Wyecomb was training the pulsing blue point of a laser scalpel on a factory seam behind the felled unit’s left ear when, distantly, he heard the cough of a jeep’s engine followed by the slam of his screen. He did not look up, but called out.
“Leave them on the table, Lieutenant.”
“Leave what?” Wyecomb looked up, and saw the lean form of Colonel Krieger pass through the tiny front office of his quonset and into the workshop. He wore a tattered issue tunic untucked over khaki shorts. A forty centimetre cudgel of dried, stained baobab hung loosely in his right hand; the witchstick was accepted as token of authority among the local tribe, and Krieger had enthusiastically adopted it early in his tenure. “Lieutenant Kotcheff tells me we’re down a doll. Tell me he’s wrong, Mister.” Krieger always used the honorific, reminding Wyecomb of his status as the only civilian on the base, and omitted the paramech’s name, revealing his contempt for it. His very presence in the lab set Wyecomb’s senses tingling.
Wyecomb rose from his perch at the table. “See for yourself, Colonel.”
Krieger moved with uncustomary slowness toward the counter as Wyecomb eased the unit onto its back. The breasts had evaporated, leaving brittle pouches of collapsed skin, dimpled with nipples the colour of dead leaves. A milky discharge oozed from fissures at the temples, unseen by the vacant eyes that stared to the halogen threads in the lighting grid above. Above each hipbone, softly serrated shadows were discolouring the desiccating flesh, remembering where fierce fingers had gripped the synthetic skin. As the dehydration advanced through the unit, imprints of violence rose slowly to its surface like photographic exposures rising to the light.
Krieger belied no emotion. “What’d she do – span?” he said, casually.
“Hardly. Isn’t a quarter through its cycle.” Wyecomb spoke warily.
“Maybe she – it – just faulted?”
“When a 550 faults, it shuts down. There’s no doubt of cause, Colonel.” Wyecomb snapped a command into the air, and the scanner head on the workbench buzzed into action above the contused chest of the unit. He turned back to Krieger, confidently. “What we call fatal abuse. Defined as irreparable damage to the hard assets resulting directly from excessive user behaviours.” He gave it a moment to sink in, then added. “It appears to have been deliberate.”
Krieger studied the scanner’s image, not sure what he was looking at. “And it’s irreparable.”
“Completely.”
Krieger turned away impatiently. His eyes skipped about the interior of the lab, his witchstick twitched. “I’ll have to take your word for it. What do we do next?”
“I’d asked Lieutenant Kotcheff to supply me with logs. If I need to investigate further, interviews and such, I’ll need your help.”
The Colonel’s fidgetting ceased abruptly. He fixed Wyecomb with a stare. “Investigate? Investigate what?”
“Finding the man responsible. I’ll need it for the insurance claim, and I imagine you’ll want to take some disciplinary action.”
“Do you, now…” Krieger said, slowly.
Wyecomb stopped his work; his confident tone was suddenly gone. “You agree, Colonel, something must be done?”
“Absolutely.” Krieger replied, with a sheen to his voice. “But I was thinking more of you arranging for a replacement.”
“But what about…?” Wyecomb’s eyes referred to the destroyed android.
The Colonel’s hard eyes conferred a moment’s consideration on the unit. “The unit is irreparable, so you replace it. It’s right there in our service contract, Mister.”
Wyecomb stared at Krieger, unable to believe the blasphemy. “You’re not going to do anything about this – this -”
“This what, Mister?”
“This abuse – this vandalism.” Faced with Krieger’s complacent stare, Wyecomb forged on. “These units, they’re not fucking toys, for Christ’s sake.” he spluttered, his anger overwhelming his propriety.
Krieger exploded with laughter. “Mister, you ought to read your company’s brochure,” he panted, regaining his composure. “Fucking toys is exactly what they are.”
Wyecomb puckered, forcing moisture into his mouth. “They’re more than that, Colonel. They’re better than any doll you ever had. You know it. Your men know it.” His voice was tight, but confident.
Something in his tone made Krieger pause. “What’s your point, mister?”
Wyecomb swallowed a boulder of baked air. “Your dolls perform way above spec because they’ve been modified to.”
Krieger completed his circuit, walked right up to Wyecomb, and stood just six inches from him, his pale eyes boring into Wyecomb’s. ” You’ve been modifying these units?” He sounded impressed.
“Mostly sub-system work so far, to give them better tolerance to the climate. But I’ve done a few behaviourals as well.”
“Now that you mention it…” Krieger clucked, knowledgeably. “I’m impressed, Mister. Frankfurt know about this?”
Wyecomb’s slim modesty couldn’t hide a blush of pride. “No. They will, but not yet. Nothing personal, Colonel, but field service in the Sahara is not my ultimate career objective. But while I’m here, if my personal R&D projects can deliver better results for the company’s client – well, we’re all happy, right?” He leaned forward, earnestly. “The point is, I’ve got a lot of work invested in these. I can give your boys dolls that do them better than the company ever intended. But they have to learn to respect what they have. This -” he waved to the countertop – “It can’t be tolerated. You lose an active unit. I lose months of R&D. We both lose too much.”
The colonel nodded slowly, as if digesting a profound truth. “And these mods of yours,” he continued in a fulsome tone, his witchstick tapping at the android’s upper arm, “To what extent might they be responsible for this unit’s present condition?”
The warming air between them turned to ice. Wyecomb coughed in astonishment. “You can’t be serious.”
Krieger’s expression said he was. “Don’t recall much of a problem with failure before you got here…”
“The problem is your men. They’ve got to be disciplined to -”
There was a whisper in the thin air, then a shriek of shattering polymer as the unit’s midsection exploded, sending shards of synthetic skin showering to the floormats. A jagged wound splayed like a huge, thickly-petalled flower where the stomach had been. A tremor jerked through the body and the right arm slipped over the edge of the counter, then swung like a pendulum, describing the sudden silence in a diminishing arc of pale dust. Wyecomb watched, paralysed with shock.
“Discipline of the men-“ Krieger spoke in a voice like buffed steel, his eyes welded to the Paramech. “-is my job. Your job is to repair equipment. Don’t ever get confused again.” He lifted the unit’s dangling left arm with the tip of his stick, and dropped it onto the table. He paused, looked at the ruin on the counter. “There appears to have been an accident with this unit. No fault of yours. No fault of anyone’s. We’ll file a report, eventually. Just get it repaired, or a reasonable substitute on duty, by 1800 tonight and I’ll have no reason to investigate further..”
Wyecomb swallowed, dryly. His heart was rioting in his narrow chest.
“Alternatively,” Krieger continued, “I’ll be compelled to advise SSOC that our contractor is failing to meet minimum performance requirements. I’ll also have to report my knowledge that you’ve performed unauthorized mods on active field units.” He was gratified to see a fresh spasm of panic in Wyecomb’s eyes. “I don’t know how well you know your company, but let me tell you,” he added, almost conspiratorially, “that will be one career-killing comment field.” The stick swished against Wyecomb’s lapel, never touching his flesh. “1800, Mister.” Krieger strode toward the exit.
“I can’t do it, Colonel,” Wyecomb called out, his voice quivering with desperation, “I have nothing here, no resources, nothing-”
Krieger stopped, and turned. His face was creased with genuine curiousity. “How exactly do you run a service depot with no spareware?”
Wyecomb frowned, as if the question were profound. “It’s mostly software. Just download it. I’ve got a few hard assets in my hangar queen, but nothing that will-”
“Your what?” Krieger followed Wyecomb’s gaze to a plexi shipping tube on a shelf against the back wall. The contours of the draped shape inside the tube were unmistakable. Krieger started towards it.
“Hangar queen. It’s an outdated unit. Just keep it on hand for parts.” Hesitantly, Wyecomb followed the soldier.
Krieger stopped in front of the shelf. “Let me see her.”
Wyecomb opened the hatch and pulled away the drape with a tired gesture. “Like I said, she’s just a parts depot. She’s barely operational.” His voice was cold, meek. “She’s pretty old, too. 330.”
The Olympia 330 had been modelled on less extravagant lines than the 550 series of comforters that Krieger and his unit were using. Five feet six inches tall, with slim shoulders, and less muscle mass than was now considered desirable. Her breasts were firm, and her thighs slender. She was completely hairless. Her mouth was wide and full. Her eyes were taped over with strips of matte black duct tape. Krieger peeled back one piece; an empty socket shone back at him. “She looks pretty much intact.”
“She is, pretty much…”
“So we’ll take this for the time being,” said Krieger.
“She’s junk, colonel. She’s not equipped to…to..”
“To fuck fifty grunts a day?” Krieger surveyed the unit again, from shoulder to pelvis and back again. “She looks plenty equipped to me.” Wyecomb said nothing. Krieger nodded, smiling, but there was no pleasure in his face. “We have a contract, Mister. Five comforters. Fix her up.”
Wyecomb stammered, “There’ll be technical issues, Colonel. Protocols … permissions…”
There was a quiet rush as Krieger aspirated. “I don’t expect her to meet your usual standards, Mister. I don’t even expect her to meet spec. You owe me a doll. I have a hungry crew. Just get her operational.” He cast a fleeting, slit-eyed glance at the android. “For once in your life, Mister, “ he turned back to Wyecomb with a gaze that was both threatening and weary, “Fuck procedure.” He strode out into the merciless heat of the desert mid-morning, the witchstick jumping at his side.
Wyecomb slumped back against the shelving and slowly swung his gaze from the demolished 550 to the defunct, dormant 330, and back again. With no sexual impulse to confuse his deliberations (his hormone blocks were thoroughly effective) he saw only inoperable machines and impossible expectations. Finally, he closed his eyes, and saw a promising career spiralling away on a sudden cyclone of Saharan dust. He snapped to just as his legs began to buckle. He stood, quickly, with a rush to his head. On his desktop, the dedicated line to Frankfurt blinked its cursor. He looked, with fresh, more desperate eyes, at the 330, the 550, and the desk clock. And the screen.
I don’t know how well you know your company…
“Fuck procedure,“ Wyecomb muttered, “I have orders.” He rose.
Comforter behaviours postdated the 330 by several years, and while the documentation admitted no such possibility, there was no technical reason to expect they couldn’t be applied. She possessed all the basic behaviourals required, Wyecomb recalled, they just needed to be stitched together into a new operating regimen. He short-booted the unit and walked it to a workbench, and watched it lie itself down in obedient silence. He barked a scanner into attendance, and sent a query into its archive. It returned, and disgorged a lengthy scroll of outdated but prosaic instruction language onto his screen, capped with an oversized title in an inappropriately ornate font: Implementing CLisa.
So, she had a name. He began to burrow into her epidermal encryption, and soon hit brick. Good brick. He pummelled it with decryption codecs. Gates opened, layers of security peeled away, and he pushed forward, deeper, toward her core. Meanwhile, in an analytical corner of his mind, a question was forming.
This brick was too new for CLisa’s generation. Which meant it had been added later. Why?
That question was overshadowed by a growing sense of urgency. For a simple prelim, it was taking far too long. Then, like a spelunker squeezing through an ever narrowing aperture suddenly stumbling into a vast cavern, Wyecomb slipped through the last of CLisa’s superficial defences and he pitched forward into her soul. Somewhere along the way, his breathing stopped.
He had read everything ever documented on C-330’s. All the archives described the unit’s interior as spacious but primitive, barely functional by current standards, a cavern. What Wyecomb faced was a cathedral – spacious, but packed with detail of extraordinary complexity. CLisa’s core held more intelligence than he’d ever seen in a single unit. Her toolset was vast, rich with infinitely refined behaviours, operating procedures he’d never heard of, context patterns of incredible sophistication. She possessed expansive culture and acclimatization libraries. Physically, she had abilities and permissions that were troubling in their candor. Beyond sexual. Violent. Lethal. They were also disturbingly accessible, too close to the surface. It was as if some vital membrane was missing. Something…
On a hunch, he sent forth a simple prompt.
>bio
He opened the file, and CLisa’s past rippled onto his screen. Every assignment, objectives and results, postscripted with the cocktail of behaviours assigned for each. A quick visual scan set Wyecomb’s heart hammering as he read names that rang with historical import.
Rio, Khartoum, Nicosia, Hong Kong. She’d clocked kills in a dozen locations on three continents. She was what the company had then called a Special Diplomat, an assassin empowered to a level of independence long since outlawed in the Reyjavik Convention. Now decommissioned, all her lethal behaviours were intact, though dormant; her instruction board sat empty, ready for fresh input.
Wyecomb riffled her basics, her essential behaviours. As he suspected, they were rooted in hardware. No amount of hacking could undo them. And, with a shiver, he identified that parameter, that prevailing condition that he’d failed to identify earlier.
She had autonomy. The power to make her own decisions, judge her own actions, decide her own fate.
Wyecomb looked at the supine profile on the bench with a slow, respectful gaze.
Get her ready, he’d said.
At 3:20, Wyecomb hotlined to Krieger’s office. His clerk answered. “Colonel’s busy. Make it wait.”
“It can’t -”
“It’ll have to.”
“I have to speak to him, it’s extremely-”
“The Colonel is engaged.” The speaker droned in disconnection mode. He re-keyed, heard the buzzing of a locked off circuit. He keyed off.
Wyecomb sat on a folding stool, looking at the 330’s profile, for a long time. Krieger’s eyes bored into his memory. Krieger’s words played again and again in his mind.
Get her ready.
He began to cut and paste behaviours. He applied new instructions with textbook precision, noting carefully where embedded behaviours were suppressed, and by what process. Several, he noticed, were outdated and provably faulty. A few were ones he’d identified through his own research as particularly susceptible to local conditions. He stuck to the book. No-one auditing his work would find any evidence of improvisation, or malpractice. All the while a dark chamber in his heart pounded with a fearful certainty: this doll would not tolerate even casual abuse, much less the concentrated violence that had felled the 550. But – Wyecomb allowed himself a small, rueful smile – he had his orders.
He reached up, peeled away the tape over the left eye, looked into the gleaming polychrome cavern of the socket. She needed eyes. He turned to the 550; while the body was demolished, the unit’s eyes were undamaged, and far from empty. Their opticlog would contain an encrypted record of the last user, a coded sexual fingerprint designed to be easily passed among the comforters’ commnet, and a detailed recollection of the last encounter.
Wyecomb smiled, sensing some perverse poetry in his work. He avoided downloading the opticlog to a terminal where his eyes could see their contents; instead, he set the eyes into the 330’s vacant sockets, and booted the unit, then looked down.
In an eyeblink, the 550’s intimate memory of its final, fatal encounter and the identity of its last, abusive client were transferred into the 330. She was complete.
Wyecomb coughed, and the gooseneck twitched. “Implementing CLisa.”
She woke as they always did: suddenly, completely, with a vacant stare as they digested the updated instructions. Her eyes found him too quickly, and pierced him with concern.
There is no target. Is this correct?
“Yes.”
But I protect myself – by what degree?
“Any.”
The 330’s eyes did a slow blink as she processed this new mandate. At the same time, the data from the 550’s opticlog was factored and assimilated. The eyes opened, blue and beseeching, and the 330 spoke, with an intimacy reserved for her prime programmer.
There has been bad damage.
Wyecomb met the even stare with his own, his eyes stinging. Something lumpish had worked its way into his throat. “You’re better now.” His words were carefully chosen. He could see the interpreter software running options.
Do you mean that I am healed, or that I am improved?
“You can fix it.”
I may fix it, or I am able to fix it
He said nothing, but handed her a bagged jumpsuit, and stepped slowly away, to another workstation. After a few keystrokes, he began dictating into his logfile. “Port complete. No precedent or documentation for this adapt was available, but I believe the port is technically successful, though high risk, repeat, high risk. The compatibility of current 550/v code with 330/c logic is dubious. Strike that. Hazardous. The 330 appears to possess hard behaviours which may not be governed by 550 instruction sets. Nonetheless, I have followed orders, and shipped the 330, with misgivings, and under protest.” He filed to Frankfurt, and copied Krieger, knowing that the colonel’s filter would prevent any message from reaching HQ. He filed secure backups in his local archive. The record would survive somewhere. He turned to the 330, now sheathed in the thin fabric shell. Her eyes were large, innocent and wary. It was, Wyecomb noted wryly, a seductive combination.
“You’ll need to find Kotcheff, in the supply hut.” He opened the airlock, and a gulp of hot, tired air assailed them.
The 330 stood, with more dignity than any machine should enjoy, then strode out into the compound, her buttocks weaving a smooth, confident beat through the afternoon heat. Wyecomb watched her progress. As she approached the end of the compound, Wyecomb was pleased to see the grunts emerge like helpless animals drawn to the charms of an irresistible new predator. They formed a small parade behind her, clustering into the narrow porch of the comfort hut in the distance. They were, from his vantage, a mere disturbance of the dust, bare ripples in the endless heat that beat up from the dirt and decay.
“Fuck them,” said Wyecomb quietly, “Fuck them all.”
The hammering on his door came from no human hand; some blunt instrument was slamming the front wall of the hut, sending tremors right into his brain. Wyecomb crawled up through the thick blanket of somniacs, saw darkness outside, heard the strident voice of an MP. “Wyecomb? Five seconds, and we’re coming in.” Another barrage on the door. Fear encased his head like a helmet of wet steel.
He staggered out through the screen door, into the grasping, tattooed arms of four MP’s. They trundled him into the back of an idling jeep. “Downtown, Mister,” And they lurched away, down the compound.
Wyecomb knew he could not be hallucinating, though he seemed to be. The camp was a surreal carnival of fire and anarchy. Torches, sparklers, zingers, flares – incendiaries exploded everywhere, lighting the camp with erratic, bewitching light. Vague human forms danced in and out of the sudden shadows, coupling and uncoupling into confusing shapes. The din of human voices was deafening. Under it all ran the insistent, penetrating beat of primal drums. The vehicle wove through the throng and the noise at terrifying speed. The trip seemed like six hours in hell, but a mere two minutes after he left the lab, Wyecomb found himself in the CO’s cramped, highly lit office.
Krieger wasn’t there. Kotcheff was, settled familiarly in the Colonel’s swivel chaise, his fingers working the edges of a ziploc bag that contained some dark, viscous mass.
Another baggie lay on the front of the desk. It’s contents were less bloody, and smaller.
“Balls, Mister Wyecomb,” Kotcheff said, answering the question the paramech hadn’t asked. He leaned forward and slapped the second bag beside it. “And that, if you can believe it, is a heart. A man’s heart. The engine of life. Can you believe that’s all that we have inside us, keeping us going? Looks pretty frail, don’cha think?” Kotcheff made some intestinal noises. He was drunk, Wyecomb realized suddenly.
“Where is the Colonel?” he asked, an edge of panic in his voice.
“A man’s whole life, right there,” Kotcheff continued, his tone slightly maudlin. “Heart and balls.” His tone turned curious, “Tell me, did someone higher up order dolls that dismember their clients? Or is this one of your enhancements?”
Wyecomb’s stomach was a volcano. He could not take his eyes from the two plastic bags. For all his experience building androids, he’d never seen real human body parts before. The sight of them paralysed him. But his imagination was taking a steeper toll. “Where – is Krieger?”
“Can they all do this?” Kotcheff asked, “Physically tear your heart out? I mean, as a user, I should know…It’s a risk, right?” His eyes fixed Wyecomb, demanding an answer.
“He asked for it.”
“What do you mean?”
“The colonel. He asked for it, specifically. This unit, on duty. I warned him … ” He stopped, reason taking hold. “Perhaps I should contact my office.” he said, as evenly as he could.
Kotcheff studied him leisurely, his head bobbing. “Perhaps…” His eyes settled on the bags of offal, then floated back to Wyecomb, the accusation loud and clear.
“He ordered this, Lieutenant. Check the logs. I cautioned against it, but he ordered it.” Wyecomb stammered, his eyes drifting back to the bloody sacks on the desk. “I can’t be held responsible. You’re the ones who – you’re all responsible – I had no choice-” He was interrupted by a door slamming open behind him.
“You have a problem, Mister.”
The voice was unmistakable. Wyecomb snapped to, his hysteria shocked into submission. Krieger entered the office like a hurricane. “That’ll do, Sergeant.” He slapped a curling tube of faxpaper onto the desk, stirring a tiny protest of dust, and settled into his chair as Kotcheff scuttled out of it. He opened a low drawer and hoisted a 40 ounce bottle of black market Glenfiddich onto the desktop. “Join me?”
Wyecomb’s head swam. “What’s going on, Colonel?”
Krieger cocked his head toward the porthole, to the sounds of celebration, then theatrically noticed the bags of flesh on his desk. “Ah, this – yes. Sete is dead.” Wyecomb did not react. “Sete. The local warlord. The bastard that’s been stirring up this shithole for the past two years.” Wyecomb’s face still barely changed expression.
“I’m sure this is a good thing, Colonel, but-”
Krieger moved in, with a slow smile. “Unbelievable luck. See, we’re contracted to protect the oasis. Nothing more. We’re forbidden to engage in local issues. It’s been difficult. Frustrating. This son of a bitch has been trying our patience for so long…” Krieger smiled, leaned forward, spoke quietly. “Rumour is, he was murdered by a white witch. Some phantom. Wooed her way into his bed… Just the local gossip, of course, we have no reliable information.” Krieger paused, looking confused, “My grasp of the dialect isn’t perfect and I haven’t seen the body, but I gather she removed his heart through his mouth. You’re almost a doctor, Wyecomb – is that possible?”
Wyecomb didn’t answer. It was all he could do to control the tremors shivering his body. “Where-”
“Where would a man of his naturally suspicious nature have gotten so comfortable with white women?” the colonel put, expansively, “Good question. One can only assume he’d had a long and gratifying relationship with them. Gotten to know a lot of them. Over a period of time, as it were. Probably figured they were all the same. Purely pleasure. Not a dangerous bone in their bodies. Reasonable conclusion.” There was no sympathy in his voice. “Or-” Krieger exaggerated confusion, “Or did you mean where is the woman who dealt the man this most unhappy blow?” He let the question hang, his eyes bright with knowledge.
Wyecomb had no answer. Krieger turned his head, unsteadily, to the window in his wall, which was a ragged porthole onto the African sands beyond. “Who knows. It’s a local issue, none of our concern.” He looked back at the baggies. “Curious, though, that she’d leave these souvenirs at our doorstep… Anyway, all that aside, we have other business.”
“Colonel?”
“You were going to supply a replacement for the unit that went down. Where is it?”
A whole new seam of fear opened in Wyecomb’s gut. “I sent her down, last night, on schedule … she … she’s …”
“Kotcheff? You take delivery of a doll last night? 1800 hours or so?”
“No sir, Colonel.”
“But she came, I saw her. Right here. You know she did, she -” Wyecomb’s gaze strayed to the bloodied bags, and his voice stopped dead, and his eyes found the Colonel’s.
“Seems you have a doll gone AWOL, Mister.” Krieger leaned forward over the desk, his voice honeyed. “We can keep this between ourselves for now – Frankfurt doesn’t have to know. You’ll sort it out.” Krieger smiled. “Hell, it’s just a little inventory problem. You’ll sort it out.” He poured an inch of the single malt into a paper cup and pushed it across the desk toward Wyecomb. “Have a drink, Mister. You look a little off colour.”