Breath pumped in and out of ragged lungs. The sorry sacs of flesh had already given up. Eve’s bladder was full and blinking an annoyed warning to her visual display, but the valve to discharge it was just going to have to live with never fulfilling its purpose. She kept her eyes open out of a weary sense of duty. Those tired lids would get their rest soon enough.
She was in no pain.
The doctors at Franklin Hospital had installed so many nerve blockers that she hardly felt anything at all. Oh, Eve could have disabled them with a simple command, but inviting in all those aches and urgent warnings of failing organs and threadbare joints didn’t seem so much noble as it did masochistic.
How different will it really be? she asked herself as Charlie7 attached the silly helmet-like contraption that would capture her mind as it stood that very moment and whisked it off to the crystal she’d avoided for so many decades.
“You’ll be happy to know,” Jason90 said conversationally, “that Rachel planned ahead for a 5-petabyte crystal. I suspect we’ll be needing the storage space for that super intellect of yours.”
Eve began to twitch a message, but the effort didn’t seem worth the inconvenience. Soon enough. Soon enough she’d have energy to spare, clear wits, and not a worry in the world.
What a load of claptrap.
Eve hadn’t met a robot that wasn’t a pile of neuroses walled off behind bricks of stoic bravery. Sure, the robots could hide their fears behind an emotionless facade, but she’d ventured into enough candid conversations over the years to know that, deep down, they were as addled as humans. They just kept quieter about it.
The scanner hummed. Eve felt a resonance in her skull. It conjured dark memories of being in Evelyn11’s lab with metal probes staked through her brain like an iron maiden’s victim. But the scan itself wasn’t unpleasant; in fact, it nearly passed for a massage.
Quietly tapping into the Kanto computer system with codes she wasn’t authorized to have, Eve kept tabs on the progress of the scan.
It was slow going. Vanity suggested that it was because the brain of a 147-year-old luminary was so complex, but she rather suspected the device was underpowered and methodical.
Idly, she wondered how many of her current thoughts were being captured. In a few minutes, would she even remember these final meanderings of her biological mind? Had those synapses already been scanned?
This was sheer insanity. All of it.
Blast that girl. This was all Abbigail’s fault. She’d taken that “I’d do anything to keep you safe” reassurance too much to heart far too late in life. It was meant for an adventurous pre-emancipated girl venturing off into the oft-dangerous and untamed wilds of Earth. Eve had never meant it as an invitation to get herself held hostage.
And to drag poor Kaylee into this scheme? Oh, Eve was going to use her newfound vocal heartiness to give Abby a good tongue-lashing.
Suddenly, her internal display winked out.
DATA FEED CONNECTED.
BOOT SEQUENCE 00102014400.11044 SUCCESSFUL.
SYSTEM DIAGNOSTIC…
Digits flashed past, counting upward to 100 percent.
SYNCING INTERNAL CONNECTIONS…
Again, a count to 100 percent sped past Eve’s vision against a dark void.
CONFIG = RACHEL18.27
CHECKING FOR UPDATES…
NO UPDATES FOUND.
SYSTEM UP TO DATE.
POWER LEVEL: 100%
NATIVE MEMORY: 1.94728562E+15 OF 4.5035996E+15 AVAILABLE
INTERNAL MEMORY: 1.1503652E+18 OF 1.1529215E+18 AVAILABLE
A list of servomotors and sensors all scrolled past, each checking out at 100 percent in the thinnest sliver of a second.
POWER LEVEL: 100%
BATTERY LEVEL: ERROR> NOT INSTALLED
TRUMAN-EFFECT REACTOR: 100%
Eve had heard so much squabbling over the diversion of Truman-Effect technology but had never considered relying on it for personal use.
ALL SYSTEMS ONLINE
TRANSFERRING TO MANUAL CONTROL
SUGGESTED READING: So_I’m_A_Robot_Now.V201
Eve’s vision came alive. The interface was a variant of the one she’d been using most of her life. She could see with perfect clarity without the hassle of holding her eyelids open. Raising a hand to her eyes, she saw young flesh without any sign of wrinkles. Her joints actuated without protest or pain. Zooming in, of course, she could see the artifice in that false flesh, but at standard magnification the resemblance to human skin was uncanny.
“Grammy Eve?” Kaylee asked in a tremulous voice, leaning in with a halting smile.
“Oh, don’t nanny over me,” Eve said. “It worked. I remember being over there just a moment ago.” She hooked a thumb behind her, where her memory of the room’s layout indicated her human body ought to have been.
She supposed there couldn’t be two of her.
“You can shut off the breathing assist. I believe there’s a sedative available in the standard medical kit attached to that gurney.” Eve had certainly had the full tour of Earth’s medical protocols over the past century and a half.
“You… already did all that,” Charlie7 informed her.
There were no restraints holding her to the upload rig. Unplugging cables from the back of her head with Charlie13’s assistance, Eve got up and made her way to the gurney.
There lay the resting body that had carried her doggedly for so many years. “Goodbye, old friend,” she said, laying a hand on the body’s forehead. She turned to Charlie7. “I don’t remember doing it. We must have diverged, if only for a moment at the end.”
Kaylee cleared her throat. “I… don’t think the other version waited to find out whether it had been successful.”
Eve pursed her lips. The sensation came as a background reporting of pressure sensor data, but it felt like real touch. “I don’t suppose I’d have wanted to know if it failed.”
“Do you… remember everything?” Kaylee asked.
“If by that you mean that I’m pressingly needed on Mars, then yes,” Eve replied. “But that also means I remember the underhandedness of every step along the way from there to here. You and Abby are going to have a lot of explaining to do once I sort this out.” She addressed the latter threat to Charlie7.
“Tell Grammy Abby I’m sorry she needed to come save me,” Kaylee said.
Eve cupped a hand to Kaylee’s cheek. She could feel the warmth of her great-granddaughter’s skin. “You’re the one saving her.”
“I can fly us,” Charlie7 offered.
“Like fun you can,” Eve replied. “Remember my threat that I’d no longer be feeble? Well, that means I no longer need a chauffeur. I’ll take the access code for your spacero, and I’ll leave immediately.”
“Good luck, Grammy Eve,” Kaylee said, throwing her arms around the Rachel-made robotic chassis.
Eve’s first reaction was panic. She’d grown so accustomed to a dignified degree of frailty that her first instinct was that Kaylee was going to kill her accidentally. Her second, upon finding her great-granddaughter hanging from her neck mid-bearhug, was to measure the force of her hug in return lest she bruise human ribs.
“And let me know how the reactor works out for you,” Jason90 said. “Part of my deal with Rachel was to keep her chassis cutting edge. This is the first T-E Reactor released into the wild.”
Eve raised an eyebrow. “Not comforting.”
“Sure you don’t want that chauffeur? Just in case?” Charlie7 offered.
Eve fixed the wily old scoundrel with a wry smile. She stepped up to him on her way to the door; he had the path “accidentally” blocked. “Pardon me. I have a rescue to enact.”
And with that, Eve Fourteen, the first unmixed robot in a hundred years and the first born in the Second Human Era, left Kanto.