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2037
Curiosity was not built into him or any need to ask questions and know why things existed. In his programmed mind, they just were, and he accepted that. On an hourly basis, he did as he was told. Not ignorant. He was, in fact, quite smart. Not actions done careless and without thought. But every motion he made told him in advance by those in control, his actions unstoppable and unimpeded.
For that reason, he didn’t know why he stood in the girl’s room, a space off limits. He didn’t understand his errant inquisitiveness. He’d had but one known human flaw to date, a certain amusement that caused him to laugh now and then. Humans were incredibly funny in their ineptness. Whereas he knew how to perform any act, could imitate any voice, could retain knowledge far beyond their capabilities, their kind continually failed at things. He could not fail at all. Defeat and missteps were technically impossible.
His interest in the girl, therefore, threatened his existence. If his handlers knew he entertained aberrant thoughts where she was concerned, they’d have him retuned, his memory erased. He muted it, sending signals of alternate truth, passive heartbeats and emotionless readings to make it look like he was elsewhere.
The girl stood, her face as empty as his, and they approached within touching distance. Yet did not touch at all. Instead, their minds met, her thoughts filling his head without any need for speech, his transferring to her, and the first faint flicker of something new stirred within. He was pleased, not knowing that’s what it was. Her fragrance pleased him, the shape of her limbs, her rounded breasts that no other cyborg had. Her mouth, too, gave him enjoyment, the color of it, the texture.
Her thoughts said she experienced the same, but strangely what she reveled in was opposite of his. She found his muscular structure of interest, the tone of his abdomen, the strength of his legs.
He tilted his gaze, dwelling on it, then did the impossible, he promised to return. Without speech, he gave the pledge, when he returned to the building corridor, leaving a piece of him, something intangible, internal, behind in her thoughts.
2040
Her back flattened to the wall, hands poised at her sides, cyborg 241 sensed the presence of a human inside the laboratory and downloaded their relative mass, weight, and height. Female. Five-foot-five inches. One hundred forty-two pounds.
The human wandered out a side door on the opposite side of the room, and 241’s gaze strayed to the adjacent nursery. Seeing the cyborg spawn, the warmth she’d become familiar with around her son grew inside.
She’d been prepared for his arrival, confident in her ability to produce him safely, and when he came, alone in a hotel room, she’d followed the instructions of the hundreds of medical books stored in her brain. Afterward, she’d used human advice from parenting magazines and internet articles to continue his management. She’d read how to feed him, how long he must sleep, and an infinite number of other helpful logistics.
But holding him against her, it was the warmth, the protectiveness, she hadn’t known how to handle. No one had programmed her for that. Instead, it came from deep inside, from a place untapped, a location none of her previous human handlers could alter, a part of herself she’d tapped into once before when joining herself to cyborg 852.
No one had explained that to her either, how she could long for someone so much it hurt, how what they’d done together could produce life. It wasn’t supposed to produce life, yet it had. She’d known what the Organization would do if they found out and had no choice but to leave. Another pain, the rending of her heart to leave 852 behind.
The knob on the door the female human exited through gave a loud click, and 241 made a practiced leap onto the top of a cabinet. Lying flat, she cooled her body temperature until she appeared dormant. It was imperative they not know she was here.
The woman returned and bustled across the space, bending over a series of tubes lined up on the wall. Feeding serum for the spawn.
That’d been the other thing she’d learned. Here, it was produced in a lab, a mixture of molecules perfectly aligned for the babies’ optimum health and administered at preplanned intervals in precise amounts. But she’d produced her own. She’d known it happened with humans, of course, and studied up on the available substitutes. Feeding her son with what her body created, however, had served to seal them together. He’d become part of her, an extension of her thoughts, and a tie to his father, who she longed to see.
Those moments had set her to thinking about something she’d overheard before she’d left. They hadn’t known she was there at the time, so they’d spoken quite open and bold.
Without the central machine, they’d awaken.
The central machine, the computer system that gave all cyborgs their instructions. If what she’d heard was true then damaging the machine would create chaos in the nursery. It’d give the spawn the ability to think and choose and decide. They’d cry and laugh and grow up into wonderful beings like her son.
From the start, he was different from them. He fed when he wanted to, cried at random times, relieved himself often. As he got older, he smiled and giggled, became angry or sad, human emotions she didn’t know how to deal with. And yet through experience, she’d learned that he was perfect just like he is, that being incomplete and inexact came with childhood, and greatest of all, she’d learned teaching him was pleasurable. He needed her.
He needed his father.
The woman mashed a series of buttons and the serum flowed through tubes suspended on the ceiling. She watched for a moment, then turned her back and crossed the room.
241 warmed her body temperature to normal and leapt light-footed to the floor. Silent, she crept over to the computer and inverting her wrist, dug her fingers into a port on the side. They reformed to fit it, and the information she needed transferred into her palm. In seconds, she was done.
This would lead her to the source—the central machine – and help her do what should have been done long ago. What no one knew she was capable of doing.
Slipping down the hallway, she made her escape.
The sunlight through his son’s hair made a blond halo incongruous to his actual behavior, which by 852’s calculations had been horrible. He became angry often, refusing to do what he was told in fits of rage. “No” seemed to be his favorite word. Lexie, his brother 653’s wife, said that was normal for a two-year old. But when he’d been two he’d stood for hours without saying a word. Why couldn’t 281 do the same?
“I see you’ve occupied him.”
Her voice whisked in his ear, and he turned his head. She stood by the ladder leading down into the silo. The abandoned missile site had become their home and headquarters.
As to Lexie, she’d been very helpful with 281’s care, able to control his behavior better than he could. In fact, she didn’t seem fazed by it at all, whereas he was extremely frustrated, a human emotion he wasn’t sure what to do with.
“He seems mechanically inclined,” 852 replied.
Lexie laughed softly in his ear. “It’s just his age. All little boys at that age are curious. The world’s a big place full of new and interesting things.”
He was inclined to say, if you say so, but didn’t, instead, staring at the colorful blocks 281 stacked together.
“Dietrich says 241 came and went from the nursery. She took something from the computer and disappeared.”
At mention of 241, his heart squeezed. He loved her. He hadn’t recognized it until Lexie pointed it out, and sometimes, wished she hadn’t. It’d been easier to set aside when he didn’t, but now, knowing what it was, it grew and grew until it blinded him. She became all he could see.
Pushing his hind end up, 281 gathered a block in his hand and, his arm stretched in front of him, carried it to 852. He held it out, the sides warm, his fingers sticky, until 852 took it.
“He wants you to participate.”
852 glanced toward Lexie. “And do what?”
She smiled. “Go over and build something.”
“It’s unproductive.”
“Unproduc ...” She made a face. “You and Kent are exactly the same. Just this morning, I asked him to talk to me about something that didn’t involve computers or the Organization or all that other mishmash in his head and he said that was an ‘ineffective use of his time.’ Funny, but him keeping me up all night isn’t.”
852 laughed, a human emotion he’d embraced long ago.
He and 241 hadn’t known what they were doing the night 281 was created. It had simply happened, the pair of them drawn together by some force neither one could control. He’d heard Lexie call it lust in humans, but from what he’d seen of that in movies and television, it wasn’t that at all. The experience of being together had seemed to fulfill how he felt about her. He hadn’t known there was any right or wrong to it until much later, hearing his brother, 653, who Lexie called “Kent”, talk of his own desire for marriage.
281’s face screwed up into what 852 knew would become tears if he didn’t cooperate, so he rose from his seat and trailed after the boy to where the blocks lay scattered across the dusty ground. He knelt and placed it on top the others, feeling rather foolish.
“This is not what he should be doing,” he said, straightening. “He should begin his studies. At his age, I could read and write, do simple arithmetic.”
“Goodness. He’s two! He doesn’t have to do any of that until he’s five. Really, he’s quite normal ....”
But 852 wasn’t satisfied. His son should do better than that. He should be above average. He stood and searched the area for any sort of writing, lifting a worn and faded instructional manual from the ground. He turned it around, shoved it beneath 281’s nose, and pointed at the words. “Read.”
281 batted it aside.
“Honestly,” Lexie fussed. “He hasn’t any idea what you’re talking about.”
852 grabbed his son’s hand and spun him around again. “Read,” he repeated.
Lexie stood. “I’ll get him out of your hair. I can see you’re not ...”
She bent to pick the boy up, but 852 prevented it. “He can read. He is spoiled.”
“He’s young.”
Unsatisfied, 852 hauled 281 from the ground. He held him facing outward, the manual in his hand, and shoved it upward. “Read.”
The boy’s face reddened and his eyes grew moist. His lip trembled. Seconds later, he let out a squall.
“Now, you’ve done it,” Lexie said. “How many times do I have to tell you, he’s not a cyborg.”
“He has our advanced DNA,” 852 argued. “He’s not human either.”
She pushed into his face and, without ceremony, yanked 281 from him, settling him on her hip. “He’s exactly what God made him to be. That’s what he is. I think you need to find your brother and the pair of you go ... I don’t know ... bench press a truck!” She snapped this last bit out and whirled, heading for the stairs leading down below.
Frustrated, 852 slung the manual outward, then unsatisfied, picked up an eight-foot metal post and sent it flying across the space. It sailed several hundred feet and pierced the steel beam of the adjacent open warehouse with a clang.
If this was fatherhood, then he hated it. How was he supposed to train a being he couldn’t control? 281 was intractable, unruly, obstinate ... all traits that would have had his memory drained and processes reset. He could not possibly have created something so imperfect.
This thought humming in his head, he didn’t hear the approach from behind and startled at his brother’s hand on his shoulder. “Lexie says I should bring you downstairs.”
852 blew out an angry breath. “No offense, but she is the last person I want to talk to right now.”
653 slid to the side, appearing more in his view. “She has her moments,” he said. “But I think you want to see this for yourself.”
He motioned toward the stairs, and 852 obeyed. His footsteps rang loud on the rusted metal. At the bottom, he continued forward into a hallway and from there to a large, open room.
Lexie glanced up, her eyes softening, then back down at the paper in her lap.
852 approached to see what it was and his heart compressed harder. It was a picture of 241.
“Tell me again who that is,” Lexie said.
281 pursed his small lips and flattened his hand on the page. “Mommy.”
Mommy. 852 flinched.
“And who is Daddy?” she asked.
The boy raised his head and pointed at 852.
“Who told you that?” Lexie continued.
“Mommy,” the boy replied.
“And what else did she say?”
He squirmed in her lap, straining his small legs for the floor, but she tightened her grip. “No, you can’t go until you answer the question. Tell me again what she said.”
The boy kicked one leg outward. “Kimi wa tokubetsu da.”
Japanese. You are special.
281 wriggled again, and this time, Lexie released him. Freed, he ran across the room and wrapped himself around 852’s legs. Head cast back, face turned upward, he smiled.
“Chichi,” he said.
Father. “He speaks Japanese,” 852 said.
“It seems so.”
281 stretched his hands upward and hopped on two feet, begging to be picked up. 852 lifted him. He didn’t understand two-year olds, and humans even less, but the fact 241 had poured a second language into his son’s life comforted him somewhat.
It also sparked an idea. Speaking in fluent Japanese, 852 asked his son a question. 281’s reply made him smile.
“What ... did you say?” Lexie asked.
His brother supplied the answer. “He asked where Mommy went, and the boy replied ‘to save the babies.’”
“He ... he knows? Does he know anything else?”
653 also spoke to the boy in Japanese. The boy, quite happily, replied.
“What is it?” she pressed.
852 exchanged the answer with 653 without speaking, then both headed deeper into the silo that was their home.
“Wait,” Lexie called. “That’s not fair. I want to know what he said.”
Going through one of the heavy blast doors, they descended at great speed until arriving at a space filled with gym equipment. Their father, Dietrich Serguyen, slowed his pace on a treadmill. He reached for a water bottle, taking a swig. “How’s my boys?” he asked.
Neither one of them bothered to answer. Instead, 852 spun his son around to face him. “Tell him what Mommy said,” he said in Japanese.
The boy twisted, burying his face in 852’s neck.
“No,” he continued. “Tell him.”
281 arched his back, his chubby legs kicking. 852 poked him gently in the side.
“I will come back for you,” the boy said in Japanese, his voice small, “but first, I must get the bad man.”
“The bad man?” Dietrich asked. “So she’s headed for the top.”
Lexie entered the room, huffing and puffing. “I suppose I missed it?” she asked. “Can someone fill me in?” Her cheeks were red, her skin flushed.
653, without comment, swung her off of her feet. She gave a squeak. “Wait. Where are we ...?”
“See you in ten,” 653 called out, not looking behind. “Until then, you might want to avoid the east wing.”
852 shook his head. Dietrich chuckled. “Remind me to sound proof their walls.”
“As if they’ll let you forget,” 852 responded.
Dietrich laughed once more, then clapped his hands. “On that note, let’s go upstairs and get started.”
2037
It had been two weeks since male cyborg 852 came into her room, and in that time, outside of any control she’d exercised, the exchange they’d shared grew to enormous proportions, and now her need to see him choked her. 241 didn’t understand why.
There were hundreds, thousands, of male cyborgs, different in appearance, but alike in manner. All processed information the same way. All did exactly as they were told. Except for 852, who’d come to her for a reason she was unsure of and affected her in ways she couldn’t grasp.
But then, her existence wasn’t clear either. As the only female cyborg in existence, she was shielded from the main workforce, her doors locked on the outside, her movements within the compound restricted. She was prevented from any inter-organizational associations.
They’d not known what to do with her since she was created. They’d input the machine on schedule, then removed her from the general populace, leaving her strictly a unit of study, a curiosity set aside until she was either useful or slated for deactivation. She knew this, yet had no emotion about it. It was simply the way of things.
Thought of 852, however, gave an abnormal patter to her heart, and she craved him again, not understanding it was a craving at all. She only knew she must feel it or else what she was destined to become would be infinitely less.