Android Paradox (8 page)

“Why don’t you wear lenses?”

“I don’t want anything to do with those. Whatever happened to talking to people? To learning how to do something? It’s depravity, I tell you.”

“Am I depraved, Lonnie?”

Lonnie laughed. “No. You’re sane compared to some of these humans walking around here.”

“Thanks.”

Lonnie leaned on his broom and looked at the clock on the wall. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but are you going to be here much longer? My granddaughter’s got a recital in the morning and I was hoping to be done with this place in the next hour or so.”

X stood up and gestured for him to take the area. Lonnie nodded to him respectfully. X started to walk away, then turned around and saw Lonnie sweeping and whistling. What was it like to be a human who didn’t participate in the hustle and bustle of the world? It made him curious how Lonnie had convinced the Council that the UEA halls needed a janitor, though he marveled at how clean the place was. Of course, Lonnie missed many spots. All it took was a simple moisture scan of the floor to see that his work was imperfect. He covered the floor in broad, uneven strokes, often missing corners and getting water on the walls. A sweeper bot would have been more precise. It would have also saved the UEA time, money, and supplies by getting just the right amount of clean with minimal effort. There was something in the haphazard patterns of his mopping—something human. One could learn something from the way he left patches of the floor unmopped and how he oversaturated others. Yet, once it all dried, it all looked the same.
 

Sameness. Were all androids the same? Would he become evil like Brockway one day? His thinking told him no. Brockway had either made a bad choice or he had been programmed to make bad choices. X knew that he wouldn’t make the same mistakes unless he was reprogrammed.

As he headed for the android quarters, he saw a man with spiked brown hair wearing a white lab coat running frantically down the hall.
 

“X, where is he?” the scientist asked. He put his hands on X’s shoulders and shook him. “Tell me!”

“Dr. Brockway, I had to kill him.”

Dr. Brockway shook his head and tears filled his eyes. “Goddamnit,” he whispered. “It’s not right.”

“I’m sorry,” X said. “If it’s any consolation, he went rogue. He wasn’t himself. He was acting erratically. He was a mass murderer, Doctor.”

Dr. Brockway shook his head. “I should have made a better firewall. I should have protected him. This is my fault!”

X ignored the doctor’s grievous cries. “We need you upstairs. That’s why we called you. We got his black box. We need you to determine if he was hacked.”

 
The doctor’s eyes widened. “A hacker? You can’t be serious. That’s impossible.”

X turned and headed toward the engineering labs. “Come and see for yourself.”

Chapter 7

X and Dr. Brockway entered the engineering room. Digital screens lined the gray walls and hovered over desks as human engineers touched them and manipulated data. Androids walked around the room with their bodies open and their electronic innards exposed for interfacing with the engineers. You could taste circuitry and silicon, and vents at the top of the room sucked the acrimonious smells out and replaced them with neutral, fresh air that smelled faintly like clean laundry and prevented headaches from long exposure to metal fumes.
 

Brockway’s black box sat on a table in the middle of the room. Fahrens and Shortcut were talking together when the doctor ran up to the table and fell to his knees.
 

“God, it’s true. He’s gone, isn’t he?”

Fahrens frowned. “We’re sorry, Dr. Brockway.”

The doctor beat the table and wiped tears from his eyes. “He was my best. I never created another android like him. He was like my best friend. I just don’t understand what happened.”

X detected a pattern in the man’s actions. Human grief: outbursts, denial, refusal to accept loss. His behavior was erratic for a human, and not that different from a rogue android’s. An uncanny connection, but not useful for the mission at hand. His algorithm chip often sent him down long, existential paths, but this time he stopped his analysis—he had no time or patience for philosophy right now.

X held out his hand and helped the doctor up. The man’s hands were coarse, probably from handling android circuits every day, and he smelled of alcohol and sweat.
 

The doctor wiped his cheek and sniffled. “You fool! You couldn’t even salvage his body, could you? I can’t even give him a proper burial.”

X folded his arms. “Burying androids is prohibited under UEA law. Too much cadmium and mercury. If that was your intention, then I helped you avoid a jail sentence, though you may still have one if you were negligent in your programming.”

Dr. Brockway stiffened. “What are you trying to say?” He stepped closer to X and pointed at him angrily. “You’re blaming me for this?”

Fahrens threw himself between X and Dr. Brockway and the doctor stumbled backward, his anger dissipating as fast as it had come. The doctor banged the table and sobbed.

Fahrens picked up the black box. “Dr. Brockway, I know this is hard for you, but we need to decode this box.”

“Why? Couldn’t you get into the firewall?”

“No. Someone changed it.”

Dr. Brockway wrinkled his brow. “That’s not possible.” He took the box and held it in front of his face as his lenses activated. “Hmm. It doesn’t look the same.” He pulled up a stool and sat down. “I’ll need a few minutes, guys.”

Shortcut paced around the table, humming. X sat on the table and stared at Dr. Brockway, studying his face as he reviewed the code.

Someone tapped Shortcut on the shoulder. Shortcut turned, and his face went long. “Crandall.”

Crandall, plumper and sloppier in person, straightened his shoulders and adjusted his sweater vest and tie. “We ought to have a little chat about you disconnecting on me earlier.”

“I didn’t have a choice,” Shortcut lied. “Sorry about that.”

“I’m your new boss now,” Crandall said.

“Really? I guess I didn’t know that. Thanks for the update, boss.”

“I don’t care if you like me or not. You’ll obey my orders. You don’t report to Fahrens. You report to me. And speaking of reports, speak. Now.”

“Okay.”

“Speak!”

“I just did. I said okay, Crandall.”

“Tell me about your mission, smarty-pants.”

“Like hell I’m telling you. Read the dossier. I just gave a report to the Council.”

“Give me a report of everything you did. This is very important.”

“I’m not going to participate in this bureaucratic redundancy.”

“You went to the Council without reporting to me first,” Crandall said, scowling. “That’s not right. I don’t care if Fahrens is the commander. You go through me first.”

“Yeah, like I would have disobeyed a direct order from the Council to give you an update.”

“You were in the Council limo. You could have called.”

“So you’re monitoring my every move now? What kind of espionage techniques are you using?”

“That’s not appropriate.”

“Really? And you spying on me is appropriate? You asked me a question you already knew the answer to. Don’t try that crap with me, Crandall. I don’t care who you are, boss or not.”

“You’re going to pay for your insubordination.”

“Write me up, then.”

Crandall fumed as he stomped off.

Shortcut shook his head and elbowed X. “Can you believe that guy?”

“New boss?” X asked. “He looks like he can hardly take care of himself.”

“Don’t ask,” Shortcut said.

“You should have been more tactful,” X said. “Ineffectual or not, he can damage your career.”

Shortcut looked at X, hurt. “Let him. At the end of the day, he’ll know that I’m the best freaking hacker in the UEA. At least I don’t sit around and watch robotic cat videos every day.” He flushed as he spoke, and he cracked open a can of strawberry soda and took a big gulp. He crumpled the can, cutting his palm on one of the sharp edges as he tossed it into a nearby trash can. Groaning at the small cut in his hand, he reached for a tissue. “I’m going to file a worker's comp claim for this cut—just to screw up Crandall’s safety record.”

“A little respect, Shortcut,” Fahrens said. His voice was stern and final. He was looking over Dr. Brockway’s shoulder.

“That
was
respectful,” Shortcut whispered to X. “I didn’t bring up the cat videos to Crandall’s face.”

Dr. Brockway motioned to Fahrens. “I found a way around the door.”

“What can you tell us?” Fahrens asked. “Was it a hacker?”

“The coding is quite simple,” Dr. Brockway said. “Someone definitely hijacked this box. But the weird thing is that there’s no message. They decrypted the existing code, embedded the condor logo, scrambled everything, and then installed another firewall on top of it. I’m impressed that they decrypted our code, but less impressed that they didn’t do anything more exciting.”

“That explains the firewall,” Fahrens said. “But how did Brockway go rogue? Was it a virus?”

“No. No virus except—”

Dr. Brockway manipulated a digital screen and zoomed in on the burning condor. He touched the door and it lit up, ringed with golden light. He entered a command and touched the door again. The burning condor froze, then exploded. The screen went hazy and disconnected, but Dr. Brockway remained in the virtual world, controlling the environment with his lens.
 

“I want that screen re-established!” Fahrens cried. Several engineers swarmed the table and tried to figure out how to get it back online. “Doctor, what do you see?”

Dr. Brockway contorted his face in disgust. “My God, but it doesn’t make sense!”

“What doesn’t make sense?” Fahrens asked.
 

X jumped down from the table and approached the doctor.
 

“How is this possible?” Dr. Brockway asked.

“Dr. Brockway, give me a verbal report of what you see,” Fahrens said. “I need an answer, NOW!”

The doctor took off his headset. “It’s a hacker, alright.”

“Who?” Fahrens asked.

Dr. Brockway looked at the black box again. He picked it up, studying it. “She—”

BOOM!

The box exploded, sending everyone running for cover. The sprinkler system activated as the room filled with smoke and fire. X and Shortcut put out the fire with fire extinguishers, and when the smoke and foam cleared, they surveyed the damage.
 

Moans and cries of pain filled the room. Dr. Brockway lay on the floor in a bloody mess. Etched in the ground around him was the logo of the burning condor.
 

“Good Lord,” Fahrens said, coughing. “We have no idea what he saw.”

Shortcut ran to the digital screen hovering over Dr. Brockway and, after a few attempts, re-established the connection and brought up an image of the virtual room, which was also smoldering. He couldn’t rewind to the footage Dr. Brockway had seen, but he pulled up a screen full of diagnostic code. “Sir, that black box wasn’t programmed to explode.”

“What are you talking about?” Fahrens asked, wiping blood from his face.

“It wasn’t programmed. Someone detonated it. Just now. And whoever they are, they weren’t careful.” He pulled up a map of the city and pointed to a blinking red dot. “The hacker is there.”

“That’s the shopping district,” X said. His eyes glowed red and he activated his guns. “He’s mine.”

“Agreed,” Fahrens said. “Get out of here and find him. I want that hacker alive.”

Chapter 8

X and Shortcut rode hover cycles to a shopping mall that took up several city blocks. Surrounded by skyscrapers, it was the largest shopping mall on the continent. It rose seven stories into the air, white and resplendent in the afternoon sun. Digital banners hung from the walls, advertising gadgets and androids, and commercials flickered on screens placed at intervals in the parking lot. Jazzy music played from speakers under streetlights, and crowds of people passed in and out of the mall’s gigantic doors with shopping bags and android assistants following them, talking and laughing and watching movies on their digital lenses.
 

As X and Shortcut crossed a long bridge over a man-made lake near the entrance, they smelled enhanced aromas of food—doughnuts, cookies, stir-fry. The smells were designed to entice new customers to visit one of the seven food courts advertised along the bridge.

“He’s still here,” Shortcut said, checking his lens. “Still in the same spot.”

“I’ll go find him,” X said.

“I’m coming with you,” Shortcut said. “Since we’re dealing with a human this time, I might have an advantage.”

“It’s going to be dangerous,” X said. “Sometimes hackers have bodyguards.”

“I’m ready,” Shortcut said. He pulled out a small black rod that shot sparks from one end like a Taser. “Besides, you’re
my
bodyguard.”

They hurried through the mall, pushing their way through crowds of people and past kiosks with digital lenses for sale, toy stores and open-air restaurants, coffee shops, massage parlors, furniture stores, boutiques and video game stores.

They took the escalator to the second floor and Shortcut said, “He’s on this floor. Food court.”

They beelined for the food court, and the smell of food grew stronger as they neared.

“This is probably a solo job,” Shortcut said. “We’re talking about a pretty sophisticated hacker. Whoever it was, he had incredible skill to modify a black box like that. Hacker’s Law: The more skilled the hacker, the scrawnier he is.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Hackers are cowards,” Shortcut said. “Digital vandals. All they’re looking for is money and respect. As much as they try to emulate old-school mobsters, they’re no good at violence. Remember that, X. We can probably rattle him with our words. We might not need our weapons.”

Shortcut stopped suddenly and grabbed X. “He’s moving. We’ve got to hurry.”

They ran to a balcony overlooking the food court. X scanned the area, and Shortcut did the same with his lens. There were hundreds of people, and many of them were using digital screens.