Download My Love (5 page)

That was a relief.
Wasn’t it?
She bit her lip and tried not to say something stupid while techs in blue uniforms poked around inside her brain. She needed something else to think about.

“How’s Everett?” The words slipped out of her mouth by themselves. She winced and could feel Everett gazing at her from across the table. He had an infectiously gorgeous smile.

“He’ll be fine, Miss Gold. His internal replacement parts have been inserted and his body will be used to them in a little while.”

“But his legs have been torn up.”

“My skin auto regenerates,” Everett said. “The process will be done in minutes. It’s the latest in New Skin technology.” He winked.

The thought made her stomach pitch. Reminded her he wasn’t human.
He’s a mechanoid with a specialized dildo. So you had a good time. Get over it already
.

But she didn’t. Somehow Everett had wedged himself into her heart. She liked him and not just because he’d rescued her or had the good grace not to repeatedly mention her unusual use of his appendage. Somehow she also liked his looks, his manner. His jumping. Well, maybe not so much the jumping. But Everett was easily the nicest guy she’d ever met, human or not.

“Okay, we’ve got it. Transmission downloading.”

Samantha watched the screen. A tingling in her right forebrain made her want to scratch her head. She resisted the urge lest she interfere with the reception. “Is it coming through?”

“Yes. But it’s not very long. I think it’s just one line.”

Her brows knitted. “What’s the message?”

Alex sat up and stared at the screen. “It’s a code.”

She hopped off the table to take a look. The cursor blinked at the end of the line. “29 Alpha Alpha 30 Romeo Delta? That’s the whole message?” Two opposing emotions hit her at once. First, disappointment. What had she expected? That her father would send her a personal goodbye note telling her how much he loved her? They hadn’t talked in years. Then, confusion. Why go to all this trouble for such a worthless bit of information? “This is stupid. This can’t possibly mean anything important to anyone.”

Everett came up behind her. His expression went from curious to somber. He turned his back and walked away.

“Everett?”

He paused and sighed. “It’s a code, Samantha. Probably a failsafe. Your father likely programmed it into everything he designed.” His shoulders slumped. “Even me.”

She watched him walk out the door and didn’t know what to say. Suddenly she felt guilty for being human. She turned to Alex for answers. “What exactly does he mean?”

Alex shoved his hands in his pockets. “If the code is what he thinks it is, it can shut down every mechanoid on the planet with one simple command.”

“Oh.” Well that didn’t seem fair. But then one turned off a toaster by unplugging it, so what was the big deal? Mechanoids didn’t have emotions. What a silly notion. She shook her head and sighed. “Are we done here?” Alex nodded. “I’m going to go look for Everett.”

“I suggest you try the roof. He likes to go there to think sometimes.”

She turned to leave.

“And Miss Gold. I wouldn’t leave the compound if I were you. The person who’s after this information is very dangerous. He doesn’t know we have extracted it. He’ll still be after you.”

A shudder rippled across her shoulders. As much as she wanted to go home, he was right. The place was no longer safe. In fact, no place would be safe for long now. “Thanks, Dad,” she muttered under her breath. “Thanks for ruining my life.”

Everett sat on the hard triple-layer concrete roof under the protective bubble of the security shield and wondered for the first time what it would be like to die. To jump off the roof and not land on his feet but instead let himself crumple into a heap and scatter into a million different parts. Sure, he’d lost consciousness before—some of the upgrades demanded he experience temporary mental acuity downtime—but he always knew he’d wake up on the table. He simply had no concept of what ceasing to exist actually meant. He tried turning down his screens and active processes and sitting there unmoving for a few seconds. But it didn’t really give him the whole picture. It didn’t feel permanent or life changing. He slumped a little lower.

The door to the roof opened and Samantha came through. He could tell it was her by her smell but also her footsteps. Her breathing. The heat signature of her heart. Samantha was warm and fleshy and human. All those things he’d never be. Sadness never tasted so bitter. It felt like a spike through his heart.

“Everett?” Samantha sat down beside him on the edge of the roof. “Are you okay?”

He snorted. “For a dead man you mean? I’m fine.” Again he imagined himself floating downward and then crashing to pieces, ceasing to exist.

Samantha’s voice raised an octave. “A dead man? Everett, what are you talking about?”

He gave a rueful laugh and shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m not even technically alive.”

She brushed the hair out of her face and he found himself staring at her lips, remembering how soft and plush they’d felt under his. He wanted to reach out and pull her into his arms to ease this ache.
Bad idea. She hates tech, remember?
He stood and walked toward the opposite end of the building. His heart raced when she followed.

“Look, Everett. I don’t understand why this has you so upset. It’s a stupid old code. It might not even mean what you think.”

“Of course it does.” He spun and faced her. “What else would it mean? The code’s a way to shut me—all of us mechs—down if we get a little out of control or are no longer needed. Zip.” He snapped his fingers. “In an instant we’re all dead. Gone.”

“But—”

He towered over her now, anger pulsing through his circuitry as well as fear. “How would you like it, Samantha? If you were going along your daily life and ‘zap’ you’re dead? Not even a warning? No choice in the matter?”

Her eyebrows squinched again in a most adorable way. He could almost forgive her for not understanding. “But, Everett, the same thing could happen to any of us. At any time.”

He rolled his eyes. “It’s not the same.”

“The hell it isn’t.” She put her hands on her hips and stuck out her chin. “Humans don’t know when they’re going to be hit by a hovercar or have their immune-guards fail and contract a deadly retro virus. We can die at any moment, Everett.”

“Yeah, but not by someone else’s arbitrary choice.” He wasn’t letting this go. She needed to understand how horrible it felt to know that basically anybody with rudimentary programming skills could knock him off the face of the Earth at any time. And he had no control. Couldn’t she see the injustice?

She wrapped her arms around herself and stared out over the city. “Oh yeah. That’s nothing like having someone chasing you down just because your dad was a genius.”

She looked so vulnerable his anger deflated. He couldn’t resist putting his arms around her. He buried his face in her hair and inhaled her sweet honey and cinnamon scent. He wanted to kiss her again. Wanted to make her his. “I’m sorry.”

Samantha tilted her head back and looked at him. “Humans have been dying a lot longer than your type has even been around, you know. I think we’re the ones who should complain.”

There it was. The reminder he’d always be only a mechanoid jabbed him in the ribs. He let his arms drop and took a step back. How could he tell her he had emotions, too? That she mattered to him and so did her opinion? Probably she wouldn’t believe him. A bleak, empty loneliness rushed through him. He hated this Emo upgrade. It twisted him up, made him suffer in ways he’d never known existed.

She raised a hand to shade her eyes. “Hey, are those my cows down there on the lawn?”

He zoomed in his opticals and double-checked. The bovine life forms were munching happily on Security Core grass. Relief temporarily flooded him. “Yes. I had them flown here while you were asleep so you could be reunited with them. I knew you were worried about their safety.”

“Oh, Everett!” She jumped, threw her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek. “Thank you. That’s so sweet.”

He stiffly patted her on the back. “You’re welcome.”

Her face flushed. “Can I go see them?”

“Sure. Go right ahead.”

She fled the rooftop, clearly caring more about her cows more than him, leaving him standing there alone again. This time with a stinging reminder being mechanoid would never be good enough in Samantha’s mind. He could think of only one option to quell the pain. He shoved his hands in his pockets and trudged down the stairs to the lab. With a sigh he pushed open the door.

“I want the Emo chip removed,” he told Alex. “Now.”

Samantha stopped petting Bessie and looked up to the rooftop, but Everett’s now familiar form had vanished. She frowned thinking she was truly alone for the first time in the last twenty four hours or so. The freedom felt nice but also nerve-wracking. She glanced at every figure walking by her wondering which one might shoot, kidnap or harm her. All for a stupid code she’d known nothing about.

“I’m completely innocent,” she told Bessie, who blinked one of her big eyes and twitched her tail. Well it did no good to talk to a cow. She ought to know. She’d spent too many hours of her life doing it already since she had few human friends. But what had Everett so upset? It was
her
head on the chopping block, not his. Thanks to dear old Dad.

She sighed and sat on the grass. During her early childhood, her father had always been her best friend. They’d done everything together. He’d taken her to her first movie, helped her with her homework, and invented silly games for her to play. But after Mom had died of antibiotic-resistant China 12 Virus, he’d shut himself away and given himself over completely to his work. She’d hated him for choosing his work with technology over her needs, letting his zeal to reshape human lives overshadow their bond. So she’d gone her own way with her cows and her tools to reshape mankind’s future to her ideals. At a total impasse, their ideas mutually exclusive, they’d never spoken again. And now this.

No apologies. No goodbye. Just…look out for the laser fire.

Everett had fewer problems by comparison, so what had flipped his switch into auto-combust mode?

Her eyes bugged open.
Wait
. Everett was a mechanoid. He didn’t have feelings. But he’d seemed awfully upset.
Oh my God. It can’t be, can it?

She stood up, hand on her chest, mortified. “If Everett has feelings, what must he think of me?” The image of Everett winking at her after she’d handed him back the dildo, the smoldering look in his eyes when he’d kissed her, and his depressed, angry face on the rooftop came back in a flash. “It can’t be true. Can it?” If Everett had emotions and she’d let her hatred of technology blind her to the fact, then she’d treated him cruelly. Much more callously than she’d ever intended. The corners of her heart pinched at the thought of hurting Everett, even unintentionally. She cared about him and wanted to make amends.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw an Everett-like figure walking into the building at a fast clip.
That’s odd, why is he going in the front door? What was he doing out here?
She shoved her questions aside. She had to talk to him about other things. Leaving her cows she scrambled after him, but he’d already reached the main doors and was quickly walking inside. “Everett. Wait!”

Even at a fast run she couldn’t catch him, he moved too damn fast. By the time she got inside Everett was nowhere to be seen.
Oh wait. There he is
. She caught a glimpse of him as he stepped inside the travel tube, but before she could follow, the transportation device had swept him away. She vaguely remembered riding in one when they’d first arrived at Security Core, but the thought of doing it alone made her queasy. After a quick search she realized there wasn’t an old fashioned escalator in sight. If she wanted to catch him she’d have to suck it up. She took a deep breath. “Okay, I can do this.”

She stepped inside the nearest tube and braced herself. Nothing happened. “Um….”

“State destination.”

She was only familiar with a couple of places and she had no idea where Everett had gone. “Um…lab?”

“Lab level four confirmed. Thank you for traveling with Core Central.”

Whoosh
. A huge column of air swept her off her feet. She was sucked up the tube with nothing to hang on to and no way to stop. She screamed, but that too, was sucked away, right out of her lungs. Then she was thrown sideways. Her stomach slammed into her kidney and made a squishy sound she didn’t like. Seconds later she found herself ejected, landing on her knees in the hallway right outside the lab. She stood and dusted herself off. “Gee, thanks for the lift.”
Stupid computers
.

Everett definitely wasn’t in the same category. She realized that now. She only hoped she wasn’t too late to tell him how sorry she was for her initial assumptions. After bursting through the lab doors she found Everett and Alex in a heated argument.

Alex had his arms crossed over his chest. “I’m telling you it didn’t download.”

“Yes it did.”

“No it didn’t. For the last time, Everett, it. Was. Rejected.”

Everett shook his head like a dog not about to let go of a bone. “I know it went through, it had to. Look, Alex, I have these feelings….” He turned and noticed her and he stopped talking. His skin went cloud white and she thought he might faint.

She took a few steps and stopped, realizing if he did faint, she’d never be able to catch him. He’d probably crush her if he fell on her. “Everett?”

“Samantha?”

Was it her imagination or did his face light up and then fall again?
Oh lord
. What had she done? She took another step closer and Alex backed away with a, “I’ll let you two….”

Everett sent him a peevish look but didn’t stop his exit. Alex rapidly split the scene. They were alone.

She swallowed. What she was about to ask made her uncomfortable to even think about. Was it taboo for a mechanoid to talk about feelings? She didn’t know. But she wanted to shrink into the ether. “Everett…do you…I mean….” Her face heated to about a million degrees.
Oh God, this is ridiculous. I can’t even say it
.