Episode 3
I was on a third-floor balcony, looking down at perhaps a thousand of my robot copies, all standing in military formation. The sight brought me to my knees and brought tears to my eyes.
I never wanted this!
The mind upload procedure was intended to extend life!
Not to take it!
Leslie put a hand on my shoulder.
“I'm sorry, Roy,” she said. “I warned you that you weren't ready.”
“Would I ever have been?” I asked through the tears.
“I doubt it,” she admitted.
“What about them?” I asked, nodding toward my robotic copies.
“Them?” she said. “Most don't even remember who Roy Michaelson was.” She helped me to stand up. “Come on. We have to get you out of here.”
Leslie steered me back into the room. Wilcox closed the door behind us.
I was stunned speechless by what I’d just seen. How could they do this? She led me to the bed. I sat on the edge, near catatonic.
“What now?” Wilcox questioned.
“Now we get him the hell out of here.” She picked something up from a chair in the corner.
“How? Everyone saw him.”
She faced Wilcox. “Let me worry about that. Listen, nobody saw you. Nobody knows you helped me. Just go about your daily routine. You haven’t seen me and you don’t know where I am. Got it?”
“But I don’t know.”
“Exactly. Plausible deniability. Now go.”
Wilcox paused for a second, like he wasn’t sure what to do or where to go. Then he cracked the door and peeked outside. “They’re just breaking ranks now.”
“So wait a few minutes.” She put a bundle of something in my hands. “Put these on.”
Wilcox checked outside again. “Okay. I’m going,” he told Leslie. “Good luck.”
“Thanks. I’ll be back in a few hours.”
Wilcox slid out the door, leaving me and Leslie alone.
I was still sitting on the bed holding the bundle.
“Roy! Snap out of it,” she ordered. “Go put those on.”
But I was still in shock. Her telling me that I was one of multiple downloads of the original Roy’s consciousness was one thing. But seeing an entire army of myself? That was something totally different. Something I was still trying to wrap my mind around.
“Roy!”
This time she got through to me.
“What?”
“Go put those on.”
I looked down and saw I was holding a uniform. “Yeah. Sorry.”
While she cracked the door and checked what was happening outside, I hopped off the bed and, using the hospital gown to cover myself, pulled the pants on. Then I threw off the gown and finished getting dressed.
She nodded her approval and peeked out the door. “Ready?”
“Where are we going?”
“Off base. Just follow me.”
I followed her out the door. We walked along the third floor balcony, passing several doors along the way. At the end, we took the stairs all the way down to the ground floor.
There were several marines, both my clones and a few officers, still milling around, but for the most part the grounds were empty.
“Morning, ma’am,” one of the robot clones said as he passed her. He eyed me.
“Sergeant.”
He stopped. “Everything all right, ma’am?”
“Everything’s fine, Sarge.”
Leslie led me past the offices on the ground floor and around to the other side of the building and a parking lot. The lot contained mostly troop transports and humvees. She led me through the maze of military vehicles to a handful of personal vehicles hidden in the far corner of the lot. She headed for these.
She stopped at a late model Chevy and pulled a key fob from her pocket to unlock the doors.
“There’s a blanket on the backseat,” she said as she removed her lab coat. “Get on the floor and pull it over you. Try to stay out of sight until we’re off base.”
As I tried to get situated in back, she got behind the wheel and started the car.
I felt the car shift into gear and start moving. I pulled the blanket over my head. I was now completely covered. It wouldn’t stand up to even a halfway serious inspection, but it would have to do.
“We’re coming up to the gate now.”
The Chevy slowed, coming almost to a stop before speeding up again. I assumed the guards manning the gate had recognized her and waved her through.
I waited a few more minutes before I asked, “Is it safe?”
“Yeah. You can sit up now.”
I threw off the blanket and sat properly in the back seat. We were still on the dirt road that led to the base. I stared out the window at the passing desert, still trying to wrap my head around what was happening.
Objectively, I got it. I was a robot, one of a thousand downloads of the original Roy’s consciousness, and property of DHS. That much I understood. I might not like it, but I understood.
Subjectively, I was drowning. The life I had known was over. And there was no going back. I would never see Carolyn again. Never hear her laugh. Never feel her touch. She had been my rock throughout my cancer ordeal, from the devastating diagnosis right up until the mind upload surgery. And apparently, beyond. But now all I had were memories of her.
It was all too much.
“You okay back there?”
It took me a minute to register what she’d said. “Yeah. Sorry. I’m still dealing with, well, everything.”
“Well, get it together. We’re almost to our first stop.”
I looked out the windshield. Somewhere in my musings we had turned onto a paved, two lane highway. I saw a town in the distance. “First stop?”
She nodded. “We have to get you some new clothes.”
“What’s wrong with the fatigues?”
“There’s not supposed to be a military base around here. You’ll stick out like a sore thumb.” She pulled up to an old thrift shop. “Wait here.”
She returned a few minutes later carrying a plastic bag. She handed the bag back to me. “These should fit.”
I looked in the bag. A pair of old jeans and a light blue polo. Once we were moving again, and her attention was on the road, I started to change.
“Do you mind if I climb up front? I feel like I’m being chauffeured around,” I said after I stuffed the fatigues into the bag.
Leslie laughed. “You are being chauffeured around. But yeah, come on up.”
I climbed over the front seat, accidentally kicking her in the process.
“Hey! Watch it,” she said, rubbing the back of her head.
“Sorry.”
The Chevy veered sharply into the oncoming lane as she ducked her head to avoid another kick. But we were alone on the highway, so no harm, no foul.
I settled into the passenger seat.
“Where exactly are we going?” I asked. The town had disappeared over the horizon.
“Next town over,” she said. “Another half hour or so.”
“What’s in the next town?”
“My contact.”
“Are you telling me you’re a spy?”
“Something like that," she said. “We’re supposed to meet at a motel on the outskirts of town. The key to the room is in the glove compartment.”
I reach forward and opened the glove compartment. Inside I found a large wooden placard emblazoned with the number three with an old-fashioned key attached to it. “High tech.”
“Small town that doesn’t get a lot of visitors,” she said by way of explanation.
“So why did you spring me from the base?” I asked. “What does your contact want with me?”
“Her name’s Amanda. And I have no idea,” she said. “But there is a war coming.”
“I kind of figured that one out,” I said. “But with who? I thought you said you could update my knowledge without altering the original Roy’s consciousness. Wouldn’t that be something worth updating?”
“The knowledge update is used for more general information,” she explained. “For more specific knowledge, like the current political situation, you can go online just like everyone else.”
I frowned. “Well that’s disappointing.”
“Sorry,” she said sheepishly.
“Do you have a phone or something I can use?”
She shook her head. “Operational security.”
I understood the need for operational security. Especially if this trip off base wasn’t authorized. But another question dawned on me. “Why aren’t they chasing us? I have to be equipped with GPS or on a network or something. They must know where I am.”
She shook her head. “The last thing the government wants is thousands of AIs on a single network—or any network, for that matter—especially when those AIs have military training and access to weapons. And I disabled your GPS.”
“Point taken,” I said. Then, “Can they activate my GPS remotely?”
“Of course, if they knew you were active,” she said.
“They don’t know I’m awake?”
She shook her head. “You are completely off the books. Me and Wilcox are the only two people who know about you. And just in case, I installed a virus in the tracking software,” she explained. “If they discover you and try to activate your GPS, you’re going to show up in seven different locations at the same time, none of them the correct one.”
“Anything else I should know?”
“Well, you do have a few enhancements.”
Now she had my attention. “Like what?”
“Strength and speed, obviously.”
With a robot chassis and servos assisting my movements, I had expected as much.
“Your hearing and eyesight have also been improved.”
I smiled. “Cool.”
Leslie just rolled her eyes.
We rode in silence for the next ten minutes.
“Damn,” Leslie said.
“What’s wrong?”
She nodded at the rearview mirror. “There’s a cop coming up behind us.”
I turned in my seat. Sure enough, I saw the red and blue flashing lights of a police car in the distance.
“You think he’s after us?”
“I hope not.” Her attention was split between the road ahead and the cop behind. “But he sure is hauling ass.”
I looked back. The cop was gaining on us. “What do you want to do?”
If we got busted, she would take the brunt of the consequences. I’d just be forced back into the marines. Not something I wanted, but it was better than prison. Or worse.
“I don’t know.” She sped up to put more distance between us and our pursuer.
About a mile ahead, the road curved around a large rock outcropping.
“What’s around the bend?” I asked.
She shrugged. “More desert.”
I doubted our Chevy could outrun a police cruiser. But we might be able to outsmart one.
“As soon as we lose sight of him, pull over,” I said. “If we’re lucky, he’ll blow right by us.”
“And if we’re unlucky?” she said, glancing in the rearview.
I didn’t bother responding.
She continued to increase speed.
Then I heard a familiar sound, and my stomach dropped. “Helicopter,” I said, scanning the sky out the passenger window.
“Where? I don’t hear anything.”
“I don’t know.” I leaned forward and craned my neck to check out the windshield. The sound of the chopper was getting louder, but I still couldn’t locate it.
“Should I still pull over?” she asked in desperation.
“What’re you asking me for?”
“It was your idea in the first place!”
“That was before there was a goddamn helicopter above us!” Which I still hadn’t located.
I had no clue what she was going to do as we rounded the bend. I braced myself for the pullover.
“Shit!” she said. The car began to slow.
I pulled my eyes from the sky.
Red and blue lights flashed and sirens blared from the pursuing cop car.
Rotors from the unseen helicopter cut the air above us.
And ahead, several more sets of red and blue lights flashed in the distance. A roadblock.
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