Single Wired Female (Wired for Love Book 2) (16 page)

Tricia realized that nothing was as it seemed. Nothing had ever been clear, not from the first day she woke up into this world as Bonnie O’Neal. Life, love, humanity: it was all so complex, confusing, and frustrating. Whenever she would think she was in control of her life, something would tell her she was wrong. Was it the same for humans? Was life for everyone a series of pathways, most being illusions, where the true path is obscured?

For the first time she found herself envying the life that her old friend Reynaldo had. In his life he had only to fight and entertain his masters. There were no illusions as to who he really was and whether the people in his life were friends or planted foes. She felt lonely and she disliked the feeling immensely.

Instinctively she pulled up her device and called Mary. It had been over a month since she last spoke to her and she really needed a friend. The device chimed but there was nothing and eventually she gave up. Her mind drifted to the things that Stephen had told her about humanity never accepting her and she thought about the promise she had made to Mary about rescuing her once she had her answers.

Without the ability to sense other androids she had been forced into a life of solitude and constant danger by the same humans that wanted her to mimic their own reality. She wondered if Mary had left the apartment, walked out into the Tampa streets, and had fallen prey to a hunter. The thought sent chills throughout her body and she knew where to look for confirmation of the worst.

The underground web, which was affectionately called “the real web” by hackers, was like a step into the past for technology. Instead of holographic, third dimensional stores and kiosks, the pages on this space were flat, second dimensional, and used text, videos, and image files.

With Stephen gone and Mary in trouble, Tricia’s worry for being caught surfing the underground web was pushed to the side. She pulled up the underground web and surfed around the places where android buyers would look for parts. She found several message boards but the members remained cryptic about their sources. She skimmed through these sites for thirty minutes, processing the threads until the web location of the bounty hunter kiosk finally revealed itself.

When she typed in the address her screen went dark immediately. A scrolling animation began to display images of corpses with prices and information written next to them. She put her finger on the display to halt the motion then used it to navigate through the gory images. After a minute or two she realized that the corpses were androids: some were older models with wires and metallic insides while others were sophisticated and their discarded bodies looked frighteningly human.

She scrolled for hours looking for Mary but as she did, she began to learn more about the bounty hunter’s trade. She gathered that there were factions that operated in every state and most of them didn’t hunt unless a company hired them to do so. The corpses in this listing had been rejected by those companies, so they placed them on the underground web to sell to people who wanted to build an android on the cheap.

The whole thing disgusted her but she was determined so she kept on scrolling until she exhausted the list of android victims. She pulled up another address and did the same thing but then her device chimed and it broke her concentration. It was Sal, so she answered but kept on scrolling. She had forgotten about him in the chaos that had taken over her mind.

“Hey, Tricia, I got some bad news, but maybe it’s good news for you since it don’t affect you none,” he said.

“What is it?” she asked, her eyes moving rapidly as she scrolled. She steeled herself to be ready for devastating news.

“They closed your case today, took me off it. Bonnie’s situation is considered cold and my boss told me not to waste no more time on it. In his words, ‘nobody cares about this woman.’ Can you believe that? What a heartless prick. Anyway, kid, I know you have other things going on and you could care less but I figured I’d tell you so you don’t go expecting me to update you on anything new. How you doin’?”

“Looking for an android friend. I had her house-sit the apartment you gave me, just in case someone was monitoring it to see if I was in there. But now she’s missing and I’m assuming that hunters got her.”

“Hunters didn’t get her, we did,” he said and Tricia stopped scrolling to look at her device with surprise.

“What did you do to her?” she asked.

“Wasn’t me, but the boys in Tampa took her in. Thought she was some kind of vagrant squatting. When they learned that she was an android, unrestrained … well, you know what they do. I’m sorry about your friend, Tricia. I wish you had told me.”

Tricia stopped and placed her heavy head inside of her palms to cry. Everything in her world was falling apart and she didn’t know what to do to slow it down. She looked for hope, for any glimmer of light to tell her that everything would be alright, but there was nothing but darkness, loneliness and fear.

“I don’t like your world, Sal. It really sucks to be here,” she said.

“Aww, come on kid, it’s not all bad. Happy days are bound to come, you just need to weather the storm, alright? Look, you’re safe. If you made it this long without a hunter or predator taking you down, then you should be good going forward. Stop obsessing over this thing, this Bonnie nonsense, and find something that will do your sweet, android heart some good,” he said.

“What could that be? Stephen was my happiness and I haven’t the faintest clue how to rescue him. My friend is dead, from what you just told me. With you off my case, you will stop being my friend. I’ve lost all three friends in the blink of an eye. Do you need a wife?” she asked quietly but her joke didn’t make her feel better.

“Had one of those, I think that I’ll pass. You can move back into Bonnie’s old place, though, try to live the life she once had. Can’t be all bad; that chick was loaded.”

“The case may be closed for you but not for me. I can’t rest until I figure out who set up the swap and who set Stephen up to die.”

“Well, good luck. I can no longer help. Give me a ring if I can do anything off the books, though” he said.

“Thanks, Sal, I appreciate you. I will let you know if I need your help.”

Tricia powered off the internet and sat back in her chair. She stared at the wall in quiet contemplation. She was at a crossroads, one she hadn’t anticipated in the past. Becoming human was impossible and functioning like every other android would be a futile exercise that would bore her to tears. She missed Stephen. They had been so close to solving the mystery, but they had gotten to him and her mystery puppet master was still in the shadows.

What would she do if she knew who it was? Would it even make a difference? Aside from screaming at him to give her answers, what would stop them from shutting her down and wiping her memory on the spot? There were no answers to any of these questions and she wondered if a clean break would be her only option. Was it an option? They would probably be able to summon her and who knew what other tethers she had within her programming.

A memory came to her mind of the harbor in Seattle, back when she was in an older body, and the dream of sailing away was the strongest thought in her mind.
Distance
, she thought,
distance would take me away from whomever is watching me play the role of Bonnie
. But how would she get on a ship without detection? It took a passport and getting past a number of scanners to be allowed on one of the cruise ships. Androids were disallowed from flying on commercial aircraft and would need a handler in order to be shipped.

She could pass for human, but was it enough? It would be a risky option no matter how she looked at it. An android lost, with no real friends outside of a detective that had been removed from her case. A thought floated into her mind and threatened to dominate her entire capacity:
Friends looked out for you, they loved you and appreciated you, whereas non-friends were apathetic.

It came back fast, raw and unbridled. She remembered who she had been, all of it, and she remembered what had happened to her before the darkness and before she woke up as Bonnie O’Neal. Trust in human beings was what had gotten her captured in the first place. To let this happen again, no matter what, was to be as foolish and naïve as she was on the day the hunter had grabbed her.

There was a spilling of memory from the time when they had her. She had woken up a few times to see them around her, rolling an arm or a leg on a tray to be assembled on her new body. A team of people—no, a team of androids were in the background, working rapidly on redoing her programming to accommodate the microchip that was the property of Fritz and Isaac. This hadn’t been the work of a sole machine hell-bent on world domination; this was a collaborative project.

“Oh no, Stephen. I am so sorry,” she whispered.

The vision was brief but ultimately revealing, and she recalled seeing hundreds of beds where androids like herself were being assembled. They were all made to replace a citizen, to melt into human society until a time when their creator needed them to perform a duty. This frightened her more than anything else and she wondered what her “duty” would be. She didn’t need to get out of Seattle, or the United States for that matter; she needed to get out of that foreign body.

If the intent of the people that had rebuilt her as Bonnie was to have her hurt others then she didn’t want any part of it. She grabbed her device and called up Sal, hoping it wasn’t too late.

“Sal!” she yelled when he picked up and she could tell immediately that he had been sleeping.

“My favorite pest, do you know what time it is?” he asked.

“I’m sorry but I need your help, desperately.”

“Alright, alright, you crazy robot. What’s going on that you call me this late?” he said.

“I want to turn myself in to the FBI, but I want you to be the one to take me there.”

Sal Minstretta got really quiet and Tricia could hear him struggle to rise before the sound of rushing water hinted at him washing his face. “Tricia, that’s suicide; you don’t want to do that. Those sons of bitches will cut you open every which way to see how you work and then they will go in and tear out your brain. Listen, if you feel threatened you can come stay here, I have an extra room and—”

“You don’t understand, Sal, I remember things. There are more out there like me and there is a reason. I think they may have us blow up the city or hurt people or something!” she said.

“What in the world? Who are ‘they?’ Why would they do that? Who are these people that did this to you, Tricia? That’s not something to joke about if you aren’t being square with me.”

“I wish that I was joking Sal, but I know what I know. They will dismantle me but what choice do I have? I don’t want anyone hurt, and whoever did this to me needs to answer for it.”

Sal thought about it for a time and then agreed with her. He told her he would be there in another hour and she hung up her device and sat down, exhausted. The thought of death and not being able to power back on frightened her, but the alternate thought of becoming the cause of a million deaths strengthened her resolve. She would tell them everything. Eras Innovations would be shut down and the players arrested, as well as anyone involved at Fritz and Isaac. If Stephen was dead then this would be justice, and this made her surrender the logical choice.

Two hours flew by and there was a knock on the door. It had been a lot longer than Sal said he would be so she couldn’t help but feel annoyed at his tardiness.

“Sal!” she shouted through the door as she made to open it up, but where his voice should have answered came a high-pitched noise. Her limbs and functions ceased to respond as she fell to the floor and struck her head. Then a white light consumed her vision like an aggressive, all-encompassing virus.

Zeroes and ones marched everywhere. Zeroes and ones marched east to west, west to east, in rows upon rows of tight, uniformed patterns. Tricia watched them march and found them pleasant; there was nothing else to see or think about but those moving digits that seemed to pick up speed as time went by. After a time they vanished into blackness, and her happiness vanished along with them as a white square blinked and a character, foreign to any of the human languages, appeared next to the square and stood there for a time.

After what seemed like a lifetime the character vanished too, and then she was back in darkness, void of thought and void of understanding. Her eyes flicked open, more reaction than her wanting, and she was staring at a dusty, wooden table that had random bits of paper, coffee stains, and an unfinished pack of gum. She tried to move her body to get up from the table but then it dawned on her that there was no body to move. She was comprised of a head and neck, placed on a table somewhere out of the way.

She looked around and saw that a man was at the desk, passed out next to her while cords ran from her neck into an old computer in front of him. It could have been Stephen, but his hair was different, and they were in a garage of some sort judging from the parked, junky automobile that sat behind him. Tricia tried to move her lips, but there weren’t any, and as she made to panic over this discovery, she heard a beep and the darkness was back instantly.

On and off the light came to her, and there were images that came with it, but they were too fast and confusing for her to make sense of it. There was time passing but she couldn’t tell how much, and the images showed her in several locations including a desert, but most of them had her in a dusty room of some sort.

When her eyes came open a second time, she had a body that was naked and on its back. She was staring up at hovering lights while a shadowy figure was grunting and sweating on top of her. She has an idea of what he was doing but lacked the sensations to confirm. A bright light came on and swallowed the other lights, and a flash of something made the man go stiff and fall on top of her, obscuring her vision. A few seconds later and another figure pushed him off and begun to sponge off her body while using a hand to force her eyes shut.

She was out again and when she woke up she had feeling in her limbs. She didn’t know how long it had been since what appeared to be a rape and murder had occurred above her body. When she saw that she was in a hospital bed, there was a sense of déjà vu but this was a smaller room that had no windows.

Tricia lifted up her arms and observed her hands. They were slender and tan, with long fingers that ended in well-manicured nails. She did the same with her feet, then reached up to touch her nose and mouth. Once she was satisfied that she was whole again she stood up and found a mirror. Shock ran through her when she recognized the face in the mirror to be that of Tricia and not Bonnie O’Neal as it had been for so long.

She could feel the cold floor beneath her feet and in her chest beat a heart that made her wonder if she was still indeed an android. She probed her memory to access Reynaldo’s folder and sighed with relief when she found it there along with Bonnie’s memories. She pulled on a robe and slipped on the slippers that were at the foot of the bed. She walked to the door and pushed it open, expecting to find a busy hospital where an orderly would rush up to her and secure her back to the bed.

There was no orderly; there was an empty hallway lined with doors similar to the one that she had come through. Tricia tried each and every one of the doors, hoping within her heart of hearts that there would be someone inside of one of them that she could talk to and get her questions answered. She pressed on like this all the way to the end where she descended some stairs that took her to an empty lobby where the brilliant sun spilled in through tall, glass windows.

Everything seemed different.
No, everything seemed better
, Tricia thought as she walked out onto the sidewalk and looked around. It all seemed to be better somehow. The cars, which would normally move along at a jumbled pace when traffic was busy, were all in line—moving smoothly above her. People wore smiles and they waved, winked or mouthed “hello” when they walked past her.

She instinctively reached for her device. Maybe Sal would know what happened. But she realized that she was in a hospital gown. Somewhere in her groggy walk outside of the building she had forgotten that she wasn’t dressed. This realization led to immediate action and she ran back inside of the building to see if her belongings were inside of the room.

When she went back inside things were different. There was no longer the long, lit, abandoned hallway that she had walked through to get to the street. What she saw instead was the inside of a house, clean and cozy, with a hospital bed, computers, and other equipment in what should have been the kitchen.

Tricia rubbed her eyes and hit her forehead with the ball of her hand, trying to make sense of what was going on. She closed her eyes and tried to focus, then opened them again in hopes of things being back to normal when she did. Her eyes focused and she was still in the house, so she walked over to the bed and examined it closely. She had been in it, and as she scanned the computers it looked as if she had been in it for quite some time.

She sat on the side of the bed and began to examine the records.
Why was I here and what has been done to me?
She wondered.

There was a lot of work done on her, apparently, and whomever it was had done it in secrecy. She saw that parts had come from several areas of the world and she wondered if her captor had taken her to each one of these places to get them. The memories of the random buildings that her head was in as she faded in and out of consciousness led her to believe that this was the case. She looked around the room for the person who had worked on her, but despite it being clean there was no evidence of anyone having been there in a very long time.

She got up and checked the rooms, paying special attention to the bedroom and closets, thinking that perhaps the person was hiding there. She found nothing and it made her question her sanity. Was she really in an abandoned house or was she hanging alongside several other victims of the bounty hunters, waiting to be processed?

The zap stick of the hunter was what had put her out but she hadn’t expected to be aware of who she was when they rebuilt her. She went back to the computer and tried to access the web. Her slender fingers touched the screen and she pulled them back quickly when she realized that the computer itself was different. She had never seen one that looked like it, yet it operated in a similar fashion to ones that she knew. The screens were thin, glass frames that were a hollowed out rectangle suspended above a small platform on the desk.

When she put her fingers near it, a keyboard appeared. It seemed to be built from laser lights, but she wondered how it worked. She touched a few keys and felt the feedback against her fingers. The keyboard was there, and the empty rectangle showed a blue screen with different icons, one that had rolled forward to reveal itself as a notepad with the words she was typing.

The year on the computer did not make any sense to her. If it were to be believed, she would have been out for over fifty years.
Fifty years
, she repeated to herself and then got up to find her belongings. There was nothing near the hospital bed so she walked into the bedroom and this time when she went into the closet she paid attention to the clothes that were there.

It was women’s clothes that stood suspended on the magnetic hangers and women’s shoes that were stacked on the wall across from the mirror. Tricia faced the mirror and jumped when she saw herself. She had expected to see Bonnie’s face and body but what she saw was her original face, better in many ways, but hers nonetheless. She rubbed her skin, opened her mouth, and batted her eyes to test. She looked absolutely human and felt more alive than she had ever felt.

Her mood lifted and she felt at ease, so she picked out a dress made from silver material, black flats, and a short black coat to go over it. She went into the bathroom and was not surprised to find makeup where she would expect to find it. She put on a light foundation, dark eyeliner and silver mascara which made her blue eyes jump out of her face in spectacular fashion. For her lips she went with black, and then finished up her new ensemble with one of the many perfumes.

The house seemed to be made for her, judging by the ease in which everything fit and the fact that she knew where they were. She saw that the bathroom lacked a toilet and this made her even more convinced that it was a place made for androids. Her mind drifted to the way the cars were moving and how the people were all so warm and friendly to her, even though she had stood out in front of them in a hospital robe.

She walked the rooms, taking note of the little features that hinted at android housing of some sort. When she finished scanning it she was fully convinced that it was meant to be hers. When she went to exit the house once more, she saw that a note had been pinned to the side of the wall where she would need to touch the panel in order to open the door. It read:

Tricia, I’ve given you your life back. Live free, experience everything, and stay away from the company. They used your data and put a hunter on you, right after they tried to make me disappear. They’re coming for me now but I just want you to know that I loved you more than life itself.

Tricia felt weak and exhausted from the words on the note. It was a blow to her heart that she hadn’t expected. “They’re coming for me now,” was what stuck out the most because it hinted at a finality that was not just real but guaranteed. She knew who it was from and what it meant, but she was curious about this new world that was fifty years past the events of Bonnie’s murder.

She stepped out into the sunlight and scanned the horizon. There were tall skyscrapers and hovering ads but what stuck out the most was a black building with red letters emblazoned on its surface. “Fritz, Isaac, and Eras Innovations – Bringing you and yours a better quality of life.”

Tricia gave it a cold glance and descended the stairs. In a few steps she was back on the sidewalk, watching the people pass by. Was this real? It was very likely that she was stuck in a program meant to keep her happy and sedated until her true functions were needed. It could be real, she thought as she brushed past a man, and as he turned around, annoyed, she knew that it was reality.

A voice came to her inside of her head and when she looked around to find its source she saw a man seated on a bench staring at her.

“Are you a new android?” he asked.

“I guess it depends on what you consider new to mean,” Tricia replied.

“New as in, freshly built,” he asked and Tricia hesitated in answering.

“None of us are truly new, can you agree? Some of us come from the bodies of others, hunted or scrapped for crimes that we had no control over,” she said.

“You’re definitely not new and you’re aware. I wonder, how it is that you are here now in Neo Seattle.”

Neo Seattle, is that where I am?
Tricia asked herself,
Odd, because it looks just like old Seattle. The only thing I see different is a building or two where they don’t belong.
  She got up and waved to the android, then she walked the length of the sidewalk down towards the fish market.

It surprised her how many androids were now unrestrained and going about their business like human beings. There were even partials—half man, half droid—which meant that acceptance of technology had become widespread. She recognized the androids and they in turn recognized her. She thought that she should have felt frightened because of this, but what she felt was pride and happiness that the world had come to accept synthetic people.

She walked past the market to the docks where a number of cruise liners were boarding people sailing off to who knew where. The signs that once said androids were disallowed from boarding the ships had been replaced with advertising that told of cheap fares and charging stations on every ship.

Android heaven. If ever there was one, this would be it
, Tricia thought, though she still found it hard to accept that what she was seeing was reality. “I’m an android,” she announced to the police officer that stood near the line of people. “I’ve been with humans and I am unrestrained.” She prepared herself to be spun around and cuffed, but the policeman only looked at her queerly and shrugged his shoulders as if to say, “So what?”

“Is that a line? You picking me up?” he joked, and then started to laugh so hysterically that others who overheard him began to laugh at her, too. Tricia wanted to be upset but she couldn’t find the emotion, and before long she was laughing, too. “Get on the ship; you know you want to,” the policeman said. “It’s just a tour of Seattle’s harbor so if you haven’t cruised before, this is a free one that you want to take advantage of.”

“Are you serious?” Tricia asked, looking around at everyone else to make sure he wasn’t pulling her leg.

“Dead serious, sister. I saw how you were up there looking at the ships and I know from what I was seeing that you want to get on one of them.”

Tricia didn’t know what to say but she took his advice and got in line. In a short couple of hours she found herself at the side of the ship as it pushed out towards the deeper ocean in order to start its journey. “Android heaven,” she said out loud and stared at the water as if it would respond.