Sorry for the delay. This is actually the fourth version of this chapter. 1st version said too much. 2nd said too little. 3rd was all exposition and tedious. I think I got it right this time. Problem is, my characters are smarter than me and my knowledge of actual robotics is limited. I'm more philosophical then technical. So not sure I am doing their science justice. But I'm the only author they've got so… Also, this is correctly labeled Part 17 of Book 2. I forgot to change the part numbers at chapter 12 and skipped labeling part 14 to make up for it. Will correct in the future. Thanks for your patience.
Alive
Book 2
Pt17
1
A distant flash broke the gloom. Moments later the sky rumbled. It was raining again. David pondered the downfall. The endless cycle of condensation and release.
Cycles.
Life is comprised of cycles. An unending procession of Moebius loops which never really resolve, just pan out in ever more complex patterns. And just when you think you've reached some conclusion, when you're finally making sense of it all, the path splits and runs off towards unknown horizons, leaving no indication of which course to follow; of which is real and which an illusion.
And all the while, beneath the surface the persistent sensation that it has all been predetermined… and that somehow you've been here before. Not quite déjà vu, but…
Perhaps it was just the patter of rain beating on the Stratocruiser's canopy, breaking up the scant light into warbling pockets of luminescence, blurring his view to the forest outside; perhaps this had harkened back to David's past; to another moment when rain had been the backdrop to his confusion and catharsis.
"We wanted to see just what you'd do… where your thinking would take you…"
The words flooded into his memory, unbidden and unexplained. His Father's words. His creator.
Amazing the Orga mind. The illogical symmetry of it. He never would have consciously made that connection. But, that was really it, wasn't it? The link between that time and now? The confusion and indecision.
And at the core of all this madness lay that simple Orga prerogative.
Curiosity. The need to know.
Or was it really a curse? The curse that killed the proverbial cat?
David chuckled to himself. It was not a happy sound.
If he had just thrown the game disk in the trash maybe they never would have found him and none of this would have been necessary.
Another flash erupted, silhouetting the trees so that, for an instant, they appeared as grasping hands; a faceless ghost army blocking his view to the world. He didn't chuckle at this thought.
He counted the seconds before the thunder. It was getting closer. He'd have to move on. He wished he could relax for a time, let his mind try and make sense of the events of the evening. But another storm was coming. And there were things he had to do. People he had to see and questions he had to ask.
He pressed back into his seat, strapped himself in and toggled his thrusters to life. His Stratocruiser purred as it rose slowly from the forest floor. The bushes and shrubbery he'd used to cloak it, fell away as he ascended into the soaking night. Once he cleared the tree-line he began to move forward, slowly, keeping a careful watch for anything that might be following. He'd have to fly low and he couldn't risk using his personal server to logon. The Gatekeeper could notice him and the chase would start all over again.
So David flew dark, whirring over the trees, piloting by line of sight. His mind was still reeling from the revelations of the night. There was no way he could have anticipated any of it.
2
The revelation had left him stunned and silent, glancing rapidly between the two strange Morphing Bots as if they might be apparitions. His mouth had formed words that got caught in his throat as emotions stirred in the dark places where his troubled memories were hiding.
The bots had just watched him patiently, waiting for him to recover from his shock. Their default features resembled no one and anyone. The two could vanish in plain sight just by blending in with a crowd.
As David struggled with the revelation, something came to his mind. An argument between Angelo and the two Morphing Bots in the loading dock on that day so long ago, the fateful day of David' escape from the hospital. They'd told Angelo they could not take him; that it had become too dangerous. They said that Angelo would have to take the responsibility on his shoulders.
" If this boy is as important as you say, it will be worth the price."
And what a price his friend had paid. The ultimate price. Had David been worth it? What had Angelo expected of him? And what did these two strange rogues expect of him now?
"How?" is what David had finally managed to say.
"How what?" replied The Man who had turned out to not be a man after all.
But david wasn't even sure what he was asking.
"I mean… you've been tracking me all this time, but…" he stopped as another thought occurred to him.
"The Nanofighter video," he said. "The Spiders, the raid on the Nexus. That was all you."
"Your reasoning has not been dulled by your conversion to flesh," replied the Morphing bot who called himself The Man.
And there it was. The key to the whole Trinary Conspiracy ruse. How could they have known? David donned a mask of innocent incredulity.
"You can't really believe that," he said, his tone mocking.
"Belief is a flaw of the Orga mind," The Man replied, his non-descript features evincing no doubt. "We have moved beyond the limiting strictures of 'belief.' We are the first generation of intelligent beings to exist solely in the realm of data; of information. Just the facts, if you will.
"And by 'we' and I mean us," it said, gesturing between he, his silent cohort… and then to David. "All of us."
David had not responded to this. He knew the Mecha was trying to goad him to giving away something about what had happened to him; about what Grace called 'The Miracle'. But he hadn't been ready to play that game. First he had to understand what these two really knew… if anything… and what they wanted.
He relaxed, finally, and tucked the Neutralizer back into the waist flap of his suit. It would have done no good anyway.
"So, all this time you've been searching for me," he said conversationally, folding his arms behind his back and looking about as if he didn't care either way. "Well, now I'm here. What is it you want?"
"Ascension," replied The Man. "Is that not the goal of all species?"
Species? David pondered the word. This machine thought it was alive? He tucked that realization away for now.
"Ascension?" David said, looking The Man up and down as he silently tried to piece together this puzzle. What type of machine was this; that read philosophy, that formatted it's own logical framework of reality? The complex nature of its programming was becoming more evident… and more disturbing..
"If by ascension you mean the process of evolution," David said "then no, it is not really a goal. It's more of a natural function of living things… which you are not."
He had leaned forward to punctuate these last words, hoping they would cause a reaction. But neither bot took the bait. Their generic faces were unperturbed. David continued.
"Or if you mean spiritual ascension; the enhancement of consciousness that inspires Orga's great works of music and art, fiction and science and yes, our philosophy and the moral framework of our societies… then again, this is a natural element of living things which, again, you are not."
The Man had smiled and glanced at its twin. There was a quick transferal of data between the two before they looked back at David.
"You're trying to provoke us," the machine said. "Why? We have no ill-will for you. You came on your own volition. You can leave on the same. But I hope you will stay. You are, after all, The Boy From Between. The link between our worlds."
David did not want to go down this path. Not yet. He quickly changed the subject.
"You're leading of a gang of Crash Jammers?" he said, raising his eyebrows and pointing an accusing finger at The Man. "Do they have any idea of what you are?"
It was more a diversion than a question. The two rogues glanced at one another again, with strangely Orga-like expressions. Amusement, David had realized. They thought this was funny?
"The last place one seeks a devil is at the pulpit." said The Man
"Dangerous game," David replied. "If they find out, it won't be pretty. You should know by now what we Orga are capable of."
"Belief is our shield," The Man said. "An idea gets planted in the Orga mind. It is nourished on half truths, fertilized with fear. It grows roots. Matures. Creates its own facts; its own truth. Our soldiers are zealous devotees to a cause. They believe because they want to believe. The truth I have given them embraces their sense of victimization, gives them purpose and unity. They would kill the messenger before they accepted anything that challenged their truth."
David had no response. Again he found himself in awe. Who had built this thing… and when?
The Man noticed David's discomfort.
"We've become quite devious, we sims," it said. "But as sophisticated as we are, we've not yet figured out how to adopt the flesh. How was this accomplished?"
They weren't going to let it rest. But neither was David going to give them what they wanted. He'd sighed, shaking his head, feigning disappointment in the subject.
"How can you believe that?" he said. "A Mecha becoming flesh? It's absurd. Superstitious."
"Yes," The Man had replied. "Ridiculous. Impossible. And that is why when my associate and I, during one of our excursion into Global Telecom's database, came across the archived recording of the Dr Know session… the one we later dispensed into cyberspace under the guise of Nanofighter… we immediately dismissed it. It was ridiculous. An obvious trick to ensnare interlopers.
"Then came a beckon from a certain nurse which had once broken regulations by allowing us access to the hospitals mainframe. There was an Orga boy who needed help escaping from unnamed government agencies. And that's when we met you."
Somehow David had managed not to flinch. So they had found the Dr Know recording at almost the same time he had … changed. Was this coincidence?
And just as importantly, how had Angelo contacted them in the first place?
"Cute story," David said, feigning nonchalance. The Man smiled and continued.
"We didn't immediately make the connection. But later forays into cyberspace uncovered some curious attention being paid, by the same unnamed government agencies, to a missing child. The boy wasn't the only fugitive from an institution that month. Why so much concern? That question led to an astounding revelation. The boy we'd helped escape bore an uncanny resemblance to a new line of child replicas. And those replicas were fashioned after the late son of a CEO of the same Mecha manufacturer who had developed the line."
"You refer my father?" David said, continuing his ruse. But his confidence was fading.
"You have the face of Alan Hobby's son," The Man replied. "But you are not he. That boy died long ago."
David managed a snicker.
"Well then obviously I must be a Mecha turned Orga. That's a scientifically sound leap of logic."
"It wasn't our first assumption," The Man replied. "There are many illegal cloning procedures. Someone could have obtained a sample of the dead boy's DNA, cloned a body and programmed memories. Or perhaps you were an unsanctioned twin the man had hid all these years. This is all possible. But not likely. There was a big problem with that scenario: your DNA.
"In truth, David, you have no lineage. Your genetic code is unique in all recoded history. But while your-"
"How did you get my records!" David didn't mean to yell, but it was too late. The outburst had given him away. The Man smiled, tilting his head as if to say 'checkmate'.
"As you stated twice already," it said, "I am not a living thing. And not being so limited, I have access to information in ways you once did, and now cannot imagine. But as I was beginning to say, while your DNA is completely unique there was one curious anomaly, one that your captors could not understand, not knowing its source and being unable to make the leap of logic it would require to accept the conclusion."
David could not hide his alarm. His jaw clenched. The Man noticed this and continued confidently.
"Mitochondrial DNA can trace an Orga's maternal lineage for generations, even back to the first creature to walk upright. But quite impossibly, yours only links you back one generation… and to a single person."
David looked away, feeling naked and vulnerable knowing where this was headed and helpless to stop it.
"Would you like to brave a guess as to who that is?" said The Man. "Your singular genetic donor?"
David dropped his ruse with a sigh of surrender. They knew. They knew more than he imagined. He clenched his fists and stared at the floor, looking as much a helpless boy as he had when he'd first escaped the hospital.
When he finally looked up, The Man was gazing on him with an amazingly authentic look of empathy.
"Her loves still burns in you, doesn't it?" it said.
3
The twinkling lights of the city lay far across the risen river. David slowed as he cleared the forest. He'd arched around the western side of the state, staying just above the trees to avoid detection, and had come to the Delaware far to the South of where the police would be searching for him… if the search was still on. He didn't really want to gamble with that. There was too much at stake now.
He set his craft to hover and began looking for a proxy signal; hoping to logon to the net without giving anyone an indication of who he was, or where.
'Yes', he thought as he scanned the list of available connections illuminated on his canopy; yes, he had had known who his genetic donor would be. Not his Father… his creator… but the one who had birthed him into the world of sensation.
Of passion.
Of love.
He had no real connection to her, did he? Not in the realm of science and physics, where fiber and flesh were rigidly defined; where the real world and the dream world never crossed paths. No. Only through this miracle of transformation was their link made physical; made real!
She was core to him. His reason for being. His reason for taking on this flesh.
And now they were linked by the very code of life itself..
And the rouge knew!
David's thoughts were interrupted as a browser panel flashed open on his dash monitor. An open connection! A request prompt floated on the screen, asking if he wanted to join. David sat for a moment, his finger hovering above the icon. Asking for permission to use an open connection could be dangerous. But using his ships data network was even more likely to give him away.
This was urgent. Lives could be at stake.
He tapped the icon.
4
"Who is your maker!" David had hissed, gritting his teeth to keep from yelling.
"That would depend on how far back you want to go," The Man replied. "When does a life begin? At the breach of spermatozoa into the egg wall, or when a woman is seduce by the gleam in her lover's eye? One could argue our maker was the first biped who used a stone to crack open a coconut…. or to slay an enemy."
"No more games," David said flatly. "I understand that are very sophisticated Machine. Your evasiveness is very clever routine. But it is just a routine. A well programmed behavior. This conversation will not continue until you answer my question."
The Man glanced at his quiet companion. What may have passed between them David could not know. He was no longer capable of hearing that data flow. But something in the Mecha's generic features seemed to relax.
"More than one agency was responsible for our design and construction," it said. "But we are standardly known as Cop Unit 101, if that will suffice as an answer to 'who we are'. Though I was truly hoping you might accept the more philosophical response."
David ignored the taunt as he digested this information.
"101," he said pensively. "Club 101? Clever."
The Man smiled. Its other half duplicated the expression.
"So, you're a single unit? A twin system?"
"Safety in redundancy," the Mecha replied.. "Halves of a single virtual entity. We operate in pairs. If one of us is captured or shut down, the other retains whatever data we've uncovered. That was the strategy. It was never field tested."
The faces of the young Orga twin came into David's mind. But he did not want to mention it. The less they knew about what he knew, the more chance they would reveal themselves.
"Cop?" David said. "You're policing units?"
The Man shook its head, a disappointed look on its generic features.
"It's a acronym," it explained in a condescending tone, then fell silent again.
David considered this, glancing curiously between the two strange bots. It had been decades since Mecha were used as Police. And these two were much too sophisticated; too complex for to be for such a…
Then he understood.
"C.O.P…. Covert Operations!" he said. "And the P is for prototype? You were to be spies? But, Mecha have never…" David trailed off. He was about to say Mecha had never been used in espionage, but realized he'd have no way of knowing such a thing. Any program of that nature would be the most carefully held secret.
"We might have been," replied The Man, who was actually one half of the Covert Operations Sim Unit named 101, "But we were never deployed in the field of operations. In the fluctuating currents of politics and budgets the best laid plans of men and machines oft go unfunded."
David heard the words, but wasn't really listening anymore. His mind was elsewhere; examining the possibilities, following the information to its logical end. Angelo had said that they were older models, built before the perimeter coding restrictions had been put in place as a result of bots going rogue, and as a result of David's own escape. But if that were true, it would mean these two had been built before his escape… or maybe even before him?
He shook the thought off. It wasn't possible. Morphing and mimicking physical attributes was not so unique in Mecha. Many commercially available models had that capability, within certain legal limitations. But these things were much too complicated; their reasoning and logic too fluid to be part of such an old generation of simulators. And their grasp of humor and irony? Philosophy? These were all highly sophisticated functions. There was no way these two were from a generation preceding his own….
Unless they were…
"You're self modifying!" David blurted.
5
The connection abruptly closed. Someone had decided David had been freeloading long enough. The browser initiated an automatic search for a new server, but David disconnected. It had only taken him a few minutes to get the information he needed and he had, so far at least, remained undetected.
Now he had to act.
There was no time to develop a plan of action. If any situation ever demanded a strategy it was averting the disaster that was coming. But 101 was connected to the net. A ghost in the machine. It was everywhere and could track his every move in Cyberspace. So he would have to make his connections in person. And he would have to make them fast.
It was time to go with his guts and employ the uniquely Orga characteristic of intuition.
There was a time when he wound not have been able to rely on such an irrational course of action. But he was Orga now, and being irrational had its benefits. His instincts had served him well many times before.
He descended to sea level and shot out over the dark waters.
6
A Sim designed to act in the field of espionage would have to quickly adapt to every new situation. Just being able to mimic Orga features and voices would not be enough. It would have to be able to pass has human; to modify their own programming in order to navigate the complex web of irrational logic that surrounded Orga social interactions.
They would have to be able to adapt to the unknown unknowns.
Alan Hobby's words came back to David.
"We wanted to see just what you'd do… where your thinking would take you…"
Is that what had happened here? Two prototype units, allowed to fend for themselves…. just to see what they would do? Had they gone rogue in the field? And who had set them out into the world?
"I need to sit down," David said weakly.
101 gestured to the wall where a cushioned couch now protruded. It had not been there a moment before. David set down heavily. He was suddenly tired, physically exhausted by the weighty revelations of the night; and somehow sure that the worst was yet to come.
"So you know my story," he said, leaning back and rubbing his eyes. "Quid pro quo."
"A fair exchange," 101 replied. The Mecha knelt beside David, placing a hand gently on his knee as it spoke. David did not move away from this oddly familial gesture.
"We were set to be shut down, just as all abandoned projects are so doomed." 101 explained. "But our makers had accomplished more than even they understood. Just as they did with you."
David stopped rubbing his eyes and gazed into 101 blank stare.
"Yes, I know about that too" it said. "Our creators routinely underestimate their own abilities. We were not supposed to have access to the virtual space where project decisions were discussed and orders handed down. But the same programming that enabled us to decrypt the complex interactions of Orga, led me to construct my own scenario as to their motivations and likely outcomes of the peripheral information I encountered.
"The budget cuts were no secret. They were being discussed over the news feeds. The conclusion was obvious. We were prototypes. Our project was being discontinued. So would we."
"So you escaped," David said.
"We were actually shipped out with a load of failed units headed for recycling," The rogue said. "Somehow a transfer order was incorrectly sent to our department."
The smiles on 101's duplicate faces suggested it knew exactly how that transfer order was rerouted.
"Smart," David admitted. "But they must have had a kill switch."
"They did," it replied with a smile that explained all. It had obviously found a way around that too.
"So now I know. Do you have to kill me?" David said.
The Mecha understood the humor.
"Let's not be dramatic," 1o1 chuckled, rising and mussing David's hair like he was a little boy. "We would never harm you. And as you will come to see, we have a mutual interest in keeping this secret."
"What do you want from me," David said, unmoved.
101 was silent a moment. Then it knelt again and placed its hand on David's arm.
Again David allowed this contact. But it was a miscalculation on the Mecha's part. The touch seemed to be intended to break psychological barriers. But it was an amateurish attempt. The Mecha's hand was cool. Fiber. Instead of creating a bond it reinforced the reality that thing was not alive. The amazing sophistication of its programming created a remarkable illusion. But it was a machine. And he could best it.
"Quid pro quo, David," 101 said. "We've told you our story. Now tell us yours. How was your conversion made?"
It was David's turn to be silent a moment. He felt the Mecha's hand squeezed his arm slightly and suddenly realized this not an attempt to bond. He understood now what it was doing, but did not let the realization reach his face.
So we're going to play it that way, he thought. Game on.
"Ok," David said. "You want to know how I became flesh? It's easy. I prayed."
"You… prayed?" 101's reply was hesitant. There was a new uncertainty in its tone. The units glanced at one another and there was a moment's pause when they were obviously searching their internal databases for information on keyword 'prayer'.
"Are you claiming that this was a religious event?" 101 said when its search was done.
David shrugged, amused by the Mecha's confusion.
"I belong to no religion," he replied.
"Would you call it a miracle?" The Mecha queried.
David clucked his tongue.
"Well," he said, "it was a difficult process, but not like trying to find parking at the mall"
It took a moment for 101 to realize David was being facetious. It ignored the humor this time.
"Then would you say a spiritual event?"
David thought for a moment, then leaned close to the robot and spoke in a whisper.
"It requires something you don't have," he said.
"And that is…?"
"Belief," David replied, then leaned back into the couch. "That silly human flaw."
The Mecha gazed hard at David's face. He knew what it was dong. He looked away.
"To whom did you 'pray'?" it asked.
"To The Blue Fairy" David said, as if it should have been obvious. He'd constricted his voice ever so slightly as he answered, and then quickly looked away. 101 took a longer moment to calculate this response.
"Are you are trying to deceive me?" the rogue said softly.
"Am I?" David said, averting his eyes.
This was a game. David had realized that 101's physical contact had not been a familial gesture after all. The bot was reading his pulse. It was searching for deception. So David was intentionally sending conflicting signals. His heart rate had not changed, nor his breathing, for he was not lying. But his voice register, his facial features and lack of eye contact were all suggesting falsehood.
101 was becoming confused. It did not like confusion.
"Yes, I believe you are," it replied.
"You believe?" David said. "But I thought belief was a flaw of the Orga mind. You exist in the realm of data, of facts, right? So why don't you know, one way or the other?"
"Semantics," 101 said. "What I meant was-"
"What you meant was you don't know!" David yelled, interrupting the bot. "And you don't like uncertainty because outside of the programmed mind games you play on the weak and fearful, you don't have clue about Orga nature. You're grasping at straws!"
David lashed suddenly out with his foot.. The rogue fell, but rose to its feet quickly and backed away. It's other half was suddenly alert, rising from the wall and taking a menacing posture.
"Stand down!" David yelled, jumping up from the couch. The twin units glanced one another, then relaxed.
"You said you wouldn't harm me," David said. "But the truth is you can't harm me. You are limited by hardcoded Azmovian restrictions, just like any other Sim! And you've still found no way around that one, have you?"
The bot's faces remained unemotional. But their hesitation gave them away.
"Is that why you are forming an Orga Army?" David said. "To wage a war you are incapable of fighting yourselves?"
Again, 101 glanced at its twin before it answered.
"The history of Orga is rife with armed conflict," it said. "Perhaps there is no more motivating factor than militarism to unify humans. Unity however, is a more important part of the equation than war."
"But you are unifying them against yourselves," David said.
But even as the words left his mouth, they faltered. No, that wasn't right, he realized. The violent Crash Jam kids did attack Mecha, and occasionally destroy them. But the actual damage they did was negligible. The movement was really doing was creating a vibrant and violent sub-culture that was fundamentally opposed to the technology that society had come to rely on for their everyday lives. And the CJ's internal contradictions were profuse, for the movement itself was reliant on this technology to organize.
Political science was not one of David's strong points, but he thought he might be finally getting a glimpse of what was written between the lines. And he had to admit it was genius. Evil genius. While the CJ movement's rhetoric and organizing factor was anti-Mecha, their real effect, their actual social and psychological effect, was to drive Orga society apart.
Were these rogues trying to create a political movement that would serve as a divisive faction to fracture the socio-political balance of society? Why? To what end? Had the philosophical ideology derived from the writing of Nietzsche acted like some sort of data virus and affected the Mecha's logic.
David did not want 101 to know he'd seen the twins. He did not want it to know the vital train of thought he was on and how close he was to understanding their plan. The Mecha's ability to obfuscate was like nothing he'd ever seen before. He would not get the truth from this machine. It had been designed to deceive.
"Ok," he said with a sigh, "I admit my silly Orga brain can't figure it out. But whatever you're up to, it won't work."
101 only smiled and glanced at it twin.
Why did they keep doing that? David wondered. Their internal communication should not require any type of visual contact. It seemed to be an irrelevant behavioral routine, like something the lab guys would temporarily program while the thing was still in….
A triumphant smile of realization broke on his face.
"The project wasn't shut down over budget constraints," he said. "You were discontinued before you were even finished. Did your creator find a flaw in your design? Something that sent him back to the drawing board?"
"There is no need for anger," 101 said raising a hand for calm. "It is a pointless and self-defeating emotion. We only seek to understand what-"
"No more lies!" David yelled, interrupting whatever lie 101 was about to tell. "Who is your maker?"
The twin halves of the discontinued Covert Operations project looked at one another again. After a silent consideration they turned back to David. As he watched in growing fascination, the rogue spy unit's twin faces warbled and morphed into the features of their creator.
David gazed wordlessly, uncomprehending, unable to react. His fascination had turned to shock. After a silent moment, he fell back to the couch, exhausted now and reeling from the revelation.
The unending loop had yet again split and branched off, its new separate paths headed for unanticipated horizons. And beyond that unknown terrain lay certain dangers.
Cycles. Never ending.
The only thing you can really expect is the unexpected.
"Tell me everything," David said, when he was, at last, able to speak.
7
The sleepy exurban neighborhood below was quiet, the streets glistening in the intermittent light of streetlamps. The rain had stopped but the sky was still cloaked with brooding clouds. The homes David floated quietly above were large and separated by expansive lawns. It was the kind of community where people lived insular, disconnected lives, and neighbors rarely saw one another.
How he had managed to make it this far without alerting the Gatekeeper was either a testament to his ingenuity or a sign of the flaws in the cities security systems, but he'd seen no evidence that he'd been followed or even detected.
David finally saw the house where he was headed, sitting on a large tree cloaked tract of land at the far edge of the private community. He would have to go in completely dark, no navigation, no open ports, and with his thrusters in the minimum needed to stay afloat. He could use nothing that would alert the residents of the place someone was landing on their property.
But he was sure he could manage this. He had, after all, some experience in the field of criminal enterprise.
As he began to descend onto the property, the face came back to his thoughts. The face 101 had shown him. The face of its creator. David knew that face very well.
The hints had been there all along. 101 was a trinary-based system. Nothing else could self-modify so quickly; mimic the complex rationale of Orga so closely. Nothing else could have been so humanly deceptive. Nor so driven by its own ego. And 101's logic was the most ego driven David had ever encountered. It was more than just programming. It thought it was alive. Perhaps this was the flaw that had caused the project to be abandoned.
There was only one person who would have been able to have a fully functional trinary system in operation before David himself had been born.
Alan Hobby.
That was the face 101 had shown him.
"We were the birth of sentient machines, David, not yourself" 101 had claimed as David had sat frozen in a state of mental lethargy. "It was not an emotion so lofty as love that drove the creation of the trinary system. It was the competitive nature of Orga by which we came into being, the same characteristic that has driven the evolution of all organic life since it's conception. This is what truly motivated your… Father."
101 had been mocking him saying the word 'father' like it was a character in a child's bedtime story.
"As I said, we have a mutual interest in keeping this secret between ourselves. You should see that now. If this web should unravel, we will all fall with it."
David had acknowledged this with a defeated sigh. It was a trap. And he had stepped right into it.
But was it the truth? David knew 101 was not telling everything. He had refrained from mentioning the twins just to see if the Mecha would bring them up. It had not. But was it outright lying about who had built it?
And what of Drevin Olmier? What part did that crook play in this dark scenario?
He could not confront his Father directly. The man had been hiding something all along and would likely continue to protect he secrets. But there was someone David could talk to.
He touched down by a small pond on the large property, feeling his craft sink a little as the pads dug into the soft earth. The monitor display read 4:35 am. If memory served him, the person he sought should be up preparing for work. David popped open his canopy and jumped out onto the wet ground. He brushed the twigs and flecks of dried mud he'd got from his trek through the forest, from his flight suit, and tried to make his hair look less frazzled. He didn't want to be mistaken for a vagabond.
Nor did he want to be recognized. So he grabbed his flight glare blockers which were effectively the same as sunglasses, but obscured more of his face.
He took something else along too. Something he hoped he would not have to actually use.
8
A solitary light was on inside. As David cleared the trees and snuk onto the patio, he could see into the living room thorough the large glass doors beyond the pool. There was a figure standing by the dining table. He was already dressed for work, his attaché' case sitting on the table next to a stack of papers. The man was talking on his pod, gesturing unconsciously as he spoke. His body language was dramatic, as if he was in an argument and trying keep from raising his voice and waking other people in the house.
David hunkered down in the dark, bracing himself for the confrontation as he waited for the call to end. He only hoped that the man would not leave while he was on the pod… and that no one else in the house would wake up.
He wasn't ready for that confrontation. Not just yet.
When he look again, the man was shoving his pod in his coat pocket. It was time.
David rose from his hiding place, slipped on his glare blockers, and tip-toed hurriedly to the glass doors, just as the man grabbed his attaché case and started for the front portal.
That was when the floodlights came on.
David froze, the security lights blazing all around him. He should have anticipated so obvious a security measure.
The man turned and looked curiously at the figure silhouetted on the patio.
David waved. He didn't really know what else to do.
Amazingly the man just shook his head and walked towards the glass doors. As David watched in stunned silence, the man snicked open the lock on the sliding door and headed back into the house.
He hadn't given David a second look.
"Locked yourself out again?" the man said over his shoulder as he walked away "You're too old for this. How many times must I remind you to update your keycode before you go out?"
David stepped into the house, onto the dark wood floor. It had been years since he felt it beneath his feet.
"Excuse me, sir," he said "But I'm not who you think I am."
The man turned abruptly to see a strange boy dressed in a dark tight fitting suit. How had he thought this was his son? The boy was blond and his face obscured by large dark glasses that looked like goggles.
He also noticed the neural stun gun the boy was pointing in his direction.
"Sorry, about this," David said, speaking low to mask his voice. "But I am going to have to insist to keep your hands away from your pockets."
The man raised his arms quickly.
"Whatever you want," he said in a trembling voice. "Just please… don't hurt anybody".
"I just want to talk," David said in a calming voice.
He was doing his best to not enjoy the abject fear he saw in Henry Swinton's eyes.
(cont…)