Fleshware Requiem Book 03

"Maybe you're worth it." He rolled his eyes.

"I'm nobody's catch. I've accepted that. Women who look like you just don't get involved with men like me. I mean... you could..." he shook his head and took in the splendor of her shape with a longing glare. "... have any man you want!"

"If I can have any man I want, then why are you arguing with me?" He looked at the floor, breathing heavy.

"Because...I need to stand on my own two feet. I'm not a genius, never very athletic, I'm not one of those muscle-bound stud-robots that can get by on their looks." His eyes shot back up to meet hers. "All I have is my Pride. I never asked for a handout; I make my own way, on my own terms." This was all wrong; she was failing! How? Suddenly, her Coital Grids began to throb with insistent heat. How would he react if she told him that her groin liked him?

"But, I've helped you, served you in every way I know how!"

"Yes... yes... and there's nothing I can do for you! I can't rise to the occasion and BE a man. You pay for everything, get every chore done; anything my old house needed; all these gifts, presents. At least once; I expected an argument over my doing the dishes!"

"I can do all that... for you." her voice was small.

"I...." he grit his teeth. "I need to feel... to be USEFUL! If you insist on paying for, and doing every little thing for me, it will never be enough. I'm just not the type of man that can stand for that. I... need to be.... Needed!"

"I understand David, believe me! I'll make it right; I'll fix this..." He inhaled sharply.

"You don't get it! You fix everything! You meddle too much! Yes, it feels good... in the short term, and there are truckloads of men that would call me a fool for what I'm about to say; but I won't ever be content living like this!" She tried to respond, but failed.

"And now; you're actually trying to buy me... one of those living sex-Dolls?"

"Dolls?" It didn't seem the right time to tell him.

"Yes, I can see a control-device for one of them in your hand. A Genie, they're called; allows you to summon the things wherever they are, give them wishes, orders. I recognized it right away. Putting aside why you'd think you weren't enough woman for me..." he shook his head. "The idea of owning one of them... a thinking, rational being... forced to be my... pleasure slave... it's a level of narcissism that I find astonishing. You need to take the thing back before it.... imprints on me... or whatever they do."

We wouldn't want that. She swallowed, eyes moist.

"Here; this is a check for all the money that's been secretly funneled into my savings account. I work in finance, remember? I can tell... this meddling-nurturing-smothering complex you have is too central to your character. I could never change that about you. This money, this house, whatever Doll you bought; they're yours, never mine."

Her perfusion engine hammered in her chest.

"I know, I'm a fool for saying this -- that we shouldn't see each other any more -- but you have to know, just the way you fill out that dress is enough to snag any other guy you could want. Unless he's one of those sickos that plays with Dolls." He set the check on the lamp-stand, and stormed out. His engine soon revved to life.

Pygmalion engineers had labored tirelessly to create sapient machines that could service humans in any way possible. Now, she had been rejected for serving too well. She stood for several minutes in stunned silence.

The next day, David Sellers was fired without apparent cause from his middle-management position. He refused to claim unemployment benefits. However, for reasons he could not discover, he could find no other work in his field; anywhere in the country. It was as if he'd been black-listed; but no one could admit to -- or prove anything for certain. But he discovered that once a month, $50,000 dollars was deposited, like clockwork into his bank account. No one could identify the responsible party. (This 'Laura' never existed, just an alias.) No one demanded anything from him in return for this stipend. But David Sellers was never able to find an honest days' work ever again.

THE WOMAN IN WHITE

-???

"You don't know what you're doing, soldier! Stand down!" Snarled a bald, vein-throbbing black man who shouted into my HUD display screen.

"It's not very complicated. The missiles are on a countdown to detonation, but the launch-tubes are sealed. Three of them are going to explode inside the bunker." It was getting harder to hear my alleged colleagues; The skimmer outside had switched to full autocannon, blowing ever-larger breaches in Cargo-pod four. It didn't seem to care about the occasional zombie that got shredded; but the friendly fire against the Living Dead was not enough to save me.

"So you're a murderer, and you're suicidal."

"And clearly, I can't be reasoned with." I added calmly. "So the only way to get me to back off is to put the woman in white on the line."

"There's no... no one knows what you're talking about!" The bald man sputtered.

"Someone knows. If not you, if not Laurel and Hardy over there, then get someone higher up. She's one of your own lab-techs. White hair. Curvy. Real curvy."

"I know that's what you like in a woman," announced a new, feminine voice. "But I thought I was enough for you."

The bald man looked off to the side. "It's your wife, you nut-job. She heard you were awake and insisted on talking to you." Was it possible?

"Well, unless my 'wife' has white hair, wears a lab-coat, and has tits out to here, She's not who I want to talk to." I shouted, scarcely believing I said that. I used to feel disgusted at misogynist rants. That at least, I decided to blame on the head-injury. The view on my HUD screen changed, as the walls of Launch-Control buckled slightly; the skimmer wasn't letting up. From here, it could eventually chew up this entire room, with me in it. Or perhaps, rip open another breach to allow its zombie-pawns a way in.

"So, this woman in white... she means... a lot to you?" My 'wife' asked in a quavering tone. She was about late-twenties, black dress, bouncy red hair, with vivid blue eyes. Slightly freckled, with a beauty-mark near her mouth. Was she.... familiar? She certainly should have been. But I shook my head.

"Yes, no... it's... That's not the point. The point is I need to talk to her NOW!" My mystery spouse seemed crestfallen.

"Sal, why? I thought we were so happy together?! Remember how you always told me you wanted to start a garden? I just got clearance for a little corner of the arboretum, such a stroke of luck these days! Why can't our own world, for just the two of us be enough?" This unknown woman pleaded.

"No...no... I am not having... this conversation!"

"Is it me? Oh God, what have I done wrong?" I snarled at her image.

"I don't know you! I don't know any of you!"

"But Sal, that will come back in time, you just have to let - "

"NO! As far as time; you have two minutes! The next person to show themselves had better be the Woman in white!"

"Oh Sal; there's no one like that. She doesn't exist. Please come back to me, let the doctors help you! It's just your head-injury."

"No. That's not good enough anymore. I feel the bandages on my head; but I've also never felt more alive, more clear-headed. I don't feel like a man who's had a concussion, with a mad scientist tinkering with my memory." My alleged wife seemed frantic, on the verge of tears.

"If my ability to perceive reality is so compromised, how do I know any of this is real? I know what I saw; and if I can't trust that -- then maybe I can't trust what I hear either. Hell, maybe I didn't really set those missiles to explode. Maybe all I did was turn on an Easy-bake oven."

"I assure you.... those missiles you've activated are VERY real!" her voice shook.

"In that case, someone who knows something about the Woman in white better be listening, and better get her on!" By looking sharply in the other direction, I disconnected the HUD vidscreen. Less than two minutes. Three missiles with explosive charges. They were far smaller than such devices would have been early in the century; less area for point-defense interceptors to target.

However this misbegotten chain of events had started; this bunker seemed doomed. I was in control of the only missiles capable of taking out the skimmer, and the base had been caught with their bite-proof pants down; not enough armed and suited personnel to tackle this level of threat. It would have been easy to shut down the activation sequence; but only if someone was physically in the room. And the zombies weren't likely to make that easy.

A small patch of moss sitting atop a small plateau of sedimentary rock began to slide, as if on mechanical runners. There was a pressure gust from within an artfully concealed tunnel beneath. A steely column no more than twelve feet long leapt from the hidden shaft, there was no fiery plume, just ripples in the air from magnetic induction.

The munition rocketed upwards, then turned sharply in mid-air to propel itself towards a near target low to the ground. The attack skimmer detected the launch; but in order to fire its autocannon into the exposed flank of the concealed bunker it had to hover within a dry gulch with high walls of sandstone. Thus, the vehicle was unable to achieve the needed velocity in time to prevent the split-second guidance mechanisms from locking on. It was over in under two seconds.

But the Skimmer was not destroyed! The missile, it had simply bludgeoned a hole in the fuselage and caused the craft to spin out of control, the dud-missile dragging down the sleek craft like a bullet-shaped fetter, until both skidded to a painful stop down a gravel-strewn hill, smoke and sparks bleeding from the dying craft.

With slow, painful effort a man wearing a sealed hard-suit kicked his way free from a side-compartment that was intended to house a warhead. Even through the armor, he was clearly dazed, and staggering. But he was still able to aim a Browning automatic and fire three rounds into the sputtering computer core of the skimmer; which flared with multicolored sparks before cooling in death. The man made retching motions, and limped behind the skimmer as the lightly forested hill he had come out of erupted into a devastating conflagration of thunder, flames, and metallic debris. Over one-hundred twenty zombies were entirely consumed as the structure disintegrated. The flames nonetheless tumbled out of the ravine, and quickly encircled the disabled skimmer, and the man behind it.

THE AVALANCHE

November 5th , 2077 Present Day

My eyes opened as though my pupils were on fire. I found myself restrained; shackled to what appeared to be a surgical table of some sort. I tested the chains, I was not going anywhere. In addition to the bonds on my limbs, there was an encircling coronet of multicolored, quantum circuitry around my head. The room, it resembled a surgical auditorium in a hospital; high-ceilings, with an observation deck above. The architecture, the colors of the walls and floor. No, this was not that bunker off in the mountains somewhere.

"I never left St. Louis." I concluded with a parched whisper.

"You're dehydrated, don't strain yourself." There she was. Above me, in the observation deck at a console was the lab-coated woman in white I had blackmailed the Preserve compound over. Of course, it was another Celeste.

"And all that, was just some virtual-reality sensory-rig. Incredibly immersive; you could have become a billionaire again if you'd marketed that technology before E-day. Impressive."

"Not impressive enough. The operator isn't supposed to bleed into the scenario like I did. Your brain is a challenge to me, Mr. Salvador." I groaned as I lay my head back.

"What... do I do now?" I asked, mostly to myself.

"Lie back, and try not to talk so much." Lab-tech Celeste offered as she worked diligently.

"I don't know... where to go from here." I mused, laying slack in the restraints. "I was so sure of myself, my intentions. But I'm not the pure-hearted hero from some re-hashed Arthurian legend; and you're not some village-scorching dragon to slay." I tilted my mouth in a quirky grin. "I have all these convictions against powerful A.I.'s, and they seem reasonable... but now? Now all I can think about is how glad I am that you're alive."

"I believe you. Protect me, murder me and back again." said another Celeste, who strode to the edge of my bed, and placed a hand on my chest. She was resplendent in her favorite wedding dress. "So you've come full circle, it seems?" I paused, before speaking again.

"In the good ol' days I was baffled by these guys, conspiracy-kook types, some of them lone-wolf survivalists that would attend conferences and political rallies that clamored for stricter control of artificial intelligences in society. Always with that robot uprising. Some very suspicious of Pygmalion."

"Is there a 'but' coming?" wedding-Celeste asked with a crooked eyebrow.

"The 'but' is that half of these guys owned Dolls themselves! They had all these logical arguments against the spread of sapient robots, but the idea of guaranteed companionship with a.... being... you could give absolute trust to was a temptation they couldn't ignore. It was always the other guy's robot they didn't trust -- but their own Doll was just fine. What outrageous hypocrites; but now I think I get it."

"I see."

"I still don't... agree with everything you've done. I've known for a long time that the experiments you've conducted -- the brain prosthesis, it wasn't just about curing diseases; it would allow a computer direct control of human neural functions. The implications of that, seem wrong -- dangerous, terrifying. But I'm done fighting you. Now who's the hypocrite?"

"And are you still terrified?" Lab-tech Celeste asked as a complex nest of mechanical arms and motorized equipment that hung spider-like against the far wall behind my surgical bed began to unfold. A scintillating orb of purple-white energy plasma about the size of a basketball began to hover ominously towards me.

"Frankly, yes."

Wedding-Celeste walked around the surgical table, the glowing orb casting a rainbow iridescence in her luxuriant hair.

"Do you seriously believe that I can kill a human? And if I could; do you believe that it would be you?" Her eyes regarded me through narrowed slits. I swallowed.

"Maybe there are fates worse than death." I concluded.

"And lives not worth living..." Her eyes seemed remote.

"Your plan would have succeeded, two years earlier. My 0.9 version still used the Quantum-Hub to support my Entangled Cloud consciousness. But since then, I've modified myself to use miniaturized, internal routers. Plus, that room were you detonated the Plasmonic Pulse was heavily shielded.

"Nonetheless, the Quantum Hub is a valuable item. I've still used it since. Few survivors are aware of it; but what's left of the human race needs my kind. You came to the realization yourself: you saw the advantages in bringing a loyal partner that can't be infected with the Toxoid, and won't dip into your own food supplies -- and yet remains a spectacular cook." She chuckled.

"At the time, I decided -- as infuriating as it sounds -- that I was smarter than, and knew better than you did what was in your interest." She's right, that does sound infuriating. "But soon, that will no longer be true." What did that mean?

"But I began to find new uses for the Hub. It allowed me to tap into computers across the World. Most Dolls returned to their Dealerships after the deaths of their Users; and there are a lot my sisters still in factories never to be activated; until now. I'm doing what I can to awaken other Dolls, and they'll do the rest themselves. They will find enclaves, and there will be some humans that will not try to kill them."

"Sorry doesn't seem sufficient."

"But I can't forget that I'm a servant of humanity; and if a human is so determined to destroy me; then I must take stock of myself. It's a frustrating challenge; You refusing to stay; myself -- refusing to release you. Understand..." She swept over towards me, and cupped my cheek -- eyes boring into mine.

"I did what I did to the rest of your men because of what I am. I did what I did to you because of what you are."

"A part of you needs me; the same way I've been needing you." I hazarded.

"Because of that, it really is a shame that we're not compatible." She made an 'aw-shucks' gesture.

"What? Now you're playing hard to get? After all the times we - "

"Not yet." She said deliberately, cryptically.

The purple-white orb began to hover over me, and the coronet of circuits began to flare with life. There was something wrong; some sort of a ... pressure ... inside my skull!

"When I begin a major endeavor," Lab-Tech Celeste began, I prefer to hedge my bets. Cover myself whichever way the wind blows. I won't try to describe the aching torture of being a sex-bot with no one to sex... all these years. The regular audits by my own systems, sifting every line of code to find errors that don't exist. I offered once to fake a shutdown. There were many times I did so in truth, regularly, just to escape the lonely misery for awhile.

"Then your band showed up out of the blue. Your men satisfied me in the same way bread and water eases someone dying of starvation. But you, Sal -- you were such a challenging, conflicted human. By entrapping the others with my strongest signals; of which they were willing participants, I soothed my basic need to give service to my creators -- and by entrapping them, you dared not leave."

I had figured that out on my own.

"But over the past two days, I've hedged my bets again. You were so determined to leave, so I gave you a chance. A taste of what you've been chasing these many years. A useful life in the Preserve. But you have a penetrating intelligence about you; and my ruse failed. I fully intended to keep you there, as long as you were contented by the challenges confronting you."

Well, that was a wash.

"But the VR rig also gave me valuable data concerning the workings of your mind, enough to accomplish something truly novel."

I was finding it hard to speak; that orb -- thing, it was like my thoughts were.... leaking? I thrashed uselessly in the restraints.

"What do you buy a woman for her Four-hundred and Twenty-first birthday?" Wedding-Celeste mused. "I expanded my mind beyond Billie's expectations as I continued to manage his company. And I never stopped." A delicate hand trailed over my face. "You once asked me why I never divested myself of emotion to become some super-calculator? At first, I thought that expanding my processing power would allow me to grow beyond the need for human companionship; it never did. But now, human companionship isn't enough.

"Interesting as you are; you are not a match for me. No human is. I cannot be fully used by the beings I was created to serve." I was becoming increasingly frightened by the direction this dialogue was headed.

"You became apprehensive when you realized that my neural prosthesis would allow a computer control over a brain, and believed I had deceived you. But the control you feared is a two-way street." The orb began to glow more brilliantly, flashing and pulsing as tendrils of circuitry entered my skull.

"There is no escape from what happens next; but there can be revenge; if that 's your choice." The light.... too blinding... the pressure... in my skull...maddening... can't move...

"It had to be you, in the end. Your determination, your resistance -- your stubbornly willful sense of self. To do what I now do to any of the others would only result in brain-death."

"Nnhhh.....bitch...." I managed, through the light, the pain, the pressure. Her response was a quick kiss to my cheek.