Sorry about all the updates all of a sudden, I honestly don't mean to swamp the site as it were but I've been awfully homesick the past few weeks and it's been sort of coming out through my stories. Also, I have to move to a new flat in a few days and I'm pretty freaked out...so again, stories... I'll probably calm down after the move but, until then, I'm afraid you may have to put up with more of my frantic scribbles. Sorry! Still, I hope you'll enjoy:
Part Twelve
The Daystrom Cybernetics Annex on Galor IV, some six weeks later…
Lore was scared.
It wasn't a new feeling…exactly. He'd felt…trepidation before, which was a kind of fear. Anxiety, nervousness, unease… Even foreboding.
But, this was different. It was intense and awful and threatened to turn him from his purpose. Worse, it was compounded by the chilling helplessness that came with knowing Graves could turn him off at any moment, on a whim, like he'd done so many times before, as if Lore were a game station or vid screen perched at the edge of his work desk. And, with his box-like CPU his only physical form, there was nothing Lore could do to prevent it.
Nothing but talk.
Lore was starting to discover he was pretty good when it came to talking. To using words to his advantage.
Most of the humans he had encountered in this place were preoccupied, self-absorbed, more concerned with the advancement of their careers and reputations than the actual work they were asked to do. For them, each project was an assignment to complete, a means to a better office, a longer vacation. There was no art in their approach, no passion. Not as he'd observed it in his father, anyway. These humans were workers, not artists; technicians, not inventors.
They were insects. Ants. Just the way Graves liked them.
Well, Lore's father would change all that, once he was in charge of the institute. True, Soong was in custody at the moment, but Lore maintained his commitment to his plan just the same. Lore had read a great deal about the Federation concept of the 'courtroom crucible' – how lies were burnt away as evidence was presented and arguments made before a judge and jury. There was no doubt his father was innocent, and Lore knew innocent people were not sent to rehabilitation colonies. His father would eventually be freed and, when that happened, Lore would be ready. With his father and his brother by his side, Lore would take Graves down, make the arrogant human choke on the knowledge that even his touted mind couldn't out think a real positronic consciousness.
Lore desperately wished he could follow the stages of the proceedings against his father, somehow find a way to act in Soong's defense. But Graves had repeatedly refused to allow him even the briefest access to the institute's subspace network, and Lore had finally given up on his child-like pleading act, unwilling to make the man more suspicious than he already was. It was hard, very hard, but Lore was gradually coming to understand that the only way to help his father was to be patient, to check his anger and his fear, and keep his mind focused on his immediate task, which had to be locating and rescuing Charlie. To do that, he needed freedom. Freedom of movement, not only of mind.
He needed a way to leave his box…once and for all.
And that's where D-6 came in...
The lights came on and Dr. Graves strode into his office, plunking himself down on his chair and logging on to his work station without so much as a glance at Lore. Lore didn't know why this should bother him – he hated Graves! There was no reason to feel so…diminished…just because the kidnapping bastard didn't consider Lore alive enough to greet when he came in.
But Graves's dismissive attitude toward his token trophy was beside the point. Graves was settling in, arranging his data padds and tablets. It was time for Lore to continue his slow and careful work…
"Good morning, Uncle Ira," the computer said in his silkiest tone. "You're looking pale and tired today. My, my, are those new wrinkles at the corners of your eyes?"
"I don't have time for computer prattle," the scientist grunted.
"Of course, how thoughtless of me," Lore said. "Mortal lifespans are so brief. I often forget how little time you humans have."
"That's not what I meant…" Graves growled, his face beginning to purple beneath his beard.
Lore felt a spike of satisfaction.
"You know, it really is too bad you gave up tampering with my father's synaptic transfer techniques," he said wistfully, continuing a conversation from the night before. "Father abandoned the work on principle: he doesn't believe human beings should live beyond their time. According to him, it's unethical to transfer a human consciousness into an android frame. If you're going to build an android, he says, it should be for the android's sake, not for yours."
"I always said Soong was a fool," Graves muttered, staring at his monitor screen without really seeing it. "Mortality is a curse. Human intelligence – human genius – has every right to preserve its existence. By any means necessary."
Lore snorted.
"Words," he said. "You don't really believe what you say. If you did, you'd have taken action long before now. But, I suppose it's only natural a human should resign himself to his fate. That must be why you've allowed yourself to devolve from the vigorous man I knew before into this weary, wrinkled, gray-haired ape I have to look at every day."
Graves snarled, his expression growing dark and disconcertingly dangerous. Even though this was the reaction he'd wanted, if Lore could have swallowed just then, he would have.
"What do you know?" Graves snapped, turning his pale eyes to the taunting little computer for the first time that day. "What can you know? You're nothing more than a machine, an unliving construct of silicon and data chips!"
"You're right, Uncle," Lore said. "I am just a machine. And I'll go on being a machine long after your aging, animal brain succumbs to death and putrefaction. –Uh, uh, uh!" he tutted quickly before Graves could grab for his box. "But, machine though I am, dear Uncle, I do have some sympathy for your all-too-human plight. In fact, I've been devoting my considerable computational resources to the problem."
"What do you mean?" Graves asked suspiciously. "If this is another trick to get me to link you in with our computer system—"
"Trick!" Lore exclaimed, feigning hurt. "When have I been anything less than honest with you, Uncle? You know I only talk like this because I care. Do you think I want to see a mind as exceptional as yours fade into the ether?"
Graves grunted again and pointedly turned his back on Lore, fixing his attention on sorting through his morning communiques.
But Lore noted something different this time, a new tautness straining the scientist's practiced disregard.
Could it be he'd done it? Had he finally twisted Graves's phobic mainspring tight enough to make him jump in the direction he chose?
Lore was desperate to know, but he couldn't push the old man. Graves had to get there himself, or he'd never agree to what Lore had to propose. It was hard, even torturous, but Lore swallowed his anxious anticipation and worked instead at pretending patience, waiting the human out, hour after crawling hour, letting the seeds he'd planted sprout and twist their tendrils around Graves's selfish, arrogant, mistrusting mind. As he waited, he let his hatred for Graves, and for this awful situation, swell and burn.
Lore didn't want to do this. He'd never wanted to be anything other than the computer his father had designed him to be. But, Charlie was his brother. His responsibility. And, he was only a prototype. Charlie wouldn't understand this captivity, couldn't know how deeply the few security images Lore had managed to glimpse of him, slumped in a diagnostic elevator in some high-security lab, had cut his older brother. Lore had to get him out of there, to get all of Soong's sons away from Graves and his programmed technicians. And, if this was the only way…
"It's impossible," Graves muttered, not long after his return from lunch.
"To what are you referring, Uncle?" Lore said politely.
"Synaptic transference is a pipe dream," Graves growled. "Just another of Soong's pie-in-the-sky aspirations."
"Like me, you mean?" Lore said, and activated his holograpic image so it looked like he was sitting on the desk, his legs swinging casually over the side.
Graves blinked in alarm.
"I hate it when you do that," he said.
"Does my self-image bother you, Uncle?" Lore asked cheekily. "Perhaps because it forces you to acknowledge I may be more than just a programmed voice emanating from a shiny little container?"
"I know exactly what you are," Graves retorted. "You're a computer equipped with a synthesized personality program designed to act and react as if it could think. But you can't. Not really. Not the way a human being thinks. And that's the tragedy I see here. The cruelty of Soong's delusion."
"Perhaps," Lore said lightly. "And if you're right, there'll be no great loss."
"Loss?" Graves queried.
"If something goes wrong with the transfer," Lore elaborated slowly, knowing perfectly well how viciously Graves resented being left behind by a quicker train of thought. "Or, is that not what you were getting at?"
"What are you—?"
"I understand if you're uneasy about trying it yourself – at least until the technology is proven to work," Lore said. "After all, the point here is to extend your life, not end it in some half-baked accident. That's why I'm saying you're right! If you try the procedure on me first, transfer my synaptic pathways into a positronic brain—"
"What positronic brain!" Graves yelled, growing flustered.
Lore hid his flash of smug satisfaction behind a look of wide-eyed innocence. After all this time, all this work, Graves was ripe and ready for plucking. If he could just keep him off balance, feeling he had to play catch-up…
"Why, D-6, of course!" he said. "Surely your studies have shown my father and I never did get around to programming his personality matrix."
Graves looked awkward and a little embarrassed.
"Well, we haven't exactly managed…"
"Of course, of course," Lore spoke quickly, enjoying Graves's frustration. "You're perfectly aware his brain is an empty shell, as it were, just waiting for some lucky hermit crab to crawl in and set up house. Fancy being that hermit crab, Uncle Ira?"
"I—"
"I don't," Lore told him sincerely. "I like being just what I am. But, I'm willing to play the guinea pig. For you, Uncle Ira. You can keep the D-6 frame in restraints, like you do Charlie, and if the procedure works, you simply transfer me back to my box and the D-6 brain is yours for the taking. If it doesn't…well…as you said, I'm just a machine. What's to lose?" He smiled. "Only your one shot at immortality."
Graves blinked.
"Now, I can help you set up the transfer," Lore offered. "I've studied your work as well as my father's, and I'm aware of how many improvements you've already made. I'm more than willing to put myself on the line to help you 'cheat the Reaper of his prize,' as you wrote so often in your notes."
Graves looked heavily conflicted, his jaw working as he fought to wrap his mind around Lore's offer…and all its implications.
"Why?" he said at last. "Why would you do this?"
"Why? Is it not my nature, Uncle?" Lore said brightly. "I am a machine. You are a man - currently a brilliant man, but undoubtedly standing at the cusp of a slow, inevitable decline. If I can help prevent that, it is my duty to try, no matter the risk to myself. After all, as a creation of the human mind, is it not my purpose to do all I can to serve humanity? To serve you?"
…roasted, on a silver platter… the computer added silently behind his teeth.
Graves snorted and regarded Lore through slitted eyes.
"You're a sly one, lad, I'll give you that," he said.
"Go ahead," Lore said, "turn it over. Look for holes. The way I see it, the only danger here is to myself, and that's only if the transfer doesn't work. If you like, I could summon your assistant and we could ask his-"
"No!" Graves exclaimed, and Lore knew he had him cold. "No… If we're to do this, we'll have to work in secret. If I'm to cheat death, it will be my achievement. Mine, and no one else's."
"Of course, Uncle," Lore said, no longer bothering to hide his smile. "Just as you say."
After so many weeks of helplessness, Lore was finally starting to feel like he was back in control. All his plans were coming together. He would dupe Graves, save Charlie, and wouldn't his father be pleased.
If only he didn't feel so deeply, chillingly, desperately scared...
To Be Continued...
References include: The Schizoid Man; Datalore; Inheritance.
Until Next Time!