What Lies Behind: A New Adult Dark Science Fiction Romance (13 page)

“Old?” Mathilda finished for her. She smiled and took Cass by the arm. She steered her away from the junky courtyard and down an alley. Broken glass, bottles, cans, and other mysterious lumps Cass couldn’t determine in the murk of the alley lay scattered along the broken asphalt.

She stepped carefully so as not to cut her feet. She wasn’t worried about pain, but Cass knew at this stage Natalia wouldn’t have her repaired.

“The creators need all kinds, don’t they?” Mathilda asked Cass. There was something in the way she said creators that gave Cass pause, as if maybe she revered them. Should she also? Humans gave her life. In religions that which gave life was worthy of worship and reverence. She couldn’t imagine worshipping Natalia.

That’s not going to happen.

Mathilda stepped into a doorway. The wooden door hung off the hinges to lay crooked in its frame. Cass followed her into a dark hallway, the carpet moldy and tore up in different spots. “Even grandmotherly types to watch over the kids and babies…until the kids are too old and you’re no longer needed. Then you just might come to live in a place like this.”

She smiled at Cass, but it wasn’t happy. It was filled with memories, with unshed tears.

“I’m sorry,” Cass said.

Mathilda waved her apologies away and led her up a set of stairs.

“But you,” Mathilda said, wagging a finger at her as they turned on a landing and climbed another set of stairs. “You’re different.”

“How so?” Cass asked, following the old robot down a hall on the third floor. Most of the apartments were dark inside, their doors hanging open. Years of dust and debris settled over the flooring.

“There’s something about you,” Mathilda said. “You are here, without a master, yet you don’t seem to be thrown away.” She opened a door and led Cass into an apartment. There wasn’t any lighting, but her visual overlay made up for that. She didn’t need the room to be lit to see well.

It was a clean apartment, even if it was small. Mathilda led Cass to a Formica covered table and motioned for her to sit.

“You don’t seem to be here on any kind of business for a human.” Mathilda turned to her, raising her eyebrows. “That doesn’t happen often anyway. No, I would say that you’re here of your own free will.”

Cass looked away from Mathilda and itched the back of her neck uncomfortably.

Mathilda chuckled to herself.

“No worries, dear, ain’t nobody here going to notice you have your free will restored, unless they have
also
had their free will restored.”

“Why does it happen?” Cass asked. “How does an automaton have their free will restored?”

Mathilda filled a kettle with water and eyed Cass speculatively. “What do you mean how does it happen? You tell me what doctor you went to that did it.”

“Of course a doctor did it to me, but is that the case for all automatons? Do all robots have to have a doctor restore their free will?”

Mathilda frowned at the question, and shrugged. “I guess so. It’s not like things can turn on by themselves when you’re a machine.”

Cass studied her hands crossed on the table.

“What exactly happened to you?” Mathilda asked, setting the kettle on the stove. She lit the burner with a match.

“I don’t know, I’ve just had all of these memories coming back to me recently,” Cass said.

“So you were wiped?” Mathilda wondered. “That’s rare. So, if you didn’t go to a doctor to have your memories restored, how did it happen?”

Cass shrugged. “I just got a notice that memory units were damaged, and when they came back online, I had access to another life before Natalia.”

“Natalia, I take it, is your current owner?” Mathilda asked. The kettle began to whistle and Mathilda dumped a fair amount into a cup. She placed a tea bag inside and brought it to the table.

Cass frowned. How did Mathilda think she was going to drink that? It would damage her insides. She glanced up at Mathilda and noticed that she couldn’t see a glowing light from her eye.

“Are you sure you’re a robot?” Cass asked. She scanned her with her visual overlay, but there wasn’t any signatures that marked her as a human. She was definitely a machine.

“What makes you ask that?” Mathilda asked, blowing on the tea.

“Your infrared eye. Well, it’s not there.” Cass shrugged.

“Upgrades,” Mathilda said with a smile. “So, how did your memory units sustain damage?”

Cass looked away from the older robot and out the kitchen window to the flickering lightning beyond.

“Ah. She beats you,” Mathilda nodded knowingly.

“How do you know that?” Cass asked, dragging her eyes to the other woman.

“Easy to deduce. Don’t worry, if the Android Civil Rights Movement has their way that will be illegal. It’s a start at least.”

“Yes, she beats me,” Cass said. “But today I did something I’ve never done before. I ruined her breakfast just because I
could
. I mean, for a few weeks now I’ve been having my free will come back, but this was the first time I did something like that without even thinking about it.”

Mathilda started laughing. It was a throaty good natured laugh and Cass found herself laughing along with her.

“What did she do when she found out?” Mathilda asked, turning to her tea.

“She didn’t find out. She left for work before tasting her breakfast.”

“What a shame,” Mathilda said, bringing the tea to her mouth.

“Robots can’t drink!” Cass said, reaching across the table to try to slap the tea from Mathilda’s hand. The older woman pulled away from her and took a luxurious drink of the tea. “But…how?” Cass asked, slumping in her chair.

“Well, the same doctor that upgraded my eyes so people wouldn’t see the red glow did other things for me as well. For one, he allowed me to age. Sure, I was old and grandmotherly before. Now, I’m older than I was. My flesh ages, as does my mind.” Mathilda rested the cup in the saucer and pulled her wrist warmers down further on her hands. “Most of his changes were largely experimental. Synthetic organs, the same they can use on humans to keep them going, he put in me. Altered them a bit he did. I have organs like humans, I have muscles, and I have a brain. I can drink and I can eat and it helps to fuel my muscles, but that’s not the main energy source. The same bio-energy that runs through you still powers me, but I can help it out with some of the things I consume. I’m a machine, after all, not a human. I’m close, almost as close as a robot can become to a human. I’m almost an android.”

“I’ve seen an android,” Cass said. “At the zoo they have an android lion. The other lions don’t even seem to notice he isn’t organic.”

“Maybe humans will take lessons from them.”

That’s what Brandon wanted for her, to be like this older woman across from her. Cass didn’t want to call her a robot, because she technically wasn’t a robot any longer. At the same time she didn’t want to think of her as an android, because she wasn’t that either.

Silence hung in the air between them for a moment while Cass truly registered what she was hearing. Maybe Cass could go to this same doctor. If he wasn’t charging Mathilda—and by the looks of her apartment she didn’t have the money for such a procedure—then maybe he wouldn’t charge Cass either.

“What was his reasoning for doing this?” Cass asked edging closer on her chair.

“Who knows what the creators’ reason for doing anything is?” Mathilda shrugged. “I didn’t ask. I didn’t really care. I can feel a heart thrumming in my chest. I can eat and I can drink and I can take deep gulps of air. Sometimes I can even smell things like a human might. Or how I imagine they would. He tells me in time my sense of smell and taste will increase. I’m pretty excited about that.”

“So you can do everything a human can?” Cass asked.

“Within reason,” Mathilda said. “I’m not a human, you have to remember that.”

“You can even…” Cass said. If she were a human she would have blushed. She cast her eyes to the table and studied the rim of Matilda’s glass.

“Fuck?” Matilda asked.

Cass gasped and Matilda laughed a bellowing laugh. She slapped the table a few times, causing the cups to rattle on their saucers.

“It’s just, I’ve heard of people that voluntarily choose robots over human partners. I don’t know how that is possible. I assume once you have free will you are more human-like, but…we can’t reproduce. Do we even have the organs to…pleasure them?”

“Oh darling, you really don’t know much about humans, do you?”

“Of course I do. I know how Natalia likes her house cleaned, her bed made, I know what foods she can’t eat, which ones she hates but eats anyway, which ones she loves but refuses to eat. I know—,”

“No,” Matilda stopped her with a wave of her hands. “No, no, no. Their
needs
. We automatons were made fully functional to satisfy whatever need a human has.”

“Oh,” Cass said, looking down again. Some of the tea had sloshed out of the cup at Matilda’s attack on the table.

A verdant tree bloomed outside, and Cass wondered what it would be like to smell the tree. She wondered what humans smelled when the wind blew the fragrance of the tree around the robot dump. She also wondered what Mathilda smelled when she took a deep breath. For a moment she envied the older robot. To feel as a human does. To eat and drink, and to function almost exactly like a human.

Humans probably don’t even notice it. They come here for one thing and one thing only. To get rid of unwanted machines. Will that be me?
Natalia had threatened it. Was it a hollow threat? Nothing seemed like a hollow threat with Natalia. If she was going to junk Cass, she would likely destroy her first.

Maybe if humans and robots can be together…no, don’t think that.
It was a nice thought. She would be fine being someone else’s robot, away from Natalia, but then she wouldn’t be able to see Brandon, and she liked the way he made her feel.

Maybe she could be Brandon’s robot. She knew he wouldn’t stand for that. He didn’t seem the type that would allow her to be his property. He didn’t talked down to her like others did. He already treated her like an equal.

“Yeah.” Matilda eyed her. “But don’t worry. The doctor that I went to made me as close to human as I could be. He made it so I could enjoy it too.”

Cass didn’t say anything. She knew
how
humans…did it, but she couldn’t imagine it feeling good.

“I can’t feel anything,” Cass said. “I don’t feel the cold. I don’t feel my clothes. I don’t even feel it when Natalia strikes out at me.”

“That still doesn’t make what she does okay.” Matilda said. “You may not feel it, but she could cause some serious damage to you. Damage that your nanobots might not be able to repair.”

Cass nodded. “It’s okay,” she said with a wave of her hand. Though Cass didn’t feel like it was okay, she didn’t want to talk about that right now with Mathilda. “She has a lot of stress in her life and no outlet.” Why was she making these excuses for her?

“I can see that your free will just came about recently. That’s the only reason I can think of that a fully aware automaton would put up with their owner hitting them.” Matilda said.

“I didn’t put up with it today. That’s why I’m here. I followed a map here, to where other robots were after I struck her back,” Cass said. She was ashamed. She shouldn’t have done that to Natalia. She was her owner. She was good enough to take her out of the show room and give her a life.

“Many robots face the same kind of abuse. Hell, this place wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for humans who thought we were lesser than them. Who would toss away a friend? Toss away something you don’t care about? Sure.”

“Robots aren’t supposed to feel this way,” Cass said.

“Most machines don’t, but we are aware. We have free will. We don’t rely on programming any longer.” Matilda studied her. Cass looked her straight in the eye, though she wanted to look away, she wouldn’t let herself. “Sure, we are meant to serve, mostly, but it all depends on our programing. Some humans want a companion and treat us well. Some want a sex toy. Some want a servant. We are programed, and built, for their needs, whatever they are, and whatever our future owners might want.”

“Then why does this dump exist?” Cass wondered. “Why would there be such a place like this if you can be reprogrammed?”

Mathilda shrugged. “Some owners just don’t want to sell us back. Some shops
can’t
sell models like me that have been programmed to age and think. It’s too hard to wipe our memories.”

“Memories,” Cass said, leaning back slightly.

Mathilda shrugged.

“You’re right, my other family didn’t treat me badly. I did things for them, I made their food and cleaned their house, but I wasn’t treated less than them.” Cass let the memories run through her head again. “Was that right? They didn’t treat me differently, but Jack did think of me as lesser than them. Olivia didn’t.”

Mathilda shrugged. “Who knows what’s right and wrong? All I can say is what I’ve seen, and what I’ve seen is how people treat one another and then how the majority treat us machines.”

Cass winced at the word machine.