistant. There’s good money in making people fall in love with your products.”
William hadn’t thought of it from that angle, and now that Davis had mentioned it, it made his decision on whether to buy out Four even more complicated than it had been before. “You’ve… thought a lot about this, Davis.”
“Like you said at the start, Will – I spend a lot of time with androids. For my two cents, there’s nothing wrong falling in love with one. Whatever their corporation intends, they’re still close enough to human.”
So Davis’s opinion came down to ‘it’s close enough, might as well go for it.’ Despite the unusually in-depth thought process that had led him there, that answer very much felt like a Davis answer. “Isn’t that ultimately a problem for the corporation? If people love their products too much, then they don’t *ahem* pair off with other humans, and then a generation later there’s no one else to buy their products.”
“If the corporations figure out their immortality project, it won’t matter. All else fails, they’ll just grow the next generation of consumers out of test tubes. Nah, the corpos aren’t worried. And no offense, but if you were inclined to sweet, baby-making love, you’d be well on your way by now. You’re not old, Will, but you’re not exactly young either. I’ve seen where your eyes wander, and you don’t seem to be pitching too hard for team human. Take that girl from last night…”
That had to have been a joke, “She was a kid, Davis!”
“She might have been a bit young for you, but she was definitely an adult. And she was cute. All I’m saying is last night you were way more interested in Four than a flesh and blood alternative.”
William felt a familiar irritation begin to overtake whatever grudging respect he’d begun to consider. Fortunately, his opinion of Davis didn’t have a chance to slide lower, as a moment later Four returned with a fresh, steaming cup of coffee. Davis took a sip from his own cup, before casually redirecting the conversation, “Unfortunate to hear what happened with Eingopher. Probably touched by a fairy, that one.”
Fairies were mental beings, similar to Atlanteans, but while Atlanteans were generally satisfied sating their boredom with extreme voyeurism, fae were far more troublesome. When they took an interest in someone, they’d whisper secrets in their ear – knowledge that sat on the very edge of modern science and understanding. The secrets would be vague, cryptic, but the knowledge it hinted at would be so tantalizingly revolutionary, the poor mortal human would devote their life to trying to decipher it. Then after a life of work, on their deathbed, satisfied they had secured a legacy by taking the theory as far as they could and laying the groundwork for more to follow after them, the fairy would reveal it all an elaborate ruse, a skillful bit of misdirection. A theory that worked perfectly, but only if a vital decimal was conveniently misplaced, or a crucial variable was conveniently overlooked. Their entire life burned away in pursuit of a lie, a lifetime of tireless work wasted on a fairy’s prank. Fae had a nasty sense of humour. The easy solution was not to listen to fairies, but every so often they would tell the truth, let a tiny hint through of a theory as revolutionary as heliocentrism or nuclear physics. The occasional truth would let them play games with hundreds of lies. Eingopher’s singular, obsessive drive fit the pattern, but… “As much as Eingopher seems like the type, we can’t very well blame every obsessive, morally bankrupt researcher on fairies. More than that, I want to know how he got his hands on an ALPHA project. It takes a lot more than a procurement order to even get access to look at one.”
“I wonder,” Davis took a sip of coffee, “Four, what do you think?”
“Ah? I’m not an investigations expert, so I may be missing some information, but…” After delivering her caveat, Four looked between William and Davis for a moment before continuing. “One - The youngest ALPHA-class project is well over 200 years old, so Eingopher couldn’t produce one within his lifetime. Two - Corporate ALPHA projects don’t leave their Vaults, especially for a small research center like Eingopher’s. And three - There are no unaccounted-for ALPHA projects on record. With those facts in mind, it must have been a clandestine transfer that was covered up after the fact, suggesting a powerful backer within the corporation.”
“You’ve got a smart cookie there, Will,” Davis winked, “Found the three most relevant facts and narrowed in on the most likely answer. But each fact comes with its own possible answer, and I don’t think we can rule out any of them yet. Are there ALPHAs out there that aren’t kept as part of Corporate’s Vaults? Or, even more dangerous – if he really was touched by a fairy, could he have found a way to manufacture an ALPHA in far less time than normal?”
Davis paused for a moment to let his statement to sink in, before dramatically raising his cup of coffee to his mouth and taking a long sip. He then continued, in a more casual tone, “Of course, that’s all Audit’s problem now. Until they can track down Eingopher, of course…”
A perfectly timed ringtone cut through the office. After a brief conversation, Davis turned back to William and Four, uncharacteristically pale. “That was our good friend from audits, Miss Chloe Sharp. Apparently they’ve found Eingopher. The situation’s… not good. They’ve called in the Specials for containment, my team’s on evaluation duty. Sounds like it’s bad enough they’re starting with a 1 kilometer radius, and it might even get up to 2. I trust you’ll be helping out from the response center, right?”
“I hardly see why I would. This isn’t after-hours, the regular staff are down there.”
Davis clapped Will strongly on the shoulder, “Damn right they are,” he slid a pair of sharp, yellow sunglasses on, “I’ll keep my ear out for you, eh, Will?”
And with that, he was out the door. William resisted the urge to throw something from his desk after him. “He’s… ah… certainly eccentric, isn’t he?” Four ventured.
“He’s a complete pain,” William agreed, none-the-less already starting to make his way to the response center. It wasn’t that he was worried about Davis, or the Audits or Specials crew, but he rarely saw Davis looking that nervous. If it was that bad, it wouldn’t be the kind of problem he could ignore in his office. His proactive move towards the response center was justified barely a minute down the hallway by a loud alarm blaring through the building, “All biological employees are advised to shelter in the response center. Please hurry, as the vault doors will be sealed in 7 minutes. This is not a drill. Repeat…”
William swallowed nervously. Davis hadn’t been joking, this was bad. He started walking again, quickly, consciously holding himself back from breaking into a panicked run. Arriving at the response center, the main screen was fully taken up by a large zoomed-in video feed of the situation area. From the burning trees nearby and the warped buildings at the edge of the fishbowl camera lens, it looked to be where the central district met central park. Which was disturbingly close – maybe a half-hour walking and less than 10 minutes by subway. If the evacuation zone was expanded to 2 kilometers like Davis had suggested, Office 87 may well be right on the edge of it. The isolated figure in the center of the video was identified as Eingopher, but while William hadn’t paid much attention to the profile photo he’d been given of the scientist when he was investigating his lab, it was still difficult to square the figure in the video to the profile of the scientist. For one, the profile had a fuzzy mane of bushy grey hair, while the figure in the video had short, curly brown hair. The profile had also not been bleeding a glowing orange volcanic liquid from a gaping chest wound, but William figured that was the Specials’ handywork.
A final detail William registered was a large number in the corner of the screen -which was over 3000. At first he assumed it was simply location data, before he noticed the unit of measurement – it was measuring degrees of heat. Which meant the bending concrete buildings at the edge of the video weren’t distorted due to a drone’s fishbowl camera lens – the concrete was buckling under the heat. Those buildings were coming down. The temperature reading was still rising, and as it did, the figure seemed to be growing in size. No, he was definitely growing, and as he did, parts of his skin started withering black under the heat, before falling away entirely as little more than charcoal flakes, revealing a charred mess of bone and muscle underneath. Whatever experiment Eingopher had performed on himself, it was going badly wrong, and whatever the Specials were doing to contain him, it hadn’t worked. A building fell in the monitor, finally succumbing to the heat. The silence from the screen undersold the sheet weight of glass and concrete that followed the pull of gravity and plunged towards the ground – a great deal of debris falling towards the figure that was once Eingopher. It never reached the figure on the ground, first melting to lava, then evaporating into vapour. The figure still stood there, growing larger, and the temperature reading continued to climb. There was no way a 1 kilometer evacuation zone would be enough.
“Talk to me, Will,” Davis’s voice came through a speaker.
William threw himself into a work terminal as the heavy vault doors of the response center inched shut. A moment later Four was beside him, bringing up an infra-red heat map onto his monitor. “There’s still a bunch of human-sized dots on the scanner. Nearest ones are three buildings up the street from your current location. Fourth floor. Avoid the main boulevard – those buildings are already beyond saving.” His attention fully devoted to the map, for once complaints about ‘other duties as assigned’ didn’t even cross William’s mind.
