Single Wired Female (Wired for Love Book 2) (5 page)

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.

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.”

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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.

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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.

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“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.