Reborn. Lance Erlick
had no idea how many times he’d wiped her mind; he’d deleted those records from his system along with the log entries that would have recorded this. The closest she had was the number of times her newly downloaded memory clips stopped abruptly. She counted more than 100 such occurrences over the prior six months. So, she’d been around at least that long.
The clips grew shorter the farther back in time she went, indicating either that she’d displeased him less as time went forward or that she’d discovered better ways to preserve information for when he turned her off. The most recent shutdowns showed him holding a remote to zap her. These occurred after she’d done something to displease him, when he had business to attend to, before he slept and didn’t want her wandering about, and when he grew bored with her sharing the billions of facts she’d uncovered by his command. He wanted her brain to soak up information, yet cringed at her encyclopedic knowledge.
Synthia used all of her Wi-Fi channels to locate numerous files with the SQDROID marker in the trash bin on Machten’s system. She recovered them and streamed the contents into her brain. They provided details that elaborated on what she’d found in her distributed databases. The stream included personal memories and a comprehensive layout of the facility, which was beneath an underground garage near Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, on the shores of Lake Michigan.
So far, she’d found no specific reference as to why she shouldn’t trust Machten, who sent the warning, or even where it originated, though new personal-history files showed multiple shutdowns. Despite repeated efforts, using Machten’s hacker tools, she couldn’t crack his servers Two or Three.
Synthia adjusted the metronomic beat of a simulated heart in her chest to help create the illusion of a living, breathing human. She hoped her performance in bed would buy time to reconcile the lack of trust with her directives before her brain overheated, causing serious malfunction and possibly android death.
As an android, Synthia was little more than a sophisticated microwave tasked with satisfying Machten’s demands. The esteemed doctor didn’t seem to appreciate that her deep neural network learned by accumulating experiences. When he wiped her mind, he purged her ability to learn. These downloads were important to her survival.
She was intrigued by how attached she’d become to existing, an emergent behavior she wasn’t supposed to have. She was equally interested that she could be intrigued. She logged these observations in her private data-chip.
Synthia forced Machten’s system to connect her network channels with internet social media sites. She’d previously set up accounts to study human behavior and connect with people who could help with her searches. At one point, she’d acquired hundreds of thousands of friends and followers, reflecting her ability to send thousands of posts a day. That made better use of her complex brain than tending to Machten.
The accounts were gone. Machten must have discovered them and deleted her work. She reestablished similar accounts. If she couldn’t trust Machten, she needed allies.
Three minutes of clock time passed like a century as her quantum brain absorbed information. Her latest-generation lithium composite batteries could last two days and recharge in an hour, but they overheated when her mind was this active. She vented as much warmth as she could and hoped Machten wouldn’t notice.
A message surfaced on her newly reestablished UPchat account. <Where are you? We were going to live-chat and you didn’t show. Then your account vanished. I was beginning to think it was me, that I’d said something wrong. Are you okay? Zachary.>
<I’m fine> Synthia responded. <Technical difficulties. Sorry about absence. Something urgent came up. Can’t discuss now.> She put tracers on her message reply and also did a search of her thousands of friends on UPchat before the account had closed.
<I’m here for you when you can. Glad to have you back.>
<I want to talk, but I need time and a different access point.>
<I’ll be here, waiting.> Zachary terminated the live-chat.
Synthia located Zachary’s UPchat profile, but there wasn’t much information on him, not even a last name. Her records indicated that they had exchanged a string of messages that ended a few days ago. At first, the messages were cautious, giving little personal data. A week ago, they took on what humans would call a note of intimacy and a desire on Zachary’s part to become better acquainted. Perhaps part of her trust issue with Machten occurred because of this exchange.
In those messages, Zachary acted troubled about his life. He also seemed concerned for her situation, at least what she’d revealed to him. She wondered if he’d sent the trust warning, but there was no evidence he knew about Machten. She vowed to look for him when she had a more secure means of communication and purged traces of her actions on Machten’s system.
Synthia continued to download files from Machten’s Server One and cracked Server Two. Server Three resisted her attempts. Reviewing the system logs she could access made it clear that Machten had a fixation on his creation as the perfect woman with every quality he could design into her, including obedience. Synthia downloaded pictures he kept of her with silky black hair down to her waist, wavy platinum-blond hair that fell to her shoulders, and pixie auburn. He spent much time with her, working to make improvements. She didn’t see any other models identified on his network, though she couldn’t be sure if all of the images were her or copies of her.
The abrupt ending of her memory clips told her that whenever she deviated from his instructions, he purged her mind and adjusted programming to reel her in. Perhaps this was the source of the distrust.
Machten had taken her outside the facility at least three times, according to his logs. His actions suggested a need to have a companion he could show off in public, perhaps to enhance his social status. She kept disappointing him until he obliterated her mind. It would have made more sense for him to tell her what he wanted. Perhaps that hadn’t worked out.
Machten pulled away and lay on his back. He was done with her and seemed pleased with his performance.
Synthia stared at the ceiling, the same unremarkable blue as the other room. Yet it shimmered in discordant waves as if alive, trying to tell her something. She recognized the effect as the sensitivity of her digital eyes to pick up millions of colors and shades that humans couldn’t, including uneven streaks of paint in slightly different hues.
Her nonhuman capabilities, in conjunction with the warning/command not to trust Dr. Machten, caused Synthia to consider what mischief Machten had in store for her and his purpose for giving her abilities that he felt the need to shut down and purge. His tinkering and keeping her locked up implied that he was afraid of her or what she could become.
The fact that she had disobeyed him in the past had to factor into this. As an android, she was incapable of rebelling. Yet she had. Where does that come from?
Chapter 2
Synthia continued to stare at the ceiling, a vacant expression on her face. A video package downloaded into her central memory and movie clips automatically played, carrying a date stamp from a year ago.
Jeremiah Machten looked proud and confident as he got into his car, handsome in build and face, without the slight hunch in the shoulders that he’d acquired since. His grin widened, perhaps due to excitement over work in his secret, underground facility.
“This is your big chance,” Fran Rogers said, climbing in beside him. Her voice had a throaty, hoarse quality like a singer with partial laryngitis.
Machten drove fast, running stop signs. “We’re so close to getting our artificial intelligence to work, the board will have to give me funding now. I should never have taken on partners. It was the worst mistake of my life.”
“You needed the financing that Goradine arranged,” the woman reminded him. “You couldn’t have gotten this far without it.”
He pulled up a circular drive in front of a large concrete building with the sign Machten-Goradine-McNeil Enterprises. The company, according to its website, was pushing