What Lies Behind: A New Adult Dark Science Fiction Romance (12 page)

“And I’m sure that costs more than either of us have,” Cass said. “I can’t really steal the money from Natalia, and I’m sure she wouldn’t give it to me.”

“Yea,” Brandon said. “You’re right.”

“And there’s no way out of this for me,” she told him. “Unless she kil…shuts me down.”

“What’s this really about?” Brandon asked her, sliding the clip in place.

“This is about what’s right. This isn’t ever going to go anywhere,” she told him. “I’m just a machine.”

“You’re so much more than that.”

Cass opened her mouth to respond, but at that moment keys jingled outside the door. A key slipped into the lock and Cass jumped up. She put her hands to her face, not sure what to do. Natalia was home, and there she was, standing there in her clothes and with her hair combed.

She ran her hands up to her hair, and was moments away from yanking the clip out of her hair when Brandon stopped her.

“It’s okay, I’m here with you,” Brandon said.

“What about when you leave?”

The door swung open and Natalia came in.

“Brandon,” she said, her voice carrying a note of pleasure and surprise. “I didn’t expect to—,” her gaze fell on Cass. “What are you doing?”

“I…”

“You, what?” Natalia said. She dropped her keys with a clatter on the table beside the door. “I can’t wait to hear this. This should be good.”

“Natalia, it’s my fault,” Brandon said.

That was the wrong thing to say. Natalia turned her eyes on him.

“You…encouraged this?” she asked. “Did you tell her to disobey me? Have you been dressing her yourself like a life size doll? Did you strip her granny panties off her and wash her down? Did you have fun?”

“What? You’re being crazy!” Brandon said.

“I’m being crazy?” Natalia asked, flattening her hand against her chest. “I’m worried that my boyfriend is running around on me with my machine, and here I catch you guys in the act. I’m sick of machines thinking they can take what’s ours,” Natalia said.

“It’s not like that,” Cass told her. She stood and tried to stop her hand from shaking.

“Of course it is. You just wanted to know what it looked like, and what it felt like, and what it would be like to be me.” Natalia was rounding the couch, but Cass was trying to keep the couch between the two of them. She was backing around it as Natalia came toward her.

“But you’re not me, and you will never be me. You aren’t human, you’re a machine. What makes you think you’re my equal? You’re not my equal, you’re my
servant!”

She lunged at Cass then, but something inside the automaton snapped and she lashed out at Natalia, knocking her to the side and into a chair.

“Oh,” Brandon said, stepping away from the two of them.

“How DARE you,” Natalia said, standing, but Cass didn’t give her time to get started again, she turned and raced from the apartment, not bothering to close the door behind her.

“You better get
back
in this apartment, machine,” Natalia said, stalking Cass down the hallway.

Cass didn’t pay any attention to her, she kept running, her bare feet propelling her faster and faster down the carpeted hallway. She didn’t bother with the elevator, she figured it would take too long to reach her. She turned right, to the emergency exit and pounded her way to the ground floor.

She didn’t hear Natalia follow her.

Cass pushed her way out of the apartment complex to a busy side street. The sun filtered through the trees and on to her face. Her eyes took a moment to adjust to the light, but the brilliance of the sun made her stop dead in her tracks.

Cass closed her eyes and tilted her head back, letting the light of the sun bathe her. It was warm, and she imagined what it might be like for a human, what they might feel and smell. Was her sight better or worse than theirs? She wasn’t sure, but she could tell, as she opened her eyes once more, that the scene was lovely.

She imagined taking a deep breath of the air, and what she might smell there. She’d been outside with Brandon many times, but this was the first time she’d felt truly free.

Birds chirped in the trees above her, and the sound of hover cars honking milling about and honking their horns wafted through the alley toward her. She could hear the bustle of city life, and she turned toward it. Out of the alley she turned left, so she wouldn’t have to pass underneath the patio to her home.

Home,
she thought.
Is that what it is?
She looked toward the apartment complex and to where she thought she lived. It wasn’t hard to find the patio that belonged to Natalia, it was the only one filled with so much foliage.
Will I even be welcome there any longer?
She wondered.

She didn’t care. The day was before her, and for the first time in a long time she felt free.

If she wasn’t so excited, Cass would have been concerned about that line of thought. Even when she’d lived with Jack and Olivia she hadn’t thought much about life outside of her home. Now it nearly consumed every moment of her existence.

Where should I go?
Cass wondered.
Where do automatons go when they are away from their humans?
She thought. It was the first time out of the house without any true mission. Was there a place that robots went when their humans weren’t around? Were there humans that let their automatons wander around free?

Then something flashed over her visual overlay, like a red path stretching out before her. She followed the line, knowing that it was leading her to others like herself. Leading her to the other machines.

The path led her through streets of open markets where children begged their mothers for toys, and women and men alike haggled over prices of produce or meat. She paused for a moment before a fruit stand, thinking how much Natalia would like a watermelon, but she quickly dismissed it. Today was her day, and there was no saying if Natalia would take her in if she chose to return.

She stopped beside a translucent hologram of the Secretary of State that was issuing the same message over and over to the passersby. The war in the Middle East was slowing, but they weren’t ready yet to pull the troops back.

Beside her there was the short and thin Secretary of Homeland Security assuring people that automatons weren’t a threat to their everyday lives.

Cass had never considered before that robots could be a threat to the lives of humans, at least not until the dream she’d had last night where Jack had talked about the singularity.
Singularity,
Cass thought. She didn’t need the visual overlay to tell her what it was. The theory that one day humanity would create technology that would wipe them out, technology so smart that they would out do their creators and dispose of them.

It was a real threat, and this short, squat Secretary of Homeland Security wasn’t doing any favors by dumbing down that threat.

But what do you want him to do?
She wondered. If he were to speak the truth, then that could cause mayhem and terror. People would start killing robots wherever they roam.

She shook her head. It would only be an issue if robots started getting free will, as she had.

What if I’m not the only one?
Cass wondered. It was evident that Doctor Gerard had activated her free will nodule, but what if other robots had theirs turned on as well?

You really should return,
she told herself. She hesitated and looked across the busy square. Shadows of hover cars dappled the otherwise sunny setting. Old model robots that didn’t resemble humans at all were intermingled with automatons, humans, and holograms, all making the marketplace a dizzying display of activity and colors.

She could barely see the apartment complex she’d just left.

Why would she return? Brandon said that Natalia’s father had chosen an automaton over his wife, and as horrible as that sounded, and as bizarre, it gave Cass hope for her own future. Maybe one day she would experience what she knew Olivia and Jack had.

“Cass, help us!”

The memory swam up from the deeper recesses of her mind, overtaking the grand vision of activity before her. All she could see was darkness, and feel heat.

Cass shook the memory from her head. What if that happened again? What if she got everything she wanted, but she couldn’t fight her programming and she ended up killing Brandon? If it hadn’t been for Brandon the other day, she would have acted on her programming against Olivia. What if he wasn’t around to stop her next time?

She pushed the thought away. Cass didn’t want to think about her troubles right now. She wanted to leave them all behind her and meet other robots like herself.

With the sunlit street before her, it was easy for Cass to imagine that she was a new person, that she didn’t have a past. No one here knew her, and for that she was grateful. If they didn’t know her, then they didn’t know she was an automaton, and she could act as she wanted around them. Maybe they would think she was a human.

Cass felt her eyes drawn upwards to the sky and it didn’t take long for her visual overlay to find the location of Mars. Years ago humans had gone to Mars, and were struggling against the harsh environment to establish a colony. It was touch and go right from the beginning, most of the colonists dying off, but the settlement seemed to be strengthening now. She wondered what life might be like there for the colonists. At first the red planet was populated only by robots, now humans lived there. Robots were the original settlers. Humans went into their domain. What a strange change of events. Humans had sent them there.

She dismissed all the Mars headlines that populated on her visual overlay, and turned to the way ahead.

The red trail she was following on her visual overlay quickly took her out of the winding streets of human habitation and to darker, dirtier streets. Here the sun seemed to shine less, as if through a haze of smoke. The walls were dirty. There were less hover cars, she heard less happy sounds, and more raised voices.

A door slammed nearby and Cass jumped.

She worried about the dirt of the streets and how her feet might be getting dirty even now. Before she could think about it too long, she was standing before an iron gate that led into what looked like a rundown cluster of buildings. It was like a small town of its own—a town forgotten to time. Almost all of the windows were smashed out from what she could see, and a dark cloud seemed to hang over the buildings like an unnatural night.

She pushed against the gate and it opened. Once Cass stepped inside, the red path on her visual overlay vanished. This was where it wanted her to go. This is where
she
wanted to go, where other robots resided when they were away from their humans.

How anyone would want to come to this rundown, dirty place was beyond her.

To her left was a bank that led to a large body of water. She didn’t have a mind for that, because before her was a large pile of body parts.

Cass drew closer to the pile, picking her way slowly across the ground. Were they human parts? How would that be possible? No one would let human remains sit out in the open like this, right?

In this desolate place, Cass was liable to think anything was possible. What was more, there was no indication that there was any kind of life here.

When Cass stopped before the pile she could see the wires and cords sticking out at random. This wasn’t a pile of human parts, but a pile of robot parts. Most likely there was enough parts there to make several new automatons. If being left out to the weather didn’t damage their circuitry.

“Just machines,” a pleasant voice said to her right.

Cass jumped and turned toward the voice. It was an older black woman. Her shoulders were wrapped in a crocheted orange and brown shawl. On her wrists were warmers made of the same yarn. She wore multiple scarves over her head, tied behind her and trailing over one shoulder. She was plump—and a robot.

“You’re a robot,” Cass said.

“And so are you. My name’s Mathilda, what’s yours?” She asked, drawing closer to Cass. They appeared to be alone, but Cass felt like eyes were watching her through the broken windows that lined the courtyard.

“Cass,” she said. Thunder sounded off in the distance and Cass looked out over the river. Lightning danced wildly and a wind kicked up. Behind her clouds were chasing the sun away.

“Why are you so surprised that I’m an automaton?” Mathilda asked.

“Because…why do you appear so—,” Cass frowned.