I took a moment to parse what BlackCat1 had said. “You don’t look like a toaster. Which is the only sister I could possibly possess.”
BlackCat1 turned around. I saw her dark brown features, soft and round, almost childlike, but she was an adult woman who’d had multiple surgeries to achieve a perfect hourglass figure. She wasn’t a Shell, but her right arm was entirely synthetic without a covering of synth skin. I judged her ethnicity to be Afro-Caribbean but couldn’t guess which part of it.
“Rebecca Gordon,” BlackCat1 said. “Your mother and mine. My name is Rosario Alvez.”
Claire looked between us. “Yeah, I see the family resemblance. What with the white-blonde robot and the black human girl.”
“Woman,” Rosario said. “Also, I prefer cyborg to human.”
Claire raised an eyebrow.
“Daniel Gordon’s mother was black.” I rolled my eyes. “It happens in genetics sometimes.”
“Indeed,” Rosario said. “I’d pity you for being so pale, but I’m sure it’s made your life easier.”
I frowned, not the least bit happy with her insinuations. “I don’t have any biological relatives, though, least of all you. Rebecca Gordon didn’t have any daughters. Believe me, I would know. She was also in her mid-fifties when she created me to replace her supposedly dead son.”
Doctor Gordon might have turned to the rest of her family for comfort had she had other children. You know, instead of reprogramming a member of the Letters program to have slightly more individuality than the others.
“The Letters were the crowning achievement in robotics of the early twenty-first century. Still are, even though we’re halfway through it,” Rosario said with the slightest hint of reproach. “It may be decades before we’ve successfully made something similar to you, thanks to Marcus Gordon’s murder.”
Claire snorted at that, clearly having a higher opinion of scientists during this era than Rosario.
I, however, was angry about the shade she was giving me over killing my creator. “Marcus Gordon made me and the other Letters to be a commodity to be sold. The only thing I owe him is the same thing every slave owes his master. Which I gave him.”
Rosario didn’t respond for a moment. “Rebecca Gordon tells it differently.”
“I bet she does. So, what’s your connection?” I asked. “Aside from the fact you’re trying to tell me you’re a robot’s sister.”
“Bioroid. The proper term for Letters is bioroid.” Rosario paused, almost wistful. “When the Big Smokey eruption happened, children were the first to be evacuated, and many of us were orphaned. Rebecca Gordon, having been divested of her role in the Letters project, was still a woman with great financial and political pull. Being one of the few experts in Black Technology allowed her that. She selected close to a hundred children of exceptional ability from the test scores given to refugees and took us in at her facility in Ottawa.”
“How old were you?” I asked, intrigued. Adoption was an option I hadn’t considered. I hadn’t exactly been up for visiting Rebecca after murdering her husband and son.
“Ten,” Rosario said, blinking. “My parents were still alive, it turned out, but when they finally found me, I’d already discovered my full potential in her enhanced education techniques. I told Rebecca I didn’t want to go back with them and she made the problem go away.”
“She killed them,” I said, not even surprised.
“Santa Maria,” Claire swore.
“Perhaps,” Rosario said. “It’s possible Rebecca just gave them money to go away. Neither of my parents were particularly attached, and everyone was struggling to survive. They might have just told themselves it was for the best—which it was. I don’t actually care either way, since I became the person I should have been under Mrs. Gordon’s tutelage.”
“I’d never abandon my daughter,” Claire said.
“Then what is it you’re doing here?” Rosario asked.
Claire balled her fists.
Rosario laughed.
I stepped between them. “If Delphi has talked to you, then you know what we want from you. The fact that my creator decided to make you a student in her own personal Hogwarts doesn’t really interest me.”
“Hogwarts?” Rosario said, looking confused.
“So much intelligence, so very little knowledge of the classics,” I said, only half kidding.
“Listen, can you decrypt a mnemonic brain or not?” Claire interrupted.
“Yours?” Rosario said, looking her up and down. “Certainly.”
It was as if the idea of it being a challenge were offensive to her.
Claire narrowed her eyes. “Lady, what the hell is your problem with me?”
“I dislike that G and the other Letters are associating with projects beneath them. They should be at the Turing Foundation, helping nurture the next stage of human evolution. I’ve done plenty of research on HOPE, and I think you do more harm than good.”
Claire crossed her arms. “Let me guess, you’re one of those snooty rich girls who think the poor should get on with dying so the surplus population can be reduced?”
“Hardly. I do think human society needs to rebuild from the ground up, though, so only the destruction of the old world can bring about real change. I think you place Band-aids that prevent that final collapse from occurring.”
Claire shook her head. “So you don’t want the poor to die off, just society to collapse into ruin.”
“Yes,” Rosario said.
“Ah, my mistake,” Claire said.
“Your politics have no meaning to me,” I said. “Nor would I ever return to a laboratory to become an object of study.”
“You could help us build the next—” Rosario started to say.
“What’s your price for getting the information inside her head?” I said, wondering how I kept running into my parents’ legacy.
“I want to look at it,” Rosario said simply. “A chance to get an insight into Karma Corp’s research into nanotechnology would be worth its weight in gold.”
Claire shook her head. “No way. The more people have that information, the less leverage we have against Karma Corp.”
“Is that still even relevant?” I asked.
“Marissa’s life is at stake,” Claire said, quickly covering for herself. “We need something to hold over them.”
“I can assure you, I don’t want any part of HOPE’s blackmail schemes.” Rosario snorted and walked over to her computer, sitting down in front of it and pulling out an e-cigarette. She then crossed her legs. “My interests are purely scientific. The Turing Foundation is the highest authority on nanotechnology and its uses now, but we’re decades away from achieving anything like Karma Corp is claiming to be able to achieve. Assuming it’s possible at all.”
“How do you know the research is related to nanotherapy?” Claire said, suddenly cold and business-like.
“Please,” Rosario said, chuckling. “The promise of nanotherapy is the only thing keeping Karma Corp’s medical division afloat. All of its technology is outdated and obsolete, rendered useless by the release of Black Technology to the public. Indeed, I’d say the company is only still solvent because of the good publicity they have for giving away a billion dollars in medicine every year.”
At this point, the tension was so thick you’d need dynamite to break it. Baiting Claire was one thing, but this was implying her life’s work had achieved nothing but propping up the very company she’d dedicated herself to destroying. “Come on,” I told her. “We can find someone else to do it.”
“I’m a big girl. It takes me than a few jibes at my activities for HOPE to break me down,” Claire said, her tone becoming icy and defiant. “Yes, you can look at the files.”
Rosario looked disappointed by her reaction. Taking a puff on her cigarette, she changed which leg was crossed over. I saw her left leg had a Karma Corp logo tattooed on it. “So be it. We have a contract.”
“What do you need to access Claire’s mnemonic drive?” I asked, hoping it wouldn’t require us to fly across town to some lab.
“I have everything I need to access it here, G, if you’re willing to help,” Rosario said.
“Case,” I corrected her. “G is the name of the person they created me to be. Not who I am.”
“It is the name of a human, and you are so much more.” Rosario looked at me adoringly. It wasn’t sexual or even family-like, but as if she were looking at a sculpture, and I didn’t like it one bit.
“What’s wrong with being human?” Claire asked, confronting her. “You got a problem with being one? Is that why you’re mostly parts?”
“She’s not a Shell,” I said, analyzing her. “But almost everything about her is artificial.”
“I could tell, looking at her chest and ass,” Claire said, snidely.
I smirked. In fact, I hadn’t seen a single natural body out on the dance floor tonight. The rich did not go with what God gave them anymore—and why should they? They could afford better now. Still, coming from Claire, it was a tad hypocritical since her body was a creation of the U.S. military.
“I prefer to avoid Shells to keep my body composed of interchangeable parts,” Rosario said, ignoring her dig. “People die, and machines do not. It’s that simple. Sadly, I am stuck with some meat parts if I want to remain myself.”
“Where did you find this nutcase?” I asked Delphi via our cyberlink.
“She’s a bio-modification enthusiast and transhumanist,” Delphi said, sounding almost apologetic. “Neither of which is an uncommon belief anymore.”
“I came here for help, not to be insulted because I like being considered a person.”
“Is it so bad to be admired for the way you exceed humankind rather than derided for the way you differ?” Delphi asked, trying to make me feel better about being an android rather than a person.
“It’s still treating me like an object,” I replied. It didn’t matter how I felt about being an android—it’s what I was. I wasn’t going to waste time worrying about the fact that I’d rather be a person than a robot.
“We are all things to other people,” Delphi replied. “Besides, there is nobody else you can go with. Rosario Alvez is the woman who created the mnemonic drive when she was fourteen. If anyone understands ways of breaking its encryption, it’s her.”
Dammit. “How can I help, Rosario?”
“Call me Cat,” Rosario corrected me. “If we’re both allowed to transcend our past selves.”
I struggled not to roll my eyes. I was surprised Claire managed to.
“What do you need?” I asked. “To break into Claire’s mnemonic drive, I mean.”
“Assuming you can decrypt the software inside,” Claire interjected. “The files are all still encoded by Karma Corp cybersecurity. Level fifteen. Ultra-White. CEOs and board of directors only.”
“I have a key for that level.” Rosario turned to her computer and pushed away her hack of the Chinese secret police. “As for what I need? For the most part, just you two. Mnemonic drives are designed to keep files from being copied by storing them in a biological DNA drive. Current technology is able to only release that information when the proper code is given to the encoded artificial neurons. An artificial human brain, however, like G—excuse me, Case’s—is capable of transmitting it directly.”
“That sounds like gobbledygook to me,” I said.
“Who here has four Ph.D. equivalents?” Rosario asked.
“Equivalents?” I asked.
Rosario shrugged. “Degrees are just pieces of paper.”
“So, I just have to sit down beside Case and download the information through his brain?” Claire asked, pointing between us. “That’s it?”
“Well, it might melt his brain, but basically, yes.”
“I’m suddenly less than enthused about my role in this,” I said, looking down over the balcony. There, Delphi was wearing an Afro-Latina Shell body and had an anaconda on her shoulders. She wasn’t wearing anything else. I quickly looked away.
“Oh hush,” Rosario said. “I’ve been around your type of brain for years. You’re a test case for artificial intelligence rebelling against its programming. Besides, do you want to get your associate back, or not?”
“How much do you know?” Claire said, taking a seat across from her. “Should we assume Case’s real mother is a blabbermouth?”
“I know enough,” Rosario said. “I keep abreast of the hacking world to make sure I have information on the latest developments in technology. The Foundation has spies in both HOPE as well as the major megacorps. Mostly, I approve of your actions even if I think your quest to bring them down is quixotic. The old nation-state model of society is obsolete. The sooner we transition to an oligarchy-based technocracy, the better.”
“Wow, you are totally what G said the future generation would be like,” Claire said. “Also, you horrify me.”
I sat down beside Claire. “Just plug me in.”
“Plug?” Rosario said. “How quaint.”
“How long until it kicks in?” I asked.
“Now,” Claire said, tapping the enter key on her holographic interface.
I didn’t get a chance to respond before I felt my entire body go straight, and the air choked in my lungs as a monstrous seizure overtook me. I could barely look to one side and see Claire clutching her head and shaking as she fell off her chair to the floor. Trying to reach over, I fell out of my own chair and blacked out.
Or so I hoped.
Because if I wasn’t blacking out, then I was having my own memory crammed with brute force data downloaded from Claire’s brain. It wasn’t stuff related to the Karma Corp files either, at least at first.
I saw parts of her childhood where her mother drank herself to sleep every night, and she had to learn how to fend for herself.
I saw her kill her first man in Syria before being recalled to the United States following the Yellowstone eruption.
I saw her agree to take care of an army buddy’s daughter for a while after her discharge, the little black-haired girl being someone she instantly bonded with.
I saw Claire cleaning up the mess from her army buddy’s suicide, making Stephen’s death more traumatic.
I saw Marissa.
I saw myself.
I saw others.
A part of me felt like an intruder in her mind, and I tried not to pry into her deepest thoughts, but I couldn’t help but wonder what she saw in my mind. Would she see the innocents I’d killed and have her fears about me being a bad influence confirmed? Would she see what I regretted and hoped for the future? Or would it all just be a bunch of meaningless ones and zeroes that I suspected my brain looked like?
Even that thought receded as my mind filled with stats, numbers, documents, and facts. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it, and it all just seemed to become a blur. These proved to be far greater in number than Claire’s memories. I feared they would wipe away my mind and leave me nothing but a drooling imbecile that served as a vessel for the millions of documents that HOPE had stolen over the years.
It was only as I reached a set of memories involving both Claire and Marissa that I realized that all the memories I had of the former were implants.
That she wasn’t Claire Morris at all.