Ashes, Dust, and Androids, Julie Steimle [best romance ebooks txt] 📗

Officer Brayton Hills walked up the stark marble steps of the American Technological Design Corporation building with Agent Grant Keller of the Better Technologies Union. They both met, stepping out of their taxies on the concrete out front. Both stared up at the foreboding structure, a grey slab erected midst a million other monolith like building of the city. Officer Hills took a breath and sighed.
“I hate this place,” he said, shaking his head.
The air was frigid, littered with vapors trailing from the taxies and gutter drains. The building stood as a figure of perfection, erect and clean. It was perhaps the only “perfect” thing in the city. Rubble and remains of the former city still stood in parts and was only partially removed for the newer, finer, more modern structures. People, homeless from the Urban War, displaced as garbage like the littered rags and scraps of debris around them. Despair was evident in their faces, voicelessly screaming that even God could not save them from their hellish life. They called to the two men as they passed. It was all Officer Hills could do to ignore them.
He gritted his teeth. As a Police Regulator, he heard their cries all over the city. Most were left unheard.
Agent Keller stepped briskly up to the com box and pressed the button. They could hear a dim buzz through the steel door. Officer Hills shook his head and then joined Keller at the entrance. A soft pressured blast of air blew the hair back from the faces of the men as the door opened. Sterile pine aroma accompanied the air and enveloped them. Agent Keller marched directly into the marble tiled foyer with Officer Hills grudgingly walking behind.
“I hate this place,” Hills said again.
*
A technician carefully slid the thumb sized chip into the cargo slot of the android’s skull. The slot was a new addition to the machine, new metal with protective casings to preserve the delicate piece. He pushed the slot lid into place and pulled the skull shell back over the newly fitted hole. False hair was refitted and fastened. Patting the android on the head, he nodded to his fellow worker at the BTU building.
“All ready to go. Is she programmed yet?” the technician said as he stepped off the stool.
A man in a green lab coat nodded, pulling a cord out of the android’s wrist. Two exposed portals, a centimeter in diameter, were quickly covered by its durable elastic-skin.
“This one was a little stubborn. I had to re-sort her memory chip to fit directions. This TAMA should be retired,” he said.
The first technician nodded. “Oh, it will be. I hear ATCD is coming out with a new model so we won’t have to use these anymore.”
Nodding as he collected input cables off the android, the second man said, “I’m glad. These models give me the creeps. Just looking at her file I’d say she’s killed more than a hundred people.”
“That’s five hundred-eighty-six to be exact. I read her by-line.”
The green suited technician stared back at his friend and winced. “That many?”
The other nodded nonchalantly. “She was a good one. That’s why they haven’t scrapped her yet.”
The technician stepped in front of the android and pried her mouth open. Taking a dental-like pick he touched the node in her right back molar. The android blinked her eyes twice. A more natural expression lit her face, and she stared curiously at the two men.
The green suited technician took a tense breath and snuck another one before speaking.
“You have your orders. Go.” He stepped back hesitantly, wondering if the TAMA had processed the information that he had given her.
The model blinked her eyes again, cocking her head as she read the instructions in her circuits. Lifting her chin at completion, she sharply nodded to the two men and marched toward the lab door.
Both men audibly sighed in relief.
“She’s off,” the first said.
“Good.” The man in the green suit wiped a bead of perspiration off of his forehead.
*
“Welcome!” Dale Keynes greeted them flamboyantly throwing his arms open as if he wanted to hug both men.
Agent Keller smiled and stepped toward them man, extending his business arm for a good shake. Keynes met the hand with his own friendly grip and wrapped his arm around the man’s back, firmly patting him. Officer Hills stood with his hands in his pockets, waiting for the two business men to end their fond greetings.
Stepping forward, Hills said, “Mr. Keynes….”
Smiling, “I’m sorry Officer Hills. I know you have a pressing schedule.” Keynes quickly shook the officer’s hand and led with his other. “This way please.”
Officer Hills held back. “I hate to be so blunt, but I came here to talk with the business at hand and have no time for the tour.”
Mr. Keynes smiled, glancing back at the agent sent from BTU who also came to protect his interests.
“Of course. You’ll want to see the lab first,” he said, continuing to point the way.
Officer Hills held his head higher, sterner, repeating himself. “I have no time for a tour.”
“The lab, sir. You will want to see the lab,” Mr. Keynes insisted, still smiling.
Agent Keller nodded. “It’s all right, Officer Hills. You’ll get all your answers in the lab.It should be here soon.”
“What will be here?” Hills skeptically asked.
“The TAMA,” Keller said.
Officer Hills cocked his head and shook it slightly. He closed his eyes briefly and sighed with disgust.
“I see.”
*
The TAMA left the Better Technologies Union building that stood on the edge of the city. The land about the building was barren for thirty yards. What lawn the building once had was now dark and charred. Few patches of surviving grass peeked out of the soil, but little of it survived the toxic air and rains. The TAMA stood as the only form of “life” on the terrain.
She marched out the front gate, looking like a dignified soldier dressed in her decorative uniform. Her pace took her directly into the city. Many eyes watched from the streets and out of windows, staring at her. Her form stuck out, anomalous. Her perfect fabricated hair lay slick against her skull, and her perfectly crafted face denoted a sensible beauty. She walked with large swift steps, stepping over and around obstacles such as bent metal and rubble. Her trail took her through dingy roads and highly traversed alleyways. The masses watched her perfectly clean form weed through the crowds of the ragged and impoverished. People parted as she passed through. Occasional jeers yelled out of the crowd, ignored by the android, which had no feelings. She continued to march.
“Murderer!” a man shouted through dozens of people in the barter market.
“Demon metal!” another yelled.
“Tin can trash!” a third cursed.
Echoes of dissident voices accompanied harsher calls.
The TAMA marched on.
Someone threw a rock, missing the android by a foot. She stopped. She turned her head and scanned through the crowd, and then she glanced back down at the rock. The android continued her march.
Another rock was thrown.
The rock struck her shoulder. The TAMA stopped again, this time hit by a third rock. It smacked her in the face, crashing into the protective casing and elastic-skin near her eye. She narrowed her eyes, glaring with more intent focus on the mob of people that surrounded her. The crowd did not wait for the android to act. The memory of the Urban War was still too vivid to forget. A shower of rocks and wood and anything else they could grab pelted the TAMA. Instinctively, the android reached down to her right thigh, feeling for the gun that had so regularly been there in the past. The space was now empty, as it had been supposed that a gun was no longer necessary, being now a transport android and not a war machine.
Amidst all the confusion, a small metallic object shot at the android, latching onto her back, clenching into the wire network under the elastic-skin. The tack-sized machine immediately flashed white, sending a shock through the android’s system. Darts and rivets of electricity zipped across her casing, jumping from nodes and exposed portals in her eyes and mouth, running down her arms and chest. Within a minute, the electrical commotion ceased. She staggered and fell, staring open-eyed at the cracked asphalt.
The watching crowd stirred, afraid of the machine as it lay on the dark tar road. Cautious, a man wearing a shabby ski cap and a large denim coat stepped forward and poked his walking stick at the prone shape. It didn’t move. He smiled back at the others behind him, jerking his head toward the TAMA.
The crowd immediately pounced on the android, cheering and tearing at the uniform. They pulled off the badges, ripped open her finely sewn double-breasted suit coat, tore open her pressed blouse, and pried open transport cavities in her stomach and legs. Men cursed at the lack of cargo, both spaces quite empty, and satisfied themselves instead with jumping on and slamming metal pipes into the body shell. The casing barely dented, fortified well for war.
They left the android among the debris in an off alley near the market, covered with cardboard, newspapers and discarded food waste.
*
Officer Hills refused the chair Mr. Keynes offered him, wandering around the lab, poking and peering at the projects in the room.
Looking up, Hills asked, “So, when is it going to get here?”
Agent Keller gave Mr. Keynes a tired look, bored with the officer’s company. Mr. Keynes kept up his cheery appearance and glanced at his watch.
“It should be here soon. It travels by foot, you know.”
Hills huffed. He fingered a fabricated arm that lay on a shelf, watching the rods and ball joints interact with each touch. Glancing up, Officer Hills stared at Mr. Keynes, frowning.
Mr. Keynes cleared his throat. “How about I start explaining now?”
Agent Keller nodded in agreement, feeling the discomfort in the room.
“’K.” Hills leaned against the table and folded his arms across his chest.
It was Agent Keller that started to speak. “We have created a chip.”
Officer Hills narrowed his eyes in skepticism. “So?”
Keller continued. “It is an intelligence chip.”
Hills rolled his eyes. Old news.
Mr. Keynes jumped in, “He means an awareness chip.”
Officer Hills unfolded his arms and leaned forward. “A what?”
Agent Keller explained. “At BTU we have developed a chip that can be integrated into an android’s brain to allow it to become aware. I don’t mean an information collector or a problem solver. It is more like a chip that helps a machine understand.”
Standing back, Officer Hills stared at them. “You mean to tell me to created a chip that makes a robot become a what? A philosopher?” Officer Hills shook his head. “What use is that?”
“An android, not a robot. There is a difference.” Mr. Keynes tried to explain, lifting his finger in a teacher-like way.
“Hold it! You made a ship for an android like a TAMA!” Hills shook his head, infuriated. “You can’t and shouldn’t do that! Those things are ruthless. They kill and have no sympathy! If they understood what they could do what’s to stop them from taking over.” He shook his head again at the thought.
Mr. Keynes smiled and waved his arms for Officer Hills to calm down. “No, no. Of course not. The TAMAs and the TAMOs will all be discontinued. We are working