Coral-600 (7 page)

I walked out with Paisley and she got us a cab.

“What did you tell the woman at the bar to make her use Quinn's credit card?”

“I told her the truth.” A cab pulled up and we both slid in. “I told her the asshole called you a prostitute.”

“A pleasure bot is not the same as a prostitute. I am mechanics, and it is time I stopped trying to pretend I am not.” It would be much more convincing if I could stop leaking from my eyes.

“Coral, you may be mechanics, but you are not a mindless robot. You are more genuine, and more real than any human I have met since I started working at the palace.” She brushed my hair from my face.

Two people had touched my face tonight. The touch from Paisley didn't ignite my skin sensors like Quinn's touch had. This time I felt…I don't know what I felt, but it affected some of my circuitry deep inside my body. There was so much pain that could be caused with words. I wondered why humans bothered with speech. They should use blunt instruments to get their points across. Physical blows healed much quicker than verbal ones.

“I appreciate you bringing me out, Paisley. I know now that I am mechanics and I should not be allowed to mix with humans on a social level.”

The driver coughed and cleared his throat. “We're pulling up to the palace gates now. Where did you want me to stop?”

Paisley paid and we returned to our quarters. I undressed and handed Paisley back the soft jeans and shirt she had provided me with.

“Coral, I feel bad for you, but I am not doing your laundry.”

“I am returning these items to you. I won't need them any longer.” I placed the items neatly in Paisley's hands before beginning my routine for the evening.

“You have to have something other than your uniform when we go out next weekend.”

Paisley tried to hand me back the items, but I just turned and went to get my oils.

“I won't be venturing out again. I see now that I was wrong to do so. I am going to file away the data I have collected. It was all very interesting, but I don't find myself needing to expand upon this information for my hard drive.”

“You're going to, what, erase all of the last two nights from your memory? You can't do that.”

“I am not erasing the information. It could be valuable knowledge to draw from if I have to interact with visitors again, but I don't plan on doing so for the foreseeable future.”

Paisley tossed the beautiful clothes on the ground. “I know where you're at, Coral. But there will be guys you like who are assholes. I'll give you a few days, but this is not the end of us getting you out into the real world.” Paisley kicked the folded clothes she had dropped and caused them to be completely disorganized on the ground. “I know you can't stand it when things aren't clean. If you don't want me to walk all over these items when I come back to our room, you'll just have to pick them up and put them away.”

When the door shut, I looked at the clothes. Then I picked them up and hung them neatly in the closet. I shoved the items to the very back and shut the closet door. Paisley was wrong, I wouldn't need them again.

I had been recharging for quite a while when the door burst open.

“Coral, you need to get out of here.” Paisley looked around and threw open all the doors. “Why do we not have a back door?”

“Paisley, why do I need to go elsewhere?”

She ran to me and put her hands on my cheeks. “I am so sorry, Coral. I never thought we would get in trouble. The most that happens to people who bring mechanics is usually a slap on the wrist. I never thought those jerks we danced with would follow us.”

I was about to ask Paisley what she was talking about when our door opened again. The officials that stood in front of Miss Matilda were ones that no mechanical being wants to see. They wore uniforms emblazoned with a large gear shape on their breast pocket.

They were with the Department of Mechanical Affairs. If they were here in an informal capacity, they would have sent representatives. The representatives would have been wearing suits and ties, and would have worn their lanyards with their pictures and titles on them.

These men wore jumpsuits similar to repair specialists in town. This was the disposal unit. They were in charge of invasive mechanical investigations. Which was really just a nice way of the government saying they wanted to tear you apart and see how you ticked. I touched my skin. I would miss it. The last android that was captured by the DMA was dismantled to understand how the AI had become so advanced. I hoped they would shut me down first. The only way to my circuitry was through my skin which had grown and altered its makeup many times over the last decades. But they wouldn't shut me down first. They would have to have my circuits working while they dismantled me or my inner workings would not reveal what they were looking for. I wished, for the second time that night, there was a way to turn off my pain sensors.

The uniform turned to Matilda. “Which one is the mechanics?”

She looked at me. “The one without clothes. May I dress her before you take her?”

The guards looked at each other. “That's probably best, ma'am. We'll wait outside.”

When the latch clicked shut, Paisley grabbed Matilda's arms. “You can't let them take her. You've worked with all kinds of machines and you know as well as I do that she's far more human than mechanics at this point.”

Miss Matilda slapped Paisley's hands away. “I know. I had kept her protected until you and your asinine ideas about getting her out of the palace. The government didn't understand what she had become, so they left her alone. You screwed that up.”

Paisley started to cry. Paisley didn't like failing, but it wasn't her own mistake that shone from her wet eyes up at me. She was sad.

Miss Matilda dug through the closet and pulled the clothes that I had pushed to the back.

“Shouldn't I go in my traditional uniform?”

“No. You have to do something that should never be asked of a woman. You have to prove your humanity.”

“I am not human.”

Miss Matilda pinched my nipple. “Ouch!”

“Did you feel that?” She asked.

“Yes, ma'am.”

Miss Matilda picked up the tissues I had thrown in the waste basket. “You were crying tonight.”

The memories I couldn't quite bring myself to delete yet surfaced in my temporary storage. More tears threatened to leak from my eyes.

“You're more than mechanics. I've been hard on you, Coral, because you are special. I don't know what's going to happen to you now that others have seen that.” A small injector was rolled into my hands as Matilda finished dressing me.

My boss seemed to be so much more than that at the moment as she stood on her tip-toes to whisper to the auditory sensor in my neck. “It's a way out. It's a data scrambling cell. Please don't use it unless there's no other way.”

Data scramblers were injected into mechanics that had soft outer coverings to destroy the central processing units. If they were going to try and separate my skin without shutting down my systems, I could do it myself.

“Thank you, ma'am.”

Then Matilda hugged me. She had never touched me before. I hugged her back.

“We can't just let them take her.” Paisley was still going around looking for some door or window that would magically appear.

“We have to or they'll take us as well. I told you this would happen.”

Paisley hugged me next. She was crying, and she was leaking from her nose and mouth. I reached over and grabbed a tissue to wipe her off.

“I am malfunctioning, Paisley. My CPU sent in auto-data and I had to follow up with a full report this evening. They would have brought me in for repairs soon anyway. This just sped up the process.”

“Why would you send in that data?”

I didn't have a good answer, so I just let her words hang in the air as the guards opened the door to take me away. I held tight to the syringe Matilda had given me. I would see where they took me before injecting. I would make sure they intended to completely dismantle me before I took this under my skin.

The encapsulated microchip would kill everything. Once the casing dissolved in my lubricant, all of my drives would be corrupted. Nothing would be left. I thought about the incident tonight on the dance floor with Quinn. It wouldn't be so bad to have his words erased, but it would also erase everything that happened the night before. It would erase Paisley's joy at me having fun. It would erase the moments when Quinn touched me and smiled.

I couldn't just let those moments go. I should have been able to selectively delete data, but it was just another way I was malfunctioning. Perhaps the DMA could fix me, and I could remove the bad parts of tonight from my memory. On that off chance, I went with the guards. They weren't mechanics, so I could have broken free with my strength.

The only problem was they had those little glow stick wands. These weapons were used on out-of-control mechanics before, and the results had seemed unpleasant at best, and memory wiping at the worst.

“What is this?”

Quinn's voice echoed in the large hallway. He was far away from his wing. He must have been coming to see me. Even with all his mechanics he couldn't have gotten all the way over here since the guards showed up.

“Step aside, sir. We have a malfunctioning piece of mechanics here, and we don't wish to harm you.” I saw Quinn's face in my peripheral vision as the guard pushed him to the side of the hallway.

Quinn didn't look happy. He looked fearful. It was a group he could fear as well considering how much of his own body was currently made up of mechanics. Although, since he was sanctioned by the government after serving in the military, it would be unlikely to find him in my situation.

“She isn't malfunctioning,” he called from behind us.

“She was reportedly impersonating a human at a human-only establishment. That is a severe malfunction. She is going in for examination and possible repairs.”

I gripped the syringe tighter. The word possible in his explanation was very telling. They meant they would repair me after they dismantled me. If they could.

They wouldn't be able to. My skin had changed so much in the last decade alone that I knew getting to any of my inner workings would be unsuccessful.

“Coral is not like most mechanics. Her AI is beyond the standard stock and her skin is human donated. You realize how painful it would be for someone to remove your skin and poke at your musculature with an energy probe? That is what you will be doing to her if you take her where I know you're taking her.”

Quinn really needed to be quiet. I wanted to live with the possibility that I could come out of this intact a bit longer.

The guards made it to the front door and the large black van waiting for us. Our world had advanced in so many ways. The ugly boxy vehicle had been the transportation of choice for government agencies for nearly a century. Sure it drove itself now, but I found the whole ride to be a bit cliché.

The door slid open and the two men in front of our group stepped into the van. Once my feet hit that carpet inside, it would be the end for me. I knew I was expected to go in. I knew that it was requested of me by my betters to step inside, but I couldn't make myself.

I could barely move. Fear. I was afraid. I began to leak from my eyes again.

The guards looked at me in utter shock. Their mouths hung open and they looked at each other without their former air of certainty. I didn't fit into this world as a human. Tonight had made that violently clear. I also didn't fit in as a machine any longer.

The guards to my left crumpled to the ground. Then those behind me followed. I wiped my eyes to get a clearer picture of what was going on. Quinn reached out to the last four men in quick succession and with a touch from his thumb and ring finger all the men collapsed to the pavement with a little squeak.

Quinn held out his hand to me, but after that dramatic show of whatever power he wielded, I didn't jump at the chance to grab it.

“Stun gun. It was part of my upgrade package from the military. I have control over it. I won't zap you. We need to go fast. I didn't have much charge left by the time I made the last guy forget his mother's maiden name.”

I took his hand then, because sure enough, the last man Quinn took down began to move. The movements were irregular and uncoordinated but he was right, we didn't have much time.

“The queen…” the last man Quinn zapped drooled as he talked. “…the queen…will…know…of this.”

Quinn looked between our joined palms. The syringe Matilda had given me was held snugly in our grip.

“Her majesty didn't know they were coming,” Quinn said. “I don't believe it.” Quinn's brows furrowed, but he didn't turn back to the man as we took off.

I always slowed my pace when I walked with humans. I didn't have to with Quinn. His legs were a part of his mechanical upgrades, and we both went faster than a human jog with our steps.

“Did they inject you with anything?”

Quinn was asking if I had been given a seizing agent. In the event of an out-of-control mechanical item the authorities had weapons that when shot into the frame of any robot would cause the gears to seize. It activated slowly, over a period of three to five minutes to minimize damage. This was just in case the robot was doing something like carrying a car over its head at a high speed. They could also hit the machine with a stun baton to destroy the CPU immediately. Neither had happened.

“No, they hadn't even touched me.”

We ran for a full hour before either of us spoke again. Other than a glance back from Quinn every ten minutes or so, we simply moved forward.

“You have made yourself a target as well, Quinn. What are you planning on doing?”

Quinn didn't answer me. We were deep into a wooded area, and there was no path out here. Quinn's brain, although most likely integrated with computer connections, was still a human brain. When we came up to a barely visible cabin I was impressed that he had found it.