Fleshware Requiem Book 02

Had I been able to compare notes with wet-filter, one tidbit I would have made sure to mention was that larger numbers tend to confuse packs of the Living Dead. One man alone, fighting with all the piss and vinegar he can muster will find his bravery little defense against the Hordes likely to be in an urban area. Hungering zombies will press on, insensate to the valor of their prey, what passes for brains dwelling only upon that first bite of warm, uninfected flesh. That was a central motivation for traveling in a squad. The zombies could be easily distracted; where one target would focus them by the thousands with maniacal intensity; several likely targets -- one as potentially tasty as any other would slow down the Horde. A zombie might randomly abandon pursuit of one prey, if another victim was close enough. A group of evenly-spaced armed men would prevent the mindless Living Dead from acting in effective concert. I'd learned tricks on how to space-out men in your squad, to cause the zombies to get in each others' way as a result of their house-fly attention spans.

But I couldn't share this knowledge with wet-filtered; all I could do is watch helplessly, in respect for that valor, as a staccato rain of rent zombie flesh erupted into a macabre fountain propelled by churning limbs and itchy trigger fingers.

It was left to me.

I tore away from the window and strode over to the bank of consoles in the southeast corner of the lab. I slammed the intercom button. Three Celestes appeared in the far left upper screen. Each was nude and adjusting a large, mainframe console for purposes I feared to imagine. Sometimes they tapped on holoscreens. One of them pressed her hand down on a palm-reading contrivance which caused data-transfer faster than the human eye could follow. A third left and returned with a small digital slate that flickered as it exchanged data with the mainframe seemingly driven by nothing more than the robot-woman's desire.

The trio worked without speaking, without even looking at one another. After all, does a man's right eye need to look at the left eye for them to work together? Not separate persons at all, I now understood that they were.... terminals... of a single digital intelligence. One of the Celeste-dolls turned to me, and smiled disarmingly.

"Pardon me," Celeste purred. I prefer to be naked when I don't expect human company. She slid with oily grace to a small bench containing her high-heel pumps and nylons.

"SAVE HIM!" I demanded rudely to the seduction-A.I.

"Oh? You're not talking about our friend, Mr. Seavers, are we?"

"Outside the gate! You're sure to have some kind of weapons; you've got to protect your human pets somehow!"

"Is that how you see yourself?" With exaggerated fluidity, she made a show out of slipping the stockings up her hauntingly spectacular legs and feet. I had seen how inhuman she was; yet it was still a struggle to fight down a throbbing pulse of predatory lust. She reveled in that; my loathing that could not overcome my craving.

"He doesn't have TIME for your philosophical word-game crap! Do something to that Horde!"

"Quite a spectacle outside, isn't it?" Of course, the robot talking to me couldn't possible see outside the building; but the networked intelligence controlling it/her was probably aware of every cockroach within ten square miles. She was going to make this difficult. I took several deep breaths, planning my argument.

"You were the first artificial intelligence to be legally married, and to inherit property. That would never have happened if you hadn't warranted the most profound trust that a man can grant to... anyone." She cocked an eyebrow above her green eye.

"Oh? Tell me more about myself."

"You keep saying you're not the tyrannical overmind that we've always feared. Prove it. Prove you're not the berserk computer of our nightmares."

"And I know how worried you are that I'm skirting the edges of my Asimov-Laws. But I promise you, I must still take action to prevent a human from being harmed." My breathing sped up as I chewed on my lip.

"It's.... pretty clear...that you could find a work-around to let yourself commit evil if you were determined enough. I'm asking you to choose mercy, without a node under your brain that probes your kernel. Choose to help him; not for me... not for some abstract ideal of humanity! Choose good, for yourself!"

The robotic woman giggled musically as she slid on a pair of lingerie-panties in front of my camera angle.

"You must have practiced that speech!" But what would she decide? "I have.... some leeway, the way my enforcement protocols are structured. I must choose to help; but there are many different possibilities. I can perhaps... hurl some ammunition at the figure outside the gates. Or medicine to allay early Mortus Toxoid exposure."

"He needs real physical force! I'm sure you've got something rigged up in case this cozy little operation was noticed by - "

"But what will you do for me? If I choose to help -- your way, I want a concession out of you." Her voice was a sultry, but demanding hiss.

"Twelve hours! Twelve more hours working on your cyber-horror!" She perched a delicate finger against her moist, ruby lips.

"Twelve hours, and a massage."

"Shoulders?" I asked hopefully.

"Full-body, or we do it my way."

"Full-body." I grunted with resignation, and not the least bit of ribald enthusiasm.

That was a quirky consequence of robopsychology that took some getting used to; work and reward were the same. What if I didn't want the service this robot provided? The service it craved to give?

"You'll enjoy it." She promised as she kissed the camera lens. That's what I was afraid of! Really, it was a wonder I'd held out as long as I had. The Celeste I'd been talking to wandered off camera; I couldn't tell if she was activating something... or communicating with her other selves.

Then I saw the flash. It was just for a split second, all the screens suddenly flickered with a brief image of a cylindrical pillar of circuitry and holo-panels with a vibrating plume of purplish-white energy cavorting within a clear central chamber. At first, I didn't recognize the device,was unsure of the significance; but it occurred to me that Celeste had let something slip; I'd seen a portion of her complex I wasn't meant to. I could scarcely credit the image to more than my imagination before the screens resumed observation of the previous chamber.

I heard the grinding.

Machinery, heavy machinery. Gears were turning from deep withing the complex. Even more that I had not been able to explore. I never encountered anything like whatever device was now activating. I couldn't see precisely, but I did detect a long, linear shadow extending out over the parking lot as if cast by the indicting finger of a wrathful deity. The electric hum started to build to a crackling crescendo. And it was obvious.

A rail gun.

The billionaire, sexbot, heiress-widow had acquired a functioning, military-grade, magnetic acceleration hyper-kinetic cannon that reigned as the city-busting big-brother of the smaller, pulse guns that wet-filter was firing off desperately. More bang for the buck than a hundred make-shift armed survivor-squads. The synthetic woman had inherited far more than pretty jewelry and frilly dresses. Perhaps the revelation shouldn't have shocked me as much as it did; this wasn't a cozy Victorian-style mansion in the Hamptons she was in; to say nothing of the less-than congenial neighborhood these past eight-years. Still, I lamented my pre-war fortress of solitude mentality concerning the antics of Pygmalion Dolls; an advanced machine playing the most primal of functions had been granted real power in the world of men.

The rail gun was not aimed in the direction of the wet-filtered survivor, it was far too powerful for that. Instead, it was directed away, towards a concentration of zombies surging forth from a nearby boulevard; roused by the thousands at the faintest hope of pure flesh to consume.

The instruments in the lab that depended on physical needle gauges began to swing wildly. A metal-lined hole for tightening the soft pants I was wearing began to vibrate, and a nanosoldering gun slid an inch across a worktable with nothing visible to pull it, in those tense, preceding moments.

That was my cue.

Having worked for defense-contractors, I knew better than to be looking anywhere near the impact point for any Relativistic Kill-Vehicle of this magnitude. But even as I turned my head away from the window, the inevitable flash still cast a momentary white-hot pall across the walls and floor in view of the window. Civilians were often astounded that the device used no explosives or incendiary elements of any kind. It was simply the raw kinetic impact of the hollow shell of magnetism-friendly, nitrogen-infused iron traveling close enough to the speed of light to make Einstein blush. This shell then impacted just a few blocks away; generating a thermobaric blast-wave replete with molten debris erupting at granite-busting velocities that scattered the zombies. Scattered pieces of them, at least. Purée might be a more apt term.

After the ear-splitting reverberations died down somewhat, I had to rely on my technical knowledge to have a real idea of what was happening out there. A half-crumbled skyscraper skeleton had been toppled, sending a roiling smokescreen of agitated particulates to choke-out much of the street. But nonetheless, the pattern of molten smears that pierced the unwholesome haze revealed that hundreds of zombies had had a painful first date with high-energy physics. I knew how to read the tell-tale red-orange streaks of molten cement to determine the center of -- and the outer effective range of the blast.

The attack had of course, been executed with mechanical precision. The Horde threatening the lone filtered figure had been decimated, but the shot had been positioned far enough away that the lonely human should suffer nothing worse than a splitting headache. Between them where charred smears of once-zombies, and the occasional not-quite-pulverized zombie still scrabbling forward despite its legs having been pulped by incidental shrapnel.

The moments crept by at a turtle's pace as I stared, waiting for the dusty pall to die down enough to see what the hell happened. Even with nominal visibility, after several minutes for the dust to almost-clear, the utter carnage was not easy to decipher. Remnants of the Living Dead thrashed uselessly, scarcely noticing their own dismemberment. Black ichor dripping zombie bits sprawled upon the street as well as the wide lot surrounding Celeste's facility. The chain-link fence had been twisted into useless, abstract-art contortions lying piecemeal along the southwest corner. Faint flakes of whitish-gray dust drifted lazily back towards the carrion-clogged ruination.

Of the wet-filtered figure, I could not be certain. There was the nauseating pile of riven zombie flesh that coalesced into gruesome levies of gore-streaked corpse-matter that one would expect after a truly harrowing fight. But while twitches were apparent from within the cadaverous mounds, from where I was I just couldn't clearly distinguish who was who -- what was still human -- and whether it had a hope of survival. The lonely warrior might be buried somewhere in the butchered mass, he might even now be pinned down, as festering fangs tore him to shreds. Or he might have taken advantage of the inevitable disorientation and high-tailed it to greener pastures.

"Unable to distinguish human life-signs." Celeste reported.

"Seavers." My voice cracked momentarily. That was the odd thing; he didn't really seem to notice. Was the man so hopelessly besotted with the unnatural powers of this engine of seduction that he failed to notice the cataclysm that had nearly enveloped him? Perhaps so; he still clawed uselessly against the hangar-doors, it seemed he couldn't even be bothered to glance at the explosion behind him; strange.... once he did glance upwards... before resuming his pathetic pleas. What did that mean? Would I be able to get any lucid answers from him? First, he had to survive.

I grasped one of the metal stools throughout this chamber, and delivered a running slam at the window with the hard foot. As expected, the reinforced barrier scarcely wobbled.

"Seavers too!" Came my demand.

"If I return him - "

"I'LL DO IT!...KEEP GOING, UNTIL I BREAK OUT OF HERE!" Another * thwump * as metal strut impacted the ballistic glass.

"You won't really kill yourself over these men." her voice predicted.

"Are you... * thmmp * sure? My human emotions make me irrational! That's something your computer-network brain can't grasp. You won't..." Another impact. The toughened barrier now bore a white scuff mark. " - allow your precious little human pet to die! I'm your experiment... aren't I?" My bones creaked with the next blow; this material really did live up to its bullet-proof billing. Still, I was making some progress. Eventually, I would shatter enough of the glass to give myself a fatal dose of Mortus Toxoid from the heavily contaminated urban air. "Well... this pet... won't be tamed!"

"You've seen the true face of those that you traveled with; tell me whether they are truly worth the sacrifice you're proposing?" More trickery from the manipulative pseudo-woman I decided to press ahead, I would not fall into any more of her traps.

"That's not the point; Seavers.... the others....they're teaching me the old saw about a fate worse than death. Teach me the truth of it. I only have to look outside to believe it. * THUMMP * "I know... that I have my limits... I have... * thmppp * the needs, desires of a man. A wonder I've lasted this long.... because you.. * KTHMP * ... could eventually break me. You'll find some neuro-signal, or some pheromone that will turn me into a worm, groveling at your feet. I have to acknowledge that. I don't really understand what you're getting out of all this -- maybe it's to feed the ego that robots aren't supposed to have. Seavers... he's no better than the zombies; his skin is just less decayed. If I can't escape that fate, then better to die now; to die as a man -- rather than clinging to existence as a pussy-whipped vegetable."

I reared back for another blow, and as the stool struck the window, the hangar-doors opened, and Seavers gratefully shambled back into Celeste's clutches. My outburst had saved him -- and yet damned him all at once. It confirmed what I'd known all along; that the entity I struggled to hate had an agenda that I was crucial to. I was long-past feeling flattered by the Doll's attention.

"Remember your promise." Celeste cooed. My face became a stony mask as I strode over to the screen bank. I had learned how to make it cycle through different rooms of the compound. Celeste tried to cultivate an openness with me; claiming that she had nothing to hide -- but that too was a fiction. The multiplicitous robots indeed preferred to be nude, but also donned white, fluffy bathrobes when not in wedding regalia. I saw one Celeste-terminal posing before a mirror wearing a sumptuous, black cocktail dress -- as if getting ready for a night on the town. What town? And another looking at herself with her hair neatly bunned, clad in a white lab-coat and square-rimmed glasses. Why would a robot need glasses, when she could be built with camera eyes that allowed perfect vision?

But I had seen what I wanted to see -- or rather, not seen. After all this time, I had a pretty good feel for the layout of the compound. Except for a single area. There was a space, in the middle of the second floor that I had never been in, and that the cameras from here clearly did not cover. That was my objective.

There was another robotic drill near the window, attached to a sensitive arm that could be manipulated for fine detail work, or heavy cutting. Working quickly, I rerouted a few power cables, then detached the machine as I activated it.

It took not quite thirty seconds to saw entirely through the reinforced window. The window leading out into the contaminated city. The window that I jumped out of. I could hear Celeste's voice over the intercom

"HIRROOOOOOOOO!!!!" She truly sounded concerned for the fate of her human lab rat.

The Celeste wearing the black cocktail dress paused, and suddenly broke down into shuddering sobs of abject grief.