Though a golden savannah stretched before their eyes outside, and the air rippled with heat, the temperature gauge was stuck at minus forty.
Andy McCain, the captain of the Ramirez and one of Space-Col’s best empathic evaluators specializing in android testing, slowly brought the machine down.
They were nearly at their destination.
Heedless of the crackling cold, antelopes grazed calmly, as if not hearing the roar of the engines and failing to see the bulky shape of the Ramirez.
This surprised no one. Everybody knew all the reality overlays by heart. For the sex fiends among the pilots, there even were overlays that changed all physical obstacles into gigantic naked ladies, moaning loudly and satisfying their unquenchable urges in all conceivable ways. Those were quickly scrapped – banned by the Space Visualization Committee after a sudden and major spike in the number of collisions. Pilots found the dirty images distracting. Strange, given that prostitution had been legalized years before, quickly becoming one of the major sources of income to the planetary budget.
Only a few people still cleaved to the old traditions, sticking with a single partner for life, vowing to remain faithful until the end of their days. The wives of such exceedingly rare individuals gifted their partners clone-androids manufactured with use of their own genetic code. Those copies looked exactly like their archetypes and were unerringly obedient to their masters. Men were therefore able to satisfy their sexual drives without risking marital infidelity, while most wives could sleep soundly.
Most, because some still preferred to obsess over ‘what ifs’.
They were the target group for the Sexy Seductress package. For an extra charge, of course. Once you paid up, an android in the guise of the wife would do its best to seduce the husband at every possible occasion. As an effect, the husband of the jealous wife was so utterly drained by the efforts of the unquenchable doppelganger, he had no strength, let alone the will to risk a fling.
But there were even less trusting individuals out there. Those enjoyed the Secret Surveillance package. It allowed them to see what their husbands did after touching down in port.
It didn’t take much time for the enterprising manufacturers to start offering a counter-package. So called ‘masking’.
For another fee, the image of the husband could be used to fabricate fake videos of what he was up to – those were, generally speaking, long and tedious sequences of the man piloting his ship, broadcast in place of whatever was actually happening.
That counter-package didn’t last long on the market without a specifically tailored counter-counter-package. And so on and so forth. The most interesting of the packages on offer was something called Genuine Connection.
In order to activate it, the wife had to order a clone-android made with her husband’s genetic material. That android would stay home with her at all times. And thanks to special implants, the husband could take control of it in real time. To have sex, that is. Meanwhile, all stimuli felt by the woman were sent back to her own clone-android, which recreated her movements up to the tiniest details. Both partners could pretend they were really having sex this way. People who perused this particular package tended to leave positive reviews, happy with the ‘genuine connection’ they finally had with their significant other. That’s when sex with an ordinary android felt too fake for real satisfaction.
But those kinds of services were only provided by the older types of androids.
More modern models were closer to living, breathing people, and were able to more fully mimic their behavior. It was a topic of some contention where specifically did the machine end and a human begin. Were newer androids still bio-machines or were they alive and intelligent, and therefore deserving of a whole set of human-like rights? All kinds of doubters and doomsayers preached that the constant drive to perfect android-kind could only end in misery – that sooner or later the machines would rebel.
Nothing of the sort had happened to date. But, just to be sure, some restrictions had been introduced to keep the most state-of-the-art models from getting it into their heads that they were being mistreated. Then there were the android rights activists, who had to be kept in check too.
So only the most primitive models worked as sex slaves in brothels, competing with living prostitutes (who, of course, protested).
But an android doesn’t ask questions. It doesn’t complain, sheepishly agreeing to anything and everything and oftentimes doing stuff that a human prostitute would simply say no to. Androids were perfect for all kinds of deviants and fetishists. They were also much cheaper. For starters, you didn’t have to pay their wages, so owners of android public houses could dump prices.
Still, there were many who simply preferred sex with living partners, unable to stop themselves from thinking that intercourse with an android was unnatural. All in all, things remained in a state of balance. As it always tended to be.
The more modern androids were slowly but inexorably replacing people in jobs requiring higher responsibility and more developed skillsets. One of the industries that commonly used them was show business. At some point, the newest models finally received a set of rights, including the right of self-determination, at least as long as the self-determination could be deemed advantageous to the general public. An android wasn’t able to lie to a human when asked directly if it was a machine or a living being.
The freedom of the most modern models was always paired with a highly developed creativity – artificial brains were nearly as good as human ones in this regard. They could create their own neuron connections. They had their own way of absorbing knowledge and filtering reality, making it wholly unable to be programmed by human beings. They programmed themselves. The effects of this spontaneous programming were often surprising. Mostly in a positive way. But despite approaching perfection, no scientist was able to achieve the one thing in their creations they craved the most – even though androids were really good at mimicking human emotions, they couldn’t really feel them.
The Space-Col Corporation – the leader of the space colonization industry – had won the bid to lead the grand mission to spread humankind over the universe.
That announcement had come with another piece of news. Glen Rutherford, the chairman of Space-Col, promised a lucrative partnership deal to whoever first created the perfect android – one capable of feeling emotions.
James Davis, a corporate representative specializing in press relations, had given a speech detailing the chairman’s plans. When an expedition found a planet and deemed it capable of supporting human life, robots would start constructing a base there, planting crops and raising animals that would cover the future colonists’ nutritional needs. At that point, the future colonists wouldn’t have been born yet.
But they would be, in time, using artificial wombs.
Eggs would be fertilized on the selected planets, after a thorough analysis of the available genetic material. The reasoning behind that was the need to create populations ideally suited to the conditions of the newly established colonies.
That’s when the perfect androids would come to the stage – empathetic beings capable of raising the future citizens of the new homeworlds. But only perfectly human machines could successfully replace natural, living, loving parents.
Was there an alternative if no such machines were created?
Sure. Hibernating human beings was one. The only downside was that around twenty percent of people woken from cryo-sleep tended to be insane to a lesser or greater extent.
Space-Col had given scientists fifty years to create the perfect android. Then, acknowledging the impossibility to achieve the primary goal, the corporation would settle on plan B.
It should probably be added that the mission to colonize distant planets as well as the purchase of androids were to be fully financed from the planetary budget. More specifically – a special colonization fund. The stake, therefore, was an amount simply unimaginable to the average Joe.
And the corporation that would win the race?
It would hold the monopoly forever. It would rule the android industry as a titan capable of wiping all opposition and competition from the face of the Earth. And its closest neighborhood.
Andy McCain had been flying his ship from corporate HQ to corporate HQ for the last fifteen years, verifying dozens of reports of success in the field of empathic machine construction.
He had performed hundreds of evaluations, but none of the tested models came close to exhibiting human empathy.
“Reality overlay off,” Andy ordered.
“Overlay off,” a silky woman’s voice replied. That was the ship computer.
The savannah vanished immediately, making way for an altogether less pleasing vista.
It was that of a vast city, swathed in smoke. Buildings spattered with bright, gaudy advertisements, covered in a thick layer of soot – grey, drab and disgusting. Between them, as far as the eye could see, swarms of flying vehicles. Despite a multitude of aerial transit lanes, they were locked in a perpetual traffic jam.
The Ramirez had the luck to be counted among special privilege vehicles. Corporate funds could buy anything – including VIP lane passes.
Andy flew above the strings of vehicle lights and the discordant cacophony of hundreds of blaring car horns.
They want to send out androids, he thought with a grimace. They should cram the spaceports with as many people as they’d fit, slam them with a pregnancy ban and launch them into space. They should have done that years ago. In his mind, Andy begrudged the politicians and scientists their stupidity. Why would they want humanity to wait another fifty years?
A whole fifty years…
If nothing changed, it wouldn’t be a colonization mission, but a rescue one. An evacuation of the human dregs from the cesspool that the planet – a blue jewel in ages past – was inexorably turning into.
The thought of the pollution made Andy’s hand instinctually hover over his reinforced filter mask.
I’m, lucky this gig pays well. At least I can afford the filters, thought McCain.
The Ramirez was slowly descending towards the VIP lanes below the main traffic.
“Holiday on the moon! Only thirty thousand Eurollars! Take a breather!” A thunderous basso roared in Andy’s head.
The rest of the crew heard the same exclamation.
And if that wasn’t enough, a full-length ad of a resort nestled in one of the larger craters flashed across Andy’s retinas.
“Be the master and commander! Create your own world! Take Indoprex and dream lucidly!” A garish soap-opera actress chirped when another ad smothered the previous one with an invasive overlay.
Whoever gave that woman that job was an idiot. She was a looker, but that horrible voice…
And those candied visions of the dreamscape! Pleasant meadows, flowers, butterflies…
Andy’s advertising content filter must have popped off. Wasn’t it recognizing that he was an adult? They were supposed to show him a harem of scantily clothed babes instead of this bullshit.
Unless the local advertisers finally went over the top. With the state of numb befuddlement the general public was kept in, everything was possible, he supposed.
“Switching to auto-pilot,” the pleasant voice of the computer announced.
That was business as usual. When you entered a municipal advertisement zone, the local navigation centers always took over control over all vehicles.
It was hard to imagine it any other way – the number of accidents would skyrocket otherwise.
All those drivers and pilots suddenly blinded and deafened with the despicable slop the advertisers put in their heads…
“Activate anti-ad barrier,” Andy said.
“Barrier activated.”
It was blissfully quiet again and the intrusive images vanished.
They’d charge them a couple hundred quid for that, but the company would cover that.
Andy knew he could allow himself that bit of luxury. If anyone complained about the profligacy of the crew of the Ramirez, he had one solid argument in his deck: if he was to properly evaluate his subjects, he needed to be focused. And focus required him to be rested.
A moment later, the Ramirez was intercepted by the And-Tech nav system and redirected to a special company lane.
Andy observed the faces of people stuck in the aerial traffic jams as they eyed him with ill-concealed resentment. Their gazes said one thing only: “Damned toff!”
Yeah, he was pretty affluent and could afford a life of some luxury, if anything on Earth could even be called that. But hadn’t he worked his hands off to achieve this? He had earned it.
Andy wondered when the time would come for social discontent to finally reach its apogee and lead to the repeat of the events of 2204. That the current situation would end in global rioting was already obvious.
The potential effects of the short-sightedness of the bigwigs up top that liked to call themselves politicians were nothing short of terrifying.
Andy would have liked to call himself lucky. He couldn’t, though. Not really. In two years’ time he and Connie would be able to move to the Moon, but that didn’t help a bit.
Because what consolation was that when he had lost the only person he’d ever cared for… McCain stifled the fury and hatred towards the ones responsible for the horrid pollution. If not for them, there would be no toxic smog.
And Ben would have been ten. He would have…
Andy’s eyes watered. He squeezed them shut and allowed himself a single sob. He would be alone for a bit longer, so he could afford that brief moment of emotion.
Come to think about it, it was curious that the phenomenon of toxic smog had only materialized a few years ago. With pollution levels as high as they were, it should have happened ages ago.
And to think that none of the eggheaded fuckers in power had ever anticipated this.
And they call themselves scientists!
Many people had died that day. It would have been enough for the government to distribute even the simplest air filters among the populace.
But no… they preferred to spend tax money on themselves.
Nobody had cared that people were slowly being poisoned. In the end, lung cancer became as widespread as the common flu in the dark ages.
With developments in medicine it also became comparably treatable. It didn’t change the fact that most people got lung cancer at least twice a year.
You wanted to get rid of it? No problem. All you needed was to take some meds and breathe in a cloud of nanobots to excise the infected tissue.
Fortunately, human organisms were already so full of electronics that ‘health protection systems’ were able to diagnose practically all diseases in their first stages. ‘Fortunately’ for those with stable jobs, of course.
The others? Well…
It would have been enough to give people some filters and equip the poor with those ‘health protection systems’. But that would have meant a breakdown of the government’s relations with big pharma. Not to mention rampant overpopulation. As it was, the problem solved itself. But at what cost…
Ben hadn’t died of cancer, of course, nor any other disease. Ben had asphyxiated.
He had no chances. Not a single human that had had the misfortune to find themselves in the toxic smog without a filter survived. That day air pollution had spiked so much, there had simply been nothing to breathe…
Why had that happened?
Had meteorologists really been unable to predict that? Or maybe that had been the whole point – to allow overpopulation to dissipate a bit.
Sometimes Andy wondered if this was him being paranoid. But who wouldn’t be, all things considered.
The flier silently descended to the landing pad.
“Same as always?” John Kin, one of the brothers forming Andy’s organic testing team, asked.
“Same as always,” Andy replied wearily.
‘Same as always’ meant ‘there’s nothing for you here, boys.’ They had been through this so many times without any positive effects, this would most likely end up in another fiasco. “Just to be on the safe side, though, don’t wander off too far.” Dressed in t-shirts and shorts, the Kin brothers left the vehicle onto the freezing walkway and walked to the elevator.
Those guys are the lucky ones, Andy thought, I’m working my ass off here and all they do is lounge around.
Knowing the Kin brothers, Andy suspected they were already on their way to the closest purveyor of bodily delights. At least that’s how they usually spent their free time on their quest to find the perfect android. Wearing a thin shirt, with a metal suitcase filled with measurement and testing equipment in hand, Andy stepped out into the cold air.
The snow under his boots crunched and he exhaled clouds of condensation, but he felt warm – his temperature overlay was set to twenty degrees Celsius, and his body was now constantly covered with a two-inch-thick invisible barrier that safeguarded him against the sub-zero temperatures outside.
The chairman of And-Tech himself – the so-called ‘corporate golden boy’ – Mark Bennett, walked out to greet him.
Despite the whiteness of his hair, it wasn’t easy to pinpoint his real age. Either he just looked really young or had a great cosmetic surgeon. Or maybe he used one of those skin serums packed with nanobots – he was certainly wealthy enough to afford it. One thing was undeniable – the man was full of vitality. When he reached out a hand to greet Andy, his grip was vice-like. He said nothing, fixing McCain with the gaze of his steel-grey eyes. The evaluator couldn’t help but feel awkward. As if he was entering a lion’s den. Were they going to try to bribe him? Possibly.
It had been tried once – two years ago at an And-Tech facility. At the time, Andy had made it abundantly clear that he was fitted with a sense-tracking chip. It recorded everything its host experienced. Therefore, what Andy had in his head was proof that could now allow him to sue the living hell out of the would-be bribers. He had let them know that it was only a matter of his good will that he was keeping the whole situation to himself and his boss, instead of sending the incriminating evidence to the authorities.
At times, he wondered what he would have done if not for the microchip. Would he have accepted the bribe? On the one hand, he had always been squeaky clean and intended to remain so, but on the other… the government kept fucking him over constantly. Like it did with the rest of the society. So did he really owe anything to the authorities? Especially that he knew it was their fault that Ben had died.
Ben… the only thing left of his son was his mind, scanned after he died and uploaded into VR.
But was it still his child? His consciousness? Soul? Or just a perfect digital copy that only pretended to be Ben? What was the truth? He’d know one day. When he himself was dead. When his own brain would be scanned – neuron by dying neuron.
But for now, as soon as he went back home, he would merge. He would connect to the virtual world where he would meet his son again. Or at least some kind of copy. Anyway, he’d have to pay the subscription fee in three days. Otherwise, Ben would be lost.
So yeah. If he could, he would have taken the bribe. If only to be able to pay for unrestricted access to his own child.
The two men walked down a long, sterile, white corridor. Bennett kept quiet, but his body language oozed confidence. It was as if he knew the test results already, only begrudgingly accepting the necessity to perform the whole procedure. Andy followed him, deep in thought. The silence was broken by the hiss of a door sliding open in the distance.
“After you,” Bennett said coldly and gestured for Andy to pass through.
The room behind the door was practically empty, if one didn’t count the two chairs and a simple table made out of a synthetic wood substitute. There was another door on the other end, flanked by two men in black suits. Security guards, probably, though their grim expressions brought to mind a pair of undertakers. A moment later the other door opened, and an unassuming, middle-aged man entered the room.
“This is AL-430,” Bennett introduced the newcomer, “our newest android. We’ve already tested him internally and concluded that he meets the criteria of becoming a colonizing android. Of course I know you will have to evaluate him yourself. So, to keep things short – get to it.”
AL-430 said hello and sat in one of the chairs. Andy placed a set of sensors on his head. Then, he sat opposite.
Keeping his movements slow and steady, he unpacked the rest of the equipment, powered on the brain activity recorder, unconditioned reflex detectors and devices measuring changes in breathing, heart rate and eye movements.
Finally, he set up an electric field transducer. Just like humans, androids were charged with energy produced by living cells. It was one of the most important parts of the test – if an android faked emotions, even perfectly mimicked them, spasmed in absolute despair and desolation, the energy field wouldn’t change a bit. Only real humans ever passed this test.
The energy field only reacted to real, genuine emotion. In moments of anger or agitation, even expertly masked, negative animating energy would bubble and buzz in the upper parts of the body. The feeling of joy, on the other hand, would cause an equal distribution of positive animating energy throughout the organism. Episodes of depression were similar, only the energy was negative and enervating. There was no positive enervating energy. The name for this kind of field fluctuation was ‘positive and calming’, which could only be observed during meditation or deep relaxation. Positive calming energy tended to quickly transform into a positive animating field fairly quickly.
To observe a human experiencing different kinds of emotions through the transducer was akin to observing meteorological visualizations displaying changing weather patterns – a living organism was filled with energy fields in constant flux, appearing and disappearing, changing colors and intensities.
In androids, this energy field was constant. And it always consisted of the positive and calming kind.
That’s why even the most perfect androids were always emotionally dull.
Machines experienced reality with absolute indifference. In this way, they were very similar to docile, harmless psychopaths. It was another thing altogether that the newest models could hide it very well – they read human emotions perfectly and could react to it with use of their highly-developed acting skills. This was the reason behind the Android Rights Movement. Those people could never be convinced that an android could only be just a very well made bio-machine capable of pretending to be human. The activists always fell for those tricks and liked to treat androids as equal to humans – as entities capable of thinking on their own and feeling emotion. But it simply wasn’t true. Only detecting fluctuations of the energy field would prove that androids had become equal to humans on an emotional level. Only this would have meant that they could feel.
Andy was fairly sure that even then he would keep wondering if the machines had really started experiencing genuine emotions or whether they just learned how to manipulate the field. Maybe they would just move different types of energy around, coldly calculating how the field should look at a given time to fool the humans that evaluated them. McCain would never stop doubting, but it would have been enough for the scientists. For them, it would mean that androids had achieved humanity.
How would the law react to that? Would they be given full citizen rights, or would they still be kept as a kind of slaves?
As long as they didn’t feel emotions, androids couldn’t get angry at humans for being abused. If they had been capable of that, they’d have rebel in no time. And then…
Wasn’t humanity actively working towards its own demise? Androids were docile for now, though their intelligence and analytical capabilities had already outgrown human ability.
But when they rose up…
Well, that would mean they’d use their prodigious mental and intellectual skills to quickly overpower even the most cunning strategists. In the end, they’d either destroy humanity or take over control. The tables would turn, and we would become their slaves.
Andy shook his head, realizing that he had let himself space out again. That had been happening more and more lately. Am I burning out? he thought, suddenly concerned.
“Alright, let’s begin. What is your name?”
“AL-430,” the android replied.
“Do you like it?”
“No.”
Nice little trick. They made the android say it didn’t like its name. The energy field didn’t as much as twitch. Andy decided to proceed to stage one. Boring routine.
“Close your eyes.”
AL-430 did as he was told.
“Imagine you’re on a beach. Golden sand, soft to the touch. You’re lying in it. The air is clear and fresh.”
AL-430 reclined in his chair, and his face adopted an expression of bliss. The transducer showed nothing. Or was that a… No. I’m seeing things, Andy said to himself. Maybe I really am burning out. I’ll check the readouts later.
“Blue sky. The sun is pleasant. Warm. Not too hot. You feel a slight breeze from the crystal clear sea. There is a beautiful woman next to you. The woman of your dreams.”
The energy field transducer did register a fluctuation now.
For an instant, Andy was so stupefied that his words caught in his throat. He balled his fists painfully, making himself regain some semblance of control. He couldn’t let his surprise show. He wasn’t allowed so much as a slight quiver in his voice. That would have been extremely unprofessional.
The pause looked natural, he decided. As if Andy had wanted to give AL-430 a moment to imagine the view. But how could an android imagine the perfect woman? How could it feel… aroused? They had always been completely unmoved by such things. It couldn’t be… McCain broke off this train of thought and continued the evaluation. There would be a time for questions.
“Now the beautiful woman disappears, and you realize you’re on a deserted island. You’re dressed in dirty rags. You’re a castaway. You’re dying of hunger. You imagine your favorite food. What is it?”
“Pizza,” AL-430 said.
“So you imagine you’re hungry. You’re on the beach and your famished brain creates an image of a hot pizza, straight out of the oven, with thin crust and pulling cheese.”
Hunger. He felt hunger. He licked his lips.
The energy field fluctuated, showing rising discomfort.
Time for stage two.
“Would you like some fried chicken? With golden fries?” Andy asked, simultaneously turning his netbook towards the android.
“Oh, yes. I love chicken.”
“Open your eyes and take a look,” Andy ordered and played a video.
It showed living chickens, crowded in some kind of factory farm. They were terrified, squeaking thinly, as if still hoping for salvation. But moments later they all fell into a grinder. They were mashed to a bloody pulp alive. In the past, hatcheries liquidated male chicks in this way. It was simply economically inviable to keep them around. Cocks don’t lay eggs, after all.
AL-430 must have known that the chicken he had been imagining a moment before wasn’t made out of those poor annihilated chicks. The juxtaposition of the pleasant mental image with the cruel, drastic video had to elicit clashing emotions. At least in humans. Andy had never met anyone who would fail to feel anything when confronted with this test.
Al-430’s face expressed many things – anger, outrage, compassion and revulsion.
The android turned its head away from the images. He couldn’t watch any more. The energy field gauges went crazy.
They did it! Holy mother of God, they really did create an empathic android!
Andy was so stunned with this realization that he didn’t know what to say. His head swam. He closed his eyes to steady himself.
This was the historic moment when he could finally tell the Kin brothers to wrap up their pleasant frolicking, wherever they were and whoever they were fucking right now. For the first time in their career, they would be needed to perform organic testing to make sure the android was really an android.
AL-430 leaned in closer.
“Can I go now? Did I pass the test?”
“Just a moment longer, AL. We need to scan you.”
“Is that necessary? He passed the test, didn’t he?” Bennett asked in a bored voice.
“Absolutely necessary,” Andy replied stiffly and sent a summons for the organic testers through his telepathic amplifier.
An instant later he received two sets of thoughts – one was John Kin’s and expressed utter surprise and disbelief, and a moment later a confirmation that the brothers would arrive in five minutes. The second set was Donald’s, who grumbled at the ‘boss man’ being wrong at the worst possible time. That set of thoughts was filled with disappointment and a fading feeling of bliss – Andy must have interrupted the man’s fuck session with an android (as Donald was known for preferring the kind of thrills you could only get with an artificial lover) – but the man confirmed that he’d come down in a couple of minutes.
It didn’t really matter if he felt like it. He had no choice.
The brothers arrived ahead of time, their curiosity having taken the best of them. They set up their equipment and commenced their tests.
A quick body scan proved that physically the specimen was one hundred percent android – his silicone-organic brain with a built in newest generation processor was proof enough. He had a thick layer of organic tissue applied by nanobots to protect the internal organs. There were modifications that a natural human’s organism wouldn’t have survived, and which made an android’s body able to last thousands of years at peak efficiency.
“No doubt about it. Pure ’roid,” John said, helping Donald pack up their things.
“Are we ready to sign, then?” Bennett cut in unceremoniously.
“Give me a minute. I need to dial my boss,” Andy shot back, connecting telepathically with the thought transmitter in Space-Col’s headquarters, slapping the message with the highest priority flag.
Betty Heet was biting her nails, silently fuming at her boss, Glen Rutherford. She was frustrated that she had to sit around doing nothing all day long. It was maddening to be made to do exactly nothing while missing out on a raise for difficult working conditions.
Aside from a doubled wage she should have got a health benefit so she could buy herself a nanobot fat burning treatment. With all that sitting around, she had gained weight.
And besides, it was really just so exhausting! After a hard day at work, she was too drained to exercise, and she coped with the accumulating frustration by stress-eating. Candy was the only thing capable of bringing her any measure of relief in all that misery. If not for sugary treats, she would have become depressed.
Betty was sure they were the only thing between her and the abyss. Having pulled a red fingernail from between her teeth and observed the damage she had done to it, the secretary sighed deeply. All this time she had failed to notice that one of the employees was frantically trying to get in touch with the boss.
She would have heard the call normally, but at some time Betty had decided that she didn’t need sound signals to see an incoming call. The blinking lights were enough.
If he’d at least fuck me, she thought, resigned. For the last couple of months she had been doing her best to let the boss know that if he wanted, she would have…
Well. She didn’t really fancy him or anything.
On the contrary. He wasn’t a looker, and he certainly didn’t have that… thing. But beggars can’t be choosers. Therefore, Betty decided that if she couldn’t afford a nanobot diet to quickly get rid of the accumulating fat in her body, at least a good regular fuck with the boss would help her lose some weight.
Maybe she shouldn’t stop at veiled suggestions? Maybe she should just tell him. Maybe instead of leaning over the desk to display her super deep cleavage and dropping random stuff to the floor only to pick it up on all fours, flexing temptingly and sticking out her butt, she should just barge into the chairman’s office and do what she should have done a long time ago. Just rip off her clothes and scream at him:
“What are you waiting for?! Fuck me!”
Yes! That’s what I’m going to do, she decided and jumped to her feet. She was fully ready to go and do as she had planned, positively abuzz with new energy, when she finally noticed the blinking light on her desk.
“Oh,” Betty sighed, feeling her energy evaporate.
Why now? she thought and accepted the telepathic call.
“Why now what?” Her head reverberated with the voice of that numbskull, Andy.
She had failed to seduce him too. He was too fixated on that anachronistic construct he called a wife. And to think that even that wimp dumped me, she thought angrily.
“Oh, nothing,” she replied.
“What took you so long? This is urgent!”
“Yeah, yeah, connecting,” she barked impatiently.
Glen was having sex with the two hottest androids money could buy. And that was saying something – he had quite a collection now. There were Asians, Africans, plump ones and stick-thin models too. He even had a midget which had been made to order just for him. Come to think about it, his tenure as the chairman mostly consisted of fucking his androids.
Once in a blue moon he would check if there was any progress on the search for the perfect biomachine or the production of spaceships or gathering resources for the mission. Nevertheless, he was a very well-organized man, and such inspections only ever took him short whiles. Life was good. With practically limitless capital from the planetary fund, he could employ as many people as he wanted. That meant that most of his tasks had already been delegated to his subordinates. ‘Sub-bosses’, as he liked to call them. Thus, Glen could spend the majority of his days doing what he liked the most – having orgies. But, as if this wasn’t enough, whenever he really had to do some work, Betty would always distract him. She did her best to remind him just how much he turned her on. He did his best to ignore her. It wasn’t hard, really. The only times he would work were the sparse moments he was completely physically drained. The breaks from attending his androids that he did allow himself were not instance he felt any need to work, but rather times he needed to regenerate his energy. The business he did was only a byproduct. He wasn’t the only one in need of rest, either – the nanobots he used to keep his penis stiff needed time to recharge their particle nano-batteries.
“Ladies, time fo’ a bheak!” he mumbled, his mouth stuck to the pussy lips of a sexy redheaded android girl.
The machines got up and, perfectly faking disappointment, started to complain.
“Already? Why? Don’t do this to us! We’re so horny!”
“Go on! Git! Do as I say!” he shooed them away, though he was in no mood to interrupt their exertions. This time duties really were calling, as evidenced by the nagging telepathic signals from his secretary. Rutherford quickly threw on some clothes and marched to his office.
“Connect me,” he commanded.
“Right away, boss,” Betty replied in a low, steamy thought-voice. A moment later, Glen felt a torrent of Andy’s thought-patterns in his own head.
“Andy!”
“Yeah, boss?”
“Too much! How many times do I have to remind you? Stem the tide. The connection lags when you let everything through.”
“Sorry, boss.”
“So say it again. Only the essentials. Nice and short.”
“We found an empathic android! In And-Tech.”
“Are the results perfectly solid?”
“Yes. We’re sure. What do I tell Mr. Bennett?”
“Tell him we’ll sign the contract. Let him know I’ll be waiting for him tomorrow at noon in Space-Col HQ.”
Bennett couldn’t contain his glee. He managed to get away with the con of the century! And Rutherford and his people took the bait and didn’t suspect a thing.
In order to pull this through he had created a clone of one of his employees and used it to manufacture the AL-430 android. Or another iteration of AL-420, to be precise. There was no such thing as an empathic android. It was all a hoax.
Dennis Blackwood, one of the many corporate employees, had arrived at ten. As always. Bennett didn’t even know his specialization. He had selected him at random from a group of candidates suggested by the system. There had been forty-four of those, though the criteria had been particularly stringent.
For starters, all candidates had to be single men. Healthy, with no family – even distant relatives. They had to be fully loyal to the company too. And above all, they had to have extensive knowledge of androids and an extremely high susceptibility to a certain kind of brainwaves which Bennett’s special guest was an expert at emitting.
“Call him to Clive’s office,” Bennett ordered the system. Clive Hinc was a physician tasked with conducting monthly mandatory employee check-ups and prescribing nano-therapies as needed.
His office was sterile-white – so bright it hurt the eyes. A couple minutes later, an unassuming middle-aged man appeared there. The chosen one. Dennis Blackwood.
Clive wasn’t alone. Another man was waiting with him in the room. His name was Adrian Brown, and he was an outrageously expensive outsourced consultant.
The lean-faced man had a set of very special skills that he’d offer to various clients for large sums of Eurollars. And this time he had been offered an amount significantly higher than his standard rate. For his silence. He was supposed to never tell anyone what he had signed up for.
Dennis shot nervous glances at both men. He wondered why they had called him. Nano-controllers in his body hadn’t signaled any dysfunctions and he had been here for his check-up only two weeks before. And who was that guy in the black suit?
As it turned out, the man in the black suit didn’t deem it necessary to introduce himself. After all, why should Dennis meet Adrian, if Dennis was to forget Adrian had even existed?
Muttering something under his breath, Adrian Smith made a slow gesture with his hand.
Blackwood’s eyes traced the slow, fluid movements.
The monotonous drone was becoming lower, steadier and strangely soothing…
“Dennis.” Adrian decided it was time to get to business.
“Yes,” the hypnotized man replied in a dispassionate voice.
“You are now AL-430 – a new model of And-Tech android.”
“Yes. I am AL-430…”
“You don’t need to repeat after me,” Adrian interrupted impatiently.
“Yes.”
“You are capable of humanlike empathy and are very sensitive.”
“Yes.”
“You will remain an android until I tell you otherwise. When I do, you will go to sleep. When you wake up again, you will go back to being Dennis Blackwood and you won’t remember anything. Is that clear?”
“Yes, it is.”
An hour later, Dennis Blackwood – fully believing he was AL-430 – sat down at a table in the evaluation room. All the time, Adrian Brown stood by the door, pretending to be an And-Tech security guard. A real security guard flanked the door on the other side. He had also been hypnotized, but only with a shallow trance so he could still fulfil his duties. He also wouldn’t remember what happened in the room. The perfect state for what was to happen.
This time, the evaluator was Andy McCain. And-Tech agents had checked his susceptibility to hypnotic trance too. And it turned out he was very susceptible.
You really have to be an idiot to employ a man like that to do such work, Bennett thought with delight. I’m lucky Rutherford has put so much trust in science that he forgot about the natural capabilities of the human mind. I’m lucky he’s such a fool.
Bennett led the evaluator into the room.
Everything was perfectly planned, but he couldn’t stop himself from feeling pangs of anxiety. Not about Adrian Brown’s skills. No.
The sense-tracking chip inside McCain was what worried him. It shouldn’t, but it did. A week ago, Paul Stark, the company’s top brain implant specialist had told him with the utmost certainty:
“I’m two hundred percent sure that the chip will switch off as soon as the host enters the trance. The recorder always does that when its owner goes to sleep or loses consciousness. Hypnosis is like sleep in that regard. We’ve already checked a dozen times. The chip always reacts that way when the specimen…”
Specimen, thought Bennett. Pretty easy to dehumanize someone when you’re surrounded by androids. When you become akin to one by implanting all those electronics into your body.
The ‘specimen’ was now facing the hypnotized Blackwood.
Though he was tempted, Bennett didn’t look at the hypnotist.
It would have been suspicious if the recorder caught that. It could have told Rutherford’s men that something was wrong. They might order additional tests. They could take an interest in the ‘security guard’ and, sooner or later, that would have resulted in them getting to the bottom of Bennett’s plot.
Instead of looking his way, the chairman focused his attention on Andy McCain, evaluating Dennis Blackwood.
When the man finally decided that Dennis really was the first empathic android in human history and that the testing can be concluded, Adrian squinted and fixed the evaluator with a steady gaze. High susceptibility to hypnosis – so high, in fact, that you didn’t have to use any specific techniques – made it possible to just focus and send a beam of appropriately attuned brainwaves with a hypnotic suggestion encoded inside to make the man enter a trance.
The alpha mind dominating the beta. Adrian liked to think of himself as the alpha.
He considered himself a species of human higher on the evolutionary ladder than the rest of humanity. He could break anyone. Even the hardest cases. Even Bennett. In a year, without really knowing why, the chairman would pass on the full extent of his power over the corporation to the hypnotist, before retiring. Just a bit of revenge for his sadistic son who used to bully Adrian in school…
McCain’s eyes glazed over, and his jaw slackened.
“AL-430, you may now go to doctor Hinc,” Adrian said in a calm voice.
Bennett shot him a glance. Brown nodded.
“Bring in the android,” the chairman commanded the security guard.
The man left without a word and returned a moment later, leading in an android looking exactly like Dennis Blackwood.
“Did you watch everything on the video feed, AL-420?”
“I did,” the android replied.
“You are now going to pretend you are AL-430. You are to pretend that you have been evaluated a moment ago.”
“Yes, sir.”
Bennett glanced at Adrian, who nodded again. Time to continue the show.
The hypnotist fixed the evaluator with another gaze.
The man squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. He looked stunned.
“Can I go now? Did I pass the test?” the android asked, leaning in a bit.
“Just a moment longer, AL. We need to scan you.”
When the hypnotist led Dennis out of the trance, and Clive told him that he had fainted, Bennett sat back in the chair in his office and sighed with relief.
Everything had gone according to plan. Simply perfect. But, on the other hand… the hypnotist had to go. It wasn’t about the fact that he knew too much. He would have lived out his life in happiness but for the fact that the recorder planted in Bennett’s office during their first meeting had caught something weird.
Bennett was sure he had been hypnotized too.
He had seen the recording of Adrian waving a hand in front of his eyes. He had watched himself slumping in his chair and listening to that son of a bitch’s words with a slack face.
You want to take over And-Tech, you prick? Just you wait!
Bennett telepathically contacted his best hitman, Chris Smith.
“Chris,” he said. “Get rid of the hypnotist. Be discreet.”
“You got it, boss,” the killer replied.
The command having been given, Bennett could now focus on undoing what Brown had done to his brain. He switched on the wall screen,
sat back in his chair and readied himself for another trance. This time, it would be done in the traditional manner, by another hypnotist employed by Bennett to prepare a special recording for his use.
The screen displayed the face of the hypnotist. A round, flushed face that made him look like a harmless fool rather than a man who could control the minds of others. Looks can be deceiving.
“One. You feel relaxed.” The man on the screen said in a warm baritone. “Two. You are growing more susceptible to my words. Three. Reality fades away. You can only hear my voice. There is nothing else. Only my voice.”
“There is nothing else,” Bennett mumbled, slipping into a deep trance.
“When your man informs you that Adrian Brown was disposed of, you will believe him. You will pass the ownership of And-Tech to Adrian Brown in one year. You will be too exhausted to continue managing the company. You will resign. Now, you will wake up and think that I have cleared your mind of Adrian Brown’s conditioning. Then, you will delete this recording. And if you are an employee requested to control this recording, you will tell your boss that everything is in order. Three! Two! One! Wake up!”
Adrian Brown was certain that he was being followed. This meant that he was ready to employ emergency measures.
He knew about everything, of course. That Bennett had recorded him hypnotizing the chairman. He knew who the owner of And-Tech had commissioned to cobble up the trance-inducing video that was supposed to wipe away Adrian’s conditioning.
Only a fool wouldn’t have prepared for such an eventuality. And Adrian Brown had an inside man in And-Tech. He knew everything that was happening in the corporation. His inside man hated Mark Bennett with all his heart and had always begrudged him his success. It hadn’t been difficult to play him. Especially after promising the man that he would become Adrian’s second-in-command.
With the knowledge of who would make the hypnotizing video, he contacted the hypnotist and simply bribed him.
Now, only to land at the right spot where the killer wouldn’t be able to shoot him without getting close.
Chris Smith was kneeling, facing Adrian Brown. His jaw was slack, and his eyes were glazed over…
Bennett woke up from the trance. The first thing he did was to delete the recording. Done and done, he thought, satisfied. A man was standing behind his chair.
“Boss,” the man said. “You have been fooled. Brown bribed the hypnotist.”
“Just as I suspected,” Bennett replied. “Are you recording this conversation?”
“Yes.”
How lucky androids weren’t susceptible to hypnosis. Now, he only had to find the inside man, pay off another hypnotist and commission another recording that would get his head in order. And get rid of Brown. For good this time.
“Boss…”
“Yes?”
“When Smith calls, you’ll believe him that Brown has been liquidated.”
“I thought as much. When I do, play me the recording of our conversation.”
“Yes, boss.”
“We need to get that son of a bitch.”
“Yes, boss.”
Translation, from Polish, into English, Filip Sporczyk
