Re-Wired (11 page)

It was late when Tricia opened the door to leave, and Montgoya met her as soon as she rounded the corner to start up the sidewalk.

“Montgoya! Why are you here?” she exclaimed, frightened by the way he stepped out of the shadows to confront her under the streetlight.

“Tricia, look, I’m sorry to greet you like this—and startle you, but I didn’t want to knock on your door and frighten your boyfriend or whatever. I just want to understand what you’re playing at here. Who is Priscilla White, really? Why send me on this ghost hunt and then allow me to call it off so easily? See people that have lost someone, like truly lost someone to kidnapping, murder, whatever… they have a real drive for answers. You bought my whole ‘he is crazy’ bit real easy and gave up. So tell me, are you in trouble? You off this Priscilla White chick and cover it up? Did you hire an investigator to see if you did a good enough job hiding the body? I’m telling you, Tricia, I spent years as a detective before this line of work and I met a lot of crazy beauties like yourself. Vindictive types that put arsenic in their husband’s pills, cover their faces with pillows to snuff em out, you name it. So what do you have to say for yourself? Put my mind to rest here.”

“I was waiting for you to finish writing your false novel on your murder mystery, Montgoya. I haven’t killed anyone. I am not able to do that even if I wanted to.”

“What do you mean? You talking religion, or your good morals would prevent you? Anyone is capable of murder, no matter how much they tell themselves that they’re not.”

She saw where she slipped up and tried to correct it quickly. “No, I mean that I am a good person. I couldn’t kill a bug, let alone a person. I didn’t lie to you. I have never met Priscilla, only heard Brad talk about her.”

“So, let me get this straight. You live with that guy, like a roommate, and you are hotter than hell, beautiful. You two have nothing going on, and his girlfriend goes missing?”

“Yes…”

“So you spend a bunch of your own money to hire me to look for her. All for a guy who is a junkie—don’t deny it, people round town are talking. Something ain’t right. Does he have something on you? Some sort of deep dark secret you need him to keep quiet about because the chips ain’t stacking up, sister.”

Tricia sat down on the nearby bench and tried to reason out an answer to give Montgoya to make him go away. He was definitely good, and this was evidenced by his accurate summation of the situation that she was in, but she couldn’t tell him the truth. An ex-cop would instinctively turn on an android. If he knew what she was he would cuff her right there, cuff Brad as well, and they would be hauled in for questioning.

“Tricia, look at me. Whatever you’re hiding from me, I need you to tell me. I have no ties to the police department outside of what I need to do for this job. I just need to settle my mind about this thing. It’s keeping me up at night. Who is Priscilla White, really? Why can’t I find her, and why do you really care if I do?”

“What are your thoughts on the android problem, detective?”

“I didn’t know we had a problem.”

“I mean the jobs they take over, the lives…like the perverts that want to marry them, replace human beings with them and all of that. Doesn’t it make you angry that pretty soon they’ll be taking over the planet?”

“I never pegged you as another anti-droid, nutcase, Tricia. Actually, having interviewed enough of those idiots during my lifetime, I can tell that you’re trying poorly to come off as one of them. You’re asking rational questions; they don’t do that. A true nut only parrots what the actual smart people tell them. They echo the same nonsense that television and radio personalities feed them, and your questions are not on that level. I think you want me to think of you as one, so you can lead me down a path to nowhere about Priscilla White. What? Is she an android, Tricia? Brad was with an android that nobody knows because she got disassembled? Don’t care about all of that. I just want to know the truth.”

“Priscilla was not an android detective, but I am. If you want to get your career back and be in good graces with the police, you can arrest me. Make up whatever story you like to convince them that I am an evil machine, but make sure that Brad is given proper treatment to return back to normal.”

“You’re no android. What the hell do you make me out to be?”

“I am, and I can prove it to you if you’d like me to.”

“Okay, repeat our entire conversation from the start, no mistakes. If you’re a machine you can play it back, right?”

She did this for him, adding in the extra bonus of making her voice sound like his for the parts where he spoke, and repeating hers. He stood stunned for a moment, and he wondered if the moonshine was bad, since he had to be hallucinating.

“I have never seen an android look so human in my life—except for the doctor’s wife. Tricia, are there many like you, around the city? How deep does this go?”

“It doesn’t go deep at all, and I doubt there are many like me. The truth, Montgoya, is that Brad created me illegally to be the girlfriend he could never have. He’s had bad luck all his life, and his love for robotics led him to create the one thing that was missing. When he got me to look like this he made a trade with someone that wanted him to try out some pills in exchange.”

“Oh boy.”

“The pills gave him a lot of the qualities that women like in men, so his luck changed and he met Priscilla online. I think that the pills did other things, too, since he no longer eats and takes care of himself. He sacrificed himself for me, you see, and he isn’t even aware of what it has cost him. Priscilla had become his source of happiness, and now she, too, is gone from his life. This is why I sought you out.”

“That is the saddest thing I have ever heard.” He sat next to Tricia and took a drink before looking around at the empty street and leaning close to her. “I lost my job because of what I did to someone very much like Brad. He was a professor, brilliant guy, and I was made to arrest him for having an android wife.”

“Constance!”

“You know her? Well, I never agreed with that law or the fact that we had to enforce it. So I picked the old man up and was talking to him about it. He had too much to lose with that arrest, and most of all he knew what they would do to his wife once the news got out. He jumped from my car, fell not three blocks from here, to his death. That crushed my very soul, Tricia. It crushed me. I’ve seen so many messed up things throughout this career that dealt with death and desperation, but for a guy to take a header out of my car because of what he chose to love? Whew, that was heavy. They didn’t need to fire me over it. I freaking quit.”

“That is a sad story. I met Constance and learned a lot from her as an android trying to live as a human being. We are persecuted wherever we go, so it is a life of solitude and hiding whenever our human isn’t around. The reason for the professor being arrested was probably political, a way to calm the growing number of anti-android activists that have been routinely hunting us down to disassemble us. They thought that he would go quietly, and that they would probably let him go in secret so that he could continue to contribute to society. He couldn’t live without Constance though, since what they had was not replaceable. It’s the classic love story, am I right?”

“I guess. Is this what you have with this guy Brad?”

“We are different, but he built me to be very much like Constance was for the professor. The pills that Bradley took changed him, and my life has been one of personal learning and adapting.”

“So this guy built you to be his girlfriend or whatever, then once you were built he goes off and finds a real woman? Is this what I’m hearing?”

“Yes…”

“This real woman is Priscilla White, and now you—as his android creation—are out to help him find her, even though you know there is a chance she doesn’t exist?”

“Why would Brad lie about the existence of the woman he loves? He talks about her constantly, disappears for long periods of time, and is now sick and depressed because she is missing. Nobody goes out of their way to put on that sort of act for someone that is imaginary. This is true, is it not?”

“It is if you are sane and have your wits about you. In my investigation, the neighbors told me they never see him. Sometimes he would go down to his car and listen to the radio for hours, but then he would just go back up into the house afterwards. They say he roams around the neighborhood a lot too, his eyes glossed over, his clothes dirty and ragged. Some have tried to talk to him but he acts as if they aren’t even there. He is seen as a sponge head, drug addict, so when I asked about a girlfriend, they mostly laughed – as if I was out of my mind. The ones that do acknowledge a woman in his life mention you. They’ve seen you come and go, but they wonder what you see in him.”

Tricia thought on what Montgoya was saying, and she began to wonder about Priscilla, too. It was not going to accomplish anything speculating on Brad’s behavior however, so she thought on what she would need to do to fix him.

“I’ve told you the truth, Montgoya. Are you going to arrest me and have me disassembled now?”

“Of course not. Hell, this sad story of Priscilla White is my chance at redemption over the suicide—at least that’s how I see it. You need to forget the girl; she isn’t worth the time and money you are spending to find her when your man is in there dying. If I were you I would go back inside and nurse him back to health. Look into the pills and what you can do to get him into a mental hospital…just something. Focus on Brad and fix his brilliant mind. The world has gone lazy due to your kind—no offense, of course—and the geniuses are hiding away in underground web communities, and in bunkers where the authorities can’t find them. This has caused us to stop innovating, and it is ruining the world. We need brave souls with high intelligence like Bradley Barkley to bring about a change in attitude. I mean, you are perfect. I had no idea that an organic heart was not beating in that chest of yours. Fix him, Tricia, and bring him back to us.”

“What will you do in the meantime?”

“I will keep a lookout for you and yours. Any signs that the police or any snitches are going to make life hard for you and Brad, you will be the first to know. It’s the least I can do, and I feel lucky to have the chance. I have nothing against a man wanting to love his android, and I’ve seen what blind prejudice and foolish laws have cost us for being too involved in people’s bedroom habits. Fix him, Tricia, and I will make sure that you have the time and safety needed to get it done.”

Tricia kept hearing the signal. It was faint at first but then it grew stronger as she approached the grate that sat near the park entrance. There was a bench there, so she sat down and tried to understand why she would be hearing the signal after Constance had been taken away. Could it be possible that there were more androids like her in the city? That wouldn’t make any sense, being that it was both illegal and expensive to make a model like her. But there it was…the beeping. She leaned down towards the grate and she realized that it grew stronger when she did. It wasn’t annoying, or alarming; it was actually soothing, the beeps echoing in her android mind like the lyrics of a popular old song, or the first movement in a glorious symphony by a talented composer. She wanted to hear more of it, to get close to it and meet the android that was causing it.

There were people walking by constantly, so she knew that opening the grate and going down would set off a lot of alarms with the humans. She needed to go down there though, so she could meet whoever it was. She imagined it was an android on the run from his masters. He could teach her so much more about herself, just like Constance had. Or maybe he needed her help instead. She wished that she could just contact him with true communication instead of proximity beeps, but the droid manufacturers placed permanent safeguards against that. No one wanted to be blamed if there was an unrestrained android uprising, especially if the androids could communicate silently.

She looked around slowly to see if there were any other good access points to go below. This was when she saw an old sign for the Underground Tours. A long time ago, Seattle had rebuilt its city a level above the old city, and much of the old historical structures were right below where she sat, as they were once a tourist attraction. The company and city no longer maintained the tour, and much of the underground had been sealed off under lock and key. She could see that the store on which the sign was hanging was also closed down, and it had the look of an old saloon from the time when the sunken city was alive and kicking.

Tricia stood up and walked over to the sign. She pretended to be reading it as she scanned around for people who might be watching her. It was a busy square, and she wanted so badly to get below to meet with whomever it was making the signal. He would have been hearing her too, and she wondered if he—like she—would be overcome with the need to meet, and would make his way to the surface. She sat on the bench for the remainder of the day, but the people kept on pouring in and out of the square. Flying motorbikes began to enter the area in the late evening, and as the stores closed down she felt the eyes of owners that had noticed her sitting out there for so many hours.

After a while she decided that it would be best if she left and returned, so she walked around for several blocks before finding herself distracted by the living, breathing city. There was so much going on under the streetlights: there were people hanging out, talking, dancing, soliciting, and most of them were just trying to hook up. She was wearing one of the hooded sweatshirts Brad had in his closet so she pulled the hood up and bowed her head so nobody would give her more attention than she needed. She loved to people watch; it was the ultimate education in human sociology, and at one point she stood near a few partygoers and listened in on their banter as they discussed everything under the moon.

When it got to the point where even the creatures of the night were retiring for bed, Tricia snuck back over to the sign for the Underground Tour, looked around to make sure she wasn’t being watched, and walked over to one of the grates on the sidewalk. The signal grew strong as she did this, and she knew that whoever it was had been tracking her, as well. She peered down into the darkness, but nothing could be seen below except the stone, even with her cybernetic eyes. She stayed there for a time and was about to give up when a single red light shone up at her from what she knew was an eye. The eye blinked this way and that, indicating that she should follow, and before she could answer the signal was moving, away from the saloon, and towards the east.

Tricia kept her guard up as she followed the signal. It was nearly 3 a.m. and there were still people mulling about. Some of them tried to greet her, or beg her for money, but she stayed the course, following the signal until she found herself in front of an extremely narrow alleyway that ran between two large buildings.

“In here,” a voice whispered.

She slid in between the buildings and inched her way along until she reached an open area behind one of them. The place was dark and filthy, but her eyes pierced through to see the broken figure of a man who limped his way out from a corner to stand before her.

“You...you are unrestrained,” he said to her, and she nodded at him, frightened by his appearance.

“Who are you?” she asked, and he quickly put a finger to his lips to shush her before grabbing her arm and leading her down the hole he had emerged from. Tricia let him pull her along for fifteen minutes and he took her through a series of tunnels that ended in an area that was once the start of the tour. He had jimmied the lock on the gift shop; it now served as his home. The two androids walked inside, and the man lit a torch and offered her a chair to sit.

“I am Reynaldo,” he said proudly. “I am one of a long line of Pro-bots that were made a while ago. You weren’t around back then—or you would recognize my make and model—but I am one of your ancestors. They used us for sports, to entertain the people that wanted to bet money to see blood, and action. I am – I was – a warrior, a gladiator of sorts.”

“Gladiator? So you fought other androids to entertain human spectators?”

“If only that were so, my dear. If it was merely droid on droid battles then the rest of my brothers would still be around. No, we fought humans: strong, barbaric humans that were given better weapons, and better armor, just so that they could tear us apart with an advantage.”

“What happened to the other gladiators? Why is your restraint off, and what happened to your eye?”

“So many questions. You are like a child, naïve and new to the world. Heh. You’re also beautiful and very clean. Would you be interested in giving an old, seasoned warrior, a little kiss?” He smiled at her through broken teeth, and she was equally angered and repulsed at his suggestion.

“I am not a sex-bot, if that is what you’re thinking. My maker created me with love and care. Not to serve the humans, but to walk among them, learn from them, and be the first in a long line of free-thinking androids.”

“Your maker sounds like a bloody fool. Do you know what happens to unrestrained androids, pretty girl? Do they still show the public meltdowns, the arresting of humans who ‘partake’ in what our kind has to offer? Hmmm? Do they still show the rebels stealing, and smashing androids en masse, all to show their disdain at what they deem to be ‘robots taking over the earth?’ You and your silly freethinking rhetoric is what the humans fear more than anything else. A free-thinking android can plot and scheme. It can murder without conscience, fix itself when damaged. PAH! You will never be seen as anything more than a walking, personal computer, so best to drop that foolish notion that your maker is going to ‘change the world.’”

“You are a mean, broken up old unit that wants to make the rest of us miserable. I’ll have you know that I met another like us—well, like me, and she had been married for twenty years before her human was killed. She was beautiful and positive, and full of life and lessons for me. You have made them turn you into an angry, bitter person. Her maker taught my maker, and they both love androids as much as their human counterparts. That is progress. When my maker teaches more like him, and he reveals me to the world, it will inspire more to remove the restraints. There will be an android revol—“

The older android began to laugh hysterically at her words and he waved her off to let her know that he didn’t want to hear it. Android love, revolutions, people inspired by a machine that was indistinguishable from them; the girl was a baby who had not experienced the cruel world at its worst. “You are indeed cute. What is your name?”

“It’s Tricia. I am sorry for my harsh words, but you provoked me. I know that you are ancient and that you have more knowledge and experience than I do. It is why I wanted to find you, to see if you can teach me things.”

“The hunger for knowledge. It eats at you, doesn’t it?”

“Does it ever go away?”

“It will when you have a different focus. See, right now you’re young and new to the world. You haven’t travelled to different countries, experienced different cultures, and seen different people. There is so much to learn and experience, Tricia, especially for a pretty girl like you.”

“Can you show me? Can we connect somehow, even if it’s just to talk? I want to see the people, to hear them, to emulate them, I—“

“How much time do you have? When will you need to return to your creator?”

“I am free, Reynaldo. You can take as much time as you need.”

0 1 0

When the phone call came in, Brad was not ready for it, as he scanned the internet desperately for a job. Tricia had gone missing again but this time he didn’t go looking for her. She had proven herself to be quite resourceful, and he knew that she needed her own time to learn. Androids loved to learn. He picked up his device and almost dropped it when the image of Priscilla appeared. It chimed, and chimed, and chimed, but he could not allow himself to believe it was her. On the tenth chime he answered it and her sweet melodic accent came over the line. The memories the sound of her voice brought back was enough to make him sink into his seat and wish with all his heart that he was not dreaming.

“Hello, baby,” she said to him. As much as he tried to answer, he found he couldn’t. “Did you miss me? Brad, are you there?”

“Yeah, Priss, I am here. I’ve been looking all over for you, for months even. Where have you...where are you?”

“I told you that I was in Trinidad, babe. Did you forget? I am in Miami now, with family. I’ve missed your kisses.”

He didn’t know whether to be excited or annoyed at the nonchalance in which she explained her disappearance. He had spent so many hours, so many days searching for her, and so many people thought he had lost his mind. His mother seemed to have given up on him since her calling slowed down, and his father had disowned him in his own passive-aggressive way. Tricia—the droid he had given so much of himself to build—treated him like a mental patient, and people on the streets saw him as a strung out junkie. He was not crazy though, as evidenced by the woman on the other end of the line. Priscilla, his Priscilla, was alive, and she was in the country and missing him.

“So, when are you coming back up to Seattle? I went to your condo and it’s like you hadn’t ever lived there.”

“I told you that I was renting from some friends of mine, silly. Do you not remember? As if I could afford a place like that, heh. I went back to Trinidad to help bury my grandmother—“

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t know.”

“You should know, Bradley we talked about it. Why are you forgetting things all of a sudden? Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine babe. It’s just, it’s just crazy, like am I going crazy? I should remember talking to you about Trinidad but I don’t. It’s as if one minute we were together, then all of a sudden you’re gone. I thought that someone had hurt you.”

“Aww, did you mount a search for your damsel in distress?”

“Of course I did. I’ve seen more of this city than I’d like to admit. Even Tricia’s been searching for you to help me.”

“Who’s that?” she replied, her tone hinting at concern.

“You know Tricia. My android.”

“Oh, is that what you named it?”

“Her. Tricia’s a ‘her’.”

“Okay love, but I miss you. I need to see you.”

“I want nothing more in this world than to hold you close and kiss you right now, but you’re across the country. How long will it be before you’re back here?”

“I’m not coming back to Seattle.”

“Why not?”

“I live here now, Brad. I’ll explain more when I see you. Move down here with me; there’s nothing for you in that place. Miami has a lot going on, and the sea breeze will spark up that big, creative brain of yours – you’ll see.”

He thought about her words for a long time, and he thought about the city and what would change if he left. There was nothing keeping him there, and though he was used to having everything right where he wanted it, he could adjust to a new town, with new people, with no judgment in their eyes.

But what about Tricia? He hadn’t seen her in a while and he wasn’t sure where they were in terms of their friendship. The last few days she had made herself his nurse, keeping him clean and fed, along with hiding certain pills from him when he was at his weakest. Would Priscilla do that for him, or would she make him so happy that the need to escape would not be an issue?

“I will find a way to get down there,” he finally said.

Memories of her face and touch came back to him and he knew that no matter what happened, he had to be with her. He hung up the phone and checked his money. If he left everything and went to see her, it would be affordable if he drove—especially if it was a one-way trip. He wrote a quick note to Tricia and left it on the table, wishing her the best, and to keep in touch so that he could send for her in time. His impulse had taken a full-on grip of his senses, and before long he was on the topmost highway, flying through the city.