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“What sites
are blocked?” Chal asked. Dr. Fielding looked up from his work.

“What sites
aren’t?” he said, shrugging. “But what can you do?”

“I can’t
get to the information I need,” Chal said. She had been so
excited to get access to the outside world, and now it looked like
the only thing that would load was her email. She clicked on the home
page from her email itself. Nothing.

“It’s
the military,” Dr. Fielding said, which was both a complete
explanation and no explanation at all. A light went on, and the
centrifuge slowed. He took out one of the test tubes. The contents
had separated into two layers of thin gray liquid, small black
residue at the bottom of the tube.

“What is
that?” Chal asked, pushing her email aside. God, it was so
frustrating.

Dr. Fielding took
out a syringe and inserted it into the test tube.

“It’s a
kind of interferon,” he said. “We manufacture it
ourselves here.”

“What does it
do?” Chal asked.

“It inhibits
neuronal connection cell growth,” Dr. Fielding said. As Chal
watched, he reached a white-gloved hand into the cage. All of the
mice scattered around, trying to escape. He caught one in the corner
of the cage and wrapped his fingers around it, pulling it out.

“Isn’t
that the opposite of what we’re trying to do?” Chal said.
“You’re in the business of growing brains, not destroying
them.”

“I’m not
in business,” Dr. Fielding said, sniffing at the assumption.
“I’m strictly a scientist. Learning is everything,
whether in creation or destruction.”

He brought the mouse
down onto the lab table. Its pink feet scraped against the metal
tabletop. Dr. Fielding picked up the syringe.

“We’ve
learned, for example, that this particular interferon only takes
seconds to stop the production of new neurons,” he said. Chal
watched as he pushed the syringe into the mouse’s lateral
abdomen and injected the liquid inside. He put the mouse back down on
the table.

The mouse wanted to
escape, Chal could tell, but it was already paralyzed. It would start
out in one direction, then freeze in place, turn, and start in
another direction. It kept moving this way, in jerks and starts. Chal
would have thought it was having a seizure, but its eyes were focused
and alert, fixed on Dr. Fielding’s figure.

“Why are you
injecting this mouse with it?” Chal asked.

“This
particular interferon compound is notoriously unstable,” Dr.
Fielding said. “We run daily and weekly tests to see if the
compound is still viable.”

“Viable,”
Chal repeated. “You mean fatal.”

“Eventually,
yes. It’ll eat away at enough of the neuronal tissue so that
there’s nothing left. But it’s a relatively painless
death.”

“How long does
it take?” Chal asked. The mouse had stopped trying to move and
was lying on its side, legs kicking. Its eyes still tracked the
movement of Dr. Fielding.

“A minute or
so in mice,” Dr. Fielding said. “Longer in
human-substrate organisms.”

“Like Alan,”
Chal murmured.

“You’re
growing quite attached to the prototype,” Dr. Fielding said.
“Is that how a scientist should behave?”

Chal flushed. She
had not meant to be so obvious about the connection she had felt with
Alan during the last session of questioning. He was just a substrate,
after all, grown and implanted with intelligence.

“Would you
like to see the others?” Dr. Fielding asked. His tone was
deceptively casual.

“Other what?”
Chal asked.

“The organisms
we’ve grown for future use. The ones who haven’t had
their neural structures implanted yet.”

“There are
others?” Chal thought there had only been the three prototypes.

In response, Dr.
Fielding simply fished a set of keys out of his pocket and walked to
the other side of the lab. Chal followed, curious.

It had looked like a
closet upon first glance, but now that Chal’s attention was
drawn to the door she saw that it had multiple security measures
installed. Apart from the normal keypad, the door had a deadbolt that
unlocked only with Dr. Fielding’s physical key. There was also
a brief flash of light as the door opened.

“Security
alarm,” Fielding said. “Any time this door opens, a
warning is issued to main security. They know that only a handful of
people are allowed inside.”

“Am I allowed
in?” Chal asked, knowing the answer before he spoke.

“Of course,”
Dr. Fielding said, motioning her inside. He followed her in. “The
eminent Dr. Davidson is allowed everywhere in my lab.”

Chal did not respond
to his bitterness; it was normal by now. Dr. Fielding didn’t
treat everybody with such suspicions, but Chal was a woman, born
outside of the country. She got the sense that he might have been
part of the reason for the all-male staff.

Stepping inside, she
could not stop herself from gasping. It was chilly inside, and her
breath came out cold. The prototype bodies were suspended along each
side of the room, looming over her. The interior of the storage
chamber was much larger than it had looked from the outside –
the walls extended down for another forty feet or so before ending.
And the bodies...

They were all
identical to Alan, with the same dark hair and shaped physique. A
plastic molding supported them on the wall, and intravenous lines ran
through their veins. They stared straight ahead to the wall in front
of them, their eyes blank and meaningless. Their lips slightly
parted, like the lips of a doll, or wax figures. And they were
breathing.

“It’s
cold in here,” Chal said, trying to cover her initial shock.
She watched the chest of the body nearest her rise and fall in slow
motion.

“The
substrates are prepped for full animation before we begin growing the
neural structures,” Dr. Fielding said. “Their growth is
expedited to a certain point, but once they’re at a certain age
we use the cold to slow the growth process.”

“Why this
age?” Chal said, examining one of the bodies. “Why do you
stop them at this point?”

Dr. Fielding looked
at her curiously.

“You really
don’t know, do you?”

“Excuse me?”
she said.

“You’ll
have to talk with Lieutenant Johnner,” Dr. Fielding said.

“About what?”
Chal turned to face Dr. Fielding. “Come out and say what you
mean.”

Dr. Fielding
frowned. “It’s classified. What I’ve told you is
all I can say. Talk with Johnner.”

Although he was
being indirect, Chal sensed the kernel of sincerity behind his words.
He was suspicious, yes, an asshole, yes, but he was an asshole who
was telling the truth, this time at least.

“What should I
ask him?” Chal said.

“Ask him why
we’re putting intelligence into these bodies. Ask him why we’re
putting emotion into them.” Dr. Fielding looked around.

“Why did you
show me these?” Chal said.

“You would
have found them anyway, curious as you are,” Fielding said. His
voice had a deep sense of purpose in it, but he seemed disappointed
by Chal’s lack of understanding. “But I wanted you to see
what we’re doing. What we’re making.”

“I’ll
talk to Johnner,” Chal said. “Later.”

“Of course,”
Dr. Fielding said. He was back to being his cold, polite self.

“And in the
meantime,” Chal said.

“Yes?”

“In the
meantime, you’ll be keeping an eye on me?” She arched one
eyebrow.

Fielding brushed
past her and toward the door.

“You’re
just as replaceable as they are once the prototype is fully
developed,” he said, once he had reached the entryway. “Don’t
forget that.”

Chal opened her
mouth to reply, but found she had nothing to say. The soft sound of
the prototypes breathing surrounded her as she stood there, watching
the scientist leave. Dr. Fielding did not stop walking as he moved
past the lab table, calmly reaching out his hand to brush the dead
mouse into the trash can as he went by.

***

CHAPTER
ELEVEN

It was the fourth
awakening. Chal felt confident, and the beginning of the experiment
went as smoothly as she could have hoped. The white noise levels had
been decreased to almost nil and the lights were increased, though
only a small increment.

All of the
scientists working on the project thought that such small changes
would not be enough to destabilize the prototype’s
development. But they were focused on the wrong stimuli, and spent
too much time taking care of the variables they had anticipated. This
was a mistake, for crucial errors in experiments happen most often
when dealing with radical shifts, changes that have not been
anticipated. Such was the case in the fourth session with the
prototype.

Everything was set
up properly, and Chal was at peak attention, excited to learn more
about the development about the prototype’s brain. She was
thinking about how she would ask him about his emotional state, and
about what Dr. Fielding had shown her in the previous hours. The
initial awakening went smoothly, and Chal was lulled into a sense of
security by the repetition of the prototype’s play. Things only
began to go wrong at the moment Alan lost interest in his fingers.

“Alan,”
she said. He was staring off into space, his hands still moving on
top of the water, splashing softly.

“Yes, Chal?”
he answered in a sing-song voice.

“I want to ask
you about how you’re feeling,” Chal said. She wanted to
remember an odd maneuver he had been repeating, interlacing his
fingers and twisting them back and forth, and her eyes drifted to the
clock to note the time.

“How I’m
feeling?” Alan asked.

“Yes,”
Chal said, writing down the time. “What you’re feeling on
the inside.”

The splashes ceased
completely, and Chal’s eyes snapped back to the tank. Alan’s
hands were rubbing his thighs, slow but hard, and his eyes were fixed
to his body. When Chal saw what he was looking at, she breathed in
sharply. He had gotten an erection.

Stupid, stupid
.
How had she not noticed? It had been Fielding’s decision to
withhold anti-puberty medications from the IV, and Chal had been in
agreement, however qualified, that they shouldn’t interfere
with normal bodily growth alongside mental growth. Although it would
make their lives more difficult initially to deal with the
repercussions of hormones, it would decrease the chances of having
normal neuronal and emotional development, which was, after all, the
main reason they were performing the experiment.

Chal just hadn’t
thought that she would have to deal with these repercussions so soon.

Alan’s hands
knit themselves into fists, and he continued rubbing his thighs.

“Ohh,”
he moaned. Chal held back, afraid to interfere. He seemed to be in a
state of distress, though, and it was impossible for her to sit and
wait for another minute before talking. She noted the time. Her
entire being shifted from observation to action. She reached out and
put a hand on his shoulder.

“Alan,”
she said softly. His attention snapped to her.

“Chal,”
he said. His voice was strained, and sweat stood out on his brow
despite the cool saltwater tank he was resting in. His eyes were
frightened.

“Alan,”
Chal said. “Listen to me.”

“It hurts,”
he said. His fists were rubbing at his thighs hard enough to leave
traces, but Chal knew a few bruises were not the main concern here.

“Ahh!”
he shouted out suddenly, and his hands gripped his thighs. Chal’s
hand tightened on his shoulder instinctively and he jerked backwards.

“I am
malfunctioning!” he cried, and his voice sounded eerily
perfect, a copy of the other, failed prototype. “I am
malfunctioning!”

Chal froze.

She had dealt with
emergencies before in the field and in the lab, and every time she
had been able to keep her head. Deep breath, don’t choke, and
the world would go on spinning. She had always been prepared, always
ready to handle whatever flew at her. But this was different. She
felt her chest tighten, and all of the air in the room seemed to have
disappeared.

This wasn’t
just a failed experiment. This was watching somebody die in front of
her.

Alan’s eyes
clenched shut, his entire body tense. He was breathing in hard fast
pants.

“Ahhhh,”
he groaned again. His body twisted in the tank. “Ahhh!”

“Alan,”
she said feebly. He was going to die, he was going to die right in
front of her and there was nothing she could do or say that would
stop it. Her heart felt as though it had stopped in her chest. All of
her sense of time was gone, and her eyes were fixed on the man in
front of her who was writhing in the water. Her lips parted, but she
had nothing to say.

Then he opened his
eyes and looked at her.

“Chal,”
he whispered through gritted teeth. “Help.”

Something inside of
her broke down, and she felt her heart begin to beat again. Help.
Yes. Help. She could do that.

“Alan,”
she said. “You’re going to be okay.”

“Help,”
Alan said. He reached one hand up and grasped her by the arm. She
felt his strong hand around her tiny wrist, and a rush of fear swept
through her again. It was overwhelmed by the need to help him,
though, and she leaned forward.

“This is
normal,” Chal said. “Do you understand? Normal.”

“It
hurts,
”
Alan hissed. His body wrenched sideways, sending a wave of water
splashing over the edge of the tank, but his eyes were still glued to
her. “
Please.
”

The door opened and
the assistants stood ready with their syringes. She shook her head
once,
NO
, and turned back to Alan. She steadied him with the
hand she had on his shoulder, trying to ignore the tight pressure on
her wrist. Alan’s breath made hard ripples on the surface of
the water. Every muscle in him seemed to be tensed. His eyes were
clenched shut.