Chapter Twenty-Three

“What does the ‘IRM’ stand for?” I asked Nicholas again as we neared Coach C’s building and slowed down. “Is the ‘R’ part a reference to the r-process for Thorium?”

Nicholas stopped in front of the door and turned to fully regard me. His light blue eyes were glittering. “You know, you’re the first person to actually make that connection and ask me that?” He laughed. “Not that I’m surprised. But no. And it’s a secret.”

He opened the door, and like a gentleman, waited for me to enter first. But I narrowed my gaze at him and pressed my lips into an impatient line. I’d never given up that easily on something in my entire life. “Is it for ‘revolution?’ I mean, despite the fact you designed Luke and Zero first, Daniel was actually the first IRM model you produced, and… well, let’s face it. Daniel is pretty much a walking revolution… then again, if he was the first you produced, a revolution wouldn’t yet be eminent,” I reasoned, faltering.

Nicholas chewed on his cheek for a few seconds, considering me carefully. My confused determination must have won him over, because he let the door shut on its own and shoved his hands back into his pockets. “You really want to know?”

“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t.”

“It stands for ‘robot.’”

I blinked. “It what now?”

“It stands for ‘robot’ as in “I, Robot.’ And that’s where the ‘I’ comes from too, since you were ready to ask.”

I blinked again, but this time I lifted my head in an ah-ha moment. “I see,” I said softly. “Of course.” That actually made a lot of sense. I smiled a little at the cultural reference. “Why the numbers?”

“Well, I needed to differentiate them somehow. I chose a number for Daniel at random, in a way. Six-hundred, sixty-seven is as good a number as any.”

Nicholas was one of those special people with synesthesia. Synesthetes could sometimes see letters and numbers in color or even taste or feel them. Though he had come across a few issues in school because of it and other syndromes associated with it, I was still a little jealous. In all honesty, it sounded like it would have added an interesting flare to life.

“But I had nothing to do with the numbering for Luke and Malcolm. As we’ve established, the gods only know who is responsible for Malcom’s production. Probably the devil himself.”

He opened the door again, and this time I went inside. He followed after, making sure the door locked behind us.

“He’s got the right color blood for it,” I joked, recalling the way the Star Trek original series doctor, “Bones” had often teasingly accused the Vulcan “Spock” of being a devil due to his green blood.

“Speaking of blood, that’s another thing I regret,” Nick told me, no smile in his tone. “Vulcan blood.”

My smile vanished too. “You mean the sealer you used on Thorium to make it safe for human interaction,” I guessed.

“That’s the one.”

“Nicholas,” I stopped on a step and drew him to a halt on the next one up. He peered down at me. Waaaaay down.

“You can stop feeling bad about that one right now,” I told him, craning my neck. “You had no way of knowing people would use Binder-Nine the way they did. And if you hadn’t created Vulcan blood, well… we wouldn’t have androids.” I paused. “I wouldn’t have Lucas.”

He didn’t say anything more on the subject, but I could almost hear him thinking as we continued up the stairs.

Nicholas took the steps slowly. He was in excellent shape; I’d seen him move and fight at the Vector Fifteen tower and at the hospital. His physique was as tall and strong as ever, so I knew he’d kept up with the martial arts he’d been taking when we were in high school. He was going slow for me, probably because he didn’t want me to push it too hard after my surgery.

But we went slowly enough that I could think things over.

Android blood, or “Vulcan blood,” as it had come to be known due to its green color, was composed of several volatile substances. It had to be. The blood of an android was its power source. Its battery, so to speak.

The seemingly most dangerous of the substances that made it up was a highly unstable element known as Thorium, named after the god of thunder, Thor. Thorium was radioactive. It was so radioactive in fact, that in the twentieth century, there had been talks of replacing nuclear reactors across the globe with Thorium reactors. A few had been successfully built and were still in use.

Thorium was relatively easy to come by, and it was powerful, so it was seriously useful as an energy source. Nicholas had obviously recognized that. But it couldn’t be effectively used in its hot reactive state. A bleeding android would otherwise inadvertently give its human companions fatal cancer within a week.

So Nicholas had created an entirely new substance, one that negated the harmful reactions of Thorium while still allowing it to work as a source of energy. It did this by bonding itself to the chemical molecule, neutralizing its otherwise detrimental effects. As it so happened, the two substances combined are what produced the green color of android blood.

Oddly enough, it turned out that Vulcan blood’s most lethal ingredient was not the Thorium, but the binder Nick created. After he had already created and produced several lines of some of his first android models, he’d inadvertently learned that the sealant in their blood became volatile when exposed to iron. He’d learned this by accidentally slicing his finger open while wrestling with a stubborn envelope, then bleeding into a very small tester filled with Binder-Nine.

The resulting explosion had temporarily blinded him and given him a concussion, as well as destroyed most of his lab. He was fortunate three-D printing “skin graft guns” had been capable of completely reconstructing the skin tissue he’d lost to third-degree burns. Now the only evidence remaining of the accident was his rather OCD use of letter openers when dealing with his mail.

Consequently, Nicholas realized there was enough Binder-Nine in a single android body to destroy a city the size of Los Angeles. And all anyone needed was that one android and a little bit of iron, which could obviously be found everywhere. Naturally Nicholas tried his best to keep the reactive tendency of Vulcan blood under wraps while he attempted – fruitlessly – to replace Binder-Nine with something less dangerous. But the military caught wind of it anyway. And when it did, it “appropriated” several androids for testing purposes. Powerful weapons of mass destruction soon followed.

For this reason, when a non-functioning android was disposed-of, it was drained of every last drop of its Vulcan blood before the body was discarded. That blood was then by law handed over to military officials, and every ounce of the substance was accounted for. What then happened to the blood was more or less a mystery. But I was pretty sure it went to a bunch of different places – and that it shouldn’t have gone to any of them.

We reached the apartment in time to hear cheering from the other side of the door. Someone had clearly won a round of some kind of game.

Down the hall, a head popped out of another apartment door and said, “Hey you!”

I grew instantly worried that we were being too loud and were about to get into an un-neighborly altercation. I turned my head, expecting to see someone scowling. But instead I found a woman who looked to be somewhere in her sixties, fairly attractive, and dressed all in red and green, grinning openly. “You do me a favor and tell Chuck to come see me before the day’s out, would you? I forgive him for not inviting me to the party,” she said in a gravelly voice that told me she’d smoked a lot in her younger years. Just like Coach C had.

“I’ve got mistletoe hanging from my ceiling that I need him to get down for me,” she explained with an obvious wink and a sparkle in her brown eyes. Now that her door was open, I caught the scent of something remarkable wafting from her apartment. Something like cookies. Like chocolate chip cookies. And I heard Christmas music.

The woman laughed a real, deep belly laugh, and went back inside her apartment, closing the door softly behind her.

I looked up at Nicholas, who was smiling, clearly amused.

“She didn’t tell us her name,” I said.

“I’m guessing it’s Mrs. Claus,” Nick said, echoing my thoughts.

But then Coach C’s apartment door opened and Coach stepped out into the hall lickety-split. He was carrying a wrapped present, and he’d literally put on a suit. A real, live suit. I didn’t think anyone but androids even owned suits anymore. True, Coach’s was outdated, and parts of it were nearly threadbare. But it was still a suit.

“Her name is Angela Myriam Henrietta Marston,” he told me frankly, with a huge grin. I caught the scent of after shave and continued to stare at him with wide eyes. “And I’m late delivering her Christmas present.” He winked at me, brushed past us, and half-way down the hall, he turned and said, “Don’t wait up, kids.”

I watched him turn back around, approach Angela’s door, and deliver a “Shave and a haircut” knock. It opened a second later, and Angela cheerily chimed, “Two bits!”

They laughed, she let him in, and the door was shut in our faces.

“She has cookies,” I muttered. My stomach growled. “I think they’re chocolate chip.” I put my hand to my stomach, which continued to complain about how put-out it was. “That’s my favorite.”

Nicholas began laughing. I turned and shot him a narrowed gaze before leaving him in the hall to enter the apartment. The moment I did, the scent hit me again, only this time it was stronger – cookies.

Charlotte came out of the kitchen with Shawn in tow, both of them holding trays of fresh, hot, straight-from-the-oven cookies. “You’re back!” she exclaimed with a huge smile. “Perfect timing! Shawn and I made cookies! Some are choco-chip, since we know they’re your favorite.”

Now it was my turn to laugh. Shawn looked adorable with flour on his cheek and nose, and a proud grin across his face. “I even made some for Nanuk,” he said. “With carob chips!”

As if he’d heard his name and taken it as a green light, the enormous K-9 came lumbering out of the hallway at full speed, and everyone scrambled to get out of the small woolly mammoth’s way.

Charlotte heard the commotion before the dog rounded the corner, and she was able to place her tray of cookies on the table in record time to keep him from getting to them. But Shawn, who wasn’t as accustomed to acting quickly because of small children or large animals, simply stepped out of the kitchen with his tray – and directly into Nanuk’s path.

The long haired, pure white Mastiff skidded to a halt on the kitchen tiles, tilted his giant head to the right, and panted heavily as he studied Shawn and his piled-high metal tray. Shawn stared right back, clearly out of his element.

Then Nanuk leapt with all his might.

Everyone screamed. Shawn’s eyes grew very wide. He took a fruitless step back, but it was too late. The two-hundred and sixty pound dog slammed into him full-force, knocking the android and his tray of carob chip cookies to the kitchen floor in seconds flat.

“Nanuk!” both Lucas and Jack cried, scrambling to get ahold of the beast. But the dog was oblivious to their attempts, joyously wrapped up in the task of obliterating every baked good on the floor.

After a while, I noticed Shawn was laughing. “I guess he likes them,” he said through his chuckles while Daniel offered him a hand up. “I’m going to take that as a win.” He got to his feet and brushed himself off as the dog proceeded to do all the rest of the cleaning for them.

And while they dealt with the small catastrophe happening in the kitchen – I was on my third chocolate chip cookie.