What Lies Behind: A New Adult Dark Science Fiction Romance (16 page)

There was a song playing in her head. A beautiful song.

The nanobots were repairing her again. That much she could tell, but the song drowned out everything else. She knew the song because the name would flash up on her visual overlay before the song started playing. “Dream a Little Dream of Me.” It was by Mama Cass, the singer Brandon had told her about when they were by the lake. The song was lovely.

It reminded her of Brandon in more ways than just because he mentioned it. She really wished that she could live with Brandon in that dream world conjured within her whenever he was around.

Just a machine
, that’s what the man in the memory had called her. Just a machine. Everyone seemed to be referring to her as just a machine…including Mathilda, who was so much more than
just
a machine.

The woman in the memory seemed to think differently. She seemed to think that robots were worthy of so much more than the life most people were giving them.

That woman was Janet, and she wasn’t treating Cass like much more than a machine either, sending her on missions. Ones that, it seemed, Cass didn’t want to go on? How was she any better than the man who thought of her as only a machine? How was she any better than Natalia?

There had been her other family, but they were gone now. Dead, and Cass hadn’t been able to save them because…she was just a machine. Even Jack thought that. Was that the real reason she killed him? She was a machine, and one of the main things she’d been programmed with was the need to survive and not put herself in danger.

But don’t humans have the same instinct?
Flight or fight they called it, but they had a choice. There was an “or” in their “programming” that Cass didn’t have. She had a flight, no fight. She wondered if she was completely free willed if she would have that option to fight, or if the will to survive would always override her bravery.

No. That had already been proven wrong. She knew that Natalia would punish her if she went to the apartment, but she still had to go. It
could
be overridden, but she had to get that device from Natalia.

“Cass?” she heard before her. She couldn’t see though. The nanobots hadn’t repaired her vision yet. The song stopped. “You were singing,” Brandon said. “I told you it was a great song.”

She felt his hands on her shoulders as he turned her slightly.

“What happened to you?” he asked. She felt him pick her up and carry her out of the closet. “I really don’t need to ask. You really need to get away from her. We both do.” He sat Cass on the sofa and she felt him working at the panel on her side. “Whatever she did it’s being repaired. You wait here, I will be just in the other room, okay?”

She couldn’t answer, so she didn’t try. She could feel the nanobots whirling around inside of her, making their repairs and chirping their statistics as they went. Before long all systems were online and she was able to sit up on the sofa.

“Alright,” Brandon said, coming in. He was wearing a long sleeved green thermal shirt today with his customary loose jeans. “Natalia isn’t here. What happened?”

“EMP,” Cass said. Her speaking was slurred, slower than it had been before. The room around her was spinning. She let her head drop into her hands to help stop the sensation.

Speaker damage detected…initializing repairs.
The nanobots swirled out of the base of her neck and around to the front of her throat.

“How did she ever get her hands on that?” Brandon asked. He had been in the process of sitting down, but he stopped mid-motion when he heard of the EMP. He stood once more. “Alright, that doesn’t matter. She has it, and it’s illegal. So that means it must be here somewhere,” he said. “We need to find it, and we need to get you away from here. You’re coming to stay with me. I will keep you safe.”

Cass was already shaking her head no.

“Why?” he asked.

Speaker repaired.

“She has another remote that can control me, take away my free will,” she told him. “She will use it on me. That’s the reason I left you last night. I couldn’t fight it.”

Brandon frowned.

“So she has a remote that can control you, and an EMP generator. Those are freaking weapons! They weren’t just outlawed because of how people were using them on robots. They can mess up a lot of shit with them.”

Cass nodded, but her vision wavered out in gray noise when she did. The nanobots reported another damage and came out of their hidey hole. “I know, but while she has the two of them…”

“You have to come with me. There’s no way around it.” Brandon knelt before her. “If you’re staying, I’m staying too, long enough to find that remote and destroy it. Do you think you can resist the remote long enough for me to do that?”

His eyes searched hers.

“I don’t know if I can,” she said. “How could I leave her like that?”

“That’s the remote talking,” Brandon said, sitting back on his heels. “Cass, I really enjoy your company, and I would love to see where this goes. It’s been a long time since I’ve really liked being around someone.”

“You’re around people all the time,” Cass said. She pushed to her feet, though the floor seemed to move beneath them, and crossed to the window. Instinctively she adjusted the environmental controls for the patio, taking into account the overcast day. She looked out the balcony doors and to the street below. Natalia didn’t want her out there, not in her own little refuge, but Cass didn’t care.

She stepped outside anyway. The verdant plants around her almost seemed to exalt in her freedom. The synthetic lighting made the patio brighter than the day really was.

Brandon followed her.

“That’s not what I meant,” he said. “Of course I’m always surrounded by people, but that doesn’t mean I’m not alone. The way we talked the last few weeks? I haven’t been able to talk to someone like that in ages. I don’t know what this is, but I want to see where it goes, and we can’t do that while you’re all muddled up with Natalia’s abuse.”

Cass sighed, some emotion she didn’t have words for bubbling up inside of her. All she knew was it made her feel bad, it made her feel almost like the night she’d stared into Jack’s dying eyes.

She didn’t like the feeling.

“I’m a machine,” she said. “How can you feel this way for me?”

“What?” Brandon asked, drawing nearer. Cass didn’t believe that he hadn’t heard her.

“I’m just parts and wires and gears. Blood runs through your body. Some bio energy produced by water and algae runs through mine! We aren’t compatible. Natalia is better for you!”

“I don’t want Natalia. I don’t care what runs through your body. So what, you are made up of bio energy and wires. Without electric impulses, my brain wouldn’t run. And what’s blood but an organic oil?”

Cass didn’t look at Brandon. She didn’t know if she could have looked at him at that point. She didn’t want to see him then. What would she really see? Was this another torture of Natalia’s? Had she figured out that in the last day or so that Cass wanted more than anything to feel human? What was more human than being able to love and being loved? Had she concocted this with Brandon as Cass originally feared? Her vision was blurred. Her shoulders shook.

“And you can feel,” he said, wrapping his arms around her. He felt warm, and his body felt hard. “You’re crying.”

“How’s that even possible?” she asked, trying to shrug out of his embrace, but he wouldn’t let her go. That was just as well. She didn’t really want him to let her go. Instead, she relaxed into his embrace, laying her head on his shoulder. “I’m not human.” She argued.

“That doesn’t mean that you can’t feel!” he told her. He turned her to look at him. “Cass, so what if you’re an automaton? What does that even mean? It’s obvious that you can feel, you can think, you can communicate.” His brown eyes searched her face. He brushed away a tear. “Your skin feels like skin.”

“But what lies behind all of that skin?” Cass asked.

“Your insides. It’s what makes you run, makes you work, nothing more than that. What’s underneath my skin is the same. Organs. It’s hidden behind all this skin, you can’t see it. You have to rely on what you know about me. Why should that be any different for you?”

“I’m programs and software. You’re not.” she said, rubbing away her tears.

Brandon shrugged. “How do we know that?”

Cass shook her head, her eyebrows creasing.

“I mean, what you call programming, we call personality. What you call software, we call characteristics. What you call electricity, some of us call a soul. Similar things.”

Cass looked away from him. He let his hands drop from her shoulders.

“What do you see when you look out at the street?”

She shrugged. “What everyone sees.”

“And what do you see when you look up in the sky?”

Cass looked up.

“With
out
your visual overlay?” There was a chuckle in Brandon’s voice.

Cass smiled through her tears. “Stars, and universes, and possibility.”

Brandon nodded. “So why isn’t there a possibility that you’re just as alive as I am?”

Cass sighed and dropped her eyes to the city street. She watched people going about their daily lives, oblivious to what was happening on the balcony above them. For all they knew, she and Brandon were lovers, out enjoying the day on their deck. They didn’t know that she was a machine and he was a human.

“I could make you happy,” he said, intruding on her reverie. “No abuse. No overlord. Just you and me.”

She had that before, and then it was taken all away. “What if this is all I’m meant for?”

“How can anyone be meant for that?”

“I’m meant to serve humans,” Cass said.

“No, not serve. Help. Isn’t that what everyone does for one another? Help?”

She was silent.

“When scientists created automatons, they didn’t do it so they could have slaves. They did it so they could have another life form that could help them. Computers have always been able to do more technical and difficult things than humans. That’s why you were made. It wasn’t until they started selling automatons to the general population that you had people like Natalia who treated them like servants and mindless drones.”

“And you
want
that with me?” she asked. “I can’t reproduce. I don’t age.”

“None of that matters. Honestly, I don’t much care for kids anyway, so problem solved.”

They both laughed.

“No reason to decide now. Think about it?” Brandon said. “I could give you a better life.”

Cass sighed, brushing away the last of the tears. “I can’t expect you to try to find the device on your own. And I can’t leave Natalia just yet. What if she finds out that I went with you? What if she knows? If she’s worked up about her father leaving her mother for an automaton, that could put you in danger, and I don’t want that.” Not to mention, she couldn’t shake the feeling that her programming wouldn’t sneak up on her and make her do something she didn’t want to. The other day when she went to see Olivia, she almost couldn’t control herself. If Brandon wasn’t there, who knows what would have happened to her?

Brandon scowled. “What if she abuses you again?”

“I will be good. I will do everything she wants.”

“We both know that won’t help,” he told her. “She will find
some
reason to attack you.”

“I know, but I can take it.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t like this idea. There’s only so much EMP you can withstand without shorting out. There’s only so many times that you can take damage to your computer without causing serious damage.”

“I know, but—”

“No,” he shook his head again. “I won’t let you do that.”

“You won’t
let
me?” Cass said.

He frowned. “That came out wrong.”

“Is this what life would be like with you, too? Me just waiting on your orders?” Cass asked. This time she did pull away.

“Of course not.” He ran his hand through his hair and stepped back. He leaned against the brick wall and watched her. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Well, this is my future, and part of
being
human is being able to make my own decisions, right?”

“Of course,” he answered.

“Then I need to start making my own decisions. Starting with this one. I will help you find that remote, and I will destroy it. That’s the only way I can be free from her. Free from humans always trying to control me.” She thought of the operating room and the swinging light above her head. She needed this. She needed to know that she couldn’t be controlled.

“I don’t like this,” he told her. “I don’t want you to feel like I think I can force you to do something you don’t want to. I want you to know that while you’re with me you will have that freedom that everyone deserves. Even if I think it’s a dumb idea.”

Cass folded her arms over her chest.

“I’m staying here as much as I can to make sure you don’t take a lot of damage,” Brandon said.

“That would be nice,” Cass said.