The Android Chronicles Book One: The Android Defense (8 page)

“Okay,” Mandelie said.
“Let’s hope it works. Good night, Luke.”

“Good night, Miss
Miles.”

Luke opened his eyes as his
communication console blinked. He tried to remain awake, but the
softness of the sheets beneath him activated his sleep state and he
drifted to sleep.

“So how’s the learning curve
with Luke going?” Damian said, taking a sip from his glass of
brandy as he eyed Lina, sitting across the table from him. All
around them, waiters in white uniform floated around the confines
of Da Silvano.

Lina smirked. She looked
more like a model than ever in her long, softly shimmering black
dress, her blond hair falling around her face.

“You mean his learning
curve, or mine?”

Damian smiled.

“Yours, of
course.”

Lina laughed, in a slightly
tipsy way.

“I’m going to pretend I
didn’t even hear that. But he’s quite impressive, of course. He
looked at five of our product lines today and gave me a list of
possible upgrades for them, off the top of his head.”

“Good,” Damian said. “He’s
keeping up his end of the bargain.”

“He’s hot too,” Lina said,
with an alcohol-fueled smile. “Like, really hot.”

“Don’t get too close to
him,” Damian said. There was a warning in his voice. “He’s an
android. I’m your boss.”

“Who could forget?” Lina
said, and hiccupped.

Luke awoke at his usual time
of eight o’clock in the morning, as his internal alarm went off. He
shut it off and rose from the bed. The electric current running
through him began to warm up.

He went into the bathroom
and took a long shower. He emerged from it with a towel wrapped
around his waist. He opened the door and nearly dropped his towel
in surprise when Miranda walked right into him, carrying a box of
soap which fell out of her arms.

“Oh! I’m sorry, sir,” she
said. “I was bringing you some new soap for the bathroom. I didn’t
know you were in it.”

Luke sighed.

“It’s alright,” he said. “Go
ahead.”

He walked into his dressing
room and shut the door behind him, locking it securely. He pulled
on a dark blue sweater and dark jeans. When he was fully dressed he
emerged and saw Miranda setting his breakfast plates carefully on
the table.

“Adventis didn’t lie when
they said the Fantastic Domestics were unfailing in their duties,”
Luke said, sitting down on the couch.

Miranda beamed.

“I never fail in my duties,
sir.”

“If you don’t mind me
asking, how long have you been in existence?” Luke said.

“I was fully assembled
nearly five months ago,” Miranda said. “What about you?”

“Two years,” Luke said. “And
thirty one days.”

“You must miss your old
home,” Miranda said.

“There’s not much to go back
to,” Luke said. “The man who designed me is missing. But I miss …
certain parts of my old home.”

Miranda pulled a feather
duster from her apron and began dusting the couch.

“I hope I will stay here at
Adventis,” she said. “But I can’t be sure. When the Fantastic
Domestics are finally available for public purchase, I may have to
go somewhere else. All I hope is that whoever I go to is a kind
possessor.”

“If I am still here when the
Fantastic Domestics are put on the market, I will request that you
continue to be my attendant,” Luke said. “But please, try to knock
next time you open one of my doors.”

Miranda smiled
brightly.

“Thank you so much,
sir.”

Chapter 19.

Mandelie looked up at the
Adventis building in a mixture of grudging awe and disgust as she
drove her small car up to its grand entrance. She wore dark
sunglasses and a large hat on her head that concealed much of her
face.

She exited the car and gave
her keys to one of the waiting valets. Then she walked discreetly
up to the huge glass doors of the building and waited.

She did not have to wait
long. She saw a tall, handsome android come through the glass doors
and look around. Only she knew he was an android; to the other
people around them he looked entirely human.

His blue eyes flashed in
gladness when he saw her. He looked striking in his dark blue
sweater, beige overcoat, and dark jeans, a gray scarf wrapped
around his neck.

Luke made his way to her,
moving around the people in his way. When he reached her he smiled.
He took her hand impulsively. Mandelie felt the surge of heat in
his internal circuitry.

“I feel like I haven’t seen
you in years,” he said.

“Me too,” Mandelie
said.

She blushed, without knowing
why.

Without letting go of her
hand Luke led her through the ground floor of the Adventis
building. Mandelie kept her head down, not wanting to be recognized
by any of Damian’s guards.

The two of them ascended an
elevator to the thirty ninth floor. When it opened, Mandelie and
Luke walked down a short, lushly carpeted hallway to the door of
his room.

He opened it for her.
Mandelie walked inside. Luke closed the door.

“You can take off your hat
now,” he said.

Mandelie did not seem to
hear him. She was looking around the grand room.

“Wow,” she said. “I want to
hate it, but I can’t. It’s nice. At least it’s much better than a
horrible jail.”

“It’s still a jail, in a
way,” Luke said.

Mandelie took off her hat.
Her blond hair cascaded to her shoulders in falling
waves.

Luke found himself staring
at the back of her head. He moved past her quickly.

“Do you want any coffee?
Anything to drink or eat?” he said.

“No thanks,” Mandelie said.
She walked to the white couch and sat down. She looked at him with
relief in her eyes.

“You look good. Really good.
I’m glad that they’re treating you well.”

“Everything here comes with
a price,” Luke said. “You look beautiful. But then again, you
always do.”

Mandelie laughed. She
brushed her face with her hand.

“Come on, Luke. You’re going
to make me tear up.”

Luke smiled.

“I feel better already,”
Mandelie said. “I don’t really feel that alone anymore.”

“What’s been happening with
the search for your father?” Luke said.

“The police aren’t really
doing anything,” Mandelie said. “I think they’ve called off the
search. I’m going down to the station myself tomorrow and finding
out how far they’ve gotten. But I doubt it will make a
difference.”

She bit her lip and looked
down at her hands.

“If I could get out of these
walls, I’d scour the city for him,” Luke said. His voice conveyed
frustration.

“No,” Mandelie said. “It’s
better for you to stay here. The police will haul you back to jail
in a second if they catch sight of you.”

“I understand what you
mean,” Luke said. “That sense of futility.”

“Yeah,” Mandelie said. “But
I can’t shake this feeling that my father’s still alive. I think
his disappearance has something to do with something he was doing
in the lab. Maybe with the Mind Portal.”

“I have had that thought as
well,” Luke said. “But your father never spoke of the Mind Portal
to anyone, other than myself, Jake, and Trista. And you, of course.
How could anyone else have known about it?”

“I don’t know,” Mandelie
said. “But someone must have found out.”

“And taken your father,
instead of the Mind Portal?” Luke said. There was skepticism in his
voice.

“It doesn’t make sense,”
Mandelie said. She sighed.

“I never even really
understood what the Mind Portal was, to begin with. A way to
experience the human mind opened to its full potential, that’s how
my father put it.”

“I knew what it was and what
it did, in theory,” Luke said. “But your father never allowed
anyone to test it out except for him. He believed it was still too
dangerous.”

“There’s no way for anyone
to disappear within the Mind Portal, right?” Mandelie said. “Inside
the box.”

“No,” Luke said. “The person
remains within the box.”

“It’s kind of a … dangerous
experiment, now that I think about it,” Mandelie said. “I wonder
why he did it. Why he made it, in the first place.”

“Perhaps for the same reason
he made an android,” Luke said. “There’s a lot of danger in that
idea as well.”

He smiled
slightly.

“Oh, Luke, there’s no way
you’re similar to the Mind Portal,” Mandelie said. “No way, at
all.”

She looked at her
phone.

“I should get going. Before
one of Damian’s goons finds out I’m here.”

She got to her feet and
walked to the door.

Luke accompanied
her.

Mandelie put her hand on the
handle of the door and then turned.

She kissed him. The kiss
lasted a minute or an hour, it was impossible for either of them to
tell. When it was over, Mandelie looked at Luke with shock and
confusion in her eyes.

“I’m – I’m sorry,” she said.
“I don’t know what came over me.”

Luke’s eyes engulfed her in
a blue, endless sea.

“Don’t apologize,” he said.
“Whatever you feel for me, I feel it too … Mandelie.”

He touched her hair but
Mandelie slipped away from him.

“I have to go,” she said in
a low voice. She grabbed her hat and closed the door behind her.
The sound of it closing felt like a gunshot to Luke.

“You … kissed him?” Trista
said, stunned. “You kissed Luke? Luke the android?”

“I know,” Mandelie said. “I
could die right now. What got into me?”

“Um,” Trista said. She was
lost for words.

They were sitting in the den
of her apartment. Behind the door of Trista’s spare room Jake’s
loud snoring could be heard.

“I can’t possibly have a
crush on Luke,” Mandelie said. “He’s … he’s not even real! In a
sense.”

“Well,” Trista said.
“Physically speaking … I think it would be easy to have a crush on
Luke. I mean, he’s not bad-looking.”

“No,” Mandelie
said.

“And then again, Luke’s
smarter than most human beings,” Trista said. “He’s not a mindless
robot. You might even say he’s an upgraded version of a human. He’s
just not … human.”

“No,” Mandelie said. “He’s
not. But it felt … better than kissing a human, Trista. It was
indescribable.”

“Would you do it
again?”

“I don’t know,” Mandelie
said. “I don’t know.”

Chapter 20.

Damian stood in his office,
his arms folded over his chest. It was early in the morning and he
was staring at the television screen on his wall, where images of
protestors surrounding the Adventis building were flashing. The
protestors were carrying signs that read “JOBS FOR HUMANS! NOT
ROBOTS!” A news anchor was commenting gravely on the
images.

“The protestors have been
gathered around the Adventis building for nearly six hours, ever
since the news broke of Adventis’s new androids, designed to
perform jobs formerly held by people ...”

Carlie was seated
cross-legged on the couch, her high heels slipped off her feet,
staring at the screen while munching idly on a bowl of
popcorn.

“I knew this was going to
happen,” Damian said. “That’s why a CEO always has a plan B in
place.”

“What’s your plan B?” Carlie
said, in an uninterested voice.

“I always knew selling the
androids to America would be a hard sell,” Damian said. “Putting
hardworking people out of their jobs and all that crap. Oh, I’ll
still put the androids out on the market, but I’m not going to
depend solely on America to buy them. I’ve got some other, very
interested buyers ready and willing to buy as many androids as we
can supply them. And they happen to be even richer than America
is.”

“Wow,” Carlie said, her
voice still uninterested.

“The only difference is we’d
have to adopt a different agenda for the androids,” Damian said.
“We’d have to tailor the androids for a different
purpose.”

“What do you
mean?”

“Let’s just say we’ll need
to bulk up our stock of Super Soldiers,” Damian said.

Luke was doing a series of
push-ups on the floor of his room when he heard the door open and
saw Miranda’s long legs moving through his field of
vision.

“I brought your laundry,”
Miranda said. “And a fresh coffee pot.” She set the coffee pot on
the kitchen counter and the laundry on the white couch.

Luke lay on his back and
began doing sit-ups.

“Thanks,” he
said.